Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader Thursday January 31, 2013 10:00 a.m. SLT
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
    Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™
    Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
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"New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989,
Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved." Designated by the initials, (NRSV).

Invocation:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen
Confession and Absolution
We come before you, our Loving Father, Mother God, confessing most of all our need of you.
We confess that we have not always acknowledged just how much we depend on you.
We confess that we have not always loved you with all our heart, soul and mind.
We have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We ask that you will forgive us and grant us your strength to conform more fully to your loving will for us.
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Amen.
In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is my privilege to declare to you and to myself, the entire
forgiveness of all our sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen

Prayer of the Day
Let us pray.
Almighty and ever-living God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love; and that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen

First Lesson: from Jeremiah 1 (NRSV)
1 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
6 Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."
7 But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, "I am only a boy';
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you,
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."
9 Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
"Now I have put my words in your mouth.
10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

17 But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. 18 And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land--against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. 19 They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.
Here ends the First Lesson

Psalm 71 (NRSV)
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be to me a rock of refuge,
a strong fortress, to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.
5 For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O LORD, from my youth.
6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
it was you who took me from my mother's womb.
My praise is continually of you.

15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,
of your deeds of salvation all day long,
though their number is past my knowledge.

17 O God, from my youth you have taught me,
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Second Lesson: from 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 (NRSV)
12:31 But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;
when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Here ends the Second Lesson.

Gospel Lesson: Luke 4:21-30 (NRSV)
21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?"
23 He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, "Doctor, cure yourself!'
And you will say, "Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Caper'naum.'"
24 And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.
25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Eli'jah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,
and there was a severe famine over all the land;
26 yet Eli'jah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zar'ephath in Si'don.
27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Eli'sha, and none of them was cleansed except Na'aman the Syrian."
28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built,
so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.

 - Sermon -

The lessons for this week are very important for our worlds political and cultural situations.
The first lesson speaks of the prophet having been known by God even BEFORE he was formed in his mother's womb.
God knows and calls each of us before we are created.
God loves us and cares for our lives intimately
before we are born, even before we are conceived.
Verses like this are often used these days in a political way.
The issue of abortion seems uppermost in the minds of a lot of believers.
I can assure you that this verse and others like it say nothing at all on the subject.
We can construe them as we like,
but no one's particular interpretation can be taken as the final word.
Even if some believers come to think that abortion is wrong under any or even all conditions,
they do not have the right to try to impose thier opinions on anyone else.
That is a key understanding of the separation of religious principles from political ideologies.
Our faith informs everything we think, say and do.
It does not require us or anyone else to take particular political or cultural positions.
It is possible to be a faithful Christian and be totally opposed to abortion.
It is equally possible to be a faithful Christian and believe that every woman has the right to make her own choices
regarding her own body and her own reproductive life.
What is not possible
is to be a faithful Christian and have no compassion.
The love of God for us
calls us all to love Him
and to love each other.
Our psalm sings of God's compassion for us,
delivering us from the wicked and unjust.
As always, God's favorite way of delivering His children from those who have no compassion
is to teach them to have compassion.
God has compassion for them, too!
Our second lesson teaches us all about compassion.
It tells us what God's love is like.
It shows us the kind of love we are being called to have.
In the Greek language, in which this lesson was first written,
there are at least four words for love.
The love being described here
is called agape.
It is the kind of love that purely and simply cares.
If you say that you care about another person,
and you always want what is best for him or her,
then you are loving that other person with agape.
This love is patient and kind.
It does not seek what it wants.
In second life terms, we would say that it avoids drama!
The love of God for us always seeks what is good for us,
especially our freedom.
When we say that we love someone,
we may think that we want what is best,
but that just might not include freedom,
especially if that freedom includes the right to do something that we do not want them to do.
We know that God's love for us includes exactly that.
We are free to do God's will and obey Him.
We are also free to disobey Him and rebel, in other words, to sin.
Of course, if we do so,
ultimately we will diminish our own freedom.
There are many examples of how this works,
but even in human society we can see it in something as simple as speed limits.
If we drive our city streets within the law,
we enhance our own freedom and everyone else's freedom too.
We provide for our own safety in that way and the safety of others.
If we drive recklessly, we will diminish our own freedom and the freedom of others.
The likelihood of an accident is much greater if we do not drive within the law.
Even if we don't have an accident,
we might get a traffic ticket, costing us money that we then would not have the freedom to spend on other things.
If we get too many traffic tickets, we might lose the right to drive,
and our freedom would be diminished in that way, too.
So even in a very mundane example,
we see that our freedom is enhanced by our obedience to law.
In terms of God's law of love,
the prinicple is even more true,
though it may be a lot less obvious.
By loving others,
by caring about the well being of everyone we meet,
we ourselves are more likely to be loved and cared for,
since love tends to call to love and bring more love into being.
As the saying goes,
Love is the one thing that you get more of when you give it away.
Our Lord Jesus was the perfect example of love in action.
When He preached in His home synagogue in Nazareth,
He told His people
that the words of hope from the lesson He read
had been fulfilled in His hearing.
There was controversy in His preaching,
for people were reluctant to accept one of their own as a true prophet.
The same thing happened to the prophet Mohammed.
He was widely loved and respected by the tribes of Arabia,
but his own tribe, the Quraysh, was the last to accept him.
The words of our Lord have been proven true over and over again,
"Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown."
Love given is not always reciprocated.
Jesus was nearly killed by the people of His own home town,
but His time had not yet come.
He would be killed by those who rejected His love,
but it was not on that day
in which He preached in His own hometown synagogue.
It would be on another day
in Jerusalem
when the political and religious leaders of His time
turned against Him
because they found His message threatening to their way of life and their ideologies.
Separation of religious principles from political ideology would have served Him well, but it was not so in His time.
It is not always so in our time, either,
but it serves well for people who think differently to live together in peace and harmony.
In the U.S. it is called the separation of church and state,
and it is being seriously threatened here.
Not only here, but all over the world,
there are people who believe that they can impose their religious principles on others through the force of law or war.
That false concept is at the heart of deep conflicts in places like Egypt, Mali, Syria, and even France, Turkey, and the U.S.
We all need more love for our neighbor and less judgment.
When we heed the call of our Lord to love one another as He has first loved us,
our own freedom and the freedom of others all over the world will be enhanced.
Human community can be built on love.
It has happened over and over again
in marriages
in friendships
in neighborhoods
in cities and states
in nations
where compassion is the goal of human relationships.
Communities built on love are a foretaste of that great community of love
we know as Heaven.
Amen.

Prayer of the People
Please type your spontaneous petitions in chat.
Each prepared petition is intended to remind us of the things we need to pray about,
so a brief pause will be provided for us to pray our own petitions,
either sharing them in the chat window
or praying them in our own hearts.

Loving God, we pray for each other, for those who depend upon us for prayer, and for all people according to their needs.
We ask that your healing power may prevail in our lives.
We pray that those in positions of public trust may be worthy of that trust as they act as stewards of power and wealth
for the benefit of all.
We pray that conflicts may be resolved in the context of relationships,
so that violence of thought word and deed may be diminished all through our world.
We ask your blessing for all who bear witness to the Gospel, so that relationships with you may be deepened for all people.
All these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we ask that you will grant for the sake of your Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name we pray.
Amen.
Our Lord's Prayer
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 sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever,
Amen.
Benediction
May the Lord bless us and keep us.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen +