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Worship
Service for March 5, 2023
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: O God, You are my God, I seek You,
P: my soul thirsts for You, my flesh faints
for You,
L: as in a dry and weary land where there is
no water.
P: So, I have looked upon You in the
sanctuary,
L: beholding Your power and glory.
P: Your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise You.
L: I will bless You, as long as I live;
P: I will lift up my hands and call on Your
name.
Opening Hymn – Christ of the Upward Way Hymn #344 Blue
Prayer of Confession
God, You call us to honesty
about who we are and all that we do. In
these moments, make us honest with ourselves.
We remember those things we have done or left undone that have hurt
others, that have caused suffering and pain in our world, that have betrayed
our love for ourselves. Give us the
courage and the wisdom to do things differently, to change our behavior so that
in asking for forgiveness we might lead forgiven lives. In the spirit of Jesus Christ who befriended
and loved all sinners, we now pray. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting
to everlasting. I declare to you, in the
name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
May the God of mercy, who forgives us all of our sins, keep us all in
eternal life.
P: We are forgiven people. Our songs of joy are lifted to the One who
forgives. 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
Loving God, in Jesus
Christ you have shown us compassion, accepted us unconditionally, and given us
a new set of values to embrace. Help us
to live in accordance with your will and aspire to be Christ-like in our
relationships. Guide us in paths that
lead to life and the peace that only you can give. For without your grace and guidance, we are
lost.
Healer of our every ill,
through the power of your Spirit and the words of your Son, you bring life to
the lifeless and hope to the hopeless.
You know our deep hurts and our needs – those things that drain life
from our bodies and souls. Stir us by
your Spirit, that we may be strengthened in body. Blow through us with your Spirit, that our
souls may be new.
Even as we seek your
healing and life-giving power, we lift up those whose weakness brings them to
despair. We entrust to you those who are
sick and dying; the homeless and those living in poverty; those without work
and without food; those living in constant fear of persecution and oppression,
particularly in other lands; those who live with the constant companion of
violence and conflict.
We pray most especially today for….
There are inner voices too deep for words, Lord, hear us as
our spirits speak to your Spirit in this moment of silence…
As you have extended
your life-giving Spirit and wind upon creation from the beginning, continue to
blow a fresh breath of life into your people 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 – Beneath
the Cross of Jesus Hymn #92/320
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
111
Second Scripture Reading – John
3:1-17
Sermon – God’s Great Big Love Story
I
believe that Jesus’s story is first and foremost about the love of God for
every single one of us. It is a
stunning, beautiful, expansive love, and it is for everybody, everywhere. That’s the story. “For God so loved the world…” That’s why Jesus came. That’s his message.
A
staggering number of today’s Christians and non-Christians alike have been
taught that only a select few will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place
called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and
punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that
this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith. I believe that this kind of message is
misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s
message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs
to hear. In the beginning of the
Christian movement, that was the message that separated us from all other
messages. Christians became known for
their great love.
However, many Christians today believe
that “in order to get into heaven” a person has to say a prayer at some point
in their lives, asking God to forgive them and tell God that you accept Jesus,
that you believe Jesus died on the cross to pay the price of your sins, and you
want to go to heaven when you die.
Some call this “accepting Christ,”
others call it the “sinner’s prayer” and still others call it “getting saved”,
being “born again” or being “converted.”
That this prayer, showing your belief
in Jesus and God is the only way to get to heaven, that ultimately it doesn’t
really matter what kind of person you are, as long as you’ve said or prayed or
believed the right things.
But Jesus came for a purpose.
Jesus came to call disciples…for a
purpose.
And Jesus called those disciples –
students of life – to learn from him on how to live in God’s world, God’s
way. Constantly learning and growing and
evolving and absorbing. Much of the
speculation about heaven comes from the idea that in the blink of an eye we
will automatically become totally different people who “know” everything and
understand. But our hearts, our
characters, our desires, our longings – those things take time.
Jesus calls disciples in order to
teach us how to be and what to be; his intention is for us to be growing
progressively in generosity, forgiveness, honesty, courage, truth telling, and
responsibility, so that as these take over our lives we are taking part more
and more and more in life now, and in the age to come.
During the years that Jesus walked the
earth with his disciples, many in the crowds of that day who were following
Jesus assumed that he at some point would become one of those leaders, who
would rise to military power and drive out the Romans. But Jesus wasn’t interested in that. He was trying to bring Israel back to its
roots, to its divine calling to be a light to the world, showing the nations
just what the redeeming love of God looks like.
