A Gathering in Worship Offered by the People of the Church of Christ, Union
First Sunday of Lent 10:30 am
Meditation
“You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.” ~ Psalm 32
From There to Here: We Gather
Prelude
Welcome
Song Show Us How to Love v.1
Hearts open, minds awake, change us now for heaven’s sake. Leave us not alone in hatred’s wake. Show us how to love. Show us how to love. Show us how, show us how to love.
Call to Worship
Song Show Us How to Love v. 2
Eyes open, shocked awake, much to learn from our mistakes. Draw us closer in our heartache. Show us how to love. Show us how to love. Show us how, show us how to love.
¨ Prayer of Approach & Confession
One: Let us pray: Holy and Merciful One, in this season of discernment we come bringing our deepest longings, and our failed attempts at satisfying them. We have often looked for love, for acceptance and security, in the trappings of notoriety, popularity, and power that diminish others in order to gain for ourselves.
All: We yearn for lives that matter, we desire relationships that thrive, we want less regret.
One: At times we fail to see that you have already given us what really matters: your love and acceptance. You provide opportunities all around us to make a difference in the lives of others. You give us a fresh start each day, inviting us to do better. In this silence, we bring to you our pleas for openness to a different way of living.
[Silence]
Amen: My friends, be assured by the Psalmist who says, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” Let us respond together:
All: We open our hearts, our minds, our souls, our vision to the ways of love created by God, embodied in Jesus, and already moving in us by the Spirit. By this grace, we are forgiven, loved, and freed. Amen!
Song Love Us Into Fullness v. 1
¨ Words of Assurance
One: Amen: My friends, be assured by the Psalmist who says, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”
All: We open our hearts, our minds, our souls, our vision to the ways of love created by God, embodied in Jesus, and already moving in us by the Spirit. By this grace, we are forgiven, loved, and freed. Amen!
¨ Passing the Peace of Christ
All who come to this sanctuary are welcome companions on the journey of faith. Please turn to those nearest you and greet them with words of peace.
Hymn #205 Black Forty Days and Forty Nights Heinlein
1.Forty days and forty nights You were fasting in the wild; Forty days and forty nights Tempted, and yet undefiled.
2. Shall not we your sorrow share And from worldly joys abstain, Fasting with unceasing prayer, Strong with you to suffer pain?
3. Then if Satan on us press, Flesh or spirit to assail, Victor in the wilderness, Grant we may not faint nor fail!
4. So shall we have peace divine; Holier gladness ours shall be; Round us, too, shall angels shine, Such as served You faithfully.
5. Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, Ever constant by your side, That with you we may appear At th’eternal Eastertide.
Word and Worship
Video Reflection
Song Love Us into Fullness v. 2
Love us into fullness, hold us in your care, cheer us with your presence here and everywhere.
Sung Psalm 32, p. 642
The psalms were originally musical compositions. During Lent we will pray the psalms in musical form. Rev. Kent will lead and you are invited to sing the response when invited.
Children’s Moment: as the children return to their seats we sing
May God’s presence guard, protect and guide you. God bless you, God bless you. Our savior’s loving arms be ever ’round you. God bless you, God bless you.
Special Music These Forty Days of Lent St. Flavian
1. These forty days of Lent, O Lord, with you we fast and pray; teach us to discipline our wills and follow, Lord, your way.
2. As thirst and hunger you have known, so teach us, gracious Lord, to die to self and only live by your most holy word.
3. And through these days of penitence, and through your Passiontide, for evermore, in life and death, O Lord with us abide.
4. Abide with us, that so, this life of suffering once past, an Easter of unending joy we may attain at last.
Scripture Lesson Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
~ New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition
Sermon Look for the Resister Rev. Kent Gilbert
Song Love Us Into Fullness v. 3
Love us into fullness and we shall be strong; Jesus, walk beside us, fill our hearts with song.
Living Prayer
Call to Prayer
Ringing of the Peace Bell
The Union Church Peace Bell was created by Jeff Enge in honor of Union Church member Carl Eschbach (1904-1998). A twin bell hangs in Berea’s sister province in Japan and is also rung in the hope of peace for all nations.
Kyrie Dinah Riendorf
In this season of Lent, we will come together in prayer using an ancient form in the church. The Greek words, “Kyrie Eleison” mean “God, have mercy on us,” and “Christe Eleison” means “Christ have mercy.” The church has been chanting this during prayer since the early centuries of its existence. We sing this simple chant as a response to each intercession. The repetition of this beautiful “Kyrie” is itself a prayer. God’s mercy is a gift of love, given freely to us.
Community Prayer
Loving Creator, we come to you asking for strength to resist injustice in this world. You have created a world in which we are a global community, connected and interdependent. Show us how to love so that when one part of the human family is affected by hate, war, hunger, or disaster, we will move to right any wrongs and alleviate suffering for the sake of all. You have created a planet full of such wonder and diversity. Show us how to love this planet home as our precious dwelling, assuring the flourishing of all living things. We pray this day for our sisters and brothers in the earthquakes, and those too long at war in Ukraine, in Palestine, and all places were violence seems to prevail… God have mercy. In this singing we lift up this world to you with our love:
All: Kyrie Eleison
Community Prayer
Loving Sovereign, we come to you asking for strength to make a difference in our communities and to be full and whole in our relationships. You created us for beloved community, bringing what we can offer and honoring others as living words of grace. Show us how to love more widely, more deeply, in our hurts and to those in need. You showed us what love looks like in the companionship of Jesus who invited all to his table, touched the untouchables with healing, spoke with, and drew close, those shunned by others. Open us more completely than we can imagine so that our love may break through the most difficult of situations. We pause in silence as we each lift up in our hearts the relationships that need your love
[Silence for personal prayers]…
God have mercy. In this singing we lift up each other to you with our love:
All: Christe Eleison
Community Prayer
Lover of Our Souls, we come to you asking for strength to love ourselves and to look for love in the right places. In the beginning you created us in your own image, giving us life and breath and the ability to love. And yet we find it difficult sometimes to love what you have created–to believe that you called us “good.” Help us know the lure of your love for us, so that we may be your love in this world, in our communities, and in the lives with whom we intersect each day. God have mercy. In this singing we open ourselves to your love:
All: Kyrie Eleison
Our Lord’s Prayer
And so, as your people following in the ways of your Son, Jesus, who set the pattern of love as resistance to the temptations of fleeting fame and fortune, we pray with confidence the prayer that he taught us, reaching to you as…
All: Our Maker, Our Mother, and 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. Amen.
Call to Offering
A Chance for Generosity: www.easytithe.com/union
Our gifts help sustain this particular community of caring by sustaining the building, pastor and staff, and all the materials that make our ministry of healing, justice, and teaching available to all in need. In addition, a portion of our contributions flows out to aid those in need via many external ministries.
Many friends give online, and you can use your smart phone or computer and go to www.easytithe.com/union. You don’t have to register to make a contribution, but if you do, it can make future generosity that much easier. Baskets are placed at the head and foot of each aisle for those who wish to make an in-person donation. Electronic donations can be made very simply and easily at: https//: www.easy tithe.com/union
You can even give by text! Text to 859-448-3403 (Example: Text “$50.00 Offering”)
You can also use US mail! Mail to: 200 Prospect St., Berea, KY 40403
Your contribution is love made visible. Thank you!
Offering Music
From Here to There: We Depart
Community Connections
Announcements
We share opportunities for Beloved Community and ways to serve.
Lighting the Justice Candle to Lead us Forth
James Bond was born into slavery in Kentucky. After the Civil War he and his with his family moved to Knox County here he worked as a farm laborer.
James Bond left that farm for school at Berea College. To pay his tuition he drove a steer the sixty-mile distance. James required a significant amount of remedial work to catch up with the other students, but his persistence paid off when he graduated from Berea in 1892. He continued his education by perusing a divinity degree from Oberlin College, where he graduated in 1895. Bond served as a minister in Tennessee for a time and then took a job with the Lincoln Institute in Shelby County, Kentucky, as a fundraiser.
Bond tried to join the military during World War I as a chaplain, but he was rejected due to his age. He did, however, work with soldiers through the YMCA at Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville during that conflict. He later served as the first Kentucky Director of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. In this role, Bond worked to open lines of communication between the races and worked to provide mutually satisfying solutions to issues.
Bond died in 1929 at age sixty-five. His influence provided an example for his descendants. His son, Horace Mann Bond, a college professor at Fisk University and late Fort Valley State, and grandson Julian Bond, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), leader in Civil Rights Movement, and politician, both owed a great deal of their success to Dr. James Bond.
¨ Hymn #43 Black Love Divine, All Loves Excelling Beecher
- Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, on earth be found,
Fix in us a humble dwelling;
Let us all your mercies crown.
Jesus, you are all compassion;
Pure, unbounded love impart;
Visit us with your your salvation;
Enter every trembling heart. - Breathe, O breathe your loving Spirit
Into every troubled breast;
Let us all in you inherit;
Let us find your promised rest.
Take away our love of sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith, as its beginning,
Set our hearts at liberty. - Come, Almighty, to deliver;
Let us all your life receive;
Suddenly return, and never,
Nevermore your temples leave.
You we would be always blessing,
Love you as your angels love,
Pray, and praise for your unfailing,
Wounded arms outstretched above.
- Finish, then, your new creation;
Pure and spotless may we prove;
Let us see your great salvation
Perfectly restored in you:
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Crowned as saints we ever shall be,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
¨ Benediction
Postlude
You are welcome to be seated to appreciate the music following service, and to show appreciation at the end with applause.
Our Prayers for Others
¨ Each week we join millions of Christians who pray for one another through the ecumenical prayer cycle and, locally, the Berea Ministerial Association’s prayer cycle (Link to World Council of Churches Ecumenical Prayer cycle. (union-church.org/ministries/prayer/). Let us hold the people of Belgium, Luxembourg & the Netherlands and our brothers & sisters at Emmanuel Baptist Church in our hearts, and pray for them. Please hold these concerns in your prayers, today and throughout the week.
¨ Prayers for all the people of Ukraine for their safety and sovereignty. Prayers also that the government of Russia will turn to reason & respect for their own peoples’ lives as well as for Ukrainian families.
¨ All those seeking a new and just society and those fearful that they will be supplanted, may God open their hearts and include them in grace.
¨ For the survivors of the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria that help will arrive and that lives may be spared. Hold them in their grief and empower all those who can help to lift their hearts to the aid needed.
¨ Hazel Morris’ niece-in-law, diag-nosed with cancer
¨ Ally Nurre’s sister hospitalized in Scotland.
¨ Sharona Nelson, recovering at home from shoulder and arm surgery.
¨ Those recovering from recent Covid Infections
¨ Rita Barlow
¨ Melissa Zook and the family, at the loss of her mom.
¨ JoAnn Russell, Reda Hutton’s aunt, facing several medical challenges.
¨ Our church family members in nursing homes or who are homebound: Jan Hamilton, Doug Hindman, Betsy Hoefer, Dorie Hubbard, Loyal Jones, Lois Morgan, Cheryl Payne, Alva Peloquin, Laura Robie, Betty Wray, Sally Zimmerman
¨ Patsy Boyce, sister-in-law of Bob and Jean Boyce, undergoing chemotherapy.
¨ Celebrations with Prayers of Joy! Birthdays: Today, Feb. 26 – Triss Holland; 28 – Rachael White; March 5 – Jenny Bromley
Anniversaries—Feb. 29-Charles & Audrey Coyne
If we haven’t got your important dates, let us know. We’ll help you get connected in FellowshipOne Go!
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