You Can't Go Home Again -- Really
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For January 26, 2025:
You Can’t Go Home Again — Really
by Mary Austin
Luke 4:14-21
For those of us who have never lived in California, our images are mental snapshots of the Hollywood sign, the red carpet at the Oscars, the Pacific Coast Highway, and gorgeous sunny days. The state carries a magical air of unreality. But reality has arrived in the form of brutal fires affecting much of the huge Los Angeles area. Keeping up with the fires’ progress has opened our minds to the reality of ordinary people in California, people who have lost so much. Teachers, nurses, firefighters, farmers, and others have lost homes, businesses, and even whole communities. Adding up the damage is a huge task, with losses now estimated to be at least 250 billion dollars. In addition, “The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection estimates that more than 12,300 structures have been damaged or destroyed.”
Cutting deeper is the loss of home, sometimes a house that generations of one family have occupied for decades. Other times, home feels like a close-knit community or an established way of life. Those losses are beyond the reach of insurance claims and can never be assigned a price.
In the gospel this week, we see Jesus return to his hometown, where, he too, discovers that he doesn’t have a home to go back to.
In the News
Altadena, the source of so much fiery destruction, was a thriving Black community, where “many early homeowners of color were pushed because of redlining — a discriminatory bank-lending practice that effectively precluded them from buying in white neighborhoods. Even after redlining was outlawed, the practice continued informally through steering by real estate agents.” As a result, the area became racially diverse, home to a small number of Asian Americans and a substantial Latino population, as well as Black residents. It had cheaper, more modest homes on smaller lots than the other side of town.
As they put down roots, the area allowed residents to thrive economically, too. “A considerable number of the first-time home buyers from that period stayed in Altadena for good. These days, about a quarter of Black residents in Altadena are 65 or older. Many of Altadena’s Black families passed their houses down from parents to children and hoped they would be the foundation of generational wealth.”
In losing their homes, the residents also feel the loss of their deeply rooted sense of community. “When you lose a middle-class Black community, it’s a loss of culture, but it’s also a loss for the next generation,” according to Wilberta Richardson, president of the Altadena unit of the NAACP. Some residents won’t be able to afford to rebuild, while “the median sale price of a house in Altadena is now nearly $1.3 million.”
The losses are layered. There is no physical home to return to for many. Community institutions, churches, neighborhood groups, and the bonds between longtime neighbors are also gone, leaving people uprooted in multiple ways.
In the Scriptures
Once Jesus finishes his time in the desert, he heads home. Luke doesn’t tell us why he goes. Does he want time with his family and a home-cooked meal? Or to anchor himself back in a familiar place when everything else is changing so fast?
All three synoptic gospels tell this story, and Luke takes care to place it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Like other traveling rabbis, Jesus goes to the synagogue to worship. Tradition allows him, as a rabbi, to open the scroll and teach. When he does, he announces something new about himself to a crowd of people who think they know him. He reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, reminding people that God’s good news comes to the poor, the blind, the oppressed, and the captive. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says after reading from this picture of God’s reversals.
Part of the outrage is Jesus stepping out of the way they know him. We can imagine that another part is people wondering why he’s bothering to say this when nothing has changed. For this group of people, Isaiah’s vision doesn’t seem to be fulfilled. They’re still poor and still oppressed by Rome. Their clothes are still shabby and they still have to work endlessly to make ends meet. As Linda McKinnish Bridges writes [Feasting on the Word Commentary, Year C. Volume 1], “These words had been attached to the description of the Messiah who was to come; and [the people] were waiting... He is the one they have been waiting to come all their lives, and their grandparents’ lives, and the generations before them. The carpenter’s son is the Messiah.” And yet, nothing has changed. Jesus’ image of the good news being fulfilled doesn’t seem all that good.
In the Sermon
Like the people listening to Jesus, we hear that the good news has arrived, and yet it’s difficult to hold onto. The country is divided, with people of all kinds worried about what happens next. For people with a firm image of what the United States stands for, there’s no home to go back to right now.
The sermon could explore what God’s good news looks like when nothing changes on the outside. Our neighbors around the country are recovering from fires and hurricanes while experiencing economic stress and family division. Many immigrants, with and without papers, fear what a new administration will bring. Women are loading up on contraceptives while they can.
The sermon could also talk about expectations. The people in his hometown have a mental picture of Jesus, the carpenter’s son, and he confounds their expectations. We expect presidents to behave in a particular way, and we expect the same of the people close to us. We expect our lives to unfold in predictable patterns until our mental images are upset by a bankruptcy, a trans kid, or a devastating illness. What do we do when our expectations are upended?
Or the sermon could talk about the experience of going home again — visiting the parents who still see you as a teenager or, on the other side, seeing how much your town, your church, or your parents have changed. What happens when your college, your elementary school, or your church closes, and nothing is left? My own daughter, now in her 20s, is still complaining about the “travesty” that replaced her childhood playground. Where do we meet up with God in the changes?
The sermon could also explore what happens when we’re slow to see what God is doing. It takes time for the people in Jesus’ hometown to take in God’s good news, embodied in Jesus, and we church people are the same. The local church tries to wish away a changing neighborhood instead of getting outside to meet the new neighbors. We lament that “young people” don’t want to serve on committees instead of changing our focus to ways they can participate. The wider church was late in catching up to the reality of gay marriage and in accepting the LGBTQ+ community. Where are we too slow to see now?
Thankfully, God’s good news is always ready for us to catch up to it and is always waiting to change our lives, too.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Trumping The Bible
by Dean Feldmeyer
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Ezra saw that the country was a mess, so he called everyone together and read the Torah aloud while pastors and teachers passed through the crowd and answered questions about the text. And the people wept.
Trump saw that the country was a mess, so he teargassed some protestors and held a Bible aloft in front of a church he had never entered. And the people shrugged.
So he tried again. This time he appropriated Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, called it the Trump Bible, marketed it, and offered it for sale on the internet for the bargain price of $60. And the people laughed.
In the News/Culture
In May 2021, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, country musician Lee Greenwood published a “God Bless the USA” edition of the Bible with a US flag on the leather cover.
The God Bless the USA Bible includes the texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States before amendments, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” in Greenwood’s handwriting. Amendments 11-27 are omitted.
