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now so you good morning saints and welcome to worship here in the historic sanctuary of the first congregational church of kalamazoo michigan we're a member church in the united church of christ where every sunday we affirm that no matter who you are and no matter where you are on life's journey you are welcome here my name is nathan damas and i'm one of the pastors of this church i want to personally welcome you to our digital worship service i hope that it provides you the time for peace and renewal and hopefully even a message that you can take with you as you prepare for the week's labor ahead kinfolk we all have a role to play and we all have a place at the table we are each of us a member of the body of christ and so members of one body let us seek his peace together may the peace of christ be with you good morning fcc my name is joshua vreeland and i'd ask that you join me in the call to worship as we come to worship this day let us bring our joys and sorrows believing in hope through christ as we come to worship this day let us come with trust believing in healing through christ as we come to worship this day let us come into god's presence believing that christ offers a new way to live thanks be to god so so foreign so so friends it was nearly three years ago that we first embarked on this journey of sanctuary with our beloved sister auntie sahida every passing day things are beginning to look brighter i think at this time more than ever it is critical that we lift her up in prayer and that we continue to advocate for her visit protectsahida.org to learn more about her story and about the next steps that we can all take to see her restored to her place in our beloved community will you pray with me god eternal refuge we humbly ask that you protect your precious daughter sahida nadim in her time of struggle protect her from those who seek to do her harm give her strength and courage during the day and rest and peace during the night strengthen the spirit of all your children in the community of kalamazoo make them one people for the sake of the poor the wanderer the immigrant and all those seeking refuge in this difficult day amen is happy sunday everyone this is a message for the kids today's scripture talks about a time when jesus met someone with what our scripture calls an unclean spirit sometimes it can be difficult to understand these stories but what we can see is that this person seems upset and jesus responds by setting them free from whatever that force is that was making them feel unsettled and upset this week we have a festival coming up called candlemas candlemas is a time when we remember the event where jesus as a baby was brought to the temple and simeon who was at the temple recognized that jesus was from god and said that jesus would be a light to the whole world jesus also says that he says i am the light of the world i think that our story today is like that it's about jesus bringing light and bringing new possibilities to what looks like an impossible situation so i hope that you will listen carefully to this story and listen to the ways that jesus is bringing possibilities and i hope you will tune in to our candleness video which is up on the youtube channel and you can watch that along with using the materials that will be delivered to your house on tuesday february 2nd look out for deliveries of candle making kits all right here's our blessing dear god thank you for jesus help us find hope in you amen i hope you get some sunshine this week today's scripture reading is from the gospel of mark chapter 1 verses 21-28 i'm reading from the inclusive bible so it may look a bit different from the version you have in front of you they came to capernaum and on the sabbath jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach the people were spellbound by the teaching because jesus taught with an authority that was unlike their religious scholars suddenly a person with an unclean spirit appeared in their synagogue it shrieked what do you want from us jesus of nazareth have you come to destroy us i know who you are the holy one of god jesus rebuked the spirit sharply be quiet come out of that person at that the unclean spirit convulsed the possessed one violently and with a loud shriek it came out all who looked at this were amazed they began to ask one another what is this a new teaching and with such authority this person even gives orders to unclean spirits and they obey immediately news of jesus spread throughout the surrounding region of galilee hear what the spirit of god is saying to the church thanks be to god kindred happy sunday let us pray almighty and ever arriving god we know that you have high expectations for us surprise us and then strengthen our resolve at one of my jobs prior to ministry or concurrent with the beginning of my ministry i worked as a community organizer and through a long roundabout series of twists and turns i had occasion to take a bunch of teenagers on a trip these were some teenagers from a historically redlined and oppressed community to take them all the way to fordham university in the bronx for a week of pretty intense community organizer training i didn't really ask for this uh i'm not typically the first to volunteer for chaperone duty um i'm not like i'm not a bad chaperone i think i'm just i think i'm like too flexible uh i chaperoned a trip one time a long time ago to a museum for a group of kids i was a substitute middle school teacher and so i was in charge of you about half a dozen of these squirrely sixth graders we're walking around this museum and there's this big exhibit i think it was like a caveman exhibit or something australopithecus anyway there's this big fake cave that they built um and i think they got a plastic rocks or something i don't know i was standing there and i was thinking to myself it probably would have been a lot more cost effective to just go with a large scale photograph of a cave and then one of the kids ran up to me and said hey mr animals and then they called me mistered animals uh they said hey mr danimals can we get up on top of that thing and i i said something like you know probably not i don't think the sides of it are load-bearing and you uh you probably would need like a step ladder a rope or something i wonder how they clean it up there like do they you think they bring in a cherry picker or something to never thought that you'd need workers comp to to to have that kind of coverage to work as a custodian at a museum but you know i've never really thought about it i have a friend who works as a docent at a museum i suppose i could and then i looked up and there were five teenagers you know doing the cupid shuffle up on top of this museum exhibit so anyway i get a little in my head sometimes you can't do that when you're a chaperone but i take these kids to fordham university which is in the bronx as you know these these kids were not used to a whole lot of structure in their lives and i was the i was the only white person in our group and i think honest to god probably most of the white people that they knew were either cops or cps agents but i got along well enough with them um but it was hard to get them to listen to me and for good reason i think so i learned to put things in stark terms i'd say listen i don't care what happens to you that's always a good way to start if you don't sit next to me on the subway i swear to god i'm just gonna get off at the correct stop and if you're not paying attention you are literally gonna be lost in the bronx and i am not gonna come find you you're gonna have to live with the mole people in the subway system for the rest of your life so that was my strategy to get them to stop goofing around enough to pay attention to when we were supposed to get off the subway and i very much grew to love these kids now i like many of them spoke spanish and they would always talk to each other in spanish because they didn't think that i spoke spanish and i saw no reason to disabuse them of that notion i miss them they were brilliant kids they taught me that intelligence has very little to do with the quote-unquote quality of the school that you go to it has much to do with whether or not you're able to pay attention to what's happening around you but we were there in the bronx and after a long day of training and education which i got to say this this this training is very very hard it's very challenging and these kids did better in those classrooms than anybody else because they got it they've been preparing for it their whole lives they understood the community of organizing is about saving our communities their communities the people that had the hardest time in these chains were mostly middle and upper class white people but anyway we got back to the dormitories and i was just trying to help them process everything right how's this stuff how's community organizing politics mass movements direct action how does it intersect with us how does it intersect with our relationship with jesus christ and what about does it matter to us does it make any difference and they just would not listen to me at all they were being loud and excited and rambunctious and annoying and acting wild and they were going on and on about who owed who what and who was gonna get the top bunk tonight where and when and all about the petty slights and inside jokes they used to fill up the day and i lost my cool and i used what i called oh my preacher voice and i just shouted and then they all said boy you could hear a pin drop that was a rude thing to say but one said that you speak spanish and i said only when i have to now we we've got a little bit of work left to do and then you guys can get back to goofing around and the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful they stopped speaking spanish in front of me though but i do remember that specific moment there's a parallel here in the way that we communicate with one another in times of stress and worry and anxiety and then the way which god so desperately wants to communicate with us i have a recurring experience in my life of prayer with god i'm going to share with you um at times in my life i can be in a place of deep discernment and confusion and i'm desperate for for god to tell me what to do next it's like it's like shouting at somebody on the street from an open window and while the building that you're in is burning right you're in a burning building the windows open you're shouting at somebody on the street help right help the burn the building's on fire what do i do what do i do you're scared you're just shouting at them you can't do what they say because you're just shouting this is me so many times so many times in my life i'm filled with panic and anxiety just shouting shouting at god like i'm yelling at a person on the street and if ever there's an answer back if ever i stop and pause to listen and though i always feel that i'm hearing it for the first time it's that god finally shouts back how am i supposed to catch you if you won't jump what's going to happen what is going to happen will i be safe will i be unsafe what does the future hold and jesus is teaching the truth of god and suddenly he's interrupted in his sermon by a person the text says with an unclean spirit now this can mean all sorts of things when i think of unclean spirits and i want to just kind of cut to the chase i think of something that's out of place in a way that's harmful or disruptive to the peace and harmony of others in that place an unclean spirit is likened to the way that a gambling addiction in the life of one member of a family can destroy the lives of those members around it at a larger level at a systemic level an unclean spirit can be the stuff of systemic idolatry like walking through a beautiful garden of statues and wondering