Estes Park United Methodist Church
January 3, 2021
Prelude – Break Forth, O Beautious Heavenly Light
Greeting/Welcome
Call To Worship
Leader: O God, Searcher of all our hearts, you have formed us as a people and claimed us for your own.
People: As we enter this new year, we would like to have a clean start, brush off the past year like dust off our sandals.
Leader: But the shadow of the past lies over the new. Let us pause and hear what the old year has to teach us about resilience and patience about aloneness and community.
People: Let us pause and remember how God has met us in this time; how God’s love has sustained; What God has revealed to us about neighbors and about neighboring.
Opening Scripture: John 1: 1-9
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, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
Song – Here I am to Worship
The Prayer of Confession: John 1:10-13
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, 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.
Leader: Holy Friend, Savior and Healer of the world, we in your church family admit to you the frustration we feel for our part in the evil that infests humanity.
People: We are called to truth but we prefer darkness to light because our investments are there.
We are called to hope, but we slide into the negativity of the snide and lost.
We are called to mercy, but we harbor grudges and let slip insidious innuendos.
We are called to faith, but we live as if everything depended on us.
We are called to love, but it rarely goes beyond loving those who love us.
God of abundant loving, please forgive your church family for our failure to uphold and express the generosity of your ways. Forgive us for those sins of which we are ashamed, and for the sly sins which as yet we have not recognized and brought out into your light. Please be to us, not the God we deserve but the Savior who heaps grace upon grace. In you alone we place our trust. Through Christ Jesus our Redeemer.
Silent Prayer
Assurance of Pardon
Leader: Sisters and brothers in the family of God, take heart. Christ came into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through love, grace, forgiveness and the renewal of our hearts, might be saved. In his name you are forgiven.
People: Thanks be to God. Amen
Offering and Prayer of Blessing
Scripture: John 1:14-18
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Sermon: “God is Willing”
Closing Song – I am the Light of the World
Benediction
Postlude – We Three Kings