Liturgy 5-27-2018

This blog is a record of the call to worship, Scripture readings, and prayers from our Sunday liturgies.  If you are interested in writing something for the liturgy, or if you have a concern about any aspect of our liturgy, please email jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Call to Worship

we have gathered to worship
the Creator and Sustainer of all that is

the One in whom we live and move and have our being

we have gathered to devote our attention
to the Word who became flesh

the One who has entered into our condition,
shared in our suffering,
and shown us what love is

we have gathered to embrace the Spirit of God

the One who dwells among us as Advocate and Comforter,
and is making all things new

hoping to be formed in the way of Christ

that we might be the Body of Christ in the world.

amen.

Scripture

Isaiah 6:1-8

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.

And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Trinity Sunday Reading

This is a reading arranged from For All God's Worth by N.T. Wright:

Left to myself, the god I want is a god who will give me what I want.  He—or more likely it—will be a projection of my desires.  At the grosser level, this will lead me to one of the more obvious pagan gods or goddesses, who offer their devotees money, or sex, or power. All idols started out life as the god somebody wanted.

At the more sophisticated level, the god I want will be a god who lives up to my intellectual expectations: a god of whom I can approve rationally, judiciously, after due consideration and weighing up of theological probabilities.  I want this god because he, or it, will underwrite my intellectual arrogance.  He will boost my sense of being a refined modern thinker.  The net result is that I become god; and this god I’ve made becomes my puppet.  

Nobody falls down on their face before the god they wanted.  Nobody trembles at the word of a home-made god.  Nobody goes out with fire in their belly to heal the sick to clothe the naked, to teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, because of the god they wanted.  They are more likely to stay at home with their feet up.

But on one particular day in the year we celebrate the God whom we didn’t want—how could we ever have dreamed of it?—but who, amazingly, wanted us.  In the church’s year, Trinity Sunday is the day when we stand back from the extraordinary sequence of events that we’ve been celebrating for the previous five months—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost—and when we rub the sleep from our eyes and discover what the word ‘god’ might actually mean.  

These events function as a sequence of well-aimed hammer-blows which knock at the clay jars of the gods we want, the gods who reinforce our own pride or prejudice, until they fall away and reveal instead a very different god, a dangerous god, a subversive god, a god who comes to us like a blind beggar with wounds in his hands, a god who comes to us in wind and fire, in bread and wine, in flesh and blood: a god who says to us, ‘You did not choose me; I chose you.’

You see, the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, is as much a way of saying ‘we don’t know’ as of saying ‘we do know.’  To say that the true God is Three and One is to recognize that if there is a God then of course we shouldn’t expect him to fit neatly into our little categories. The doctrine of the Trinity affirms the rightness, the propriety, of speaking intelligently about the true God, while at the same time affirming intelligently that the true God must always transcend our grasp of him, even our most intelligent grasp of him.

When St. John the Divine found himself looking into the open door of heaven, he didn’t see the god he might have wanted; he saw all creation worshipping the awesome and majestic creator God; and, when he looked closer, he saw a Lamb that had been killed and was now alive forevermore.  The doctrine of the Trinity declares the mystery which is above all else what this broken world needs to hear: that the true God is not detached from the evil of this world, but has come to share it and bear it in his own body.

Prayer

Living God, you have gifted us with breath in a particular time and a particular place.  

As we navigate the varied paths of our lives, we ask that you would form us more fully in the way of Christ—that you would make of us the body of Christ—because in Christ we have found hope and care. 

We ask that you would make us mirrors of that hope and care, that you would teach us to bear one another’s burdens as he did; to stand with-and-alongside when we would rather offer advice, prayers, and platitudes from a safe distance.

And in our bearing of one another’s burdens, we ask that your Spirit would be our Advocate and Comforter—that when our words fail to express the burdens we share, the Spirit would offer truth, and when our minds are full of noise, that the Spirit would whisper peace.  

And indeed, we ask that you would form us in the Spirit, making of us advocates and comforters, that we might bear your light in our time and place until Your will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

Setlist 5-27-2018

Yesterday was the first Sunday after Pentecost, also known as Trinity Sunday.  Our songs were gathered with this in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.  Below the songs, you can find a brief example of one way you might think of these songs. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Holy, Holy, Holy

Come Thou Fount

All Creatures of Our God and King

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to begin Trinity Sunday by speaking of the Triune God who evades our mental categories and whose grandeur is beyond what our language can describe.

Come Thou Fount: As Trinity Sunday allows us to speak of God and God's relationship to us cumulatively, this song offers us language to speak of who God has been in order to look ahead to who we might expect God to be for us.

All Creatures of Our God and King: This song orients our worship alongside all of creation, recognizing that the Triune God is working toward the re-Creation of all things.

Wild One: This song speak of God's evading our grasp and always being greater than we can comprehend.

Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Pulse then: This song is about the Breath of Life in all of creation, and petitions the Spirit to reawaken our hearts to our interconnectivity to all creatures, that we might be moved toward loving as God does.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Liturgy 6-11-2017

This blog is a record of the call to worship, Scripture readings, and prayers from our Sunday liturgies.  If you are interested in writing something for the liturgy, or if you have a concern about any aspect of our liturgy, please email jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Call to Worship

we have gathered to worship
the One who is Father and Mother to us all

to devote our attention to our Creator,
Nurturer, and Sustainer

we have gathered to follow
in the way of the Word who became flesh

to learn the love, faithfulness,
and humility of Christ

we have gathered to be transformed
by the Holy Spirit

to be shaped into the Body of Christ
and drawn into the work of God in the world

amen.

