Bulletin – Sunday, February 2, 2025 – Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
We Gather as People of Faith
Welcome
Announcements
Lighting the Christ Candle
Call to Worship
One: In the presence of God, in the presence of one another we gather. In our music and our prayer, our silence and our speech, God is with us.
All: Let us worship.
Hymn – “Love is the Touch”
Love is the touch of intangible joy;
Love is the force that no fear can destroy;
Love is the goodness we gladly applaud:
God is where love is, for love is of God.
Love is the lilt in a lingering voice;
Love is the hope that can make us rejoice;
Love is the cure for the frightened and flawed:
God is where love is, for love is of God.
Love is the light in the tunnel of pain;
Love is the will to be whole once again;
Love is the trust of a friend on the road:
God is where love is, for love is of God.
Prayer of Approach and Confession
One: God our Creator, your kindness has brought us the gift of a new morning. Help us to leave yesterday, and not to covet tomorrow but to accept the uniqueness of today.
(a period of silence)
One: By your love celebrated in your Word, seen in your Son, brought near by your Spirit, take from us what we need to carry no longer…our regrets, our fears, the time we have squandered, the love we have squandered, our lack of hope
All: so that we may be free again, choosing to serve you and to be served by each other.
(a period of silence)
One: These our prayers, we bring to you in the strong name of Jesus. Grant us mercy and new life through him, we pray. Amen.
(adapted from A Wee Worship Book, © 1999 Wild Goose Resource Group, p. 37)
Words of Assurance
One: Hear these words from scripture: God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation: the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
All: Thanks be to God!
Sung Response – “Behold, Behold, I Make All Things New” (MV #115)
Behold, behold,
I make all things new, beginning with you
And starting from today.
Behold, behold,
I make all things new, my promise is true,
For I am Christ the way.
We Hear God’s Word
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-10
4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 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.” 6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 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. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” 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. 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.”
Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
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. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 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. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, 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 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
May God speak to us through these readings of scripture.
Thanks be to God!
Hymn – “Though I May Speak” (VU #372)
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 given 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.
Meditation – “Aha!”
Anthem – “You’ve Searched Me God, You Know Me”
You’ve searched me God, You know me,
You know when I sit, when I rise up to go,
You gentle Your hand on my heart, You are Holy,
The seeds of my life You have sown.
My heart will sing and rejoice, know the wonder of Your Grace,
I will rest in the palm of Your hand.
Before a word was spoken,
Before all the hurt, all the shattering of dreams,
Before all the longing, Great Healer, You held me,
The days of my life, You have seen.
My heart will sing and rejoice, know the wonder of Your Grace,
I will rest in the palm of Your hand.
The wings of dawn are rising,
I fly to the shores of a sea far away,
Yet there You will find me, my solace, my comfort,
You guide me in all of Your ways.
My heart will sing and rejoice, know the wonder of Your Grace,
I will rest in the palm of Your hand.
O holy One, Creator,
O You who have gathered me in from the cold,
My life it was woven together forever,
In Love where all things are made whole.
My heart will sing and rejoice, know the wonder of Your Grace,
I will rest in the palm of Your hand.
We Respond to God’s Word
An Invitation to Share
Offering Sung Response – “Grant Us, God, the Grace” (VU #540)
Grant us, God, the grace of giving;
With a spirit large and free,
That ourselves and all our living
We may offer faithfully.
Offering Prayer
Prayers of the People
Prayer Jesus Taught Us
All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by 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 trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
We Go Into God’s World
Hymn – “Love, Joy, and Peace”
Of all the Spirit’s gifts to me;
I pray that I may never cease
To take and treasure most these three:
Love, joy, and peace.
God shows me love is at the root
Of every gift sent from above,
Of every flower, of every fruit,
That God is love.
God shows me that if I possess
A love no evil can destroy,
However great is my distress,
Then this is joy.
Though what’s ahead is mystery,
And life itself is ours on lease,
Each day the Spirit says to me:
“Go forth in peace.”
We go in peace – but made aware
That in a needy world like this
Our clearest purpose is to share
Love, joy, and peace.
Benediction
Sung Response – “Lead me Lord, I Will Follow”
Lead me Lord, I will follow.
Lead me Lord, I will go.
You have called me, I will answer.
Lead me Lord, I will go.
