We will worship together for World Communion Sunday today at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth at 11:15am. You are welcome to join us for a fellowship hour prior to worship at 10:00am.
Worship
Service for October 6, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant…it will not be like the old covenant:
P: Written on stone.
L: This will be a radically new covenant; my
laws will be within you
P: Written on hearts.
L: And God added these wonderful words -
P: I am your God and you are my people.
L: Imprint these words anew on our hearts, O
God, so that we know You in all Your fullness.
P: Let us love You as You love us and worship
You as You deserve.
Opening Hymn – Spirit of the
Living God #322/389 Blue/Brown
Prayer of Confession
Merciful God, You bring our
lives in harmony with Yours because of Your righteousness and justice, Your
steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness.
These are the qualities of Your life which were clearly imprinted on Jesus’
heart and which have been written on our hearts not in ink but with Your
Spirit. We confess that while we readily
accept the joy of living Spirit-filled lives, we all too often fail to live up
to the challenges that it brings. When
we alienate others by our judgmental and hard-hearted attitudes: Living God,
forgive us and renew our lives with Your Spirit. When our witness fails to reveal a heartfelt
desire to spread the good news of peace, love, justice and mercy to a world
sorely in need of such news: Living God, forgive us and renew our lives with
Your Spirit. Living God, we come to You
in penitence and faith, praying that Your love will be rewritten on our hearts
and revealed in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new
creation: everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new! We have been reconciled to God through Christ
and all this is from God who does not count our trespasses against us – but
entrusts us with the message of reconciliation.
P: The
good news therefore is this: In Jesus Christ we are renewed, we are loved, and
we are forgiven. Thanks be to God!
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 nations, you called your people to be a light to the world,
to draw to yourself all who seek peace.
Lord, we ask that you use us, your church, to be instruments of that
peace, so that justice and compassion might be known in every land.
We pray for your hurting and broken world. We pray that conflict, wherever it may be,
comes to an end, that wars might cease and the peace can truly be
realized. We pray for our enemies, as
much as we pray for our friends and allies.
Lord, give our nation’s leaders a spirit of wisdom and a heart of
reconciliation, that we might be guided to provide for the well-being of the
hungry and homeless. We especially think
of those refugees and migrants who have left their homes to find a place of
comfort and rest; away from the disasters and tragedies, conflicts and poverty
in their homelands.
We pray for your church and its leaders. Give us pastors and church leaders who are
eager to hear your voice and to follow your call. Make us as community models of righteousness
for all who seek to know your ways.
Teach us to rejoice in all things and to seek what is honorable, just,
pure, pleasing, commendable, and praiseworthy, that we might be good
ambassadors of your good news to those whose hearts are restless for you.
Lay your healing hand on those we have named this morning who struggle
with sickness of body, mind, or spirit.
We especially pray for…
Hear also our unspoken and silent prayers this morning.
Lord, by your healing and comforting, reveal your power and love, and
give us a taste of the feast to come as we pray 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. And 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 – Precious
Lord, Take My Hand #404/684 Blue/Brown
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Luke
8:1-3
Second Scripture Reading – John
20:1-18
Sermon –
Mary
Magdalene, Mary of Magdala, or Mary the Tower
(based
on Luke 8:1-3, John 20:1-18)
By now you’ve probably noticed that my
series of sermons that I began a month ago have taken us chronologically
through my formative years of faith, beginning when I was in Confirmation Class
learning a more in-depth understanding of Scripture up until about 30 years
ago. In all honesty, not much changed
drastically in my spiritual development or faith journey until a couple of
years ago.
I began following one of my favorite
authors, Diana Butler Bass, and her on-line blog. This week and next week are a two-part
series. This morning you’ll hear some
foreshadowing overlaps into next week and next week you’ll see how today’s revelatory
importance comes to a conclusion.
In 2022, Diana Butler Bass, wrote about
a woman by the name of Elizabeth Schrader who was living in New York city where
she was a singer-songwriter. Elizabeth
(or Libbie), as she is more commonly known, is a cradle Episcopalian with a
very lively faith life. She adores the
church. She loves liturgy. She loves
praying with and to the saints. And one
day Libbie walked into a church garden in the city of New York seeking refuge
from the city, and sat down to pray. And
as she prayed, she heard a voice and the voice said, "Follow Mary
Magdalene."
Now,
Libbie usually doesn't hear voices when she's sitting in gardens praying. So, that was pretty startling to her. She went home, sat down, and wrote a song
about the encounter and Mary Magdalene.
