We will jointly meet today at Olivet Presbyterian Church in West Elizabeth, PA at 9:45 for Worship and Communion. There will be no on-line availability today.
Worship
Service for November 2, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Praise is due to You, O God, O You who
answer prayer.
P: Happy are those who live in Your courts –
those who are satisfied with the goodness of Your house and Your holy temple.
L: You are the hope of all things, Holy One,
from the ends of the earth to the farthest seas.
P: You make the gateways of the evening and
the morning shout for joy.
L: Rejoice in God, O people, and be glad.
P: Let us shout and sing together for joy.
Opening Hymn – O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing #466
Blue 4vs.
Prayer of Confession
Creator God,
we confess this day to engaging in the habits that diminish the bounty of Your
creation. Not satisfied with the
goodness of Your holy temple, Your seas and mountains, Your rain and soil, we
have fashioned a system of sustenance that seems good to us, but cannot be
sustained. Be merciful to us, for we
have sinned. Answer us with awesome
deeds of deliverance, O Hope of the Earth.
Give us vision and prophetic spirit.
Renew our vocation, as stewards of Your creation. (Silent
prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Do not lose heart. Those who humbly admit their sins find favor
with God. For God answers prayer, and
forgives transgression. Believe this
good news: We are forgiven and freed to newness of life.
P: Enrich us with wisdom, and bless us with
growth, O God of our salvation. 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
You have called each of us, gracious God, into relationship with
you. As we grow and change, your words
continue to challenge us, to confront us, to judge us, to love us. Thank you for the gift of your Holy Word to
us in our lives.
You have called each of us in your Word-Made-Flesh self, who was
willing to bear the reproach of those in authority in order to serve the least,
the last, and the lost. He spoke your
healing, redeeming, gracious words into reality. Thank you for that gift of Your Word in our
lives.
You continue to call to us in the needs of those around us; and so we
offer our prayers for all who are in any way burdened, disillusioned, or
suffering. Hear our prayers of concern
for the world, for the establishment of peace, for the ease of suffering and
pain from drought, disease, political strife and conflict. Reach out now to our own country and its
leaders. Allow them to be wise in
decision making and compassionate to those in need.
Lord, hear our prayers for those near at home and their relationship
with you. Allow them to feel your
presence and know your amazing grace. We
lift up in prayer to you this day….
Also hear these prayers, those quiet prayers of the heart, as we pray
to you in silence….
Most Holy God, we stand now and ever, under your mercy praying the
Model Prayer your Son taught to us 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 – Be
Still My Soul #712 Brown
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Psalm 65
NT – Luke 18:9-14
Sermon
Mercy or Merit
(based on Luke 18:9-14)
A
Pharisee and a tax collector walk into the temple to pray… kind of sounds like the
beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it. And
in some ways, it kind of is, because Jesus is poking fun at the ridiculousness
of the scenario, but one that played out all the time.
Eugene
Peterson spent a majority of his life retranslating the Bible into a book called
The Message. It is sort of similar to
the Good News Bible, which is known as a paraphrase version – putting scripture
into contemporary language, but not taking a serious look at the original
language translation and it’s contextual and historical meanings. Instead, The Message does that, takes
seriously the meaning of the original language as well as how we might view it
today. I mention all of that because in
Peterson’s version of this passage has a more contextual understanding of both
the original intent of the passage as well as our own.
In
verse 1, our version reads:
“He also told this parable to some who trusted
in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” In The Message, it reads: “He told his next
story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral
performance and looked down their noses at the common people.”
“Trusting
in yourself” is a phrase that needs to be carefully nuanced, so the Message’s
alternative of being “pleased with themselves” makes Jesus’s intended meaning,
I think, a bit clearer for us. We’ve
read stories throughout Luke, like of the persistent widow against the unjust
judge, where they have had to trust God’s promises or an internal moral compass
shaped by God’s meaning of right and wrong. In other words, trusting in yourself is not
inherently sinful. But as The Message’s
word choice makes clear, what the Pharisee felt was most definitely not that –
he wasn’t just trusting in himself; he was puffed up and arrogant, pleased with
himself.
As
we move through the passage, The Message reads that, “The Pharisee posed
and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other
people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man…”
This
Pharisee wants attention: he has noticed who is in the space and wants people
to notice him. Peterson’s use of the
word “pose” really emphasizes the showy-ness of the moment. Kind of like an Instagram moment – a picture
posed to look like everything is perfect, even if there are a bunch of flaws in
the background that you don’t see.
I
remember seeing some pictures of Lisbon, Portugal on Instagram prior to
visiting. The lighting was just right
and the subject of overhanging colorful umbrellas in the street was alluring. The mood was obviously meant to convey beauty
and perfection. However, when I got
there, the part that was missing in the Instagram photo was all the graffiti
over all the walls of the connecting buildings and the trash on the
ground. When the area was seen in its
true light, the sight looked a lot less beautiful.
That’s
what this Pharisee does…he poses for an Instagram moment. The more standard translation that we read
this morning is that the Pharisee “stands by himself” so that he is not at any
risk of being touched by someone less righteous than he. What he prays, then, about his sense of
righteousness is accurate to how he lives and guards himself, but it is not
real. It’s simply a pose for Instagram.
It’s
not so much that what he is doing is wrong—praying at the temple is an
important part of the life of faith, but the method and the motivation reveal
the real problem behind this bad joke and why Jesus is telling this story. Even as he comes to pray to his loving God, he
has compared himself to all of the people he’s walked by and rather than
finding himself wanting, it’s everyone else who fails to measure up. The Pharisee assumes God sees these people
(and himself) the same way that he sees those around him. Able to point out the faults of everyone else,
able to name his checklist for spirituality, what’s left for him to work on? Nothing.
He’s perfect. What’s left for God
to do but praise this Pharisee and thank him for being so awesome!
But
that’s the thing, isn’t it? God actually
does see this man in the same way that God sees the thieves, the rogues, the adulterers
and the tax collector. God sees each person
as God’s own children; His creatures, the very objects of all God’s love and
redemption. It doesn’t take more of
Christ’s sacrifice to redeem the tax collector than it does to redeem the Pharisee.
The
tax collector, on the other hand, stands a far way off while praying, not for
the purpose of posing, but because he doesn’t feel worthy. Peterson translates
the description of him even better, the tax collector was “slumped in the
shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up,” praying to God for
mercy because he knows he’s a sinner. “Beating his breast” might feel too showy in
today’s context and language. He’s not
making a spectacle of himself – quite the opposite – he’s off in the shadows, making
as small of a target as possible for others, as well as God. This tax collector might be feeling like he
doesn’t measure up to guys like the Pharisee, but that hasn’t stopped him from
showing up and praying about what’s true for him, right here, and right now. In this parable, the tax collector reminds us
that it is better to be imperfectly on the way than it is to think we’ve
already arrived.
Miroslav
Volf has just published a book (Fall 2025) called The Cost of Ambition: How
Striving to be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse. In the Preface he writes, “It takes only a
quick perusal through the Bible to see that striving for superiority is a
dominant theme in the story of human suffering and wrongdoing.” To illustrate the point, Volf briefly retells
the Cain and Abel story about what happens when our sense of being superior is
challenged and how it leads us to violence as we try to preserve the lie that
we are better than someone else. The
alternative, of course, is to remember God’s grace, our human equality, and
that every success and benefit, etc. is a gift to be received. The tax collector, even though far off – standing
alone, has turned towards God in his humble prayer and is closer to being ready
to receive than the posing Pharisee is by a long shot.
Peterson
puts Jesus’s conclusion this way: “Jesus commented, ‘This tax man, not the
other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the
air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be
simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
I
love that last part: if you’re okay with telling God the truth about the sort
of state you’re in, you’ll actually be in a posture that allows the Holy Spirit
to do something about it.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN
Offertory -
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication
We
come before you, all-giving God, rich with the gifts you have given to us, rich
with the love you have lavished on us, rich with the blessings your Son has
brought to us. The gifts we offer you
here speak not only of our gratitude for your love, but also of our commitment
to seek anew and continuously to grow in our discipleship. Bless these gifts, and us as givers, to the
work for which you have called us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN
Communion
Invitation
From North and South, East and
West God calls us to sit at His Holy Banquet.
All those who have traveled far in spirit and in truth are invited. All those who find this Table near to their
heart are invited. God welcomes everyone
– the saint and the sinner, the bold and the downtrodden, the wayward sons and
daughters as well as the faithful siblings, the righteous and the
unrighteousness alike. The table is
prepared for us all.
Words of Institution/Breaking of Bread and Pouring of the
Cup/Distribution
Communion Prayer
Holy God,
We praise you,
for you are the One from whom we will return.
You conceived the universe,
wove the world together,
and hold all life in your hand.
You watch us waking or sleeping,
You keep every tear that we shed,
You hear every prayer we make,
You know both our best and our worst,
And you will not let us go.
So with rain, wind, and sunshine,
With all that moves in time with its Maker,
we praise you.
We praise you
for Christ’s life, which informs our living,
for his compassion, which changes our hearts,
for his clear speaking,
for his disturbing presence,
his innocent suffering,
his courageous dying,
his rising to life, breathing forgiveness,
We praise you and worship him.
Merciful God,
Send now,
in kindness,
your Holy Spirit
to rest on
converting us
from the patterns of this passing world,
until we conform to the shape of the One
whose food we shared this day.
Make us one body as we serve you and one another in love. AMEN
Closing Hymn – For All the Saints #526 Blue 4 vs.
Benediction
Friends, the hour has come for
you to take up your mantle of humility and go from this place knowing that the
Lord sees you, understands your own suffering, your own journey and rewards you
with grace. Go and be a light of peace
and justice to the world. AMEN.
Postlude
