Sermon Tone Analysis

*Prayer of Preparation         *Psalm 126 A pilgrim song

It seemed like a dream, too good to be true, …We laughed, we sang, we couldn’t believe our good fortune.

We were the talk of the nations - “God was wonderful to them!”

God /was/ wonderful to us; we are one happy people.

And now, God, …bring rains to our drought-stricken lives  So those who planted their crops in despair will shout hurrahs at the harvest, So those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

TM

*Prelude*

*Introit*

*welcome, announcements, joys and concerns*

*~*Hymn*      Beneath the Cross               *# *127 

*~*Call to Worship~/~*Invocation* ~/ Lord’s Prayer

Leader: Gracious God, give us generous hearts ...

to share whatever gift it is that you have given to us .... \\ All: Gracious God, give us generous hearts.

\\ Leader: To acknowledge you as the giver and source of life.

\\ All: Gracious God, give us grateful hearts.

\\ Leader: To give without counting the cost ... \\ All: Gracious God, give us unselfish hearts.

\\ Leader: To share without expecting something in return ... \\ All: Gracious God, give us compassionate hearts.

\\ Leader: To hold all of our treasures with open hands ... \\ All: Gracious God, give us freed-up hearts.

\\ Leader: To have gospel priorities ... \\ All: Gracious God, give us loving hearts.

\\ Leader: To recognize the abundance of blessings in each passing day ... \\ All: Gracious God, give us seeing hearts.

\\ Leader: To fall more deeply in love with the God of all generosity.

\\ All: Gracious God, give us generous hearts.

\\ --Adapted from Joyce Rupp, Fresh Bread and Other Gifts of Spiritual Nourishment \\ Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, at it is in heaven.

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

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever.Amen

*~*Gloria Patri* \\ *Young’s Peoples Moment *   Help the children make a list of people for whom they should and for whom they want to pray.

Make the list as long as you can, as we are instructed to pray for everyone.

Pray with the children, not just for ourselves, but for everyone.--Philip

Schroeder \\ Call to Prayer              Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

Prayer Hymn               I Will Sing the Wondrous Story      # 284 v 4 

*Pastoral Prayer           *Create in us a clean heart, O God.

When we are tired of the sameness; when we're busy, yet there seems so little meaning in what we do; when wrong choice or injustice from another leaves a residue of leftover pain, hurt or anger which preoccupies our time; in all such times, O Lord, how we long for a clean heart and a right spirit.

You alone have the eraser which gives us a fresh new beginning, Lord.

We may apologize, we may feel sorry, but you are the one who forgives and helps us to forgive.

We must ask for it.

We have to want new beginnings.

In our better moments, we do.

Create in us a clean heart, O God.  --Earle W. Fike, Jr., Please Pray With Me (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Press, 1990)

Ps51- God, Generous in love - give us grace!

Huge in mercy - wipe out my bad record.

Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry.

I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down.

You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil.

You have all the facts before you;

whatever you decide about me is fair.

I’ve been out of step with you for a long time...  What you’re after is truth from the inside out.

Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.

Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing.

Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health.

God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me.

Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!

Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home.

Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.

Unbutton my lips, dear God; I’ll let loose with your praise.

Going through the motions doesn’t please you, a flawless performance is nothing to you.

I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered.

Heart-shattered lives ready for love don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.

Create in us a clean heart, O God.

*Musical response*

*Offertory sentence     *all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.

Deut 16:17

*offering*    Doxology

*offertory prayer          *Creator God, by whose will the world came into being and who has given us life and sustenance:  with thankful hearts we praise you for your goodness and thank you for your bounty.

*Hymn*                        On a Hill Far Away               *# *251

*Scripture Text        */Luke 16:1-13/  1Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.

2So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you?

Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’

3Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me?

I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’

5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’

He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’

7Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’

He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’

He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’

8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.

9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

10“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and wealth.”

* *

*Sermon               *The Truth of Love* *

*Truth is not an ideology.

Truth is a relationship; truth is a person.*

Jesus has been addressing the scribes and Pharisees, and he now turns and offers a message for the disciples.

The man eventually tagged as the "dishonest manager" is first described as being only a rather inept manager - for the charge that gets him in trouble with his master is "squandering" his property (v.1).

Unlike outright theft, this term suggests that the steward's poor performance at the job was costing his master money.

Quite sensibly, the master gives his inefficient manager a pink slip.

\\ The steward now faces an uncertain future - and he quickly dismisses the options of manual labor or simply begging.

He determines that his next course of action must be one that will result in people welcoming him into their homes when he is finally dismissed.

Whether it was correcting an earlier practice of unlawful usury or a straightforward case of theft, the previously inept steward can now be described as a genuinely dishonest steward.

There is no doubt that he is cooking the books.

\\ The steward's actions are discovered by his master - with confusing results.

Instead of cursing the steward for his actions, the master commends him for his business shrewdness.

This conclusion is so unexpected and so hard to imagine on the lips of Jesus that some commentators have simply thrown in the towel.

~/~/~/~/~/

One decade ago, in March 1994, the huge defense contractor Martin Marietta returned to the Pentagon some 540 overpayments, totaling $135 million.