Originally, Greenwood intended the text of the Bible to be the New International Version, but the publisher of that edition withheld permission after receiving multiple public complaints. Greenwood finally settled on the King James Version, which is in the public domain in the United States.
The book created further controversy in March of this year when then-former President Donald Trump promoted a new edition of the God Bless America Bible at a price point of $60. The website selling the Bible billed it as “the only Bible endorsed by” Trump and that his “name, likeness, and image” are being used under paid license from one of Trump’s organizations, CIC Ventures LLC.
Then, last week, Greenwood announced the publication of a new inauguration edition with “Donald J. Trump 47th President of the United States of America Inauguration Day Edition January 20, 2025” imprinted on the leather front cover. It costs $69.99 — $10 more than the original edition.
So far, Trump has made about $300,000 from the sale of what he calls on his financial disclosure statement the “Greenwood Bibles,” according to the BBC. He has said that this money will go toward paying about $100 million he owes to people who have won lawsuits against him. Greenwood has not disclosed his share of the Bible profits, but it is estimated to be about the same as Trump’s.
The God Bless the USA Bible, aka the Trump Bible, has come under considerable criticism from both the conservative and liberal branches of the Christian church, which criticism can be easily found by doing an internet search of the subject.
Complaints fall into two major categories: 1) the appropriation of sacred texts for political purposes and 2) representing political texts as sacred. This raises the question of how we, as a culture, determine which texts are sacred and how they became so.
In the Scriptures
Ezra had no problem determining what texts were sacred in his religious/political context. When he came home to Jerusalem, he entered an old and established theocratic state where the government and religion were one. And the Torah, as represented in the Pentateuch, was the one and only sacred text of the community. The writings of the prophets and other teachers were considered informative and instructive, even authoritative, but only the Torah, the book of the Law, was sacred. After all, the decalogue (Ten Commandments) had been written by the very hand of God, had it not?
By bringing the people together with their leaders and reading the sacred texts to them, he was not introducing anything new; he was simply reminding them of who they were and what they had historically stood for. His hope was that this would reunite the people and strengthen their position in a land that was largely hostile to them. Such is the power of sacred texts.
We modern Christians, living in an inclusive and pluralistic culture, don’t have it quite so easy, do we? First, as Christians, our generally accepted sacred texts extend far beyond the Pentateuch. Most Christian denominations consider the entire Bible sacred, but we don’t all agree on that. There’s the Roman Catholic version and the Protestant version, the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version, and on and on. Secondly, the culture around us is not so much hostile toward our religion as it is indifferent. Indeed, sometimes this is even the case with Christians themselves. Like our Donald Trump, they “uphold” the Bible without having ever really studied what it says beyond the weekly readings they hear from the pulpit.
Religions, and even some secular organizations, all have their sacred texts, and determining which texts are considered sacred can vary greatly depending on religious, cultural, and historical contexts — a thorough examination of which would extend far beyond the limits of this sermon. Let us suffice it to say, however, that determining factors include:
Critics’ objections hold that the inclusion of non-sacred texts in the same volume with sacred ones can lead to profound and even dangerous confusion.
In the Sermon
“[David] The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!’” 2 Samuel 18:33
In including this verse here, because, for me it is one of the most sacred of the sacred, I have, in my career, stood at the graveside with parents who have lost a child more times than I can remember. Every time I’ve thought of my own children and how deep and profound my love for them is. I can’t help but empathize with those parents, imagining the pain I would suffer if I were in their place.
The text meets most of the criteria listed above, but more than that, it speaks to my life, my heart, my soul. I know that David, perhaps the most beloved of all God’s children, save Jesus, experienced that very human pain and reminds me that the people of God are not immune from suffering. We are people of sorrows, acquainted with grief, as Isaiah put it. And yet, God’s hand is upon us, leading us through our sorrows even as God led David through his.
The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance — not even Lee Greenwood’s stirring lyrics — can do that. They are celebrative, instructive, and maybe even authoritative for us in some respects. But they are not sacred. They do not speak to the soul.
My great-uncle, Enoch Feldmeyer, was a bachelor farmer, a staunch churchman, a kind and loving man who died in his 88th year. When the family gathered to go through his things, we found his Bible. It was in German, and it was handed off to me because I was the only clergy present (although the family has produced more than a few ministers over the years).
I suppose that because it was big and heavy and in German, no one bothered to look far into it. But after I took it home and began to thumb through it, more out of curiosity than anything else, I discovered that it was more than a Bible. It was a repository for all manner of Enoch’s interests, loves, and memories.
Pressed between its pages were newspaper clippings, poems, quotes, Sunday school lessons, recipes, invitations, letters, photographs, and scores of handwritten thoughts and comments about the texts scribbled on scraps of paper, a few going back as many as 50 years, some of which threatened to disintegrate as I tried to extract them from between the pages.
They were important to him. Some were precious, and some I doubt he even remembered he had put there. I could imagine him sitting in the pew and leafing through the pages with his big, calloused fingers, searching for the morning’s lesson, saying his familiar “Aaaach!” when something fell out and he had to retrieve it. But they kindled feelings and memories that warmed his heart, so he put them back in their place in the Bible. He loved them.
But they weren’t sacred. They were tucked among the sacred texts, but they were not, themselves, sacred. He understood that.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Eat, drink, and give food away
This reading describes a spontaneous celebration in which the people — all of them — call on Ezra to read the Torah to them out loud. After the reading starts, the Levites appear on the scene (possibly indicating a story from a different source getting conflated here) who instruct the people. It’s really important that the people not only hear, but understand. They weep, which may be something interesting to explore sermonically. Are these tears of recognition and joy? Perhaps they are tears responding to the vast chasm between how the people have been living and how the Torah calls them to live.
* * *
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Be happy, damnit!
