Worship
for the Lord’s Day
August
2, 2020
A Note
before we begin this day’s worship:
We will continue to worship from home
until further notice. However, we’ve added
video of our normal PowerPoint for the hymns with Bob Morris playing the organ
at Bethesda and a video of the sermon for your worship experience.
Some additional announcements:
Our VBS program; Creation –
God’s Great Big Beautiful World will run through its last Wednesday on Aug.
5. It has been well received and the
kids have particularly loved the Photo Scavenger Hunt challenge. Kids between Kindergarten and 5th
grade can continue to come by the churches at Olivet Presbyterian Church in
West Elizabeth, PA on Wednesday between 1-3pm and at Bethesda United
Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, PA between 3-4pm.
Also,
on August 5, Garrett Little will be celebrating his birthday. It is a milestone birthday for him because
last year he got to ring the bell at Children’s Hospital to celebrate his
remission from Leukemia. His favorite
things are Wendy’s Chili and Frosty. I
thought it would be great to help him and his family celebrate his birthday by
giving him a bunch of Wendy’s gift cards.
I’ve gotten a number of donations, but if you would still be interested,
let me know by Tuesday.
Our
Sessions will meet via Zoom on Aug 6 (I had reported an incorrect date earlier)
at 7pm. Hopefully, we’ll have more to
report after their next meeting.
Finally,
with sadness we had to say goodbye to our Bright Beginning Preschool Staff at
Bethesda; Founding Directory, Jennifer Wooley and her Assistant, Amber
Mayersky. We are currently delaying a
fall opening due to unknown protocols needed for a safe opening for our staff and
children, what the school districts will do, and these staff changes. Keep our departing staff, community children
and parents in your prayers. We do hope
to have a new staff onboard shortly after the new year of 2021 to plan on a
full opening by the next school year. If
you know of any possible candidates, let us know.
Be
patient. We will be together again,
soon! Until then, let’s begin:
Prelude
Opening
Prayer
In
the darkness of night and the brightness of day, You, O Lord, are present to
us. As we wrestle with situations which
seem to drain us of our energy; as we struggle to find out who You call us to
be, You reach out to us with reassurance of empowerment and courage for the
days ahead. Calm our spirits and prepare our hearts and lives to receive Your
awesome grace. It is in Jesus’ name that
we pray. AMEN.
Hymn My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Prayer
of Confession
Lord
of mercy and hope, we come before You with concern on our hearts. We know that we have fallen short of being the
kind of disciples that You have called us to be. We have turned our backs on people in need; we
have closed our ears to the cries of the voiceless. And so we hesitate to come before You because
we believe that You are probably disappointed in us. Remind us again that You are merciful and that
Your love transforms and changes our lives. When we falter and slide off the path of hope You
place before us, You “pick us up and dust us off” and put us again on the
trail, confident of Your faithful presence with us. Forgive us our weakness. Strengthen us and give us courage; help us to
be bearers of Your good news of peace. We
pray this in Christ’s name. AMEN.
Words
of Assurance
Feel
God’s healing love pouring over you and into your lives. Know that God delights in each one of you and
will always be present to you. This is
indeed the Good News of the Gospel. AMEN.
Affirmation
of Faith – The 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
Lord, we have heard the story of Jacob
as he wrestled with the angel, how he asked for the angel to bless him. We, too, come to You for blessing. There are so many times in our lives in which
we have felt alienated, downtrodden, alone. It is easy for us to wallow in our misery, to
whine about all the perceived injustices that have been heaped upon us. But You encourage us to stand strong; to seek
the blessings that You have provided for us; to recognize the many ways that You
are with us, giving us strength and courage. Be with us again, precious Lord. Guide our lives. As we have brought our prayers before You for
those near and dear to us, seeking healing and hope for them; let us also
remember that those same mercies are lavished upon us, not because we deserve
them, but because of Your great and generous love for us. Help us receive these blessings and, in turn,
be a blessing to someone else. For we
ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior who taught us to pray 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
Scripture
Readings
Old
Testament: Genesis
32:22-31
22The
same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven
children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took
them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
24Jacob
was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the
man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket;
and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he
said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you
go, unless you bless me.” 27So he
said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then
the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have
striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29Then
Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you
ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So
Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and
yet my life is preserved.” 31The sun
rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
New
Testament: Matthew
14:13-21
13Now when Jesus
heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.
But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had
compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said,
“This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so
that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them
something to eat.” 17They replied,
“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 18And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking
the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke
the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the
crowds. 20And all ate
and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces,
twelve baskets full. 21And those who
ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Anthem – Five Loaves and Two Fishes
Sermon
– Just a note: You can click on the sermon
title and hear/watch me give this sermon via YouTube from my home office.
Five
Loaves and Two Fish
(based on Matthew 14:13-21)
One of the things I miss most during
this whole pandemic is sitting down with people; loved ones, friends, family
members, even strangers in a restaurant at community tables, to eat. It has always been a sacred act for me. What is it about sharing food that makes such
an impact on us? Even the cooking and
the preparation of a meal becomes sacred, an offering. There are a number of movies out that depict
this very concept; Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Ratatouille, Big
Night, Julie and Julia, and Tampopo.
A number of years ago I read a book by Sara
Miles called, Take This Bread. She talks
about her conversion to Christianity which she finds when she enters an
Episcopalian Church, on a whim one Sunday morning in San Francisco, to find a
strange ritual called communion. The
ritual of taking communion, eating bread and drinking the wine, takes her
breath away, shatters her understanding of what Christianity is all about and
she comes back for more. She had been
journalist in war-torn Central America and in Africa. She explains,
“Just like the strangers who’d fed me in El
Salvador or South Africa, I was going to have to see and understand the hunger
of other, different men and women, and make a gesture of welcome, and eat with
them. And just as I hadn’t “deserved”
any of what had been given to me – the fish, the biscuits, the tea so
abundantly poured out back in those years – I didn’t deserve communion myself
now. I wasn’t getting it because I was
good. I wasn’t getting it because I was
special. I certainly didn’t get to pick
who else was good enough, holy enough, deserving enough, to receive it. It wasn’t a private meal. The bread on the Table had to be shared with
everyone in order for me to really taste it.”
She goes on to explain her initiation into Christianity and how
difficult it was for her having grown up with non-religious parents and yet, in
that journey she is asked to help distribute communion one Sunday and she says
this, “What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly
disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can’t be a Christian
by yourself.”
That’s one of the most difficult parts about
being isolated from one another right now.
Yes, we can worship alone. Yes,
we can continue to grow in our faith and learn something new or deeper about
our connection with God. But
Christianity itself was meant to be a community faith, we just have to figure
it out – how to respectfully and carefully honor one another for those who
could be at risk and how to find increasingly safe ways of being together. There have been way too many examples of
churches and groups that have gathered spreading the virus among their members
unknown until someone or many someones got seriously ill. We just need to use the imagination and
creativity God gave us to figure it out and we will. Maybe this is a time for us to reset. To appreciate all of what we have taken for
granted and to figure out what is most important. Until then, we can use whatever technology we
have at our disposal to continue doing worship and community this way.
A couple of years ago, several restaurants
began offering the option of community tables – long tables set for crowds of
people that didn’t necessarily know one another. In my town, Mediterra – one of my favorite
restaurants – has two of them, but even places like First Watch have begun
introducing them. Here strangers may sit
across from one another or next to one another and eat together. One Saturday morning we went to Mediterra for
breakfast. Honestly, I had had a
terrible week and wasn’t in the mood for socializing with anyone, much less
strangers, but most of the private tables were occupied so we reluctantly sat
down at the community table. Of course,
shortly after, an older couple sat down across from us. I stared at my coffee cup and ate quietly,
looking only between my fork and the food I was putting on it. Ultimately, someone broke the silence and offered
a non-committal comment/questions, “Oh, their food is so good, isn’t it?” Sighing, I responded. We spoke lightly about the food at Mediterra,
how much we enjoyed the new place and then slowly, opening me up, we began
talking about other subjects. I learned
that the older gentleman had been an investment banker and had lived in
England, Spain, and Germany for most of his life. She was from Spain where they had met and
married. In his retirement, he was now a
partial owner of another restaurant on the South Side. We talked about how different Christianity is
practiced in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe. They gave me lots of tips of places to visit
the next time I’m in Europe. On a day I
wanted to sit in silence and appreciate a meal, others perhaps saw in me the
need to talk and listen. And maybe they
needed that, too. We met as strangers
and parted as friends over a shared meal.
Sara Miles says in her book, “All of it pointed
to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically
inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions –
eating, drinking, walking – and stayed with them, through fear, even past
death. That love meant giving yourself
away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for
others. The stories illuminated the
holiness located in mortal human bodies, and the promise that people could see
God by cherishing all those different bodies the way God did. They spoke of a communion so much vaster than
any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in
the sharing of food, particularly with strangers.”
