Welcome
Thank you for Joining us St. Paul’s “online worship.”
Announcements
We have a link posted on the slider on the Home Menu for
1) An invitation to St. Paul’s Christmas Eve Service.
2) A Link to the Banff Ministerial Community Christmas Eve Service.
Call to Worship
God comes to us in the cry of a child:
Let every heart prepare a welcome.
God comes to us in the whisper of a loving mother:
Let every heart prepare an embrace.
God comes to us, abides in us:
Let every heart prepare to receive the Christ.
Let us worship the God who has come, who is here and who will come again.
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
God of majesty and mercy,
Creator, Christ and Spirit,
you are powerful, you are holy, and you are loving.
You come among us not as a warrior or tyrant,
but as a child. new life born among us and for us.
And so we come to worship you this day,
trusting your wisdom with Joseph,
pondering your mystery with Mary.
We offer you our love for all that you have been,
all that you are,
and all that you will be,
one God. Holy and loving, now and forever, Amen.
God of mystery and mercy,
you came to be with us and offer us new life in Christ,
and yet we often stray from your side.
You came to offer us love,
but we confess that we can be stubborn and selfish in the ways we live.
You came to reconcile all people,
but we confess that we often resist repairing relationships and so remain divided.
Forgive who we have been,
amend who we are,
and direct who we shall be.
through Jesus Christ who reaches out to us from the manger and the cross. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
Words from Christina Rosetti fit the Advent theme for today:
“Love came down at Christmas; Love all lovely, love divine.
Love shall be our token, Love for plea and gift and sign.”
We meet God’s gift of love in the Christ Child,
whose forgiveness restores us for whatever lies ahead, giving us reason to rejoice.
Thanks be to God for this hope!
Carol: My soul gives glory to my God
Prayer for Understanding
Living, loving God, the stories of this season are familiar, so open our minds and hearts by the power of your Spirit to hear your Word afresh. Make us attentive to Jesus, the Living Word, and gift he brings to our midst. Amen.
Scripture
Isaiah 52:3-12 Good News for Exiles
Psalm 98:1-9 Sing to the Lord a new song
Luke 1:26-38 Mary responds to God’s divine intrusion in her life
Sermon: “Here, Am I!”
While attending seminary at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, I lived in student housing. Student housing was conveniently located just a block from the school, close to the downtown core of Pasadena, and just twenty minutes away from Dodger Stadium.
Unfortunately, it was also located next to an area of the city with a high crime rate. One of the realities of living in that section of Pasadena was that you had to think a lot about personal safety. If you didn’t, there was a high probability that you would become a crime statistic.
The apartment complex I lived in was surrounded by a high fence, with locked gates, with a locked parking garage, and other security measures. These security measures were necessary to provide us with a safe and secure living area.
These measures were a very welcome because when you live in that kind of environment, you need to feel some sense of security to keep your SANITY.
Even with all the security measures in the world, the REALITY of living in an area with a high crime rate has a funny way of creeping in. I remember one night coming back very late from work. I drove to the parking garage under the apartments, inserted my magnetic card which allowed me entrance to the garage. I drove in and found a parking spot next to one of the doors. I took out my groceries and went to one of the locked doors. I inserted a key opened it, grabbed my groceries and started walking up stairs to my apartment. I came out one door to the court yard, then went to another locked door, inserted a key, opened it and started to climb the stairs up to my apartment.
As I turned one of the corners I was startled and shocked to see a spray painted gang logo tag on one of the walls. The person or group who had managed to elude the many security measures had spray painted their gang name on this one wall.
It was as if they wanted to send a message to those of us, who called this place home, “We have managed to invade your safe little world and we are here.”
I was shocked and horrified when I saw that ugly, unnerving spray painted gang logo on the wall. I knew that my safe and secure living area had been violated by one of the local gangs. The gang logo was a sign that proclaimed that this was their territory now. I felt violated and angry because of it. I thought how dare these gang members invade and disrupt my safe world.
That experience taught me that my safe little world was not as safe and secure as I thought. Someone had entered my world to disrupt it, to catch me off guard and had changed it in ways that changed how I lived.
This taught me the valuable lesson that at any time, at any place something or someone has the potential of entering our world and changing it forever.
Have you had a similar kind of experience? Perhaps it was an act of crime, an accident, an illness, or incident that was beyond your control or imagination. Perhaps you have learned this during the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Israel was aware of this fact. They quickly came to understand how quickly their fortunes could change with the invasion of an unwanted army. The great Babylonian Army invaded Palestine. They had taken Israel captive for no important reason other than they just happened to be in the way between of their goal of claiming the Egyptian empire as their own.