Nehemiah commands the people to be joyful, to eat food of celebration, and to share those same foods with the poor. Can joy be commanded? Another passage where joy is commanded is at the end of the parable of the Prodigal Son and His Brother, in Luke 15. When the older son refuses to join the party and dancing celebrating his brother’s return, the father says to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” (emphasis added, Luke 15:32-33, NRSV)
* * *
Nehemiah 8:1-10
Adding the tough part
The lectionary omits vv. 4 and 7 from today’s reading. This is a boon to today’s liturgist because the skipped verses contain 26 unfamiliar, long, and difficult-to-pronounce names. If your liturgist is really skilled and attentive, you might want to add them. If your liturgist needs a dose of humility, you also might want to add them. Three years ago, I had these verses read and gave that day’s liturgist a Liturgical Croix de Guerre for Meritorious Reading.
* * *
Psalm 19
Two different texts mashed together?
The first six verses of today’s psalm have the reader / hearer looking up into the grandeur of the heavens. The next five verses have her hunched over a written text. It is not a stretch to feel a kind of whiplash at the abrupt change in focus. Verses 7-11 are a good match for the Nehemiah reading; both demonstrate the supreme value of knowing, understanding, and applying God’s living word to one’s life, and its joy and reward.
* * *
Public recitation of the Law
Iceland has a very lengthy history of reading its law aloud annually. As early as 930 CE, the Icelandic people’s assembly, the Alþingi, gathered to hear the lawspeaker lǫgsǫgumaðr recite the entire legal code. Contrast this with the 1,500-page bill passed by the House and Senate, keeping the federal government funded through March 14, 2025.
The Nehemiah reading is an earlier recitation of the law. How many laws would we have if we were limited by what the lawspeaker could hold in her memory?
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Learning to read the Bible again
A number of years ago, theologian Ellen Davis noted the difficulty that secular culture has with scripture. Unlike the crowd Nehemiah describes, few of us preach before crowds that gather “from early morning until midday,” and whose ears are “attentive to the book of the law.” Based on conversations with other scholars, Davis said, “in postmodern culture the Bible has no definite place, and citizens in a pluralistic, secular culture have trouble knowing what to make of it. If they pay any attention to it at all, they treat it as a consumer product, one more therapeutic option for rootless selves engaged in an endless quest of self-invention and self-improvement.”
Her conversations with academics led her to suggest churches and interpreters begin appreciating and interpreting scripture as art. Reading scripture “has the potential for creating something beautiful.” It’s not unlike the pastoral work of interpretation undertaken by Ezra and Nehemiah in this week’s text. Davis continues:
Interpretations of scripture are not just right or wrong, although at times such categories are useful and necessary. A more adequate way of judging our readings might be the way we judge works of art — according to the standards of beauty. To what extent do our readings reveal the intricacy, the wondrous quality of what the biblical writers call ma‘asei Adonai, “the works of the LORD”? To what extent do they draw us toward something, a way of being that is — to use Paul’s language — more “lovely,” more “gracious,” more “excellent,” “noble,” “worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8)?
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Individualism’s questionable triumphs
Paul argues that the multiplicity of God’s gifts and the diversity of the body of Christ enable it to flourish. Anything less creates chaos and confusion. Yet his assertion that “if one member suffers, all suffer together” has become distorted in American politics by a focus on hyper-individualism. As Donald Trump re-enters the presidency, one writer suggests that a primary reason for democracy’s imperiled state is “our worship of individualism.”
The writer quotes scholar Heather Cox Richardson’s January 5, 2025 newsletter, which suggests the prevailing view that when government provides basic functions such as protecting civil rights, promoting a social safety net, and providing infrastructure, it “crushes the individualism on which America depends.”
An interesting example of this has been the use of private firefighters to curb fires in Los Angeles. A recent post on X, now deleted, reportedly asked, “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. Will pay any amount.”
Insurance companies have relied on such services to offset huge losses, but it points to a larger concern. Individuals, the Daily Kos piece observes, “don’t succeed on their own… (they) need the schools, the roads, the police, the fire departments.” Accordingly, the writer concludes, “they have an obligation to support (i.e., taxes) the institutions that did all that for them and continue to give them the ability to make more money.”
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Fragmentation in our society
In 2023, Harvard lecturer Richard Weissbourd and US Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut) explored how the “atomized” and expressive individualism of American society has crowded out concern for the common good in recent years. They began with a centuries-old observation from Alexis de Tocqueville from the early 1800s. As de Tocqueville toured America, he was both fascinated and worried about America’s love of individualism and entrepreneurship. Weissbourd and Murphy note de Tocqueville “also questioned whether a society could hold together when existence becomes atomized and individual success crowds out the common good. America, he worried, would descend into a morass of avarice, self-interest, and envy without a means through which Americans could prioritize virtue, character, and the common good over personal interest and individual achievement.”
Two hundred years later, they observe, it is our continuing struggle to properly balance these tensions that contributes to influencing American society. Our delight in “pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” often leads to an overfocus on the individual at the expense of the collective. America’s greatness, they suggest, lies not just in our individual entrepreneurism but also “in our decision to make sure that this value on personal responsibility and success is never absolute.”
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Trump’s inaugural points to our distunity
While Paul urged the Corinthians to consider the ways the body must work together by celebrating diversity, political commentators noted the lack of humility and self-reflection in Donald Trump’s second inaugural address. It is a problem, they say, endemic to both parties. Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, for example, noted that “we no longer have a shared understanding of what basic words like ‘unity’ are supposed to mean. Certainly with Trump, but also to a lesser extent with Biden, appeals to unity were usually another way of saying, ‘Hey, let’s have unity but on my terms’ or, ‘Everyone should be unified around my idea of unity,' and so on. It became a power move: Whoever had power, for the moment, was the one who tried to enforce an artificial consensus in a deeply divided country.” Journalist E.J. Dionne said that in his opinion, Trump’s speech was “not only overreach but utterly without humility or a sense that there might be good and decent people in the country who disagree with his view,” suggesting that it will be heard by Trump’s opponents not as a rallying cry for a unified country but as “a demand for vigorous opposition.”
* * *
Luke 4:14-21
A Third Reconstruction
Jonathan Wilson-Hargrave and the Rev. William Barber II’s book White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy explores the authors’ ideas about proclaiming good news to the poor in 2025. In an interview for Sojourners, Wilson-Hartgrove noted:
We’re trying to redefine poverty in this book. And we think it’s important because the federal official poverty measure doesn’t capture the crisis of poverty in America. According to the official poverty measure, if you make $14,000 a year in this country, you’re not poor; but nobody can live anywhere in this country on $14,000 a year. (Note: The Department of Health and Human Services notes that the current threshold for poverty for an individual in the United States is $15,060.)