And he was confident that this love doesn’t wield a sword. To respond to violence with more violence,
according to Jesus, is not the way of God.
We find him in his teachings again and again inviting people to see
their role in the world in a whole new way.
And if Jesus teaches us non-violence,
why would we believe in a God who sends and tortures billions of people in a
place called hell. Isn’t that a violent,
damning God?
On the websites of many churches,
there is often a page where you can read what the people in that particular
church believe. Usually the list starts
with statements about the Bible, then God, Jesus, and the Spirit, then
salvation and the church, and so on.
Most of these lists and statements include a section on what the people
in the church believe about the people who don’t believe what they believe.
This is from an actual church website:
“The unsaved will be separated forever from God in hell.”
This is from another: “Those who don’t
believe in Jesus will be sent to eternal punishment in hell.”
And another: “The unsaved dead will be
committed to an eternal conscious punishment.”
Welcome to our church.
Really?
Yet on these very same websites are extensive
affirmations of the goodness and greatness of God, proclamation and statements
of belief about a God who is “almighty, powerful, loving, unchanging,
sovereign, full of grace and mercy.”
This God is the one who created “the world and everything in it.” This is the God for whom “all things are
possible”.
But if that is true, how can there be
anyone who is damned?
How great is God? Great enough to achieve what God sets out to
do? Or just kind of great, or medium
great, great most of the time, but maybe not in this, not totally great. Maybe just sort of great; a little great.
Does this magnificent, mighty,
marvelous God fail in the end?
The Psalmist wrote “The earth is the
Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”
The Biblical account constantly
teaches us that God is about the kind of love a parent has for a child, the
kind of love that pursues, searches, creates, connects, and bonds. The kind of love that moved towards,
embraces, and always works to be reconciled with, regardless of the cost.
The Psalmist again writes in Psalm 65
that “all people will come” to God. Paul
writes in Philippians 2, that “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Psalm
22 – “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the
families of the nations will bow down before him.”
All
people, all nations, Every person, every knee, every tongue.
Jesus
teaches a series of parables in Luke 15 about a woman who loses a coin, a
shepherd who loses a sheep and a father who loses a son. The stories aren’t ultimately about things
and people being lost; the stories are about things and people being found. The God that Jesus teaches us about doesn’t
give up until everything that was lost is found. This God simply doesn’t give up. Ever.
It is
rightly pointed out, however, that love, by its very nature, is freedom. For there to be love, there has to be the
option, both now and then, to not love.
To turn the other way. To reject
the love extended. To say no. Although God is powerful and mighty, when it
comes to the human heart God has to play by the same rules we do. God has to respect our freedom to choose to
the very end, even at the risk of the relationship itself. If at any point God overrides, co-opts, or
hijacks the human heart, robbing us of our freedom to choose, then God has
violated the fundamental essence of what love even is.
And a
poignant point here is that lots of people in our world right now choose to be
violent and abusive and mean and evil.
What will make them change?
A
picture of God that is ceaseless in pursuit of us is a perspective that
believes that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find
themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart,
and even the most “depraved sinners” will eventually give up their resistance
and turn to God, because Christ reconciled all things, whether things on earth
or things in heaven.
Our
role is to tell the story of God.
Telling
a story in which billions of people spend forever somewhere in the universe
trapped in a black hole of endless torment and misery with no way out isn’t a
very good story. Telling a story about a
God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do or say
or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a
very good story.
However,
telling a story where everybody enjoying God’s good world together with no
disgrace or shame, justice being served, and all the wrongs being made right is
a better story. It is bigger, more
loving, more expansive, more extraordinary, beautiful, and inspiring than any
other story about the ultimate course history takes. We can be honest about the warped nature of
the human heart, the freedom that love requires, and the destructive choices
people make, and still envision God’s love to be bigger, stronger, and more
compelling than all of that put together.
Jesus
came for a purpose, to call disciples, and to teach us how to live and how to
tell a really good story.
Let us
start living and telling about God’s Great Big Love Story for the whole world,
for everyone. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Your
gifts to us are abundant, O God. You
give light and life to your people, strengthening us for your mission in this
world. Receive from us, we humbly pray,
these offerings, that they may be used to both serve you and establish your
will within the body of Christ. We pray
in the name of your Son, Jesus. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord Hymn
#441/405
Benediction –
As you
leave this place, lift up your eyes to the Lord! The One who sent Jesus Christ, as salvation
for all the world, will never desert you.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time on,
and forevermore. Go now in peace, with
God’s blessing. AMEN.
Postlude
