Maundy Thursday Service 2018

Maundy Thursday Service: 3/29/18

Prelude:  Psalm 22 (video 1)

Call to Worship Pastor Roy Karlen

Let us hold fast to the faith we confess. For we have a great high priest who has gone into the very presence of God – Jesus, the Son of God. Our high priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy with our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a high priest who was tempted in every way that we are but did not sin. Let us be brave, and come forward to God's throne, where we find His grace. There we will receive mercy and find His forgiveness, love, and reconciliation.

Music: EL SHADDAI (video 2)

Opening Prayer & The Lord's Prayer: Jordan Beidler

Eternal God of mercy, we gather in awesome wonder to behold your loving gift of Jesus Christ, who came to bring the world to wholeness, and who was broken by it. Yet by his death, we live and know your unfailing love.  As we gather to recall and celebrate Christ's gift of fellowship at the table and to lament our frail failings of devotion, pierce our hearts with the conviction of our betrayals, reassure us of your abiding presence, and transform us by the Spirit of Christ, who taught us to pray, by saying...
Our Father...

Music:  When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (video 3)

New Testament Reading: John 13: 1-15 Pastor Roy Karlen
John 13:1-15  Revised Standard Version (RSV)
13 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. 5 Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. 6 He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “You are not all clean.”
12 When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

Music: In Christ Alone (video 4)

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 53 Jordan Beidler
Isaiah 53  Revised Standard Version (RSV)
53 Who has believed what we have heard?
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
    and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him,
    and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
    a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
    and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,
    so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
    and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
    and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him;
    he has put him to grief;
when he makes himself an offering for sin,
    he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand;
11     he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
    make many to be accounted righteous;
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out his soul to death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

Seder Video:  (video 5)

The Community Shares the Lord's Supper:

Communion Meditation: Pastor Roy Karlen
May this sacrament, Lord Jesus Christ, bring life to us and pardon for our sins, to us for whom you suffered your passion. For our sake, you drank gall to kill in us the bitterness that is the Enemy's. For our sake, you drank sour wine to strengthen what is weak in us. For our sake, you were spat upon to bathe us in the dew of immortality. You were struck with a frail reed to strengthen what is frail in us and give us life for all eternity. You were crowned with thorns to crown those who believe in you with that evergreen garland, your charity. You were wrapped in a shroud to clothe us in your all-enfolding strength. You were laid in a new grave to give us new grace in ages likewise new.

Prayers of Thanksgiving: Elders Jeff & Jodi Frank
Prayer #1: Heavenly Father, show forth among us the presence of your life-giving Word and Holy Spirit, to sanctify us and your whole church through this sacrament. Grant that all who share the body and blood of our Savior Jesus Christ may be one in him, and remain faithful in love and hope. And as this grain has been gathered from many fields into one loaf, and these grapes from many hills into one cup, grant, O Lord, that your whole church may soon be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.  Amen

Prayer #2: We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your great and manifold mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord, whose nature it is to always have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen. 

Words of Institution: Pastor Roy Karlen
On the night that he was betrayed, our Lord took the loaf... and after blessing it and giving thanks, he broke it, saying “This loaf is my body broken for you, as often as you eat of it... do this in memory of me.”
In the same fashion after the meal, he took the cup, saying “This cup is the new covenant poured out in my blood, as often as you drink of it... do this in memory of me.”
The Lord's body broken for you 
The Lord's blood shed for you 
The Lord's table is set, all come now and eat. 

Sharing the Lord's Supper:

Video: “One Bread One Body” (video 6)

Prayer of Consecration: Pastor Roy Karlen

Loving Creator, we thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world.  We thank you for the mystery of your love as revealed to us in the cross.  We cannot understand all that the cross may mean, but we feel your hand upon us and today we give ourselves anew to you.

Love so amazing, so divine, demands our lives, our souls, our very being.  Take these lives, use them in your ministry of reconciliation to a world deeply in need of love and mercy and justice and righteousness.  Lord, here we stand as your disciples. Send us out today to do your work.  In Christ's name, we humbly pray.  Amen.

Passing the Flame: Amazing Grace (video 7)

John 19:28-30 (RSV) Pastor Roy Karlen
28 After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Please feel free to extinguish your candles and leave the Chapel at your leisure.


Postlude:  (video 8)