Worship
for the Lord’s Day
July 19,
2020
A Note
before we begin this day’s worship:
We will continue to worship from home
until further notice. However, we’ve added
video of our normal PowerPoint for the hymns with Bob Morris playing the organ
at Bethesda and a video of the sermon for your worship experience.
Some additional announcements:
First, we have put together a VBS
program; Creation – God’s Great Big Beautiful World to run this
summer, but it will be a Staycation kind of VBS. Kits will be available for pick-up for all
kids between Kindergarten and 5th grade at Olivet Presbyterian
Church in West Elizabeth, PA on Wednesday between 1-3pm and at Bethesda United
Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, PA between 3-4pm. New kits will be available each Wednesday,
same times through Aug 5.
Second,
Garrett Little will be celebrating his birthday on August 5. It is a milestone birthday for him because
last year he got to ring the bell at Children’s Hospital to celebrate his
remission from Leukemia. His favorite
things are Wendy’s Chili and Frosty. I
thought it would be great to help him and his family celebrate his birthday by
giving him a bunch of Wendy’s gift cards.
If you are able, please let me know.
Finally,
with sadness we had to say goodbye to our Bright Beginning Preschool Staff at
Bethesda; Founding Directory, Jennifer Wooley and her Assistant, Amber
Mayersky. We are currently delaying a
fall opening due to unknown protocols needed for a safe opening for our staff
and children, what the school districts will do, and these staff changes. Keep our departing staff, community children
and parents in your prayers. We do hope
to have a new staff onboard shortly after the new year of 2021 to plan on a
full opening by the next school year. If
you know of any possible candidates, let us know.
Be
patient. We will be together again,
soon!
Until
then, let’s begin:
Opening
Prayer
God
of Jacob, who rested his head on a stone pillow and saw visions of your angels,
be with us this day. Give us a vision of
your presence in the midst of our strife. Give us courage and confidence that you are
with us, calling us to be your loving people in the world. For we ask these things in Jesus’ Name. AMEN
Hymn Come, Christians, Join to Sing
Prayer
of Confession
It is said that confession is good for the
soul, but there are times, O Lord, when we just don’t want to confess, we don’t
want to own up to the many ways in which we have failed to be your faithful
disciples. We have turned our backs on
those in need. We have sought after
power and riches, believing that these things bring true happiness. But you know us far too well. You know what is within our hearts and our
spirits. You seek the very best for us
that we might grow to be fruitful plants in your garden. Be with us. Forgive us when we have failed to love and
treat others with respect and compassion. Turn our hearts back toward you, who always
reaches out to us offering healing and love.
AMEN
Words
of Assurance
Great news comes to us, dear friends. God, who is faithful and just, who cherishes
us as we are, seeks restoration and healing for those broken places in our
lives, forgives and loves us unconditionally.
Receive that good news! AMEN
Affirmation
of Faith – The Apostles’ Creed
I believe
in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His
only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin
Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He
descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended
into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy
catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
Pastoral
Prayer
Lord, we wonder about you. We look around us at the mighty power and
majesty of nature, and it is easy for us to sing songs of praise for your
creation. But then we look at the ways
in which people treat one another. Too
often, lying and cheating are touted as the ways in which we should live. We see deceit and anger, hostility and hatred,
and we wonder where the visions of the angels descending and ascending are
today. We long for times of peace and
joy yet are drawn into the horrors of the world. Be with us, Lord. Help us see and feel your presence in our
lives. Help us place our trust in you. For there is much work to be done in your
world, and you have called us to this work. Guide our steps and guard our lives. For we ask this in Jesus’ Name, Your One and Only Son, who taught us to
pray saying; 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: Genesis
28:10-19
10Jacob left Beer-sheba and went
toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night,
because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under
his head and lay down in that place. 12And he
dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to
heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And
the Lord stood
beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of
Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your
offspring; 14and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you
shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the
south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your
offspring. 15Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and
will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done
what I have promised you.”
16Then Jacob woke from his sleep
and said, “Surely the Lord is
in this place—and I did not know it!” 17And he
was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the
house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” 18So
Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under
his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He
called that place Bethel;
New
Testament: Romans
8:12-25
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you
free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God
has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in
the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For
those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the
flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things
of the Spirit. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on
the Spirit is life and peace. 7For
this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not
submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and
those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you
are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in
you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
10But if Christ is in you, though
the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of
righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in
you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies
also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Anthem – Holy Spirit You Are Welcome Here
Sermon
– Just a note: You can click on the sermon
title and hear/watch me give this sermon via YouTube from my home office.
This past month or so, Romans has been
the epistle reading for the daily lectionary.
Many of my favorite passages come from Romans. I’ve studied the letter at various stages in
life/ministry, but it’s been a while since I’ve read through the whole thing
and dedicated some significant amount of time on it. This past month didn’t disappoint, as I read
through it again. But, I also found
various passages more challenging than I remember, grappling with words or
phrases or concepts that I’d either missed or glossed over in the past.
Today’s reading is not one of them,
however. It contains a concept that I
think about often and appreciate more and more as I get older. That concept begins in verse 14 – “all who
are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” and continues; that when we
cry out to God, it is the Spirit of God, “bearing witness with our spirit that
we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ…”
There are two parts of this section in
Romans that I want to touch on. One is
about our adoption as children of God and the second one is about the Holy
Spirit speaking to our spirits.
In explaining this I want to share two
stories. The first one I came across
many years ago and it has resonated with me because it sounded so much like my
own story and the second one I came across just the other day.
It was mostly a family gathering. It was a regular event, each year on Father’s
Day, when the crowd would gather for a big cook-out in the backyard, when Dad
was unsurprisingly holding court out on the back deck grilling the hot dogs and
hamburgers, the ribs and the chicken, the sausages and the kabobs.
Those standing around were the usual
suspects, Dad at the grill, the next door neighbors who were more like family,
me waiting for instructions about what to do with the barbecue sauce and the
salt and pepper, the cousins who had all just changed into their swimsuits and
were waiting for permission to get into the pool, Uncle Charlie who had just
returned with a round of beverages for the adults, Mom shouting instructions
from the kitchen window, Grandma sitting on the rocker saying something to my
mother about the weeds in the garden and my sister hanging around with all the
cousins, there were various other aunts and uncles, and close family friends,
who had (over the years) joined us in this time together. There was one additional person this year, a
newcomer, my Uncle’s date.
She was sitting in the chair next to
Grandma, trying to take in all the commotion and activity. Even for a relatively small family, there was
a lot to absorb. I stood there with the
barbecue sauce in one hand and the salt and pepper shakers in the other, lifting
them periodically into the air as an offering.
But Dad was on a roll and not paying the least bit attention to my
silent vigil over the condiments and seasonings.
I had pretty much tuned him out
several stories ago, but watched as Aunt Sally (we were told to call her,
“Aunt” Sally) listened to my father with rapt attention, though her eyes never
strayed far from looking at Uncle Charlie.
How many Father’s Day celebrations had we done this, I wondered? At least ten, maybe more, and I found the
best way to remember was keeping track of Uncle Charlie’s dates. Because every year it was a new one, and
every year my father told the same stories, and every year the stories got
grander and bigger and every year we were told to call my Uncles’ date Aunt so
and so, even though he rarely saw any of them for more than a couple of months,
let alone marry any of them.
I think I now have more Aunts spread
across the United States than most people have fingers and toes to count them
on.
Just to be sure that I hadn’t missed
my cue while I was reminiscing, I again held up the sauce and the seasonings in
my father’s general direction and after a second or two pulled them back down
to chest level and waited. That’s when I
heard the familiar words and I knew that he was about to start on another tall
tale (or at least, some story that originally had a grain of truth in it, but
now had become just a myth or fable).
“Have you heard the one about when…”
Shoot, I had missed my opportunity to
escape. I should have been more
insistent that last time when holding up my offerings. I could have broken through my father’s
homily, but now that he had started a brand new story I was prisoner to wait
through this next one ignored, but expected to remain. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes and brought the
flavorings down to hip level. Dad
wouldn’t want them now, unless his attention was broken from the story and he
returned to the task at hand.
Our neighbor noticed my predicament
and quietly took the bottle and shakers from my hand and traded with me a bowl
of potato salad to take into my mother.
With a silent thanks I went into the house to give Mom the potato
salad. Free at last from my father’s
storytelling, I rushed upstairs to grab a beach towel and join my cousin’s and
sister to await permission for getting into the pool.
After retrieving a towel, I
contemplated which escape route to take, so that I would miss both Mom and Dad
and not be called upon to do another task and then there was always Grandma to
worry about too. She always managed to
grab me, if the rest left me alone. If I
went out the front door and around the side of the house, I could be in the
midst of my cousins and would miss detection from all three of the adults that
always had me working as gopher.
As I came down the steps, I heard loud
laughter from the back deck and porch and my Mom proclaiming loudly, “That’s
not true. That’s not how it happened at
all. Now tell the story right or don’t
tell it at all. I swear every year you
make up new things to add to it.”
Instead of continuing down the stairs
to my escape route, I sat down on the steps, width-wise, with my back against
one wall and my feet against the other.
Here I planted myself to listen to the banter back and forth between my
mother and father, to listen to the rest of the family chip in details that
they remembered of the story, to hear completely different versions of the same
story from others and to recall my own memories.
It was a ritual. But it was more than ritual. I sat there on the steps and realized that it
was my family’s way of welcome. It was
my family’s way of adoption. They told
stories, so that you would know our history and be included. Aunt Sally, or whatever newcomer came, they
were meant to feel welcomed and part of what made us…us.
That’s what had happened when I had
been adopted and became a member of the family and my sister too. Mom and Dad sat down and told us stories
about the new family we had been adopted into.
We learned all about distant Aunts and Uncles, about ancestors who were
long gone, about weird relatives and eccentric ones, too but we were made to
feel that these people should matter to us, because we mattered to them. It didn’t have anything to do with blood, but
had everything to do with welcome and acceptance and love. That’s what we do, as we share our stories
with one another, we share them as our way of welcome, our way of adoption.
I often think that the role of the
Holy Spirit in our lives, bearing witness or speaking to the spirit in us, is
to convict us. To point out to us our
wrong-doing, of doing something that we should not do. To convict us of wrong-thinking and to open
us up to reshaping our beliefs. So that
we are more in-line with Christ. But the
Holy Spirit can’t share welcome and story with us, the Holy Spirit can’t speak
to us and can’t communicate with the spirit within us if we aren’t willing to
listen.
The problem today is that we’ve
stopped listening. We’ve stopped
listening to one another and we’ve stopped listening to God’s Spirit talking to
our spirits. We’re much more comfortable
listening to the same sound track that we created for ourselves; our own voices
in our heads. The problem with this is
that it drowns out God’s voice. It
drowns out the voices of our brothers and sisters that have a story to
tell. It drowns out anything that might
be contrary to what we already think and believe.
Although we might have known this for
a while, I do believe that our current situation and the pandemic that we’re
all experiencing has amplified this – as for many of us, we are the only voice
in our heads right now. We get to listen
to that voice night and day. We read
newspaper articles and listen to headline soundbites that only affirm what we
think and believe. We’ve gravitated more
thoroughly to what is familiar and comfortable in these challenging times. Afterall, we have fewer voices around us to
talk about these things. Life is already
uncomfortable, why make it more so by shaking up what we think or believe.
But, I hope what might be happening is that we
realize how impotent our own voices are, how petty they’ve become, how
ineffectual they are at creating change.
Especially, when everyone around us is doing exactly the same
thing. We truly need a greater voice in
our heads, God’s Spirit speaking to our spirits. But we need to be open to listening to that
voice.
Over the years I’ve learned that God
doesn’t necessary MAKE bad things happen in order for us to learn a lesson, but
instead we can learn something out of bad situations. So, what if this pandemic and what we’re
experiencing is what we needed? A year
so uncomfortable, so painful, so raw – that it finally forces us to grow. A year that screams so loud, finally
awakening us from our ignorant slumber.
A year we finally accept the need for change. Declare change. Work for change. Become the change. A year we finally band together, instead of
pushing each other further apart.
I want to close with my second story, an
example of God’s Spirit speaking or bearing witness to the spirit within
us. I share it with you verbatim as the
story itself was shared.
I was rude to someone today.
We are on vacation out of state this week in
North Carolina. I walked into our usual
donut joint with my mask on. The owner
walked up to me and started taking our order. In retrospect, I should have given more
attention to her weary countenance.
I took one side of my mask off so I could
continue my order without being muffled. Without hesitation, she said, “Sir, please put
your mask on.”
My flesh convinced me that this was the time
for me to be a patriot. I put the mask
loop over my ear and told her that we wouldn’t be needing any donuts after all.
She seemed to shrug my response off, so
I continued. I didn’t yell. I didn’t make a scene. But I looked at her straight in the face and
told her she was rude. We exchanged
pleasantries, and I left.
2 miles down the road, the Holy Spirit smote my
heart. I stood for my personal belief
while ignoring humility and grace.
I turned the van around and drove back to the
donut shop. I entered the shop, and the
same woman was standing there. I walked
right up to her, with my mask on, looked her in the eye and said,
“I. Am. Sorry.”
With workers and other customers looking on, I
asked for her forgiveness and told her I should have been more gracious and
humble. She opened up to me for a few
minutes about how tough the current situation was on her as a former nurse and
current small business owner. She was
tired. She was weary. She was worried.
She didn’t need a seasonal patriot. She needed a gracious Christian.
I purchased my donuts, we laughed, and I left. When I got back to the van, I explained to my
children that it was important we set ourselves aside for the wellbeing of others.
I made sure my kids knew that I was
willing to eat crow so a tired stranger could have an emotionally healthy day. I explained to my children what I had done and
how I needed to make it better. I
explained to my children that God allows us to make mistakes so His grace can
be on greater display.
We will back for more donuts this week. I’ll be wearing my mask the whole time, making
sure I am a blessing and not a bully. And
I didn’t have to give up a shred of freedom or dignity to do so.
This world needs humility, grace and
forgiveness. It doesn’t need more casual
Christians dying on their temporal hills. It needs more Jesus-followers living out the
Gospel.
We were created to be in community with one
another, adopted as God’s own children within the same household, with our
neighbors next door and our neighbors from other tribes, nations, and
cultures. Can we stop listening to just
our own voices and begin listening to God’s Spirit speaking to our spirits and
be strong enough to be convicted?
Hymn O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
Benediction
As
we have been blessed, may we bring blessings to all in the name of Jesus
Christ. AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment