Today we celebrate Communion together at a joint service at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth at 11:15am with fellowship prior to worship.
Worship
Service for October 4, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Welcome to God’s house, a place of faith.
P: From our homes, we come seeking God’s
word.
L: Here you will find nourishment and hope.
P: But may we also learn lessons of courage
and peace.
L: Here you will find rest from your
struggles.
P: Lord, prepare our hearts to receive Your
words as we worship You this day. AMEN.
Opening Hymn – Spirit of the Living God #322/389
Prayer of Confession
Most merciful
God, we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed; by
what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us,
that we may delight in Your will, and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your
name. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Hear the Good News: Paul writes to
Timothy, “Do not be ashamed of testifying to God, who saved us and called us
with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works but in virtue of God’s own
purpose and the grace God gave us in Christ Jesus years ago.”
P: By that grace we are saved. Let us believe the good news of the
gospel! In Jesus Christ we are
forgiven. 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
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 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 worthy
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. 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
Scripture Reading(s):
OT – Isaiah 5:1-7
NT – Philippians 3:4b-14
Sermon –
Pressing On
Philippians 3:12-14
We live in a culture that encourages us to
present the perfect, finished version of ourselves. We show people the picture after it has been
cropped and filtered, the accomplishment after the struggle has been edited
out, the smile that hides the worry, and the confident answer that covers all
the questions we are still afraid to ask.
A number of years ago I began watching a
show on the Food Channel and really liked some of the recipes and the backstory
of one of the hosts. His name was
Andy. Over the years I followed along as
Andy went from being one of the peripheral figures of the show to being one of
its anchor hosts. I followed along as
drama hit the news channels about the toxicity and racism of “behind the
scenes” issues of the show and how many of the hosts quit, including Andy. Andy went on to develop his own show that was
more or less successful, continued to develop his brand on social media and I
followed along. He wrote a cookbook,
which I bought. I was enchanted by his
humble Persian beginnings and his love for food. During the Pandemic, his on-line presence
grew even more popular. His perfectly
curated life on Instagram seemed like a dream.
Every photo – a flawless image of plated magic. Every picture of table settings seemed to
come directly from that Robin Leach TV Show from the mid 80’s – 90’s, The
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous whose slogan was “Champagne wishes and caviar
dreams”. Although I have no aspirations
for being a chef, I do love to cook and drew a lot of inspiration from
him. One day, as he was launching his
cookbook, I decided to send him a message knowing that it was a pipedream to
ever hear back. To my surprise, he
replied. And four years later, we’ve
developed a rather robust correspondence friendship. But the person I’ve come to know is
absolutely nothing like the man you see on Instagram or TV. He’s complex, has lots of doubts, more
failures than wins, and worries about everything. Now, when I see a picture he’s posted on
Instagram, I’m mindful of the dozens of other pictures that weren’t perfect and
not posted, the doubt and worry behind the smile, of the sleepless night he had
prior to that day’s cooking, of the fight he’d just had with the producer who
wanted the background to be different, or the pivot he had to make at the last
minute for one of his signature dishes because the host couldn’t find the large
pearl couscous he likes to use.
In our scripture reading this morning,
Paul does not offer us a polished portrait of a person who has arrived. Like the real Andy behind the Instagram
perfection, Paul offers us something more truthful and more hopeful: a picture
of someone who is still reaching, still learning, still being changed by grace.
Paul has every reason to boast. He lists the credentials that once gave him
confidence: his heritage, his religious training, his devotion to the law, and
his reputation for zeal. But his
encounter with Christ changed the way he measured his life. He discovered that faith is not a trophy we
place on a shelf or a status we achieve and then defend. Faith is a living relationship with Christ,
and a living relationship is never finished.
There is always more love to receive, more grace to understand, more
truth to discover, and more compassion to practice.
That is why Paul says, "I press on to
make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Paul does not press on so that Christ might
finally accept him. He presses on
because Christ has already claimed him. Grace comes first. Belonging comes first. Love comes first. The Christian life is not an anxious attempt
to earn God’s love; it is our grateful response to the love that has already
found us.
The phrase Paul uses in this passage of
"pressing on" can sound tough to tired people. It can sound like one more demand to work
harder, accomplish more, and pretend that we are not weary. But Paul is not giving us a religious version
of the command to work until you drop from exhaustion. He is not telling us that exhaustion is holy
or that we should ignore our limits. Sometimes pressing on means simply taking
the next brave step, but sometimes it means resting long enough to remember who
we are. Sometimes it means speaking, and sometimes it means becoming quiet
enough to listen. Sometimes it means
holding on, and sometimes it means releasing what we were never meant to
carry. The direction is always toward
Christ, but the pace and circumstance may be different for each of us.
Paul then says that he does one thing:
"forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies
ahead." Forgetting does not mean
erasing our memory. Paul certainly did
not forget his past. He remembered that
he had persecuted the church, and he spoke about it openly. He remembered the communities that had
nurtured him, the friends who had stood beside him, and the suffering he had
endured. The Bible itself is a book of
memory. Again and again, God’s people are told to remember.
So, what I think Paul means by saying to
forget, is that the past must not be allowed to control the future. We can learn from yesterday without living
there. We can tell the truth about what
happened without permitting it to determine everything that can happen
next. Some of us might be held by
regret. We replay a conversation, a
choice, or a failure and imagine that one chapter has become the title of the
whole book. Others of us are held by
hurt, unable to move because someone else’s cruelty to us still speaks louder
than God’s grace. And some of us are
held not by painful memories but by pleasant ones. We remember a season when the church was
fuller, when the family gathered more easily, when our bodies were stronger, or
when life seemed simpler, and we spend so much time looking backward that we
miss the new thing God is doing in front of us.
There is a familiar experience when we
drive a car. The rearview mirror is important; without it we cannot understand
what is behind us. But the windshield is much larger for a reason. We need to see the road before us much
clearer than we see the road behind us.
Memory helps us understand where we’ve been, but hope helps us see where
God is leading. Paul is not throwing
away the rearview mirror. He is simply
refusing to confuse it with the windshield.
This is true not only for individuals but
also for congregations. Churches have
long memories. We remember beloved
pastors, crowded Sunday school rooms, choirs that filled the sanctuary,
programs that seemed to flourish, and people whose presence helped make the
congregation feel like home. Those
memories are gifts, and we should honor them.
But the purpose of memory is not to build a museum around the past. The purpose of memory is to remind us of
God’s faithfulness so that we can continue to trust God with the future. The God who met the church in an earlier
generation is not trapped in that generation.
The Spirit is still moving, sometimes beyond the patterns that feel
familiar to us, calling us to notice new neighbors, hear new voices, and
discover new ways to embody the love of Christ.
Pressing on, then, requires us to ask a
different question. Instead of asking
only, "How can we recover what used to be?" we begin to ask,
"What is Christ inviting us to become now?" That question does not
dishonor those who came before us. In
fact, it may be the most faithful way to honor them, because the saints of the
past did not preserve the church by refusing every change. They pressed forward in their own time. They responded to needs that were before
them, took risks they could not fully calculate, and entrusted a living faith
to the generations that followed. Our
calling is not to repeat their answers but to share their courage.
Most of us would prefer to see the whole
route before we begin. We want a clear
map, a guaranteed outcome, and some assurance that our efforts will
succeed. Yet much of life does not
unfold that way. Anyone who has walked
through grief knows that healing rarely happens in a straight line. There are better days and suddenly difficult
days, moments of laughter that surprise us and moments when a familiar song or
empty chair opens the wound again.
The toaster I’ve been using for the last
five years was my sister’s. A couple of
weeks ago, it broke and I had a full-on meltdown. Over a toaster. Pressing on meant ordering a new one, even
though I hated letting go of hers. Pressing
on in grief does not mean leaving love behind.
It means allowing love to change its form, carrying gratitude and sorrow
together, and trusting that even when we cannot see very far ahead, God is
present in the next step. And the next
step for me in that toaster moment was to order an even better one that my
sister would have been happy that I got.
