Call to Worship - Mother's Day

Lord Jesus, your name drips off my lips like drops of gold...

 

Mmmmmmm...

 

And Lord Jesus, Emmanuel, you are God with us...

 

Preach, preacher!!!

 

And Lord Jesus, your light is one that restores our souls to glory...

 

Yes, Jesus!!! Yes!!!

 

But we come to confess a disturbance in the force.  We often forget in our own lives what Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies...

 

“You don’t know the power of the dark side!!!”

 

And we don’t.  We are seduced by the dark side.  We are tempted into a complicity and apathy that stems from living inside a broken system.  In the movie The Usual Suspects starring Kevin Spacey, his character says about the main antagonist in the film:

 

Who is Keyser Söze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Söze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

 

Today in churches across this great land people are trying to convince us that we do not need God; that we can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together with the fairies and that’s God enough.

 

But life is tough, and hearts get broken day after day.  We see a church unable to capture our imaginations, and a church unable to preach to us though we live in the struggle.  The church preaches pie-in-the-sky while on earth we hunger for a God who is a bit more earthy; a God who is just a bit more human.

 

Well, have I got news for you, folks.

 

Say it again, preacher.

 

Well, have I got news for you, folks.  Today, just before you woke up, the light from a flaming ball of hydrogen spilled across the horizon, and it was the dawn.  This is the same way that Jesus comes close to us.  Jesus has called me to preach good news to you weary souls.  Jesus has shown me a way into a church who is sick and tired of churches theologizing; he has shown me a way into a church where real people, with real lives, and real fears seek the honest good news of what God has done.  And so, as the Sun of Righteousness pours himself out upon us I ask, are you ready to GET YO PRAISE ON?

 

HALLELUJAH!!!