Am I Repeating Myself?

Welcome, Announcements, Joys, and Concerns

Passing of the Peace

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices; who, from our mother’s arms, hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today. 

Preparing our Hearts

Call to Worship From Leader: O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? All: The one who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in their heart; Leader: O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? All: The one who does not slander with their tongue and does no evil to neighbors, nor takes up a reproach against friends; Leader: O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? All: The one in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the LORD;  who swears to their own hurt and does not change; Leader: O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? All: The one who does not put out their money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. The one who does these things shall never be moved. 

In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks fo time; all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.

When the woes of life o’ertake me, hopes deceive and fears annoy, never shall the cross forsake me; lo, it glows with peace and joy.

*Hymn #gtg213 ph84 In the Cross of Christ I Glory

When the sun of bliss is beaming light and love upon my way, from the cross the radiance streaming adds more luster to the day.

Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, by the cross are sanctified; peace is there that knows no measure, joys that through all time abide.

In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks fo time; all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.

*Call to Confession

*Corporate Prayer of Confession (Followed by silent prayers of confession)

O God of shalom, we have built up walls to protect ourselves from our enemies, but those walls also shut us off from receiving your love. Break down those walls. Help us to see that the way to your heart is through the reconciliation of our own hearts with our enemies. Bless them and us, that we may come to grow in love for each other and for you, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

*Assurance of Pardon

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be: world without end. Amen, Amen.

*Gloria Patri #581

Proclamation

Witnessing God's Work

Micah 6:1–8 ESV

Hear what the Lord says: Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the Lord has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Hebrew Scripture Reading Epistle Reading

1 Corinthians 1:18–31 ESV

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Epistle Reading

Am I Repeating Myself?

Sermon “Am I Repeating Myself?”

I feel like today is a big day for us together. I have officially been here for three years as of yesterday. In most relationships, there isn’t much significant about three years. But in a pastor/congregation relationship, three years means something pretty important: We’ve been through an entire lectionary cycle together! You’ve officially heard everything I have to say about the Bible. Amen.

Although, there are the weeks where I was away on vacation or study leave. And there are 4 or 5 choices of scripture each week in the lectionary, so there are all of the ones I didn’t get to yet. Plus we’re always learning new things together. So there is certainly always something new to say, even if it can be harder to find it now. And let’s face it, the world isn’t helping with that. We - humanity - just keep messing up and hurting each other in the same old ways decade after decade and century after century. 

I don’t believe the world is getting worse. I genuinely believe that Theodore Parker was right when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But we do have more access to the knowledge of everything that is happening around the world. And we have fast access to it. Think about how quickly everyone seems to know about a celebrity death these days. This morning, I knew within minutes of Punxatawney Phil being pulled from his hole that he had not seen his shadow and predicted an early spring. 

We are constantly hearing about all the things that are going wrong in the world. You can find good news out there, but you usually have to be purposely looking for it. It can feel so overwhelming to see all that is going on in the world. It’s this volume of knowledge of what’s happening in the world that gets so overwhelming. Just a few hundred years ago, you only knew what was happening around the world because of rumors and fairy tales brought from the rare faraway traveler or explorer. Today, we know what is happening around the world with relative accuracy within hours. And there is so much, it can make one feel helpless against it all. 

Groundhog Day was not always as huge a deal as it has become these days. 1993 was a game changer for Punxatawney’s tourism trade - at least for one weekend a year. That is the year the movie “Groundhog Day” came out. In “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray plays a grouchy weatherman, Phil, who is sent for the fourth year in a row to Punxsutawney to cover groundhog day. He thinks the whole thing is stupid, he hates the small town, and he is very salty about having been sent there yet again. While there, he finds himself trapped in Punxsutawney overnight by a snowstorm. When he wakes up the next morning, it’s February 2nd - groundhog day - all over again. Phil gets stuck in a loop reliving the same groundhog day every single day for what appears in the movie to be years. If you’d like to be precise, according to Hollywood Insider, “Ramis (the director and co-writer of the movie) once said Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day for 10 years, even though the original plan was to have him trapped for 10,000 years. According to the website Wolf Gnards, which ran the numbers, Phil was actually trapped for eight years, eight months and 16 days.” (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/happy-groundhog-day-heres-5-769137 )

I’m sorry if you haven’t seen it and this is a spoiler, but it’s a pretty predictable comedy that’s been around for nearly 30 years, so I don’t feel too bad if I blow it for you: In that eight years, eight months, and sixteen days of living in a time loop in a blizzard in Punxsutawney on groundhog day, Phil eventually comes to the conclusion that while things aren’t changing around him, he can change. By the end of the movie, he’s no longer the terrible grouch he was at the beginning. He goes from doing anything he can to escape being stuck in what he perceives as being the worst place ever to helping people, being kind. Eventually, the culmination of all these small changes - helping his cameraman carry the equipment, bringing coffee to the crew - is what releases him from the time loop and lets him wake up on February 3.

