Read-along Service for Sunday, February 2, 2025

Trinity-St. Andrew’s United Church
Order of Worship
Sunday, February 2, 2025 – 4th Sunday after the Epiphany

Prelude
Words of welcome, announcements

Lighting the Christ Candle
We light this candle as a sign of God’s Spirit that is still at work in the world. May its light brighten our spirits, and may the light of God shine through us to brighten the world.

Introit:                 This Little Light of Mine

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let in shine.

Call To worship
We have come to worship the living God, who has created all living things. We come to hear God’s wisdom that is spoken through prophets and teachers to teach us how to live well. We gather to open ourselves to the presence of God’s Holy Spirit so we might receive and share this Word of life for our world today. The life giving wisdom of God has the power to open hearts, open minds and open doors.  Come, let us share in this time of prayer and praise, for God is welcoming you in.

Hymn                  Make a Joyful Noise                                           VU 820

Make a joyful noise all the earth!
Worship your God with gladness.
Make a joyful noise all the earth!
Come to the place with a song!

  1. Know that your God has made you.
    Know it’s to God we belong.
    And come to this place with joyfulness and praise.
    Worship your God with a song!                Refrain
  1. Enter these gates, thanks giving.
    Enter these courts with praise.
    Sing thanks to your God and bless the holy Name.
    Worship your God with a song!                Refrain
  1. Ages through endless ages,
    seasons of endless years,
    the love of our Maker shall ever endure.
    Worship your God with a song!                Refrain

Prayer of Approach
O God of the prophets, you have known us and chose us before you even  formed us in the womb. Just as you have spoken through the prophets and through Jesus, you seek to speak through us here today. Fill us with a strong faith that is not afraid to speak your word, that we might share the gift of hope that does not disappoint. Teach us to cherish the love that bears all things for your sake, until that day when we shall know you fully, even as we are known by you. Amen.

Scripture Reader:  Peter Raaphorst
First Reading:             Jeremiah 1:4-10
Gospel Reading:         Luke 4:21-30      

Hymn                            Spirit, Open My Heart                               MV 79 

Refrain:
Spirit, open my heart to the joy and pain of living.

As you love may I love, in receiving and in giving,
Spirit, open my heart.

  1. God, replace my stony heart
    with a heart that’s kind and tender.
    All my coldness and fear
    to our grace I now surrender.      Refrain
  1. Write your love upon my heart
    as my law, my goal, my story.
    In each thought, word, and deed,
    may my living bring you glory.         Refrain
  1. May I weep with those who weep,
    share the joy of sister, brother.
    In the welcome of Christ,
    may we welcome one another.       Refrain

Sermon “Christ and Our Culture”
Anthem

The offering
We give thanks for everyone who continues to support TSA and our many ministries. Your gifts of support and encouragement mean a lot to us.  You can get more information about making a donation by contacting the church office or by visiting our website. There are also many opportunities to volunteer in our different ministries.  For all the gifts you share, for all the people you bless by your serving and giving as a disciple of Jesus, we give thanks.

Offering Song   Your Work, O God, Needs Many Hands                     VU 537

  1. Your work, O God, needs many hands
    to help you everywhere,
    and some there are who cannot serve
    unless our gifts we share.
  1. Because we love you and your work,
    our offering now we make:
    be pleased to use it as your own,
    we ask for Jesus’ sake.

Offering Prayer
Giving God, We give You thanks and praise for all of Your gifts to us. We know that you are the source of every good thing, light and love come from You. You have created us, and you continue to breathe life into us through the power of Your Holy Spirit. You have given us so much, and it is because we recognize the gifts You have given to us that we now give to the work of Your kingdom. We dedicate this offering as well as our hands and our hearts to the work of Your kingdom here on earth. Take and use us, that our hands may reach out in service, our feet may walk the difficult path of reconciliation, and that our words may be words of peace. For this we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hymn                            O God of Every Nation                             VU 677

  1. O God of every nation,
    of every race and land,
    redeem the whole creation
    with your almighty hand;
    where hate and fear divide us
    and bitter threats are hurled,
    in love and mercy guide us
    and heal our strife-torn world.
  1. From search for wealth and power
    and scorn of truth and right,
    from trust in bombs that shower
    destruction through the night,
    from pride of race and station
    and blindness to your way,
    deliver every nation,
    eternal God, we pray.
  1. Give strength to those who labour
    that all may find release
    from fear of rattling sabre,
    from dread of war’s increase;
    when hope and courage falter,
    your still small voice be heard;
    with faith that none can alter,
    your servants undergird.
  1. Keep bright in us the vision
    of days when war shall cease,
    when hatred and division,
    give way to love and peace,
    till dawns the morning glorious
    when peace on earth shall reign
    and Christ shall rule victorious
    o’er all the worlds’ domain.

