Fourth Sunday of Advent - B

For August 2, 2026:

• Insufficiency Becomes Sufficient by Dean Feldmeyer.

Tom and Ben couldn't stand each other. They'd known each other for a very long time since they had been at school together years ago and had lived in the same village ever since. But they'd never hit it off. Unfortunately, being a village there was only one church, and Tom and Ben were both churchgoers.

Contents
What's Up This Week
"Not a Cup but a Cow" by Frank Ramirez
"Compassion at Work" by Argile Smith


What's Up This Week

Seasonal Theme
The teaching and ministry of Jesus the Christ.

Theme For The Day
God's blessing from our troubles and the kingdom's invitation to share with others.

Old Testament Lesson
Genesis 32:22-31
Jacob Wrestles At Peniel

This psalm belongs in the category of "personal lament," which means it probably was not used for corporate worship, but by an individual pray-er. From the tone, the person is clearly in some unspecified distress, probably from persecutors of some sort. Protesting his innocence and his faithfulness to God, the psalmist asks for divine relief, and concludes with an expression of confidence that God will come to his aid (v. 18: "I shall awake satisfied").

I wonder how many of us here are named after someone.

Chances are that a good many of us carry family names. We are named for a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, or an aunt somewhere on the family tree. Others of us had parents who named us after a character in the Bible, or perhaps some other significant character from history.

All told, I expect a pretty fair number of us are named after someone else.

To Jim it seemed like an opportunity to right decades of wrongs.

Yogi Berra, the great baseball player of an earlier age, was known for his unusual and creative use of the English language. In giving directions to his home, for example, he often told people, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." His formula for success, as some heard it, was this: "Ninety percent perspiration, and the rest mostly just plain hard work." Then there was the time he went to a restaurant by himself and ordered a large pizza. The waitress asked if he would like it cut into four or eight pieces. "Better make it four," he replied.

Willy Loman lived in a world of indifference; nobody seemed to care about him and others. It was a world where people thought mostly of themselves. Willy was a traveling salesman, but not a very good one. For many years he had been on the road, traveling from one city to another, one hotel to a second. His area was all of New England. Several times each year he would make his rounds, going from his home in New York north to Waterbury, Connecticut, then on to Providence, Boston, and north still further to Portland and Bangor in Maine before returning home.

Aren't families fun, at times? Paul reminds us in the lesson for today that families can be a source of many things in our lives.

Consider the husband who had promised his wife to replace the kitchen cabinets, but kept putting off the home improvement. The wife had to leave to care for her sick mother for two weeks and returned to find the new cabinets installed in the kitchen.

Call To Worship
One: We come to this place of worship,
to encounter the One who has called us here.
All: This Holy One -- our God --
is with us in every moment.
One: God is in our celebrations and joys,
God is in our darkest nights of loneliness.
All: This Holy God -- our God --
blesses us and calls us by name.
One: As night fades before the coming light,
we meet the One who saves us --
even from ourselves.
All: This God -- our Holy God --
touches us with the spirit of hope.

Hymns
Break Now The Bread Of Life (NCH321, CBH360, UM599, PH329)
Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown (UM386, CBH503)
God Is Here (NCH70, PH461)
Holy Spirit, Truth Divine (LBW257, NCH63, PH321)
Our God, To Whom We Turn (NCH37, PH278)
Sweet Hour Of Prayer (NCH505)
Sheaves Of Summer/Una Espiga (NCH338, PH518)
You Satisfy The Hungry Heart (PH521)

Anthems
Asleep On Holy Ground, Michael Card, The Beginning, Solo

First Lesson: Genesis 32:22-31
Theme: Out Of Joint

Call To Worship (based on Psalm 145:1-4)

One: We will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.

All: We will proclaim you as God and King in the midst of our community.

One: Every day we will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.

All: Your name is great, Lord, and worthy of this praise.

One: Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.

We all love stories of courage among those who wrestle with daunting difficulties in life and actually pull out a win:

* Francis Parkman suffered from both arthritic muscles and poor eyesight. He could work only five minutes at a time, scrawling huge letters on his manuscript, yet he managed to complete a massive twenty-volume historical masterpiece.

Early in the cherished 1965 movie, The Sound of Music, we see the sisters at the abbey wondering about their whimsical novice, Maria. At the moment, no one can find her, and one of the sisters dutifully reports to the Reverend Mother that she has looked in all the usual places. "Considering that it's Maria," responds the wise, old woman, "perhaps you should look someplace unusual."

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. (v. 19)

Good morning, boys and girls! How are you this morning? (allow answers) Today we are going to talk about bread. How many of you have eaten bread recently? (allow answers) What did you eat with your bread? (allow answers)

The Point: Jesus wants us to work together to spread the kingdom of God.