Worship
for the Lord’s Day
May 17,
2020
A Note
before we begin this day’s worship:
Throughout history, the people of God
have needed to adjust to their surroundings and circumstances. As I have mentioned previously, they’ve
worshipped together in temples, cathedrals and temporary make shift huts or
tents, they’ve worshipped in foreign lands, and when the times dictated it,
they’ve even had to worship privately in their own homes. They have known difficulties and have been
persecuted for their faith.
We
are, once again, in what is called a Liminal Season. Liminality means to be at the threshold. To stand at the place between our previous
way of structuring identity, time, or community, and an emergent new way of
being, thinking, and living. During
liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily
dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes
once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.
We’ve
known for the last 20 years or more that God was doing a new thing. I heard it over and over again in conferences
and in seminars I attended. I read it in
Phyllis Tickle’s book, The Great Emergence, where she asserted that life
makes a major shift every 500 years….and we are in that time period. It felt almost foreshadowed in my readings
the past couple of years with Canoeing the Mountains by Tod Bolsinger
and How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You Are Going by Susan
Beaumont. But, who knew how quickly the
times would change and what God was really up to. We still don’t fully know, but here we are; keeping
a distance from a novel virus pandemic and from one another.
I’ve
spent a great amount of time in, what I call, “living and walking prayer” asking
for God’s guidance and reassurance, but predominantly for insight and
wisdom. I still don’t know where God is
leading us, but I am assured of God’s presence and God’s strength to allow us
to get through this and learn to be more reliant on Him.
As
we move through the process of watching the world gather a little bit more
openly, we cautiously wait to see how things turn out. In the meantime, we remain at our homes
worshipping God physically isolated, but corporately united.
Let’s
begin:
Opening
Prayer
Lord
of wondrous light and power, we come to you this day to learn of your will for
our lives. Heal our wounds; lift our spirits; give us courage and confidence to
boldly serve you in all that we do.. AMEN.
Prayer
of Confession
Lord
of mercy, there are so many times in our lives when we feel alone, perhaps
particularly now. We sometimes wonder
where You are. We cry out to You in our unrest,
our confusion, our pain, and hurt. And
when You do not immediately grant the request of our cries, we begin to doubt
that You even care or exist. Stop us
from going down this path of uncertainty and fear. Help us look around and find the many ways in
which You have blessed our lives. Forgive
us when we are so quick to doubt and so arrogant in our demands of Your
responses. Give us a spirit of patience
and willingness to be ready to hear Your voice. Strengthen us for the ministries of love and
hope that You have placed before us. For
we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN
Words
of Assurance
Even
in the midst of doubt and darkness, the light of God is shining in you, on you,
and through you. Out of God’s great
love, you have been redeemed and made whole. Rejoice, beloved of God! AMEN
Pastoral
Prayer
Lord
of love, You have asked us to keep Your commandments. While You dwelt among us You demonstrated the
power of love to effect healing, redemption, and hope in the lives of all Your
people. Yet we are so unsure of the
gifts that You have given us for ministry that we wonder if we can really do
what You want us to do. We are a strange
mixture, Lord. We are arrogant in our demands of Your mercy and timid in our
awareness of the blessings and gifts You have given to us. That’s why we’re here today, though we are
apart from one another, we are together in Spirit and in Truth. We really want to sense Your presence and
receive courage truly to be Your people in this world that You have loaned to
us. Remind us when we bring names and
circumstances before Your throne of Grace that we also bring our own needs and
concerns. Lay your healing hand upon our
hearts and spirits. We place our lives
and our trust in You, O Lord.
I lift my own prayers up to You now….
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.
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.
Scripture
Readings
Old
Testament Reading: Psalm 66:8-20
8Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard,
9who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.
10For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is
tried.
11You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs;
12you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and
through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
13I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will pay you
my vows,
14those that my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in
trouble.
15I will offer to you burnt offerings of fatlings, with the smoke
of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
16Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has
done for me.
17I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled with my tongue.
18If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have
listened.
19But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my
prayer.
20Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed
his steadfast love from me.
New
Testament Reading: John 14:15-21
15”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you
forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he
abides with you, and he will be in you.
18”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In
a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I
live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am
in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my
commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be
loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Anthem: C Major
Prelude by Bob Morris on the Bethesda Organ
Sermon
–
The passage we read this morning from John begins and ends with
love. In fact, Jesus mentions the word
love fifty-seven times (agapoa and phileo) in the gospel by the “beloved
disciple”. In v. 15 Jesus declares that
if his disciples love him, they will keep his commandments. Unlike, in the gospel of Matthew, nowhere in
John does Jesus command us to go the second mile, turn the other cheek, render
unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Famously,
Jesus gives only a single commandment in John and it occurs in the chapter just
before the one we read this morning: "I give you a new commandment, that
you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one
another. By this everyone will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (13.34-35). He then reiterates this in the chapter just
after the one we read this morning: "This is my commandment, that you love
one another as I have loved you. No one
has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. (John
15:12-13). We see, then, the
overwhelming, repetitive, circular emphasis on love. "If we fail in love, we fail in all
things else."
If Jesus gives
one commandment; to love, then for John there's only one question to ask
yourself at the end of each day: "In what ways did I or did I not love
today?" As you reflect upon that,
judgment happens. Where you did not
love, there lies judgment. If we fail in
love, we fail in everything else.
But understand
that for John judgment is merely diagnostic, not retributive. In John, Jesus is constantly asking those he
comes into contact with questions that help them understand their lives and
motives more clearly. To the sick man in
ch. 5:6: "Do you wish to be made well?"; to Martha in 11:26: "Do
you believe this?". He asks so that
they might know themselves better, and therefore move forward with clear vision
into the truth, light, glory, and love, all of which are abundant in God and available
for us. It's all part of the big picture
for how we are to conduct our lives.
Jesus moves on
from the subject of love to the Holy Spirit.
He refers to the Holy Spirit not as The Paraclete, but rather as Another
Paraclete. The word parakletos
presents translational difficulty because it has a range of meanings in the
Greek, all of which are meant by the author.
English translations variously translate it Comforter, Advocate,
Counselor, and Helper. Keeping it in its
transliterated form, Paraclete, helps us catch the strangeness of the word for
us; after all, it's strange among biblical authors, too. It appears only five times: four times in
John 14-16 and once in 1 John 2:1. The
Holy Spirit is specifically said to do the following: teach, remind (14:26),
abide (14:16), and testify about Jesus (15:26). Jesus was the first Paraclete. And he tells his disciples that after he is
gone, he will send another – the Holy Spirit.
In reference to
seeing and knowing the Holy Spirit, William Barclay said: 'We can see only what
we are fitted to see.'" An
astronomer will perceive much more in the night sky than an untrained eye. Someone trained in art will see far more in a
painting than another person who has never studied art. The trained musician will enjoy a symphony
much more than someone who is unfamiliar with musical style or technique. What we are able to perceive in any situation
depends on what we bring to the experience.
Likewise,
someone who has given up on the very notion of God won't be listening for
him. If we hope to receive the Holy
Spirit in our own lives, it requires waiting and watching for it, in
expectation of the Spirit’s arrival. If
you want to know the presence of the Spirit in your life, don't challenge God
to "Show me!" Don't take the
attitude that if God wants me to know God’s Spirit, then God will make it
happen. Don't take the position
"I'll believe it when I see it."
Rather, if you want to know that presence, then expect it, wait for it,
prepare for it, believe in its coming.
You'll see it. After all,
believing is seeing!
As Christians we
are familiar with the Trinity; The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that make up what
has been referred to as The Godhead or the Trinity. We say it in our beliefs in the Affirmation
of Faith each Sunday. But perhaps the
most stunning feature of the Fourth Gospel is what some have termed the
Quattrinity, and it is a concept that has often given me pause to think about.
In John, Jesus
insists that the intimate relationship that exists between him, God, and the
Spirit also includes believers. The
believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, the
believer is an equal part of it. John
tries to push at this by grabbing hold of a number of terms and repeating them:
abide, love, the language of being "in" (14:17 and 20), and later in
an emphasis on "one-ness" in chapter 17:21-23. This idea really only occurs in John, but we
are supposed to just "imitate" Jesus; we are to participate in Christ
fully/wholly. The pinnacle of this idea occurs
in verses not included in our reading this morning, through verse 23:
"Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my
Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with
them." If God, Christ, and the Holy
Spirit have made their home with us, how can we imagine there to be any
distance between us and God? For those
of you sheltering in place right now with your family, there is no distance
between you. You are one unit. The same is true for the concept of this
passage and John’s idea that we are part of the Trinity.
This, in turn,
affects our eschatology, which is the part of theology that is concerned with
death, judgment, and the final destiny of our souls. Everything that matters; our ultimate intimacy
with God and Christ, is available now. If
we are to understand the Gospel of John and John’s message for us adequately, we
don’t have to wait until eternal to experience that intimacy with God. God is present and can be part of our lives
right now. God is not currently holding
out on us in any way--life, abundant life, is available for living from this very
moment into eternity.
Thanks be to
God! AMEN
Benediction
Being assured
of the love of Christ, go into this world in all ways possible right now with
the healing love of God to be given generously in peace and hope. God’s peace will always be with those who live
in God’s love. AMEN.
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