Prayer
As always, we open with prayer. Is there anything on your mind that we can pray for this evening?
Praise
Let’s read the passage from Living Faith below and then pause and dwell for a moment
“The church lives to praise God.
We have no higher calling
than to offer the worship that belongs to God.
Through the preaching of the Word
and the celebration of the Sacraments,
in praise, prayer, teaching and fellowship,
God sustains the life of the church.
We worship God as Lord
offering ourselves in the service of Christ,
rejoicing that we have been brought from darkness to light.”
Passage
Mark 14:1-9: Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2 “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
Ponder
1. In a very original act of ‘worth-ship’, the Unnamed Woman gives her everything to Jesus in an act of pure worship. If you are up for sharing a personal story, what does a part of your original/pure worship look like that is between you and God? Can you try to describe what your personal worship time is like—or maybe if there’s something you’ve wanted to try?
2. How has the way in which you worship God changed for the better over the course of your life—and what do you think caused the change?
3. Living Faith talks about how God, through different types of worship ‘sustains the church.’ Out of the list of ways we live into our most-high calling, what part of worship connects with you the most and why?
4. Much like this passage, many of us were also sitting around a “Celebration Table” for Thanksgiving, and we may have gone around a circle and said what we are thankful for. In a way of individual worship to the group, can you tell us what you are thankful for?
5. Jesus describes what the Unnamed Woman does for Him as a ‘beautiful thing’. Have you ever publicly done something for God that was personally meaningful, and you felt God saying the same thing to you? Giving all glory to God, what was it?
Pray & Part