Christmas Day: Family Liturgy

This is the liturgy our family used for worship together when we gathered to celebrate Christmas. It is designed to illustrate and encourage the kind of structure that can be used profitably in family worship. The divisions are based on the number of members in my family who would be participating, each person reading or leading a different section. You may wish to add or subtract sections or use different Scripture passages or prayers. The prayers here are drawn from the 1928 BCP and the URCNA's Book of Forms and Prayers. --JME

 Family Readings & Prayers

Christmas Day

Opening Sentence of Scripture

“Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)

Hymn

Scripture Reading: John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Collect

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

Scripture Reading: John 1:6-13

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Collect

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

Scripture Reading: John 1:14-18

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’ ” And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

Collect

GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thine only Son Jesus Christ; Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Scripture Reading: Matthew 2:1-12

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:

‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ”

Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”

When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.

Hymn

Family Prayer

Merciful Father, You so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son. He who was rich became poor for us, the eternal Word made flesh, a great Light shining in the darkness. Only because of Your Word and Spirit have we seen that Light and been drawn into its brightness. Give us the grace humbly and joyfully to receive Your Son, even as the shepherds and princes who welcomed Him, and to look no further for our redemption than to this child lying in a manger. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

Corporate Prayer: The Lord’s Prayer

Closing Blessing

May the LORD bless us, and keep us. May the LORD make his face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. May the LORD lift up his countenance upon us, and give us peace, both now and evermore. Amen.

Closing Praise: Doxology

Thanksgiving Day Liturgy

 Liturgy for Private or Family Worship

(PDF Download)

Thanksgiving Day November 23, 2023

Gathering Hymn (Choose a gathering hymn, e.g. TPH #103C, #254, #552)

Responsive Psalm: Psalm 107:1-9

Leader: Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good!

Household: For His mercy endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy,

And gathered out of the lands, from the east and the west, from the north and the south.

They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way; They found no city to dwell in.

Hungry and thirsty, Their soul fainted in them.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, And He delivered them out of their distresses.

And He led them forth by the right way, That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.

Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men!

For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness.

Prayer of Thanksgiving (From the URCNA Book of Forms and Prayers)

Our Sovereign God, who created all things for Your pleasure and who gives to all life, breath, and every good thing, we thank You for our creation, our preservation, and all the blessings of this life. For rain and sunshine, in abundance and in lack, we acknowledge that our times are in Your hands. You supply all of Your creatures with Your good gifts, the just and the unjust alike. Nevertheless, we especially give You praise for the surpassing greatness of Your saving grace, which You have shown to us in Christ Jesus our Savior. For our election in Him before the foundation of the world, for our redemption by Him in His life, death, and resurrection, for our effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and all of the blessings of our union with Him, we give You our heartfelt thanks. And we look with great anticipation toward that day when You will raise us to life everlasting, glorified and confirmed in righteousness, so that we may sing Your praises without the defilement of our present weaknesses, distractions, and sins. As You have given us these gifts, we ask that You would give us grateful hearts, so that we may serve our neighbors in love. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, who taught us to pray, saying:

Corporate Prayer: The Lord’s Prayer

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 lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

Responsive Psalm: Psalm 138 (Different readers may be chosen to lead each section in larger families)

Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.

Oh, give thanks to the God of gods! For His mercy endures forever.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords! For His mercy endures forever:

Part 2: Creation

To Him who alone does great wonders, For His mercy endures forever;

To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, For His mercy endures forever;

To Him who laid out the earth above the waters, For His mercy endures forever;

To Him who made great lights, For His mercy endures forever—

The sun to rule by day, For His mercy endures forever;

The moon and stars to rule by night, For His mercy endures forever.

Part 3: Exodus

To Him who struck Egypt in their firstborn, For His mercy endures forever;

And brought out Israel from among them, For His mercy endures forever;

With a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, For His mercy endures forever;

To Him who divided the Red Sea in two, For His mercy endures forever;

And made Israel pass through the midst of it, For His mercy endures forever;

But overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, For His mercy endures forever;

Part 4: Conquest

To Him who led His people through the wilderness, For His mercy endures forever;

To Him who struck down great kings, For His mercy endures forever;

And slew famous kings, For His mercy endures forever—

Sihon king of the Amorites, For His mercy endures forever;

And Og king of Bashan, For His mercy endures forever—

And gave their land as a heritage, For His mercy endures forever;

A heritage to Israel His servant, For His mercy endures forever.

Part 5: Providence

Who remembered us in our lowly state, For His mercy endures forever;

And rescued us from our enemies, For His mercy endures forever;

Who gives food to all flesh, For His mercy endures forever.

