Worship Bulletin

Worship September 20. 2020 German Church of Atlanta Greeting and Announcements

Psalm 34: 2-6 I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

2 I will glory in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

4

I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

5 Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

6 This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.

Psalm 34: 7-11 7

8

The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

9 Fear the LORD, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing.

10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

11

Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

Hosea 6: 1-6 “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.

2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.

3 Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him.

As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.”

4

“What can I do with you, Ephraim?

What can I do with you, Judah?

Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.

5 Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth— then my judgments go forth like the sun.[a] 6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Matthew 9: 9-13

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Sermon 9-20-2020 Dear friends, dear confirmands, dear brothers and sisters, This Matthew who wrote the gospel was actually the tax collector with whom Jesus sits at the table in the story we listened to. And so, Matthew tells us the story with Jesus and the Pharisees: Many of the very religious Jewish leaders back then admired Jesus actually as a wise teacher. But they were angry that he did not behave as the Jewish faith demanded: he did not keep the commandments of purity. No one is allowed to sit at the table with an impure person. Unclean, these were the people on the margins of society: blind people, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors who often cheated others for money, persons with leprosy and all people who had contagious diseases. Jesus broke all the religious laws of his time. He sat at the table with people who he should not

be in contact with under the Jewish Purity Law. There were class laws that determined who was down and up, and then purity laws that declared who was in and who was out. And religious people for sure kept themselves clean. They wanted to be “in” and belong to the upper class.

Jesus was not “in” however, and he was not “up”. He had no place where he laid down to sleep every night. He lived largely on the street. He touched people who needed healing. He had mercy and compassion especially for those who were forgotten by other people.

And why? Jesus answered, "It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick! Think about what it means when God says, "I do not ask of you any sacrifices, but that you be merciful." I have not come to invite such people into God's new world, where all things are in order, but those who have turned their backs on God." Many people even today still think that faith is something that can be achieved through keeping certain order, holding certain things to be true or making sacrifices, making donations.

But faith means becoming a follower of Jesus. It means sitting at the table with Jesus and learning from him. What do we learn?

Mercy, compassion, the acceptance of every human being without discriminating, the end of such thinking of “up and down”, “in and out”, “pure and impure”. When we become followers, disciples of Jesus and learn to practice compassion every day anew, then we have faith. Then we belong to the family of God and Jesus is our brother.

I want to share with you about a woman who was certainly a sister of Jesus. Her name later was Mother Teresa. She was born with the name Anjezé Bojaxhiu in 1910 in a region that is now Macedonia. At the age of 18, she left her home to join the sisters of

Loreto, a group of nuns in Ireland. There she took the name Sister Maria Teresa after Saint Therese of Lisieux. A year later, in 1929, Mother Teresa moved to India and taught at a Catholic school for girls.

She observed how Indian society also had many outcast and marginalized people. India had a strict class system. And at the very bottom were the so-called “Untouchables”. These people were born into their cast or class and remained very poor. Other people in society learned to not care about them, as they were the “untouchables, unclean, outsiders”. After living in India for 17 years, Mother Teresa shared that Jesus spoke to her in prayer: "Theresa, I want you to take care of the sick and dying people, the outcasts, on the streets of Calcutta." In this situation, Theresa had faith. She trusted. She believed deep in her heart that God would give her the strength to do it. She knew that God would be with her and in her. She knew that God would not leave her. Faith is this deep trust in the heart.

A few years later, Mother Teresa received the approval of the Catholic Pope to found an order, a group of religious sisters called "missionaries of charity" and to serve the poorest of the poor.

Twenty years later, these sisters had spread all over the world and today they still serve the poor in many countries: in Asia, Africa, Europe and even the United States.

These sisters listened to the teachings of Mother Teresa: “Go in trust, in faith in Jesus. "There should be no pride. There should be no vanity in this work. For this is not your work, but God's work.

These are not your poor, but God's poor."

Although her work suddenly became famous and had an increasingly bigger impact, Mother Teresa always said, "I am interested in people, not programs. Programs serve a purpose; but

Christian love is for one person, and I am determined to help people."

Mother Teresa also said that the biggest disease today is not leprosy, nor tuberculosis, not AIDS, nor cancer. Rather, the greatest disease in the world today is the "feeling of being undesirable, overlooked and abandoned by all".

Aren’t her words profound and still touch our hearts today?

And so faith for Jesus and for Mother Teresa is not "the holding for true of certain sentences" or following certain religious dogmas.

Faith is also not a certain religious behavior. It is not a means to become part of a "better group of society."

No, faith is a deep trust of the heart that sends us to serve other people. We carry the mercy and compassion of Jesus deep inside, at the bottom of our hearts, in the pit of our stomachs.

Faith is also not a one-time decision, not a holding for true of certain religious teachings, but a following of the example of Jesus.

Faith is this deep trust in God. It is down in the bottom of the abdomen; it is deep in our heart; where God shapes us over time in our hearts and creates in us compassionate behavior as we begin to see others as Jesus saw them.

Mother Teresa said: We cannot boast of our faith. We can't proudly say, "Didn't I make a good decision back then? Or: let me tell you about the time I made my choice for Jesus Christ, and how I became the example of faith." As you can see, there is no room for boasting when it comes to trust. One cannot boast of one's own faith. One cannot boast of one's own salvation, for this is all a gift from God. It is God himself who embodied in Jesus what faith means. Faith means trusting in God, which then becomes a daily practice.�

Mother Teresa gave a lecture when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She said, "We are created in God's image. We were created to love and be loved, and then God became a human who enabled us to love as He loved us."

“In the midst of all the trials of today's world – the material plight of the poor, the suffering of the sick and dying, the inner emptiness of those who are considered rich, the poverty of those who are undesirable and unloved”– Mother Teresa assures us: "The good news is that God still loves the world." God loves the world "through each of us," she said. "You are God's good news; You are God's love in action. Through you, God still loves the world.

Every time people come into contact with us, they will become renewed and better people because they have come to know us.

Let us radiate God's love."

Mother Teresa went on to say: You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have eyes to see. Wherever you go, you will find people who are undesirable, unloved, unkempt, simply rejected by society." "Do we know our poor here? Do we really know them? If we don't know them, we can't love them.'

She also said: "Giving yourself to others is not always easy, especially when we look at others with worldly eyes.” "Prayer is something that will help us to see God in one another. And if we have the joy of seeing God in one another, then we will love one another. Therefore, no color, no religion, no nationality should come between us. For we are all the same children of the same loving hand of God." Mother Teresa confessed: "When I was young in faith, I prayed that God would feed the hungry, or would do this or that, but now I pray that He will lead me to do all I can do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I pray for strength. I used to think that prayer

changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things."

These words of Mother Teresa also speak to us today. They ask us to open our eyes today to the people around us, whether they are in material or spiritual need. They can be on the street or in our neighborhoods or even in our own families, and they can't wait."

Compassionate love begins today," Mother Teresa pleaded. "Today someone suffers, today someone is on the street, today someone is hungry. Our work is for today, yesterday has passed, tomorrow has not yet come – today we have to make Jesus known to the people. Today we should love, serve, prepare food, clothe and protect. Today - don't wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may not come.

Tomorrow we will not have them, if we do not take care of them today. " With these words, we are pointed entirely to the here and now, to today. Don’t we all understand these words of Mother Teresa more than ever before, as we live through this time of the pandemic?

Let us live our faith. In here and now. Let us make visible the heart and the hands of Jesus. And let us practice compassion: with ourselves and with all we meet. Amen

Intercessory Prayer

Dear church, let us now pray the intercessory prayer for this world together.

When I say: We pray together, then the worship community answers: God, have mercy with us!

Gracious God, so many people are suffering these days and months.

We think of the sick, the dying, the bereaved, and all the sad among us.

We hunger and thirst for the presence of your Spirit, for your spirit is love, righteousness, and compassion.

We pray together: God, have mercy with us!

Jesus, our brother, so many people are suffering these days and months.

We think of those who have lost their jobs, the small business owners who had to close their shops, all hungry children and lonely grandparents, We hunger and thirst for the presence of your Spirit, for your spirit is love, righteousness, and compassion.

We pray together: God, have mercy with us!

Healing Spirit of God, so many people are suffering these days and months.

We think of those who are discriminated against because of their skin color or culture of origin, of all refugees in prisons and all people who have to live in fear.

We think of people who don't have health insurance or no money.

And of the people who have no home and no family.

We hunger and thirst for the presence of your Spirit, for your spirit is love, righteousness, and compassion.

We pray together: God, have mercy with us!

Jesus, you come and sit at the table with us.

You bear with us our illness, our fears and our suffering.

You came not for the healthy, but for the sick.

You are not looking for those who justify themselves, but for those who call for you.

We pray together: God, have mercy with us!

Spirit of God, we call upon you.

Our hearts are tired and sick.

Come with Your Love, Your Healing Righteousness, and Your Compassion And change us, our society and our world.

Amen

We pray together with the words that Jesus taught us: Our Father in Heaven Hallowed be Your name Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our sin, just as we forgive those who sin against us.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory Forever and ever, Amen Blessing Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

May God give you love for all the small things every day.

Each person you meet who is in need is Jesus in disguise.

May your eyes be opened to how Jesus wants to meet you this week.

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

May your eyes and mouth smile hundred times a day.

Be a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

May God’s Spirit of Love, Compassion and Justice be able to write a love letter to the world through your life.