First Presbyterian Church
Third Sunday of Advent
December 12, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL
TO WORSHIP (From Philippians 4:4 and Isaiah 12:2)
Rejoice
in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
Surely
God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid.
The
Lord God is my strength and my might.
He
has become my salvation.
Let
us worship the Living God.
*Hymn
of Praise: “What Child Is This”
1.
What child is this who, laid to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping? Whom angels
greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?
Refrain: This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary.
2.
Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding? Good Christians,
fear, for sinners here the silent Word is pleading. (Refrain)
3.
So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh, come, peasant, king, to own him; the
King of kings salvation brings, let loving hearts enthrone him. (Refrain)
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
Eternal God, John the Baptist prepares the way by calling upon us
to repent. We have failed to share as we should. We have failed to honor the
poor and the oppressed. We have failed to bear fruit worthy of your salvation.
Have mercy upon us, God. Heal and forgive us so we can welcome Christ with pure
and genuine hearts. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYERS
OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF
PARDON (Isaiah 12:3-4)
With joy, let us draw water from
the springs of salvation. Give thanks to the Lord! Call on God’s name.
*THE GLORIA
PATRI
Glory be to the
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
INVITATION: “Dear Lord, I
need You, please come into my life today.
Amen”
LESSON: Matthew 1: 1-6; 16-23
1An account of the genealogy of
Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his
brothers, 3and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar,
and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, 4and
Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon
the father of Salmon, 5and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,
and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6and
Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by
the wife of Uriah…16and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of
Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. 17 So all the
generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to
the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to
Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
18 Now the birth of Jesus the
Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to
Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the
Holy Spirit. 19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her
quietly. 20But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel
of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not
be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the
Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you are to name him
Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ 22All this
took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
Ruth 1: 1-18
In the days when the judges ruled, there
was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live
in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. 2The name
of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his
two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in
Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3But
Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two
sons. 4These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and
the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there for about ten
years, 5both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman
was left without her two sons or her husband.
6 Then she started to return with
her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country
of Moab that the Lord had had consideration for his people and given
them food. 7So she set out from the place where she had been
living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back
to the land of Judah. 8But Naomi said to her two
daughters-in-law, ‘Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May
the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and
with me. 9The Lord grant that you may find security,
each of you in the house of your husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they wept
aloud. 10They said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your
people.’ 11But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters, why will
you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your
husbands? 12Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too
old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I
should have a husband tonight and bear sons, 13would you then
wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my
daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of
the Lord has turned against me.’ 14Then they wept
aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
15 So she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law
has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your
sister-in-law.’ 16But Ruth said,
‘Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’
18When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no
more to her.
SERMON: “Where you go, I will go” Rev.
Peter Hofstra
“Where you go I will go, and where
you stay I will stay. Your people will
be my people and your God my God. Where
you die I will die and there I will be buried.
May the Lord deal with me be it ever so severely, if anything but death
separates you and me.”
Ruth spoke these words. They speak truly to her story, but they speak
the truth of Christmas as well. First in
the prophet Isaiah, chapter 7: 14, it says “Behold, a virgin will be with child,
and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, that is
“God with us”. These very words, “and
they will call him Emmanuel, which means “God with us”, Matthew recalls in
their fulfillment in the birth of Jesus.
“God with us”, how better to
explain that then in the words of Ruth, “Where you go I will go, and where you
stay I will stay.” This is at the root
of the promise made in John, that when Jesus returned to heaven, yet in the
Holy Spirit, he would be with us always.
When the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples at Pentecost, it was
upon each of them, and the Spirit continues to descend upon each of us in turn
so that where we go, Jesus will go and where we stay, Jesus will stay.”
Come full circle to the Christmas
story in Luke 2, to the words of the angel, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will
be for all the people.”
We can take that for granted
today. The church is to be found all
around the globe. Emmanuel, God With Us,
is not bound by geography, but stretched to wherever two or three are gathered
in His name. That is not the only, nor
the first, understanding of Emmanuel as a name of Jesus. To say that Jesus is “God With Us” is a
literal one, Jesus incarnate, Jesus in the flesh, becoming a human and
descending from heaven to be born among us, not counting Godhood as something
to be grasped.
Emmanuel, God With Us, fulfilled as
Jesus the human born at Christmas.
Emmanuel, God With Us, fulfilled Jesus continuing to be with us through
our individual walks of faith as the Holy Spirit descended upon us.
Something we need to understand,
looking back to the time of the writing of the Christmas story, is how much
Jesus did, in fact, change the religious landscape of Judaism. At the time of Jesus, the center of worship
was Jerusalem. That is where God’s house
was, that is where proper sacrifice was to made, that is where the people were
called to gather. It is the religious
center of the religious land of the Jews, the land of Israel, granted to them
as the Promised Land. We need only look
back to the story of Rahab in Joshua 2, as the introduction, to see God’s
fulfillment of that promise to God’s people after the Exodus.
Mary and Joseph were obedient to
this center. Luke records how they
brought Jesus up to the temple in Jerusalem on the days after his birth to be
dedicated in God’s House. But by the
time the gospel was written and used in worship to tell the story of Jesus,
belief in Jesus had outstripped its core of Jewish believers and extended to
the Gentiles of the Roman empire and beyond.
Churches were established across the empire and beyond as the faith
grew. The need to understand that Jesus
was not simply connected to the city of Jerusalem-especially after that City
was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, such is the truth we find in
understanding Emmanuel.
The declaration of Ruth we can then
understand to be the declaration of purpose of our own Lord Jesus. But she says more, “Where you go I will go,
and where you stay I will stay. Your
people will be my people and your God my God.
Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me be it ever so
severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
She is giving up her national and
religious identity. She was from Moab,
which had its own gods, as did every nation of the time. But it is an act of love for her mother in
law Naomi that takes her to make this promise, a promise that she carries out,
a promise that is developed through the rest of the book of Ruth. Another way of putting this might be, “I love
you and nothing else matters.”
She was going to take care of
Naomi, no matter what. I know that
feeling, I know the practice of that love right here in our own
congregation. How Marge is at Melissa’s
side as she recovers from her surgery.
How Nancie is here for Jean and with Jean every Sunday. How Shirley has been an active companion and
participant in Donald’s recovery, helping to provide that active young man with
the engagement he needs so that he will not fall into frustration at the time
this requires. How Joan Takach is
prepared to care for and help Donna through Covid. How Joan Dunich is Rita’s link to the world
from the nursing home. And these are the
stories of love that I can point to immediately in my thoughts and prayers for
our congregation. This sermon could
become simply a list of honor to these acts of caring and love that are part of
who we are as God’s people.
To read the rest of the book of
Ruth is to see how God’s love in Ruth’s promise to Naomi plays out in her
life. Each of us, in our love and caring
for our family and neighbors, we see how God’s love in each of us is carried
out in our own stories.
If first we can see how Ruth’s
words speak the truth of the Christmas promise of Jesus, of Emmanuel, coming to
dwell among us, see how also in her words the very spirit of Christmas, the
call to live out what Jesus brought to us, love and grace and hope, extends
into the hearts and minds of those who come together to celebrate Christmas.
I need to add some caution
here. Caring for our loved ones, that
blessing of this congregation, is not something that we just happen to do
because it’s Christmas. The Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day parade did not come to an end with Santa arriving in Herald’s Square which
was taken as a reminder that Advent was beginning, therefore we have to care
for our loved ones. It’s not like,
“Christmas is coming, I better be good for goodness sake.”
That is what the song says, but in
the popular culture, the wisdom is not being good for goodness sake, it is
being good to get off Santa’s naughty list.
Thank God that is not how our faith
works. The love and caring of Ruth, the
love and caring of our congregation, these are at work no matter when, no
matter what. It is what we do as good
human beings. It is what we do in
Christ. And one beautiful piece of this
is that, in people who may not declare themselves to be believers in Jesus,
when this love and caring shows up in their lives as well, that is the divine
spark, the image of God in which we were created, the spirit that was breathed
into us at creation, continuing to shine even in a world of sin.
The power of Christmas comes as a
reminder to us of why we do the loving and caring things that we do-because
sometimes it can be hard. Sometimes
things do not turn out the way we planned.
Sometimes we can open ourselves to give so much love and so much caring
that we burn out. Read Ruth’s story, its
only four chapters long. Wonder if she
ever had second thoughts about just what she’d gotten herself into in
Bethlehem? At one point, Boaz tells her
that he’s spoken to the young men to leave her alone. If he hadn’t spoken to them, what kind of
treatment could Ruth have expected? I do
not imagine it would have been good.
Boaz was a good man and all but was she watching the hearing before the
city elders about which kinsman redeemer was going to end up marrying her? The power of Christmas is that it can be a
jump start to reverse our emotional fatigue if our spirits are flagging.
Such is the joy of being a
congregation that comes together in the worship of God and the support of our
community. There are people here who
will help us, who will pray for us, who will listen to us, who are in circumstances
that are similar to our own so that we know they get it, but we are not a bunch
of strangers trying to build community in a support group. We are God’s children, gathered into this
community of faith where the love of Christ and the power of God sustain and
build us up as we build one another up.
Christmas is a reminder of the good
we have received from God. In the book
of Ruth, Naomi, who lost her husband and two sons before returning,
impoverished and begging, to Bethlehem, will see in Ruth the blessings of God
that renew her family and her fortunes.
By the end, she is able to hold her grandson and see the hope of a new
generation even in all that was lost.
Ruth herself, a stranger in a strange land, finds herself married and
taken care of. Now, that may not be the
ending we would assert in this day an age.
Taking care of herself, building a life for herself that depended on
nobody but God, that is success in our present age. But we have spent time considering the sexism
of that time and place, how things were ‘different back then’.
Thus, in Ruth’s words, we are reminded of why
Jesus was called “God With Us” for his birth, not simply God come down as a
human to live among us in the form of Jesus Christ, but Jesus with us-even if
his physical form returned to heaven-in the promise and indwelling of the Holy
Spirit.
But these words of Ruth are not
simply the reminder of the promise fulfilled in the season of Christmas with
the birth of our Savior. These words of
Ruth also reflect the very love that Jesus shows to us, love that we live out
in our care and comfort of those in need around us, family and neighbor.
I hope that we know the salvation
we have received in Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is that hope and promise that undergird
the joy of the Christmas Season. Because
Easter is the proof of the loving power of God expressed to us in the gift of
the child in the manger. See how Ruth
concludes her words, where you will die, I will die and may the judgement of
God come down upon me if anything but death was to separate us.
Through the love of Jesus,
expressed in his death and resurrection, we have the greatest promise that
death itself will never separate us from the love of God or the love of those
who have gone on before us to join Jesus in heaven. Praise be to God for the witness of Ruth as
we continue together to celebrate the joy of the Season of Jesus’ birth.
Amen.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH (From the “Book of Common Worship” Rom. 8:1, 28, 38, 39)
We believe there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus; for we know that all things work together for good for those who love
God, who are called according to God’s purpose. We are convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
PASSING OF THE PEACE
THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS (2 Peter
3:8-15)
“All
things in heaven and earth belong to God, who is coming in glory to reveal a
new creation.” Let us present our tithes and offerings to the Lord.
*DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from
whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him
above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Christ
calls us to live generous and grateful lives. Take these gifts we offer today,
O God, and use them to the fulfillment of Christ’s ministry. May these gifts
help to heal the sick, comfort the lonely, feed the hungry, house the homeless.
As Christ’s hands and feet, use us too, in service to building your beloved
community. Amen.
JOYS
AND CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
A voice cries out in the
wilderness: we must prepare the way of the Lord. During this season of Advent,
we prepare the way of Christ with our prayers of thanksgiving and intercession.
God of our salvation, hear our prayers.
As the days grow short and
the nights loom long, we praise you for these seasonal reminders that there is
time for work and time for rest. For those of us who know warm homes and soft
places to sleep, we thank you for these precious gifts. We pray for those who
are homeless, or those whose home is unsafe or financially insecure. May all
your children get the rest they need to thrive. God of our salvation, hear
our prayers.
As divisiveness and conflict
continue to plague us, Holy God, we thank you for the generosity, kindness and
care this season encourages within us. As we contemplate the vulnerability of
Christ, born a fragile infant in a violent world, let us drop our facades and
the masks of strength we hide behind. May this season of Advent prepare us to
celebrate the strength that can be found in weakness and the power held in
humility and love. God of our salvation, hear our prayers.
As your people gather in
homes and churches to celebrate this season, let us be reminded of all the
reasons we have to rejoice in you. Let us be reminded of your protective
presence, of your gentleness and love, of your peace which passes all
understanding. Guard our hearts and minds this Advent, Savior God, so we can
rejoice over your faithfulness through Jesus Christ our Lord. God of our
salvation, hear our prayers.
As a people of faith, we
lift these prayers to you, trusting you hear us and receive us. Finally, hear
us now, as we pray the prayer Christ taught us by saying together,
Our
Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors. Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory
forever. Amen.
*CLOSING HYMN “Infant Holy,
Infant Lowly”
1.
Infant holy, infant lowly, for his bed a cattle stall; oxen lowing, little
knowing, Christ the babe is Lord of all. Swift are winging angels singing,
noels ringing, tidings bringing: Christ the babe is Lord of all.
2.
Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping vigil till the morning new saw the
glory, heard the story, tidings of a gospel true. Thus rejoicing, free from
sorrow, praises voicing, greet the morrow: Christ the babe was born for you.
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
Elements of Order of Worship Liturgy written by Teri McDowell Ott,
courtesy of the Presbyterian Outlook
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