December 18, 2022, Advent 4

Welcome and Announcements

St. Andrew’s welcomes you to this Advent service of Love. May the Love of Christ Jesus dwell in your hearts and minds and richly bless you as you worship with us today.
Our Loonie Offering for the month of December will go to the SAFE house to help relieve and deliver many from the pain and suffering that is so prevalent at this time of year. Christmas is not a happy time for everyone and so once again we pray that all may know the Love of Christ in their lives even in the midst of despair, pain and suffering. Check the “Recent Posts” to learn how you can support the SAFE House.

Called to Worship: 

Reader 1: We are people of love.
Reader 2: God has loved us so much that God has chosen to come
as Immanuel, the God who is with us.
People: We are free to love others, because God first loved us.
Reader 1: The fourth candle of Advent invites us to reflect God’s love
in our lives.
Reader 2: We light this candle so that we can see who we are called
to love today.
(Light the candle of love)

Reader 1: Let us pray:
People: Holy One, help us to know
we are deeply loved and to
share that same unconditional
love with others. May our lives
reflect the warmth and wonder
of this flame. Make your church
a place of love and acceptance
in our community. Amen.

Hymn: 118 Hark the glad sound

Prayer of Adoration

O God, in this time of worship, may we be open to your promises, your love, and your transformation. May we vision and dream. May we be surprised. May we receive the life you give us. May we encounter Emmanuel—God with us. And may we never be the same. Hear us now as we confess before you:

Unison Prayer of Confession:

We need you so desperately, O God: we need to accept you for who you truly are, not what we expect.

Too often, we choose to hide who we truly are; both the sins that shame us, and the potential that frightens us.

Too often, we choose quick fixes over your true justice: we choose to be right rather than righteous, in our countries, our communities, and our covenants.

Too often, we choose our schemes over your plan: we reject leaps of faith in favor of small, secure steps, we reject selfless giving in favor of quietly going our own way.

Hear us, forgive us, and help us accept you for who you truly are, not what we expect. Amen

 

Assurance of Pardon

At the beginning, at the end, and in every time between, the good news speaks to us of God’s tender mercy and love for us. God comes! Not to punish, but to gift us with peace, not to judge, but to save us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Peace

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you

Share peace.

Hymn: 139 Hark the herald angels sing

Scripture Lessons:

Psalm 80: 1-7 Matthew 1: 18-25

Sermon: Faithful to the Law?

The last few days have been confusing and challenging. To be frank, I had no idea what to do when I heard the news.

The news was a shock!

Mary had asked if she could speak with me privately. So we went to the courtyard. She seemed nervous with what she was about to say.

She started by talking about an angel, who had come to her in the night and told her she would be having a baby who would be the son of God.

Shocked, I just stood there and looked at her.

The questions whirled in my mind:

How could this be?

And who was this man who came to her room?

Was he the father of the baby?

Was she covering up for him by calling him an angel?

Mary could see that I was confused and angry….

“Just say something,” she said. “I need to know what you are thinking”.

I still could not process the information. She was a sweet girl, and our upcoming marriage was a good alliance between our two families—but a baby that she wanted me to pass off as mine, well that was another matter.

“You do believe me?” she asked. “Please believe me Joseph, it is exactly what happened. There was a flash of light and when I looked up a huge fearsome angel was standing there, telling me I was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit.

“At first, I didn’t want to believe him, but what else could he be, he was huge and bronze in colour, and he said his name was Gabriel. So I agreed to have the baby as God wanted,” she

stopped talking, and started weeping, saying, “please don’t be angry.”

But I was angry. And disappointed. And confused.

I sent her to her room and told her I would talk to her in the morning.

Back in my own room I paced the floor while I considered the problem.

I knew what the Law required.

Clearly she had been caught in sin. It was my responsibility to bring her before the priests and accuse her of adultery. It would then be my responsibility to throw the first stone.

As I contemplated the Law, I knew that a stoning for adultery wasn’t an option that I could live with. I would be publicly humiliated. So would my parents and her parents. And as a result of the stoning, Mary would die.

She was a nice girl. Still just a child really. Likely this was not her fault, something had to have happened to her and the unlikely story was her way of making sense of it all. I could not see how following the Law would help in this situation. Surely mercy would be the best way to handle this. So that is what I decided to do.

I knew that I could simply send her home, end our betrothal privately and trust her parents to send her somewhere safe until the baby was born. That really would be the best solution.

