Today's Worship Service and Sermon - March 21, 2021

 

Worship for the Lord’s Day

March 21, 2021

A Note before we begin this day’s worship:

          I’m so excited that we will be back in public, in-person worship next week for Palm Sunday, March 28.  There will NOT be any special services during Holy Week this year, such as our normal Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services.  But, I will continue to provide on-line worship in this format here for the foreseeable future.  Please plan to join us on Sunday mornings at our regular worship times (Olivet Presbyterian Church, West Elizabeth – 9:45am and Bethesda United Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth – 11:15am) 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 this week continues to be YouTube clips as I had done before our current organist was recording music.

 

Let’s begin:

 

Prelude – The blind pianist is Nobuyiki Tsujii, who composed this piece called “Elegy for the Victims of the Tsumani”, which occurred just over 10 years ago.  We have suffered tragedy, both man-made and natural, throughout the history of the planet, but we have a capacity to turn those tragedies and the affects they have on us into gifts of wonder for our fellow travelers.

 

Call to Worship

Lord, be with us this day as we commit ourselves to being Your disciples.  Help us face the future unafraid, trusting in Your loving care and presence with us.  AMEN.

 

Hymn  Near the Cross

 

Prayer of Confession

Compassionate Lord, forgive us when we falter on this Lenten journey; when the road ahead seems too uncertain and we are afraid.  We admit that following Jesus is not an easy task.  Jesus requires us to be willing to make the ultimate commitment of our whole lives and we hesitate and hold back.  Draw us back to You, Lord.  Give us confidence and courage to face the future with hope.  Let us place our trust in You that the message of peace and mercy You have given to us through Your Son, Jesus the Christ, may be offered to others through our own witness to Your healing mercy.  In Jesus’ name, we pray.  AMEN

 

Words of Assurance

Even though the future is always clouded; God is with us, guiding, healing, comforting, restoring.  Rejoice!  In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and healed.  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 know us well, Lord.  You know that we would like the ways of discipleship to be easy; to have the paths laid out in a neat line with the future clearly visible at all times.  But part of our journey is obscured by our own greed and fear.  You do not block the way to hope and peace, but our own fears provide the barriers; and far too often those barriers take the forms of alienation and prejudice.  Write Your words on our hearts, Merciful God.  Plant Your transforming love in our spirits.  Give us courage.  We bring before You our concerns, our joys and our sorrows, give us hearts of peace and confidence in Your all-sustaining presence.  Help us set our feet on this pathway toward the cross and beyond. 

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  When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

 

Scripture Readings

 

Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:31-34

³¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

 

New Testament: John 12:20-33

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

²⁷“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

 

Sermon – Last week the teleprompter on my iPad was too slow and this week it was too fast.  Not sure what changed from previous weeks.  O well, if it feels like I’m speeding through the sermon, my apologies.

 

Habits of the Heart

(based on Jeremiah 31:31-34)

 

"...I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."  What a comforting word that must have been.  Especially for those who knew with every fiber of their being that they were in their current mess (and a BIG mess it was) because of their sin.  It was a wonderful word of hope.

And this word came from a surprising source...Jeremiah.  By this point in the prophet's career (probably 40+ years by now), he was very well known.  And he was NOT famous for bringing words of comfort and hope.  If anything, he was seen as sort of a curmudgeon who was a constant gadfly to both the religious and the political establishment. 

Over a period of years, Jeremiah tried to persuade a succession of kings that God wanted obedience and not political solutions to Judah’s problems.  His warnings fell constantly on deaf ears.  During his time as prophet in Jerusalem, he had attacked the nation's religious hypocrisy which was used more like a good luck charm - "As long as we go through the motions of worshipping, all will be well with God," seemed to be the attitude by everyone, not just the religious and political leaders.  He saw injustice rampant with the oppression of those who were less fortunate.  He foretold the coming of the forces of Babylon and recommended national surrender.  He was hated by his family and friends; he was forbidden to preach in the temple; he was arrested and placed in stocks; he was threatened with death; he was beaten and imprisoned; he was dropped down into a cistern that had nothing in it but gooey muck. 

