Worship on the Lord’s Day
01 September 2024 10:00 am
The Sacrament of Holy Communion
Online & Onsite (Mixed Presence) Gathering as a Worshipping Community
Led by the Rev. Brad Childs
Music Director: Binu Kapadia Vocalist: Lynn Vaughan
Elder: Rom Rhoad
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
Silent preparation for worship
Call to Worship
L: Holy God, you call us to worship.
P: In your presence, we seek truth and forgiveness.
L: Holy God, you call us to worship you.
P: In your presence, we seek the grace to forgive one another.
L: Holy God, you call us to worship you, heart, body, mind and soul.
P: So we gather to offer you our prayer and praise with joyful thanks.
Opening praise: This is amazing grace
Prayers of approach and confession
O holy and merciful God, You are God and we are not.
Your ways are higher than our ways.
Help us to know you.
Lord we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have failed to be an obedient church.
We have not done your will.
We have been unwilling to listen, eager to speak, and easily angered,
We have broken your law.
We have rebelled against your love.
We have not loved our neighbours and we have the most vulnerable people in this world in their distress.
Thus, we have been stained by the world, and we find ourselves distant from you.
Forgive us we pray.
Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Response: I waited, I waited on you, Lord
Assurance of God’s forgiveness
We know there is no limit to God’s love and grace and forgiveness in Christ Jesus. The challenge is not for us to find forgiveness. The challenge is for us to live as the forgiven people we are, to claim this truth and live it out in the world. Let us go forth, sharing the spirit of forgiveness and embracing the outcast, knowing that there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. Amen and Amen.
We listen for the voice of God
Song: To show by touch and word (763)
Scripture readings (NRSV): James 1: 17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, & 21-23
Response: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God
Message: Tongues afire
The two thousand-member Baptist church was filled to overflowing capacity one Sunday morning. The pastor was ready to start the sermon when two men, dressed in long black coats and black hats entered thru the rear of the church.
One of the two men walked to the middle of the church while the other stayed at the back. Everyone knew that something wasn’t quite right. Then both men reached under their coats and withdrew large automatic weapons.
The one in the middle announced, “Everyone willing to take a bullet for Jesus just stay in your seats!”
Naturally, chaos ensued. The pews emptied. The people feared for their lives. The congregation, the choir and 7 all 7 assistant pastors went running. After a few moments the gunmen looked around and found about twenty people left sitting in the church. The lead pastor was still holding steady in the pulpit.
Then the men put their weapons down. “All right” one said, “Now that it’s just us Christians here Padre, feel free to start the service.”
James is the brother of Jesus. In the book of Acts James is called James the Just. He was the head of the council in Rome and had the final say on matters when the disciples disagreed with one another. In Galatians 2 Paul and Peter have an argument and as a result go to James to decide between them. So, not to put too fine a point on it, but if there were a Pope in the first generation, Peter wouldn’t be it. James would be.
James has always been a controversial letter in our Bibles. Martin Luther found apocryphal catholic books like Bel and the Dragon to be historically important enough to keep in the back of his Bible as reference material But James, Luther hated. He called it the “epistle made of straw” because he thought it talked to much about works and not enough about grace… so he tore it from his Bible and he burned it.
James wrote at an early time when Christian persecution was on the rise. When he wrote, to proclaim one’s self to be a Christian, could mean a death sentence. Still, contrary to what Martin Luther thought, James isn’t about works righteousness or earning favor with God. It’s about making your faith come alive. That’s why James said, “Faith without works is like a lifeless body” Yeah, it may be there but it’s just not doing anything. Yeah you may be a Christian but more like a lifeless one that never moves. Faith without works is dead.
James wanted people to put their money where their mouth is… so to speak. To say what they mean and mean what they say. James wanted people to claim Christ and then act like it.
James writes, “Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.”
As it’s often been said, “God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we speak.” Or as Proverbs 17:28 puts it, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Or if this were written today it would probably read, “Better to save a draft of your email, then to send one you’ll later regret.”
Unfortunately, we tend to speak (or type) much more than we care to listen. Consequently, we often fail to hear what others are saying.
In one of his books, long before Dr. Stephen Hawking died, the Rev. Dr. Ben Edgington wrote about meeting together, “I’ve occasionally been to lectures given by Professor Stephen Hawking. Even if you’ve never heard him speak, you are bound to have heard of him: he’s a scientist who suffers from motor neuron disease and is almost entirely paralyzed. The way he communicates is truly extraordinary. With just about the only muscle function he has, he uses a single button to laboriously select words from a computer screen on his wheelchair, and when he’s finished, a speech synthesizer delivers his words in a Robot-like voice.