Wilson-Hargrave reflects on his own family’s experience of rural Southern poverty. He argues that “real change is possible” when poor people of all races are helped to understand what they hold in common. He upholds a vision of prophetic Christianity that looks at Jesus’ proclamation to the poor, oppressed, and suffering and how a Christian focus on justice becomes a powerful force for change. “The prophetic word to us is not so much about what we might declare to somebody else or even to our government; [it’s] fundamentally about what kind of orientation would make us a different kind of people, different spaces.” What would happen, he argues, if the typical mainline church in America could “become a center for the poor in your community, to organize and to build, not just political power, but to build community together, right? Share meals and have child care and education; that would be a beautiful thing for the church. And I think, in so many ways, the vitality and the future of the church depends on that.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship
One: The heavens are telling the glory of God.
All: The sky proclaims God’s handiwork.
One: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
All: The decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
One: More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold.
All: In keeping them there is great reward.
OR
One: Glory to you, O God, who comes to claim your children.
All: We rejoice in your loving presence in our lives.
One: Come and dwell in us that we may dwell in you.
All: Help us to feel at home in your kin-dom.
One: Love us so that we may love others.
All: Bless us so that we may be a blessing to others.
Hymns and Songs
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty
UMH: 64/65
H82: 362
PH: 138
GTG: 1
AAHH: 329
NNBH: 1
NCH: 277
CH: 4
LBW: 165
ELW: 413
W&P: 136
AMEC: 25
STLT: 26
God of the Sparrow God of the Whale
UMH: 122
PH: 272
GTG: 22
NCH: 32
CH: 70
ELW: 740
W&P: 29
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
UMH: 126
H82: 408
PH: 483
GTG: 645
NCH: 6
CH: 6
W&P: 56
He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395:
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
UMH: 133
GTG: 837
AAHH: 371
NNBH: 262
NCH: 471
CH: 560
ELW: 774
W&P: 496
AMEC: 525
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
UMH: 138
H82: 645/646
PH: 171
GTG: 802
NCH: 248
LBW: 456
ELW: 502
Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee
UMH: 175
H82: 642
PH: 310
GTG: 629
NCH: 507
CH: 102
LBW: 316
ELW: 754
W&P: 420
AMEC: 464
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
UMH: 358
H82: 652/653
PH: 345
GTG: 169
NCH: 502
CH: 594
LBW: 506
W&P: 470
AMEC: 344
It Is Well with My Soul
UMH: 377
GTG: 840
AAHH: 377
NNBH: 255
NCH: 438
CH: 561
ELW: 785
W&P: 428
AMEC: 448
Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
UMH: 381
H82: 708
PH: 387
GTG: 187
AAHH: 424
NNBH: 54
NCH: 252
CH: 558
LBW: 481
ELW: 789
W&P: 440
AMEC: 379
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
CCB: 28
Renew: 23
Your Loving Kindness Is Better than Life
CCB: 26
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is the beginning and end of all:
Grant us the wisdom to seek our home in you
that we may find joy now and in the time to come;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the source and end of all that exists. You are the Alpha and the Omega. Help us to seek our home in you so that we may know the joy of life eternal now and forever. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our searching to belong in places other than God.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our way and no longer remember where our home is. We read the sacred texts and find ways to use it to disparage and denounce others. We use scripture to puff ourselves up and tear others down instead of allowing the Spirit to renew us and bring us home to God. Forgive us our foolish ways and open our eyes to the path home. Amen.
One: God is our home and has provided the sacred texts to bring us there. Receive God’s grace and return that you may call others home.
Prayers of the People
Glorious and gracious are you, O God, our creator and the home of our souls. Wonderful is your love for all your creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our way and no longer remember where our home is. We read the sacred texts and find ways to use it to disparage and denounce others. We use scripture to puff ourselves up and tear others down instead of allowing the Spirit to renew us and bring us home to God. Forgive us our foolish ways and open our eyes to the path home.
We give you thanks that you have not left us as orphans but have given us a true home in yourself, O God. We thank you for the scriptures which record you seeking after your children. We bless you for sending Jesus to remind us whose family we belong to. Thank you for those who have shared your love with us so that we have been able to believe that we are truly loved.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We lift up to your loving care those who struggle to feel at home, even in their own skin. Many struggle to feel accepted and many find they have no love for themselves. Too many are told in words and actions that they are unlovable. As you come among your children and care for them, help us to allow your Spirit to love them through us.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
Hear us as we pray for others: (Time for silent or spoken prayer.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Our Differences Are Our Gifts
by Katy Stenta
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Prepare ahead of time: Lots of the same picture or photo of noses — one for each kid. Lots of the same picture of photo of ears — one for each child. A body cut into pieces like a puzzle for the kids to easily put together.
Give every child an ear and tell them to build a body out of it.
Then do the same with noses.
Then hand out body parts and have them actually construct a body together.
In this 1 Corinthians passage it discusses how, although every body part is different,
They are all useful
And that you cannot build the body out of one piece
We are the body of Christ.
The church right now
Is the Body of Christ.
We each have different gift to represent God.
Some of us
Sing,
Teach,
Build,
Sit quietly with friends when thy need it.
(Let the children answer, too.)
If we all did the same thing we wouldn’t be the body of Christ.
Let’s pray,
Dear God
Thank you
For reminding us
That our differences
Are our gifts.
Help us
To be
The body of
Christ
Together,
Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 26, 2025 issue.
Copyright 2025 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- You Can’t Go Home Again — Really by Mary Austin based on Luke 4:14-21.
- Second Thoughts: Trumping The Bible by Dean Feldmeyer based on Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10.
- Sermon illustrations by Tom Willadsen and Chris Keating.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Children’s sermon: Our Differences Are Our Gifts by Katy Stenta based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a.
