Fourth Sunday After Epiphany
St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Coronavirus
01-30-2022 10:00AM Worship
THE GREETING, CONFESSION, AND FORGIVENESS:
L Blessed be the holy Trinity, (+) one God,
who creates us and forms us… who redeems us and calls us… who unites us and sends us.
C Amen.
L Today the WORD OF LIFE is appealing to us to love one another.
C And – when we don’t – we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. CLANG, BANG! Lord, forgive us.
L Today the WORD OF LIFE is challenging us to enlarge the community of those who experience God’s love.
C We might know the talk, but we don’t always walk the walk. CLANG, BANG! Lord, forgive us.
L Today the WORD OF LIFE is insisting that we stop being childish in our Christian journey.
C Our faith is nothing without love, and our good deeds are empty without God. CLANG, BANG!
Lord, have mercy on us.
L Today the WORD OF LIFE is encouraging us to grow up, brothers and sisters, to stop acting like we don’t know, to stop insisting on having our own way, to stop being envious and boastful and rude, to stop silently and loudly – CLANG, BANG! – rejecting the person and the message and mission of Jesus. God loved the world so much that God sent Jesus the Christ to earth as perfect love in flesh and bone, showing us how to love and willing to die for us so that we might live through him. By the grace of Christ (+) you are forgiven, you are loved… and you are empowered to love as God has loved you. Let’s do it! Hallelujah!
OPENING SONG: “THE GIFT OF LOVE” Tan #522
- Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the gift to all inspire,
And have not love – my words are vain as sounding brass, and hopeless gain.
- Though I may give all I possess, and striving so, my love profess,
But not be giv’n by love within – the profit soon turns strangely thin.
- Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control; our spirits long to be made whole!
Let inward love guide every deed; by this we worship, and are freed.
THE PRAYER OF THE DAY (together):
Let us pray. Father in heaven, you sent your Son Jesus to proclaim and embody your saving power, your wonderful mercy, and your overflowing love for all people. Anoint us with the power of your
Holy Spirit and fill us with your grace that we, too, may proclaim and embody love that is just as big and as wide as yours. If we do nothing else well as your people, let us love each other and become your love for others. Lord, keep us thirsty in our hearts and busy in our witness. So be it, Amen!
FIRST READING: JEREMIAH 1:4-10 [Never too young – or too old, too busy, too anything – to live up to God’s truth.]
1:4 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
1:5 “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.”
1:6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
1:7 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.
1:8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
1:9 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.
1:10 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.”
SECOND READING: 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-13 [The truth to this particular – and every – unloving congregation.]
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.
13:2 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.
13:3 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.
13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
13:6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
13:8 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.
13:9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
13:10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
13:11 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.
13:12 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.
13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
GOSPEL VERSE: “Always remember Jesus, Jesus.
Always remember Jesus, Jesus.
Always keep Him on your mind.”
THE GOSPEL: LUKE 4:21-30 [The Man who was “too true to be good”! His inclusive love got him excluded.]
4:21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
4:22 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?”
4:23 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 Capernaum.'”
4:24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.
4:25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land;
4:26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.
4:27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
4:28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
4:29 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.
4:30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
THE SERMON: Pastor Neil or Pastor Gwen
SONG SELECTION
OFFERING [In this imperfect world God entrusts LOVE to us and sends us to share it with others with our words but also our deeds. What we give and how we give reveals the growth of our faith and our lives as we seek to follow Jesus Christ.]
THE OFFERTORY SONG: “THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE”
- This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine… (3X)
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
- Ev’rywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine… (3X)
- Jesus gave it to me, I’m gonna let it shine… (3X)
OFFERING PRAYER:
O Lord our God, You have anointed us to bring good news and to proclaim liberty, to bind up the brokenhearted and to liberate the oppressed. Help us to shine forth always and in all ways with the bright glory of Jesus Christ. Amen.
MUSIC SELECTION: “LORD, WHOSE LOVE IN HUMBLE SERVICE” Dennis Fortune Green #423
THE PRAYERS… We pray that the joy and light of JESUS CHRIST will touch all lives!
THE LORD’S PRAYER
SONG SELECTION
THE BENEDICTION