PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 4th Sunday of Easter May 3,
2020
~~~~~~~~~~
Jesus
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!
WELCOME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Welcome to Pioneer’s blog worship service.
Though we are accessing this remotely and unable to look each other in the eye,
we are still the Pioneer faith community, gathered as children of God to
worship, to be spiritually fed, and to be equipped to go out to serve in
Christ’s name—though we do it differently during this crisis.
We
will share the Lord’s Supper as part of this worship service. So please pause
and gather your choice of bread and beverage. While the bread and grape juice served
in community and led by the pastor in person is our tradition, we are facing
times that call for us to do worship in new ways rather than being tied to
rigid tradition—much like the early church.
The blog continues to be our resource for
worship and communications. If you are having difficulty using the blog or
setting up a shortcut to it, please call Jean or Jon and we will walk you
through it or Jean will stop by and put a shortcut on your computer—keeping
appropriate distance, of course. (Unless you have an Apple.)
We will soon be testing two different ways
to access the service “live”. One will be through Zoom and the other through
Facebook Live. Zoom will be real time and will be by invitation, so let pastor
Jean know if you want to receive the service that way. A test run of Zoom will be held on Wednesday, May 6th at
11:00. If that goes well, a “real” service will be held on Sunday, May 10th
at 10:00. The Facebook Live will be a recorded service that you can tap into as
it fits your schedule. More info on that as we progress.
The construction work continues. The main
sidewalks east and north are in. The sidewalk from east up to the church is in.
The first phase of the east side parking is done and they’re doing the prep
work for the rest of the east side and the north side
Now allow yourself a brief time of silence
as you open your hearts and feel God’s presence with you, right where you are.
BAPTISM: Friends, remember your baptism … and be thankful.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Everything
as it moves, now and then, here and there, makes pauses.
The bird, as it
flies, stops on one place to makes its nest, and in another to rest in its
flight.
In
the same way, God has paused as well.
The sun, the moon,
the trees, the animals—all are places where God has stopped, leaving the touch
of the Holy in all things.
We
too, have had God pause in us. We, too, have the Holy touch in our beings.
Let
us now pause ourselves, and listen for the voice of God in our hearts and feel
God’s holy touch.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Gracious and Holy
God, we gather to bring you our praise and to celebrate your goodness to
us. We come to you because you have
first come to us. We know you because
you have shown yourself to us in Jesus Christ, and empowered us through your
Spirit. As we worship, lift our hearts
in song, enliven our hearts and minds with the words of scripture, and strengthen
us with your presence that we may serve you with joy and gratitude and holy
imagination. We pray in the name of
Jesus. Amen.
OPENING
PRAISE SONG: “We Are the Family of God”
CALL
TO CONFESSION
Even when we’ve been too busy to notice,
God has been constantly loving us and encouraging us to grow in the light of
that love. Let us confess to our God of grace.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Gracious
God, we confess we have not loved you with all our heart, our soul, our
strength, our mind. We have not loved our neighbors with a deep and abiding
compassion. And we have not loved ourselves and cared for our own truest needs.
Transform our shallowness, enliven our deadness, heal our wounded, broken
places, and fill us with your Spirit. Forgive us even as we forgive ourselves
and others. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ who brings us love that has no
end. (personal prayers …..) Amen.
ASSURANCE OF FORGIVENESS
Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.
The old life has gone; the new life has
begun.
Friends, believe the Good News!
In Jesus Christ we are forgiven and
restored to new life!
PASSING THE PEACE
May the peace of Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Let us extend the peace of Christ in heart
and prayer to God’s children everywhere.
GLORY
BE TO THE FATHER
TIME
WITH CHILDREN
Hello
Zoey and Fiona. I hope you’re keeping busy during your time at home and not
getting bored. There are lots of things that you can do—besides coloring the
pictures I sent you. One of the things I did when I was little was make things
out of paper and paste. Paste is a type of glue. Have you glued things together
before? You can make pictures by gluing different shapes and colors onto a
sheet of paper.
Long,
long ago people couldn’t just go to the store and buy what they needed. They
had to make it themselves. Over a thousand years before Jesus was born, the
Egyptians made glue by boiling animal bones and skins. They even figured out
how to glue the stems of grasses together to make a type of paper called
papyrus. During pioneer times people would use the whites of raw eggs or else
mix flour and water together and make paste. Now they use chemicals to make
glue as well as plant and animal products.
