PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog World Communion Sunday October 4, 2020
~~~~~~~~~~
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.
Pioneer offers worship in several modes:
a)
The
blog.
b)
The
blog service mailed through US Postal service.
c)
Sermons
only, mailed to those who so request.
d)
Zoom
services at 10:00 Sunday mornings.
e)
Live
Worship: we can now allow up to 40 people in worship. A six-foot distancing
will be maintained. Masks are required. There can be congregational singing
with masks, but no passing the peace, hugs, handshakes, or coffee hour.
-
Women’s
Spirituality meets at the church Tuesday the 6th at 10:30
-
Pastor
will be attending Synod meeting by Zoom October 8-9
-
M&M
(Membership & Mission) will meet following worship on Sunday, the 11th.
-
Session
will meet at 6:00 Tuesday the 13th in the downstairs Fellowship
Hall.
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
We are called into community as ones who
stand for life!
We are called into lives of hope.
The voice we hear is the voice of our
longing;
The cry of our hearts.
It is the voice of a God whose name is
Love,
A God, whose will is justice.
In prayer and song let us respond to the
call of our God.
We
offer ourselves and all that we are for the healing
of
the world.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Loving and gentle God, as the world
bristles with fear and animosity, we lean toward our own fear and despair. It
is the fear, oh God, which halts, paralyzes and destroys. It is the fear which
drives us apart from each other, and from you. In these uncertain times, our
prayer is a healing prayer. We pray that your presence in us and in the world
will reach out and grow in compassion, hope and power so that this disease of
fear and violence will give way to the light of love and justice. Amen.
OPENING
SONG: “We Are the Family of God”
Even when we
have been too busy to notice, God has been constantly loving us and encouraging
us to grow in the light of God’s love.
We can trust God with our deepest confession.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
God,
we live as people caught in a storm. Around us rage the powers of anger and
violence, the floods of rage and fear. Around us grows a reality that would
claim our allegiance and our love. It is not easy to weather the storms, O God,
and too often we find ourselves caught up in their fury. We begin to take on
anger and frustration, and we participate in the brokenness and suffering which
surround us. Forgive us, God of love. Touch us with the newness of life we have
in you.
(Let us continue our prayers in
silence……) 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
So
it sounds like you have rules at home, just like I did when I was growing up.
Is that fair, to have rules? Sometimes we’d rather there weren’t rules and we
could do whatever we wanted. But that’s not always good for us. We need healthy
food, not just sweets and we need good sleep in order to grow strong and
healthy and not be grouchy the next day. If we love Mama and Daddy, we want to
respect them and obey what they say, don’t we? They want what is best for you.
God
wanted what was best for people, too. So a long, long, long time ago God gave
the people rules to live by. We call them the Ten Commandments. They said things
like we worship only God and we shouldn’t kill or steal or tell lies or want
what someone else has. One of the rules was that we should honor our Father and
Mother. When we love them and help them and obey them and don’t talk back, that
is honoring them.
Those
are good rules and people try to follow them. Jesus made it easier, though. He
said that the most important thing is love. Jesus wants us to love God and love
each other. That’s two rules. If we keep those two, we’ll be keeping those
others. Let’s pray:
Jesus,
we love you and God your Father and so we want to follow your rules. Help us to
remember that love is most important and help us act in loving ways. Amen.
HYMN: “Jesus
Loves Me”
The heavens are
telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day
pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech,
nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through
all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a
tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and
like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the
heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its
heat.
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the
Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring
forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to
be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and
drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned; in keeping
them there is great reward.
But who can discern his errors? Clear
thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of
great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
SCRIPTURE 2: Exodus
20:1-4, 7-9, 12-17
And God spoke all
these words, saying, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
-
You shall have no other gods before me.
-
You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth; to bow down to them or worship them …
-
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain;
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
-
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you
shall labor, and do all your work; …
-
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be
long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
-
You shall not kill.
-
You shall not commit adultery.
-
You shall not steal.
-
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
-
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not
covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox,
or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.
SERMON: “Ten
to One” Rev. Jean
Hurst
“You shall not …” It’s like God, the
parent, warning the 2-year old, “No!” Does that bring back memories of your
parenting years? How many times has the little hand reached for the forbidden
and again you had to shout “No!” Hopefully, the little hand was pulled back
before the injury or damage was done … until the next opportunity. They were
always pushing the envelope and testing the limits.
Did you notice that it didn’t change
as they got older? Especially in the teenage years, they were still testing the
limits and pushing the envelope. Do you remember your own resistance to your
parents’ rules? Did you hear that statement, “As long as you live in my house,
you’ll abide by my rules!”? We see that struggle with rules in adults as well.
Why? Is this just a facet of our humanity? Our insistence on maintaining
independence? Our resistance to authority? Is it a notion that the individual
knows better than the authority, essentially an ego thing? Was that what was
going on with Adam and Eve?
I suppose, like me, you’ve heard
people boasting, “Nobody’s going to tell me what I can and can’t do!” You hear
it a lot about mask wearing and social distancing. We tend to think that’s a
political statement, but I think it might be as much about feeling that ‘someone’
is trying to control them and they’re fighting against one more layer of it.
Really, how many of us haven’t felt
over-regulated? Even with a simple thing like a stop light, we might feel it’s
nonsense to sit there and wait when there’s no other traffic in any direction.
Or we might resist a speed limit on an open stretch of highway with no other
traffic. We might disagree with the rules, feel they’re burdensome, consider
them an insult to our intelligence, or figure they’re just plain ridiculous.
In the beginning, God seemed to have
just one rule. “See that tree over there with the fruit hanging on it? Don’t eat
that fruit!” Didn’t work. Thousands of years later God sends Moses to bring the
people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, leads them into the wilderness, parks
them at the foot of a mountain, and sends Moses to the top. Ten rules, written
in stone, are carried back down. Ten rules to govern the relationship of the
people with God and with each other. Ten rules were intended to provide the
people with the boundaries necessary to live in harmony with each other. What
did the people do? They broke every rule.
I wonder if God lamented, “Why do I bother?” Yet those ten rules
stand to this day. And yes, we keep breaking them. It seems if you say ‘don’t’ that
someone is going to say “watch me”.
Yet we know those rules are for our own good. Relationship with God,
relationship with self, relationship with others goes a long way toward
ensuring a happy life.
It seems that most people think it’s
important to keep those ten commandments, even inscribing them on stone in
front of courthouses, as long as those rules don’t interfere with their own
desires in life. They wouldn’t think of bowing down to Baal or carving an image
of Dagon (who had the body of a fish with the hands and head of a human) and
worshiping it. Of course not. But nowadays, those aren’t the gods who are in
competition with God Almighty.
In modern times we still have a
polytheistic society. Now it’s money and power and materialism and consumerism
and entertainment and ideology and sports and anything else to which we give
excessive time and devotion. What is worship? The dictionary says it’s to show
honor, devotion, and reverence. Despite our lip service proclaiming otherwise,
what gets precedence over God? All those idols in our lives, all those things
than are so important to us.
Why would God worry about whether we
make other things more important than God? We could lean on the Old Testament
answer, “For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” Really? Jealousy is
closely linked to envy, which is one of the seven deadly sins and is also tied
to coveting, which is forbidden in the 10th commandment. It’s not
logical to lay on God what God has forbidden for us.
What if, instead, the answer is that
God loves us and wants the best for us and being in a positive, loving relationship
with God is part of that? If God isn’t the priority in our lives, we lose out
on so much of what scripture promises. The idols of the world are temporary
and/or imaginary. God is real and eternal. How can God grant us peace, comfort,
wholeness, grace, forgiveness, and love if we are consumed with our own
interests and if we fail to be in relationship with God in order to be open to
receiving those gifts?
And God wanting the best for us is
revealed in most of the remaining commandments. When I say ‘us’, I mean all of
humanity. We have a tendency to view ‘us’ as ‘me’. God does love each of us individually
and it’s important to embrace that. And God does not love each of us
exclusively. God loves us inclusively—along with every other person who walks
the earth or ever has. We are all God’s creation, God’s children. Like any of
us as parents, we want our children to get along and love each other.
That’s where the commandments about
honoring parents, not killing or committing adultery, not stealing or telling
lies about others, and not desiring what belongs to someone else comes into
play. If we lie, steal, kill, are unfaithful, we’re going to make someone else
unhappy—perhaps unhappy enough for retaliation. That obviously damages
relationships. If we do not respect and honor our parents, that damages the
relationship with them. If we long for what someone else has, we might want it
badly enough to take it. Obviously, that, too will damage relationships.
