Sunday ~ Dec 6, 2020
Order of Worship
Prelude: Rosemary Nettrouer, “Lift Up Your Heads,” arr. Paxton
Announcements
Hymn: “Hark! The Glad Sound” (#175)
Advent Candle Lighting: “Waiting for Home” (Kevin & Gwen McDonald)
Music: Vs. 2 of “One Candle is Lit,” to the tune of “Away in a Manger” (Cradle Song version, #187)
Prayer Concerns
Pastoral Prayer
Message: “God with Us”
Scripture: John 1:1-14a
Open Worship
Benediction
Verse 2 of One Candle is Lit
Come quickly, shalom, teach us how to prepare
for a gift that compels us with justice to care.
Our spirits are restless till sin and war cease.
One candle is lit for the reign of God’s peace.
Announcements
Good morning, and welcome! We at University Friends are glad to have you worship with us this morning.
- Thank you for music by Rosemary Nettrouer, technical support by Michael Barrett and Joe Dawley, music coordination by Dawn Blue.
- We are live streaming on Facebook and the church website (wichitaquakers.org) and will not be gathering for worship in person for a while. Please feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link.
- Please also feel free to comment on the Facebook page with prayer concerns or announcements.
Today
- 12:00 p.m. ~ Listening Group Leaders via Zoom
- 3:00 p.m. ~ 205 Sunday Class via Zoom
Monday, December 7, Estimates of Giving Deadline
Tuesday, December 8, 6:30 pm, Book Club
Wednesday, December 9,
- 1:30 p.m., Visitation
- 6:30 pm, Bell Choir
Thursday, December 10, 6:30 p.m., newly configured Personnel Committee
Saturday, December 12, 3:00 pm, Outreach & Christian Ed Committees
Prayer times: Monday at noon with Sue; Thursday at 8:30 with Kim (See The Light This Week for details.)
We haven’t yet heard from folks at Friends University about whether they can meet with us next Sunday afternoon. We’ll let you know as soon as they do.
Other things to remember (See The Light This Week for details.)
- Sign up for a meal or donate money for Family Promise. Our host week begins a week from today.
- Let Sue Wine know if you’d like to participate in a Zoom Reader’s Theater performance of “A Christmas Carol.”
Hymn: “Hark! The Glad Sound” (#175)
Advent Candle Lighting: “Waiting for Home” (Kevin & Gwen McDonald)
Music: Vs. 2 of “One Candle is Lit,” to the tune of “Away in a Manger” (Cradle Song version, #187)
Prayer concerns
- Rosemary’s brother and sister-in-law, with COVID in a care facility
- Mary and Joseph Bengi have COVID.
- Steve Grether died last night.
- Don Mallonee is in the hospital and scheduled for a heart cath tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Paul and Cheryl are helping with Linda’s care.
- Our church during this time of transition, with the holidays and the pandemic, and important decisions coming up – May we find clarity and energy for the tasks at hand and the decisions we will need to make as we find our way forward. May we find ways to use our assets wisely and well. May we discover ways we are to be a beacon of love in our world. May we be looking for the doors you are opening, and may we have the courage to walk through them. May we see what you are doing in our world and join you in it.
Pastoral Prayer
God our maker, the home of our Spirit, we welcome you into our hears and lives. We are grateful that we can find a home in you.
Message: “God with Us”
Scripture: John 1:1-5, 10-14a
Brace yourselves. I am going to say something shocking.
Jesus wasn’t born in a stable.
That’s right. According to biblical scholars, the whole thing about the inn and the stable is based on a misunderstanding, along with the human tendency to think that the way things are in our culture and time is the way things were in the culture and time of the Bible.
Here’s what those scholars say.
We know the Christmas story so well. Mary and Joseph traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem and were turned away from the village inn by the innkeeper. They took refuge in a barn, where baby Jesus was born and laid in a manger. A very early church tradition says the site of the nativity was a cave near Bethlehem.
The Biblical story of the birth of Jesus is found primarily in Luke 2. … Luke neither quotes nor mentions an innkeeper. We suggest the story does not refer to an inn, a cave or even a barn, but rather a house!
The text of Luke 2 notes there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the “inn.” Unfortunately, the Greek term translated inn (kataluma) had multiple meanings…. Used only one other time in the New Testament (Luke 22:11 and the parallel passage, Mark 14:14), it was the place where Jesus observed the Last Supper with His disciples. Here, … Luke gave additional information about the kataluma. He said it was a furnished large upper story room within a private Jerusalem house. The kataluma of the last night of Jesus’ Earthly ministry was the “upper room.”
We suggest the kataluma of Jesus’ first night was a similar room in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph came into town with Mary ready to deliver. Arriving at Joseph’s ancestral home, they found it already full of other family members who had arrived earlier. While the exact reason space was not made for a pregnant woman is unknown, it probably indicates the house was full of elder members of Joseph’s family, who had priority.
So that is when Mary and Joseph went to the barn, right? Not exactly. The Biblical account mentions neither barn nor cave—it is assumed because of the manger. Mangers are animal feeding troughs, and barns are where one would expect to find them. But in the ancient world, as well as in primitive modern cultures, mangers are also found within the house itself. Animals are regularly kept in homes at night.
A small number of flock animals were housed, not in attached exterior sheds, but inside the house in one of the ground floor rooms. Here, animals, tools and agricultural produce were stored. Here, too, food was prepared and possibly consumed. Family sleeping quarters were on the second floor (an upper room). By being inside, the animals were protected from the elements and theft. In addition, their presence provided body heat for cool nights, access to milk for the daily meal and dung as a critical fuel source.
Excavations in Israel have uncovered numerous installations within domestic structures which probably represent ancient mangers. Some are carved, but most are stone built. Wooden mangers, of course, have not survived in the archaeological record.
Consequently, Mary and Joseph did not find space in the living quarters of the ancestral family home. Instead, they stayed downstairs in the domestic stable, still within the ancestral home, where a manger or two was located. (https://christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a012.html; cf. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/jesus-christ-not-born-in-stable-theologian-new-testament; https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-was-not-born-in-a-stable/)
So what? What difference does it make whether Jesus was born in a stable or a barn or a cave or a house?
Another scholar puts it this way:
In [Luke’s] Christmas story, Jesus is not sad and lonely, some distance away in the stable, needing our sympathy. He is in the midst of the family, and all the visiting relations, right in the thick of it and demanding our attention. ***
The problem with the stable is that it distances Jesus from the rest of us. It puts even his birth in a unique setting, in some ways as remote from life as if he had been born in Caesar’s Palace. … the message of the incarnation is that Jesus is one of us. He came to be what we are, and it fits well with that theology that his birth in fact took place in a normal, crowded, warm, welcoming Palestinian home, just like many another Jewish boy of his time.
(https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-was-not-born-in-a-stable/)
Jesus is one of us. Jesus is God is with us.
In my mind, I hear the Maranatha song from the 70s:
Emmanuel, Emmanuel,
His name is called Emmanuel
God [is] with us, revealed in us
His name is called Emmanuel (https://wordtoworship.com/song/10144)
John 1, beginning with verse 1, New Revised Standard Version:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. …
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own,[c] and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us….
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
In times of joy, it is easy to believe that God is with us. When our hearts are full of love, when we know we are loved, when we are able to love, God is with us. When beauty stirs our souls, God is with us. When we are centered and at peace, we know God is with us.
When we are too busy to notice, God is with us. When we forget to listen, God is still with us. When we have trouble believing God is with us, God is with us.
In times of sadness, God is with us. When we are afraid, God is with us. When anxiety threatens to overwhelm us, when we worry that we will screw this up like we’ve screwed things up before, God is with us. When we feel broken, God is with us. In the midst of despair, God is with us.
God’s light shines in the darkness.
Where in your life is darkness threatening? Take a moment. Where in your life is darkness threatening? Hold that darkness. Hold it in your hands, and lift it up into God’s healing light. [Pause.]
Where in the life of our church is darkness threatening? Lift that too up into God’s healing light.
Where in our city, our nation, our world is darkness threatening? Lift that up into God’s light and love.
All who open their hearts and lives to Jesus, to God, to that light, have the power to become children of God, to have their lives changed. It is possible to live and act in new ways because God is with us.
God is with us.
John 1, beginning with verse 1, in The Message:
1 1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.
3-5 Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out. …
9-13 The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering Life
[God] brings into Light.
[Jesus] was in the world,
the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice….
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not blood-begotten,
not flesh-begotten,
not sex-begotten.
14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
Open worship
Let us join together in open worship, communion after the manner of friends.
Benediction
We are meeting in person and also streaming our sermons on Facebook at 10:00 AM CST. Watch live:
https://www.facebook.com/universityfriendschurch/
Not on Facebook? You can see all of our posts and videos on our site here!