Paul then says that he presses on
"toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ
Jesus." The prize is Christ:
knowing Christ more deeply and becoming more fully shaped by Christ’s
self-giving love. Think of a relay race.
No runner carries the baton from the beginning of the race to the end. Each person receives what another has
carried, runs the portion that is theirs, and then places the baton into
someone else’s hand. We did not begin God’s work in the world, and we will not
complete it by ourselves. We have
received faith from people whose names we know and from countless others whose
names have been forgotten. Our task is
to run our portion with courage and generosity, so that those who come after us
receive not a burden of fear but a legacy of hope.
The finish line is not a private escape
from the world but a life increasingly caught up in God’s work of healing the
world. We move forward whenever our
hearts become more merciful, our welcome becomes wider, our courage becomes
steadier, and our lives begin to resemble the grace we’ve received.
We do not need to show the world a curated
life, perfect, without flaws. Like my
friend, Andy, behind the scenes God already knows that we are striving toward
the image of Jesus, pressing on toward the goal. There may be something in your life today
that feels unfinished. There may be a
prayer that has not been answered, a relationship that has not been repaired, a
decision that remains unclear, or a grief that still surprises you. Paul reminds us that Christ has made us his
own, and because we are held by Christ, we are free to take the next faithful
step.
Perhaps that step is offering an apology
without trying to defend yourself.
Perhaps it is asking for help, beginning a difficult conversation,
returning to prayer, or allowing yourself to rest. Perhaps it is standing beside someone whose
voice has been ignored, trying a new ministry, welcoming a person you do not
yet understand, or releasing the assumption that the best days are all behind
you. The step may appear small, but
small steps taken in the right direction are never wasted. And in doing so, we can remember that Paul
did not say, "I have reached the goal." But rather he said, "I press
on." The gospel gives us permission
to begin again after we discover that we still have more to learn. Indeed, it is often in the unfinished places
that grace becomes most visible.
Let us therefore press on—not frantically,
not fearfully, and not alone, but with the quiet courage of people who know
they are held by grace. Let us press on
when the way is clear and when we can see only the next step. Let us press on toward deeper love, wider
mercy, braver justice, and a fuller life. Forgetting what lies behind us,
strain toward what lies ahead, trusting that the God who called us is already
there. 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
Communion
Invitation
to The Lord’s Table
Jesus was always the guest.
In the homes of Peter and Jairus,
Martha and Mary, Joanna and Susanna,
he was always the guest.
At the meal tables of the wealthy
where he pled the case of the poor,
he was always the guest.
Upsetting polite company,
befriending isolated people,
welcoming the stranger,
he was always the guest.
But here,
At this table,
Jesus is the host.
Those who wish to serve him
Must first be served by him.
Those who want to follow him
Must first be fed by him.
Those who would wash his feet
must first let him make them clean.
For this is the table
where God intends us to be nourished.
This is the time
when Christ can make us new.
So come, you who hunger and
thirst
for a deeper faith,
for a fuller life,
for a better world.
Jesus Christ,
Who has sat at our tables,
Now invites us to be guests at his.
Prayer
of 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.
Words
of Institution
Among friends, gathered round a table,
(taking and breaking bread)
Jesus took bread, broke it, and said,
“This is my body, broken for you.”
(holding the cup)
Later he took the cup and said,
“This is the relationship with God
Made possible because of my death.
Take it, all of you, to remember me.”
(pour out the cup)
In this meal
God comes to us
So that we may come to God.
(Distribution
of the Bread and the Cup)
(The Bread)
Christ, whom
the universe could not contain,
Is present to us in the breaking of this bread.
Take and eat.
(The Cup)
Christ, who
redeemed us and called us by name,
Now meets us in the sharing of this cup.
Take and drink.
Closing
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 – In Christ There is no East or
West #439/428
Benediction
Having been healed
and made whole by God’s love, now go out into God’s world to be a healer and
one who brings peace and hope to others. Know always that God is with you. AMEN.
Postlude
