Worship
Service for September 5, 2021
Click here (when
highlighted) for the YouTube link for the recorded service.
Prelude
Announcements:
·
Please feel free to join us for in person
worship at Olivet (West Elizabeth, PA) at 9:45am or at Bethesda (Elizabeth, PA)
at 11:15am.
·
We will have a joint service together on Sept
12 at Bethesda at 11:15am followed by a provided luncheon – Potato Salad, Pasta
Salas, Green Salad and various hoagies from DiCarlo’s.
·
We will have another joint service together on Sept
19 at Olivet followed by a provided breakfast – Fruit, Donuts, Bagels and Cream
Cheese.
·
Both Congregations will have a Congregational
Meeting following their worship services on Sept 26.
Sounding of the Hour (at Bethesda only)
Call to Worship
L: Lord, we are called here this day to learn
of Christ’s healing love.
P: Help us, O Lord, to learn Your lessons of
compassion.
L: Every day there are many ways in which we
can offer help to others.
P: Help us, O Lord, to be ready to reach out
to all in need.
L: Come, let us worship the One who prepares
us for service.
P: Let us sing our songs of praise to the One
who has healed us. AMEN.
Opening Hymn – In This Very Room
Prayer of Confession
Gracious
God, we come before You today knowing that we often fall short of Your call to
love one another well. We allow
ourselves to be blinded by wealth and power.
We ignore those around us who suffer injustice, poverty, and
rejection. We tune out the cries of the
poor and those on the edges of our communities.
Help us see Your great generosity, hear Your word of mercy, and feel
Your abounding love for all who need Your redemptive grace. Strengthen us to reach out in service to
those who are in need. Make us aware of
those outside our own communities that we may see them as Your precious
children and serve them in humility and joy.
May we continue to grow in grace as we learn how to serve You in the
name of the great Servant, even Jesus Christ. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: We have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the Spirit that is from God.
May we understand the grace and forgiveness bestowed upon us by God,
that others may find the Kingdom within us and among us.
P: We have been forgiven and will strive to
forgive others. AMEN.
Gloria Patri
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
Lord, You know how
great our needs are. In these difficult
times when jobs are threatened, homes are being lost, families are experiencing
great stress, come and bring Your healing love to us. Help us place our trust in You. Remind us again of how You transform lives,
not just with healing, but with a spirit of hope and compassion. Keep us hopeful. Teach us not to give up when things are going
wrong. Give us faith that can move
mountains. Give us hearts that are ready
to be of service to others in all times and in all places.
Today, we have lifted
up people and situations which concern us and have we have asked for Your hand
of healing, remind us that that same healing hand rests on us as well.
In a time of silence we
also lift up our personal prayers of concern.
Lord, hear the prayers of our hearts and spirits now…
Enable us to be people
of compassion and trust; for we ask these things in Jesus’ Name who taught us
to prayer together 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 – Just
As I Am
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Psalm 125
NT – Mark 7:24-37
Sermon –
Secrets
(based on Mark 7:24-37)
Let’s
begin by putting this short, clipped version of the Syrophoenician woman and
her insistent plea into a more complete context in order to understand this
whole passage in Mark a little bit better.
Back in the end of chapter 6 in Mark, we read that Jesus had gathered a
huge crowd, taught them during the day, healed their illnesses and had
miraculous fed the thousands gathered with five loaves of bread and two
fish. He then went across the waters to
Bethsaida and to the land of Gennesaret, but as soon as he and the disciples
had landed a new crowd began to gather as word about him had spread. He also taught them and healed their
illnesses.
By this time the elders or Pharisees back in
Jerusalem had started getting a little upset over Jesus’ popularity and they
set out to find out who this Jesus person really was. So, they came to him in Bethsaida and
demanded to know why his disciples ate with unclean hands, as they confronted
him on others matters as well. Jesus
returned their objections with his usual candor talking to them in parables. When he finally left to find some peace and
quiet, even his disciples demanded to understand what he had said, for they
didn’t understand his teaching either.