Besides
making pictures, glue can be used to fix things that are broken. It is also
used to make new things. Cars and airplanes and beams to make buildings all
have lots of glue in them. That glue has to be really strong, doesn’t it?
But
you know what the strongest glue is? It’s love.
Families can be held together with love. So can nations. And churches. A long
time ago, after Jesus died and came back to life, small groups of people began
meeting. They didn’t have big church buildings. They met in homes. When they
did, they worshiped God and learned about their faith and read the Bible and
sang songs and prayed—just like we do at church.
Even
though we can’t meet as a church, we still love each other and we are still a
church family and look forward to the time we can be together again. Love is
also the glue that holds us to Jesus. He loves us and we love him. Love is a
strong glue that holds us all together. Let’s pray:
Dear Jesus, thank you for loving us. Thank
you that love is like glue that holds our families together, including our
church families. If glue is strong enough to make a big beam that holds a
building up, then love is a strong enough glue to hold us all together. Help us
to be like glue when we love others. Amen.
HYMN: “Jesus
Loves Me”
Jesus loves me,
this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him
belong, they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves
me. Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves
me. The Bible tells me so.
Who does Jesus love? Yes, Jesus loves Zoey
and Fiona. And Jesus loves each one of us. Jesus remembers when we were little
like they are now. Jesus watched us grow up and he loves us still.
SCRIPTURE
1: 1 Peter 2:19-25
For it is commendable
if you bear up under the pain of unjust suffering because you are conscious of
God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and
endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is
commendable before God. To this you were called, because
Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you
should follow in his steps. "He committed no sin, and no deceit
was found in his mouth." When they hurled their insults at him, he
did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he
entrusted himself to him who judges justly. "He himself bore
our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might
die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have
been healed." For "you were like sheep going astray," but
now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
SCRIPTURE
2: Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone,
because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who
believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their
possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had
need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke
bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord
added to their number those who were being saved.
SERMON: “Back
to Our Roots” Rev. Jean Hurst
If you’ve had the opportunity to
travel to Europe, you’ve likely had the delight of visiting cathedrals that are
massive monuments to the Christian faith. They were built to honor and worship
God. Generally, tall steeples slice through the sky, pointing upward to God.
Often crosses of various types adorn the roofs. With solid stonework, ceilings
that arch high overhead, ornate furnishings, and inspiring artwork, they represent
the best that believers could construct to house the presence of their God and
proclaim their faith to the world. Some of these cathedrals were centuries in
the making.
Many, if not most, of the European
cathedrals were built in the middle ages. At the turn of the millennium--the
year 1,000--people thought the world would come to an end.1 (Think
about Y2K or the end of the Mayan calendar.) When everything didn’t come
crashing down around them, something started going up instead—churches and
cathedrals. I wonder if the construction of those cathedrals was in response to
the gift of life continuing.
Dial back a thousand years before that
and you find the first century church doing much the same … but in heart and
action rather than bricks and mortar. Jesus was gone … twice. First was his
crucifixion followed by the resurrection. Next was the ascension after a
limited number of people had witnessed his risen presence. His disciples had
been given their commission to continue Jesus’ ministry. Peter began preaching
and the Holy Spirit made a public appearance in Jerusalem at Pentecost. The
church was born.
In faith and thankfulness and awe they
gathered—not in magnificent cathedrals but in simple homes; not by the hundreds
or thousands but in handfuls; not with formal structure and liturgy nor with
ordained pastors and professional musicians. They simply gathered. They
experienced community and understood what that meant. They encouraged one
another in the faith, especially during a time of intense persecution where
gathering in Jesus’ name could mean a death sentence.
What held them together during a time
of profound opposition and adversity? It
was the truth and power of the resurrection. As they heard the story, their
hearts were touched. Deep within, they understood a truth their logical minds
would have denied. Their faith in the risen Jesus gave them the courage and
conviction to be the church. Because they believed and continued to live and
share the truth, others came to believe as well and the church continued to
grow.
Initially, the early church sounds
idyllic. That was very much influenced by the four practices listed in the Acts
passage which helped this infant church grow and thrive. Those four practices
defined their worship and lives as Christians and as church. 1) They devoted themselves to the apostles’
teaching. 2) They devoted themselves to fellowship. 3) They devoted themselves
to the breaking of bread. 4) They devoted themselves to prayer.
All this sounds pretty basic for
worship from our contemporary experience. But the results were so much more.
The passage says that they held the good will of all the people and more were
added to their numbers. This was a time of exponential growth in the church. It
was more than a simple formula for gathering and worship. These early
Christians held a deep-seated belief in the resurrection and church growth was
based on the Easter truth and the Easter proclamation. Those gathering felt awe
and wonder at the presence of the eternal in their midst.
The church was not without its issues
and struggles, especially as their numbers grew and more and more Gentiles were
converted. We read of that not only in Acts but in the Epistles as well. The
concept of sharing possessions leads to deception. Distribution of food to
widows in ethnic groups becomes controversial. The question of whether Gentile
converts must adhere to Jewish laws becomes divisive. In the Epistles we’ll
learn of the abuse of table fellowship, disruption of worship, competition
around whose spiritual gifts are more important, and the list goes on.
The church has always been a
collection of imperfect people. God has always worked in and through imperfect
people. Just read scripture for story after story of what God has done through
flawed, ordinary people. And through the amazing, transforming power of the
Holy Spirit, the church has continued to grow and touch lives for over two
thousand years.
And here we are today. The church is
socially distanced. Members are isolated. We are forced (or we have the
opportunity) to explore new ways of continuing what the early church began. We
worship in homes. Remember their faith was based on a resurrection experience
so real to them that though most of them didn’t have a first-hand experience, they
embraced it with awe and exultation. They practiced being the church through devotion
to following the teachings, to fellowship, to communion, and to prayer. Not
just adhering to these, but devoted to them. They had a Spirit-filled passion.
Do we?
Though our building is closed, the
Church is open.2 We are
the church, the body of Christ. And Christ is the head of the church. We strive
to follow the teachings of Jesus—though we may do that imperfectly. We will
come to the Lord’s Table in a new-for-us way. We pray … as Jesus said, without
ceasing. It’s something we can do from the isolated safety of our homes. And
the world desperately needs our prayers right now. And we are still in
community though that happens one-on-one (with appropriate social distancing),
by telephone, through social media, by Zoom … by heart. Community helps remind
us who we are.
Our community is not a private club
but instead reaches beyond denominational boundaries to a broader community and
out into a world of need. Our generosity responds to those impacted by the
coronavirus and wherever we can act in life-giving ways to bring healing and
transformation and hope.
When we go through times like these,
it can feel like the beacon of hope is dimmed and the church is at risk. But
the body of Christ has experienced obstacles and oppression and
persecution--and even pandemics--throughout its long history. Rather than
diminishing the church, it seems to make the church stronger. It is because
resurrection truth is stronger and more life-giving than anything that might
oppose it.
I ran across a quote by Lilias Trotter
on a piece of artwork one time. It read, “Believe in the darkness what you have
seen in the light.” We are an Easter people. We are children of the
resurrection. No matter how dark it gets, we know that truth. We have seen it
in the light of God’s love.
2borrowed from a
cartoon sketch in the April 22nd edition of Christian Century.
HYMN: “God
of Grace and God of Glory”
PRAYERS
OF THE PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Still your hearts and minds as you
feel God’s presence surrounding you and God’s love holding you. (silence …)
God of all creation, we praise you and
thank you for all the ways that you have blessed us and sustained us. We thank
you especially for your love and grace revealed in Jesus Christ and for the
salvation we have in his name. Hear our prayers of thanks ….
God you know our deepest feelings.
Touch us where we are. Lord, help us as we struggle to forgive and love ourselves
and others. Hear our prayers for our own physical, spiritual, and emotional
needs ……..
Guide us and teach us to reach out in
love to all who need food, inspiration, direction, care and healing. Fill us
with your Spirit of love and grace. We place in your tender care Sandy … Sandi
…Trisha … Dave … Jacob … Linda … Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck … Courtney … Ethel …
Helen.
We pray for all your children—those
who are afraid, lonely, hungry, oppressed, who face the perils of war, violence
in their homes and on the streets, those suffering because of the coronavirus.
We pray for the businesses whose survival is at risk, those who have no
resources to fall back on. Help us to be generous and guide us to compassionate
action.
We pray in the name of Jesus who taught
us to pray: 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 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.
OFFERING
All good things come from God. All that we have. All
that we are. God’s gifts. God’s blessings. Let us bring before God the offerings of our
gratitude—in our financial gifts, in the dedication of our lives to sharing
God’s grace and love. (Pledges and monetary offerings can be mailed to the
church.) Take a moment now to make your heart offerings ………………..
