Unfortunately, I was ill then away, so this is my first post since the week after Easter. You can find us live on Facebook Live at 11:15 am and anytime thereafter. We might be going back to uploading the service onto a newly dedicated YouTube Channel as well. We'll see how things come together this month.
Worship
Service for May 7, 2023
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: The Lord is our refuge.
P: We can find peace in God’s abiding love.
L: When troubles assail us, we call upon the
Lord.
P: When joys abound, we call upon the Lord.
L: Welcome this day to God’s house, one of
many dwellings of the Almighty One.
P: We thank the Lord and praise God for His
refuge and sanctuary. Let us worship
God.
Opening
Hymn – Rejoice, the Lord is King Hymn #155/370 4 vs. Brown
Prayer of Confession
Patient God, You know how easy
it is for us to stray. We wander off so
easily. Forgive us, we pray. Heal our brokenness and our fears. Remind us again that You lead us in gentle
paths and by quiet waters – when the paths are stony and the waves tumultuous,
help us remember Your protection and Your care.
Help us extend that same love and care to others, for we ask this in
Jesus’ name. (Silent
prayers are offered)
AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Christ our cornerstone and our salvation,
offers to us hope and comfort, forgiveness and mercy.
P: We are a forgiven people. 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
Merciful
and loving God, You call us Your beloved ones and You seek to protect us, but
we love to take risks; emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Call to us again. Help us hear Your voice. Give us hearts of love and compassion for all
our dear ones who suffer illness and adversity.
Today we especially for ….
Be with those who have no safe homeland for which to go,
no land they can call their own, no sense of being part of a community. Allow us to open our hearts and community to
them as You have called us to meet those needs. Gracious God, You always accepted us, so let
us accept others, though they may be different, though they may offer another
perspective, another voice, another point of view.
Help us find ways of challenging our own preconceived
notions of the truth and find a larger one as we embrace the stranger, accept
the widow, offer home to the orphan and community to the outcast. You always accepted us, so let us accept
others, realizing that the sheep of Your pasture are awash with diversity of
spirit and origin. Let us celebrate
those wonderful gifts and learn from them.
Lord, with a sense of Your presence among us, we now
lift up our personal prayers in silence….
Gathered in one voice we pray the universal prayer Your
Son taught us…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 #144/377
4
vs. Blue
Scripture Reading(s):
Proverbs
4:10-18
John
14:1-14
Sermon –
Story
(based on Proverbs
4:10-18, John 14:1-14)
This morning I want you to think about
times you’ve spent with your family and friends; cherished moments that you
shared with them. Think about who was
there, what you were doing, what the occasion was. Imagine for just a moment that you are back
with them, see their faces, hear their voices cracking jokes - telling stories,
feel their bodies in hugs and kisses, taste the food you share, the heady
smells of baked bread, perfume or cologne – or the subtle smells of shampoo,
the undertones of earth or flowers, maybe even cigar smoke or perhaps bourbon,
whatever the senses take in that you associate with them. Pause
Such was the occasion during this
encounter with Christ. He is with his
friends, his disciples. The hours before
his final one are coming swiftly to a close.
He knows that the time is slipping quickly away. These are precious moments. Each of these disciples will remember them
intimately. They will recall who was in
attendance, where each person was sitting, and the exchanges they had with
him. They will remember his teaching and
his story about heaven. They will retell
others that he goes before them to prepare a new place for them in heaven and
they will make the connection, if not now, later, about him being one with God.
They will recite Jesus’ own words as
he sat with them at the table and they will record them for future generations to
read. Words like the ones just before our scripture reading this morning
and those we included today, like;
“I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another.”
“Just as I have loved
you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are one of my disciples, if you have
love for one another.”
“Do not let your
hearts be troubled.”
“Believe in God,
believe also in me.”
“I am the way, and the
truth, and the life.”
“No one comes to the
Father, except through me.”
Profound words that
have been re-used and restated over and over again by Christian followers for
nearly 2,000 years.
All too often we take
snippets of story, phrases that are said and forget that they come with
context. For example these words, just
spoken, were said in the context of Jesus sitting with his disciples for the
last time. They were partaking of the
Passover meal when they would have recited together in a ritual feast the story
of Moses leading the people out of bondage in Egypt. During the evening meal, the children would
ask the following questions that would prompt the adults to explain the
significance of the meal to the children.
Question 1: On all
other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread. But on this night, why do we eat only
unleavened bread? The answer the
assembled adults would give is this; We eat only unleavened bread on this night
to remind us of the haste with which our ancestors left Egypt.
Question 2: On all
other nights we eat all kinds of herbs.
On this night, why only bitter herbs?
Answer 2: On this
night we eat only bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slavery.
Question 3: On all
other nights we do not dip our herbs even once.
On this night, why do we dip them twice?