Doing a question-and-answer session with him is an amazing experience: it can take him five or ten minutes or even longer to compose a reply to a single question. But during that time there is not a whisper in the audience. Everyone is eager to hear what Dr. Hawking has to say. No-one jumps in with their own answer to the questions because they know they’d look a fool. And if he says something controversial people don’t get up and rant at him: they weigh what he says because each sentence he speaks takes time. Hawking is very careful with his responses. He listens carefully and responds just as carefully. Only that we might all have to compose ourselves thusly.”
James continues on. He writes, “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.”
Now, this verse is not quite what it first appears. At first glance it seems to be about purifying the community from sin and it is to an extent. But it’s really more about listening for God. See, the word for filthiness that’s used here is actually a medical term from the time. The word was used very specifically to describe two distinct things. The first use of the word was a way to refer to soiled clothing. But the second way the word was used was to refer to the removal of earwax (put aside all filthiness). For most of the commentaries I checked it seems that Earwax is probably the case here. If that’s true, then it’s sort of like a little note that James drops on his listeners… “Listen up, people. Get the wax out of your ears! God’s word is within you. Listen to it.”
“Therefore, get the wax out of your ears and do away with all wickedness, and in humility, receive the word implanted which is able to save your souls.”
James wants us to be slow to speak, eager to listen, to get the wax out of our ears and truly hear the Word God has already implanted within us.
He continues on: “Now prove yourselves doers of [that] word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, it is like a person who looks into a mirror and as soon as they step away from it, forgets what they look like.”
In The Message it’s paraphrased like this: “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.”
James understands that God wants us to have a living faith. That’s why, later in his book James gets more aggressive. He says, “what good is it to say you have faith, when you don’t do anything to show that you have faith?” (James 2:14)
I have this friend in Omaha, Nebraska from my young adults group. His name is Peter. He’s a really wonderful guy. A while back we had this talk about seeing a car with a big Jesus fish on the back I saw speeding and cutting people off in traffic. Pete quoted me this verse. We both agreed that it would be better for some people not to put the Jesus fish on their cars in the first place. But “there’s really no way to fix this” I said. “Yeah, there is…” Pete said. It turns out this had been bothering Pete so much and for so long, that he had begun going out for a drive once a week with a big Jesus Saves bumper sticker on the back of his little smart car. {This is absolutely true.) Once a week Pete goes out for a drive with one purpose. He lets people in the lanes they want in. That’s it. His goal is not to get to the store or pick up some milk. It’s just to be a polite driver. Letting people merge into his lane is his sole purpose. Now, it sounds crazy… but when Pete steps away from the mirror, he still knows exactly what he looks like. He puts his money where his mouth is. He does just what James says: he proves himself a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer. And I like that.
Bad, rude drivers proclaiming their faith in Jesus bothered Pete, so he decided to be a good driver and proclaim his faith in Jesus.
I wonder what other things in life we might deal with in this same way???
In verse 26 James goes back to the thrust of his argument. Here he says, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.”
James says, if you’re going to drive a car covered in Christian bumper stickers, you better watch your mouth. All eyes are on you to see if you’re merely a hearer or if you’re a doer. You better learn to listen carefully, and when you’re mad, you had better learn to hold your tongue.
I read this story recently: A man working in the produce department was asked by a lady if she could buy half a head of lettuce. He replied, “Half a head? Are you serious? God grows these in whole heads, and that’s how we sell them!”
“You mean,” she persisted, “that after all the years I’ve shopped here, you won’t sell me half a head of lettuce?” “Look,” he said, “If you like I’ll ask the manager.” She indicated that would be appreciated, so the young man marched to the front of the store to see the manager. “You won’t believe this, but there’s a lame-brained idiot of a lady back there who wants to know if she can buy half-a-head of lettuce.”
Then the kid suddenly noticed the manager gesturing with his eyes, and quickly turned around to see the “lame-brained idiot of a lady” standing right behind him, obviously having followed him to the front of the store. “… Thinking quickly the boy added… “And this nice lady was wondering if she could buy the other half.”
Later in the day the manager cornered the young man and said, “That was the finest example of thinking on your feet I’ve ever seen! Where did you learn that?” He said, “I grew up in Grand Rapids, and if you know anything about Grand Rapids, you know that it’s known for only two things: great hockey and hideously ugly women.”
The manager’s face flushed, and he interrupted, “My wife is from Grand Rapids!” To which the boy replied “Oh, and which hockey team did she play for?”
James says, bridle your tongue. Good advice.
Our God wants Christians to say what we mean and mean what we say. He wants Christians that are quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger; Christians that know what we look like in the mirror; ones that reflect his image. He wants Christians that bridle our tongues. He wants Christians that define True religion not just as something we talk about, but something we do for others.