With the invasion of the Babylonian Army, Israel’s safe and seemingly secure world had been turned upside down. Israel was left wondering, “Where was God? Why had God allowed this terrible thing to happen?” All of their preconceived ideas about how God should act towards them had vanished into thin air.
It is into the midst of those dire and depressing circumstances that God called the prophet Isaiah to announce another invasion of sorts. This time it would be an invasion by God.
God announces to the people through the prophet Isaiah and through the invasion of a foreign nation…
“Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; HERE AM I.”
Following that announcement, God tells Isaiah to get up to a high mountain and announce the Good News that…
“Your God reigns….
“The Lord has comforted his people…
“He has redeemed Israel…
“See the return of the Lord to Zion…
“The Lord had bared his holy arm…
“The Lord will go before you…
This is the good news announcement and celebration that God was intruding into their world of sorrow and despair to accomplish His great redemptive purposes. Like the spray painted gang logo on the wall of my apartment complex, God was announcing his loving and faithful presence among them,
Here am I! (Is 52:6)
all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. (Is. 52:10)
I used to think that the Christian faith offered a great deal of security, like the high fences and locked doors of my apartment complex. But then I read something that changed my perceptions about life.
I read it with new eyes and with new understanding thanks to the insights of a Presbyterian Pastor name Frederick Buechner, who wrote a wonderful book entitled “The Hungering Darkness.” It is a book of short meditations on the Christian faith.
This book brought to light some things I had overlooked in the Christmas story so many times before. Today I pass on these insights to you.
As Buechner reflects upon the Christmas story, he reminds us that the Christmas story revolves around a whole cast of unlikely characters in a very unlikely place. He reminds us of how we have become so familiar with the story that the characters and the setting to the point where we have become quite comfortable with the story of Jesus’ birth. All seems as it should be. But this is not the case. Everything in the story points to a God who invades our world, who shatters our every attempt to pigeon hole Him or to tame Him. The Christmas story reminds us that God chooses to act as God wishes to act. God doesn’t act in ways that we want or expect God to act.
When the Christmas story is read with that underlining assumption, we can never be sure
HOW God will act,
HOW God will come to us,
WHO God will use to carry his message
WHOM God will deliver his message to.
We can never be quite sure of what God will do next and we can never be totally sure of God again.
In Luke we read how the angel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce her role in God’s plan of salvation for her people. A surprising intrusion if there ever were one. And through the angel, God reveals that in his wisdom chooses to enter our world as a person. Not as an adult, not as a mighty warrior, not EVEN as an angelic being. God chooses to have his Son born into the world as a baby, a baby who is helpless and dependent upon its mother and earthly father for its needs.
The woman and her husband do not live in palaces, they have NO title, NO power, NO money, NO influence. Rather, they are poor, common people, who live in one of the most desolate places in the entire Roman Empire, and who are of a race of people despised by the ruling people.
Then Luke tells us that the King of kings is born in a stable, wrapped carefully in rags to keep him warm and placed in a feeding trough.
There in the stable the Son of God lies cooing along with the smell of the dung of the animals. Can anything ever be the same again?
The first visitors are not heads of state, nor kings, nor popes, or priests, nor anyone with title or privilege. The first visitors are shepherds, people of questionable reputation, people who do the work that no one else wants to do. It is these simple shepherds who the Angelic choir announce the birth of Jesus, God’s only son, the Christ, the Saviour. Societal outcasts and bums are given the honour of being the first to witness and to praise God for the birth of Jesus. Why not Caesar, or Herod or the Governor of Palestine, or the chief priests and scribes? Weren’t those people of greater importance than a bunch of bums watching sheep at night? Surely God is doing things the wrong way, or is He?
God demonstrates that no place is safe anymore. There is no place that we can hide from his love. There is no one, no group of people who are outside of God’s care. The Christmas story says this loud and clear.
Fred Buechner writes…
“Those who believe in God can never be in a way sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present to this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place that we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.” (Hungering Dark, pp.13-14)
During this season, we are reminded that the God who invades our safe little worlds as an innocent baby, who lies silently in the manger is also the one the who turns our world upside-down-and-right-side-up (Luke 1:46-56). We are reminded to that this child who starts off life in humble surroundings, whose is name means “God Saves” will end up dying humbly on a cross, promises a kingdom where God’s invading love rules all.
One of the important truths we are challenged to consider as we celebrate the birth of Jesus is how do we respond to God’s many intrusions into our safe little worlds?
Do we respond with questions, or anger, or a reluctance to embrace God’s many intrusions into our lives?
Or do we respond as Mary did in humble and obedient faith that is expressed in her word . . .
“Here, Am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
It is when we say “Yes” to God’s many intrusions that God continues to use us to boldly announce his Good News that HE is HERE. And that is an intrusion that we can truly embrace with all that we are!
Amen.
Moment for Mission – Preparing a Place of Welcome
Being forced to flee from one’s home and ending up in a foreign land is terrifying. There are often language, social and cultural barriers in the new place that make settling very difficult. Rani Ibrahim, the leader of the Newcomer Mission at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Peterborough, Ont., sees it as his calling from God to make this transition easier for those in his community. He does this through social programming, accompaniment services and prayer gatherings. With support from Presbyterians Sharing, this mission has helped hundreds of people experience the love of God and provided people with a sense of belonging in Canada.
Prayers of the People
Spirit of Hope,
whenever the world seems confusing and bleak,
you pierce the darkness with light, bringing hope and vision for the way ahead.
This has been a difficult and confusing year of pandemic,
and so we thank you for lessons learned and changes of heart,
for new discoveries and hope restored.
As nature around us prepares for the long sleep of winter,
we pray for those who are ill or dying,
and for those who are bereaved or feel any burden of loss.
(A silence is kept.)
O God, reach out to all of us in Christ,
and give us hope for the living of these days.
O God of Peace,
within our lives and relationships, and in communities around the world,
there is conflict and antagonism, mistrust and resentment.
We pray for all places where violence has done its worst,
where cruelty and suspicion appear to win the day,
and where the vulnerable live in fear and despair.
(A silence is kept.)
O God, reach out to all of us in Christ,
and give us peace in these times.
O Creator of Joy,
we thank you for moments of joy and celebration in our lives,
for pleasure given and received,
for quiet times spent in reflection and remembering,
and for happy gatherings, even if they had to be small.
In these colder, darker days,
we remember those who feel left out or neglected,
those who have found the months of pandemic restrictions a heavy burden,
and those we find difficult to love, even at a distance.
(A silence is kept.)
Be their light and their warmth,
O God, reach out to all of us in Christ,
and give us joy to share in the days ahead.
O Love Come Down at Christmas,
you call us to live in communion with you and one another.
You form us into families, circles of friendship, and communities.
Today we pray for our family members, whether we’re close or estranged,
for our friends, whether nearby or far away,
and for neighbours who share our community, like minded or not.
(A silence is kept.)
Help us express both our love and concern in gentle words and kind actions.
O God, reach out to all of us in Christ,
and strengthen our love for you and for one another.
And now we pray together, using the words that Jesus taught:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory
are yours now and forever. Amen..
Carol: Go tell it on the mountain
Charge and Benediction (Romans 16:25-26)
Now to God who is able to strengthen you
according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery
that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed,
and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles,
according to the command of the eternal God,
to bring about the obedience of faith—
to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ,
to whom be the glory forever! Amen.
Stay safe! Have a great week! Reach out to someone this week.
Prayer Partnership
Sunday, December 20 Jesus said: “Those who welcome the stranger, welcome me.” We give thanks for the Kalunba refugee ministry in Budapest, Hungary, and for Director Dóra Kanizsai-Nagy.
Monday, December 21 We pray for the Rev. John Wilson who serves as the convener of the Ministry and Church Vocations Committee for the Presbytery of Algoma and North Bay.
Tuesday, December 22 Gift-giving God, we pray that you move us to greater generosity with all the gifts entrusted to us so that we might bear witness to your love.
Wednesday, December 23 We thank God for people who pray, opening their hearts to God’s direction, trusting in God’s faithfulness, and holding others up in care.
Thursday, December 24 (Christmas Eve) Christ was born as one of us and in him God shows how much the world is loved. We pray that the light of God’s love bless and fill the world with peace.
Friday, December 25 (Christmas Day) For Christ there was no room in the inn: we pray for shelter for those who are homeless. Christ had to flee his birthplace: we pray for the safety of all refugees. Christ read scripture in the synagogue: we pray for God’s wisdom to guide us.
Saturday December 26 God of love in whom we hope, we pray that you send your peace to the vulnerable, unemployed, anxious, hurting and to those who experience violence.