You Can’t Go Home Again — Reallyby Mary Austin
Luke 4:14-21
For those of us who have never lived in California, our images are mental snapshots of the Hollywood sign, the red carpet at the Oscars, the Pacific Coast Highway, and gorgeous sunny days. The state carries a magical air of unreality. But reality has arrived in the form of brutal fires affecting much of the huge Los Angeles area. Keeping up with the fires’ progress has opened our minds to the reality of ordinary people in California, people who have lost so much. Teachers, nurses, firefighters, farmers, and others have lost homes, businesses, and even whole communities. Adding up the damage is a huge task, with losses now estimated to be at least 250 billion dollars. In addition, “The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection estimates that more than 12,300 structures have been damaged or destroyed.”
Cutting deeper is the loss of home, sometimes a house that generations of one family have occupied for decades. Other times, home feels like a close-knit community or an established way of life. Those losses are beyond the reach of insurance claims and can never be assigned a price.
In the gospel this week, we see Jesus return to his hometown, where, he too, discovers that he doesn’t have a home to go back to.
In the News
Altadena, the source of so much fiery destruction, was a thriving Black community, where “many early homeowners of color were pushed because of redlining — a discriminatory bank-lending practice that effectively precluded them from buying in white neighborhoods. Even after redlining was outlawed, the practice continued informally through steering by real estate agents.” As a result, the area became racially diverse, home to a small number of Asian Americans and a substantial Latino population, as well as Black residents. It had cheaper, more modest homes on smaller lots than the other side of town.
As they put down roots, the area allowed residents to thrive economically, too. “A considerable number of the first-time home buyers from that period stayed in Altadena for good. These days, about a quarter of Black residents in Altadena are 65 or older. Many of Altadena’s Black families passed their houses down from parents to children and hoped they would be the foundation of generational wealth.”
In losing their homes, the residents also feel the loss of their deeply rooted sense of community. “When you lose a middle-class Black community, it’s a loss of culture, but it’s also a loss for the next generation,” according to Wilberta Richardson, president of the Altadena unit of the NAACP. Some residents won’t be able to afford to rebuild, while “the median sale price of a house in Altadena is now nearly $1.3 million.”
The losses are layered. There is no physical home to return to for many. Community institutions, churches, neighborhood groups, and the bonds between longtime neighbors are also gone, leaving people uprooted in multiple ways.
In the Scriptures
Once Jesus finishes his time in the desert, he heads home. Luke doesn’t tell us why he goes. Does he want time with his family and a home-cooked meal? Or to anchor himself back in a familiar place when everything else is changing so fast?
All three synoptic gospels tell this story, and Luke takes care to place it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Like other traveling rabbis, Jesus goes to the synagogue to worship. Tradition allows him, as a rabbi, to open the scroll and teach. When he does, he announces something new about himself to a crowd of people who think they know him. He reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, reminding people that God’s good news comes to the poor, the blind, the oppressed, and the captive. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says after reading from this picture of God’s reversals.
Part of the outrage is Jesus stepping out of the way they know him. We can imagine that another part is people wondering why he’s bothering to say this when nothing has changed. For this group of people, Isaiah’s vision doesn’t seem to be fulfilled. They’re still poor and still oppressed by Rome. Their clothes are still shabby and they still have to work endlessly to make ends meet. As Linda McKinnish Bridges writes [Feasting on the Word Commentary, Year C. Volume 1], “These words had been attached to the description of the Messiah who was to come; and [the people] were waiting... He is the one they have been waiting to come all their lives, and their grandparents’ lives, and the generations before them. The carpenter’s son is the Messiah.” And yet, nothing has changed. Jesus’ image of the good news being fulfilled doesn’t seem all that good.
In the Sermon
Like the people listening to Jesus, we hear that the good news has arrived, and yet it’s difficult to hold onto. The country is divided, with people of all kinds worried about what happens next. For people with a firm image of what the United States stands for, there’s no home to go back to right now.
The sermon could explore what God’s good news looks like when nothing changes on the outside. Our neighbors around the country are recovering from fires and hurricanes while experiencing economic stress and family division. Many immigrants, with and without papers, fear what a new administration will bring. Women are loading up on contraceptives while they can.
The sermon could also talk about expectations. The people in his hometown have a mental picture of Jesus, the carpenter’s son, and he confounds their expectations. We expect presidents to behave in a particular way, and we expect the same of the people close to us. We expect our lives to unfold in predictable patterns until our mental images are upset by a bankruptcy, a trans kid, or a devastating illness. What do we do when our expectations are upended?
Or the sermon could talk about the experience of going home again — visiting the parents who still see you as a teenager or, on the other side, seeing how much your town, your church, or your parents have changed. What happens when your college, your elementary school, or your church closes, and nothing is left? My own daughter, now in her 20s, is still complaining about the “travesty” that replaced her childhood playground. Where do we meet up with God in the changes?
The sermon could also explore what happens when we’re slow to see what God is doing. It takes time for the people in Jesus’ hometown to take in God’s good news, embodied in Jesus, and we church people are the same. The local church tries to wish away a changing neighborhood instead of getting outside to meet the new neighbors. We lament that “young people” don’t want to serve on committees instead of changing our focus to ways they can participate. The wider church was late in catching up to the reality of gay marriage and in accepting the LGBTQ+ community. Where are we too slow to see now?
Thankfully, God’s good news is always ready for us to catch up to it and is always waiting to change our lives, too.
SECOND THOUGHTSTrumping The Bible
by Dean Feldmeyer
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Ezra saw that the country was a mess, so he called everyone together and read the Torah aloud while pastors and teachers passed through the crowd and answered questions about the text. And the people wept.
Trump saw that the country was a mess, so he teargassed some protestors and held a Bible aloft in front of a church he had never entered. And the people shrugged.
So he tried again. This time he appropriated Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, called it the Trump Bible, marketed it, and offered it for sale on the internet for the bargain price of $60. And the people laughed.
In the News/Culture
In May 2021, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, country musician Lee Greenwood published a “God Bless the USA” edition of the Bible with a US flag on the leather cover.
The God Bless the USA Bible includes the texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States before amendments, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” in Greenwood’s handwriting. Amendments 11-27 are omitted.
Originally, Greenwood intended the text of the Bible to be the New International Version, but the publisher of that edition withheld permission after receiving multiple public complaints. Greenwood finally settled on the King James Version, which is in the public domain in the United States.
The book created further controversy in March of this year when then-former President Donald Trump promoted a new edition of the God Bless America Bible at a price point of $60. The website selling the Bible billed it as “the only Bible endorsed by” Trump and that his “name, likeness, and image” are being used under paid license from one of Trump’s organizations, CIC Ventures LLC.
Then, last week, Greenwood announced the publication of a new inauguration edition with “Donald J. Trump 47th President of the United States of America Inauguration Day Edition January 20, 2025” imprinted on the leather front cover. It costs $69.99 — $10 more than the original edition.
So far, Trump has made about $300,000 from the sale of what he calls on his financial disclosure statement the “Greenwood Bibles,” according to the BBC. He has said that this money will go toward paying about $100 million he owes to people who have won lawsuits against him. Greenwood has not disclosed his share of the Bible profits, but it is estimated to be about the same as Trump’s.
The God Bless the USA Bible, aka the Trump Bible, has come under considerable criticism from both the conservative and liberal branches of the Christian church, which criticism can be easily found by doing an internet search of the subject.
Complaints fall into two major categories: 1) the appropriation of sacred texts for political purposes and 2) representing political texts as sacred. This raises the question of how we, as a culture, determine which texts are sacred and how they became so.
In the Scriptures
Ezra had no problem determining what texts were sacred in his religious/political context. When he came home to Jerusalem, he entered an old and established theocratic state where the government and religion were one. And the Torah, as represented in the Pentateuch, was the one and only sacred text of the community. The writings of the prophets and other teachers were considered informative and instructive, even authoritative, but only the Torah, the book of the Law, was sacred. After all, the decalogue (Ten Commandments) had been written by the very hand of God, had it not?
By bringing the people together with their leaders and reading the sacred texts to them, he was not introducing anything new; he was simply reminding them of who they were and what they had historically stood for. His hope was that this would reunite the people and strengthen their position in a land that was largely hostile to them. Such is the power of sacred texts.
We modern Christians, living in an inclusive and pluralistic culture, don’t have it quite so easy, do we? First, as Christians, our generally accepted sacred texts extend far beyond the Pentateuch. Most Christian denominations consider the entire Bible sacred, but we don’t all agree on that. There’s the Roman Catholic version and the Protestant version, the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version, and on and on. Secondly, the culture around us is not so much hostile toward our religion as it is indifferent. Indeed, sometimes this is even the case with Christians themselves. Like our Donald Trump, they “uphold” the Bible without having ever really studied what it says beyond the weekly readings they hear from the pulpit.
Religions, and even some secular organizations, all have their sacred texts, and determining which texts are considered sacred can vary greatly depending on religious, cultural, and historical contexts — a thorough examination of which would extend far beyond the limits of this sermon. Let us suffice it to say, however, that determining factors include:
- Tradition and History – they’ve been around for a long time.
- Authority – they are believed to be divinely inspired or written by revered figures such as prophets, saints, or enlightened individuals.
- Ritual Use – they are often used in ceremonies, rituals, and practices.
- Doctrinal Significance – they contain essential teachings, doctrines, and laws that are foundational to the beliefs of the religion or organization.
- Community Acceptance – they are recognized as sacred by the community or organization.
- Literary or Linguistic Features – they sometimes contain certain literary or linguistic features that set them apart from other literature.
- Revelatory Content – they sometimes contain what are believed to be revelations from a divine source.
Critics’ objections hold that the inclusion of non-sacred texts in the same volume with sacred ones can lead to profound and even dangerous confusion.
In the Sermon
“[David] The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!’” 2 Samuel 18:33
In including this verse here, because, for me it is one of the most sacred of the sacred, I have, in my career, stood at the graveside with parents who have lost a child more times than I can remember. Every time I’ve thought of my own children and how deep and profound my love for them is. I can’t help but empathize with those parents, imagining the pain I would suffer if I were in their place.
The text meets most of the criteria listed above, but more than that, it speaks to my life, my heart, my soul. I know that David, perhaps the most beloved of all God’s children, save Jesus, experienced that very human pain and reminds me that the people of God are not immune from suffering. We are people of sorrows, acquainted with grief, as Isaiah put it. And yet, God’s hand is upon us, leading us through our sorrows even as God led David through his.
The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance — not even Lee Greenwood’s stirring lyrics — can do that. They are celebrative, instructive, and maybe even authoritative for us in some respects. But they are not sacred. They do not speak to the soul.
My great-uncle, Enoch Feldmeyer, was a bachelor farmer, a staunch churchman, a kind and loving man who died in his 88th year. When the family gathered to go through his things, we found his Bible. It was in German, and it was handed off to me because I was the only clergy present (although the family has produced more than a few ministers over the years).
I suppose that because it was big and heavy and in German, no one bothered to look far into it. But after I took it home and began to thumb through it, more out of curiosity than anything else, I discovered that it was more than a Bible. It was a repository for all manner of Enoch’s interests, loves, and memories.
Pressed between its pages were newspaper clippings, poems, quotes, Sunday school lessons, recipes, invitations, letters, photographs, and scores of handwritten thoughts and comments about the texts scribbled on scraps of paper, a few going back as many as 50 years, some of which threatened to disintegrate as I tried to extract them from between the pages.
They were important to him. Some were precious, and some I doubt he even remembered he had put there. I could imagine him sitting in the pew and leafing through the pages with his big, calloused fingers, searching for the morning’s lesson, saying his familiar “Aaaach!” when something fell out and he had to retrieve it. But they kindled feelings and memories that warmed his heart, so he put them back in their place in the Bible. He loved them.
But they weren’t sacred. They were tucked among the sacred texts, but they were not, themselves, sacred. He understood that.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Tom Willadsen:Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Eat, drink, and give food away
This reading describes a spontaneous celebration in which the people — all of them — call on Ezra to read the Torah to them out loud. After the reading starts, the Levites appear on the scene (possibly indicating a story from a different source getting conflated here) who instruct the people. It’s really important that the people not only hear, but understand. They weep, which may be something interesting to explore sermonically. Are these tears of recognition and joy? Perhaps they are tears responding to the vast chasm between how the people have been living and how the Torah calls them to live.
* * *
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Be happy, damnit!
