Announcement:
In person worship services have been temporarily suspended until Jan. 10, 2021. We do so out love for our neighbors and in support of our hard working medical staff in the Bow Valley.
Call to Worship:
One: Now is the time to get ready:
All: Let us prepare the way of the Lord!
One: Now is the time to be changed:
All: Let us repent and seek forgiveness.
One: Now is the time to welcome God into our midst:
All: Let us worship God in humble expectation.
Carol: On Jordan’s Bank
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
God of all times and places, you are holy and loving.
You create pathways where there is no path.
You prepare us to receive wonders beyond imagining.
In every time and every place, you have raised up leaders
who point to your glory and honour your greatness.
You have called us by name, baptized us with water and with the Holy Spirit.
You bless us for abundant living, and set us in the world to serve you.
We are your people, and so we worship you
as our Creator, our Redeemer, and the Breath of our lives,
one God, now and always.
John the Baptizer called people to repent
and so we join together in confession, seeking God’s grace.
God of mercy,
We confess that we resist changing our hearts and minds,
even when your Word compels us to reconsider cherished opinions.
We are more comfortable remaining as we are than taking up your challenge.
Forgive us for being set in our ways,
and seeing others only in light of inherited ideas and past experience.
Forgive us our reluctance to forgive each other as we have been forgiven.
By the power of your Holy Spirit, transform us by your great love and mercy.
Give us new eyes for seeing, new ears for hearing.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ Friends, trust that peace and forgiveness are God’s gift to you this day.
Be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit that moves with you into each new day. May the peace of Christ be with you all.
Prayer for Understanding
God of grace, still our busy minds so that we will hear your Word speaking through the scripture. By your Spirit, create a space within us to receive your wisdom your mercy, and your invitation to live for you. Amen.
Scripture
Isaiah 40:1-11 Isaiah announces the comforting news that God is providing a way home to the Exiles in Babylon.
Mark 1:1-8 Mark begins his Gospel with John the Baptist’s ministry in the wilderness of the Jordan River.
Sermon: Messengers of Comfort
On this Second Sunday of Advent we hear the beginning words of Mark’s Good News of Jesus Christ. He begins with John the Baptist in the wilderness. He quotes from Isaiah chapter 40, . . .
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”
This is the Good News announcement that in Jesus Christ, God was fulfilling his promise of building a divine highway through the deserts and wildernesses of our lives. This divine highway is one that leads us back to God and to our rightful home with Him.
It is typical during the season of Advent and Christmas for us to experience a deep sense of longing to be home. This sounds strange this year as many are living in places where no stay at home orders have been issued by local health authorities. Perhaps that is why we hear more than ever people who long for a better kind of home than they experienced growing up in homes disrupted and destroyed by violence, abuse, or neglect. Regardless if our experiences of home have been positive or negative, there is this natural and deep and abiding longing to be home.
More than in any other time of the year it seems that we are able to relate to the familiar words of the prophet Isaiah in the midst of our own wilderness wanderings and our personal and communal exile.
When we hear the prophetic words of Isaiah, when we hear the anxious cries of a people in exile, and when we hear the challenging words of John the Baptist, we are apt to hear within our souls our own deep longing to be home. There is something in their words that makes us long to experience the kind of home that God has revealed in the words of the Prophets, the Apostles and most fully in words of Jesus.
Like our spiritual ancestors, the wildernesses and sense of exile of our lives be they of our own making or imposed upon by forces beyond our control, are places and situations where we lose our way, wander from the path, and get lost. Exile is always that time when we become enslaved to false gods, dreams, and values of an alien empire. The time of this pandemic has certainly been one of those important times in our lives and world.
Our experiences of Exile and Wilderness be they real or imagined, physical or spiritual, recent or in our past, are places foreign to us. They are places that unsettle us and promote us to long for a place of peace, love, and comfort. In other words, to long for home.
Which of the familiar words of the carols and the familiar words of the Christmas story, have you heard over and over, which stir your memory, gnaw at your soul, and beckon you to come home to God?
Could they be just a simple coincidence or a result of creative advertising by the media? Or could it be that God desires that we all rediscover a sense of home that can only be found in going home to Him and found in being at peace with one another?
St. Augustine, a Christian leader of the 4th Century A.D., rightly expressed this sense of longing to be home with God in one of his prayers . . .
“Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in you.”
Could it be that St. Augustine was thinking about Isaiah’s words . . .
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
In the midst of this Advent Season, we are once again reminded that God has sought us and paved a new way back to HIM through Christ in the midst of our own wildernesses and exiles.
We are reminded that the God, who was present with His people in their wilderness wanderings, and present with them in their forced exile in a foreign land, continues to be present with us through His Son, who became John in his Gospel said became “flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood of our world” (John 1:14, The Message).
Both Isaiah and John the Baptist boldly declare the Good News that we can always come home to God. The They boldly invite us to come home to God no matter how long or how far away we have been away from Him. They boldly call us to come home no matter how many detours we have made in trying to get home. And they boldly encourage us to come home no matter how long we have avoided making the important steps to be at peace with God.
Let us also be bold in joining with Isaiah and John in announcing this Good News to others through our gracious our words and actions.
Therefore, let us as Isaiah challenges us to do to . . .
Get up to the high mountains,
and let us lift up our voices with strength,
not being afraid to lift them up;
and let us say to the people of the Bow Valley,
“Here is your God!
Now is the time to come home!
To Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be all praise, glory and honor.
(Please note: This sermon was inspired by and from a sermon “Returning” by Rev. Dr. William Willamon)
Special Music: Comfort, Comfort ye my people
First Plymouth Church of Lincoln, Nebraska
Mission Moment – Youth Clubs Make a Difference
In Malawi, 20-year-old Layton had been engaging in unsafe sexual behaviours. Several of Layton’s friends attended Presbyterian World Service & Development-supported youth clubs, where they would get together and discuss how to achieve a world without AIDS. His friends warned him about the consequences of his actions and shared information they learned at the youth club. Layton never thought to attend these meetings until one day when his friends persuaded him to get an HIV test. Anxious about the results—which eventually came back negative—Layton knew he needed to change his life. Deciding to join the youth club himself, he reflected, “I think my friends from youth club saved my life. I joined them so that we can save many from such behaviours.”
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
God of Wisdom and Patience,
In this season of Advent, we wait for your gifts of hope and peace
to claim the world once more.
We wait on you in prayer, knowing you hear us even before we speak.
Prepare our hearts and minds to welcome the coming of your Son once again,
and prepare our courage and conviction to follow the way of the Lord.
Thank you for leading us on the Way, especially in these difficult days
when the pandemic still threatens, and people are so divided.
We are grateful that we can rely on your strength and comfort
when so much around us has become uncertain.
Comfort those who are troubled in mind or spirit as the days grow shorter.
Strengthen the bodies and spirits of those who are tired or suffering.
Embrace those who are living with loss,
and protect children and young people
for whom the future seems confusing and unimaginable.
God who makes all things new,
Turn our lives upside down
and shake out the unnecessary distractions of this season.
Focus us on what is truly important and who truly matters to us.
Turn our lives upside right
so that our priorities and purposes match those we have learned from Jesus.
Shape and reshape us until we conform to his way of living and his likeness.
Turn us upside down, O God,
so that we value what is hidden and small more than what is showy and grand.
Open our eyes to the needs of the most vulnerable in our community
and help us speak out with them and for them,
even if we must challenge those who usually get their way.
Turn us right side up, O God,
so that we can see we have more than enough resources to share
with those who have much less than they need day by day.
Hear us now as we name places, people, and situations that need your care:
God, you are Alpha and Omega, our beginning and our end.
Strengthen us with your Spirit to build your kingdom,
here and now, now and always.
Hear us as we pray together, using the words that Jesus taught:
And now we pray together, using the words that Jesus taught us:
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: Hark the Glad Sound
Charge and Benediction (Eph.6:23-24)
We are sent into new week by Christ
To be his messengers of peace to those who discouraged, fearful, and anxious.
We go announce the Good News that in Christ we find our peace and rest.
May peace be to you, the whole community,
and love with faith,
from God the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace be to you with all
who have an undying love
for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer Partnership
Sunday, December 6 We pray for Hamilton Banda and volunteers at the Ndirande Handicapped Centre in Malawi who provide support to people with physical and mental disabilities, especially to children and their families.
Monday, December 7 We pray for all in the church as we seek to be in communion with people holding differing theological views. We pray for compassion and understanding to keep us as one in Christ.
Tuesday, December 8 We pray for the health and safety of people serving and worshipping in ministries with Indigenous Peoples.
Wednesday, December 9 We pray for chaplains who serve in correctional facilities, and for the Rev. Glenn McCullough, our denominational representative to the Interfaith Committee on Chaplaincy for Corrections Canada.
Thursday, December 10 (Human Rights Day) We pray for individuals and organizations defending human rights in Canada and around the world. We pray for their safety and the safety of those they support and protect.
Friday, December 11 We pray for the people of Palestine-Israel who work for peace.
Saturday, December 12 We give thanks for all those who are restless for peace throughout the world, those who inspire others to resist injustice and defend inequality.