Pastoral Prayer,
The Lord’s Prayer 

Hymn                  Make Me a Channel of Your Peace                            VU 684

  1. Make me a channel of your peace:
    where there is hatred, let me bring your love;
    where there is injury, your healing power,
    and where there’s doubt, true faith in you:
  1. Make me a channel of your peace:
    where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope;
    where there is darkness, only light;
    and where there’s sadness, ever joy.
    O Spirit, grant that I may never seek
    so much to be consoled as to console,
    to be understood as to understand,
    to be loved as to love with all my soul.
  1. Make me a channel of your peace.
    It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
    in giving to all that we receive,
    and in dying that we’re born to eternal life.

Benediction
So now we leave this space of worship And while so much of the road ahead is uncertain, the path constantly changing, we know some things that are as solid and sure as the ground beneath our feet, and the sky above our heads.

We know God is love. We know Christ’s light endures. We know the Holy Spirit is found in the space between all things, closer to us than our next breath, binding us to each other, until we meet we again, Go now in peace.

Choral Amen                                                                                  VU 974
Postlude

“Christ and Our Culture” Text: Luke 4:21-30
Preached by Rev. James Murray at Trinity-St. Andrew’s United Church, Renfrew. February 2, 2025

When Jesus starts his ministry, it’s not really obvious if he has a plan or not. So he starts close to home, speaking in the neighbouring communities where he is well received. But when he tries to share his message in his own home town, things do not go well. The people are amazed at what he says and how he says it. They are amazed at the healing work he is able to do. But they can’t get past that this person they have known their entire life is now suddenly becoming famous. They know he doesn’t have a fancy education. So they start to ask who does Jesus think he is talking like this.

After this disastrous event in Nazareth. Jesus must have wondered if this ministry of his was a good idea or not. Now if Jesus had a Public Relations manager, you can just imagine what they would be saying after the incident in Nazareth. The PR team would be telling him bluntly that things aren’t going well. They may have even suggested he try a different marketing strategy. After all, that crowd’s reaction almost got Jesus killed.

All through the gospels there is this tension, between God and this world. God so loves this world, that God sends Jesus to redeem it. A message of love and being kind to each other sounds like such a motherhood statement. At the same time, this world tries to kill Jesus on more than one occasion. That’s because his peace filled message gets in the way of the way we like to do business. We are often left to wonder how we should relate to Christ, and how we should be relating to our culture.  The Culture we live in is the world we have created over time with our language, our habits, as well as our ideas, beliefs, customs, and values. It isn’t easy to disentangle ourselves from our culture. It also isn’t easy to reconcile the ways of this world with the demands the gospel places on us. Our world has always struggled with the contradictory evolutionary notions of competition and co-operation.

About 75 years ago the American theologian Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called “Christ and Culture” that looked at this tension.  Niebuhr wrote his book in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the way different religious groups either resisted or gave in to the Nazis. In his book, Niebuhr noted the many ways we struggle with our loyalties to Christ, given that we are also the product of our culture.  In his book Niebuhr sketched out five different ways that we Christians relate to the world around us.

Niebuhr says the most radical way we respond to the world around us sees Christ as being Against the Culture.  From this point of view the Lordship of Christ means He is the sole authority over the Christian. It presents Christ and culture as a radical either-or choice: if we follow Christ we must reject any loyalty to the surrounding culture. We see this worldview in the First Letter of John where it says: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15).  For this reason the political philosopher Tolstoy argues that “All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian.” Tolstoy was a pacifist who opposed saying the oath of allegiance. He also rejected doing military service on religious grounds. To be against the culture means we should resist giving ultimate authority to the state. You can see this spirit in the Mennonite movement, who feel it is necessary to keep themselves separate from our decadent society in order to give absolute loyalty to Christ.

The complete opposite approach Niebuhr describes sees Christ and culture as being inseparable. Supporters of this option, so-called cultural Christians, claim that Christ is to be understood as the highest aspiration and fulfillment of our culture. In this way it is possible to affirm both Christ and culture. This type sees little or no difference between loyalty to Christ and the best our culture has to offer.  This approach inevitably leads to accommodation.

Christianity can quickly become a patriotic follower of the culture and an uncritical supporter of whatever our society is doing. This is what happened to the churches in Germany who supported Hitler. It was also what happened to the churches in the United States who supported slavery.

Now there are several positions which are possible in between those two extremes. We could say Christ is Above the Culture.  This type believes the good in our culture needs to be properly ordered by Christ. In this approach Christians believe that if the Church was to rule over the culture, all would be well with the world.  As noble as this option sounds, it does have its imperfections. The integration of church and state creates large temptations for compromising Christian truths. It opens the door for the church to abuse its political power, relying on the Sword instead of the Word to make people live by church teachings. History has shown us time and time again that while controlling the state means we can force people to be good, we can never force people to believe.

The fourth option is to say the relationship between Christ and culture is a paradox that can never be resolved.  This was the position of Martin Luther and the early Protestant theologians.  Martin Luther said we are simultaneously both ‘saints and sinners’. Saint Paul says we are to be ‘in the world but not of it’.  This option results in a strong distinction between the sacred and the secular worlds. It can lead to a dualism, where what is permitted in the secular is not allowed in the sacred. There are many churches that do not allow the use of secular music in their worship because it is too worldly, even though the message may actually align with Christian teaching.

The last option Niebuhr offers is more optimistic. It’s about the ability of Christians to improve the culture. It still acknowledges our human capacity for sin, but maintains that cultures can evolve and make better choices over time. In this last option, Christ is called the Transformer of Culture.

Christ the Transformer of Culture realizes that God is both above and in our culture. The Christian tradition can help to shape as well as resist the culture.   We know that we cannot create a more holy culture all by ourselves. Change is only possible through the grace of God. At the same time we must realize that since people do have free will, this means each person must choose how they shall participate in their culture. We will only ever win hearts and minds with the power of persuasion. Love can never rule by force. Love only works when two hearts learn how co-operate and act as one. Creative Transformation starts when we create communities of faithfulness which lives out the transformative love of God. Things get better when we are to seek out the moments of possibility and grace which are possible in this world, and value them up.

As Christians, we must always be humble when it comes to the truths by which we live. We must also be constantly vigilant to the power of sin in our midst. As Mahatma Ghandi puts it, “truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.”  Faith can never be forced upon anyone. So our faith, and our truths, must always be shared in a generous spirit of humility. All we can do is say ‘this works for us, and we invite you to join us’.  We prove the truth of our beliefs by how we live them each day. The honest truth is that people will not choose to follow the way of Christ if we can’t offer them a better quality of life than what they already have.

“Christ transforming culture” means we must remain critical of culture, but not turn our back on it. We must also be willing to enter into alliances with the culture when we find others who are willing to co-operate with us to work towards the goals of the kingdom of God. For God works with this world as it is, in order to make it all it can possibly become.

Now in order to be faithful to God, there will be times we will have to use each of Niebuhr’s five categories. Some days we will be for the culture, some days we’ll be against it, but we will always be part of it. No matter which model we use, in all things we are to be merciful agents of grace.  We are to be witnesses to God’s redemptive healing power in the world, for we are both of Christ, and of our culture.

The incident in Nazareth show us how Jesus handles this conflict with the world around us.  When Jesus is rejected by the people of Nazareth, he does not reject them. Luke tells us Jesus “passed through the midst of them and he went on his way.”  He learned from the encounter, but he doesn’t give up on anyone. In the same way, each of us will face difficulties and rejections in our lives. It is a real challenge to follow the way of Jesus in our culture today. Thankfully we can find in the Holy Spirit the strength we need to pass through the midst of these troubles, and follow Jesus on his way, a way which leads to creative transformation of our lives, and hope for this world.

Sources:   Richard Niebuhr “Christ and Culture” 1951 Harper & Row

 

 

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