Emmanuel Mennonite Church
Save us from the time of trial Lord,
Save us from the time of trial.
“Proclaiming peace through Christ”
Your Spirit comforts those who endure trials.
We pray for our community and for our neighbors.
(open prayers)
Save us from the time of trial, Lord,
Save us from the time of trial.
Meeting House
1236 NW 18th Avenue
Gainesville, FL 32609
Phone: 352-377-6577
e-mail: gnvmenno@bellsouth.net
Pastor: Eve MacMaster
web site: gainesvillemennonites.org
You hold your people securely in your care.
We pray for the church in all places,
that we may daily follow in the footsteps of Christ.
(open prayers)
Save us from the time of trial, Lord,
Save us from the time of trial.
______________________________________________________
You alone are worthy of trust. We pray for the world,
for those in positions of power and authority.
(open prayers)
Save us from the time of trial, Lord,
Save us from the time of trial.
*GATHERING/PRAISING
I will call upon the Lord
God of our strength
We offer you other concerns we carry in our hearts.
(open prayers)
Save us from the time of trial, Lord,
Save us from the time of trial.
God of grace and glory, you fling the stars into the heavens;
you see every sparrow fall.
Deepen our trust in the mystery of your power
shining through Christ Jesus,
that we may live your love for the world.
In the name of the one who taught us, we pray:
Our Father . . .
INVITATION TO THE OFFERING
*SUNG RESPONSE
Praise God from whom
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
*SENDING SONG
*BENEDICTION
I am weak and I need thy strength
Hymnal 119
Hymnal 553
February 14, 2016
First Sunday in Lent
*Please stand as you are able
Sing the Journey 19
Hymnal 36
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: We gather in this Lenten season to remember, repent,
and seek renewal.
People: Creator God,
open our minds and hearts to your Spirit
and help us to claim your promises.
Leader: We see your movement through history:
from destruction to provision,
from flood to foundation,
from death to life.
People: You are an active, responsive God.
We trust your mysterious ways and rest in your mercy.
ALL: AMEN.
LIGHTING THE PEACE LAMP
OPENING PRAYER
CONFESSING/RECONCILING
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
(silence)
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and sustain in me a willing spirit. Amen.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble, I rescue them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation.
EPISTLE LESSON
A reading from Romans 10:8b-13 (The Scripture is read)
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
*HYMN
THE PEACE OF CHRIST
Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us forgive one another:
The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
And also with you.
OLD TESTAMENT LESSON
A reading from Deuteronomy 26:1-11 (The Scripture is read)
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
RESPONSIVE PRAYER
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Leader: Those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
People: will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
Because you have made the LORD your refuge,
the Most High your habitation,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
For he will give his angels charge of you,
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Because you cleave to me in love, I will deliver you;
I will protect you, because you know my name.
And I will raise you up
Hymnal 596
GOSPEL LESSON
A reading from Luke 4:1-13 (The Scripture is read)
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
SERMON
*HYMN
When we are tempted
Sing the Story 81
SILENT REFLECTION:
Where have you sensed God’s Holy Spirit among us this morning?
SHARING REFLECTIONS
INTRODUCTIONS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
SHARING JOYS AND CONCERNS
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Rejoice in the Lord always.
The Lord is near.
Do not worry about anything,
but in everything with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God.
Savior God, we bring our prayers to you
as acts of love for you and for our neighbors.
In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.
Your power protects us in times of trouble.
We pray for ourselves and those dear to us.
(open prayers)
WELCOME VISITORS! We’re glad you’re here! Please sign the guest
book and join us for a Valentine’s Day lunch after the worship service.
your God has given to you and to your house -- you and the Levite, and the
sojourner who is among you. .
TODAY AT MEETING HOUSE Sunday school, 10:00 a.m. We are
reading the Letter to the Romans. Worship, 11:00 a.m. Valentine’s Day
lunch, 12:15 p.m.
ROMANS 10:8b-13
The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of
faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will
be saved. For people believes with their hearts and so are justified, and they
confess with the mouth and so are saved.
The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of
all and bestows his riches on all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
SERVING TODAY: Music direction, vocal solo, Kay Martin; Flute,
Ginny Campbell; Worship leading, Dick MacMaster; Scripture reading,
Paul Campbell; Sermon, Eve MacMaster; Sharing, Kathy Navajas
TUESDAY, February 16: Men’s group and Qi Gong class at Martin’s
WEDNESDAY February 17: The Great Debaters, 7:00 p.m.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mark Moser, February 17
DEUTERONOMY 26:1-11
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God gives you
for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall
take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from
your land that the LORD your God gives you, and you shall put it in a
basket, and you shall go to the place that the LORD your God will choose,
to make his name dwell there.
And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to
him, “I declare this day to the LORD your God that I have come into the
land that the LORD swore to our fathers to give us.”
Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down
before the altar of the LORD your God.
And you shall make response before the LORD your God: “A wandering
Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there,
few in number; and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, and laid on us hard
bondage. Then we cried to the LORD the God of our fathers; and the LORD
heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the
LORDS brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm, with terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place
and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And look, now I
bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”
And you shall set it down before the LORD your God and worship before
the LORD your God; and you shall rejoice in all the good which the LORD
LUKE 4:1-13
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led
by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he
ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to
become bread.”
And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread
alone.’”
And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world
in a moment of time and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority
and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.
If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.”
And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
And he took him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here;
for it is written,
‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’
and
‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your
God.’”
And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him
until an opportune time.
THE GREAT DEBATERS, US, 2007. 124 minutes.
From a review by Roger Ebert, who listed The Great Debaters as one of the
year’s ten best films.
The Great Debaters" is about an underdog debate team that wins a national
championship, and some critics have complained that it follows the formula
of all sports movies by leading up, through great adversity, to a victory at the
end. So it does. How many sports movies, or movies about underdogs
competing in any way, have you seen that end in defeat? It is human nature
to seek inspiration in victory, and this is a film that is affirming and inspiring
and re-creates the stories of a remarkable team and its coach.
The team is from little Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, a black institution
in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s. The school's English professor, Melvin
Tolson (Denzel Washington, who also directed the movie), is a taskmaster
who demands the highest standards from his debate team, and they're
rewarded with a national championship. That's what the "sports movie" is
about, but the movie is about so much more, and in ways that do not follow
formulas.
There are, for example, Tolson's secret lives. Wearing overalls and work
boots, he ventures out incognito as an organizer for a national sharecropper's
union. He's a dangerous radical, local whites believe: probably a communist.
But he's organizing both poor whites and blacks, whose servitude is equal.
He keeps his politics out of the classroom, however, where he conceals a
different kind of secret: He is one of America's leading poets. Although the
movie barely touches on it, Tolson published long poems in such magazines
as the Atlantic Monthly and in 1947 was actually named poet laureate of
Liberia. Ironic, that his role as a debate coach would win him greater fame
today.
He holds grueling auditions and selects four team members: Henry Lowe
(Nate Parker), who drinks and fools around but is formidably intelligent;
Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams), a superb debater; James Farmer Jr.
(Denzel Whitaker), a precocious 14-year-old who is their researcher, and
Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), the substitute, and the only female
debater they've heard of. Tolson drills them, disciplines them, counsels them
and leads them to a string of victories that culminates a victory over Harvard,
the national champion.
We get a good sense of the nurturing black community that has produced
these students, in particular James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker), a preacher.
(Young Denzel Whitaker, as his son, is no relation, and not named after
Washington). James Jr. would go on to found C.O.R.E. ( the Congress of
Racial Equality).
Tolson drives his team on long road trips to out-of-town debates, and one
night traveling late, they have the defining emotional experience of the film:
They happen upon a scene where a white mob has just lynched a black man
and set his body afire. They barely escape with their own lives. And daily life
for them is fraught with racist peril; especially for Tolson, who has been
singled out by the local sheriff as a rabble-rouser. These experiences inform
their debates as much as formal research.
The movie is not really about how this team defeats the national champions.
It is more about how its members, its coach, its school and community
believe that an education is their best way out of the morass of racism and
discrimination. They would find it unthinkable that decades in the future,
serious black students would be criticized by jealous contemporaries for
"acting white." They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they
express all this most dramatically in their debating.
The debates themselves have one peculiarity: The Wiley team somehow
draws the "good" side of every question. Since debaters are supposed to
defend whatever position they draw, it might have been intriguing to see
them defend something they disbelieve, even despise. Still, I suppose I
understand why that isn't done here; it would have interrupted the flow. And
the flow becomes a mighty flood in a powerful and impassioned story. This
is one of the year's best films.
NOTE: In fact, the real Wiley team did beat the national champions, but from
The University of Southern California (USC), not Harvard. Co-writer Robert
Eisele explains, "In that era, there was much at stake when a black college
debated any white school, particularly one with the stature of Harvard. We
used Harvard to demonstrate the heights they achieved."
The film omits another reality: even though they beat the reigning
champions, the Great Debaters were not allowed to call themselves victors
because they were not truly considered to belong to the debate society;
blacks were not admitted until after World War II.