Oh, give thanks to the God of heaven! For His mercy endures forever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Collect

O MOST merciful Father, who hast blessed the labours of the husbandman in the returns of the fruits of the earth; We give thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness to us, that our land may still yield her increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Scripture Reading: James 1:16-27

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:25-34

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Hymn  (Choose a hymn, e.g. TPH #237 or O God of Earth and Altar)

Closing Blessing

May the LORD bless us, and keep us. May the LORD make his face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. May the LORD lift up his countenance upon us, and give us peace, both now and evermore.

Amen

Closing Praise: Doxology

Two Years Later

November 11, 2019 was a Monday. That morning I received the kind of phone call every parent dreads. It was my oldest daughter, Hannah. A man driving a van had run a red light at a high rate of speed and struck their car. Hannah was bruised and had minor abrasions but would be okay. Ellen Beth was not. She was transported by ambulance to a local hospital where they discovered her spine was fractured. She was then transferred to a special unit at a Children’s Hospital where she would spend the next two weeks. After returning home, Ellen Beth spent the next three months in a wheelchair. Eventually, by God’s great mercy and grace, she began walking again, then running, then exercising, and then doing jiu-jitsu. Today Ellen Beth is finishing prerequisites for nursing school and working full-time as a Tech in the Observation unit of a local hospital. She has helped save the life of multiple patients, and she has performed CPR and worked bedside on other patients who have not survived. The crash in 2019 changed her life, in ways good and bad. She will always carry the scars of that day, but she is stronger, wiser, and better for having had that experience.

If the driver had struck Hannah and Ellen Beth’s car just a few seconds later, EB’s injuries might have been far worse, and Hannah would almost certainly not have survived. That car crash and everything that happened in it was not an accident. It was hard providence, governed, restrained, and guided by God’s grace. The situation might have been very different, and if one or both girls had not survived, the Lord would still be good and merciful. The crash was bad, but it could have been so much worse. The injury and trauma were great, but not as great as they might have been. We know this is true, and we speak about it often. But our family had a reminder this morning.

Two years to the week after that fateful day, once again on a Monday morning, another teenager in our family, the girls’ younger brother Jack, was driving near our house. This time I was in the car, sitting in the passenger’s seat. We were approaching an intersection just a few blocks from where Jack’s sisters were injured and could easily have died. I don’t think either of us were thinking about that day two years before as we approached the road. Suddenly just ahead of us a car traveling southbound ran a stop sign and began traveling westbound at a high rate of speed. The light was red as he approached the intersection, but he only accelerated as he rocketed into the path of north-south traffic. There was a loud, powerful collision as the speeding sedan struck a small SUV, destroying and immobilizing that vehicle and sending the sedan careening across the intersection, through the adjacent, undeveloped corner lot, and under a tree approximately half a football field length away.

Jack moved to the corner of the intersection and pulled to the curb. I switched on our hazard lights and told him to stay in the van. The driver in the middle of the intersection was screaming, trapped into the smashed car, covered in blood and deflated airbags, alive but in a bad way. As another bystander moved to the driver’s window, I ran across the intersection and into the empty lot to check on the driver of the other car. He was dead. It looked like he had broken his neck.

A police officer was on-scene less than a minute after the collision. The driver of the sedan had been fleeing from law enforcement, although it did not appear the officer was in high speed pursuit. But the speeding driver was desperate to get away. He was ready to risk everything to avoid being detained by the cops, and it cost him his life. I don’t know if the other driver’s injuries were life threatening or not, but the severity of the crash will surely affect him for the rest of whatever remains of his life.

It had been a quiet morning. Sitting in the passenger seat, I was looking down at my phone when the crash happened just ahead of us. Jack and I had been listening to a news podcast just like every other morning, and then everything changed. I spent the rest of the day thinking about the dead body I had seen. I’ve lost count over the years how many there have been, but I wasn’t expecting to see one today. We weren’t thinking about what happened just a few blocks away only two years ago, but when I later texted my wife and daughters to tell them what happened and that we were okay, we obviously thought about it then.

The last thing I tell my girls every morning when they leave to work a shift at the hospital is: Keep your head on a swivel. It is part of our morning liturgy. By now it may be so familiar that they no longer think about it. But I do. Every time I say it to one of them, I wonder if it will be the last time. How many times have I been distracted when driving? How easily do I forget how quickly and unexpectedly and permanently things can change?

The driver who ran a red light and crashed into my daughters walked away uninjured. The driver who ran the red light today died at the scene. My girls eventually recovered from their injuries. I don’t know what will happen to the other driver in the crash today. But today I was reminded of how great God’s mercy has been to my children. After all, that could have been my daughters, or today it might have been Jack. I was reminded of how quickly things can happen when you least expect it. I was reminded that the world is full of reckless people with no regard for the welfare of others, or even for their own. There are all kinds of lessons I could extrapolate as a pastor from today’s experience, but there is no need to do that. I’m sure they are obvious. In the meantime: Keep your head on a swivel. --JME