Worship
for the Lord’s Day
March
7, 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. 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 – Rachmaninoff’s
Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, #5
Call to Worship
Lord, there are so many
things that lay claim to our lives, our hearts, and our spirits. Come to us in this hour of worship, heal our
wounds and free us for the journey. Open
our ears and our hearts to hear Your words of healing love. Prepare us to be faithful disciples for
You. AMEN.
Hymn Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart
Prayer of Confession
Patient Lord, we have
cluttered the “temples” of our lives with so much unnecessary things that they
have blocked out Your healing words of hope and mercy. We have been keenly aware of our economic
situation and have spent much time and energy worrying about these things. Forgive us when we have been too preoccupied
with these things that we have not listened to Your words and followed Your
ways. Clear away any fears and frustrations
that we might have. Give us clean hearts
and spirits. Help us to be confident in
Your mercy and transformational love.
These things we offer in the name of Jesus, the Christ. AMEN
Words of Assurance
Rejoice! We are forgiven. Let the clutter of our lives fall away and be
replaced by the Love of God in Christ Jesus.
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
Lord, sometimes we have difficulty hearing the story of
Jesus cleansing the Temple of those who would lie, cheat, and steal. We always want Jesus to be patient, meek, and
mild. But there are many times when bold
action is required to cleanse our greed and avarice from our lives. Lord, help us remember that Jesus’ patient
words often fall upon deaf ears. Remind
us that we need to be bold in our faith; first examining our lives and clearing
out the pain, greed, and fear. Replace
our anxieties with confidence in Your all-sustaining love and grace. Enable us to put our service to You and Your
people above our selfishness. As we
reach out to others in need, remind us that we also stand in need of Your
mercy.
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 Beneath the Cross of Jesus
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Exodus
20:1-17
Then God spoke all these words: 2I am
the Lord your
God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you
shall have no other gods before me. 4You
shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God
am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third
and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6but
showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and
keep my commandments. 7You
shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not
acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8Remember
the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9Six
days you shall labor and do all your work. 10But the
seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you,
your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the
alien resident in your towns. 11For in
six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day;
therefore the Lord blessed
the sabbath day and consecrated it.
12Honor your father and your
mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving
you. 13You shall not murder. 14You
shall not commit adultery. 15You
shall not steal. 16You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbor. 17You
shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s
wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to
your neighbor.
New Testament: John
2:13-22
13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem. 14In the temple
he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated
at their tables. 15Making a whip
of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the
cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their
tables. 16He told those
who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my
Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples
remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for
doing this?” 19Jesus answered
them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction
for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered
that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus
had spoken.
Sermon –
(based on Exodus 20:1-17)
We all know the Ten
Commandments. Whether we have watched
the epic movie starring Charlton Heston, memorized the list in Sunday School,
Vacation Bible School, or some youth group over the years, it is one of those enduring
lessons that we have kept all our lives.
Most of us know them by heart and can recite them in order, but have
them truly made an impact on your life and the way you live.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel
called Moses: Man of the Mountain, he writes:
“Moses lifted the freshly chiseled tablets of stone in his hands
and gazed down the mountain to where Israel waited. He knew a great exultation. Now men could be free. They had something of the essence of divinity
expressed. They had the chart and compass
of behavior. They need not stumble into
blind ways and injure themselves. This
was bigger than Israel. It comprehended
the world. Israel could be a heaven for all men forever, by these sacred
stones. With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned to where
Joshua waited for him. “Joshua, I have laws! Israel is going to know peace and
justice.”
God has just delivered Israel
from bondage – and now God explains what will be required for them to stay free
and out of bondage from another nation. There is such a thing as holiness, as a deep
desire to fulfill God’s will, and it is required of all people. The intent of the commandments is to engender
love of God and love of neighbor. As Christians, we find in these Ten
Commandments a set of profound guidelines that demonstrate the kind of life God
wants us to live.
The second commandment, “You shall not make any graven images of
God.” Yet, we are made in God’s image,
and Jesus, both fully human and fully divine, is the perfect image of God. Any other creature-like images; the Egyptian
god Horus or the Wall Street golden bull, you name it; they mislead us. Martin Luther clarified this commandment when
he said that our god is whatever motivates us, changes our mood, embodies the
life we desire… so who is your God?
The
third commandment is “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in
vain”. What exactly does that mean? No swearing with God’s name in it? Not exactly.
More accurately, it means that every utterance of God’s name should be
done so with reverence, a mixture of awe, wonder, love, respect, and
esteem. Evoking the name of God should
not be for casual purposes. Imagine a
Being so powerful, so perfect, so incredibly beyond human understanding that
the very foundations of the universe hang from the palm of His hand. God spins the whirling planets too numerous
that we do not even know the extent of them (billions of them). God created them from nothing. God knows the very number of hairs upon your
head and upon the head of every living creature that has ever stepped foot upon
the earth, the number of scales of every fish in the sea, and the number of
feathers on every bird that has soared the skies. God knows every leaf that has unfurled from
the tiniest bud, every root that has stretched its length into the earth, and
every flower that has scented the air.
God knows every living creature by name.
God preserves and guides them.
God hears our prayers, helps us in our necessities of life, rewards or
disciplines us as is our need, and provides good things for our hearts’
desires. So, when we utter God’s name we
do so with reverence and awe.
On Mt.
Sinai God spoke to Moses and gave a rather long explanation in the fourth
commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your
work. But the seventh day is a sabbath
do the Lord your God; you shall not do any work, you, your son or daughter,
your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore
the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” Over the years, we’ve sort of misconstrued
this commandment. Generations of our
parents and grandparents seemed to think that this meant stores should be
closed on Sunday and people shouldn’t go to work that day. Which, I suppose in smaller towns and
villages that worked as a general guideline for everyone in the town or in the village
to be on the same schedule. But, mostly,
we don’t live in small towns anymore, we live in a global village now, which is
much more difficult for all of us to have the same schedule. For example,
those of you who come from larger families, even you know, how difficult
it can be for everyone to be on the same schedule, to sit down at meals
together, to go to school or work at the same, to have the same vacation
periods, etc… It’s difficult, if not
impossible. I remember comments by my
grandmother who would say things like, “I don’t know what the world is coming
to. I remember when all the stores used
to be closed on Sunday.” But this
commandment wasn’t primarily a prescription for how retail stores were or were
not to operate. It was primarily about
our own internal rest and time of meditation for our reverence for God. We’ve sort of forgotten the primary purpose
and instead have focused on the secondary purpose. Yes, in the secondary purpose, we are to give
time of rest to people in our sphere of influence – whether they are family
members or people in our employ and to make sure that they too have a time of
rest, a time for contemplation on the blessings given to them by God, a time of
meditation and worship. We are ALL to
remember a day of Sabbath.
In the
fifth commandment, there is a major shift from the first through the fourth
commandments that have a primary focus on God to that of others. This fifth commandment can be difficult for
those who have had abusive parents. But
this commandment is as much about parents as it is about children. In the third commandment, we saw the majesty
and faithfulness of God toward God’s own creation and why we, as God’s own
children, ought to be reverent to God.
God requires of us this reverence because God cares for us deeply,
provides for us, cherishes us, rewards and disciples us, and knows our every
need. This is equally true of this fifth
commandment. Parents, as ambassadors for
God, as earthly representatives of God, should do the same for their
children. And thus, are due the respect
and honor that we give to God. Our
parents should be our greatest benefactors.
Ambrose,
Bishop of Milan had a huge influence over Augustine’s life and upon Augustine’s
confession of his disrespect and treatment of his parents, Bishop Ambrose said
to him, “How much has not your mother suffered on your account! How many sleepless nights, how many
privations, how much anxiety has she not borne for you! How hard your father has worked, to provide
you with food and raiment! And can you
be so ungrateful to those who have done and suffered so much for you?” If you know anything about Augustine and his
life, you would know that they were not perfect parents, by far. Although Augustine lived during the first
century, his family wasn’t much different than any other family today. As he got older and sought to be more
faithful to God, he realized his own contempt toward his parents was a
disrespect of God and he sought to confess that sin and to soften his attitude
toward them.
In
keeping faith with this commandment, may it be one that we hold dear as both
parents and children. Parents, earn the
respect and honor of your children. And
children, give your due honor to them as God’s earthly representatives.
In the
sixth through tenth commandments, attention is turned fully outward on our
relationships with the world around us and our duties to other people.
Don’t kill. How many times do the characters of the Old
Testament get in trouble with God over this one? God sought out Cain when he killed his
brother Abel, Nathan condemns David for having Bathsheba’s husband killed. But that isn’t all. In the gospels, Jesus explains that anger is
an interior kind of murder and in our rancorous culture, where anger management
is a big thing, aren’t we rabid killers?
No adultery. In a culture where sex as impulse, pleasure,
and self-fulfillment is all over the media Jesus said if you harbor lust in
your heart, you are an adulterer. There
is a reminder, however, in this commandment from an encounter that Jesus has
with a group of men who were about to stone a woman for being an
adulterer. Jesus tells the men that if
they are without sin, they can throw the first stone. One by one that drop their stones and wander
off. And Jesus offers her
forgiveness. So, even if we’ve broken
these laws and sinned, we are reminded that there is forgiveness.
No stealing. Again, in doing some reading and research for
today’s sermon, I found some interesting takes on this commandment. Francis Spirago says that, “all trustworthy
information respecting the earliest ages of humanity bears evidence to the
possession of personal property. If
those living in society as a group would not have the right of possession, the
incentive to labor would be wanting.”
This is an argument, in its various forms, for those who are against
government hand-outs or providing charity.
There is therefore, no incentive to labor for your possessions – it is
then either stolen from another or given as a reward for sloth. Spirago goes on to explain more, “But it
cannot be said that the distribution of wealth, as it is under existing
circumstances, is in accordance with the will of God. It could not be God’s will that a small
minority should enjoy all the world’s wealth, while an overwhelming majority of
God’s children should live in poverty and destitution. This great inequality is the result of
sin.” So, although, on the surface, this
commandment to – Don’t Steal – seems easy enough to interpret, there is a
multi-tiered level in our manifestation of this commandment today.
Do not lie. This one could be called the commandment of
the tongue, the mind, and the heart.
Being truthful in all things is not always easy. We sometimes justify our little white
lies. But this is honestly a much deeper
commandment. It’s about the truth we
tell ourselves and the mirage of a false narrative to hurt someone else. Perhaps it can be summed up by the words of
Polonius in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.
“To thine own self be true.” But
what does that mean? The first meaning is
that someone can better judge him or herself if they have done what they should
or could have done. The second is that a
person should be honest in all their ways and relations. The third meaning is that a person must
always do the right thing. And finally,
Polonius, who was speaking to his son at the time meant that he must do
whatever was most beneficial, in an honest, upright way.
And finally we come to the last
commandment. No coveting. Coveting is
the engine of capitalism! Wanting all
the toys. But I think God would liberate
us from the stranglehold of always wanting more – or really, wanting what is
new and different. An example of
covetousness today might not be, wanting more iPhones, but rather wanting the
latest iPhone.
These are the enduring laws of
God that have lasted for thousands of years.
May we still find them relevant today.
AMEN.
Hymn Jesus Shall Reign
Benediction
God goes with us,
wherever we go. Seek goodness and
compassion. Bring the words of hope and
peace to all whom you meet. Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude Adagio for Strings by
Samuel Barber.
This is a longer piece
than I would normally use (about 8 minutes), but one of the most gorgeous
pieces of music I’ve ever heard, played with such passion by Lead Cellist,
Hauser.
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