Worship
Service for March 10, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: We gather to share in our love of God.
P: Lord, open our hearts and let us share
Your Good News!
L: We gather to share our witness to God’s
goodness.
P: Lord, let our lives bear witness through
service to Your people.
L: We gather to praise God whose love is
eternal for the entire world.
P: Lord, open our hearts today to sing Your
praises. AMEN
Opening Hymn – The Old Rugged Cross #327 Brown
Prayer of Confession
God, we confess that we have
sinned against You, against one another, and even against ourselves. We have spoken lies, cursed You, said awful
things against one another. We have been
consumed by doubt and been complacent with the hatred that is rampant in the
world. We have oppressed the helpless,
been intolerant of others, shrugged uncaringly at violence, and spent money
foolishly. Our sins are many and
varied. Please, most Holy Lord, forgive
us our transgressions and bring us to reconciliation with You and with one
another. Hear our heartfelt contrition
this morning. (Silent prayers are
offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Friends, hear now the loving truth of
God. God did not send the Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe in Him are not condemned
but are instead saved to life eternal.
P: Thanks
be to God for God’s gift to us in Christ Jesus.
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, You have
given us many blessings and supplied us with everything that we need. We are Your servants, the people that You
have created. 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 to us, renew us with the strength of Your will and the
wisdom of Your direction. When we would
rather stand idly by than 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 life-giving
love. When we walk away from You and the
lives to which You have called us, lead us to repentance and reconciliation so
that our broken hearts and spirits might be healed by Your Word.
There is much war and
violence in the world – send Your angels of mercy to the innocent victims. Protect them in the arms of Your love. Bring wisdom to the world’s leaders to come
to terms of peace and equity for all those who seek it. May swords of hatred be bent into plowshares
and weapons of destruction be rendered useless.
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…
All this we ask not
only for our sake, but also for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord who
taught us to 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 – There
is a Balm in Gilead #394 Blue
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
107:1-3, 17-22
Second Scripture Reading – John
3:16-21
Sermon – For God so loved the
world…
(based on John
3:16-21)
This
morning I’m probably going to ruffle a few feathers, I might even undermine all
that you’ve come to think about this very familiar passage. But, in doing so, I hope you think more
deeply about today’s scripture reading; one of the most well-known passages in
the New Testament.
We
have before us this morning what I would consider one of the most misused,
misunderstood texts in the entire Bible. One single verse has provided motivation for
some of the most destructive and unchristian impulses of those who take the
name Christian. “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish, but have eternal life.”
Based on this passage, if
you do not believe, what will happen to you? You will perish. Taken literally it suggests that those who do
not believe in this Son will perish. It
is difficult to overestimate the harm, hurt and abuse that has been encouraged
by this literal rendering of John’s Gospel. Therefore, we are free to use every tool at
our disposal to stamp out anyone that threatens this understanding of the
passage. People of other lands, cultures, and
religions, including Indigenous peoples that had different cultures and
beliefs.
The
bloody Christian Crusade against Muslims of the Middle Ages was based on the
belief that Muslims were a threat to believing in the Son. The Holocaust toward Jews was nurtured by the
notion that Jews were a threat to believing in the Son. Christian missionary work was often conducted
among native peoples with John 3:16 as its driving force. Taken literally John 3:16 becomes the
cornerstone for an edifice of beliefs that include rejection of those who
differ in all kinds of ways.
The
irony of that is that of the four Gospel writers John was the least literal
among them. All of the Gospel writers
take great liberty with the actual events of Jesus life and the things he said.
They were not necessarily historians; they
were seeking to communicate a faith. But,
John is the one who exercises the greatest freedom in reworking and retelling
the story of Jesus in order to communicate who Jesus is for us today.
Most
of you know how the gospel of John begins, right?
“In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and
without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of
all people. The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Poetry. John connects the very beginning of Genesis
and creation to the story of Jesus Christ in poetic form.
Now,
let me tell you another misconception and that is in the translation of this
passage. In the original Greek, the word
for “belief” is pistis, which can be translated as “belief,” but it can
just as easily be translated as “trust.” If we were to translate pistis as
“trust,” rather than belief, how does that shift the meaning of the passage for
you? Let me read it again using this
different translation to pistis.
“For God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may
have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not
send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him. Those who trust in him are not condemned; but
those who do not trust are condemned already, because they have not believed in
the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light
has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because
their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come
to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do
what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds
have been done in God.”
Does
the change from “belief” to “trust” change anything for you?
