Worship on Epiphany Sunday
10:00 am January 05, 2025
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs, Communion Service Led by Rom Rhoad
Music Director: Binu Kapadia Vocalist: Lynn Vaughan
Welcoming Elder: Shirley Simpson Reader: Darlene Eerkes
We gather to worship God
Music Prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you.
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship: Psalm 47: 1-2, 5-9 (ESV)
L: Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with joy! For the LORD the most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.
P: God had gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
L: Sing Praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King sing praises!
P: For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!
L: God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.
All: The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham; for the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!
Opening praise: Forever God is faithful
Prayers of approach and confession
Almighty God, we come to you this week recognizing the many ways we have fallen short of your commands. Maybe we have called siblings fools, we have hated our enemies, we have not treated our neighbours as ourselves, we have not turned the other cheek or prayed for those who hate us, we have not lived up to what Jesus has taught us. We are but people, full of fault and sin. Forgive us Lord.
Response: Glory, glory hallelujah
Assurance of God’s pardon
Fellow followers of Jesus, hear these words and take assurance- “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God has forgiven us of our sins, he has given a single great sacrifice for all time. Recognizing this, let us go forth and sin no more. Come now Lord Jesus. Amen.
We listen for the voice of God
Song: Blessed assurance (687)
Scripture readings: Genesis 19:23-25; Luke 12:4-12
Response: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
Message: “Fear Him”?
As Jesus said according to Luke “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he was killed, has the authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”
What does this mean? What is Jesus asking us?
Fear God, the Father?
Fear Him, the Son?
This does not sound like good news.
Is this really, in the Good News?
Often when people are confronted with this sort of question, they ask-
“Why would a loving God ask us to fear him?”
That’s a difficult, but reasonable question.
Why would a loving God do this?
Let’s take a step back. Let’s first examine how Fear is used and understood here on earth. Fear an important tool in the human understanding of how governments derive their power and authority. For governments like our own, theoretically it is a ‘fear’ of the people that our government derives its power. This is expressed by our ability to vote (3), and thus keep politicians “in fear” of our power to remove them from power.
Other forms government rely more overtly on fear, like that of the Roman Empire (4), the very government that Jesus was technically a subject of. In this empire, fear was the tool that maintained the empire, subjects of the Romans would fear the might of the empire’s military forces and pay taxes and worship the emperor as signs of their submission. By the reign of Emperor Trajan (5), this threat of force was a necessity for the Romans to govern.
Trajan, like other emperors before him, played to a veneer of maintaining Roman Tradition, insofar as it helped him keep his throne. Of these traditions, adherence to the traditional gods of Rome was required, and he used this to justify his rule. This was done as it was believed that the gods of Rome would destroy the Empire if the people were not maintaining their sacrifices to them. So, the Roman Emperors took control over expression of religion as to maintain the good will of these gods. So, a surface level of piety was required, and faiths that openly undermined this had to be suppressed, such as Christianity.
Our Faith fundamentally undermined the Roman State religion. Our beliefs taught us that sacrificed pigs to Jupiter appeased no such being, our faith taught that an emperor could not become a god after death, due to an edict from his successor, which had to be confirmed by a majority vote by the senate. Our faith that taught that spilt libations of wine honoured nothing and changed nothing either here or in the afterlife. These meaningless rituals were essential to maintaining Roman rule for centuries, rituals believed to have been started by Rome’s second King, Numa, almost a thousand years before. As the Emperor feared the gods, the Romans should fear their emperor. This was one of the ways in which emperors would maintain their position. That and the threat of death, was enforced by legions. (6) That fear was symbolized by the painful execution by Crucifixion. The very method by which Jesus was executed.
The Roman Empire, differing from the Republic that preceded it, relied much more on the threat of legions, than the relationship with the gods. Fear of death kept the subjects of the Roman Empire in line. All one had to do to stay alive under the Romans was pay their taxes and worship the divine spirit of the emperor.
Roman men such as Pliny the Younger were loyal and obedient servants to his emperor, Trajan. He was directly appointed to be a governor over the rich and commercially prosperous Province of Bithynia, which is in modern Turkey. At any moment, if Pliny even had a hint of disloyalty to Trajan, he could be easily removed from his position, especially since he had no legions directly under his command. So, it was for his own health and his wealth that he stayed loyal and ‘in fear’ of his emperor.
In Pliny’s Province, there had been a growing problem, a group that Trajan had declared as subversive as they undermined the traditional faiths of the Empire. In his enthusiasm to please his emperor. Pliny had captured and tortured two slave-women apart of this group, a group identified as Christians. These slaves were deacons (lay leaders) in their church. From them he sought to gleam more information about these Christians and their subversive faith. These women Pliny tortured for their faith, and they taught Pliny that their beliefs in this Jesus were not evil, cannibalistic or corrupt as many rumours at the time had stated. By the Holy Spirit they testified the Truth, that Jesus was Christ, the Son of God, who had died a human death for humanity’s sin and had risen on the third day, eventually ascending into heaven after declaring his intention to one day come again. They refused to renounce Jesus Christ or worship the emperor. So, they suffered for it.
These women had no fear of their emperor as Pliny did.
Fear was a necessity to Trajan’s rule, after all he had seized power from
Nervus, a weak old man who was unpopular with the army, a man who he ironically deified after his death. Trajan had sized power by forcing Nerva into adopting him as his son and heir. Nerva valued his life enough to accept this new order, and Trajan rewarded him with deification by motion of Senate. Trajan was a man, clever, conniving, politically apt, a skilled general loved by his soldiers and feared by those under his rule, but nonetheless he was nothing more than a man.
God does not rule like this at all, God does not need to rely on other gods or legions of troops to maintain his rule over the earth. (9) The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed by God as a means to put people into fear of His divine power, of His ability to smite the entire world like what we might say at the wave of His hand. This punishment was not born out of malevolence, but rather righteousness. Even in this act of wrath we do see God’s mercy.
After God had determined to smite this evil valley and its inhabitants, His Wrath does not consume the entire valley, (10) “’Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.’” (Genesis 19:17b.)
God spares the city of Zoar. It is within the same valley as Sodom and Gemorrah, guilty of the same sins, but at Lot’s request God spares it. There was no other special reason for God to spare this city, as it was included in the depravity found in the entire valley. God spares it out of love for Lot and Abraham, both very imperfect people.
Emperors, Kings, and Dictators rule through fear. Their power is in this world, and it is fleeting. God’s rule is not justified by fear. Fear is what kept the Roman gods in power, it’s what kept the Romans blindly and faithlessly sacrificing to the gods, and when those gods failed and the Republic fell, a new god arose for the Romans, the Emperor, who could quite literally become a god, ruling jointly with his fellow gods from their own thrones up in the heavens. (11)
But these soon to be divine emperors could not tell anyone to the exact detail everything that there is to know about their empire. How many soldiers they have under their command at an exact moment, how many of their courtiers wanted them dead and how many of their subjects loved them. Emperors, for whom thousands would pray for every day, would struggle to say exactly how many of their Imperial Subjects prayed for their spirit, and how many of those that prayed believed that their words, that their incense, that their spilt wine did anything.
I imagine to these earliest Christians, especially as they were being spat on in the streets, as false rumors were being laid against them, as they were chased from town, kicked out of their homes by relatives, or when they were sporadically tortured, crucified, maimed, and murdered, this passage from Luke was one of the passages of which they could hear and find much comfort in. They feared God, the only god worthy of fear.
How we have conceived of fear, fear for our governments, our government’s fear of us, much of our lives can be said to be predicated on fear. Fear of our standing in society, our relationship with our friends, our family. In our lives we all fear constantly. In some way it is no different with our God. But He is not just like those people in our lives. He forgives, and he asks us to forgive each other. (12) “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8. God is unlike us, yet not unlike us at all. God knows us for who we are, and will render justice in His own timing, for reasons only fully understood by God.
On Earth, no power, no Emperor, no ruler, no government, no priest, no human, can ever claim to have such power as the judge our souls, to judge us worthy of election into heaven or for us to be condemned to Hell. That alone is in God’s hands.
My Friends in Jesus- Fear God, but fear not.
God is Almighty, All-Powerful, Omnipresent.
And God is Good.
Our God is Benevolent.
Our God is a loving God.
Our God is forgiving.
