Worship
Service for March 23, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: A rich feast waits for those who call upon
the Lord.
P: God offers to us all the bounty of God’s
love.
L: How we have thirsted for hope and peace!
P: How we have longed for joy and love!
L: God continually blesses and heals us.
P: Praise be to God for God’s steadfast love. AMEN
Opening Hymn – My
Faith Looks Up to Thee #383/539
Prayer of Confession
This is the season of
turning. We are called on this journey
to turn our lives to You, O Lord, to turn away from all those things which have
harmed us and others; to separate ourselves from actions and attitudes that
demean and destroy. It is far too easy
for us to sink into the mire of self-pity and self-serving attitudes, wondering
why everything isn’t coming our way. We
want comfort, contentment, no stress, no struggle. Yet our lives are filled with stress and
discontent. We hurt, Lord. We hurt in our bodies and our souls. We hurt in our relationships with
others. How we must try your
patience! We don’t want to be like this
– we want to feel the warmth of Your love, the freedom of Your Spirit, the joy
of serving You. Forgive us for our selfishness
and stupidity. Heal us. For we ask these things in Jesus’ name. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: You are given another chance! God has heard your cries. Turn again to the Lord.
P: We will find comfort and strength in God’s
eternal love for us. And in that love,
we are healed. 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
We put everything off
until the last minute, Lord. You have
invited and encouraged us on this journey, reminding us of the struggles and of
the hope. You ask us to let go of the
things that bind us from serving freely, but we have a nasty tendency to wait
until it’s almost too late - until the last minute. We can’t seem to let go of the hurt, fear, and
pain. On this journey, remind us again
of Your healing love, Your forgiving power. Help us trust the goodness and potential for
good that You have placed in all of us.
We have come to this
place to hear Your word, to sing and pray to You in hope. Enable us to find the courage to really
believe in You, that Your healing love may permeate our souls and prepare us
for true witness.
When we are tempted to
move away from you, O God, bring us back by your benevolent mercy. When we fail to use the gifts and the talents
that you have given us, renew us with the strength of your will and the wisdom of
your direction. When we would rather
stand idly by than to become involved in the passion and the suffering of this
world, move us to act with the gift of your compassion. When we surround ourselves with images that
would lead to our destruction, renew us with the Spirit of your live-giving
love. When we walk away from you and the
lives to which you have called us, lead us to repentance so that our broken and
sinful hearts might be healed by your Word.
Lord, hear also the
prayers of your people who lift up their worries and concerns… we pray now
for...
There are times when we
need you to hear the unspoken prayers of our hearts, because we cannot say them
aloud. Hear us now Lord, in silence…
Gather us as one
people, Lord, blessed for a purpose, happy to serve as we now join in one voice
praying…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 – O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee #357/665
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
55:1-9
Second Scripture Reading – Luke 13:1-9
Sermon -
Second Chances (based on Luke 13:1-9)
In
our Brown Hymnal, the Celebration Hymnal, there’s a well-known hymn called
Softly and Tenderly #479. Alan Jackson
made it a bit more popular when he included it in one of his albums called
Precious Memories. In this hymn, the
first stanza says, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling; calling for you and
for me. See, on the portals, he’s
waiting and watching; watching for you and for me.”
That
is a great line in a beautiful hymn. It
makes Jesus out to be that wonderful non-anxious presence. You know the pastoral scene of Jesus sitting
on a rock or a log, by a stream, gently holding a lamb to his breast, petting
it softly and tenderly. Well, that might
be true some of the time, but not in this message from Luke chapter 13 with the
killing of Galileans and the accident of the falling of the tower which killed
18 Israelites. This time that message is
loud and clear and quite pointedly specific.
Now, before we get into the meat of the
parable, let’s talk about those first five verses. This part of Luke 13 refers to two events
that were probably familiar to that ancient audience who were reading it. Unfortunately, the details of these events
have been lost to time. And Luke is our
only source of information about these two tragedies as the other gospel
writers do not mention them at all.
However, from historical records and from similar modern day events, we
can guess what these tragedies were about.
The first one is the awful mention that Pilate had mingled the blood of
Galileans; people that for whatever reason had been executed, with their
religious sacrifices. So the blood of
the people executed mingled with the blood of their sacrifices defiling the religious
act of purification. The purpose of mentioning
this tragedy was first to point out Pilate’s disregard for their faith and also
to point out his brutality, both of which will come into play as our Lenten
journey leads to the cross.
The second calamity that Jesus mentions
is in reference to a tower in the wall around Jerusalem. Apparently, the tower collapsed without
warning and crushed 18 innocent victims.
The purpose of mentioning this tragedy was the opposite of the first
one, where this seemed to be a random, haphazard occurrence.
I suspect that these two incidences
happened fairly close together time-wise, and were the talk of the town. Therefore, Jesus uses them, a
state-sanctioned terror and a rather random accident, to illustrate his point. Both of these events saw people killed with
little warning and for no clear reason.
Both kinds of events lead us to realize how precarious our own existence
is – snuffed out suddenly at the hand of an evil tyrant or by a random accident. Jesus tells his audience that neither the
victims of Pilate’s rampage nor the innocent victims of the collapsed tower did
anything wrong. He connected these two
tragedies for that very reason, Jesus wants the listener to understand that
life can be capricious or seemingly random.
I
think the single most important lesson in these passages is that Jesus is
trying to get his audience to understand that life can be nasty, it can be
brutal, and it can be short, cut off suddenly without warning. We can’t equate tragedy with divine
punishment. Sin does not make atrocities
come. They just come.
If
you live long enough, care enough about others, you will inevitably begin
asking the question, “why do good people have to suffer?” or “Why do good
people die?” “If there is a God who
cares about us, why do these tragedies come to the good ones.” We’ll offer up our sons or daughters, our
sisters or brothers, our wives or husbands, our mothers or fathers as good
people who suffered, who died. And we’ll
wonder why those other people, the bad people, seem to escape these tragedies,
seem to gleefully go through life without blemish or harm. You’ll see the wrong people sick. The wrong people die.
Rabbi
Harold Kushner used his own tragic story to illustrate this point when he
wrote, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”.
His son Aaron was only 14 when he died of Progeria, the premature aging
disease that made him age faster. Some
well-meaning folk offered words of comfort, usually the same words he, as a
clergyman, offered others, like “There are reasons for this that we can’t understand
now, but sometime in the future it will become clear.” Or “We
simply must put our trust in God and give God the glory.” Or “God
won’t give you more than you can handle, since you are such a strong man of
faith, God figured you could handle this.”
Rabbi
Kushner said that none of those words were comforting at all. The truthful answer is that none of it makes
sense. We can’t make sense of
tragedy. There is no answer to that why
question. Things happen. They happen to the righteous and the
unrighteous. They happen to the good and
the bad. Rains fall on the just and the
unjust alike.
So,
by speaking about those two tragedies together, Jesus is telling us to move
past the why and get to the meat of the story.
And the meat of the story is about a barren fig tree.
Because
of life’s fragile nature, it gives it urgency.
Jesus doesn’t want us to spend time on the question of “why did this
happen?” Instead, he wants us to focus
on our own lives, what we’re doing with them, and the unknown amount of time we
have left. And repentance is part of
that.
Jesus
repeats two times, “unless you repent you will all perish”, just like the
others did. At first, this might sound
like the same sort of fear mongering and frenzy our evangelical friends whip up
after every natural and unnatural disaster.
But notice that Christ’s approach follows a slightly different
path. He doesn’t promise freedom from
calamity but urges his hearers against false self-assurances. If life’s fragility demands urgency, that
urgency shows that life itself is precious and has carved out opportunities for
us to seize God’s graciousness.
The
parable about the barren fig tree that Jesus uses in the next four verses, reinforces
ideas from the first half of this passage. A cultivated yet unproductive tree may
continue to live even without bearing fruit, only because it has been granted
additional time to do what it is supposed to do. Unless it begins to bear fruit,
the result will be its just and swift destruction.
The
tone of the parable emphasizes that patience and mercy have temporarily kept
judgment at bay. But judgment will come
– one day, for everyone, regardless. You
are given another chance at it every day.
And, in our parable, to help with those renewed chances, the tree has
not been left to its own devices. Everything
possible is being done to get it to act as it should. God does not leave people to their own
resources but encourages their repentance and action.
One
of my favorite movies is Hope Floats.
It’s about a young woman named Birdee Pruitt who is humiliated on live
television by her best friend, Connie, who’s been having an affair with
Birdee’s husband, Bill. Birdee tries
starting over with her daughter, Bernice, by returning to her small Texas
hometown, but faces petty old acquaintances who are thrilled to see Birdee
unhappy – except for an old flame, Justin.
As he helps Birdee get back on her feet, she rejects his offers over and
over again, resulting in still more humiliation. After one final rejection, Birdee’s mother
reprimands her lightly but effectively by saying, “You think life goes on
forever? You think behind every chance
is another chance and then another one and another one? It’s the worst kind of extravagance, the way
you spend your chances, Birdee?”
Jesus
does the same thing here in this parable, using the Fig Tree. In this parable, the Fig Tree is given
another chance. It’s already had countless
opportunities. It’s already had
countless chances. And it has failed to
produce fruit. Which is the worst kind
of extravagance. Its purpose was to
produce Figs. That’s why it was created. That’s why it was called a Fig tree. Instead, it is using up resources, time,
energy; wasting away by simply existing with no aim or purpose.
In
this season of Lent, we talk about repentance a lot. Because it is that urgency that leads us to
the cross. Repentance isn’t about moral
uprightness, expressions of regret, or a “180-degree turnaround.” Rather, it refers to a changed mind, to a new
way of seeing things, to being persuaded to adopt a different perspective and
to act differently, to make a different choice.
In this case, to bear fruit.
Too
many Lenten observances assume that taking our humanity seriously requires
morose expressions of piety. But the
Christian outlook on repentance arcs toward joy. And it finds grace experienced within the
awful precariousness and strange beauty of our fleeting existence.
The
power of this parable is the suspense that it ends with. Will fruit emerge in time to thwart the ax? How will this season of second chances play
itself out? How do the gardener’s
efforts make the tree’s existence a state of grace and opportunity?
In
this parable, Jesus is not calling softly and tenderly. He’s calling urgently and loudly. In the days that you have left, what are you
doing with your life? How will you live
the rest of the days allotted to you?
Will you allow the gardener to come, tend to you and allow you to
produce figs or will you ignore the gardener and all his ministrations to you
and continue to produce nothing, still living a life without purpose?
You
might think from this story, from this parable, that you need some grandiose
plan as the purpose of your life. But
no, what if I told you that you fulfilled it when you took an extra hour to
talk to that kid about his life? What if
it was when you paid the bill for that young couple in the restaurant? Or when you saved that dog in traffic? Or when you tied your father’s shoes for him
when he could no longer do it?
Sometimes
our problem is that we equate our purpose with goal-based achievement and we
get overwhelmed with the possibility that we could never achieve something amazing
or outstanding. The Fig Tree wasn’t
asked to produce peaches. It was
demanded to do what it was created to do – produce figs. God isn’t really interested in amazing
achievements – something spectacular.
God is interested in your heart; you were created to act out of
kindness, compassion, and love.
What
is the purpose of your life for the days that you have left? It is an urgent matter. Jesus is calling loudly for you to be and do
what you were created for.
Thanks
be to God.
AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord,
here is our gratitude for all that You have poured out in blessings upon
us. Let these offerings be a true
reflection of our thankfulness and a true measure of our discipleship. AMEN
Closing
Hymn – In the Cross of Christ I Glory #84/328
Benediction –
God has
called You to bear witness to hope and goodness. Know that You have been healed of all that
prevents You from serving God. Go forth with
God’s love and blessing to bring Good News this hurting world. AMEN
Postlude
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