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This Sunday will be my last worship service that I post until the end of August/beginning of September. Instead, I'll be posting my daily experiences, pictures, etc... of my continued Sabbatical Leave: Breaking Bread with our Ancestors; our connection to food, faith, and family. You can follow along as I travel to the UK, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. If you followed me to Spain and Portugal earlier this year, you'll notice that this part of the trip will be a little more laid back with an even deeper concentration on my subject.
Rev Bob Ruefle will be maintaining worship in my place at Olivet (9:45am) and Bethesda (11:15am) on most Sundays.
Rev Becky Cartus will take the pulpit on June 26 and July 31 at a joint worship service at Bethesda (11:15am) with a fellowship hour following that is planned as part of my Sabbatical Leave. During the Fellowship Hour, participants will learn about some cooking traditions from this part of the world from Cooking School owner, Gaynor Grant, and will share story and fellowship with one another. Reservations for these two events are necessary for the purpose of planning. You can send me an email at revwaltp@gmail.com if interested in attending.
And finally, a former child of the Bethesda Church, now Rev Melissa Morris, will take the pulpit on July 3 at both Olivet and Bethesda.
Worship Service for May 29, 2022
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Praise God, who has raised Jesus Christ to
reign in power!
P: Praise God, who sends the Spirit to
empower the church.
L: Praise God with trumpet sound; praise God
with flute and harp!
P: Praise God with timbrel and dance; praise
God with strings and pipes! Let
everything that breathes praise God!
Opening Hymn – Rejoice, the Lord is King Hymn #370
Brown Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
Gracious
God, You encourage us with Your love, bringing new life out of death. We confess that we need Your life-giving
power in our lives and our relationships.
We have hurt others and been hurt by them. We are often angry or afraid. We are not sure when to assert our needs and
when to care for others’ needs. We
continue to live in ways which do not lead to peace and justice. Forgive us, O God. Pour Your Spirit of wisdom and healing upon
us, that by our lives and our loving, we may glorify You, through Jesus Christ
the Risen One. (Silent prayers are
offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Let us continue on our journey of faith
and obedience, knowing that the Lord has forgiven our sins and blessed us for a
holy future.
P: Thanks be to God! 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 and Lord’s
Prayer
On this Memorial Day
weekend Lord, it is difficult to know what to pray or even how to pray today. Violence seems to have no end – not just from
war, but from every day living. With
people who feel that it is their right to take another person’s life – from
children learning lessons at school, to elderly black people out shopping at a
grocery store, from those seeking to worship God in a place of sanctuary to
those who are part of another nation. It
doesn’t seem to end. And it makes no
sense to us, O God. The violence of
humanity breaks our hearts, so we can’t even imagine what it does to Yours. Why are we a people bent on destruction? Why are we a people who have lost our
way? We hear so many voices taking up
the refrain of sending thoughts and prayers.
But, are those just empty words or are we truly on our knees begging you
for answers. And what, O God, is our
responsibility in all of this? You’ve
given us compassionate hearts. You’ve
given us minds full of knowledge. You’ve
given us a spirit of wisdom. But, what
have we done with them?
There are moments when
we have more questions than answers and other moments when we seem to know what
to do but fail to do them. Help us, O
God. Help us from our way back to You,
to Your way of peace in this world, and Your pathway of redemption and care for
one another. Help us, O God, act and not
just keep saying an empty refrain of “sending thoughts and prayers” when
violent tragedy strikes again.
Today, we also lift up
to You the concerns of those we love, who are part of our own lives. We pray for…
And now, hear the
beating of our hearts and the pounding of our thoughts that weigh so heavily
upon us as we pray to you in silence….
Gracious God, we join
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 – Alleluia! Sing to Jesus Hymn
#377 in Brown Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm 97
Second Scripture Reading – John
17:20-26
Sermon
Oneness
(based on John 17:20-26)
On the night before he was sentenced
to death, Christ had one more moment of instruction for his disciples. After he had washed his disciples’ feet,
promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit and given them some final words to
live by, he prayed to God. In front of
his disciples, I find it most interesting that he prayed for himself first,
second he prayed for them (his followers) and lastly, he prayed for all
believers.
Throughout
much of John and particularly in this prayer, Jesus talks about God and himself
being one. The Father is in me and I am
in the Father, Jesus says. We are one,
he says. But now Christ takes it to a
new level. He prays to God, “I pray that
all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may
believe that you have sent me. I have
given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity.”
This
was Christ’s prayer at the end. This was
his most important, most critical, most heartfelt concern. His deepest worry was for those who would
believe in him after having heard the message from the disciples, that they be
one. 2,000 years have come and gone since
Christ uttered those words in a prayer to God – many have heard and believed
because the disciples carried his message of Good News to the ends of the earth
as they had been instructed. Is there
unity among the followers of Christ? Are
we one?
Unfortunately,
the answer to those questions is no.
Maybe that’s why Christianity, as a religion, is having such a difficult
time being considered by those outside the church. Maybe in the past they’ve been a part of
conflict in the church, maybe they’ve been the recipient of harsh judgment,
unnecessary slander, or downright abuse by those within the church’s
walls. Maybe they’ve witnessed friends
who have been hurt by the church, suffered in a place where they thought they
were safe, or heard stories of conflict.
Our
history is also to blame. The One
catholic meaning universal church, which we say we believe in when we recite
the Apostles’ Creed broke into fragments over serious problems within the
ranks, but also sometimes over silly issues.
