First Presbyterian Church
First Sunday of Christmas
December 26, 2021
10:00 AM
Order of Worship
CALL
TO WORSHIP (from “Joy to the World”)
Joy
to the world, the Lord is come!
Let
earth receive her king!
Let
every heart prepare Him room.
Let
heaven and nature sing in joy!
Let
us worship the Living God.
*Hymn
of Praise: “Angels From the Realm of Glory”
1.
Angels from the realms of glory, wing your flight o'er all the earth; ye who
sang creation's story now proclaim Messiah's birth:
Refrain: Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ, the newborn king.
2.
Shepherds, in the field abiding, watching o'er your flocks by night, God with
us is now residing; yonder shines the infant light: (Refrain)
3.
Sages, leave your contemplations, brighter visions beam afar; seek the great
Desire of nations; ye have seen his natal star: (Refrain)
4.
Saints, before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear; suddenly the
Lord, descending, in his temple shall appear: (Refrain)
PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)
Christ our Savior, forgive us for our dishonesty, our ignorance,
our apathy towards growing in faith. Forgive our resentment and anger, the ways
we dominate and divide. Clothe us in your new garments of compassion, kindness,
humility and patience. Help us to embrace your peace and surrender to your
extraordinary love. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYERS
OF CONFESSION
ASSURANCE OF
PARDON (From the hymn “We
three kings of Orient are”)
O star of wonder, star of night … westward leading, still proceeding,
guide us to thy perfect light. In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.
*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’,
Luke 2
In those days a decree went out from
Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the
first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of
Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went
from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called
Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He
went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a
child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her
child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of
cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the
inn.
In that region there were shepherds
living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an
angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around
them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be
afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the
people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the
Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child
wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was
with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’
When the angels had left them and gone
into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and
see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to
us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child
lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been
told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the
shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them
in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all
they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
SERMON: “The
Legacy of Mary the Mother of Jesus” Rev.
Peter Hofstra
December 26, 2021 Sermon Rev. Peter Hofstra
“What Did Mary Know?”
We have
followed the genealogy of Jesus that introduces us to the Christmas story in
the Gospel according to Luke. More
specifically, we have considered the women who are mentioned by name in that
genealogy. Going back to Abraham, there
are 14 generations to David, 14 generations to the deportation to Babylon, and
14 generations to Jesus. In all of those
generations, only five women are named, including Mary, the mother of Jesus,
herself.
The attempt,
this Advent, has been to try to figure out why Matthew included these women. In
the male dominant culture of the time, there was significance to these women,
and the question has been ‘what is their significance’? But how about consideration not only of their
significance to us, but their significance to Mary?
There is a
very powerful Christmas song that we ran early in our prelude called “Mary, Did
You Know?” The lyrics are included. What did Mary know about these other women in
the genealogy? Unlike we today, who can
be drowned in all the streams of media that come pouring into our lives, Mary
really only had one, that which was taught in the homes and synagogues of her
community, the stories of what we call the Old Testament.
What did Mary
know? Long after Christmas, more than
thirty years later, she was going to stand on Golgotha, the mount of the skull,
and she was going to see her boy crucified.
Did she know about Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon? Did she know that when it looked like
Bathsheba’s son, who was promised the kingship, looked like he might be pushed
aside, probably killed outright as a contender to the throne, that when
Bathsheba came to the king, the promises that God had made were NOT, in fact,
pushed aside, but were fulfilled despite the odds they seemed to be facing? Did she know the stories of God’s promises
being fulfilled? She knew the words of
her Son, that he was coming back again.
Did she find strength in those three days he was in the tomb that were
renewed in the hope and joy of Jesus’ resurrection? Did she know she was from the line of
Bathsheba?
Come back to
Luke 2. We rejoice in these words
because we know what’s to come. “In
those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be
registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius
was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be
registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to
Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the
house and family of David.” What did
Mary know? She knew that she was being
torn from the community she knew, where her support system was, where her
family was, and she was being dragged to Bethlehem. And it was not a temporary thing. In the days of Roman, Roman citizens were the
ones who were free to travel. Roman
soldiers were the ones forced to travel in order to keep the Empire safe and
free for the citizens. Everyone else,
all the conquered peoples and the client kingdoms, they were all tied to their
lands and to their jobs so they could provide the taxes that paid for the
armies, that paid for the freedom known by the Citizens.
Did Mary know
the story of Ruth, who followed Naomi from her country of origin, from Moab,
from her faith of origin, the gods of the Moabites, to a new land and a new
people with which she had no connection?
Did she know the story of God’s care and preservation of Ruth and
Naomi? Of the success she found in her
new life in that very same City where Mary and Joseph moved to, into Bethlehem
itself? Did she know she was from the
line of Ruth?
Related to
this forced move, this, according to the rules of the Romans, this permanent
shift in locale, when Mary moved, she was not just pregnant, she was VERY
pregnant. So while there may never truly
be a good time to move, there are certainly absolutely horrible times to
move. Her entire safety net, her
household, her preparations, what has been termed the ‘nesting’ that seems to
be built into the DNA of a new mother, all of that was ripped out from under
her when she was forced to go with Joseph to Bethlehem.
And you know
what happened when they got there. There
was no room for them in the inn. If she
left Nazareth convinced that everything she needed and prepared and set into
motion for the birth of her son was being taken away, the sight of the barn,
the sound and smells of the animals, the food trough that became a cradle? I remember a very male, rather older pastor
commenting in a sermon about this, “These were not ideal circumstances for the
delivery of a baby boy.” Ya think?
What did Mary
know? Did she know the story of Rahab,
born and raised in Jericho? Living there
with her entire family? Gathering her
entire family into her house built into the wall as the entire city was
destroyed around her? Everything and
everybody she knew, outside her immediate circle, dead in the war between the
Israelites and the Canaanites, reduced to homelessness, to the state of a
displaced person, in the very first battle of the war.
Did she know
that Rahab confessed the Lord, God of Israel, as her own God. That the Lord took care of her, that the Lord
established a place for her among the people of Israel. Did she know that she was from the line of
Rahab?
And before
all of this started, the Lord God came to Mary through the angel Gabriel, to
ask her to take on the mission of being the mother of the Messiah, to be made
pregnant by the Holy Spirit. That this
was a choice she made and she rejoiced about, as is reflected in the words of
Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1. But then
she had to tell Joseph. “God made me
pregnant.” As we transition from the
genealogy of Jesus to the opening of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, we see
the plans that are in the works. Joseph
does not want to disgrace her publicly.
We know that, even in that time, the penalty for adultery was death by
stoning. There is an episode in the
Gospel of John where the men of the city bring a woman so charged to Jesus in
order to get his take on her death. That
is where he teaches, “You who are without sin cast the first stone.” It was never a matter of innocence or guilt,
it was all about forgiveness.
Joseph was
going to dismiss her quietly, sent her back to her own family, disgraced but
unharmed. I wonder how this challenged
Mary’s acceptance of what God had come to her with. What did Mary know? Did she know the story of Tamar? Another woman who would be dragged before her
father-in-law on charges of adultery-but to the memory of two dead husbands… Would she have understood what Tamar did in
obedience to God’s law? An obedience
that led to a rather sophisticated plot of deceit? Obedience that found her to be the more
righteous because of her obedience?
As Mary,
resting beside a newborn, greeted the shepherds, heard the stories of angels,
as she treasured all these things in her heart, as she lived her life as Mary,
the Mother of God, to where she watched her own son die, only to live again,
where she saw the new faith that he founded out of what came before, did she
have more than simply God’s word for it?
Did she know the stories of her own faith? Did she know what came before? Did she know how God’s faithfulness had already
been worked out?
So here is
the story teller in me considering all of this.
I would like to think of it this way.
As the writer of the gospel of Matthew was gathering materials to tell
the story of the life of Jesus, I like to think of them sitting down with
Jesus’ mother. We are pretty sure that
Joseph died somewhere before Jesus’ ministry began. What questions would they ask? I know what I would ask. What was it like, to be the mother of the
Savior? I can imagine her telling them
that it wasn’t all tinsel and candy canes.
Rather, as she reflected on the birth, the life, the death, and the new
life of her son, I hear her reaching back into her own faith experience to
these other stories, to these other moments, so she had not only the words of
the Lord as her comfort, but she had the history of the Lord’s faithfulness to
draw upon. I can imagine then the gospel
writer sitting with his materials and his notes. There are the stories that Mary cited, that
from her history as a person of the Jewish faith where God spoke to her from
his past faithfulness. There is Tamar,
there is Rahab, there is Ruth. There is
Bathsheba, another mother of a king…but also the object of David’s biggest sin,
as the wife of Uriah… Perhaps this was
God’s inspiration to put these names down, for the consideration and
edification of the future generations who would learn about our Savior from the
Gospel, who would learn the deep connections of faith and love that led to God
being born as a baby among us on that first Christmas.
What did Mary
know? Mary knew that her son from by the
Holy Spirit, the Son of God. Mary knew
that the angel of the Lord came to her personally to set in motion what was to
happen. Mary knew that her Son, although
arrested and executed, rose again from the dead. Mary knew he arose to offer the gift of grace
for the forgiveness of all humanity.
But Mary also
knew that God’s faithfulness did not suddenly drop from heaven when Gabriel
came to her. Mary knew God’s
faithfulness to God’s people throughout their history. Mary knew God’s faithfulness would continue
to the people into the future, through Jesus.
So what do we
know? We know what Mary knows. We know not only the gift of the birth of
Jesus, we know the legacy of faithfulness that came forward through the women
that Matthew has named for us in Jesus’ genealogy. And we know, though it has been countless
generations since the birth of Jesus, that God’s faithfulness carries forward
to this very day.
We know the
true power and joy and love of Christmas.
We know, as we go from this place, that God is our God, a God of love
and forgiveness. We know that from his
humblest beginnings, in a manger for a bed, that Jesus is the Way, the Truth,
and the Life, that in Him, the light of the Christmas Star shines into this
world with the promise of our renewal in Him.
Amen.
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH (From the “Book of Common Worship” Phil.
2:5-11)
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard
equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he
humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a
cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is
above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in
heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess to the
glory of God: Jesus Christ is Lord! Amen.
PASSING OF THE PEACE
THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS
We are
the stewards of God’s good gifts. Let us present our tithes and offerings in
faithful response to God’s generosity.
*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
May our gifts offer healing and hope. May our lives reflect your love.
May our actions serve your will, God of grace and glory. Amen.
JOYS
AND CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Come, let us adore him … We adore you, Savior God,
Root of Jesse, Ruler of Nations, Newborn King. We give thanks for the star that
led us to this long-awaited hope and the season of Advent that prepared us for
your extraordinary birth. Come, let us adore him … We adore you, Savior
God, born fragile, vulnerable and human. We pray for those most vulnerable in
our society: the sick, the marginalized, the abused, the poor and homeless. We
pray for those who are bone-weary from work, those who feel helpless and
hopeless. Empower and encourage them by your Spirit, O God. Come, let us
adore him … We adore you, Savior God, for being with us in the flesh, for
entering our world and experiencing our humanity, for redeeming and sustaining
us in each and every moment. We pray for those who feel misunderstood, for
those who are angry and those who have been dealt with unjustly. We pray for
the victims of violence and for those who turn to violence as the answer. We
pray to the Prince of Peace to heal us and guide us in the path of peace. Come,
let us adore him … We adore you, Savior God, for the way you came and
continue to come in mystery and in might. You enter our world, our joy and our
pain, making our hearts burn with thanksgiving. May our lives be gifts of
praise to you. May our Christmas joy turn us towards each other with
compassion, respect and kindness. May we cloth ourselves in dignity and love
each other as you love us. Holy and astounding God, we have seen the reflection
of your glory and celebrated your love born again. Help us bear witness to
Christ in our lives and in our prayers. 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 “Joy to the
World”
1. Joy
to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let every heart
prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing, and
heaven and nature sing.
2. Joy
to the world, the Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ; while fields and
floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding
joy, repeat the sounding joy.
3. No
more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; he comes to make
his blessings flow far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found, far as
the curse is found.
4. He
rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories
of his righteousness, and wonders of his love, and wonders of his love, and
wonders of his love.
*BENEDICTION
*THREE FOLD AMEN
Elements of Order of Worship Liturgy written by Teri McDowell Ott,
courtesy of the Presbyterian Outlook
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