A Service of Worship

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Become Living Stones

This is week four of the worship series Become Living Stones.

As part of our worship series today, we experience a shift. The symbolic stones that have weighed us down, caused us to stumble, and offered false security are used this week to build God’s house, a place with many rooms.

You are invited to find a stone you can hold, to be included as part of your worship.

Now you are coming to him as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable. You yourselves are being built like living stones into a spiritual temple. You are being made into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Thus it is written in scripture, Look! I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, chosen, valuable. The person who believes in him will never be shamed. 1 Peter 2:4-6, CEB

Welcome & Invitation

Now you are coming to God as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable.

We ourselves are being built like living stones into a spiritual temple. We are being made into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Jesus reminds us that in God’s house there are many rooms, there is much space, and that God’s kingdom includes and welcomes all. We are called out into the world to continue building and expanding the reign of God which has no limits.

*Holding your stone, think about how you as an individual or as a community of faith can build upon God’s expanding reign. *

Call To Worship

Jesus said, I go and prepare a place for you, and I will come again.

We gather in this place to know your presence and your love.

Jesus said, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. If you know me, you know God.

We pray to know you more deeply, that we may know God more intimately.

Jesus said, in God’s house there are many rooms, there are many places where God dwells on earth.

We search to know God out in the world, to engage more deeply and love more thoroughly.

Let us begin by, together, worshipping God in this place and at this time.

Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above (MIT FREUDEN ZART)

Hymn Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above

Call to Confession

We confess together as a community of faith because we acknowledge the reality of sin in the church, the world, and our personal lives, and so we ask God for forgiveness and help in amending our lives. And the proof of God’s amazing love is this: while we were sinners Christ died for us. Because we have faith in him, we dare to approach God with confidence, assured of a forgiveness already given through Christ. So, in faith and penitence, let us confess our sin before God and one another, first together and then in silence.

Prayer of Confession

God of mercy, we confess that we have not borne the fruit of the Spirit. We have not loved others as you have loved us. We have denied the promises of baptism and cut ourselves off from you. Forgive us, restore us, that we may abide in your love and live out your mercy, for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Assurance Of Forgiveness

Friends, hear the good news! Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old life has gone; a new life has begun. Know that we are forgiven and be at peace. Amen.

Encountering God's Word

Prayer for Illumination

Come, Holy Spirit, that through your word we may be guided into the love of God for all the world. Amen.

Scripture John 14:1-4

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Dr. Tracy Hartman, Professor of Preaching at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, takes on that beloved passage from John 14, so often heard at funerals: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” But she thinks Jesus may have had a specific troubled heart in mind: Peter’s. How about you? Have you ever been troubled by your own failure? Could you use a word of comfort from Christ himself?

Let not your Hearts be Troubled (A Sermon on John 14:1-14)

Father Dave Smith is an Anglican priest at Holy Trinity in Sydney, Australia. In his sermon he challenges the traditional understandings of "in my Father's house there are many rooms" and offers a fresh interpretation of what Jesus says in "Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled."

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Prayers of the People

God, we have gotten comfortable with our own four walls, whether they be the walls of our homes or the walls of our churches. It’s possible we’ve even become accustomed to our isolation, finding new routines which placate us. Stir us from our cocoons, from our fortresses, from our hiding places to remember that there are others outside the walls. There are others who have been impacted disproportionately because of their income or lack thereof, because of the color of their skin, because of systems that left them with no passed-on wealth, no safety net, poorer health before the virus even began. Open our eyes to see these siblings of ours, to see clearly the disadvantages that were set up and reinforced and bolstered generations ago, which must be broken down and discarded in place of systems which bring equity and health and enough for all. Stir us to strive for better than the way it was before we were safer-at-home, for the sake of all your children.

God of beauty, in these recent weeks we have relied on the beauty of the arts to give us relief, in storytelling and visual arts and television and movies and music and baking and cooking and dance. Help us go beyond appreciating them for the solace, and even happiness, they brought and move us to demand equity and health and enough for all who made these forms of beauty possible, for our world is surely richest when there are arts. And we don’t want to forget that. Help us to not forget that, we pray.

God of this world, show us the ways we can work for the good of all your people even when we are contained within our walls. Spur us to continue serving in your name even while we await the time to be freely outside walls and doing your work from there. We ask all of these things through Christ.

The Lord's Prayer

Hymn It Is Well with My Soul

During the hymn find a place and lay down your stone, your distractions, into God’s keeping now.

Charge and Benediction

We have joined with Christians around the world this day to worship God: in houses, under shade trees and thatched roofs, under bridges and in parks. God’s house has many rooms, and it is still not full. Go now into the world, ready to find God in the most unlikely places. Go now with confidence that there is a room - a place of love - reserved especially for you.