Many of us are keenly aware of the upcoming presidential election. It’s only February and yet, it’s everywhere on the news. You can’t avoid impeachment talk if you try. And we should all vote. All of us. BUT, we can’t rely on participation in politics as the answer to the world’s problems. If we see “cleaning up D.C.” (whatever that looks like depending on the “side” we’ve chosen” as being the solution), we’re a) going to be waiting a very long time and b) missing what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians.That’s just the sort of foolish world-wisdom that Paul is talking about in this letter to the Corinthians. Yes, civic participation is important, but it’s not the answer to spreading the witness of Jesus and bringing real freedom to the people around us. 

Should we send money to the Presbyterian Disaster Agency and the Red Cross and World Vision and other aid organizations when there are disasters or to help sustain their battle against poverty? Absolutely! But that’s also not the answer to centuries old problems that plague the world. That is just another way of foisting our gospel responsibility off onto someone else “out there”. 

The world’s wisdom is “Those who think differently than you on the ‘big issues’ are what’s wrong with the world.” The Gospel’s wisdom is, “Everyone around you matters beause we are united to one another in Jesus Christ who died for our sins on a cross.” 

The world’s wisdom is, “Support the big causes that you believe in and things will change for the better.” The Gospel’s wisdom is, “Your every day life and the way you go about daily interactions matters in the grand scheme.”

We too are given a deceptively simple - yet incredibly hard to carry out - way out of the loop of terrible stuff around us. There is no fancy trick to escaping the seemingly endless yuck in the world. It’s as simple as Phil’s learning to be kind to the people around him, to genuinely look out for them and stop thinking about himself and his fixation on leaving Punxsutawney.

I’ve heard the verse referred to as “the best chapter in Micah”. This is because it builds and builds and builds this feeling of pent up, “What do you want from me in this disaster of a world, God?!” And the answer is simply:

Micah 6:8 ESV

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

It starts small. 

It starts small. 

It starts with handing a few bucks to someone homeless without worrying about what they’re going to buy with it. 

It starts with letting go of your high view of yourself and realizing that the people around you are just as important as you are. I always tell my kids to remember, “There is nobody in this world who is worth more than you are. . . and there is also nobody in this world who is worth less than you are.” 

It starts with just saying, “Hey, not cool, buddy” when someone makes a racist or sexist comment.

It starts with asking someone around you genuinely interested questions about themselves. I have this friend who is amazing at this. He’s so good at this, I have to work really hard to turn it around and get a chance in to ask him about his family and work. And it also makes him the sort of person everyone immediately likes. Be like that friend. Make people feel like they matter to you. 

It starts with feeding someone’s parking meter or paying for the car behind you in the drive thru or telling a harried mom at Target she’s doing a great job. 

None of these things are going to erase the sin in the world. But they do change us and they gradually change the way the people around us see us and our faith and the world around them and it’s contagious. 

So, while I am confident that we will all wake up tomorrow on February 3 rather than reliving today again, I am also confident that tomorrow morning the news will still be full of disgusting nonsense that makes many of us want to go back to bed and ignore the world, I am also confidence that you, dear faithful friends sitting here with me this morning, can make a difference if you let go of the time loop of bad news and embrace the call in your day to day life:

: “. . .to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Response

Micah 6:8 ESV

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Response

Let us break bread together on our knees (on our knees); Let us break bread together on our knees (on our knees)

When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. (on me)

Let us drink wine together on our knees (on our knees); Let us drink wine together on our knees (on our knees);

When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. (on me)

Let us praise God together on our knees (on our knees); Let us praise God together on our knees (on our knees);

When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. (on me)

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord. who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again 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.

*Declaration of Faith 

Apostles' Creed

Communion? Yes (PH page 13, GTG 552-554)

Leader: The Lord be with you! All: And also with you!

Leader: Lift up your hearts! All: We lift them up to the Lord!

Leader: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God! All: It is right to give our thanks and praise!

Communion

Sharing of our Tithes and Offerings

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise God, all creatures here below. Praise God above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

*Prayer of Thanksgiving

Let us talents and tongues employ, reaching out with a shout of joy: bread is broken; the wine is poured; Christ is spoken and seen and heard.

Sending

Jesus lives again; earth can breathe again; pass the Word around: loaves abound!

*Hymn #gtg526 ph514 Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ

Christ is able to make us one; at the table he sets the tone, teaching people to live to bless, love in word and in deed express.

Jesus lives again; earth can breathe again; pass the Word around: loaves abound!

Jesus calls us in, sends us out bearing fruit in a world of doubt, gives us love too tel, bread too share: God (Immanuel) everywhere!

Jesus lives again; earth can breathe again; pass the Word around: loaves abound!

May the peace of our Lord Christ go with you, wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing, once again into our doors.

*Charge and Benediction

Amen

As you depart, please share signs of Christ’s peace with one another. 

FOR EMSWORTH: As you depart, please share signs of Christ’s peace with one another. 

*Those who are able may stand in spirit and in body