Today's FaceBook Live Streaming will be recorded from Olivet at 9:45 instead of the usual from Bethesda at 11:15, as we have a joint service at Olivet today which will begin happening on the first Sunday of each month, alternating between the two churches.
Worship
Service for March 3, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: The world finds no proof of God.
P: But the heavens tell of God’s glory.
L: God’s message is foolishness to the world.
P: But God’s folly trumps human wisdom.
L: The freedom of the world brings us
spiritual death.
P: But obedience to God’s ways bring life.
L: And life in abundance!
P: We gather in the name of the crucified
Christ.
Opening Hymn – My Faith Looks Up to Thee #383 Blue
Prayer of Confession
With hearts of sorrow, we come
before You, O God, to confess what You already know – we have failed to keep
Your laws. Again and again, we have
followed our own selfish will, rather than Your holy and life-giving will for
our lives. We have twisted Your decrees
and institutions to suit our preconceptions and interests rather than Your
own. Forgive us, O God and cleanse us
from hidden faults, that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our
hearts, may be acceptable to You, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God shows steadfast love and blesses to
the thousandth generation those who walk in God’s ways. In love, God sent Jesus to bless and redeem
God’s people.
P: God
forgives us our sins and restores us to new life. Let us rejoice in God’s mercy.
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
Lord, sometimes we have
difficulty hearing some of your stories in the Bible. Like today Lord, when we hear about Jesus
cleansing the Temple of those who would lie, cheat, and steal. We always want Jesus to be patient, meek, and
mild. But there are many times when
bold action is required to cleanse the cancer of greed and avarice from our
lives. Lord, help us to remember that
Jesus’ patient worlds often fell upon deaf ears over and over again. Remind us that we need to be bold in our
faith; first examining our lives and clearing out the pain, greed and
fear. Replace our anxieties with
confidence in Your all-sustaining love and grace. Enable us to put our service to You and Your
people above our selfishness. As we
reach out to others in need, remind us that we also stand in need of your
mercy.
Lord of hope and
justice, we have come this day to worship with so many concerns that are on our
hearts, weighing down our spirits. We
feel the bands of the world’s claims on us tightening around our hearts,
suffocating our spirits, driving our thoughts and actions. We live in a culture which has encouraged us
to be greedy, to want more and more, to never be satisfied with enough. Lord, help us to break the bonds that
"instant" riches, or "instant" gratification have on us. Help us to remember that You have chosen us to
be Your witnesses to hope, peace, love, justice in the world. Break the chains of our own oppressions that
cause us to place possessions before following You. This day, patient and loving Lord, enable us
to look into our lives at the chains that bind us. Free us to serve You and in serving You help
us to discover the joy of discipleship and the freedom that no riches or
treasures can provide.
Gracious God, we also
pray today concerning the greed that is out in the world, suppressing the poor,
causing more hunger and poverty. We pray
about the greed that is out in the world that causes war, death, and
destruction. May Your Spirit be bold in
the land to eradicate this greed. And may
we be instruments of peace.
We pray today, Lord,
for those in our families that are facing surgeries, treatments for cancer or
disease, or any other difficulty. Wrap
Your sustaining arms about them and give them the strength they need. Lend your aid and support to those who care
for loved ones. We especially pray today
for….
Hear also our silent
prayers and the burdens of our hearts in this private time with You.
We pray all this as we
pray together.…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 – O
Master, Let Me Walk With Thee #357 Blue
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading –
Exodus 20:1-17
Second Scripture Reading – John
2:13-22
Sermon –
Be Angry, But Do Not Sin
(based on John 2:13-22)
The story of Jesus turning over the tables of the moneychangers in
the temple has always intrigued me. The idea that Jesus
could have become so angry with religious authorities for cooperating with the
violent and oppressive Roman Imperial system that he would create such a scene
in the Temple is so far from the image of Jesus as the meek and mild
long-haired peace-lover that we’ve all come to take for granted.
For generations, biblical commentators have gone to great pains to
ensure that any hint of Jesus’ humanity is scrubbed clean from interpretations of this
story. But anger is a perfectly
normal human emotion. Jesus was a
human being and therefore he was subject to normal human emotions. However, the institutional church frowns
upon anger.
The Jesus whose compassion for the poor coupled with his passion
for justice who stormed into the Temple and in an effort to turn things upside
down and demonstrate the need for systemic political change, well he’s too much
of a radical troublemaker. So, we’ve mostly
replaced him with the meek and mild Jesus, who wanders around in the hills
with a lamb draped over his shoulders, exhibiting endless patience and choosing
to sit idly by with a child upon his lap perhaps, well out of the public
discourse over the plight of the poor, and far away from the rattling
of sabers as the rumors of war begin once again to
permeate the air.
But there’s just one problem with the popular image of Jesus and
that’s the crucified Jesus. Jesus was executed by
the state not because of his patience with those in power but because of his
impatience with those in power. Jesus’
impatience was born out of his anger at injustice. Anger is a powerful human emotion. Anger is a useful human emotion. Anger lies at the heart of our human
condition. Our anger at
the way things are can be just the impetus we need to compel us to change the
way things are. When anger moves
us to reject the status quo, our protests can become the means by which we
effect change.
Anger is not the opposite of love. Anger is a vivid form of caring. Anger is not to be feared nearly as much as we
ought to fear indifference. Our
anger means we care—we care about what is happening to our fellow human beings.
Feminist theologian,
Beverly Wildung Harrison, wrote what has become an important essay for
those who work for justice in the world. The essay was entitled, “The power of anger
in the work of love.” Harrison insists that rather than controlling or managing
our anger, we need to harness the power of our anger so that we might be about
the work of love in the world.
Ephesians 4:26 tells us to “Be angry, but do not sin.”
That’s right: The Bible commands us to be angry.
“Be angry. That’s an
order.”
Now, you may object that we’ve already got more anger that
we know what to do with right now, and, of course, you’d be right. There is indeed a surplus of anger out there. With increasing frequency and intensity,
people are voicing their anger, venting their anger, even voting their anger.
But there’s anger, and then there’s anger.
Yes, there’s the anger of being cut off in the turn lane,
of having a wait time that exceeds four minutes, of being berated in the
comments on a post by an internet troll….
Then there is the anger that leaves us shaken and shaking
because a sacred trust is being treacherously broken; because those who have
done no harm are being gratuitously harmed; because those who have too little
now have even less, and those who already have much too much now have even
more; because egregious wrongs are being perpetrated, and the perps don’t even
admit that the wrongs they’re perpetrating are wrong.
What has happened—is happening now, here, and everywhere—is
not merely a sin and a shame. It is an
outrage, and outrage calls for anger, anger that ought to come out. Anger in such instances is not merely
permissible; it is obligatory, imperative.
Thus, the imperative: “Be angry.”
Faced with
an outrage, anger is the price we pay for paying attention.
Great emotions are especially powerful teachers. They have so much power to reveal our deepest
self to ourselves and to others, yet we tend to consider them negatively. Yes, they are dangerous, making us reactive
and defensive, but they often totally rearrange how we know—or if we
know—reality at all.
Believe it or not, such emotions are ways of knowing. They have the capacity to blind us, but also
the power to open us up and bring us to profound conversion, humility, and
honesty. People who are too nice and
never suffer or reveal their own negative emotions, usually do not know very
much about themselves—and so the rest of us do not take them too seriously.
While the racial wealth gap between white people and our black brothers
and sisters continues in the US, we are not moved. As the gap between the rich and poor widens
to the point of despair, we are not moved. As multi-national corporations crawl into
bed with governments both provincial and national so that they can have
their wicked way with our environment, we are not moved. As the power of the almighty dollar
threatens to rob us of our political voice and the very nature of our democracy
appears to be rotting from the perils of excess, we are not moved. As children slip further and further into
homelessness and poverty, and governments continue to cut and slash programs
designed to provide the basic necessities of life, we are not moved. As our once proud medical system continues
to struggle under the weight of our demands and our reluctance to seriously
engage in reform, we are not moved. But
as for tapping into our anger about the injustices in our world, well we’ve got
places to go and people to see, and besides what’s the use of protesting
with our votes or our actions because nothing’s going to change anyway? Right?
There’s something called justice fatigue. I’m all too often simply tired of hearing
about the injustices of this world. Because of that I’ve sometimes become
apathetic and those moments when I am able to muster a little righteous
indignation, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with my anger, so I just
forget about it and mind my own business because in the face of so much
injustice, what can I hope to accomplish.
As followers of Jesus, we might well ask ourselves: “Where
are the angry Christians? While the rich
are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. Where are the angry Christians? While the integrity of our democracy is
threatened by powerful people using their wealth in ways that at the very least
warrant investigation? Where are the
angry Americans? As the multi-national
corporations obsess over their own concerns to make more and more money at the
expense of planet earth. Where are the
angry Christians? As children continue
to struggle simply to survive in a world where the death of innocent victims to
war has become something we have chosen to tolerate. Where are the angry humans?
Remember that anger has a powerful role to play in the work
of love. Anger is also very dangerous. Jesus’ public demonstration of his anger at
the rampant hypocrisy and injustice of the powers that be, led to his execution
by the powers that be. But Jesus’
willingness to display his anger publicly even though he knew it very well
might get him killed, began a movement for peace and justice that even death
could not conquer.
In her essay the power of anger in the work of love,
Beverly Harrison reminds us that, “all serious human moral activity, especially
action for social change takes its bearings from the rising power of human
anger…anger denied subverts community.”
It was the power of anger that gave birth to every human
rights movements in the world. When
angry people stand up and say “enough is enough” the status quo of powerful
institutions and powerful individuals cannot hold sway. Embedded in the angry demands for social
change are the seeds of hope that the world can become a different and better
place. Without anger there is no hope.
Our failure to understand our anger has driven anger
underground and that is precisely where anger becomes most dangerous. Anger that is not named and acknowledged
manifests in resentment, rage, passive aggressive behavior, physical violence,
abuse and addiction. We can only paper
over our anger with politeness for a while, but if we refuse to find ways to
use our anger to effect change, we together with those around us will become
the victims of our rage.
The spiritual practice of protest has been neglected by so
many of us. Perhaps we have become too
comfortable to risk the status quo. But
for those of us who profess to follow Jesus, finding ways to use the power of
anger in the work of love means that we must learn again to practice protest. If we are to evolve beyond our warring
madness, if we are to become more than the sum total of our possessions, if we
are to grow as a peaceful people we must put our anger to work in new and
engaging methods of protest so that God’s reign of peace through justice can
become a reality. Maybe it’s long past
time for us to turn over a few tables.
Thanks be to God.
AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord,
with the blessing of these gifts we also ask that You work in us and through
us, that we may reflect Your light, Your truth, and Your love into this world
that gropes in the darkness. May the
light of Your Love shine brightly in our hearts and set the world aglow with
the power of Your grace. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – In the Cross of Christ I Glory
#84/328
Benediction –
Go forth
with the Lord at your side, seeking goodness and compassion. Bring the words of hope and peace to all whom
you meet. Go in peace. AMEN.
Postlude
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