So for 3,500 or so years God has been
trying to get the humans God created to get along and live in loving
relationship with each other—which is why God created us. For that same length of time, humans have
been breaking those commandments. God tries another tack. God sent Jesus.
Jesus uses a different approach, one
not so much based on rules. He modeled what love is. He taught love. He showed
his followers the human face of God. He said think about how you would like to
be treated. Got it? Now go out and treat others that same way. He said if you
think you have enemies, that’s not what you were created for. Change that
relationship. Love them, help them, pray for them, bless them.
He said, you don’t like to be judged
so don’t judge others. You don’t like the weight of what you’ve done hanging
around your neck and want to be forgiven, so forgive others. You know what it
is to be a broken, hurting, lonely, rejected human, so be a friend and healer
and accept others. You know what it is to suffer loss and to grieve, so comfort
others who are experiencing that. You like having good things in your life and
you have sufficient resources, so share with those who don’t.
He said, obviously you love yourself.
You show that by providing for yourself, protecting yourself, feeding yourself,
clothing and housing yourself, treating yourself well. So, now apply that to
those you encounter, loving them in the same way you love yourself.
Jesus told us, you know all those
commandments you’ve read and been taught from scripture? Those are good. But
I’m going to give you a short cut. It’s simple. It’s easy to remember. It’s the
key to all the others. It’s love. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
All the others will flow from these two--even the Ten Commandments. Amen.
HYMN: “The Servant Song”
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Amazing God, whose presence among us
has been revealed so dramatically in Jesus of Nazareth, the One who became the
cornerstone for your church, we celebrate today the reality of your love in the
world. Together with your church in all parts of the world, we rededicate
ourselves to being witnesses of your love and grace, to be beacons of hope in a
dark world.
But
we walk so often in shadows which darken and obscure our way that we forget the
shape and texture of hope. We are told that it is empty wishing. We are asked
to be still and ‘hope’ for better tomorrows. But God, we know that the ground
of our hope is you, and that our hope is born as we embrace the struggle to be
a faithful people who live out your vision of justice and love. Grant us
strength and grant us vision, Holy Spirit, so that our hope may be the music of
souls united in the healing and liberating work of your son, Jesus.
We pray for the brokenness and pain of
the world—all of us who are impacted by the pandemic, by the wildfires
including those who risk themselves to fight them, those trying to sort through
and understand political and election issues, those living with addictions,
violence, poverty, and injustice. We pray for the elderly who are so affected by
the loneliness and isolation imposed by the virus.
We pray for … Lois White … Virginia
DesIlets … Judy’s daughter Rosa Lester …
Darlene Wingfield … John Matthews … Margaret Dunbar … Trisha … Dave …
Jacob … Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck … Courtney … Ethel … Helen. (Additional prayers …………)
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.
CALL TO OFFERING
What do we offer to God and what do we hold out as
our own? God wants our all and through that all, God brings to reality God’s
kingdom on earth. Ponder now what of your life you bring before God as your own
offering.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
God of the universe, all that we have and all that
we are is yours. Help us to use well all that we here devote to the work of
your church. Help us to manage well, to your honor and glory, all that we
retain for ourselves. May you always be first in our priorities. Amen.
THE LORD’S
SUPPER
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. It is the
place we come to renew our commitment to continue his ministry and mission. Today is World Communion Sunday. We join our brothers and sisters around the world in sharing this meal. Our
Lord invites us all 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 …………….
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: “The Church’s One Foundation”
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
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.
~~~~~~~~~~
PRAYER
CARE:
Virginia
DesIlets (broken hip/surgery), Lois White (cancer), Margaret Dunbar
(fall/broken tailbone), Judy’s daughter Rosa Lester (retinal bleed), Darlene
Wingfield (pulmonary fibrosis), John Matthews (cancer), Trisha Cagley (health
problems), Dave Clark (kidney cancer), Jacob Cunningham, Joyce Sahlberg (health
issues), Jennifer Schirm (Parkinson’s), Chuck VanHise (leg/walking rehab), and
Courtney Ziegler (Huntington’s).
LECTIONARY
FOR 10/11/20
Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians
4:1-9,
Matthew 22:1-14
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