May we all be the kind of Christians God has called us to be. Amen
Song: Great is Thy faithfulness (324)
We respond to serve God: Our time of giving
Reflection on giving: Dayspring is empowered to carry out our mission of worship, service, and care by generously given volunteer time, talent, and treasure. Many thanks to all who give so generously!
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Jesus our Friend and Redeemer, we come to You this morning ready for a new day. As we begin to turn this season from summer to school, as things begin to become busy and our daily schedules fill, remind us to pause and give thanks to You. Remind us to take in the beauty of the world around us and to give thanks for the people You have brought into our lives. Call upon us to call upon others, to not forget our friendships and family and to cherish our time together. Guide us away from the busy-ness of the outside world and into the peaceful rhythms of daily life. Renew in us Your guiding Wisdom. Keep us to the promises of new life here and now on earth and help us to share this gift of life with others.
We pray for the church, that we might show forth our faith in action, regard all with impartiality, and be quick to listen and slow to anger.
We pray for our nation, that whenever trials may befall us, that You may grant us endurance and wisdom.
We pray for the world, that the lowly may be raised up, and that mercy may fall on us all.
We pray for the sick, the injured, the vulnerable, and those undergoing all forms of adversity, that they might all be found in Your presence. Especially this morning we pray for new and expectant mothers in our community.
Gracious God, let our prayers be offered to you with the gentleness that is born from your wisdom from above, that is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, and full of mercy.
Hear our Prayers and help use us to answer them. Amen.
The Sacrament of Holy Communion
Invitation
Those who belong to Christ gather gladly to his table to make a memorial of his life and death to celebrate his presence and together as his Church offer Him thanks. For this reason we take this bread and this wine and set them aside from all common use.
The celebration is for us but it is not ours. It is God’s alone. Now, together as one body made up of people from all around the world, of all ages, we pass on what was passed to us.
Welcome to the Lord’s Supper.
Song: Lift up your hearts (526: vss. 1-4)
We affirm our faith: The Apostles Creed (539)
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Communion Prayer
Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy Supper which we are about to celebrate is a feast of remembrance, of communion, and of hope.
We come in remembrance that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent of the Father into the world to assume our flesh and blood and to fulfill for us all obedience to the divine law, even to the bitter and shameful death of the cross. By his death, resurrection, and ascension he established a new and eternal covenant of grace and reconciliation that we might be accepted of God and never be forsaken by him.
We come to have communion with this same Christ who has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the world. In the breaking of the bread he makes himself known to us as the true heavenly Bread that strengthens us unto life eternal. In the cup of blessing he comes to us as the Vine in whom we must abide if we are to bear fruit.
We come in hope, believing that this bread and this cup are a pledge and foretaste of the feast of love of which we shall partake when his kingdom has fully come, when with unveiled face we shall behold him, made like unto him in this glory.
Since by his death, resurrection, and ascension he has obtained for us the life-giving Spirit who unites us all in one body, so are we to receive this Supper in true brotherly love, mindful of the communion of saints.
Holy and right it is and our joyful duty to give thanks to you at all times and in all places, O Lord, our Creator, almighty and everlasting God! You created the heaven with all its hosts and the earth with all its plenty. You have given us life and being and preserve us by your providence. But you have shown us the fullness of your love in sending into the world your Son, Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, made flesh for us men and for our salvation. For the precious gift of this mighty Savior who has reconciled us to you we praise and bless you, O God.
With your whole Church on earth and with all the company of heaven we worship and adore your glorious name.
Most righteous God, we remember in this Supper the perfect sacrifice offered once on the cross by our Lord Jesus Christ for the sin of the world.
In the joy of his resurrection and in expectation of his coming again, we offer ourselves to you as holy and living sacrifices.
Sharing of the bread and wine
Send your Holy Spirit upon us, we pray, that the bread which we break may be to us the communion of the body and blood of Christ. Grant that, being joined together in him, we may attain to the unity of the faith and grow up in all things into him Christ our Lord.
And as this grain has been gathered from many fields into one loaf and these grapes from many hills into one cup, grant, O Lord, that thy whole Church may soon be gathered from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
The Lord Jesus, the same night he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying,
“Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me.”
After the same manner also, he took the cup when they had supped, saying, “this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ.
The cup of blessing which we bless is the communion of the blood of Christ.
Song: Behold the Lamb
The prayer after Communion
Heavenly Father, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food
of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal Kingdom.
And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.
To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.
Hymn: I’m gonna live so God can use me (648)
Sending out with God’s blessing
The Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you His peace. Amen, and Amen, and Amen.
Response: The Blessing
Music 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).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2024) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs 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.