I will be away next Sunday, but Rev. Ellen Campbell Gardner will preach at a joint service at Olivet Presbyterian Church, West Elizabeth at 9:45am. All are welcome!
Worship
Service for June 30, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Wait for the Lord, like those who hope in
God’s mercy.
P: God’s steadfast love endures forever.
L: Watch for God, like those who eagerly
await the morning.
P: We watch for God, whose power redeems us.
L: Hear God’s hopeful word, like those who
long for pardon.
P: Sing praise to God!
Opening Hymn – Come, Thou Almighty King #139/8
Prayer of Confession
Out of the depths of despair,
we cry to You, O God. We are lost in a
world of pain and suffering. When we put
our trust in weapons of war, we find no peace.
When we put our hope in the health of our bodies, we suffer pain and
find no healing. Come to us, O God. Forgive our doubts and fears. Heal our brokenness, that we may rejoice in
Your steadfast love. (Silent prayers
are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: There is forgiveness and healing with
God. God’s steadfast love has the power
to redeem our brokenness and make us whole.
P: For
this we give thanks!
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
God of all
miracles, we wait for Your voice and direction.
We are often so busy with holiday celebrations and gatherings that we
forget to offer our thanksgiving for the blessings You offer. We are bombarded by the anguish of the world
arising around us – news of tragedy and war, blaring at us from all
directions. Hear our cries, O Lord. Open our hearts this day that we might become
people who bring peace and hope to those in despair. Comfort and heal our wounds. Bless us with wisdom tempered with compassion. Remind us that we have freedom because others
who have gone before us have stood proudly by the principles of hope.
Where
there is hatred, help us bring words of love.
Where
there are injustices, help us correct unjust systems and become advocates for
the voiceless and the powerless.
Where
there is apathy, empower us to bring the good news of Your gracious transforming
love.
Lord, be
with us this day as we offer our concerns for friends and family. Hear our prayers, O Lord. We pray for….
Most
merciful God, hear also our own deepest of prayers in these moments of silence…
Be with us
this day and all our days as we seek to follow You, praying 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 – Ye Servants of God #477/38
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
130
Second Scripture Reading – Mark
5:21-43
Sermon – Interruptions
(based on Mark 5:21-43)
I
enjoy the days when I get up in the morning with a plan for the day to
accomplish X, Y, and Z. And I get really
excited when, by the end of the day, I have actually accomplished those things. Once in a great while, I even get an
opportunity to throw in a little extra that I hadn’t planned to be able to
do. Unfortunately, most days don’t go
like that. Most days, I wake up in the
morning with the plan for the day, but instead my entire day is really just
one long interruption. At the end of the
day, I’m completely exhausted, but accomplished absolutely nothing. Everything on my to-do list is still there…to
do. And I wonder what I did all day.
Do you have days like that?
One day, when I was really frustrated about
not getting my to-do list done; in fact, the things on my to-do list were now
several days passed when I had wanted to accomplish them and new things kept
getting added, I started thinking about all of the interruptions that happen
during the day. At the end of it had I
really accomplished nothing? If so, what
needed to change so that I could get things done? If not, what was I busy doing all day?
I’m not going to bore you with the details of
my daily life, but one of the things that I discovered is that a lot of the
interruptions were important. Of course,
there is the occasional interruption of a telemarketer or someone stopping by
for just a moment to show me something, to ask me a question or to tell me
about something. Those interruptions are
brief, require minimal attention on my part, and I can usually get right back
on track when the interruption is over.
Then there are the interruptions that require
just a tad more “presence” on my part.
Like the third time Tyler interrupted me to explain how fast a 900 horse
powered engine can go and that he had a dream about one the other night that he
was racing. Honestly, I could care less
about how fast a 900 horse powered engine can go. In fact, as far as I’m concerned the only
thing that really matters to me about a car is that it gets me from point A to
point B without me ever having to worry about it. However, the speed that a 900 horse powered
engine can go IS important to
Tyler. And because Tyler is important to
me – every now and then…I pay attention.
Even if that means that I have to ask a couple of questions, pretend I
understand anything that he is talking about, and be excited for him that he
won the race in his dream. Or when Ms.
Brenda comes into my office to ask if 5 year old Nicholas can attend VBS even
though he will not be going into Kindergarten next year. That kind of question may seem rather innocuous,
but it’s something important to consider because of its ramifications for other
children, not just because Nick was part of our Preschool Program. Now, to get back to what I was doing. What was that, anyway? After a minute or two of thinking…Oh, yes,
that’s right I was just about to do….
Those kinds of interruptions pull me off track
for a bit longer than the first kind.
They require me to take a moment to sort of “get back in the game” And once in a while, even when I’m back at
trying to accomplish my to do list, my mind might wander…back to that last
interruption and think something like…What did he mean, “he was going to try to
see if the car could go faster next time?”
Was he talking about the dream or about the next time he actually drove
my car? Mmmmmm…maybe I should clarify
that….
Or in Ms Brenda’s case, I start mentally
asking questions like; should we set different parameters regarding readiness
for VBS. Things such as; can the child
read, how social are they, will they get anything out of the program or will
they simply be a distraction from the other children receiving the message we
are trying to teach? And the list might
go on for that kind of interruption.
Now, what was I doing?
Then there are the interruptions that we
willingly allow to distract us. Often,
they are temptations. A number of years
ago when I was taking a Contemporary Ethics course, I had one more paper to
finish. Around 4:00pm on a Friday night,
I got a call from a friend of mine, who I really hadn’t seen in a long
time. We’d been texting back and forth
since May about getting together and catching up. He wanted to see if I’d be interested in
grabbing dinner somewhere. I had planned
to use the evening to crank out that last paper. But should I stay or should I go? I tried to justify the break for dinner. I had to eat, anyway. The paper wasn’t actually due until
midnight. Should I stay or should I
go? Just so you know – I went. Got home and cranked out that last paper with
20 minutes to spare. But then woke up –
straight out of bed at 2:30 in the morning, realizing that I had forgotten a
significant point I’d planned to make in the paper and had forgotten to add a
reference to the Bibliography that I couldn’t find earlier. So, I berated myself for being so easily
swayed to enjoy dinner and catching up with an old friend.
Then there are the interruptions that
completely change the course of the day.
We’ve all had them. The kind of
interruptions we get from loved ones.
Such as; Mom just called, they are taking Dad to the hospital, can you
meet us there? No, she doesn’t know
what’s wrong, but he is having pains in his chest. Yes, those kinds of interruptions. There is nothing that we can do about
them. They blind side us and we just
have to go with the flow. If there had
been a plan for the day, well that plan will just have to wait, because these
interruptions take priority.
Looking at today’s scripture reading…Jesus had
gotten up that day, ready for another round of teaching by the sea. Perhaps he had a plan for the day. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that the
crowds knew (this….fill in the blank) about God. Perhaps he had stories and parables in his
mind that he wanted to teach. He often
spent time in prayer. Sometimes when the
crowds were gone he would gather his disciples together and explain a little
more in-depth what he had just taught.
But instead of standing on the shore of the
sea and teaching the crowd in parables, he was interrupted by Jairus, a ruler
of the synagogue. Jesus knew
Jairus. And Jairus’ daughter was near
death. Jairus had enough faith in Jesus,
whether he fully understood who is was or not, he had enough faith in him to
seek him out and believe that Jesus’ touch would make his daughter well. Regardless of what Jesus had planned to do
there by the beach, Jairus and Jairus’s daughter were important to Jesus, so he
went.
The crowd at the beach had come for a reason,
and they weren’t about to be so easily dismissed, so they all followed
Jesus. And a woman in the crowd, who had
been hemorrhaging for 12 years, had heard about Jesus. She believed that if anyone could heal her,
he could; if she could just touch his clothing.
She made her way through the throngs of people, reached out and
believing she would be made well, touched him.
And immediately she was healed.
The scriptures say that Jesus felt power go
out from him and rather than just continue on his way; he stopped. Another interruption from his plan for the
day. He asked the crowd, “Who touched
me?” The disciples were incredulous,
“Are you kidding? You see the
crowd…everyone’s been touching you. And
you want to know about a specific person that touched you?”
There is Jairus, slightly on a head, wondering
what could possibly be keeping Jesus.
His daughter is at home, perhaps dying this very moment and Jesus has
stopped in the middle of a crowd that has been pressing in around him all along
the way and he wants to know who touch him?
Jairus is anxious, “please let’s just keep moving.”
But Jesus allows himself to be interrupted
again, but this time by some unknown woman in the crowd, who immediately drops
to her knees at her feet and tells Jesus that she did it. Although, the scriptures leave out her name
because she was unknown to the writer or to the person who told the story, but
she too was known by Jesus and he calls her by name. The scriptures substitute her real name with
daughter. Jesus stops, calls her by
name saying, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be
healed.”
While Jesus was being interrupted to speak to
this woman, a servant from Jairus’ household comes to tell him that his
daughter has already died, “Don’t bother the teacher anymore.” Or, don’t
interrupt him any further.
Jesus ignores them and continues on his way to
accomplish his first interruption – the healing of Jairus’s daughter, which he
does.
Jesus had woken that day, perhaps planning on
teaching by the seashore. Instead he got
interrupted by an emergency in the household of a friend. The first interruption allowed the second
interruption to occur because if he hadn’t been walking along the way toward
Jairus’ house, the bleeding woman might never have gotten close enough to touch
Christ’s garments. And the second
interruption allowed the first interruption to have an even greater impact on
Jairus’s household and on the crowds who witnessed his ability to not only
heal, but also to witness Christ’s power over death.
The point in this story is that some
interruptions may be divinely inspired and necessary to our living, learning,
and understanding the fullness of God.
So don’t be so quick to disregard or dismiss the distractions and the
interruptions that you encounter throughout your day. Interruptions may seem an annoyance at best,
but they may end up being an extremely important part of your story or someone
else’s, serving as a tremendous blessing for you or someone else.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Healing
and Transforming God, we give You thanks that You continually bless us. Take these gifts, multiply their impact on
the world, and bring us all ever closer to Your reign of peace and love. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – To God Be the Glory #485/56 2 vs. Blue
Benediction –
Friends, be
empowered and be strengthened by the knowledge that God is there for you. Be a people of peace, love and hope. AMEN.
Postlude
