Prayer as We Gather: What we need, what we long for in worship this holy hour, Lord, is the word you whispered to prophet Jeremiah: “Before I created you in the womb I knew you, I set you apart.” Set us apart, though we protest as Jeremiah did, with your firm insistence, “Where I send you, you must go. Don’t be afraid, because I’m with you.” That’s it, that’s what we long to receive from you. Appoint us. Put your words in our mouths. Send us, Lord. Amen.*(Mitchell Simpson, inspired by Jeremiah 1)
Call to Worship:
I’ve taken refuge in you, Lord.
Don’t let me ever be put to shame!
Bend your ear toward me, be my rock of refuge,
Where I can always escape.
Rescue me from the grip of the wicked, Lord.
You are my hope, the one I’ve trusted since childhood.
I’ve depended on you from birth.
You cut the cord when I came from my mother’s womb. (from Psalm 71, the Common English Bible)
Morning Prayer: Thank you, God who shaped us in the womb and knows us by heart, for being so much more than a prop for our fragile self-esteem. Prone as we church folk are to doing the right thing for the wrong reason, we welcome apostle Paul’s sobering shot of reality, warning that all our good deeds and vaunted wisdom are for nothing if not underlain by sacrificial love. His jarring cost-benefit analysis offends our gratuitous benevolence: “If I give away everything I have to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever.” Ouch! Launch us beyond a dim selfie-hedged religiosity into the intoxicating love that supersedes even faith and hope, for we pray in the name of the only One who ever lived that sort of love from first to last, saying … *(Mitchell Simpson, inspired by 1 Corinthians 13)
Prayer of Confession: Forgive us, Lord, for no more fully understanding Jesus than did the Nazareth hometown crowd when he returned and spoke in their synagogue. Have mercy on our dizzying vacillation, pivoting as did they when the wandering Galilean homeboy applied Isaiah’s messianic prediction to himself. We, like they, shift from being “impressed by the gracious words flowing from his lips” to being “filled with anger, rising up and running him out of town to throw him off the cliff.” Daily we cast Jesus out, symbolically hurling him from the idolatrous heights of our nationalism, racism and consumerism. Grant us your full pardon, Lord, we pray. Amen.* (Mitchell Simpson, inspired by Luke 4)
Assurance of Pardon: There is good news today, even for such a lynch mob as we, so take heart. Our risen Galilean Lord continues to move among us with the same message he delivered that day in Nazareth. Referencing prophets Elijah and Elisha, whose ministries extended beyond Jewish bounds to embrace hurting Gentiles in Sidon and Syria, Jesus hammered home the truth that God’s lavish love includes more than a chosen few, a truth still inciting hatred and violence among white supremacists. In the same way Jesus passed unharmed through the murderous crowd “and went on his way,” so today his message of compassionate inclusion cannot be muted by the aggressively ignorant among us. Thanks be to God for all who are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus!*(Mitchell Simpson, inspired by Luke 4)
Thought for a Sabbath Day: “That which we hope for and love about home – even when it is not our present reality – keeps alive in us the promise of a day when pain, rejection and misunderstanding at the hands of those who should know us best shall be no more.” - Cleophus LaRue, professor of preaching, Princeton Theological Seminary