One
of the great historians and theologians of the church was Augustine. He charged the church with these words, “In
essentials unity. In non-essentials
liberty. In all things, love.” Perhaps he had in mind this passage from the
gospel according to John. Perhaps he was
concerned about the church, the way Christ prayed to God about the believers
who were yet to come.
About
10 years ago I read a book called, “Love Wins” an excellent book by Rob Bell that
I highly recommend. I started reading it
when a member of my previous congregation shared with me an article about a
Presbyterian pastor who declared that Jesus may not be the only way to heaven. Rob Bell, an evangelical and former pastor of
Mars Hill Church, one of the largest churches in the nation, contends that
there is more mystery to God’s story than we are often willing to admit. That we can get side-tracked too easily on
the message we want to hear and not on the difficulties that are outlined in
scripture. Regardless of what you
believe about heaven and hell and who is going where, it is one of those
debates that have been going on in the church for a very long time. But the crux of the matter is about universal
salvation. Will everyone be saved?
If we keep
in mind Christ’s prayer for believers and Augustine’s charge to the church, the
crucial question is what is essential when we begin any kind of debate that has
the potential for putting people on one side of the room or another. You’re either on the groom’s side or the
bride’s side, you’re either with me or against me; it’s an “us” verses “them”
mentality. And that is never
healthy. That kind of debate never wins
favors or brings people together.
However, what is essential? In Philip
Gulley’s book, “If God is Love” he writes that, “Grace makes it possible for those who believe
differently to respect and relate to one another. Grace allows us to disagree, to challenge the
damaging beliefs of others even as we are challenged, and to do this without
violating the autonomy and dignity of others. Grace empowers us to embrace deeply divergent
convictions even as we embrace one another. We love one another as God loves us -
graciously.” I think that both Rob Bell
and Philip Gulley would say what is essential is to love as God loves.
There
are other debates in the church that span denominational lines. There are important debates within
denominations. Some of those debates have
the passion behind them to split churches as we’ve seen in our own denomination
and as the United Methodist Church is seeing in theirs right now. Some of those debates are extended issues
that have never been resolved over centuries.
Some of them are, quite frankly, silly.
But where do we draw the line in the sand? Where do we say, this is essential or this is
a nonessential? More importantly, over
all where is love in the context of our debates, our concerns, our unity?
I
come back to the text. Our Lord is at
prayer with those gathered around. The
end is at hand. Jesus’ words are, in the
hearing of the disciples, also his last words to them. Everything he has worked for and hoped for
will now be in their hands. Can he trust
them to carry on? Of all the ways he can
intercede in prayer on behalf of the disciples, what will he request from
God? What will he pray for and encourage
them to strive for, attain and maintain after he is gone?
Does Christ desire for them some
foolproof strategy for bringing people into the church (wouldn’t that be nice!),
or a formula for peace on earth (what we desperately need right now), or a plan
for solving economic and social evils (which seems to get more and more
complicated all the time)? No one can
deny that such difficult questions cry out for answers, but as critical as all
these problems might be, they are secondary concerns for Christ.
His
last words to the disciples in prayer to God were that they be ONE so that the
world might know they belong to Him and that this strange new community called
“The Church” is indeed the promise of a new creation in the making. That’s what our Lord prays for, that
Christians be ONE.
In
a society that does everything but create a world that is one, Christians are
to be ONE. As members of Christ’s broken
body, it is hard to comprehend the pain our disunity over the centuries has
caused our Lord, and the damage it has done to our credibility as his
witnesses.
Jesus
prays that his disciples be one as he and God are one. Whatever else this may mean, it means that
this unity is given in Jesus’ absolute love for and trust in God. Unfortunately, we have put ourselves first
and not God. We have put our thoughts,
our desires, our beliefs above God’s.
And that’s what has kept us from being in unity with one another. We cannot be one until we put God first. We cannot be one until we put Christ
first. We cannot be one until we put one
another first. And isn’t that what
Augustine was trying to say; above all else…love. And isn’t that what God is, if nothing else;
God Is love?
Putting aside denominational
debates, putting aside debates that have raged for eons, putting aside debates
that have split the reformed churches within the last 200 hundred years, or
even the social debates that have engaged more of our time and money in the
last 40 years and have split denominations.
Debates that have kept Episcopalians and Presbyterians separate from
Baptists and Methodists or Disciples of Christ’s from Mennonites and
Protestants separate from Catholics, or so on and so on. It is here where true unity can start and
become real; not for the world, but for us.
This is the first place we can begin to do our part in answering
Christ’s prayer. The oneness for which Christ
prayed means nothing unless we taste it and feel it where we worship together
and learn together as part of a Christian community. I’m talking about a shared love for Christ in
this setting. I’m talking about a love
so strong that it reaches around the differences that may tend to separate us,
a love that leaps over barriers of individual likes and experiences that might
exclude others, so that the Spirit of Christ in us is stronger than the many
things that could pull us apart.
It
is our shared love for Christ, here in this place, that gives us oneness with him,
that same oneness he had in this life with God.
By the grace of God, we can begin anew to be a living answer to Christ’s
prayer.
AMEN.
Offertory
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
The gifts we
present this morning, Loving God, are only tokens of the blessing You have
showered on our lives. All that we have
belongs to You. Help us live to serve You
day by day in all that we do. We offer
these gifts and pray this prayer in the name of the one who offered himself for
us, Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
Closing Hymn – Blessed Assurance Hymn #341/572
Benediction –
You are called to witness to God’s love. Prepare your hearts and spirits to receive
power from on high. Go into God’s world
in confidence, offering healing and hope to all you meet. Go in peace and sharing God’s great
love. AMEN.
Postlude
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