We Are Worthy

Text: Luke 2:1-20

The shepherds never really had much reason to feel like they were worth much. They looked dirty because they were dirty. They smelled worse. They were imparted with the important and high job of raising the animals that were to be used in the sacrifices of penitence and worship given in the Temple in Jerusalem, but they were also considered unclean and therefore forbidden from entering the Temple themselves.

Society despised them. They were ridiculed, rejected, outcast, and alone. No one took his son out into the fields and encouraged him to aspire to the grand job of shepherding a flock. Shepherding was not considered a grand job. The task once fine for the likes of Jacob (Israel’s namesake), Moses, and David was no worthy goal for a young Jewish lad in the time of Caesar Augustus.

Sermon: “The Heart of Worship”

Text: Revelation 4

Some things we just seem to take for granted. You know what I mean. We live with them, even depend on them in vital ways, without giving a thought as to how they work or whether we can do better by them than we currently do. We take for granted, at least sometimes, things like breathing, food in the pantry, the effects of gravity, that we will be around tomorrow, and that family will always be there for us. Of course, some of those things are more dependable than others. But we live our lives around them as if they will always be there, like a comfortable pillow that is only missed when it suddenly isn’t there.