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Dec 06, 2020

Adoration Weeps Too

Adoration Weeps Too

Passage: John 11:1-

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Advent 2020: O Come Let Us Adore Him

Keywords: worship, joy, sacrifice, king

What if anguish and adoration are not opposites? What if the former is an expression of the latter, while the latter holds the former together?

12.06.20 GMR Online Service from Grace Mills River on Vimeo.

Order of Worship

Advent Monologue: “He’s not here, is He?” 
ADVENT READING: Luke 2:8-14
CALL TO WORSHIP: this liturgy from Every Moment Holy
OT READING: Psalm 42:1-6
Sharing Our Laments
MESSAGE TITLE: Adoration weeps, too
CENTRAL TEXT: John 11:1-37
RESPONSE: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1
BENEDICTION: From The Worship Sourcebook

Download the bulletin for the Liturgy in Blue service

FREE Special Event & Resource:
Sunday, December 6 at 4pm

The Book of Job Project presents dramatic readings by acclaimed actors of The Book of Job as a catalyst for powerful, guided conversations about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon individuals, families, and communities.The Book of Job is an ancient Hebrew poem that timelessly explores how humans behave when faced with disaster, pestilence and injustice.

Featuring performances by Bill Murray, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Kathryn Erbe, and Nyasha Hatendi.

Presented by Theater of War Productions

Click here for registration & details

Readings & Scripture

 Advent Reading: Luke 2:8-14
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Call to Worship: Liturgy from Every Moment Holy
Leader: Christ Our King, our world is overtaken by unexpected calamity, and by a host of attending fears, worries, and insecurities. We witness suffering, confusion, and hardship multiplied around us, and we find ourselves swept up in these same anxieties and troubles, dismayed by so many uncertainties.

All: Now we turn to you, O God, in this season of our
common distress.

Leader: Be merciful, O Christ, to those who suffer, to those who worry, to those who grieve, to those who are threatened or harmed in any way by this upheaval. Let your holy compassions be active throughout the world and in our church family even now— tending the afflicted, comforting the brokenhearted, and bringing hope to many who are hopeless.

All: Use even these hardships to woo our hearts nearer to you,
O God.

Leader: Indeed, O Father, may these days of disquiet become a catalyst for conviction and repentance, for the tendering of our affections, for the stirring of our sympathies, for the refining of
our love.

All: We are your people, who are called by you, we need not be troubled or alarmed. You are the King of the Ages, O Christ, and history is held in your Father’s hands. Inhabit now your church, O Spirit of the Risen Christ. Unite and equip your people for the work before us even as we worship.

Old Testament Reading: Psalm 42:1-6, NRSV
“As the deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

Central Text: John 11:1-37

Response: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1
Leader: What is your only comfort in life and death?

All: That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Benediction: From The Worship Sourcebook
May the love of God the Father, the faithful creator,
The peace of Christ, the wounded healer,
And the joy of the comforting Spirit,
The hope of the Three in One
Surround and encourage you today, tonight, and forever.
Amen.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 142:2-3
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

ILLUSTRATIONS:

InView Media Album 12.6.20 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. What has been the saddest day of your life? You never fully recover from that day, but how long before the sadness began to recede, if at all, into the background?
  2. How would you define anguish? If you had to distinguish it from bitterness, what makes anguish different? How might anguish be an expression of faith rather than the absence of it? How are both sisters’ common lament, “if you had been here…” an expression of anguished faith?
  3. But what other comparisons and contrasts could you make between Martha’s and Mary’s responses in this moment? What could they mean? Do they matter?
  4. When you have been in need of consolation what most provided that? When you have had the opportunity to offer consolation, what forms did it take?

QUOTES:

  • . . .faith is a ‘walking in darkness,’ and not a theological solution to mystery. - Flannery O’ Connor
  • Miracles are disruptive. When the dust settles there is always damage done – not all the hungry are fed, and not all the sick are healed. - Richard Beard’s fictional retelling of Lazarus in his Lazarus is Dead
  • You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. - Admiral James Stockdale
  • The light appears to those living in darkness. If we can allow ourselves to stay in this dark place a while longer, without easy distractions or analgesics, we might hear a very different story to the one we think we know. - Giles Fraser
  • This is the story of Jesus. He leaves a perfect place to climb down into our bomb crater and plays a song – the most beautiful song I have ever heard. - Sara Groves
  • Every lament is a love song. - Nicolas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
  • Weakness has a special sting if you understand it as a moral failing. Many stroke patients express frustration, even anger at themselves, that they haven’t been able to regain full functionality by sheer force of will. There is an assumption that mastery is our natural, proper condition, and if you aren’t capable of it, you’re defective. But that is wrong. Mastery isn’t our default state of being. Mastery is a great accomplishment, achieved only temporarily and with tremendous help from other people. From birth, we fitfully climb the ladder from childlike clumsiness to adult virtuosity. Loss of that dexterity is part of life. We use our prime years to help the weak, to raise our own children, to ease our parents into old age. Or at least we should. This interdependence is not a flaw in the human condition; it’s our great strength. - Ian Marcus Corbin
  • “Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the strait path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain—oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to the point of this prayer every difficulty hedges and directs us.” - George MacDonald. “Unspoken Sermons.”
  • We must allow the mourning, afflicted soul a due and comely expression of his grief and sorrow in his complaints to both God and men….There is no sin in complaining TO God, but much wickedness in complaining OF Him. - John Flavel
  • We cannot be truly and fully grateful unless we get right with suffering. There have been many attempts at working that one out. In the great Eastern religions, suffering is something to be minimized and, finally, escaped: The Buddha spoke of the four “noble truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering,” and many teachers in the Hindu traditions speak of a final liberation from suffering. In Islam, suffering selects: It offers a test of faith separating the committed disciple from the unbeliever. Christians take a distinctly radical view: that suffering is neither an evil to be evaded nor a punishment handed out routinely, like some kind of divine speeding ticket, but something to be entered into willingly in order to become not godlike but more fully and more perfectly human. We learn to be grateful not only for the alleviation of suffering but for the suffering itself — that, too, is a gift. We discover ultimate gratitude when we discover the Ultimate Object of our gratitude. Learning that ultimate gratitude does not necessarily mean wandering around the desert in a supernatural daze, though that has worked for many great men in the past. Some of them even sought out such a wild place as Massachusetts, landing there in the winter in rickety boats, like madmen. They went ashore and gave thanks to God. - Kevin Williamson
  • The message of Christ isn’t that you can’t kill me. The message of Christ is you can kill me and that’s not death. - Stephen Colbert

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

—Jan Richardson, “A Blessing for the Brokenhearted”

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