With my mind at peace, I went to bed.

I tossed and turned and finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

In my dreams an angel came to me. He looked exactly like Mary had described. Huge, taller than anyone I have ever seen, and glowing like a bronze statue…. He spoke to my fears and gave me an assurance that he had come as a messenger from God. The message he gave me, was the same message he had given to Mary. “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[f] because he will save his people from their sins.” NIV

I woke from my dream and went back to pacing the floor and thinking things over. Mostly I wondered why the angel waited, why didn’t he come earlier and save me all that agony of figuring out the right thing to do.

Then I realized that the right thing to do was to come to the conclusion that mercy and grace were the right things. Mercy and grace are always the right thing to do in any situation.

I was thinking of offering mercy, but I had not gone far enough. I started to think about the messages that the prophets had brought us from God over the ages.

Messages of mercy. Messages of grace. Messages of forgiveness. And especially the lessons on how often we humans make a mess of life and God provides mercy to turn our lives back to him

In fact, the words the angel spoke about the meaning of the baby’s name pointed to that very reality. I was to name the baby Jesus—Saviour—because he would save his people from their

sins. Variations of that name came up in my own family tree. Jesse the father of David, was named from the same root word. So was Jacob my father and me, Joseph, who would be the father of Jesus. We all had a special role to play in the restoration of Israel and the salvation that God wanted to provide to his people everywhere. Clearly God’s son needed to be raised with mercy and grace, and love. Mary and I would be responsible for directing his footsteps in the right direction.

But first I needed to take footsteps in the right direction.

So in God’s plan for salvation, I willingly and gladly took my place. When Mary arose, we went back out to the garden for another private talk. I told her about the angel and the message about naming the baby who was born to be the saviour of the world.

So here we are, the donkey is prepared, and Mary and I are about to leave for Bethlehem, the city of David, for the census. It will be a long hard journey. I wanted her to stay here with my parents, but she insisted on coming.

She is so close to giving birth that it is likely the baby will be born in Bethelhem. It is fitting that our son would be born there, it roots him in his connection to King David.

I don’t know what hardships are ahead of us, but whatever they are, I know that God will be walking with us. Whatever happens I will trust the leading of angels and the will of God.

We will take care of the baby. Then, when the time comes, we will give him over to God to become all that God wants him to be.

Thank you for listening to my story.

 

Hymn: 159 O Come all ye faithful

Offering Doxology Offertory Prayer

God in this season suspended between hope and fulfillment, let we never forget what you have done. May we be overwhelmed by your mercy, which flows in wave after wave. Accept these offerings as our expression of your mercy through our lives. Through the gifts we bring and the lives we live, may we make straight the path for the Lord, your glory will be revealed. Amen

 

Gathering Prayer Requests Prayers of the People and the Lord’s Prayer

We bless you, our God, mighty and sovereign power. You do not forget your children.

We bless you O God for your gifts to us, creation, Scripture, covenants, grace and salvation.

And you bless us with a vision of your kingdom that sheds light on our darkness.

Bless and disturb us now O God with that vision of your kingdom, turn us back to you from the paths we have chosen. Hear us as

we lay our hopes at your feet and strengthen us, reassure us, and move us into your will.

Hear us now as we bring our intercessions before you.

*Joys

Family, Friends

Hear the deepest hopes of our hearts, that we may come to know you and trust you more deeply.

In Silence we pray.

 

*WE pray for those caught up in wars around the world; soldiers, refugees and those who hold fast to the reasons for fighting

In silence we pray

 

*We pray for the homeless—excluded from what the rest of us are doing, cold, struggling to keep hold of who they are

In silence we pray

Into the mess of this world a fragile child will come—the salvation of the world but human as we are human.

We pin our hopes on this baby, born into a life of pain and poverty, homelessness, debasement and death. We pin our hopes on you O Jesus in whose love we are made whole.

Now in the name of Jesus we pray as he has taught us saying together,

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 debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever, Amen.

Hymn: 153 Joy to the world

Charge and Benediction

Listen carefully for God’s loving whisper in this time–the words will give you healing and hope.

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the whispers of the Holy Spirit be with us, now and forevermore.

Sung Blessing 112: Prepare the way of the Lord

Prepare the way of the Lord Prepare the way of the Lord And all people will see The salvation of our God