Today we worship together at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, PA at 11:15am with the celebration of communion.
Worship
Service for June 1, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Praise the Lord, all the people!
P: For our Savior has been raised on high!
L: Jesus Christ who was crucified and has
risen from the dead
P: Now sits at the right hand of God the
Father Almighty.
L: Jesus will come again, bringing the
fullness of God’s kingdom.
P: Praise be to our Lord! AMEN.
Opening Hymn – Glorify Thy Name/Majesty #9 &
10 Brown
Prayer of Confession
Lord, we are “what’s next?”
people. We want to know what we are
supposed to do. We journeyed through the
Lenten Season, stood at the foot of the Cross, witnessed Jesus’ Resurrection
and his appearances to his disciples in an upper room and on the lakeshore. Now, in this day we are called to wait. Again!?!?
That’s hard for us to do. We want
to jump into some kind of action. Calm
our hearts and help us wait for the Spirit.
Forgive our impatience and our lack of faith. We place our trust in your redeeming love. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Jesus commanded the faithful ones to wait
for the power from on high. Be
patient. God’s love is given to you and
the power of God will enable you to be witnesses for God in this world. Be still and know!
P: We
give thanks to God and vow to be a people of great courage. 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
The
watchword for this day, like at Advent, is “Wait!” We have a hard time with that, O Lord. We want to get out and do something for You,
God. We want to feel useful and be of service.
We are itching to move and be about Your
work in the world. Yet You call us to
wait until the Spirit is given to us. Lord, we are afraid of waiting - because
sometimes it feels like we’ve lost our enthusiasm, sometimes it feels like
we’ve given up, sometimes it feels like we have given in to the world’s embrace
of apathy and inactivity. So, as we wait
for the Holy Spirit, give us courage and strength to prepare our spirits for Your
service. Help us to know that You are
with us always, opening and aligning our hearts and minds to Your work and Your
will for us. Help us to trust in all
that Jesus said. For the time is coming,
and is perhaps even at the door, when our witness will be crucial, when our
words and actions reveal Your love and healing power. This isn’t a long wait, but rather a pause to
prepare us, Lord. And in this pause, make
us ready. As we wait this day, we are
mindful of all those who need to feel your presence in their lives. Be with….
Hear too,
our heartfelt prayers in this time of silence.
Now, Lord,
gather us as one voice 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 – Just
As I Am #488 Brown Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
97
Second Scripture Reading – John
17:20-26
Sermon
–
Jesus Prays for Us
(based on John 17:20-26)
Today is the final Sunday in the season of Eastertide. Next Sunday we will be witnesses to Pentecost,
the time when the Holy Spirit was given to the Disciples. The season of Eastertide is another period of
waiting, like Advent, when Jesus asked the disciples to wait for the power of
the Holy Spirit to come. In this cycle
of the lectionary readings, we’ve been going through the book of John during
Eastertide. Throughout these week’s of
readings in John, unlike the years where the readings come from Luke or Matthew
in Eastertide, we’ve been listening to Jesus’ talk with his disciples on the
night before his crucifixion. So, we’re
still in the upper room, and the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday
haven’t happened yet. We are caught in a
time warp between pre-crucifixion and post-resurrection. When you think about it, this sums up our
lives as Christians. We are caught in
the already, but not yet of the Kingdom of God.
Only the gospel of John gives us the full account of that last
conversation around the table. Jesus has
been distilling the last three years’ worth of teaching into these final words.
And now, Jesus shifts from teaching to
praying, from giving his disciples information to praying
for them. But, in this prayer he also
prayed for us, here and now. Those who
would believe because of the work of the disciples so many years ago.
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those
who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As
you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that
the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I
have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in
me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you
have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire
that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my
glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of
the world.
“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you;
and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I
will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in
them, and I in them.”
In chapters 13 through 16 of John’s gospel, Jesus has been
talking to his disciples. But when we get to chapter 17 he’s said all he
can say, so Jesus closes their time together in prayer. And this prayer follows a progression
from the very specific to the broadest possible generalization.
First, in earlier verses of this Chapter Jesus prays for himself. He is certainly not in the kind of agony the
other gospels describe as Jesus prays in Gethsemane. He asks the Father to glorify him, the Son,
with the glory the Father has given to him, so that the Son can glorify the
Father (vv1-5). Then Jesus prays
for those seated at the table with him. We
might expect him to pray for God to give them comfort in the loss they are
about to experience, or to keep them true to their purpose of spreading the
good news. But Jesus prays the same
prayer a parent might pray when their children are out late at night, or they
drive on their own for the very first time, or they start hanging around with
friends the parent doesn’t quite trust. It’s
a prayer for protection. (vv 6-19)
Jesus says, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in
the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that
you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with
them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded
them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that
the scripture might be fulfilled” (vv 11-12). And then he goes on to say, “I am not asking
you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil
one” (v.15).
Finally, we get to the passages we read this morning where he
prays for everyone who will be touched by their witness – and that includes you
and me. This prayer is for one-ness. It’s a prayer for community. Jesus prays that, ‘all may be one.’ To be a follower of Jesus is to be a part
of a greater whole. According to Christ
there are to be no solitary Christians or spiritual ‘Lone Rangers.’ … We are
one in Christ whether we agree with each other or not. We are one in Christ whether we like one
another or not. To become a part of Christ is to become a part of the
community; a part of the one.
Throughout this prayer,
John engages in some Greek wordplay. The
only difference between the word “one” and the word “in” is a tiny diacritical
mark, a little tick above the vowel to indicate that the word meaning
“one” has an “h” sound at the beginning of it. Four times Jesus calls for one-ness, but that
unity is more than solidarity. It comes
from the seven times he says “in” – I in you, you in me, they in me, you in
them… One-ness comes from being ‘in’ Christ.
Jesus is asking the Father to make us all one with God and one with each
other.
Theologian Miroslav Volf
calls this “mutual interiority,” where two people each maintain their own
personal identity, while opening themselves to each other and allowing the
other to be included within their personal space. Jesus invites all who believe in him into the
one-ness of the Triune God. And this
one-ness is grounded and rooted in love. It’s a choice to reciprocate the love God
offers us. It’s a choice to love God
back by loving each other. This kind of
love challenges us “to be enough of a self to engage in self-giving love. Any failure to
live in unity is usually a failure to reciprocate – a failure to love God
back.
I mentioned this love Christ wants us to have for each other a
couple of weeks ago, when we heard Jesus give the new commandment to love one
another as he has loved us. This love
binds us together, even when we disagree on important questions of how to be
the church, how to be followers of Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, the Church with a big C, keeps becoming more and
more fractured instead of more and more … one. The unity Christ hoped for isn’t necessarily
a call to agreement on every issue. It’s simply a call to commit ourselves to
sticking together, and to keep loving one another in the midst of disagreement.
It’s a way to show the world how to disagree and love each other
at the same time. This is the reason why
our unity is so important to Jesus that he asks for it four times in two and
a half verses. It isn’t just for
our benefit. It isn’t just for Christ’s
benefit. Christ’s prayer for unity has
only one goal: that the world would know God has sent Jesus
into the world.
So, it’s not an either/or and it’s not even a both/and – the
question is: how can we talk together about difficult
things in a way that shows love? That’s the bottom line. That’s what Jesus was asking for when he asked
the Father to make us one. It’s about sharing the one message of the Good
News in Christ: Jesus is the Son of God who takes away the sins of the world.
My sins. Your sins. All sin.
I think there is much to be gained by discussing how we, as a
church, want to live out our calling to offer hope and healing to a broken
world. In this week’s PNews from our
Presbytery, Rev Brian Wallace and Rev Ralph Lowe give an example of how to have
courageous conversations on difficult topics and still be united in Christ’s
love. (You can find the video under
Pittsburgh Presbytery’s Channel on YouTube.)
Our main concern should be deciding how we can minister to people
whose primary identity has not yet become “faithful follower of Jesus Christ”. Let us do that with grace and love for one
another, so that the witness we bear points others to Jesus, and Jesus alone. Only then can Jesus finally expect an answer
to his prayer that we might be one, even as he and the Father are one. Only then can the Kingdom of God become fully
real. Only then can we ask others to gather
around this Table, offer one another Bread and Cup, and rejoice as we hear once
again the reminder that, because we who are many partake of the One Loaf, we
have been made one in Christ Jesus.
Thanks be to God. AMEN
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
With
these gifts we give of ourselves to the world you have created, to the love you
have poured out, and to the work of Your Holy Spirit. Lord, grant us your mercy that we may be
strengthened to walk in your ways, even as you walk with us. AMEN.
Holy Communion
The Invitation:
Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I
give to you. If you love me, rejoice
because I am going to the Father.”
Today, we are invited to join with him at the Table and in so doing we
join one another to be nourished by the one who tells us, “I am the Bread of
Life.” All are invited, so come.
God’s blessings are poured out to us through the life,
death, work, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, by whose grace creation
is renewed, by whose love heaven is opened, by whose mercy we offer our
sacrifice of praise. God’s love compels
us to come to the Table. Our hands are
unclean, our hearts are unprepared; we are not fit even to eat the crumbs from
under God’s Holy Table. But the Lord,
the God of our salvation, shares bread with sinners. At the Table we are cleansed and fed with the
precious elements of body and blood that God may live in us and we in him, and
that we, with the whole company of Christ may sit and eat in God’s kingdom.
The Breaking of the Bread and the Pouring of the Cup
On the night before He died he had supper with
his friends and, taking bread, Jesus gave praise to God. He broke the bread, gave it to them and said,
“Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of
me.”
(Bread is distributed)
When supper was ended he took the cup. Again he gave praise to God and gave it to
them and said, “Drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant,
which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me.
(The Cup is distributed)
Prayer after Communion
Lord of all life, help us to work together for
the day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the
earth. Look with favor upon us, your
people, gather us in your loving arms and bring us with all the saints to feast
at your Holy Table in heaven. As we listen
to Your word, worship you in majesty, long for your refreshing, renewing,
equipping, and empowering, we wait. Make
us ready for your coming Spirit. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – I’d Rather Have Jesus #506
Benediction –
Friends, you
are called to witness to God’s love. Go
out into the world with confidence, offering healing and hope to all you
meet. Share the Good News of the Gospel
and the love of God that is in you. AMEN.
Postlude
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment.