Tag Archives: sermon on the mount

Worship Service for Epiphany 5A

05 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Epiphany Liturgy/Prayers, Liturgy, Pop

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Call to Worship
One: As the sun climbs from the horizon
Many: God’s presence endures with us.
One: As the clouds mask the sun’s warming presence,
Many: God’s presence remains with us.
One: As the sun drifts back to the horizon,
Many: God’s presence lingers with us.
One: As light rests until morning,
Many: God’s presence persists with us.

Invocation
Gleaming God-
No matter how cold the winds whip around us,
No matter how chilly stares and words may appear,
No matter how frigid our despairing hearts,
Your light warms our souls and melts our cynicism.

Divine Brilliance-
May your morning light encourage us to walk your way.
May your rays of sun reach us from behind the clouds
And encourage us in these weeks of winter.  Amen.

Prayer of Reconciliation
Holy God, Holy Light who abides within our souls,
We have hoarded the light-
thinking we will spend it on a rainy day.

We have stashed the light far away from our neighbors.
We worry: Would they steal our light from our souls?
Would we have enough illumination when the clouds roll back in?

Through your eternal, inspirational light, encourage us to share the light with our neighbors.
May this light feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick.
May this light draw us closer to one another.
May we become people moved by the brilliance of Christ.  Amen.

Assurance of Grace
Like the sun each morning at daybreak,
God’s grace renews our spirits,
energizing us to start fresh in each moment.
Live in the bright, excitement of this grace!  Amen!

Invitation to Offering
Like a flame spreading from one candle to the next, we, too, are encouraged to share light and love with our neighbors and church. We give because God has given us much.  We love because God’s love is overflowing.  In this time and place, may we give our treasures so that God’s love and light can be experienced by all.

Prayer of Dedication
Gleaming God, with these offerings, may our neighbors experience your love.  With these treasures, may the world know your light and continue to pass your brilliant hope to all.  Amen.

Benediction (Based on Isaiah 58)
May your light break forth like the dawn.
May your gloom be like the noonday.
May God guide each of us continually
So that we live as bright, watered gardens
Where water and light never fail.  Amen.

On Being a Lily of the Field

20 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Life, Pop

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water-lilies-bud-pond-green-99548.jpegI’ve always been the type of person who worries excessively.  This has always been part of my personality from the time I was a small child, and making drastic changes to such an embedded character trait takes time.

I go about my daily business worrying about how well I accomplish things and if I will have all the resources I need for the future.  I worry about the well-being of those I love and what will happen in the future to all of us.  I worry about small things and large things alike.

So when I read a text like Matthew 6:25-34, I want to laugh.  “God, you’re trying to tell me that I shouldn’t worry.  Easier said than done.  Releasing the worry won’t be happening here!”

And then I am faced once again with surgery.  I’ve tried everything I can to avoid surgery, but I must undergo the procedure once again.  For a while, I worried about having to endure this operation once more and did what I could do to avoid it, but there was little I could do.  I need to have it.

I will be on the surgical table in the very near future, so worry clouds my mind.  There is nothing that I can do once I lie down to have surgery except pray, believing that God knows what I will need and care for me in ways that will strengthen my well-being.

During the procedure, I know that I will be like a lily of the field—unable to care for myself in that period of time.  I will be enduring a period in which I am just “being” instead of “doing.”  My dependence will be on God and those working with God to bring about my health.

Most of us do not want to be like lilies of the field.  We want control, and we want solutions right now.  But now and again, life happens, and our time to be like flowers in a field arrives. We come and go with the winds.  We allow the rains to wash upon us.  Neither we can control.  And God wants us to embrace this time so that we can find our well-being again soon.

So I ask for God to take care of me while I am like a lily.  I ask God to heal me so that I can work hard once healing happens.  And like Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, I ask God to help me always figure out what I can control and what I need to give to God.

This post will be in St. Paul UCC’s March 2017 messenger.