Love – call to worship
As we gather today in worship,
each part of our service will reflect the nine Fruits of the Spirit. Our first fruit is that of Love. Without love, there would be no reason to
even gather together as a family of faith.
Worship is our way to say Thank you to God. Thank you God for loving us. Thank you God for giving us the gift of
love. In worship, we can learn more
about how this fruit can grow in our lives and how we can share it with others.
We show the fruit of Love by
volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, by donating to the Roxbury Food Pantry,
and through our time of being together as a church family.
Because God first loved us – let us join
together with our call to worship:
Self-control – confession
In the Dr. Seuss Book – The
Lorax, the Oncler has no self control.
He finds a tree that is perfect for his Thneed and so he cuts down tree
after tree after tree in order to make more and more Thneeds. He has no self-control over his factory and
creates pollution. All he cares about is
himself and making more Thneeds so he can make more money. His loss of self-control leads to ruin, ruin
not just for himself, but for all the animals that once lived where the trees
grew. God calls us to live in harmony
with the world around us which can only happen if we produce the fruit of
self-control. Let us ask God to
strengthen us in our self-control through our unison prayer of confession.
Patience – forgiveness
Hear these words from Psalm 103
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
One of the fruits God asks us to bear is patience. Thankfully, our God is a patient God. God calls us to learn from him. Part of being patient involves forgiving
others and forgiving ourselves. Because
our God is patient, we can rest assure that forgives us when we lose our
self-control and provides us the nurture we need as we bear the fruit of
patience within ourselves.
Hear the Good News of God’s
forgiving patience for us:
As God’s
chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one
another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other;
just as the Lord[b]has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive.
Peace – passing of the Peace
As we abide in God, we are
called to bare the spiritual fruit of peace.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus says:
Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. As peacemakers, we proclaim this church to be
a bully free zone. In our schools we
seek ways to be kind to each other, to treat each other with respect and not to
be mean. Wherever we are: in church, in
school, at work, hanging out with our friends, we can bear the fruit of
Peace. When we are kind, when we are
gentle, when we are loving, when we are filled with self-control, there will be
peace.
We traditionally share the
peace of Christ with each other after we have confessed our sins and heard the
Good News of our forgiveness. Once we
are forgiven by God, we show our forgiveness of each other through the passing
of the peace. To truly bare the fruit of
peace, we must be reconciled not just to God but to one another. Throughout our lives, we will have struggles
and challenges. There will be times when
we will be angry, when we will not want to listen to others, when we will be so
hurt that we will not want to forgive.
Remind us of the fruit of Peace, that we need to nurture this fruit as
it ripens on the vine of our lives. Remind
us that this is a fruit that grows in community and that we are all responsible
for its care. As a community that is
called to be Peacemakers, let us now share the peace of Christ with one
another.
Faithfulness-
scripture
Our Bible is a collection of
stories about faithfulness. It is about
God’s faithfulness to us and how people learn to be faithful to God. We cannot bear the fruit of faithfulness
without reading the stories of the Bible.
These stories are our stories.
When we read the Bible, we
learn about how we should care for the earth, how we should care for each
other, and how we should love God. Faithfulness
is believing that God is Who the Bible says God is. It is trusting God is at work in the world restoring everything for good. Faithfulness is trusting that God is at work
in each of us. As we read the stories of
the Bible and connect our lives to these stories, we begin to have a clearer
picture of how God is working in our own lives and in the world around us.
The following Scripture readings is form the
Gospel of John and shows how important it is to be connected to God in order to
bear fruit.
Jesus says:
Jesus says:
15 “I am the true vine, and my
Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every
branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes[a] to
make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been
cleansed[b] by
the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I
abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides
in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you
are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because
apart from me you can do nothing. 6
. 8 My Father is
glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become[c] my
disciples.9 As
the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my
commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s
commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these
things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.13 No one has greater
love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.14 You are my friends if
you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you
servants[d] any
longer, because the servant[e] does
not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I
have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me
but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will
last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these
commands so that you may love one another.
Gentleness
The second scripture readings is from Galatians 5
The Fruit of the Spirit
22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such
things. 2
As a young person, there are
a lot of choices for activities. Some
young people like to play soccer and football while others like to play musical
instruments or do art. I like to
dance. In dancing, there are gentle
movements and it is graceful. Football
and soccer can be rough, people get tackled and knocked over and sometimes even
hurt. Dancing embraces the gentle
spirit, the spirit of grace and respect for each other. Other forms of gentleness might be holding a
kitten or a puppy. We are gentle so as
not to hurt something else. At
Christmas, when we are decorating the Christmas tree, we might need to be
gentle with fragile ornaments, since we do not want them to break.
God invites us to bear the
fruit of gentleness, in doing this, we need to think about things that might
hurt others, whether it is someone’s feelings or something someone might
own. Being gentle also means we don’t
brag about ourselves. Being a great
athlete is a wonderful thing, but if all we do is go around telling people how
great we are, we are not filled with the spirit of gentleness. We may also bear the fruit of gentleness by
giving thanks to God that we are created with bodies that allow us to be great
athletes, or great artists, or great musicians.
By being a gentle person, we will embrace the fruit of love, peace, and
kindness.
Generosity – offering
What does it mean to be
generous? Learning to share with others,
such as sharing toys with my sister or with a friend. It might mean letting someone else have the
last piece of pizza or the bigger piece of cake. We can be generous with our time, with our
money, with our love, and with the stuff we own. Here at the church, we can be generous by
bringing in canned food items for the Roxbury food pantry or by donating summer
items to Family Promise for homeless families in our community. We can be generous with our time by
volunteering in our community. We can be
generous with our love by giving a friend a hug when they seem sad. God asks us to be a generous people. As we give our offering, we are sharing
something that is ours and asking God to bless it so that it can be used in
God’s work with other people.
Prayer after offering is collected:
Loving God, bless these gifts
so that they be used in your ministry both, here in this church and out in the
greater world. Amen.
Kindness – prayers of the people
Each Sunday in church, we
have a time where we pray for one another.
This is the spiritual fruit of Kindness.
We spend time thinking about others, about their struggles and we ask
God to bring healing into their lives.
Sometimes we pray for people we know, and sometimes we pray for people
that we do not know, this is an act of kindness, to give of ourselves for
others. In Sunday School, we showed kindness by making cards for our homebound
members. We wanted to let them know we are thinking of them.
Each day God asks us to be
kind. Kind to our parents, kind to our
brothers and sisters, kind to our friends.
Sometimes people can be mean to us and hurt our feelings. As we learn more about the fruit of kindness,
we try not to be mean back. We do not
always have to be friends with everyone, but we do need to be kind. As we pray for our families, our community
and the greater world, we pray that there will be more kindness.
Let us pray
Lord, make me an
instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
Joy – Benediction
We gather to worship as a way
to say thank you to God for the way in which God loves us. Now, as we go out into the world, back to our
homes, to school, to work, to the week ahead, we go out with the Spiritual
Fruit of Joy. This fruit is one that is
centered not in human feelings, but is how we respond to God’s presence in our
life. The fruit of joy is something that
grows deep within our souls and gives us strength. At Christmas, we sing: Joy to the World. We are happy about the birth of baby Jesus,
we are rejoicing that God has given us our Savior. As we leave worship, we go out rejoicing,
rejoicing that God is always present with us, for the world has received her
King, we ask him to rule in our hearts, and we will sing God’s praise.
Benediction:
Joy to the world: Let earth receive her King
Joy to the world: our Savior reigns
Joy to the world: He comes to make his blessings flow
May the Fruit of Joy be upon
each and everyone, this and every day.
Amen.
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