It’s actually called “Magdalene.” And that's what happened. She wrote an incredible song about Mary
Magdalene. But then something deeper
started nagging at Libbie. She really
didn’t know that much about Mary Magdalene and wanted to learn more. If critics or her audience wanted to know why
she wrote the song and what it was about, she really didn’t have an
answer. And she thought, "Well, I
don't think I was just called to write a song. I think I need to learn more. Who is this Mary Magdalene?" And so here she is, an Episcopalian living in
New York City, and she thought, "Where do I learn more about the
Bible?" And she calls up General
Theological Seminary in New York City, which is the Episcopal seminary there,
and she says, "I need to learn more about Mary Magdalene. How do I do that?"
The
person in the admissions department said exactly that she could come to General
and that she could earn a degree, a master's degree in New Testament if she
liked. And she said, "Oh, I want to
do that. I feel called to do that."
And so Libbie, a singer-songwriter,
signed up for the New Testament program where she studied with a wonderful New
Testament professor who taught her Greek, Coptic and Aramaic, and began to
teach her how to translate the New Testament. And Libbie was off to the races as a master's
degree student in New Testament. She still
couldn't get Mary Magdalene off of her mind.
I’m
going to pause Elizabeth Schrader’s story there for a moment. And I want to ask all of you, what do you
know about Mary Magdalene? What’s the
first thing that comes to your mind?
Go
ahead and shout out some answers.
Carolyn
Osiek is Professor of New Testament Studies at Catholic Theological Union in
Chicago. In her Dictionary of Women in
Scripture she describes Mary Magdalene as “the most famous of Jesus’ women
disciples and the one who has been most misinterpreted in Christian history.
What does scripture actually tell us
about her?
In
the passages we heard from this morning, we find Mary Magdalene listed among
the women who traveled with Jesus and the twelve disciples. She is specifically named as someone, “from
whom seven demons had gone out,” (Luke 8:2), but also as someone who had her
own wealth. These women were not
groupies or even paid to travel and support the men, but it mentions that they
ministered out of their own resources. We
also know from Luke’s account of the resurrection story that Mary Magdalene
went to the tomb to care for the body of Jesus and was a first witness to the
resurrection along with a couple of other women. Her presence that morning is repeated by
Matthew, Mark, and John. John, however,
has a slight adaptation. He places those
women standing at the cross, but only Mary goes to the tomb that morning.
We read that encounter this morning as
well. She has an encounter with Jesus
where she mistakes him at first for the gardener.
Some of you may recall her to be the
woman who washed Jesus’ feet. All four
gospels recount this incident and she is often depicted with a vessel of
ointment… but is she in the actual bible as doing so?
In Matthew 26 and Mark 14, an unnamed
woman comes to him at a man named Simon’s house in the town of Bethany and this
anointing is connected to the transition to his trial and execution… preparing
him for burial. Luke places the story in
a different context and place, near the beginning of his ministry in chapter
7. He doesn’t name her either, although
Luke adds the detail that she was a sinner.
What kind of sinner? It doesn’t say, but we tend to assume that she was
a prostitute even though the text does not indicate that. And yet, over and over in art, this woman is
connected with Mary Magdalene. So some
of you may have thought she was a prostitute.
And
part of that is because in medieval times, some religious leaders like Pope
Gregory the Great conflated several women in scriptures all together… including
the women caught in adultery, the sinner who anointed Jesus feet, and the Mary
we know from Bethany. Scholars like Hugh
Pope, however, believe that the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet is this Mary
Magdalene because of the central role that she plays in the gospel of John and
the praise that Jesus bestows upon her.
What throws a wrench in all of this is
when we assume that Mary Magdalene means Mary from a place named Magdala… like
we might think of Jesus the Nazarene or Jesus of Nazareth, and like Joseph of
Arimathea. But, current scholars seem to
agree that this Mary that we’ve called Mary Magdalene, thinking that she was
called this because of the place she was from, wasn’t from Magdala. She was most likely from Bethany.
However, in the Greek passage of Luke,
it makes clear that this Mary is called Magdalene. Not that she is from a place named Magdala or
Migdal. Instead, she is given this new
name… like Simon who is called Peter, the Rock.
Or Thomas, who is called Didymus, the Twin.
So,
what does Magdala mean in Aramaic, the common spoken language in Jesus’
day? It means the Tower. So, Mary Magdalene was most likely a new name
that Jesus gave her; Mary, the Tower.
Why is any of that important?
Jesus came to shake up the world, to flip
the known hierarchy of power, to transform us into something new, different, or
perhaps most likely back to its original intention. If you go all the way back to the beginning
of Genesis. The wind of God or (the
breath of God) swept across the face of the waters. In the Hebrew Bible this wind or breath of God
is interpreted to be the Holy Spirit or the Ruach of God. In English we don’t get the significance of
this, but in Hebrew, the first and original language that the Old Testament was
written in, the word Ruach is feminine.
The Holy Spirit is feminine word and therefore its pronoun is she. And only a few short verses later in Genesis
says that God then said, “Let us create human kind in our image, according to
our likeness (plural) – male and female God created them.
In Galatians 3:28 – the author of this
letter to the Galatian Church helping to create the world that Jesus wanted
says that now in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, there
is no longer male or female – we are all equal in the eyes of God.
So, what if in that same sense Jesus
did two things? He renamed Peter, Cephas
– the Rock upon which he’d build his church and he renamed Mary, Magdalene –
the Tower of whom there was much faith.
What if the two of them were to be equal partners in changing the world
to make a more equitable one? Male and
female together as partners, as helpmates to one another. The gifts of both to be shared equally for
the benefit of all.
On Friday night, I was privileged to
join in the celebration of 100 years of the Women’s Club of Elizabeth, who now
meet here at our Bethesda church.
Hearing the stories of women from across generations share their personal
journeys of leadership, courage, education, and knowledge. I was honored to hear those stories and to
celebrate those women who’ve made a lasting impression on this town and
wherever their lives have led them.
Imagine what kind of world we’d have now
if we had allowed those two dynamics to grow Christ’s Church together – the male
Rock and the female Tower. Take a look
around. Who are the Towers of Faith in
our church today? Yes, it’s the women
and it’s my prediction (prophecy perhaps) that it will be women who in the end
save Christianity. It’s only taken about
2000 years to get us here. But, we need
them equally – the rocks and the towers, together.
Thanks
be to God.
AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord, in your faithfulness you provide our
every need in ways that surpass our understanding. We dedicate before you today the large and
the small work of every member of the church, and we ask that you accomplish great
things with our offerings of self and substance. We pray this in the blessed name of our
Savior, Jesus the Christ. AMEN.
Holy Communion
Invitation
All who seek the Lord, come.
All who seek after
righteousness, come.
All who feel lost, lonely or
afraid, come.
All who feel tired, restless,
or in need of strength, come.
All who are burdened with
life’s difficulties and challenges, come.
All who are filled with joy
and love, mercy, and grace, come.
We are all invited to the
table. So, please, as we join our
brothers and sisters across the globe, come.
The table is set for you!
Let us pray.
Lord as we gather around this wonderful
meal
everywhere and in every place;
bless us all your children.
As we eat this bread and drink this cup
linking arms around the world,
pour your grace into us all.
Grace us with your presence
as we quietly and loudly pray to you.
May we see in each other
your light, your love and you.
May it not matter our differences,
our names, our languages,
our looks, and our way of doing things.
May what matter today and everyday be that we
are one in you.
And as we pray many we call to mind our brothers
and sisters
who are unable to be with us today whether in
body or spirit.
May you bring comfort to those who are grieving,
lonely,
heartbroken, ill or broken of spirit.
May you strengthen those whose lives feel
shattered,
don’t make sense, in crisis, and
experiencing loss.
May you say the healing word to those who need
it.
May you bring the human touch of love
to those who have not been touched.
May you love the unloved through us.
May you shine your light
into those whose world is covered in darkness.
May you use us to feed the hungry,
clothe the ones who need clothes,
give a cup of water to those who are thirsty,
shelter the homeless, visit the sick and those
in prison.
May lives be awakened to you, Lord,
to your love and to your kingdom
whose door is always open to all.
Join me now in the Great
Thanksgiving:
Great Thanksgiving
L: The Lord be with you.
P: And
also with you.
L: Lift up your hearts.
P: We
lift them up to the Lord.
L: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Breaking of the Bread/Sharing of the Cup
Closing
Hymn – In Christ There is no East or West #439/428
Benediction –
God has gifted us with men and women, whose vision and
dreams reach into the future, whose ministry and mission are the heart, hands,
and feet of Christ. Go, from this place,
as an ambassador for Christ – both male and female, young and old, black and white,
rich and poor. Go in peace.
Postlude
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