 

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-2:4

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Matthew 28:16-20

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

 

 

 

Trinity Sunday Reading

Our liturgy included a reading on Trinity Sunday from N.T. Wright's For All God's Worth (23-25) [the order of the last two paragraphs is different than in the text; they were rearranged to read better as a selected unit]:

Left to myself, the god I want is a god who will give me what I want.  He—or more likely it—will be a projection of my desires.  At the grosser level, this will lead me to one of the more obvious pagan gods or goddesses, who offer their devotees money, or sex, or power (as Marx, Freud and Nietzsche pointed out).  All idols started out life as the god somebody wanted.

At the more sophisticated level, the god I want will be a god who lives up to my intellectual expectations: a god of whom I can approve rationally, judiciously, after due consideration and weighing up of theological probabilities.  I want this god because he, or it, will underwrite my intellectual arrogance.  He will boost my sense of being a refined modern thinker.  The net result is that I become god; and this god I’ve made becomes my puppet.  Nobody falls down on their face before the god they wanted.  Nobody trembles at the word of a home-made god.  Nobody goes out with fire in their belly to heal the sick to clothe the naked, to teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, because of the god they wanted.  They are more likely to stay at home with their feet up.

But on one particular day in the year we celebrate the God whom we didn’t want—how could we ever have dreamed of it?—but who, amazingly, wanted us.  In the church’s year, Trinity Sunday is the day when we stand back from the extraordinary sequence of events that we’ve been celebrating for the previous five months—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost—and when we rub the sleep from our eyes and discover what the word ‘god’ might actually mean.  These events function as a sequence of well-aimed hammer-blows which knock at the clay jars of the gods we want, the gods who reinforce our own pride or prejudice, until they fall away and reveal instead a very different god, a dangerous god, a subversive god, a god who comes to us like a blind beggar with wounds in his hands, a god who comes to us in wind and fire, in bread and wine, in flesh and blood: a god who says to us, ‘You did not choose me; I chose you.’

The doctrine of the Trinity affirms the rightness, the propriety, of speaking intelligently about the true God, while at the same time affirming intelligently that the true God must always transcend our grasp of him, even our most intelligent grasp of him.

You see, the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, is as much a way of saying ‘we don’t know’ as of saying ‘we do know.’  To say that the true God is Three and One is to recognize that if there is a God then of course we shouldn’t expect him to fit neatly into our little categories…

Setlist 5-31-2015

This week, Josh preached from Luke 12:13-21.  It was also Trinity Sunday, which is the day on the Church calendar that we make a point to acknowledge, contemplate, and appreciate the fact that God has been revealed to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--Three, yet One.  Our songs were gathered with the Trinity in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

Holy, Holy, Holy

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.

Holy, Holy, Holy: This song presents the tension between God being glorious, such that there is no one else that stands on equal footing with God, and the fact that God is both One and Three.  This is most apparent at the end of the third stanza when "there is none beside Thee" and "God in Three persons, blessed Trinity" are placed side by side.  There are various ways to think about the word "holy," but perhaps one of the most straight forward, when speaking of God, is the idea that God is Wholly Other.  This means that what we can know about God is fundamentally limited--even though God created us in way that we can be in relationship with God.  The mystery of the Trinity is incoherent in terms of human reason, but it would be presumptuous to assume that we have the capacity to map out and comprehend One who is Wholly Other.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee:  We sang this song to focus on God the Son.  In Jesus, God crossed the boundary between being Wholly Other and experiencing existence as a human.  Though humans cannot hope to ascend to the heights of God and understand everything there is to know about God, God came to us and showed us who God is in a "language" that we can understand.  Aside from showing us what God is like, Jesus called us to be a particular kind of people--people of love.  With this in mind, we sang this not only to acknowledge Jesus as God, but to ask for help in being people who are more formed into His likeness.

House of God Forever: We sang this song to focus on God the Father.  Though God is Wholly Other, God cares for us.  Though there is much about God that we cannot understand, God fully understands us, and knows how to meet our needs.

Wild One: I shared a reading from N.T. Wright's For All God's Worth before we played this song, and I think his words sum up the place of this song better than I can articulate. You can read the selection here.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to focus on God the Holy Spirit.  Though God is Wholly Other, God has come to dwell among us in the Holy Spirit, transforming us into something new, and connecting us to one another and to Godself.  We also sang this song to look over our shoulder at last weeks' songs.  This is what we said:  When we come to Pentecost each year, we are celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts, thanking God for blessing the Church with the Gift of God's continual presence.  We are also reminding ourselves that this Gift has been given to us as well.  In reminding ourselves of this, we are hoping for a renewed awareness of the Spirit's presence.  We shouldn't reduce Pentecost to a yearly refilling station for caring about the Spirit, but we also should not pretend that we live lives that are fully aware of the Spirit at all times.  Pentecost is a time to remember that we are a people who have been given a Gift, and to live into that reality.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM