Worship
for the Lord’s Day
April 11,
2021
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
If you are in the local area, please plan to join us again 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.
Let’s begin:
Prelude – I Know That My Redeemer
Lives, instrumental
Call to Worship
L: Come, all who are weary and heavy laden,
P: God will give you rest.
L: Come, all who are weighed down by the
defeats of sin and the
wilderness of this
world.
P: God will give you hope. Worship God, whose Son has defeated
death so that we might
have eternal life.
Hymn Jesus Shall Reign
Prayer of Confession
Patient and loving God,
You have promised to never leave us or forsake us. You have given us the gift of Your presence
here on earth and assurance of Your enteral presence when we die. You have given us every good and perfect
gift, and yet we still doubt Your goodness.
We continue to be tempted to turn to gods who demand from us what we can
never give and offer us death and destruction rather than life and
resurrection. Gracious God, help us see
beyond the things that are transient and focus on things that are eternal. Give us confident trust that our salvation is
a gift from You, a result of Your grace, given to us through Jesus Christ our
Lord. AMEN.
Words of Assurance
P: In Jesus
Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to
God.
Affirmation of Faith – 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
God of Awesome Joy, be with us this day as we
continue to bask in the celebration of the resurrected Lord. Let the light of Your love flood into our
lives and through us to all those who have been captured by darkness, that the Light
may give them healing, freedom, and hope.
Let us remember that the good news of Easter exists for us today, even
in the shadow of doubt. Like Thomas we
are sometimes afraid that our faith is not strong enough unless we see clearly
with evidence that truth of Your abundant love.
Let us witness to the reality, sometimes in spite of our lack of fool
proof evidence, that darkness does not win, that death is not victorious. As Easter people we proclaim that Christ is
Risen, for us, for one another, and for me.
We are raised with Christ to a new life of hope and service. Let the joy of this good news swirl around in
our hearts. Let the excitement for
service and ministry burst forth from us.
Let us truly be the “Easter People” that You have called us to be. For we ask these things in Your holy name.
This day, we also 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.
Anthem – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – The Crosby Family
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Psalm
133
1How
very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!
2It is
like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of
Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
3It is
like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there
the Lord ordained
his blessing, life forevermore.
New Testament: John
20:19-31
19When it
was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house
where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and
stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After
he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples
rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus
said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send
you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the
Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the
other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless
I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the
nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week
later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although
the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with
you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas
answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus
said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who
have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book. 31But
these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Sermon – due to
a recent family emergency, I honestly can’t even think of writing a sermon for
today without it being about what’s going on in my own life. So, I offer you an old sermon of mine and
this: May the words of my mouth and the
meditation of my heart be pleasing, for this day, to the Lord.
(based on John 20:19-31)
Have
you ever been disappointed, I mean really disappointed? If so, you know the toll that disappointment
can exact from a soul. The picture is
far too commonplace. A friend fails
us. A family member breaks a
promise. A confidante of ours succumbs
to the temptation of rumor and a private conversation between the two of you
becomes a matter of public information.
Dreams are destroyed. You know
this scene, maybe even personally. You
believe unconditionally in someone who ends up betraying you. You love passionately the person who ends up
rejecting you.
A
single incident of profound disappointment can lead to sweeping generalizations
laced with a pervasively negative perspective on life. We might end up saying things like, “You just
can’t count on anybody or anything.”
“Love, friendship, loyalty, and promises are great ideals that
ultimately fail when the crunch is on.”
Because of disappointment in one dimension of life, many people refuse
to trust in any dimension of life.
Disappointment can even adversely affect a person’s relationship with
God. Harry Emerson Fosdick once observed
that most of the people who don’t believe in God do so because they were deeply
discouraged and disappointed by another in life.
If
you have ever been disappointed – and I mean really disappointed – then surely
you understand the disciple Thomas and his reaction to the news of Jesus’
resurrection. Indeed, most of us
probably share more spiritual kinship with Thomas than with any of the other
eleven disciples.
When
Jesus was killed in Jerusalem, it looked for a while like all the disciples of
Jesus might be killed as well, after all they were part of his group. They were part of this small sect that now
the Jews and the Romans both believed were trying to usurp power from the King;
maybe insight an uprising, cause a riot, try to overthrow the government. There was a great deal of confusion, rumor,
pensiveness and anxiety that followed.
Jesus could have been that martyr this group needed to inflame the
crowds and do something drastic, but instead the devastated disciples were not
in that kind of mood and escaped any further punishment by the
authorities. Each found a hiding place
and remained there through Saturday, the day after Jesus’ death.
Then
came Sunday. The dawn of that Sunday
morning was accompanied by incredible news – he is risen! Jesus is alive! Some reports indicated that Jesus planned to
meet his disciples again very soon. And
by Sunday evening, all of the disciples were together – well, all but
Thomas. Some commentators are very
critical of this disciple’s absence.
However, it was totally consistent with his character. Thomas would be the one most likely to
venture into the city while his friends huddled behind closed doors. If you remember the full story recorded in
John, earlier in the gospel it’s recorded that when Lazarus had
just died, the disciples are resisting Jesus' decision to return to Judea, where Jesus'
fellow Jews had previously tried to stone him. Jesus is determined to go, and Thomas says bravely:
"Let us also go, that we might die with him".
