My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

James 1:19-21

Communion thought for Sunday, Feb 4

I will sing about the Lord’s faithful love forever; I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations with my mouth.

Have you ever heard the voice of God? What would you do if you had?

James describes the church as a brotherhood of believers. Tom’s sermon explores what the analogy should mean to the church today.

The first major snowstorm of 2024 caused us to cancel in-person worship on Sunday, but most of us still managed to come together via our Zoom link (which anyone can do, just email us for the URL). The first Sunday of the month, we typically forego a sermon, and have an extended communion service instead. This is the recording of the communion service.

What do you know about Ebenezer Scrooge?

 He's a character in the novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published December 1843, 180 years ago this month. It's been translated into 39 languages, and there are at last count, 135 adaptations of it on stage, screen, and radio.

Here is what you need to know:

 Jacob Marley was dead. He died on Christmas Eve seven years before our story has even begun. He died alone. He had only one friend in the world, and that friend was one Ebenezer Scrooge.

Mind you, when I say he was Marley’s friend, I only mean that they were business partners. Their firm was named Scrooge and Marley, even now seven years after Marley’s death.

Scrooge had never bothered to paint out Marley’s name on the sign.

Dickens describes Scrooge this way:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

Sermon: Patrick Barber

We focus on two gifts in scripture: One, the recipient had asked for and received, along with numerous blessings besides. The other gift was one no one would ever have even thought to ask for, though through it, the entire world was blessed…

1 Kings 3:1-15; Luke 1:26-56

Sermon / Communion thought on how the church is Christ’s body

Lately, I’ve been drawn to songs that are socially conscious, like the Youngbloods’ Come Together, Bob Dylan’s The Times, They are a’ Changing, and Blowing in the Wind. One song that hit me recently was a song by Peter Gabriel, a musician who used to front the progressive rock band Genesis in the late sixties to mid seventies. Actually, there are three, all from his third solo album.

Games Without Frontiers is a song you might still hear on classic rock radio stations. It’s a commentary on the futility of war, but also its inevitability, because of human nature.

Another song is called Biko, written as a eulogy for Stephen Biko, an anti-apartheid activist who died in police custody on September 12, 1977 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The government had reported he’d died of malnutrition after a hunger strike, but the truth was that he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury from police beatings and died.

But the song I’m going to talk about this morning is called Not One of Us.

Where do you get your news?

On November 12, Gary Burke preached a sermon about metaphors and figures used by Jesus to describe his church, and ways in which we might skew our understanding of the church by overemphasizing some metaphors at the expense of others…

Last week, guest speaker Ken Bever spoke of a mustard seed that grows into a large tree. This week, Tom Yoakum shares a story of a different tree he was reminded of, the tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4, and what was to become of it… and him.

Ken Bever, president and co-founder of Hope fore Haiti’s Children, spoke to us about how a small seed can lead to great works.

Scripture: Matthew 13:31-33

Though we are a servant survivor congregation, we have a mission to seek and save the lost as we go. The sermon this week focuses on Isaiah 2, and how it connects to the baptism of one Ethiopian eunuch who traveled thousands of miles just to worship at the temple…

Dennis Lacoss shares scriptures regarding the second coming of Christ

During the final week of Jesus’s earthly ministry, all of the gospels record that he entered the temple courts and drove out those buying and selling and converting currency. John’s gospel adds the detail that he did so wielding a whip he himself had made out of cords. This is not only a premeditated act, but possibly the most violent act of Jesus’s ministry.

Storrs Road Celebrates 50 Years

Sermon: Phillip Elliott

Scripture: Luke 6:17-26

Communion: Dayton Miyashiro

Sermon by Tom Yoakum

Communion by Meshach Ojo

A song service of members’ favorite hymns, introduced by Dennis Lacoss and conducted by Angela C. Howell.