It was fine to sit across the table with people
who were like me. Who had lived and
traveled to other parts of the world, who had a thorough grasp of life apart
from themselves. But what about people
who are very different from me?
Sara Miles goes on, “What I heard, and continue
to hear, is a voice that can crack religious and political convictions open,
that advocates for the least qualified, least official, least likely; that
upsets the established order and makes a joke of certainty. It proclaims against reason that the hungry
will be fed, that those cast down will be raised up, and that all things,
including my own failures, are being made new.
It offers food without exception to the worthy and the unworthy, the
screwed-up and pious, and then commands everyone to do the same. It doesn’t promise to solve or erase
suffering but to transform it, pledging that by loving one another, even
through pain, we will find more life.
And it insists that, by opening ourselves to strangers.”
Yes, this couple sitting across from me had
similar life experiences to my own. We
were relatively in the same socio-economic bracket. But, sitting there, I imagined a whole cast
of characters, some having spent years in investment banking, others having
rarely a dime to their name, all of us sitting at the table sharing story,
eating bread, drinking coffee. Just
because someone has wealth or prestige or is in a particular socio-economic
bracket doesn’t mean they aren’t broken.
We sometimes believe that only the poor are outcasts, that only the less
fortunate are weak. But as Julia Roberts
character says in Pretty Woman, “That’s just real estate.” The condition of the soul and spirit knows no
such boundaries.
Miles says, “I understood why Christians
imagined the kingdom of heaven as a feast: a banquet where nobody was excluded,
where the weakest and most broken, the worst sinners and outcasts, were honored
guests who welcomed one another in peace and shared their food.”
Finally, she says, “There’s a hunger beyond
food that’s expressed in food, and that’s why feeding is always a kind of
miracle.”
Today’s New Testament story from gospel of
Matthew is about this feeding of the multitudes and it’s recorded in all of the
gospels including John, which is rare among them. Often Matthew, Mark, and Luke (known as the
synoptic gospels) tell similar parallel stories. Or there is a common story between one of
these gospel accounts and John, but rarely do all four gospels have the very
same story. In the synoptic gospels it
is inferred within the story that these loaves of bread and two fish are what
the disciples had themselves to eat and Jesus wanted them to not keep for
themselves, but to give them to the crowd of thousands. The one big difference in John’s account is
that these five loaves of bread and two fish that the disciples had weren’t
from their own provisions, but instead were given to them by a boy in the
crowd. It is a significant departure
from the story that the other gospel accounts tell, but one that fits the
gospel of John well because John was the quintessential storyteller.
If you think back on your life in or even
outside the church, what ministers or church leaders do you remember? Who had an impact on you? I remember growing up in the Downingtown/West
Chester area with pastors Wayne Allen, Dick Whiteside, Bob Lamont, Linda
Jaberg, and Bill Hess. Each of them
helped shaped me in different ways as I grew in my faith journey. But I also remember some additional members
of the church or church staff. Glenn
Kinkner, our church organist, Robin Frenz our choir director, Dal Matthews an
elder of the church and my confirmation Sunday School teacher and many others
whose lives touched my own in different ways.
They became important to me because of what they did, what they said,
and more importantly how they related to others. All of them were personable, approachable and
took whatever I offered as a young child or as a younger youth as gift, whether
that was a prayer during Children’s Sunday, or my voice in choir, or a question
about something in the Bible. Each took
those offerings as a worthy offering and sacred. And that made an impression on me.
The boy looked upon the crowd and couldn’t
imagine what good his small lunch could offer them. The disciples said to Christ, “all we have
are five loaves of bread and two fish.”
What good could this be for so many?
We think about the amount of poverty; lack of
food, water, shelter in the world. We
think of the poverty of the soul in those who walk, travel, work and live among
us. What good will our small offering
be? Our gift of money or time or
presence is only a drop in a bucket when you consider the immensity of the
need. But it means the world to the one
person that receives it, whether that is an actual meal or a friendly smile or
a listening hear to brighten someone’s day.
What small gift do you have to offer as worthy,
as sacred, as sacrifice? As the anthem
asked, “What is your five loaves and two fish?”
In a conversation Sara has with her friend
Steve, “The point of church isn’t to get people to come to church.” “No?” said
Steve, cocking an eyebrow. “What is
it?” It seemed obvious to me. “to feed them, so they can go out and, you
know, be Jesus.” Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Hymn Amazing
Grace
Benediction
The
Spirit sends us forth to serve. Go in
peace, knowing that God will always be by your side in all that you do. Go in love, offering healing and hope to
others. Go in joy, that others may be
lifted and inspired in service. AMEN.
Postlude