The fear we have for God, is not a fear of Damnation, but rather a recognition that God did not have to give us a way into Salvation. (13)
God did not have to send His Son.
But God, in his mercy, in his love, did just that.
Yes, my brothers and sisters, Fear God, and Fear not.
That seems to me[1], to be how we should understand Luke’s message.
Do not fear those who kill the body…
Do not be Afraid. Trust in God.
Birds are a dime a dozen, and God remembers and accounts for each and every one of them.
God will remember you. As God remembers the birds. As God remembered Abram. As God remembered Lot. As God remembered those two deacons, tortured for His sake. God knows us for who we are, and we should give thanks that it is God who judges us. Not an emperor, not an elected leader, not the world, not a human, not anything else.
Fear not, for God holds us to being worth much more than even those many trillions of birds. God loves us. God remembers us. God accounts for each and everyone of us.
Fear not, for the All-Powerful and Only God is Just, and He knows all and remembers all, and His Kingdom has no end.
God be praised. Amen.
Song: To God be the glory (350)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Lord God, although these offerings we give will not guarantee our salvation, they represent our devotion to our Saviour and our will to continue to assist in the ministries done by this church in Jesus Christ’s name. Let us give what we are able to, whether that is our time, our patience, our love, or some of our money. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Prayer of gratitude, and for others and ourselves
Eternal God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, accept the prayers of your people, Lord you alone know what we are all suffering, what we grieve in this life you have given us. Lord, strengthen us to do your will and love our neighbours, even when we feel that we cannot. Even as we come out of this Christmas season, help us to not forget the benevolent love you have shown us by sending us your son, Jesus. In his Holy name we pray, Amen
The Sacrament of Holy Communion
Invitation
Friends in Christ, this is the joyful feast of the people of God. They will come from east and west, from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God.
This is the Lord’s Table. Our Savior invites all who trust in Him to share the feast which He has prepared. Here, in the bread and the cup, we remember Christ’s sacrifice, celebrate His presence, and anticipate His return in glory.
Come, not because you must, but because you may; not because you are strong, but because you seek God’s strength. Come to this table of grace, where Christ meets us with forgiveness, peace, and love.
Song: All who hunger (534)
The Lord’s Prayer (sung: 469)
The Communion Prayer
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Gracious God, Creator of heaven and earth, with joy we give you thanks and praise. You spoke and the earth was formed; from chaos, you brought order; out of darkness, you brought light. You made us in your image to live with one another in love.
Even when we turned away from you, you reached out again and again, calling us back to your embrace. Through the prophets, you promised a Savior to redeem your people and set them free.
And so, with your people on earth and all the company of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!
Holy are you, and blessed is your Son, Jesus Christ. In the fullness of time, you sent him to live among us. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and reached out to the lost. His life, death, and resurrection opened the way to eternal life. Remembering his promise to be with us always, we await his coming in glory.
By your Spirit, make us one with Christ and with all who share this meal, even as this bread is Christ’s body for us. Empower us through this sacrament to live as Christ’s faithful disciples and show the world your love.
Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are yours, Almighty God, now and forever. Amen.
Sharing of the Bread and Wine
On the night of his arrest, our Lord Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks to God, he broke it and said, “This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.”
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the saving death of the risen Lord, until he comes.
Song: One bread one body (540)
Prayer after Communion
Gracious and loving God, we thank You for feeding us with the holy mystery of the body and blood of Your Son, Jesus Christ. In this sacrament, You have nourished our souls and strengthened our faith. We are filled with gratitude for Your love, which unites us with Christ and with one another.
Empower us now, by Your Spirit, to go forth into the world as bearers of Your light and love. May we embody the grace and compassion we have received, sharing the hope of Christ with all whom we meet.
Guide us in our journey of faith, that we may serve You with joy and dedication. Help us to respond to Your call with open hearts, loving our neighbors and working for justice and peace.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Song: A mighty fortress is our God (315)
Sending out with God’s blessing – Jude 24-25 (I do?)
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Response: Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Postlude
————————————————————————-
The Communion liturgy is based on the liturgies of the PCC’s 1991 Book of Common Worship. Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
Romulus Rhoad, a candidate for the ministry in the PCC, retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as he is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.
[1] δοχομαι