I think by this point Jesus was tired of all
the crowds demanding attention and being so needy and then there were the
Pharisees who sought to find fault in everything he said and did. Jesus desired to withdraw from all the
excitement, to find a place where no one knew him and to escape for just a
little while to bring himself back to center, to take a deep breath, and
re-energize. And so, he left the region
entirely and went into the borderlands of Tyre and Sidon. He had hoped to escape notice here where his
reputation was little known and an area that was filled with Gentiles rather
than Jews. And yet, even here among the
Gentiles, whispers about him had already spread and a Syrophoenician woman,
which eluded to her race being from the Phoenician area of Syria, whose
daughter had an evil spirit sought his healing powers. We learn more details about this encounter
between the woman and Jesus in Matthew.
For in Matthew we learn that she attacked Jesus while they were making
their way into town and followed him, pouring out her loud petitions, to the annoyance
of the disciples. They thought they were
carrying out his wish for privacy and to remain anonymous when they suggest
that it would be best to “send her away” with her prayer granted and therefore
stop her from crying out after them and raising a crowd. It’s really only in Matthew that we learn of
Jesus ignoring her and his answer to the disciples that his mission remained
only for those in Israel. Mark omits all
of that and all we read in Mark is his harsh refusal to the woman and the
woman’s answer.
However, whether you read the full account in
Matthew or the clipped version of it here in Mark, Jesus’ response is still
atypical and startling to hear. It is
very unlike him. And yet, in spite of
that, the woman is persistent. Perhaps
her boldness comes from what she took as meaning in his answer to her. Because what he said to her was, “Let the
children eat first.” What she heard in
that answer, is that if there is a first, then there most assuredly is a second. The very image of a great house with a
banquet table set for all means that the children also sit at the table and
that the “little dogs” are in the room, as well. This image implies that the children and the
dogs are part of the household.
To our ears, this means nothing, and we would
normally miss it’s true meaning, but to the Gentile woman from Syria, it means
everything. It means that although God
chose a people, the Israelites, as divinely blessed all others are also
present. His answer to her meant that
the Jews did not have a monopoly on God or to heaven.
His answer gave her the boldness she needed to
remind him of this in his own answer.
She catches his meaning immediately and continuing to use his choice of
words in story, she basically says, “So, after the blessed children of God get
to eat, then the rest of us will still be given something. We aren’t left out of God’s divine
plan.”
Matthew’s gospel is well-known as the Jewish
gospel. It was written for a Jewish
audience, that’s why it begins with the entire lineage of Jesus through Joseph
and Mary; to place Jesus historically ordained through the Hebrew people. And why, in Matthew, Jesus tells his
disciples in this same story, that he was only sent for the lost sheep of
Israel. But Jesus knew that his
worldwide mission went beyond the boundaries of Israel. In Mark, the author gets right to the
point. Jesus’s offer of heaven is
universal, for even the crumbs of the bread of life are still part of the
divine loaf. They are still offered to
the entire household of God. And even if
the disciples didn’t pick up on the lesson, the Syrophoenician woman did, and
it made her faith even that much stronger.
And for this, her request to Christ was granted.
It’s in the roots of this story between the
Syrophoenician woman and Christ where those who have ever been persecuted, for
those who have ever felt that they don’t belong at the table, for those who
have been told that they are worthless have a boldness in knowing that the
Bread of Life is also theirs, that the Kingdom of God is within their grasp, as
well, that their faith is stronger in having struggled to obtain it.
Although we won’t talk about the next miracle
Jesus performed of the deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, I do want
to talk about verse 36, which followed this man’s healing. Verse 36 says, “Then Jesus ordered them to
tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed
it.”