Answer 3: On this night we dip once in the salty water
to remind us of the tears we cried while in Egypt. On this night we also dip into the charoset
to remind us of the cement we were forced to make to create the bricks used in
Egypt.
And finally Question 4
asked by the children: On all other nights we eat sometimes sitting and
sometimes reclining. On this night, why
do we all recline?
Answer 4: We eat reclining on this night to commemorate
our freedom from slavery, reclining on cushions like royalty.
The repeated phrases
in the Passover Haggadah are:
“Blessed are You, Lord
our God, King of the Universe, who created the fruit of the vine.”
“Blessed are You, Lord
our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
“Blessed are You, Lord
our God, King of the Universe, the Lord is One.”
So, the rituals and
the phrases come with story, the simple words harken back to a time long before
any of the generations present remember and yet it is part of their story, part
of their heritage, part of their very DNA.
And each time they sit together at table with one another, they retell
the stories, they re-invest in their history and understand perhaps a little
bit deeper, who they are from one generation to the next.
During our own worship
service, we too use phrases and snippets of meaning that explain a lot to us,
they are part of our Christian story, they are part of our history, our
heritage, part of our own DNA, that makes us who we are. But from an outsiders point of view they
might not mean a thing or they may mean something entirely different. For example, our Gloria Patri.
It's a Latin phrase
that begins a hymn that we’ve used every Sunday in worship for eons and the
moment you, as a Christian having grown up in the church or having gone to
church for a long time, when you read Gloria Patri in a bulletin or on our
worship screen, you know what words come next, right? Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be. World without
end. Amen. Amen.
You probably can’t even say it without hearing the tune of the hymn we
use to say it in your head. It is that
much a part of who you are as a Christian.
It's a song of praise
that has within it the entire understanding of the Trinity, their role in
creation and their status to hold it all together into eternity.
But there are other
phrases and snippets of scripture that we often take out of context, twisting
the meaning of how they were meant because we often forget that they are part
of a larger story or part of a bigger picture.
A phrase like one out of our scripture reading this morning, “No one
comes to the Father except through me.”
For many Christians, this phrase has come to mean that no one can get to
heaven without proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. But, when you put into context here in this
story, Jesus is talking about the two of them (God, the Father and God, the
Son) being one, that you can’t separate the two of them. They are one and the same. I am in the Father and the Father is in me,
he says. In other words, if you know
Jesus Christ, you know God. But the
opposite would also have to be true; if you know God, you also know Christ. That Christ came to save the entire
world. That this gift of heaven is by
grace alone through faith.
I think it is
important for us to keep in mind that scripture was written as story. It’s a story about a people who believed in
God and their interactions with God.
It’s a story that is told over and over again at table with one another
from one generation to the next. That
our story may not make sense to people who have never heard it before and that
each tiny story within scripture tells part of a bigger story and that we
should be very careful when we take just a small phrase and create a different
reality that doesn’t fit with what we know about the larger picture or should
be understood clearly by those who have never heard it.
I want to close
today’s sermon with this story, as an example.
I was 26 years old, I was
driving back to Pittsburgh after visiting my grandmother in West Chester, which
is outside Philadelphia and stopping in Lancaster, I was arrested for escaping
prison and for murder.
That is a true
statement, but it is not an accurate story.
It’s a story that was told often at family gatherings for years after it
happened. It’s a story that is sometimes
told around the table when people get to know me a little better. It’s a story that I have shared with some of
our elders and deacons from Bethesda when we went on retreat about 10 years
ago. It’s a story that takes some time
to tell. Just to repeat so that you don’t
all suddenly think that the pastor you’ve known for many years is an actual
murderer; the statement I made that I was indeed arrested for escaping prison
and for murder is a true statement, but that’s not accurate – I never escaped
prison, nor did I murder anyone. But you
need to know the story to understand the full context of that statement.
And one day when we
are at table with one another, sharing our stories together, I’ll tell it. However, just like that statement that could
be misconstrued, be careful when you read scripture and know that a phrase or a
snippet of story comes with a lot of context and is part of a bigger
picture. I’ll be excited this summer as
we dive into scripture a bit more deeply through RightNow Media and discover the
context of our Biblical story together.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Thank
You, Lord, for all the wonderful gifts with which You have blessed our
lives. Take these gifts, these tokens
and use them to build Your realm, to heal the broken hearted, bind up those who
are wounded, welcome the stranger, become the gate of hope for we ask this in
Jesus’ name. AMEN.
Closing Hymn – Fairest Lord Jesus Hymn #306/87
4
vs. Brown
Benediction –
Go forth in peace. Bring hope to this world. Go forth in love. Bring joy to
this world. Go forth with knowledge of God. God goes with you, loving and
guiding your steps.
Go now and serve the Lord.
Postlude
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