Worship
for the Lord’s Day
August
30, 2020
Some announcements before
we begin this day’s worship:
The Community Support for Education Program at Bethesda had
to be canceled. Although I think it was
a good program, we just didn’t have enough time to garner the volunteer support
we needed to make it happen. We had 32
requests for registrations from parents, but by Friday we only had 7 students registered,
although I was expecting more over this weekend and even into this week. The biggest hurdle was coming up with enough
volunteers. 8 people contacted me with
an interest in volunteering, but none of them actually committed to helping. I knew it would be a stretch from the
beginning, as I knew that most of our own members wouldn’t be able to
volunteer, but also fully believed that it was the right thing to try and do
for our community and was hoping for more community support. I’ve always been a pastor that emphasizes the
aspect of DOING ministry, not just talking about it. The last few months with nothing substantial
to actually do, I was (perhaps) a little too ALL-IN for this program to come to
fruition. So, in honesty, I’m a bit sad.
We were also beginning
to make some plans to start parking lot worship services in the month of Sept.
at the Bethesda Church. The parking lot
is not very large, but large enough to hold about 12-15 cars, backed in, with
space in the center for me to preach and lead worship. In 2019, PennDot approached us about bridge
work that needed to be done just beyond our lot on 3rd Avenue and
asked if they could use our parking lot to stage their equipment at the far end
of the lot and work on the bridge. They
offered us some financial compensation for doing so. For whatever reason, the work was delayed for
nearly a year and has just now begun, which poses an additional hurdle to host
worship services in the parking lot, at this time. If they complete the work quickly, we might
still think about hosting those worship services at the end of the month. Otherwise, we are planning on the possibility
of opening up both congregations on Oct 4 for our first in-person, corporately-gathered
worship service at our regular times of 9:45am at Olivet and 11:15am at
Bethesda.
Be patient. We will be together in worship again, soon! Until then, let’s begin:
Prelude
Opening Prayer
Be with us, O Lord, as we listen today for Your word and seek
Your ways. Guide our steps and guard our
lives that we may serve You more effectively in this broken world. AMEN.
Hymn For the Beauty of the Earth
Prayer of Confession
God
of love and mercy, be with us this day. We
often falter in living up to Your expectations for us. We create divisions between various people; we
judge before we listen; we condemn before we make any attempt to understand. Our lives are in turmoil and we confess that
we have turned away from You. It is fear and anger that too often
surrounds us. Our actions become based
on those fears and anger. Give us hearts
overflowing with grace and compassion. Help
us mirror Jesus who loved and healed others who were rejected by “polite”
society. Remind us that we are called to
be strong voices of hope for those who feel alienated and lost; we are called
to be a home to strangers; to quench thirst and to give nourishment; to welcome
and bring words of hope. Forgive us when
we have forgotten these things. In
Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.
Words of Assurance
Christ calls each of us into lives of service and hope.
He equips us for these ministries and places us on the pathways of peace.
Rejoice! You are called by God’s Son and blessed by
him. 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:
(Continued prayers for
all those affected by the Coronavirus, for our schools, for our national
leaders. We also need to pray for the
devastation in Louisiana from Hurricane Laura.)
Lord
of hope, we bow before You in prayer this day. Enter our hearts as we lift
up to You our joys and concerns. We pray
for situations and people who are in need of Your healing mercies and Your
peace. Help us, in our speech and in our
actions, be a compassionate supporter and a messenger of peace.
As our
lives have encountered difficulties and concerns, so, too, are we blessed with
great joys. We celebrate these moments
of happiness and wonder lifting up joys and celebrations, as well.
Lord,
bless all those whom we name before You in our hearts today.
Touch
each life with the blessings and peace and mercy…
Give
us strength and empower us for the ministries of reconciliation. We ask
these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior 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.
Hymn He Leadeth Me
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Exodus 3:1-15
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the
priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb,
the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the Lord appeared
to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing,
yet it was not consumed. 3Then
Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the
bush is not burned up.” 4When
the Lord saw
that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses,
Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he
said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on
which you are standing is holy ground.” 6He said
further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at
God.
7Then the Lord said, “I have observed
the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of
their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I
have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of
that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the
country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9The cry
of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians
oppress them. 10So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the
Israelites, out of Egypt.”
11But Moses said to God, “Who am
I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12He
said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who
sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God
on this mountain.” 13But Moses said to God, “If I
come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me
to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God
said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the
Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“ 15God
also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of
your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has
sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all
generations.
New Testament: Matthew 16:21-28
21From that time on, Jesus began
to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering
at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on
the third day be raised. 22And
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord!