how much each of them would be worth at auction it's something that gets in the way of the real value of the thing we live in this kind of hybrid capitalist market economy we tend to view everything through the lens of its fiscal nature through the lens of profit this one time i found a piano that had a beautiful story had an amazing history to it the piano itself was it was a wreck all broken out didn't play quite right it was worth less money than it would have cost to move it let alone to fix it up but i did i took on that piano anyways project and that's a very stupid thing to do somebody told me what a waste of money make a down payment on a good piano no it's piano doesn't make money i said piano makes music which it does to this very day for my benefit and all the money in the world would come near the value that i've got listening to the music made on that very pm the bible says of this unclean spirit it shrieked what do you want from us jesus of nazareth have you come to destroy us i know who you are the holy one of god jesus rebuked the spirit sharply be quiet come out of that verse and it did things quieted down you know this unclean spirit sounds to me like a person fretting worrying and all of this worrying and fretting can distract us from our trust in god some of us are plagued by the what ifs of life what if this happens what if that happens what if what if what if i do this what if i do that and um and i will tell you as a as a person who has been with hundreds of other people as they say goodbye to the world for the last time i'm always tempted to to respond to people who are fretting and saying what if this happens what if this happens what if that happens what if what if at all what must i do i can say well what's going to happen is this some day sooner than you think you will die and then you won't ever have to worry about these things anymore i don't i don't say that that's a terrible thing to say it is not as comforting to those words to other humans as i find them anyway the thing is this the disruption in our lives that worry and fretting that the spirit of anxiety brings to us it can be loud enough to drown out the teachings of jesus christ even as he's preaching in the synagogue of our hearts there were a lot of people just last february who were very seriously worrying about how they were going to pay for their summer vacations what are we going to do what will happen what do you want from us jesus have you come to destroy us are we going to be destroyed i know who you are but what do you want from us and jesus answered be quiet chill just chill for a second listen i don't know what you're worrying about specifically there's plenty out there to worry about take your pick i know a lot of you are dealing with matters that are beyond your control it's perfectly natural to start going through the anxiety circles this then this and if this happens this might happen if that happens and this could happen then it goes this way that could happen but maybe this other thing will happen and we stand in the window of a burning building and we shout god what do i do jump perhaps god says how can i catch you if you don't jump first we've got to be quiet the spirit of anxiety will depart from us that's true by the authority of jesus you know our anxiousness isn't going to do anything good for us nobody in my experience at their time of dying ever looked up at their pastor elite stopped at this pastor and said the words i wish i would have spent more time worrying about the future well be quiet kindred we'll see what happens next a year ago one year ago and absolutely none of us had global pandemic on our dance cards you could spend a million years worrying and still be completely unprepared for what the future holds so do not worry or be afraid seek rather silence in god's direction listen to jesus when he preaches from the synagogue read the bible yeah but look and listen for his voice as well out there in the world he is as we're fond of saying still speaking and don't worry it's god's good pleasure to give you everything that you need it's going to be all right it is going to be all right i promise and i can make this promise because it was a promise that was made to me by someone very special who i know at a deeply personal level and i trust him more than anything else i'll ever know i trust him with everything and i think perhaps that may be the only safe bet i'll ever wager yep amen if you would please join me in the prayer for our church gracious and loving god show us the way that leads to life we so want to see it again but are unsure of that path long ago you gave to a people in bondage a pillar of fire to guide them to the path of freedom we have seen that pillar in the lives of those who have offered peace and justice to all in need we have seen that pillar in the lives of people of strength who offered respect and dignity to all in that pillar we have seen people of hope and power offering an outstretched hand to those who are disenfranchised and to all you gave us christ that we might know your power through grace humility and love help us to remember all whom you have lifted up to speak your word with faith and with deed help us to be people of hope for those in the darkness to be courageous courageous on behalf of those who struggle to be people of immense compassion and peace for those who know no peace may we be a people of grace humility and love we ask this in the name of jesus the christ with the confidence of children please join with me praying as jesus taught his disciples our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and do not let us fall into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen friends these pews may stand empty today but this church is hard at work and very much alive your contributions go to preparing us for the next season of our life they also contribute to the well-being of the community members here in kalamazoo recently your church council and your church leadership has worked hard to ensure that folks who are living in the refugee camps on the outskirts of town are finding safe passages to dignity we've been able to provide heat for them and also bathroom facilities simple things that make a huge difference in the lives of those to whom jesus calls us to minister please visit fccg and if you haven't completed your stewardship pledge for the coming year please consider doing that and give generously we have much work ahead of us and our giving is how we show to god the medal of our faith and so i want to also say thank you thank you for your ongoing and continued support of this historic church thank you today is is yes me oh brothers and sisters how many of you noticed that i had forgotten to wear my stole when i gave my sermon today something i had forgotten to even worry about can folk go forth in peace don't be anxious god will give you everything that you need go forth with the peace of jesus christ himself into the world to love those you meet and to serve god who is our creator amen so hi everyone happy candlemas today is a new festival and i hope that you got a packet delivered to your house that had some supplies for making a craft and also a booklet that explains a little bit about what candlemas is and also gives you some more activities to do and songs to sing i want to spend time in this video talking about the bible story that's a part of candlemas and i want to invite you to join me in blessing the candles here at our church all the candles that we'll use this year so first of all why do we call this candleness wow the bible story that we celebrate on this day is the story of jesus as a baby being brought to the temple by his parents the first time it's a little bit like when we bring babies to church for baptism it's a time when the baby is blessed by the people at the temple and welcomed into the community and when this happened for jesus there was an old man at the temple who had been waiting his whole life to see a real sign that god was bringing salvation to the world that god was going to make things right this man named simeon had been waiting and praying and on the day that mary and joseph brought their baby into the temple simeon saw that baby and he knew he knew that that baby was the sign he had been waiting for and so he went up to mary and joseph and this is what he did simeon took the baby jesus in his arms and then he praised god and said god now you are dismissing your servant in peace according to your promise for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people israel did you hear that simeon called jesus a light a light for revelation to the gentiles is a lot of long words that we don't use a lot in every day but what it means is that simeon saw jesus as a light who would show the whole world what god looks like there are other places where we call jesus a light can you think of any there's a place in the book of john where jesus says i am the light of the world and then there's another place where jesus tells his disciples you are the light of the world it's because of these stories describing jesus as light that we call this candlemas for a lot of human history the only way you could have light at night was with a candle or with a lamp there weren't light bulbs there wasn't electricity and so when people through the centuries have heard that jesus is light for most people the first idea that they had in their head the first picture that came to mind was a candle and so on this day when we hear that story about the baby jesus being called a light for all people we take an opportunity to celebrate the candles that give us light throughout the year i hope that at home you will be able to collect together candles that are meaningful for your family candles that you light maybe at advent candles that you like at birthdays candles that you light for fancy dinners or just candles that you light to make the room look nice and smell nice you can collect those all together and use the blessing that's in the booklet or you can watch the rest of this video and say a blessing along with me but what i want to do now is take an opportunity to show you some of the candles that are an important part of our church life and you can help me bless them ready this is our peace candle it's the biggest candle in the sanctuary a lot of weeks when we light this candle we pray a prayer for auntie sahida and for everyone who needs a safe place to be that's what sanctuary means a safe place these candles we light every week during worship do you see them lit when you watch the worship videos sometimes we have kids come and light these candles when we're able to worship in person those kids are called acolytes maybe someday you will get to be an acolyte now i'm going to show you a special place where we store the candles that we're going to use for the rest of the year because we don't want to just bless the candles that are out right now we want to bless all the candles that we'll be using this year in church so the the pulpit is that way that way is the rest of the sanctuary and over here this is the room that we're gonna go into did you know that churches have storage rooms like this now this is a room that you should only come to if you're with me or with another grown-up do you understand but you're with me today so i'll show you where the candles are so we have boxes of candles see like that some of them are bigger candles some of them are smaller candles up here we have boxes of the candles that we use for candlelight services so we are going to bless all of these candles too when we say our blessing join me now to bless our candles dear god thank you for the bees and the people who give us wax for candles bless these candles so that when we light them we will also be filled with your love until it shines out of us for the whole world to see amen you