Nehemiah commands the people to be joyful, to eat food of celebration, and to share those same foods with the poor. Can joy be commanded? Another passage where joy is commanded is at the end of the parable of the Prodigal Son and His Brother, in Luke 15. When the older son refuses to join the party and dancing celebrating his brother’s return, the father says to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” (emphasis added, Luke 15:32-33, NRSV)
* * *
Nehemiah 8:1-10
Adding the tough part
The lectionary omits vv. 4 and 7 from today’s reading. This is a boon to today’s liturgist because the skipped verses contain 26 unfamiliar, long, and difficult-to-pronounce names. If your liturgist is really skilled and attentive, you might want to add them. If your liturgist needs a dose of humility, you also might want to add them. Three years ago, I had these verses read and gave that day’s liturgist a Liturgical Croix de Guerre for Meritorious Reading.
* * *
Psalm 19
Two different texts mashed together?
The first six verses of today’s psalm have the reader / hearer looking up into the grandeur of the heavens. The next five verses have her hunched over a written text. It is not a stretch to feel a kind of whiplash at the abrupt change in focus. Verses 7-11 are a good match for the Nehemiah reading; both demonstrate the supreme value of knowing, understanding, and applying God’s living word to one’s life, and its joy and reward.
* * *
Public recitation of the Law
Iceland has a very lengthy history of reading its law aloud annually. As early as 930 CE, the Icelandic people’s assembly, the Alþingi, gathered to hear the lawspeaker lǫgsǫgumaðr recite the entire legal code. Contrast this with the 1,500-page bill passed by the House and Senate, keeping the federal government funded through March 14, 2025.
The Nehemiah reading is an earlier recitation of the law. How many laws would we have if we were limited by what the lawspeaker could hold in her memory?
* * * * * *
From team member Chris Keating:Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Learning to read the Bible again
A number of years ago, theologian Ellen Davis noted the difficulty that secular culture has with scripture. Unlike the crowd Nehemiah describes, few of us preach before crowds that gather “from early morning until midday,” and whose ears are “attentive to the book of the law.” Based on conversations with other scholars, Davis said, “in postmodern culture the Bible has no definite place, and citizens in a pluralistic, secular culture have trouble knowing what to make of it. If they pay any attention to it at all, they treat it as a consumer product, one more therapeutic option for rootless selves engaged in an endless quest of self-invention and self-improvement.”
Her conversations with academics led her to suggest churches and interpreters begin appreciating and interpreting scripture as art. Reading scripture “has the potential for creating something beautiful.” It’s not unlike the pastoral work of interpretation undertaken by Ezra and Nehemiah in this week’s text. Davis continues:
Interpretations of scripture are not just right or wrong, although at times such categories are useful and necessary. A more adequate way of judging our readings might be the way we judge works of art — according to the standards of beauty. To what extent do our readings reveal the intricacy, the wondrous quality of what the biblical writers call ma‘asei Adonai, “the works of the LORD”? To what extent do they draw us toward something, a way of being that is — to use Paul’s language — more “lovely,” more “gracious,” more “excellent,” “noble,” “worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8)?
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Individualism’s questionable triumphs
Paul argues that the multiplicity of God’s gifts and the diversity of the body of Christ enable it to flourish. Anything less creates chaos and confusion. Yet his assertion that “if one member suffers, all suffer together” has become distorted in American politics by a focus on hyper-individualism. As Donald Trump re-enters the presidency, one writer suggests that a primary reason for democracy’s imperiled state is “our worship of individualism.”
The writer quotes scholar Heather Cox Richardson’s January 5, 2025 newsletter, which suggests the prevailing view that when government provides basic functions such as protecting civil rights, promoting a social safety net, and providing infrastructure, it “crushes the individualism on which America depends.”
An interesting example of this has been the use of private firefighters to curb fires in Los Angeles. A recent post on X, now deleted, reportedly asked, “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. Will pay any amount.”
Insurance companies have relied on such services to offset huge losses, but it points to a larger concern. Individuals, the Daily Kos piece observes, “don’t succeed on their own… (they) need the schools, the roads, the police, the fire departments.” Accordingly, the writer concludes, “they have an obligation to support (i.e., taxes) the institutions that did all that for them and continue to give them the ability to make more money.”
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Fragmentation in our society
In 2023, Harvard lecturer Richard Weissbourd and US Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut) explored how the “atomized” and expressive individualism of American society has crowded out concern for the common good in recent years. They began with a centuries-old observation from Alexis de Tocqueville from the early 1800s. As de Tocqueville toured America, he was both fascinated and worried about America’s love of individualism and entrepreneurship. Weissbourd and Murphy note de Tocqueville “also questioned whether a society could hold together when existence becomes atomized and individual success crowds out the common good. America, he worried, would descend into a morass of avarice, self-interest, and envy without a means through which Americans could prioritize virtue, character, and the common good over personal interest and individual achievement.”
Two hundred years later, they observe, it is our continuing struggle to properly balance these tensions that contributes to influencing American society. Our delight in “pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” often leads to an overfocus on the individual at the expense of the collective. America’s greatness, they suggest, lies not just in our individual entrepreneurism but also “in our decision to make sure that this value on personal responsibility and success is never absolute.”
* * *
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Trump’s inaugural points to our distunity
While Paul urged the Corinthians to consider the ways the body must work together by celebrating diversity, political commentators noted the lack of humility and self-reflection in Donald Trump’s second inaugural address. It is a problem, they say, endemic to both parties. Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, for example, noted that “we no longer have a shared understanding of what basic words like ‘unity’ are supposed to mean. Certainly with Trump, but also to a lesser extent with Biden, appeals to unity were usually another way of saying, ‘Hey, let’s have unity but on my terms’ or, ‘Everyone should be unified around my idea of unity,' and so on. It became a power move: Whoever had power, for the moment, was the one who tried to enforce an artificial consensus in a deeply divided country.” Journalist E.J. Dionne said that in his opinion, Trump’s speech was “not only overreach but utterly without humility or a sense that there might be good and decent people in the country who disagree with his view,” suggesting that it will be heard by Trump’s opponents not as a rallying cry for a unified country but as “a demand for vigorous opposition.”
* * *
Luke 4:14-21
A Third Reconstruction
Jonathan Wilson-Hargrave and the Rev. William Barber II’s book White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy explores the authors’ ideas about proclaiming good news to the poor in 2025. In an interview for Sojourners, Wilson-Hartgrove noted:
We’re trying to redefine poverty in this book. And we think it’s important because the federal official poverty measure doesn’t capture the crisis of poverty in America. According to the official poverty measure, if you make $14,000 a year in this country, you’re not poor; but nobody can live anywhere in this country on $14,000 a year. (Note: The Department of Health and Human Services notes that the current threshold for poverty for an individual in the United States is $15,060.)
Wilson-Hargrave reflects on his own family’s experience of rural Southern poverty. He argues that “real change is possible” when poor people of all races are helped to understand what they hold in common. He upholds a vision of prophetic Christianity that looks at Jesus’ proclamation to the poor, oppressed, and suffering and how a Christian focus on justice becomes a powerful force for change. “The prophetic word to us is not so much about what we might declare to somebody else or even to our government; [it’s] fundamentally about what kind of orientation would make us a different kind of people, different spaces.” What would happen, he argues, if the typical mainline church in America could “become a center for the poor in your community, to organize and to build, not just political power, but to build community together, right? Share meals and have child care and education; that would be a beautiful thing for the church. And I think, in so many ways, the vitality and the future of the church depends on that.”
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship
One: The heavens are telling the glory of God.
All: The sky proclaims God’s handiwork.
One: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
All: The decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
One: More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold.
All: In keeping them there is great reward.
OR
One: Glory to you, O God, who comes to claim your children.
All: We rejoice in your loving presence in our lives.
One: Come and dwell in us that we may dwell in you.
All: Help us to feel at home in your kin-dom.
One: Love us so that we may love others.
All: Bless us so that we may be a blessing to others.
Hymns and Songs
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty
UMH: 64/65
H82: 362
PH: 138
GTG: 1
AAHH: 329
NNBH: 1
NCH: 277
CH: 4
LBW: 165
ELW: 413
W&P: 136
AMEC: 25
STLT: 26
God of the Sparrow God of the Whale
UMH: 122
PH: 272
GTG: 22
NCH: 32
CH: 70
ELW: 740
W&P: 29
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
UMH: 126
H82: 408
PH: 483
GTG: 645
NCH: 6
CH: 6
W&P: 56
He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought
UMH: 128
AAHH: 142
NNBH: 235
CH: 545
LBW: 501
W&P: 499
AMEC: 395:
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
UMH: 133
GTG: 837
AAHH: 371
NNBH: 262
NCH: 471
CH: 560
ELW: 774
W&P: 496
AMEC: 525
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
UMH: 138
H82: 645/646
PH: 171
GTG: 802
NCH: 248
LBW: 456
ELW: 502
Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee
UMH: 175
H82: 642
PH: 310
GTG: 629
NCH: 507
CH: 102
LBW: 316
ELW: 754
W&P: 420
AMEC: 464
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
UMH: 358
H82: 652/653
PH: 345
GTG: 169
NCH: 502
CH: 594
LBW: 506
W&P: 470
AMEC: 344
It Is Well with My Soul
UMH: 377
GTG: 840
AAHH: 377
NNBH: 255
NCH: 438
CH: 561
ELW: 785
W&P: 428
AMEC: 448
Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
UMH: 381
H82: 708
PH: 387
GTG: 187
AAHH: 424
NNBH: 54
NCH: 252
CH: 558
LBW: 481
ELW: 789
W&P: 440
AMEC: 379
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
CCB: 28
Renew: 23
Your Loving Kindness Is Better than Life
CCB: 26
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
GTG: Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is the beginning and end of all:
Grant us the wisdom to seek our home in you
that we may find joy now and in the time to come;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are the source and end of all that exists. You are the Alpha and the Omega. Help us to seek our home in you so that we may know the joy of life eternal now and forever. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our searching to belong in places other than God.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our way and no longer remember where our home is. We read the sacred texts and find ways to use it to disparage and denounce others. We use scripture to puff ourselves up and tear others down instead of allowing the Spirit to renew us and bring us home to God. Forgive us our foolish ways and open our eyes to the path home. Amen.
One: God is our home and has provided the sacred texts to bring us there. Receive God’s grace and return that you may call others home.
Prayers of the People
Glorious and gracious are you, O God, our creator and the home of our souls. Wonderful is your love for all your creation.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We have lost our way and no longer remember where our home is. We read the sacred texts and find ways to use it to disparage and denounce others. We use scripture to puff ourselves up and tear others down instead of allowing the Spirit to renew us and bring us home to God. Forgive us our foolish ways and open our eyes to the path home.
We give you thanks that you have not left us as orphans but have given us a true home in yourself, O God. We thank you for the scriptures which record you seeking after your children. We bless you for sending Jesus to remind us whose family we belong to. Thank you for those who have shared your love with us so that we have been able to believe that we are truly loved.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We lift up to your loving care those who struggle to feel at home, even in their own skin. Many struggle to feel accepted and many find they have no love for themselves. Too many are told in words and actions that they are unlovable. As you come among your children and care for them, help us to allow your Spirit to love them through us.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
Hear us as we pray for others: (Time for silent or spoken prayer.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN’S SERMONOur Differences Are Our Gifts
by Katy Stenta
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Prepare ahead of time: Lots of the same picture or photo of noses — one for each kid. Lots of the same picture of photo of ears — one for each child. A body cut into pieces like a puzzle for the kids to easily put together.
Give every child an ear and tell them to build a body out of it.
Then do the same with noses.
Then hand out body parts and have them actually construct a body together.
In this 1 Corinthians passage it discusses how, although every body part is different,
They are all useful
And that you cannot build the body out of one piece
We are the body of Christ.
The church right now
Is the Body of Christ.
We each have different gift to represent God.
Some of us
Sing,
Teach,
Build,
Sit quietly with friends when thy need it.
(Let the children answer, too.)
If we all did the same thing we wouldn’t be the body of Christ.
Let’s pray,
Dear God
Thank you
For reminding us
That our differences
Are our gifts.
Help us
To be
The body of
Christ
Together,
Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 26, 2025 issue.
Copyright 2025 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
