Hanging of the Greens (2021)
Notes
Transcript
PRELUDE
CALL TO WORSHIP/Litany of the Greens – Pastor Lauri
How shall we prepare this house for the coming of Jesus, the King?
With branches of cedar, the tree of royalty.
How shall we prepare this house for the coming of Jesus, the eternal Christ?
With garlands of pine and fir, whose leaves are ever living, ever green.
How shall we prepare this house for the coming of Jesus, our Savior?
With wreaths of holly and ivy, symbolizing His passion, death and resurrection.
How shall we prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus, the Son of God?
By hearing again the words of the prophets who foretold the saving work of God.
For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Glory to God in the highest!
Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
PRAYER-Dale Thamert
CHANGING THE PARAMENTS-Helen tucker
A Light in the Darkness
A Light in the Darkness
SCRIPTURE-Susie Rutherford
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
HANGING THE WREATHS-Judy Doud
O Come O Come Emmanuel
LIGHTING OF THE ADVENT WREATH-Betty Knapp & Macie Richards
TIME TO GO HOME
He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees.
When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.
Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.
For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
Reader One: We have endured these past few years and know that there is more to face before us. We don’t know if we have the strength to withstand what might be around the next corner. And we wonder who will stand with us, who will have our back, who will occupy our corner.
Reader Two: Who is with us? That is what we begin to wonder these days. Who will light our way and chart our course? Who is on our side, who will welcome us home again?
Reader One: Home. The prophet Jeremiah speaks of a branch that will be raised. Jesus spoke of a Son of Man that will descend. Both point to a hope. A hope that calls us home. Our true home, where we’re welcomed and loved and included. Where there is justice and equality and peace. It’s time, this Advent season, time to go home.
Reader Two: We light this candle, as a sign of our hope, our strong hope that there is a way to go home. To the home in Christ, and it starts with us, and it starts here, and it starts now. It’s time to go home.
Light the first candle on the Advent wreath
An Advent Poem – Butch Arbogast
A Tender Shoot
A Tender Shoot
SCRIPTURE-Helen Tucker
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
DECORATING THE WINDOWS-Ann Humphrey
Lo, How a rose e’er blooming
An Everlasting Promise
An Everlasting Promise
SCRIPTURE-Brian wall
“The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.
I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together,
so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.
DECORATING THE TREE
(O Christmas Tree)
PASTOR’S MESSAGE
In The Fullness of Time
In The Fullness of Time
I have enjoyed the classic Star Trek series most of my life. I watch the same episodes over and over. My brother and I received cassette recorders for Christmas one year and the thing we recorded the most were Star Trek episodes. When we would go on vacation, he and I would travel on the bed of the camper the protrudes over the cab of the truck. He would entertain me by quoting episodes word-for-word imitating all the accents. It as a hoot!
I used to wonder what it would be like to be living your life never knowing there is anything outside your world until some stranger beams in from outer space interrupting and changing what you knew about life forever. But isn’t that exactly what God does?
Many people do not welcome such interruptions. They are satisfied with their life just the way it is. The debates of evolution vs creation are not really important to them because in their minds, it does not affect them in the here and now. You see, for the folks who do not know God, there really is no real connection to time beyond the here-and-now. What is making me the happiest in this moment is all that matters. Unfortunately, this view offers no hope for anything different and it offers no future at all. There is no purpose beyond trying to make yourself happy and if you are not achieving that, then there is only despair left. No wonder there is so much mental illness in our world.
However, as a people who believe in God and His Word, we are connected to all of time. God lives outside of time, but God created a system of time for man. All time should be relevant to us. The past helps to illuminate truth so in the present we can live within that truth to safe us in the future. Of course, our salvation is not only for the future, but salvation is for us even in the present because we believe what happened in the past touches our lives even now. We have purpose. We have hope.
So, look with me a moment in how we as believers should look at time and how it effects all of our life.
First, let us consider the past. Christmas is a celebration of the past. In Genesis 3:15 God promised a Son who would crush the head of the serpent. This Son was promised throughout the generations of the people of Israel. For example, look at Jeremiah 33.
“ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.
“ ‘In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved
and Jerusalem will live in safety.
This is the name by which it will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’
That promised Branch was born and that is what we celebrate during Christmas. However, that birth was not something of the past but also of the present. Because of Jesus birth, life, death and resurrection, He is present with us today.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,
in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
What has happened in the past, directly effects our life today. We live not in accord with the temporary life of this world, but we live by the Spirit. Now, that does not mean we live in a dream world and do not live our life here on earth. It does not mean we sell everything and go live in the desert eating locusts and wearing skins such as John the Baptist did. John had a specific purpose, but if we all lived like that, we would have nothing in common with others to help point them to the truth of the word. No, God encourages His people to live where they are in the present. Look once again at Jeremiah 29. Here God sends a message to His people living in exile. He tells them to bloom where they are planted.
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.
Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
And in John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
In the present we have life to the full because we do not life a life that is rooted in only today. We do not live a transient life that has no purpose or design. We know our purpose and we know that we matter to a God who loves us.
Along with the present, we live with the hope of a future. This future will be new and fresh.
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
In Anne of Green Gables, the young girl was constantly putting her foot in her mouth. She was constantly embarrassing herself and one day she told her teacher that the idea of tomorrow gave her hope. She said, “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.” The future offers us just such a day. Not only does it have no mistakes, but it promises there will never be any mistakes again.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
As we celebrate Advent, all three aspects of time are here. We look to the past where a promise of a Savior was both promised and received. We celebrate in today and what He is doing in our hearts here and now. And we look expectantly to the future knowing that there is a final promise yet to be fulfilled.
I have a gift for you today. It is a Christmas ornament to remind you of this aspect of time. However, the things mentioned here are not just to be honored at Christmas, but has Dickens says in his classic “Scrooge,” “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” May we honor Christmas, but living life every day as if it were Christmas morning and the gift we will be receiving that day is Jesus Christ in the flesh!
Doxology
The Beginning and the End
The Beginning and the End
SCRIPTURE-Dale & Frankie Thamert
“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.
Emmanuel
BENEDICTION-Pam Hardy
Joy to the world
Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God's Son. Luke 1:35b (CEB).