Jeremiah’s special prophetic anguish came from knowing that God’s covenant with God’s people was not what was wrong and why Jerusalem was in such deep problems.  What was wrong, was the way God’s people had tried (or not tried) to keep the covenant that they had made with God.  This covenant had been written on stone tablets when they had been rescued out of slavery in Egypt.

But Jeremiah had a vision while in prison as the city fell around him to the Babylonians.  “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah….I will put my law within them, and I will write upon their hearts.”  Words of hope, quite different from all the prophetic words he’d used in the past.  Words of doom and destruction.

At the time of these words by Jeremiah, Judah was already conquered and all but a small remnant had been carried off into exile - away from home, land, family, and, in the minds of some, even God - more or less as Jeremiah had predicted. They had broken every covenant that God had established, and now were experiencing captivity once again - a once-proud nation now reduced to a life of slavery in a foreign land.  Their history repeats over again.  Now the prophet's words to them were concerned with how to get along in this new environment. In an open letter to the exiles, he suggested that they make the most of the situation:

In chapter 29 Jeremiah assures the exiled people; “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Jeremiah went on to let them know that this would not be a short-term situation: they were looking at seventy years, time enough for an entire generation to be born and die.  Yes, they WERE away from home, land, family, but they were not away from God, and God had plans for them, even still; God had plans for them "a future with hope" in Jeremiah's words.  In spite of all they had done, God was still prepared to use them for God’s own purposes.

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

"I will put my law within them" - not on tablets of stone. "I will write it on their hearts" - it will not be an external set of rules, but an internal motivation, written on the heart, a habit of the heart.  People will do right just because it is right.  People will do right just because it is the right thing to do.  Wow.  This will be a dramatic end to the cycle that has been repeated so often.  The people receive a covenant from God, follow it briefly, fall away from it, are punished, then return to the covenant with God...only to repeat the cycle over and over again.  Now, the Lord says, the vision is for a new covenant which will be kept naturally.  One that is written upon the heart.  One that is kept because it is now a habit of the heart to keep it.

The old covenant is like a posted speed limit and a traffic cop.  We obey it because we are afraid of getting a ticket if we don’t.  The new covenant is driving at a speed based on respect for the conditions of the roadway, the residents of the neighborhood, the safety of other drivers and ourselves, as well as our own need to get from one place to another (which presumably all went into setting the posted limit in the first place).  In either case the speed of travel is the same, but the difference is in the motivation. Extrinsic versus intrinsic.  Before it was the law written down for everyone to obey, with consequences to bear if you don’t heed the law; an extrinsic motivation.  Now with the new covenant that God will establish, it is because the law has been written into our hearts, and our motivation is for the welfare and well-being of God’s creation, others and ourselves, with a completely different set of consequences to bear if you don’t heed the new law written on your heart; an intrinsic motivation.  External – extrinsic; internal – intrinsic.

I would love to report that soon after Jeremiah's words were spread abroad among the exiles that their fulfillment came, but we know that this was not the case. The exiles did in fact return, but the new covenant that God was to establish with the people did not come about right away.  In fact, by the time we actually hear of this "New Covenant" more than five-hundred years had elapsed. 

And it came when Jesus sat with his disciples in an upper room.  "This cup is the New Covenant sealed in my blood," he said.  It wasn’t until Christ came that God fulfilled the new covenant with his people.  

According to today’s Gospel lesson from John, word had begun to get around about Jesus.  It was a week before the passionate sacrifice of Christ was to take place - crowds had already greeted his entry into Jerusalem.  In John's chronology, this was fast on the heels of his raising Lazarus back to life after four days in the tomb.  Jesus was beginning to attract significant crowds, and they were even bigger than normal because this was a festival week, and people had traveled from all over the known world to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem.

Word about Jesus had apparently spread to the visitors in the city.  Some of these Gentile converts ("God-fearers" as they were known) got wind of this incredible rabbi.  They wanted to meet him.  So, they came to the disciples and asked for an appointment.

We never hear whether or not they get their audience; we assume they did.  But instead what is written about the scenario is rather bizarre.  Jesus tells Andrew and Phillip in front of the crowds that had gathered that day, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." OK!  A certain tingle of excitement must have raced through those who heard him.  This was exactly what a lot of people had been waiting for three years.  NOW, Jesus would throw off the Judean "Clark Kent" disguise and become Israel's "Superman";  The war hero they’d been waiting for, that would overthrow Rome and bring Israel back to its former glory as a nation and one that would be even greater besides.  YES!  Glory!

But wait, that’s not exactly what happens.  What follows in the Gospel account is almost a stream-of-consciousness monologue which we who live on this side of the crucifixion and resurrection can understand, but it must have left his original hearers completely confused.  So, for a moment put yourself in their place. There was that statement about the grain of wheat having to "die" in the ground before it can bear fruit. What has that got to do with the conquering Messiah?  That was followed immediately with, "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Then he says, "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also." Uh huh. Finally, he takes a deep breath and sighs, "Now my soul is troubled." And those who were standing there listening probably whispered, "Ours is, too.  You’re not making any sense."

Suddenly, he lifts his eyes upward and begins a conversation with heaven that is punctuated with what some hear as a clap of thunder and others insist is the voice of an angel.  One way or another, it is most disquieting. Finally, he says, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." Yes, you and I know what he was talking about, but you can be sure that those who first heard him were confused.

Notice something though: confused or not, THEY STAYED.  There was something about Jesus that did indeed draw people to him.  It had been so since the night of his birth - humble shepherds and learned magi.  As a boy in the Temple, there were rabbis and scholars who gathered around him.  As a man there were people from all walks of life - from fishermen and tax-collectors to men like Nicodemus, the cream of Israelite society; upstanding women and fallen women; the little children loved him enough to make such a nuisance of themselves that the disciples tried to shoo them away. Even a hard-bitten Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, would be mesmerized enough by him to disavow any blame for his execution.

Why were people so attracted to Jesus?  Scripture says he was not particularly handsome.  He came from no family of influence.  He had no money.  Was it the miracles?  Perhaps.  There are always some who want to see a magic show.  But on a deeper level, what Jesus must have embodied for people sense of hope, the same kind of hope that ancient Judah felt when they heard the words of Jeremiah: "The days are surely coming, says the LORD," - in other words, you can take this to the bank - a "new covenant...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts;" - this one will be automatic; no way for us to blow it - "and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Hope.

The words of Jeremiah brought hope to the people of Jerusalem exiled in Babylon.  The words of Jesus brought hope to the people of his day exiled inside themselves for a better future.

If we read the newspaper, we might feel we are living in a world devoid of hope.  We wonder how anyone survives in this life.  We survive by the measure of our hope.  The exiles in Babylon found their hope in the gracious words of Jeremiah and his description of the handwriting on the heart.  In exile they built homes, planted gardens, had children and one day they returned – intact and strong.  But it wasn’t until the new covenant, established by Christ, that it became written upon their hearts.  What is written upon our hearts now is hope.  Every day it becomes a habit of the heart to hope for a brighter tomorrow because no matter what today brings, we have Christ in our hearts and in our lives.
Amen!

 

Hymn The Old Rugged Cross

 

Benediction

Fix your eyes on the Lord.  Place your hand in His Hand, trusting in His guiding and comfort.  Go into the world, that needs so much the words of healing love, and bring the good news of God’s absolute love and presence to all people.  Go in peace.  AMEN.

 

Postlude – An Irish Blessing