* Denotes all are invited to stand.
Bold text indicates portions of the service to be spoken or sung by the congregation.
February 23, 2025
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany
Music for Gathering:
Brian Jay
Organist
Welcome & Announcements:
Rev. Aaron J. White
Pastor
Minute for Stewardship:
Guy Shelton,
Elder & Chairperson Stewardship Committee
Call to Worship:
The way of Christ turns the world upside down.
God’s ways are not our ways.
It moves us beyond retribution and cycles of violence.
God’s ways are not our ways.
It leads us to enemy-love and scandalous forgiveness.
God’s ways are not our ways.
It calls us beyond reciprocity into radical giving.
God’s ways are not our ways.
So let us commit our way to the Lord together
until our righteousness shines like the dawn and our justice like high noon.
* Hymn 436 “God of Compassion, in Mercy Befriend Us”
Please see screens for lyrics.
* Confession of Sin:
Jolene Schmitz, Worship Leader
O Christ, the economy of your love is beautiful, expending goodness and extending lines of forgiveness beyond our imagining.
The economy of our love is stingy and crooked.
We invest love where it can be repaid.
We spend mercy where it yields gain.
We advance blessing we can bank on.
We hold grudges with interest.
We do all of this with no recognition of how deeply indebted we are to you.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, we pray with our whole hearts.
Silence for personal confession
Assurance of Pardon
How are the dead raised?
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, our weakness gives way to power, our dishonor disintegrates into glory, and we are raised with Christ.
This is gospel!
In Jesus Christ we are forgiven!
Song of Praise:
“All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord”
All praise to our redeeming Lord, Who joins us by his grace
And bids us, each to each restored, Together seek His face.
He bids us build each other up; And gathered into one,
To our high calling’s glorious hope, We hand in hand go on.
* Passing the Peace
May the peace of Christ be with you all.
And also with you.
Prayer for Illumination:
Jolene Schmitz, Worship Leader
First Reading:
Luke 6:27-38
27 “To you who hear me, I say: love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you,
28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you.
29 When they slap you on one cheek, turn and give them the other; when they take your coat, let them have your shirt as well.
30 Give to all who beg from you. When someone takes what is yours, don’t demand it back.
31 “Do to others what you would have them do to you.
32 If you love those who love you, what credit does that do you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.
33 If you do good only to those who do good to you, what credit does that do you? Even ‘sinners’ do as much.
34 If you lend to those you expect to repay you, what credit does that do you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to other ‘sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.
35 Love your enemies and do good to them. Lend without expecting repayment, and your reward will be great. You’ll rightly be called children of the Most High, since God is good even to the ungrateful and the wicked.
36 “Be compassionate, as your loving God is compassionate.
37 Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Pardon, and you’ll be pardoned.
38 Give, and it will be given to you: a full measure-packed down, shaken together and running over-will be poured into your lap. For the amount you measure out is the amount you’ll be given back.”
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Anthem:
PCM Chancel Choir
Second Scripture:
1 Corinthians 15:35–38, 42–50
35 Perhaps someone will ask, “How are the dead to be raised up? What kind of body will they have?”
36 What a stupid question! The seed you sow does not germinate unless it dies.
37 When you sow, you do not sow the full-blown plant but a kernel of wheat or some other grain.
38 Then it is given the body God designed for it—with each kind of seed getting its own kind of body.
[…]
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is a perishable body, what is raised is incorruptible.
43 What is sown is ignoble, what is raised is glorious. Weakness is sown, strength is raised up.
44 A natural body is sown, and a spiritual body is raised up. If there is a natural body, then there is also a spiritual body.
45 The first Adam, as scripture says, “became a living soul,” but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.
46 That is, the natural comes first, not the spiritual; after that comes the spiritual.
47 The first, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second is from heaven.
48 As this earthly one was, so are we of the earth; and as the One from heaven is, so are we in heaven.
49 And we, who have been modeled on the earthly, likewise will be modeled on the One from heaven.
50 Put another way, [siblings], I declare to you that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kindom of God. Neither can the perishable inherit what is imperishable.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Time for Children:
Kathy Sutula
Sermon:
Rev. Aaron J. White
* Hymn #795 “Healer of Our Every Ill”
Please see screens for lyrics.
Pastoral Prayer:
Congregation Response: Bless us with peace.
Invitation to Discipleship
The Lord’s Supper:
Invitation
Great Thanksgiving
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
…Therefore we praise you, joining the song of the universal church and the heavenly choir:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, Heaven and earth are full of Your glory.
Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,
Hosanna in the highest, hosanna in the highest.
…great is the mystery of faith:
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.
…God of glory, now and forever.
Amen
The 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. Amen.
The Bread is Broken and the Cup is Filled.
The Communion of the People.
The Prayer After Communion.
* Hymn #315 “In the Midst of New Dimensions”
Please see screens for lyrics.
* Charge & Blessing
Friends, let us do to others as we would have them do to us.
Now may Yhwh (Adonai) who sent Joseph to Egypt and gave him tears of joy at reunion with his family, surround our days with strong visions, worthy work, reconciliations, and the strength to persevere, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God, Mother of us all. Alleluia!
Amen!