Worship
Service for September 8, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Let us remember what our God has done!
P: God created the world out of a formless
void.
L: Let us remember what our God has done!
P: God made every animal and plant, bird and
fish.
L: Let us remember what our God has done!
P: God created people in the image of God.
L: Let us remember what our God has done!
P: God has made us caretakers of the earth
and to worship the Holy One all our days.
L: Let us continue our task in faithfulness.
Opening Hymn – Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart #169
Brown 5 vs.
Prayer of Confession
Holy and merciful God, in
perfection you created the earth, fixed the course of the sun and seasons, and
populated the earth with plants, fish, birds, and animals to live in an
intricate, balanced web of life. You
created us in your image and gave us the responsibility to care for the world. We confess that we have failed to live up to
our responsibilities. Our lust for
comfort and money has polluted the water with industrial wastes, sewage,
fertilizer, and pesticide runoff. We
choke the air with gases that not only poison both plants and animals but also
change the earth’s climate, at great peril. We have cut too many trees to sell lumber or
build houses. We have drained too many
fertile marshes and wetlands to create usable land. We have destroyed too many
wildlife habitats in the name of progress. For these sins of commission and omission, we
are heartily sorry. We pray your
forgiveness and beg that you would create a right heart and mind within us,
that we may consume according to our need instead of our want and that we may
begin to heal your creation from human injury. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God created us in God’s own image and
called the creation good. We rebelled
against God, but God has redeemed us back with assurance through the gift of
His only Son, Jesus Christ.
P: That perfect gift was given to us out of
love. Therefore, we are forgiven and
sanctified to eternal life. Thanks be to
God. AMEN!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Lord, you know how great our needs are. In these difficult times when children kill
other children and adults, when nations wage war against nation, when churches
the world over are losing faithful members, when our families are experiencing
great stress, come and bring Your healing love and Your peace to us. Help us place our trust in You. Remind us
again of how You transform lives, not just with healing, but with a spirit of
hope and compassion. Keep us ever hopeful.
Teach us not to give up when things are
going wrong. Give us faith that can move
mountains. Give us hearts that are ready
to be of service to others in all times and in all places.
Blessed God, we praise You for the many ways
You come to us; in the voice of a stranger or the advice of a friend. We praise You for the joys and challenges of
human community; in the laughter of little children, the wisdom of the aged,
the sacrifice of loved ones and the lessons of the outcast. Grant us Your grace as we seek to live out
our faith with one another, nurturing and challenging each other to walk in
Your ways. We pray for those who have
not felt welcome, for those who have been hurt or who feel estranged. Draw us together more closely. Encircle us with Your love that both holds us
close and opens us wide to all.
As we have lifted up people and situations
which concern us and have asked for your hand of healing, remind us that that
same healing hand rests on us also. Enable us to be people of compassion and
trust; today we especially pray for….
Hear us, O Lord, as we pray. There are also sighs in our hearts that are
too deep for words. We ask You, O God,
to hear them as well in this time of silence.
In unison, we speak the words of our Savior who
taught us how to pray saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. They will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily
bread. And 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 –
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name #142/43
Scripture Reading:
First Scripture Reading – Genesis 1,2
Second Scripture Reading – Psalm
8
Sermon
Two Creation Stories
(based on Genesis 1,2)
As I wrote in the
newsletter for this month, I’m visiting the transformational passages in
scripture that have had a huge impact on my faith over the years. This series will happen mostly
chronologically from my first inquiry into the Scriptures when I was in
confirmation class at about the age of 12 or 13, moving forward to as recently
as this past year when I stumbled on a new (to me) translation of Esther when I
visited the Jewish Quarter in Prague.
I was a church
kid. We’d always gone to church and we’d
always gone to the same church where my mom and dad got married. My father grew up in the Lutheran
denomination and my mom had a mixed background.
Her family were originally Quakers, but mom grew up attending mostly
whatever local church was handy. Until
the age of nine, her father moved nearly every year for work as a station
salesman for Standard Oil. Sometimes mom
attended a Methodist Church, a Presbyterian Church, an Episcopalian Church and
even went to a local Catholic Church for a time for religious education. When her father died at the age of nine, she
was taken to the local Baptist Church by her grandmother. When my parents wed, they tried to find a
church that was somewhat neutral between the longer history of Baptism in my
mom’s background and my father’s Lutheran faith. Two blocks from mom and dad’s first apartment
was a Presbyterian Church and that’s where I attended my entire life.
Mom and Dad were
both Sunday School Teachers, Mom sang in the church choir, was active in
Women’s Circle, and Dad was a trustee.
By the time I was 12, getting ready to enter into the Confirmation Class
in order to become a member of the church, I had attended Sunday School every
Sunday, Vacation Bible School every summer (sometimes multiple VBS’s each
year), sang in the junior choir, and went to Wednesday Night’s Kid’s Club. So, I was pretty well versed in all the main
Bible Stories and some of the odd ones, too.
I had read the Bible cover to cover, at least once – not that I
understood much of it. But, it was still
a pretty illustrious accomplishment for a 12 year old.
Our Confirmation
Class was taught by Dal Matthews, a friend of my mom and dad’s, and an elder of
the church. The curriculum for the
Confirmation Class was the most robust I’d ever received in any of my Sunday
Classes thus far. A giant notebook was
handed out to each student and there was actual homework and projects to
complete. Of course, the first Sunday of
Confirmation Class started with Genesis Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Again, remember I was 12, but from all those
years of Sunday School, VBS’s, and Kid’s Clubs I’d attended, I’d probably read
and studied Genesis Chapter 1 and 2 at least 12 times if not 20. I was really familiar with the creation
story. We took turns reading the
passage. At first, I wasn’t paying much
attention. The readers got through each
day of Creation. When it was my turn to
read, I absent-mindedly read aloud the part about God creating all the animals
– all the cattle, all the wild animals and all the creeping things. As we approached the end of Chapter 1 and
started reading into Chapter 2, we had God resting on the seventh day. But, then all of a sudden, the story seemed
to start all over again. And it was
getting to be about my turn to read again.
I flipped back. Didn’t we already
cover this? The creation of human
beings. Wait, this second section says
that before most things were created – before the plants, before even the rains
fell from the heavens, before birds and animals, God created human beings from
the dust of the ground. Well, that’s not
what it said before. I kept flipping
back and forth, how had I ever missed this?
As I flipped the page and reread a third time, I heard Mr. Matthews say,
“Walter, it’s your turn to read.”
“Wait, I have a
question. I’m a little confused. I remember being taught – Day 1 – God created
the Light, separating the light from the darkness and so on with God creating
very specific things on each day. But,
now in Chapter 2 it seems like it’s a different story about how creation
happened. It reads as if man was created
first, before anything else.”
Mr. Matthews then
says, “Ok. We’re going to get to that,
but for now, we’re just reading. Your
reading verses 8 and 9.”
At the end of the
reading, we were separated into groups.
Each group was given a day of creation to make a collage. My group ended up with Day 4, when God set a
dome in the sky, separating day from night with one light ruling the day and
many smaller lights on the dome of the sky to rule the night. We were given our homework assignments. We never did “get back to that.” I usually dive into craft projects – with a
ton of ideas of how to make it different or unique. Instead, the whole rest of the hour, all I
kept thinking about was this revelation that there were two creation stories
and wondering when we’d talk about it.
At coffee hour,
the time between Sunday School, the early church service and the later church
service, I grabbed a cup of juice and a cookie, went to find my sister, then
mom and dad. They were talking to Mr.
Matthews.
Mr. Matthews was
telling them that he was really glad that I was in his confirmation class, but
I was very inquisitive. He told my
parents what I’d asked or at least wondered about. He told them that I should speak to Rev.
Allen.
Our ride home from
church was usually banter about what we’d learned in Sunday School or what we’d
gotten out of the sermon. We were always
supposed to have one thing we’d learned and one thing we didn’t understand. Mom was insistent on this kind of
structure. The entire time my head was
spinning about what I’d learned.
Mom flipped down
the sun visor and tilted the “make-up” mirror on the back-side of it so she
could see me and asked, “So, tell me about what happened in Confirmation
Class?”
I recounted the
story and my confusion about the two different creation stories. I told them that Mr. Matthews had said we’d
talk about it, but we didn’t. Why are
there two different creation stories?
Why didn’t we talk about it in Sunday School Class? And why do I need to talk to Rev. Allen?
My parents were
quite used to me asking the Why questions.
I’d been doing that since I was 3.
I could see mom looking at me through the mirror when she said, “Because
Mr. Matthews doesn’t know the answer to your question.”
Now, I was really
confused. What do you mean, he doesn’t
know? But, he’s the teacher. He’s an adult. He’s a member of the session. At that point, I had looked up to Dal
Matthews my whole life as a really smart Christian man. I was quiet the rest of the way home.
When we got home,
I went up to my room and opened my Bible.
I reread Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis.
I reread it several times. And I
started thinking.
At age 12 I had come to believe that the Bible was like a text
book of ancient stories that had happened – kind of like a Christian History
book. I remembered going to the
Smithsonian History museum in Washington, D.C. the year before and had learned
that ancient people’s didn’t know how to read or write. That this development happened later in
civilization. Stories had been passed
down by word of mouth. So obviously, in
the very beginning of creation, Adam and Eve didn’t know how to write, so they
told their story to their children and
their children told their story to their children and so on and so on, until
one day, someone decided to write it all down.
I remembered a family reunion picnic a couple of years before
when Uncle Leon my grandmother’s brother was telling a funny story about
something that had happened when grandma spoke up and said, “That’s not how it
happened at all. What happened was…” and
she retold the same story, but with different details in a different
order. Which story was true – the one
Uncle Leon told that had embellished, but humorous bits and pieces in it or the
rather dry order of things that grandma told?
They were both probably true.
If the retelling of the story that Uncle Leon told and the
retelling of the story that grandma told were both true, then maybe both of
these stories in Genesis could be true, too.
And I began
thinking about something else, too. That
same year when we visited the History Museum, I also remembered seeing the
giant bones and skeletons of dinosaurs.
I’d always been fascinated with dinosaurs. They weren’t mythical creatures like unicorns
or gryphons, but had really walked the earth a long time ago. And yet, the Bible never mentioned them. That had always bothered me.
At about the same
time, we were being taught the concept of evolution in school. How dinosaurs had walked the earth long
before humans. How they had died out and
how other species came to thrive in a new type of environment and how one
species evolved into another. That
wasn’t covered in the Bible either.
I started thinking
and wondering. Was there only one story
that was true and all others false, or could they all be true at the same time?
Over the years,
this has always fascinated me. But at
the age of 12, it was a crucial thought process. As an older teen and young adult, I’ve read
conservative theologians and Christians try to use a pretzel theory to explain
how they all fit together with so many twists and turns and explanations that
would make your head spin. I’ve also
read theories that explain it from various perspectives – not necessarily a
different story, but rather the same story but told to and for a different
audience to help explain an important lesson.
I remember when my
sister was an interpreter at Independence Hall.
She’d have a whole series of talks that she’d give to classes that came
visiting for field trips. She’d have another
whole series of talks she’d give to a group of locals. She’d have another whole series of talks
she’d give to people from other countries.
Were they the same story? Most
definitely, but they were tailored to explain that story to different hearers
with different understanding or purpose for being there.
What transformed
my faith at the time, when I was 12, was that all those stories could be true
and I could hold them together in my heart and head. Yes, there might be tension between the
stories and that they might not fit together as easily as a puzzle, but they
could simply explain the same story from different perspectives. May today’s word enlighten your own
understanding. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Generous God, with joy we receive abundant
blessings. Now, also with joy, we
give. By this act of giving, we ask You
to work in us by Your Spirit that this might be only the beginning of our
giving. In the days ahead, show us how
we might offer ourselves more fully to You and Your ways. AMEN
Closing
Hymn – I Sing the Mighty Power of God #288/128
Benediction –
May God’s creative Spirit be
with us in our hearts and minds as we leave this place to return home. May God’s creative Spirit help us see with
new wonder the splendor of God’s creation all around us and inspire us to preserve
and protect it.
Postlude
