Sermon Tone Analysis

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*Theme                 *What does it mean to distribute the weight of the cross?
Prelude
Welcome
Call to Worship  
Leader: God’s love for our world is strong and true and whole.
\\ \\ People: God loves us and we seek to live and share such love.
\\ \\ Leader: As we journey on through these Lenten days, may we feast in God’s constant love.
\\ \\ People: God’s love overflows upon us and God’s Son fills us with life abundant.
\\ \\ Leader: Let us sing of God’s love.
\\ \\ People: Let us rejoice in the life of abundance
~*Hymn of Praise          # 415        There Is a Balm in Gilead
~*Invocation        (the Lord’s Prayer)       O God, there are so many voices that call to us daily.
They call to us and compete for our trust and our allegiance.
As we hear those voices, help us to listen only to the voice of your son, that empowered by your Spirit we may faithfully follow him now and always.
~*Gloria Patri
Anthem                                                      Eugene Lindusky
No other Plea
Play a game of “follow the leader” with the children.
Lead them around the worship space and have them imitate you as you raise your right hand, then your left hand, hop on one foot, and then the other.
Introduce a number of ridiculous gestures as you lead the group around.
Sit the children down and ask them who gets to make decisions in this game about how the group will walk.
The leader!
Point out that the game falls apart if the followers are not willing to copy the leader.
Let them know that Jesus had a problem when his disciples were not willing to “follow the leader.”
Explain that Jesus told them that he would have to suffer and be killed, and his disciple Peter said that this could not happen.
Ask them if they can guess what Jesus said to Peter.
Tell them that he said “Get behind me,” meaning that the disciples would have to fall into line and imitate him (Mark 8:31-33).
Ask the children if this kind of “follow the leader” would be difficult to play.
Yes!
But let them know that Jesus promises to take care of everyone who follows him, by leading them to eternal life with God.
Our  Offering to God               (same as last week)
~*Doxology
~*Prayer of Dedication           Loving God, you gave your son to suffer and die for the sake of our sins so we might have an abundant life.
Since Jesus gave his life for us, help us in turn give our lives to him through these gifts we bring.
Empower us to live our lives with joy and thanksgiving, trusting that as we take up our crosses and follow Jesus, he will be there to guide and direct us.
Amen.
Scripture Reading                *Genesis 17:1–7, 15–16 *
The passage reflects God’s covenant renewal to Abram and Sarai, promising that they will become the parents of a son, even in their old age.
Included in this passage are their name changes to Abraham and Sarah.
* *
~*Hymn of Prayer          insert                Heal Me, Hands of Jesus
Pastoral Prayer  Loving God, we humbly confess that all too often we are more interested in listening to the voices of this world than we are in listening to your voice.
Those voices claim us daily, and tempt us to follow them to places more destructive than we could ever imagine.
Those voices would have us believe that we do not need you, or the power of your love.
They would make us think that we are our own gods, and that we can provide for our needs.
Help us, we pray, to listen to you and your son as he invites us to take up our crosses and follow him.
Help us to trust that as we take up our crosses, Christ goes with us – sharing our burdens, knowing our pain.
For through Jesus’ suffering and death we have been given new life and new hope to realize that as we carry our crosses, nothing will be able to separate us from the power of your love.
Amen.
Gracious God, so many people and voices cry out to us and ask us to follow.
It is often more difficult than we can bear to hear your voice in the midst of the disharmony of this world.
Help us block out all the voices which would lead us astray from you.
Help us to see that of all the voices in this world, we can trust and be attentive to your voice.
For as your son invites us to follow, he knows our voices, he has experienced our lives, and he responds to our cries.
Help us, we pray, to accept his invitation willingly and without delay, so that we might celebrate your faithfulness to us, and in turn, nurture our faithfulness in you.
Amen.
~*Hymn of Praise          # 503        “Jesus Calls Us O’er the Tumult”
 
Scripture Reading                *Mark 8:31–38 *
Jesus predicts his suffering and death.
As he does, he not only rebukes Peter for his inability to accept the prediction, but he invites his disciples to take their crosses and follow him.
Message            The Upside of Death
*From the suicides of white blood cells to the crucifixion of Jesus, death has a surprising way of supporting new life.*
Death is a part of life.
In fact, we wouldn’t be alive without it.
\\ Cells are dying all the time in our bodies.
And these are not random deaths — they are programmed deaths for our own good.
\\ Look at your hand.
It has five fingers because the cells that used to live between them died way back when you were an embryo.
Embryos as small as eight to 16 cells in size depend on cell death — if it did not occur, our human development would go off course.
You might say that if it were not for death, we would not even be born.
\\ Cell death is what keeps us from being overrun with cancer.
Natural surveillance systems — such as the one involving the p53 protein, nicknamed “the guardian of the genome” — detect almost all cancerous mutations and direct the affected cells to commit suicide.
\\ These cancer cells die so that we might live.
\\ In addition, programmed cell death causes a constant turnover of cells in the gut lining, and it generates our skin’s protective outer layer of dead cells.
When our immune system has finished wiping out an infection, the now-unnecessary white blood cells commit suicide in a very orderly fashion.
This allows the inflammation caused by the infection to go down.
\\ The human body stays alive, in large part, because of death.
Certain cells die because of the benefit this brings to the greater whole.
\\ Jesus knows that there is an upside to death, which is why he says to his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed” (Mark 8:31).
He says this quite openly, like a biology teacher giving a lecture on cellular mitosis.
But Peter has never heard such outrageous talk, so he takes Jesus aside and tries to silence him.
Jesus then turns the tables on Peter and rebukes him, saying, “Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (8:33).
\\ Jesus knew that “the Son of Man” /must/ undergo great suffering and be killed.
He must die because of the benefit this brings to the greater whole.
Jesus dies to pay the price for our sins.
Jesus dies to reconcile us to God.
Jesus dies to show us how much God loves us.
Jesus dies to call us to follow him in suffering service.
Jesus dies to achieve victory over death.
Jesus dies so that we might live.
\\ Like programmed cell death, the death of Jesus brings benefit to the greater whole.
It may look like foolishness to the world, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
The challenge for us is to see how we can find the upside of death in the lives we live each day.
\\ This is not to say that we have to live in a world of loss and grief.
But it does mean that we find a way to respond to the call of Jesus when he says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (8:34).
To become a follower of Jesus means to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for the good of all.
It means to be willing to deny ourselves for the benefit of the larger human organism.
\\ Thomas Cannon did this in a truly remarkable way.
He was a postal worker in Richmond, Virginia, who lived much of his life on the edge of poverty so that he could give to those in need.
Describing himself as “a poor man’s philanthropist,” he gave away more than $150,000 to people who were experiencing hard times, or who had been unusually kind or brave.
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