Prelude

Call to Worship

Leader: My heart rejoices in the Lord; strength is gained through my God.

People: There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no rock like our God.

Leader: The Lord is a God of knowledge and by him my actions are measured.

People: The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.

Leader: The Lord makes some poor and some rich; he brings down and he raises up.

People: He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.

Leader: He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail.

People: The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed.

All: We praise our rock, our strength, our God, our Holy One.

—Based on I Samuel 2:1–10

*Hymn: “Companions on the Journey” NS 7
OR “Lord Jesus, of You I Will Sing” SP 31
OR “How Shall We Come Before You Now” HS 106

*Invocation

*Response

Disciples’ Generous Response

Hymn: “Put Peace into Each Other’s Hands” R-15
OR “Take the Path of the Disciple” R-19
OR “Help Us Express Your Love” HS 415

Sermon

Prayer for Peace see page 27

Story

A cold March wind danced around Dallas as the doctor walked into Diana Blessing’s small hospital room. It was the dead of night and she was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That rainy afternoon, March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only twenty-four weeks pregnant, to undergo emergency surgery. At twelve inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, Danae Lu arrived by caesarean delivery.

They already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs. “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” he said as kindly as he could. “There’s only a 10 percent chance she will live through the night. If by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one.” Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae could face if she survived.

She would probably never walk or talk or see. She would be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on. Through the dark hours of morning, as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep. But she was determined that their daughter would live to be a happy, healthy young girl. David, fully awake, knew that he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

David told Diana that they needed to talk about funeral arrangements. But Diana said, “No, that is not going to happen. No way! I don’t care what the doctors say; Danae is not going to die. One day she will be just fine and she will be home with us.”

As if willed to live by Diana’s determination. Danae clung to life hour after hour. But as those first rainy days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw,” the least kiss or caress only intensified her discomfit, so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby. All they could do, as Danae struggled beneath the ultraviolet light, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

At last, when Danae was two months old, her parents were able to hold her for the first time. Two months later, she went home from the hospital just as her mother predicted, even though doctors grimly warned that her chances of leading a normal life were almost zero.

Today, five years later, Danae is a petite, but feisty young girl with glittering grey eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no sign of any mental or physical impairment. But that happy ending is not the end of the story.

One blistering summer afternoon in 1996, in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting on her mother’s lap at a ballpark where her brother’s baseball team was practicing. As always, Danae was busy chattering when she suddenly became silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked her mum, “Do you smell that?” Smelling the air and detecting a thunderstorm approaching, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.” Danae closed her eyes again and asked, “Do you smell that?” Once again her mother replied, “Yes, I think we’re about to get wet; it smells like rain.”

Caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulder and loudly announced, “No, it smells like him. It smells like God when you lay your head on his chest.”

Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Danae happily hopped down to play with the other children before the rain came. Her daughter’s words confirmed what Diana and the rest of the Blessing family had known all along. During those long days and nights of the first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive to be touched, God was holding Danae on his chest, and it is his scent that she remembers.

—Author Unknown

*Hymn: “The City Is Alive, O God” HS 375
OR “Let Your Heart Be Broken” HS 377

*Benediction

*Sending Forth: Moroni 7:52–53

*Postlude

Scriptures: I Samuel 1:4–20, 2:1–10;
Hebrews 10:11–25; Mark 13:1–8/13:1–10 IV

The letter to the Hebrews is a strongly worded epistle of encouragement to a church in crisis. These Jewish Christians faced persecution, hostility, and torture. Some had been imprisoned and their property seized. The text urges them to hold on to their faith (“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful”), love one another, and do good deeds as they wait for Christ’s return. Some scholars suggest they were discouraged by the delay of Jesus’ second coming, and their poorly attended worship services mirrored their discouragement. The author reminds them that Jesus (their “great high priest”) has given them a “new and living way,” thus freeing them from the ancient cultic practices of endless sacrifices and permitting them “to enter the sanctuary with confidence,” no longer relegating them to the outer courts. Barriers to God have been removed. The author presents Jesus’ humanity while at the same time reinforcing the reader’s waning Christology.

The text lifts up the ultimate sacrifice made by Christ and calls for each member to “provoke one another to love.” The word paroxysmos can be translated “provoke,” “irritate,” or “pester” and seems like a strange verb when knit to the word love. It is not, however, a contradiction in terms. Love is not merely a feeling; it is a willful choice manifested by loving deeds. Love is more than platitudes—it is action. The readers of the Hebrew letter have become lax, despondent, and inactive and are in desperate need of love’s wake-up call. The author challenges them to disturb each other—to awaken each other from fear and apathy to loving deeds.

Love lays an obligation on us. Whether through word or deed, its expression stimulates a response; it does not live unnoticed. The Hebrew text speaks powerfully to our time and circumstance. Every worthwhile social change has emerged from a people of faith whose love for peace, healing, and reconciliation of the Spirit has provoked such change. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and other spiritual giants literally provoked others to love. They refused to give apathy its day, awakened a waiting world to their hope for justice, and paved the way for its actualization.

The text invites the speaker and congregation to look inward and weigh themselves on the balance scale of apathy and action. Have we fallen asleep? Have our hymns, prayers, songs, and sermons satisfied Sunday at the expense of Monday? What is love provoking us to do? Can our worship stimulate and empower us to provoke others to love? We, who have been challenged to “create pathways in the world for peace,” are also called to provoke others to love. The author of the Hebrew letter, along with his readers, yearns and looks forward to “see the Day [of Christ’s return] approaching” but reminds them that waiting is not enough.

1. The everydayness of life can rob us of God’s whisper in our lives. We can be so caught up in the way things are that we forget how things once were and how better things can be.
    
2. Love is more than a feeling—it is a willful choice manifested by loving deeds.
    
3. Worship reminds us of the salvation acts we already know yet constantly forget. Like the Jewish Christians in the Hebrews text, we also fall victim to discouragement and lethargy. Let us rejoice that Christ has given us a “new and living way.”

1. When and how has God’s Spirit renewed you in times of discouragement?
    
2. What “new and living way” has God provided for your life?
    
3. When and how have others provoked you to love?
    
4. Love seeks what is best for the beloved. Is love, then, the same as acceptance, or does it provoke transformation and change?