So, he would most likely not be in hiding, but would be out and about
regardless of the immediate threat to his own life. And, here in John he tells us that while
Thomas was out, Jesus appeared to those gathered in the room, promising them
peace and offering them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When
Thomas does rejoin the rest of the disciples, and they tell him about the
appearance of Jesus, he stuns them all.
Thomas refused to believe their news about the resurrection. Actually, he couldn’t believe it. It simply was not possible for him. He was a concrete, matter-of-fact kind of
guy. And this was just too much. It
didn’t make any sense to him. For
Thomas, Jesus was dead. That was the
end. It was finished and done. Jesus was no longer with them. Perhaps in his mind, that wasn’t the end of
their ministry together. Perhaps in his
mind, that wasn’t the end of what Jesus had been trying to do. But for Thomas, Jesus was dead. Period.
Throwing a wet blanket on the other disciples’ blazing excitement,
Thomas declares that he would not believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he
could see him and touch the wounds that had been inflicted upon him on that day
of crucifixion.
I
think we should refrain from too harsh a criticism of Thomas and his
doubts. Think thoroughly about this
whole scene and try to be honest about the person in this fellowship with whom
you would most closely identify. If I
didn’t know the gospel story already, if I didn’t have the benefit of all the
years of history between then and now, if I hadn’t experienced the ministry of
the church, I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be right there with
Thomas. I don’t know how readily I would
have accepted a single word about a man being raised from the dead; even if I’d
seen it happen before with Lazarus. Like
I said, Thomas worked with a matter-of-fact mentality. He refused to say that he believed unless he
did, in fact, believe.
Thomas
wasn’t trying to be a problem, intentionally displaying despondence to this
news or voicing skepticism about Christ.
He had seen the wounds in the body through which the life of Jesus had
seeped away. Maybe there were still
doubts among them about Lazarus being raised from the dead. They hadn’t actually seen Lazarus die. Maybe he had just been sleeping. But they all saw Jesus die. They all saw the life of their friend and
mentor seep away in the gruesome death and wounds that were inflicted upon
him. There was no way that Jesus had
just been sleeping. There was no way
that Jesus wasn’t truly, in fact, dead.
Thomas may have thought that the other disciples just didn’t want to
face the truth. And Thomas wouldn’t live
in a state of denial. Thomas could
handle harsh reality no matter how much it hurt better than confusing fantasy
and faith. If we think that Thomas’
tests for believing seemed stringent and crude, perhaps we should try to
ascertain what, in that situation, it would have taken for us to believe in the
resurrection; or, for that matter, what it would take for us to believe in the
resurrection today.
Because
Thomas wasn’t a man who didn’t want to believe.
He was a man who had believed all along, and as a result of that belief,
had his heart broken. Thomas was deeply
disappointed, soul-sick, if you will, over the death of his friend Jesus and
the end of what they all thought was going to happen, all that he believed to
be important. These disciples left
everything to follow Christ. And now
what? It’s over.
We probably all know that feeling
when we have been disappointed in what life hands us, “I will never love again;
I will never trust again.” We know that
kind of disappointment, don’t we? We’ve
all been there.
Eight
days after that tumultuous Sunday evening, Jesus appeared to the disciples
again. Eight days. It wasn’t just the next morning. It wasn’t just the day after. Eight days go by and nothing. Can you imagine how deep the disappointment
has set in by this time?
What’s even more amazing is that
they are all still together. I’ve often
wondered who made the first gesture to gather together. Who was it that made the soup, broke the
bread, prayed for them all? Who, at the
end of the evening said to small crowd that gathered, “Let’s meet again
tomorrow night?” What were they hoping
for?
Eight days later, but this time,
Thomas was with them. Perhaps he was
trying to reason with them to move on.
Perhaps he was trying to talk some sense into all of them. Perhaps he was trying to console them and get
them to face facts. Or perhaps it was
him, Thomas, who was so disappointed, so grief stricken that he couldn’t move
on without them, and he was the one that made the soup, broke the bread, and
prayed.
Who
knows, but eight days go by and Jesus appears to them again. After affirming, one more time, his gift of
peace to them all, Jesus invited Thomas to see and touch his wounds. That was all it took. Thomas was ready to believe again, to trust
one more time.
Once
Thomas was convinced of a truth, he was more committed to it than anyone
else. The resurrection of Jesus was no
exception for this disciple. Thomas
responded to Jesus with a most profound confession that represents the pinnacle
of all belief and John’s entire gospel.
“My Lord and My God,” Thomas declared.
The
resurrection of Jesus revives trust. So
much in our lives causes us disappointment.
Friends fail. Lovers change their
minds. Promises are broken. Dreams are shattered. At one time or another, most all of us yield
to the temptation of pessimism or give in to the lure of distrust. We speak with a certainty born of hurt and
deep disappointment. “Love never
endures, integrity can’t prevail.” When
you ever feel this way, remember the experience of Thomas and celebrate the
resurrection of Christ.
Christ’s
resurrection from death allows us to believe in that which will not disappoint
us, to trust in the one who will never fail us.
The risen Christ secures grace and forgiveness – secures them forever. And because of this, we can love again, good
does prevail and we can, indeed, trust again.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Hymn Lift High the Cross
Benediction
Postlude – Benedictus by The
Priests
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