Back in 1901 a theologian by the name of
William Wrede noticed that there were an awful lot of comments in the Gospel
According to Mark, more so than in any of the other gospels, where Jesus tells
his listeners or to those on whom he performs miracles or to the demons that he
casts out, to not tell anyone about who he really was. Wrede’s interpretation of this motif in Mark
became known as the “Messianic Secret”.
Wrede’s theory was prominent during an intense period of theological
study when theologians were trying to discover the historical Jesus. Who was Jesus as a living, breathing human
being and not only God made flesh who dwelt among us?
Up
until this time period it had been assumed by most theologians that Mark’s
gospel was an abridged or condensed version of Matthew and Luke. If you’ve ever studied the gospels, you’ll
notice that Mark’s gospel is very short compared to the other two and that
similar stories are often told in a quick, clipped version. In the middle of the 19th Century,
some theologians began to wonder if it were not the other way around; that
Mark’s gospel was actually written first as an early understanding of the life and
teachings of Christ, while the others expanded on Mark, bringing the stories to
life with more detail.
There
are a number of theories as to why Mark’s gospel, more than the others,
continually used this secrecy passage by Christ. As Wrede was studying and theologizing during
the period of the search for the historical Jesus, Wrede came to the
theoretical conclusion that:
1)
Jesus did not think he was the Messiah or divine
2)
The early church thought Jesus was both
3)
Something therefore appeared very wrong with the whole business in writing
about Jesus
4)
Somebody, after the early period, but before Mark, had the bright idea that
Jesus HAD thought these things after all, but had kept them secret
5)
Mark used this theory as the basis for his narrative.
I
have a different theory. And it is based
on this very verse, verse 36, where it states that the more Jesus told them to
be quiet, the more people talked about it.
I don’t think that Jesus meant to be mysterious, but I do believe that
Mark’s gospel was written with a certain sense of urgency. The best way to get out a message is to
create a buzz about it. To create
intrigue.
I’ve
recently started watching a series called Only Murders in the Building with
Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez.
About three complete strangers who live in the same building who are
confronted with a suicide in their building.
Convinced that this person was murdered, the more they are told to be
quiet about the incident and that the police have done their job, and that it
is not a murder but just a sad case of suicide, the more intrigued they become
and continue to investigate, pulling in more and more people and evidence to
their side.
We,
as human beings, are naturally inquisitive.
We want to know the answers. We
seek solutions to problems. We are often
mystery junkies. What better way to get
Christ’s message to the most people in the shortest amount of time, but to
create mystery, suspense, intrigue, and to tell people that it’s a secret.
I
guarantee you that there will be more people that know about something if I say
that it’s a secret, than if I just gave you the information in a
newsletter. Why are we like that? Why are we more willing to tell others about
secrets than we are willing to share well-known information? I think it’s because we believe that we have
the inside scoop. We believe that we
have the direct line of information more than anyone else. And we often so desperately want to share
that.
I’m
not sure that Christ did it deliberately, but in writing about Jesus, Mark sure
did. If Matthew’s Gospel was written to
a Jewish audience, Mark’s gospel was written with a sense of urgency because
Jesus was coming back very soon and the Kingdom of God was well at hand and
everyone needed to know it.
So,
the best way to get out your message is to create some mystery and some
intrigue and make it a secret. We’ll be
hearing this refrain over and over as we go through the gospel of Mark in the
next few weeks.
Thanks be to God.
AMEN
Offertory
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
We give thanks, Almighty God,
in all the ways that You refresh us by granting us the presence of Jesus
Christ. Strengthen our faith, increase
our love for one another, and send us forth into to the world in courage and
peace, rejoicing as we go. Take these
gifts and bless them, as we freely give.
Amen
Closing Hymn – I Have Decided to Follow Jesus
Benediction
Go forth to love one
another. Be rich in faith and serve one
another in all joy and humility. And may
the power of God our Creator, Christ our Salvation, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit be with us now and forever. AMEN.
Postlude
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