Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader Thursday, October 30, 2014 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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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.
O God, generous and supreme, your loving Son lived among us,
instructing us in the ways of humility and justice. Continue to ease our burdens, and lead us to serve alongside of him,
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen
First Lesson: Malachi 1:14b and 2:8-10 (NIV)
"I am a great king,” says the LORD Almighty, “and my name is to be feared among the nations."
 8 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble;
you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty.
9 “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people,
because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
 10 Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us?
Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?
Here ends the First Lesson
Psalm 131 (NIV)  
1 My heart is not proud, LORD,
   my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
   or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted myself,
   I am like a weaned child with its mother;
   like a weaned child I am content.
 3 Israel, put your hope in the LORD
   both now and forevermore.
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: 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13 (NIV)
We were like young children among you.
   Just as a nursing mother cares for her children,
8 so we cared for you.
Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.
9 Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship;
we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.
 13 And we also thank God continually because,
when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word,
but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
Here ends the Second Lesson.
Gospel Lesson: Matthew 23:1-12 (NIV)
 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples:
2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.
3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you.
But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders,
but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
   5 “Everything they do is done for people to see:
They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long;
6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues;
7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
   8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.
9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.
10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.

 - Sermon -

Our lessons for this week teach us about the importance of humility
in the life of God's people.
In our First Lesson we hear from God that He alone is the Great King.
The people charged with the care of His people are to be faithful to Him and to their needs,
but all too often, we are not very good stewards of the wealth and power placed in our hands.
Those are meant for the good of others as well as ourselves,
but we to whom they are entrusted
are more interested in taking care of our own needs and desires
than those of the people we are called to care for.
God's answer to this is to remind us all that we have but one Father, Himself,
so we are sisters and brothers to each other,
and God's will is that we care for one another.
Our psalm is one of my personal favorites.
Here we learn just how much God is our Mother as well as our Father.
In His loving care, we can feel as safe as a young child feels in the care of a loving mother.
We need not concern ourselves too much
with the many things we do not understand.
Whether we speak of real life or second life,
there are many things that no one person will ever grasp.
Whether we think of real life or second life,
some things will be incomprehensible to any one person.
I may have a handle on something that you don't understand,
or you may be better able to deal with something than I can.
This is why it is so important for us to help each other.
True humility enables our reaching out to help each other. 
There is a false humility as well as false pride,
and those two feelings enable each other
as well as disabling many good things that we all need in life.
The false humility tells us that we are worthless,
that no one could possibly care about us.
To put oneself down is not a sign of any kind of humility.
Rather it is a sign of letting fear overcome love in our hearts.
We are sometimes afraid of many things in life,
and fear is a survival mechanism.
When we are afraid, the fear tends to take over all our thinking and feeling.
To use the phrase from A Course in Miracles,
Love Means Letting Go of Fear.
I want to go a step further and say
that love enables letting go of fear.
A young child, safe in the presence of a loving, protecting Mother
is a fine example of human life free from fear.
We can do that for each other,
and knowing that we can help each other overcome deep fears
by loving one another
is a sign of true humility and true pride.
There is no greater power in the universe than real love, real caring,
and knowing that we share in that power
is a realistic picture of who we are
and to Whom we belong.
Since Halloween is tomorrow, I want to say just a word about the popular holiday.
I have encountered many Christians who are afraid of the day
and many of its symbols and myths.
Many others just have fun,
and I think that is quite healthy.
I try to keep in mind that it is good to be able to laugh and have fun with the things that scare us.
To use the traditional metaphor for evil,
the devil is a proud spirit,
and he cannot bear to be laughed at.
If you laugh at the evil you fear,
you take away its power over you.
So I hope you have lots of fun and laughter tomorrow!
In addition, tomorrow is based on Samhain, the traditional Celtic New Year.
With the beginning of the colder, darker and more dormant season
comes a "thin time" in which the world of spirit and the material world
seem much closer together than usual.
In this time we may sense our relationship with the natural world more than usual.
Take a moment to stand outdoors (if it isn't raining or snowing!)
and think about the living things around you.
Feel the great unity of all life,
for we share one Creator who cares for us all.
We are in this world to care for each other
in ways that reflect God's loving care.
In our Gospel lesson for today
we learn about the caring that was most important
for the community of believers in Jesus.
He said that the religious leaders of God's people in His time
were busy imposing strict rules and regulations on others
that they were not willing to lift a finger to help with.
That kind of problem is a recurring one
in the spiritual and political realms.
Powerful people tend to want to use their power
for their own benefit
or sometimes for the benefit of the institutions they serve
rather than using their power to help and care for others.
Clinging to power and using it for oneself
is an example of fear at work
far beyond the point that it can do anyone any good.
In our time, bishops of many different churches (not just the Roman Catholic Church)
have protected priests who were harming children under their care.
They were acting out of fear
that the ensuing scandal would do irreparable damage to the church they loved.
Acting inappropriately out of fear so often causes far greater damage
than the damage we have feared at first,
and so it has been in this case.
It's far better to act out of love,
being as concerned for the well being of others
as we are concerned for our own.
And this is the essence of true humility,
and the essence of obedience to the Law of God,
to love others
as we love ourselves.
An example of the use of power for the well being of others
came about in the life of Archbishop Angelo Roncalli
who would be come the recently sainted Pope John XXIII.
During the era just before World War II, he was the Papal Legate to Turkey,
a kind of church diplomat. 
He heard of a boatload of Jewish children who had been smuggled out of the Europe of the Third Reich.
No country in the world was willing to receive them
for a variety of political, diplomatic, bureacratic, or other cowardly reasons.
Then Portugal stepped up and said that the children could land in safety there and reside there
if it could be proven that they were all Catholic.
Archbishop Roncalli's office prepared baptismal certificates for every one of those children,
and the Archbishop signed those certificates himself,
saving the lives of all the children in that situation.
He was a man of true humility and faith.
He used the power in his hands for the well being of others
and gave us all a lesson in love for our neighbors.
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 +