For
many, “belief” is the work of the head. It
becomes a struggle for us to belief certain teachings about Jesus. But when we switch to trust, our minds can
relax a bit more. That’s because trust
isn’t so much the work of the head, as it is the work of the heart. Trust in Jesus is about following him. It’s about imitating his life.
But
what about this condemnation business? There
seems to be a tension in the passage. God
didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but to save it. But then it says that those who do not trust
in Jesus are already condemned. What is
that about?
For
the Gospel of John, what we say about Jesus we can also say about God. God didn’t send Jesus into the world to
condemn it. Why? Because God doesn’t condemn anyone. God loves the world. God doesn’t condemn the world to hell.
But
the passage clearly states that some are condemned. But who is doing the condemning? Not God. We are already condemned because we condemn
one another.
When
we choose the ways of evil and darkness and violence, we condemn others and
ourselves to imitative acts of reciprocal evil and darkness and violence.
God
loves the world. And to show God
unconditional, universal love, God sent Jesus, not to condemn, but to save. Jesus didn’t come to violently punish the
world, but to show God’s nonviolent love.
One
of the first encounters and teaching Jesus had in John’s gospel is a discussion
he has with Nicodemus about having to be reborn to talk about spiritual
growth. Again, this was not to be taken
literally, but figuratively about being born again. Even Nicodemus says that it’s not possible
for a person to physically be born again.
Jesus wasn’t talking about being physically born again, but being born
of the Spirit.
John
tells us Jesus was amazed at Nicodemus’ literal understanding of this evocative
image and says to Nicodemus, “You are a teacher of faith and yet you are unable
to understand what I am saying?”
Neither
Jesus nor John in his Gospel were interested in establishing a belief system to
be the cornerstone for acceptance or rejection by God, but rather to establish
the idea of trust in this God. And trust
comes in a variety of ways. It answers
the question about how one comes to have faith and how a person grows and
matures in our experience with God.
They
are rooted and formed in a community of faith.
I think that is why John introduces the story of Nicodemus right before
this passage.
Nicodemus
comes to Jesus as one whose experience of God has been nurtured and supported
by a community of believers. John begins
his story by identifying Nicodemus as a leader of the Jews. One of the unfortunate consequences of reading
John 3:16 literally has been an excessive, almost exclusive focus on individual
salvation. Have I experienced personal
salvation? Do I know Jesus as my Lord
and Savior? Viewed in this manner, the
role and place of the community, the common good, is always secondary, even
incidental to a focus on the individual.
But,
for people like Nicodemus, whose faith was formed by the Hebrew Scriptures, and
I think why John wrote this story about Nicodemus first was to emphasize that the
role of a community of believers is supposed to be viewed as primary in faith
development. In the Hebrew Scriptures
the shaping of a loving and just community is God’s central concern. As a child Nicodemus was taught the traditions
of this faith. As a youth Nicodemus was
nurtured in the collective wisdom and experience of a community who had long
sought to know God. As an adult,
Nicodemus was sustained by a community who encounters God at the heart of
creation, in Exodus movements of liberation, in prophetic calls for justice. In John, even the first miracle Christ performed
wasn’t to heal an individual, the first miracle he performed was at a community
event – a wedding – where he turned water into wine for the benefit of the
community.
John’s
Gospel reminds us of our place in a community of faith because John, like
Jesus, considers the role of a faith community central in our own faith
formation. The songs and hymns we sing
together on Sunday morning, the prayers we offer, the support we give and
receive, the study and process we go through all reflect the important role a
community of believers plays in our spiritual formation. When we absent ourselves from the community of
faith we are cutting ourselves off from one of God’s primary tools for inviting
us into a deeper and more intimate encounter with God.
Finally,
let us come back to the pivotal word in this passage…. “For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have
eternal life.” What one word is the
pivotal word in that sentence?
Believes…but,
if in fact, the word should be translated as trust. We would read this passage “For God so
loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who trusts in Him
may have eternal life.” Again, a
matter of the heart rather than the head.
And
rather than creating a belief system that saves some and rejects others, John
is simply expressing the depth of God’s love that we should trust in, which can
only be encountered in the presence of Jesus through a community of believers
where our hearts rather than our heads lead us. I don’t know about you, but it has been my
experience that my faith is strongest, I feel most close to God when I
participate in community, when I care about others, and when I let go of my
certainties and simply trust in God.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord,
give us the desire to grow in our faith in You and in love for all people. May our lives reflect what You have given to
us, so that we might bring honor and glory to Your holy name. Take these gifts and bless them. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
#101/324
Benediction –
God’s great
love and rich mercy have made us alive in Christ. Let us depart to live lives of grace and to
do good works as the Spirit of God leads us.
AMEN.
Postlude
