Worship
for the Lord’s Day
February
28, 2021
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
The positivity rate is a bit volatile right now going up
and down, but the overall trajectory is definitely headed in the right
direction. While it was down as low as
5.4%, it went back up to 6.3%, but is currently at 5.8%; however, at our last session meeting, we voted to
re-open our churches for in-person worship beginning on Palm Sunday – March 28,
unless something catastrophically terrible happens. Please plan to join us with our previous
safety precautions in place – wearing masks, using hand sanitizer when you
arrive at the church as well as if you’ve touched various surfaces in the
church, and being physically distant from one another.
Our music, for the next few weeks, will be YouTube clips as
I had done before our current organist was recording music.
Let’s begin:
Prelude – J. S. Bach’s Prelude
in C Major
Call to Worship
O God of Abraham and
Sarah, we remember with gratitude Your covenant that undergirds our lives with
certainty and gives us peace. Through
the gift of Your Son, You freed us from sin and death. You have given us everything. Be our guide on our Lenten journey. Help us deny ourselves and pick up our cross
and follow Your Son. AMEN.
Prayer of Confession
Guiding Lord, even
though we hesitate on our Lenten journey; we vowed to come with You through all
the trials and fears towards the Cross.
Today we face the challenge which true commitment brings. Are we willing to offer our whole selves to
You in service? We would like to think
that we can do that, but we are aware of how many times we have turned away
from service and instead focused on our own desires. Remind us again of the commitment You would
have us give if we are to become disciples.
Forgive our stubbornness and fears.
Lead us forward, gracious Lord, on our journey to the Cross. AMEN
Words of Assurance
The journey of
discipleship is never easy; but you can be assured that you will not be on this
journey alone. Place your trust in Jesus
and God will reward your efforts. AMEN
Affirmation of Faith – from A Brief Statement
of Faith.
We trust in Jesus
Christ, fully human, fully God.
Jesus proclaimed the
reign of God:
preaching good news to
the poor and release to the captives,
teaching by word and
deed and blessing children,
healing the sick and
binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts, forgiving
sinners,
and calling all to
repent and believe the gospel.
Unjustly condemned for
blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of
human pain
and giving his life for
the sins of the world.
God raised this Jesus
from the dead,
vindicating his sinless
life,
breaking the power of
sin and evil,
delivering us from
death to life eternal.
With believers in every
time and place,
we rejoice that nothing
in life or in death
can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Alleluia. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
You stop us in our tracks, O Lord, with Your reminder that
discipleship is not a “sometime” thing.
We are called to place our whole lives in Your care; to follow You; to
serve You by caring for others not just once in a while, but always. We admit that we’re not always ready to do
this. The demand is great; the need is
great; our energies are limited and our selfishness sometimes prevents us. Help us place our trust and our lives in Your
care. You will give us the strength and
courage that we will need for this journey.
Be with us. Help us remember that
Your love is poured out for all Your people; You are never far away.
This day, we offer up
in 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. 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 A Mighty Fortress is Our God
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Genesis
17:1-7,15,16
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and
said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2And I
will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly
numerous.” 3Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,
4“As for me, this is my covenant
with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer
shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you
the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will
make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall
come from you.
7I will establish my covenant
between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations,
for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
15God said to Abraham, “As for
Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will
bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she
shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
New Testament: Mark 8:31-38
31Then he began to teach them
that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the
elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days
rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind
not on divine things but on human things.”
34He called the crowd with his
disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For
those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For
what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed,
what can they give in return for their life? 38Those
who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation,
of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his
Father with the holy angels.”
Sermon –
(Mark
8:31-38)
How many of you have ever had dreams
of starting school or about taking exams?
Well, I have, and mine have changed over the years. As a small child, I was terrified of missing the
first day of school. I was worried that
all the kids would have an opportunity to get to know each other first and I
would be left out of the groups. Later,
I would dream about being lost in an unfamiliar school building, unable to find
the right classroom; or I’d forget my homework; or I’d read the wrong
assignment. But in its most enduring
form, my school dream would be about an exam in seminary. And it was always the final exam. I would be sitting at my desk, my #2 pencils
before me. The professor would
distribute the examination papers talking all the while about the same rules we
had heard for years, no cheating, no bathroom breaks, no getting up for any
reason, if we had a question we were to raise our hands and he/she would come
to us. My exam paper would be handed to
me face down on the desk. I would stare
at it knowing that I knew all the answers and all I had to do was turn the
paper over at the word “go” and release the knowledge in my head. At the last student, the professor would give
the word and I’d turn over my paper to read the first question. For some reason, there were ever only two
questions. I would begin to read them
and I’d panic. The first is so
complicated that my eyes refuse to focus on the words. The second is so simple in wording as to be
laughable. But I can’t answer either
question because the second one is always, “In light of question #1, what do
you believe?” I have failed. I will never leave this room. This professor will be mine forever. I will never graduate. In a cold sweat, I wake up.
I think our feelings toward school
have an almost primal quality to them.
At school, we make friends, we have our minds stretched, we set and
achieve goals. But at school we are also
found to be wanting, we learn the terror of being lost, or late, or being
called upon and unprepared.
Well, my impression of the scene in
today’s gospel is something akin to the disciples being thrust into a waking
“exam dream”. On the way to Caesarea
Philippi, Jesus springs on them a surprise quiz. “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples report back what they’ve heard:
some believe Jesus to be John the Baptist; others, Elijah; others, one of the
prophets. And then Jesus gives them that
follow-up question: “Who do you say that I am?” Forget everything that you were told to
regurgitate. Forget all that you’ve
studied for. Forget all the easy stuff
that was in the textbooks. Now, speak
for yourselves. After everything that’s
happened, “Who do you say that I am?” I
can just imagine the disciples swallowing hard, shuffling their feet, looking
desperately at one another, and hoping someone has the answer.
Peter finally breaks the uneasy
silence: “You are the Messiah”. But
then, curiously, instead of praising Peter for his insight, for understanding
all that he’s been taught, Jesus tells the disciples to keep silent about it.
What does it mean to confess Jesus
Christ as the Messiah? What does it mean
to say that Jesus Christ is Lord? For
centuries, Christians have identified Jesus by titles like “Son of God,”
“Christ,” “Messiah,” “the Lord.” Yet,
unlike Jews who were living in Roman occupied Palestine in the first century of
this common era, we have no conception of a military conqueror who arrives on
the scene of earthly oppression, backed by a mighty army to liberate God’s
people from their enemies. Actually,
even in its first-century context, Jesus’ own life didn’t seem to quite fit
into the traditional definitions of “Christ,” “Messiah,” or “Lord.”
God made the remarkable choice to
enter human life in the person of Jesus.
Just how remarkable that choice is, is revealed when Jesus follows
Peter’s confession by beginning to teach the disciples that the Son of Man must
undergo great suffering, rejection, and death before being raised again. Jesus contradicts directly the expectation of
earthly conquest and power that characterizes later Old Testament apocalyptic
thought. As far as Peter is concerned,
suffering and death should not be part of this job description. In Peter’s eyes, Jesus kind of goes off the
deep end in predicting this passion.
Halfway through the account of the gospel according to Mark, Jesus
speaks of suffering as an inevitable component of salvation. We can’t help but take notice, just like the
disciples.
Confessing Jesus as Messiah changes
forever the one making that confession. Speaking that truth, like Peter, has
implications for everything that happens thereafter. Perhaps the surprise quiz on the road to
Caesarea Philippi is frightening precisely because it forces the disciples to
shift from an intellectual exercise of just spitting out facts that they know,
to the realm of life-changing experience and understanding what they have
experienced.
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus’ question continues to confound. By rephrasing his initial query, changing
those “people” to “you,” Jesus alters the focus from description to commitment,
from speculation to belief. How we
answer is a matter of nothing less than our very lives.
Somehow, by God’s amazing grace, we
respond to the question. And I am
returned to my exam dream. There in the
classroom, my #2 pencils on the desk, the exam paper in front of me, I’ve read
the impossible question #1 that I can’t seem to answer, and then also it’s
follow up. But this time Jesus is
standing beside me at my desk waiting for an answer. I look again at the paper and back at
Jesus. But this time I know.
“You are Jesus, the clearest picture I
have of God. You show me that God is
love, because you love me. You show me
that God is compassionate, because you have compassion for others, and even for
me, in my weakness and frailty. You show
me that God is forgiving, because you have forgiven my sins by bearing them in
your own body on the cross. I would not
be here today if it were not for your living out God’s love, compassion, and
forgiveness. You are part of the life of
God, because you are God’s Son. You are
part of me, because you are a human being like me. You are the promise that no matter how
muddled, confused, or wounded I may be, you suffer with me in my suffering,
even as God hung with you on the cross.
Even when you and I both feel abandoned, we are not. Because you have suffered for me, I can, in
my own way, suffer for someone else. You
have carried my burdens. Now I can carry
someone else’s. You offer joy, and
peace, and grace. I come before you,
with empty hands, open to receive your gifts.”
“Who do you say that I am?” It is a question whose answer comes not from
the head, but from the heart. Responding
to the question is the beginning of a journey, affecting who we are and what we
do with our lives.
So on this Lenten February day in
2021, who do you say that Jesus is? And
how has that affected your own life?
AMEN
Hymn Precious Lord, Take My Hand
Benediction
The Journey to
Jerusalem is a journey of discipleship that requires commitment and faith. Go now in peace, bringing the good news of
Jesus’ love to all people. Do not be
afraid. God is with you. AMEN.
Postlude – Postlude on Old
Hundredth