This must never happen to you.” 23But he
turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to
me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24Then Jesus told his disciples,
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save
their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find
it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but
forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27“For
the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then
he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I
tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see
the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Anthem – Nearer
My God, To Thee
Sermon – Just like the hymns, you can click on the
sermon title to hear/watch a video of today’s sermon via YouTube.
A Stumbling Block
(based
on Matthew 16:21-28)
Jesus says to his disciples, “If anyone would like to
follow me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.” This passage alone should get people flocking
to churches and becoming Christians, don’t you think? This is another one of those difficult
sayings by Jesus. We’d rather hear
passages like “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you
rest”, or from John, “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may
be full”, or from the Beatitudes, “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall
be comforted.” Those are great feel-good passages that make Christianity
comfortable, safe, a buffer against the harsh realities of life.
But “deny yourself and take up your cross”? Many movies that depict Christ doing just
that aren’t great recruiting methods for Christianity. Who needs that when it is hard enough just to
keep the bills paid and food on the table, when it is hard enough just to get
up in the morning and face the challenges of the day?
Certainly, Jesus didn’t
mean that the only way we can follow him is through suffering and pain, or that
we must be crucified like him on a cross in order to follow him. But, if he didn’t mean that, what did he
mean?
Well, the whole
conversation started because Peter was asking the same questions. The disciples were off by themselves with
Jesus, taking a breather between the crowds and the critics. In the passage just before this one which we
read last week, Jesus asked his disciples who others thought he really was and
then asked them who they thought he was.
Peter gave the right answer. “You
are the Christ,” he said, “the Son of the living God,” and Jesus rewarded Peter
by calling him the petros or the pebble, the stone – incorrectly interpreted in
English as the Rock, but the foundation upon which he would build his church.
But Peter’s glory
doesn’t last very long, because as soon as Jesus begins to tell his disciples
what is about to be required of him, how he is about to walk right into the
trap set for him in Jerusalem, where he will suffer, and be killed, and be
raised from the dead, Peter explodes, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” For Peter, this kind of talk is simply too
much; to imagine his wise, young teacher coming to such a quick and bloody end,
especially an end that can be avoided.
In Peter’s way of thinking, why walk into a trap when you can turn
around and walk away? Why take a risk
you don’t have to take? That’s a pretty
normal and rational way of looking at it.
If you know what’s coming and what’s coming is bad, wouldn’t you do
anything you could to avoid it?
The newspaper
occasionally runs stories about these kinds of risk-takers: the man who rushes
into the burning building to see if anyone has been left inside; the woman who
dives into the hole in the frozen lake to rescue a child who has fallen
through. Those are the dramatic stories,
but there are quiet ones too: the doctor who spends several nights a week in a
rundown part of town, giving free medical care to homeless men; the student who
spends Saturday afternoons rocking orphaned babies with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
or Crack babies in a downtown New York clinic; the teacher who quits her job
and spends all her savings to go teach Nicaraguan peasants how to read.
It is only human to
admire such people, but there is an equally human part of us that is taken
aback by them and afraid for them. We
listen to the dangerous things they do or are planning to do and part of us,
like Peter, wants to protest. You know,
you could get hurt doing that. You could
get killed being in that place. You
could catch some disease, be shot at, raped or murdered. “God, forbid it!” comes a voice from deep
down inside us somewhere. “Isn’t there
an easier way to do what you want to do?
Do you have to take such risks?
What if you get hurt? What if you
get killed? God forbid that something
like that should happen to you!”
That is, in so many
words, what Peter says to Jesus, and right or wrong, he has a way of saying
what the rest of the disciples (and us) are thinking. Over and over again he is the disciples’
spokesman, the one who says the things they don’t dare ask. “God forbid it!” he says when Jesus predicts
his own death, and Jesus explodes.
“Get behind me, Satan!”
he says to Peter. “You are a stumbling
block to me; you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” What a shock that must have been for the
other disciples, to hear Peter, the first primary disciple, called Satan; to
hear Peter, the foundation of the new church, called a stumbling block or a
hindrance in Jesus’ way. What did he do
wrong? All he did was protest the
forecast that Jesus himself said, that he would suffer and die. All he did was say out loud that there had to
be another way.
As far as Jesus was
concerned, though, it was Satan talking; Satan, the ancient tempter. From the beginning of time the Tempter has
offered humanity alternatives to the will of God – easier alternatives, safer
alternatives, flashier alternatives – all of them temptations for us to do and
be something other than what God has called us to do and be. In the case at hand, the temptation for Jesus
is to play things safe, to skip the trip to Jerusalem and find another way to
save the world – to direct the effort from a secret headquarters maybe, to
elude his enemies, staying just out of their reach and leading his holy
revolution without placing himself at risk.
We must assume that
what Peter offers is a real temptation for Christ because later in the Garden
of Gethsemane he even prayed to God for this cup to be taken from him, so he
really was tempted and that’s why he silences Peter so harshly. Like the tempter in the wilderness, Peter is
offering him a way out, a detour around Jerusalem with all its risk of pain and
death, and for a moment, perhaps, that possible alternative seems attractive to
Christ. “Get behind me, Satan!” he says,
however tempted he may be.”
Here’s what troubles me
about this exchange between Peter and Christ:
Does Jesus mean that all of us who pray to be delivered from suffering,
pain and death are not on the side of God?
Does he mean that the only way we can be on God’s side is if we are
willing, and not only willing, but enthusiastic about enduring suffering and
pain? That kind of bothers me! I want to believe that God gives us life – in
abundance with joy, not that God is eager to take that joy away. Doesn’t God want us to be happy? Doesn’t God care about our comfort and
safety?
Well, the resounding
answer, according to this morning’s passage is “No!” “If you don’t deny yourself and take up your
cross, then you can’t be a follower of Christ.”
But, the deep secret of Jesus’ harsh words for us in this passage is
that our fear of suffering and death robs us of the very abundant life Christ
offers elsewhere in Scripture, because our fear of death always turns into fear
of living. It turns into a stingy,
cautious way of living that is not really living at all. The deep secret of Jesus’ harsh words is that
the way to have an abundant life is not to save it but to spend it, to give it
away. Winston Churchill once said, “We
make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”
Life, real living,
cannot be shut up and saved. In order
for life to come to fruition and to be abundant, it has to be spilled, wasted,
given away. Each day must pass, each
hour must be devoured, each moment must be consumed. It is in the fullness of that experience that
we have life.
Peter wanted to prevent
Jesus from doing that. He did not want
Jesus’ life to be spilled, to be wasted.
He wanted to save it, to preserve it, to find a safer, more comfortable
way for Jesus to be Lord. What he
forgot, apparently, was that Jesus’ supply of life was never-ending, that what
poured out of him poured out of an underground source so fine, so strong, that
the more of himself he gave, the more he had – a veritable geyser of living
water sent to drench a dry, parched world.
Peter missed that part
of what Jesus said, but so did I, the first nine or ten times that I heard
it. Listen again to what Matthew says,
“Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many
things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the
third day be raised.” And on the third day be raised. Peter missed that part and so can we. But when we first hear the suffering part and
the killing part, our minds don’t get that far in what it all means. We get stuck on the suffering and death
part. We get that far and say, “God forbid
it. This shall never happen to you,”
without finishing the sentence, without noticing that after the suffering and
death part there is life again, abundant life, life for Jesus and for all of us
that can never be cut off.
Living the life of
faith is not about being a daredevil, however.
This is not a sermon about signing up for skydiving lessons or doing
dangerous things for the thrill of it.
This is a sermon about living a life that matters – a life for Christ’s
sake – and about refusing to put our own comfort and safety ahead of living a
life like that, a life that pours itself out for others.
“If anyone would come
after me,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me.” Those words will never be easy to hear, but they are not, in the
final analysis, an invitation to follow Jesus into death but instead an
invitation to follow him into an abundant full life.
There is a certain
amount of pain involved in being human, and a good bit more involved in being
fully human, fully alive, especially in a world that counts on our fear of
death and uses it to keep us in line.
Jesus’ enemies counted on his fear of death to shut him up and shut him
down, but they were wrong. He may have
been afraid, but he did not let his fear stop him. He did not get stuck on the suffering and
death part. He saw something beyond
them, something as wide and glittering as the sea, worth every risk required to
reach it, and he did not stop until he got there.
To follow Christ means
going beyond the limits of our own comfort and safety. It means receiving our lives as gifts instead
of guarding them as our own possessions.
It means sharing the life we have been given instead of bottling it for
our own consumption. It means giving up
the notion that we can build dams to contain the bright streams of our lives
and letting them go instead, letting them swell their banks and spill their
wealth until they carry us down to where they run, full and growing fuller,
into the wide and glittering sea.
AMEN.
Hymn I’ve Got Peace Like a River
Benediction
Go boldly into the world in the confidence that God goes with
you, guiding your steps in paths of peace and healing. Bring the good news of God’s love to all you
meet. Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude