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Gracious God, we bring our offerings
before, knowing that you gave them into our hands in order for us to be good
stewards and to use them wisely. Bless
these offerings, we pray and us in the giving, that your kingdom work would be
done. Amen.
THE LORD’S SUPPER
Song
of Preparation:
Invitation
to the Table
The
Lord’s table is not a piece of wood with clay dishes, but a place in our hearts
that connects us to our Lord Jesus. It is a place to which we come as we
remember his sacrifice, as we seek to experience his presence, as we are
nourished to continue his work, as we recognize our community in him despite
whatever distance or disease or obstacle that might separate us. Our Lord
invites us to the table without condition, simply because we are loved. Come
with grateful hearts. Come with joyful hearts.
The Great Thanksgiving
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our
God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
It is indeed right, O Holy God, to
give thanks for your amazing grace, to praise you for who you are, for who you
created us to be. We marvel at the truth that you are with us wherever we may
be. Though we worship from home, separated and for some, isolated, it is still
in you that we find life and purpose. We are children of grace and nothing can
separate us from your love.
You have given us the gift of your
Holy Spirit who unites us, binding us together as one body across the miles. By
your Spirit of grace transform our social isolation and distance into a holy
community, connecting us to each other by your sacred presence.
Bless the elements we each have
gathered, elements common to our ordinary lives. Let them represent for us the
body and blood of our Savior who gave himself for us. Amen.
Words of Institution
As we share these symbols of bread and
cup across the distance, we remember the story of Jesus with the disciples that
last night before he was arrested. He took the bread and blessed it and broke
it and gave it to them saying “Take, eat, this is my body, given for you.” And
with the cup he said, “This cup is the new covenant, my blood poured out for
you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink of it, remember me.”
And so we do. As we lift up many
pieces in scattered places rather than sharing the same loaf and as we drink
from separate cups instead of one, we do so remembering that throughout history
God’s people have often been scattered and in exile. Through the power and
mystery of the Holy Spirit, we are made one in Christ Jesus. These are the
gifts of God for us the children of God.*
The Bread of Life……………..
The Cup of Salvation …………….
*portions of
prayer adapted from prayer by Rev. Steve Kliewer, Interim General Presbyter,
EOP
Unison Prayer of Thanks
Gracious God, you have made us one with all
your people in heaven and on earth. You have fed us with the bread of life, and
renewed us for your service. Help us who have shared Christ’s body and received
his cup, to be his faithful disciples so that our daily living may be part of
the life of your kingdom, and our love be your love reaching out into the life
of the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “Joyful,
Joyful, We Adore Thee”
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Your charge for the week is to remember the roots of
your faith and the faithfulness of God’s people. You are one of them. We live
through times that can tempt us to become complacent in our faith and
indifferent to our call to follow Jesus. It is also a time that challenges us
to go deeper in our relationship with God, to live a faith that the world can
see makes a difference, a faith that loves beyond measure and expectation.
Choose well and be at peace.
As you do, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
CHORAL RESPONSE
May the Lord, Mighty God, bless and keep you forever.
Grant you peace, perfect peace, courage in every endeavor. Lift up your eyes
and see his face and his grace forever. May the Lord, Mighty God, bless and
keep you forever.
~~~~~~~~~~
LOOKING
AHEAD
Worship and church
activities are suspended until the coronavirus is contained and it is once
again safe to come together and worship. Use the church blog to access worship
and spiritual support articles and to keep up with what’s going on. If you have
trouble accessing or using the site, call Jean or Jon.
Zoom test run Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 by
email invitation. (See newsletter for full details.) Contact Jon if you would
like to participate.
PPW Annual Sale will be held June 5th and 6th
assuming the virus restrictions have been lifted.
PPW Summer Outing will be June 12th to
Fort Rock and Lost Forest again assuming life is returning to normal.
PLEASE
KEEP THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE IN YOUR PRAYERS:
Sandy Cargill (aortic
valve replacement), Sandi Posz (lymphoma), Trisha Cagley (health problems),
Dave Clark (kidney cancer), Jacob Cunningham, Linda Kaesemeyer (knee surgery),
Joyce Sahlberg (health issues), Jennifer Schirm (Parkinson’s), Chuck VanHise
(leg/walking rehab), and Courtney Ziegler (Huntington’s).
LECTIONARY
FOR 5/10/20
Acts 7:55-60;
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
