PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 1st
Sunday in Lent February 21, 2021
~~~~~~~~~~
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 pandemic.
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 with masks and social distancing has plenty of room for additional
worshipers.
-
Worship
& Music meets following worship
-
PPW’s
lunch meeting is at noon on Tuesday
-
Men’s
Prayer Group meets Thursday 8:30 a.m.
-
Lenten
Soup Supper Thursday 5:30 Downstairs
-
Next
Sunday Deacons meet following worship
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
Lift up your souls to the Living God,
who enters into covenant with us.
We
wait on our maker, trusting God’s kindness
and
seeking to know God’s ways.
Raise your eyes to behold the risen
Christ,
who triumphs over death and destruction.
In
Jesus Christ we renew our commitment
to
share the good news of God’s realm.
Attune yourselves to the Holy Spirit’s
gifts
and leave behind the wilderness of
despair.
The
Spirit sets us free from limits of the flesh,
from
bondage to sin and decay.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
God of saving acts in human history, and
lively promises for future fulfillment, equip us in this hour of worship to
live fully in the present. Make your ways known to us and teach us your truth.
Lead your humble servants in the way you would have us go. Be patient with us,
we pray, for we are trying to be faithful. Amen.
OPENING
SONG: “Healing Grace” LU#68
CALL TO CONFESSION
In our day, we cannot escape temptation,
for it comes in so many forms, from so many sources. As Jesus was tempted, so
are we. But we have yielded to temptation and Jesus did not. Sometimes we do
not even recognize the sins into which we have slipped. We seek to recall them
now. Repent, and believe in the good news.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Have
mercy on your church, O God, for we forget the covenant into which you call us.
We follow the path of least resistance without seeking your higher way. We
forget our baptism into a faith community built on trust and forgiveness. O
God, we turn to you to lead us to a new day, trusting in your steadfast love. (continue with personal prayers …..) Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
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 one another.
GLORY
BE TO THE FATHER
SCRIPTURE 1: Genesis 9:8-17
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
"Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you,
and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and
every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish
my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters
of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."
And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me
and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me
and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the
clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every
living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood
to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and
remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all
flesh that is upon the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of
the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the
earth."
SCRIPTURE 2: Mark 1:9-15
In those days Jesus
came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when
he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the
Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven,
"Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." The Spirit
immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness
forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels
ministered to him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."
SERMON: “The
Human Condition” Rev.
Jean Hurst
How
do you rate yourself as a Christian? For some, it’s pretty broad. “I believe in
Jesus.” That would certainly limit the demands on a person’s faith. In the
letter of James we’re told that even the demons believe—and shudder. Seems a
weak measure of how well we do as followers of Jesus. So does claiming Jesus as
Lord and Savior if there’s no living it out.
There
are other people whose measurement of effective faith is a long, long list of
do’s and don’ts. You have to follow a bunch—a big bunch—of rules. You have to
have the right attitude, think the right things, have strong enough faith, guard
your every thought and action, pray correctly, and of course believe the right
things in the right ways. Failure is … well … sin.
That brings to
mind Jesus’ admonishment to the Pharisees, when he accused them of tying up
heavy burdens, hard to bear, and laying them on the shoulders of others; but
they—the Pharisees—are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.
(Mat 23:4 NRS)
Mind
you, the Pharisees didn’t just make up the rules they were laying on the
shoulders of others, but they did represent a class of religious leaders who
expanded the laws to cover every possible contingency. 613 laws to remember and
follow does seem a bit excessive. Jesus felt it was too much to expect a person
to follow every single law that had been developed from the time Moses was
handed the Ten Commandments over a thousand years earlier.
Yet
still, some of us are more
comfortable with a faith that gives us a checklist of what we should and
shouldn’t do. Give it to us in black and white and make it measurable. Then we
can follow the rules and know that we’re meeting the minimum requirements. We
don’t want to wrestle with gray areas. We’d rather not have to interpret
scripture and let it direct our path with our consciences guiding us (i.e. the
Holy Spirit). Just tell us what to do. But that also misses the mark.
So
if simply saying you believe in Jesus isn’t enough and 613 laws is over the
top, and relying on someone else to provide us a set of rules doesn’t get us
there, what are we supposed to do? And what happens when we don’t?
Well,
let’s address the ‘what happens’. If we act in a way that is contrary to God’s
will for us and for the world, that’s defined as sin. The word ‘sin’ by the
way, means ‘to miss the mark’. To ‘miss the mark’ is part of the human
condition dating clear back to Adam and Eve.
You
remember the story—how God created everything, put Adam and Eve in a garden and
set the boundaries. “See, that tree over there? Well, it’s off limits. You’re
fine with everything else.” Along comes the serpent and convinces them God
didn’t really mean it and it was okay to eat the fruit. In fact, it
would make them wise—like God! They were tempted and they gave in to the
temptation. The rest is history, so to speak.
We
have begun the Lenten journey. It’s the journey to the cross. This Lenten
journey is a time of preparation and repenting, of penitence and reflection, of
remembering Jesus’ ministry and sacrifice and how that impacts our own lives.
The Lectionary passage for today sets the stage. It is Mark’s telling of Jesus’
baptism and temptation. We talked about the baptism a few weeks ago. Today’s
focus is on temptation.
Mark’s gospel
doesn’t give us details about what those temptations were and how Jesus
responded. In fact, it says precious little about that experience. The point is
that Jesus, too, was subject to the human condition. Jesus was fully
human/fully God. That means that Jesus had the full human experience, including
temptation. He knows exactly what we’ve been through or are going through
because he’s been there himself.
Jesus was tempted.
There is no shame in temptation. It’s part of the human condition. Some people
tend to feel that if they were real
Christians they wouldn’t even be tempted by sinful things; that they should be
above temptation. But if Jesus wasn’t above it, why do we think we should be? And Adam and Eve’s failing
wasn’t in being tempted but in giving in to the temptation. The gospel of Mark
doesn’t tell us, but the other gospels do. Jesus didn’t give in to the
temptations.
As Dumbledore told
Harry Potter, it’s the choices we
make that define us. What is it we choose in the face of temptation? And,
granted, it’s not always an easy choice. The problem with temptation is that it
is so often presented as a reasonable thing to do. There are all kinds of
rationalizing that goes with a choice that is really the wrong choice. One is
the Machiavellian approach—the end justifies the means. If a little ‘sin’ results
in a worthwhile or noble outcome, then one is justified in doing it, right?
Trouble is, is good, gained at the price of evil, really ‘good’ and for whom?
I used to have a
debate—or dispute—with a fellow student at seminary who maintained that companies
going into developing countries were justified in taking their resources and
making big profits if the people of that country were, in the process, even 1%
better off than they had been (while the company was 99% better off). That is
exploitation and it misses the mark. This is true anytime we gain at the
expense of someone else’s tears or pain or misfortune or abuse.
There are
temptations that play to our egos. That temptation to put someone else down or
compare them in a negative light, or judge them negatively in order to make
ourselves look better by comparison. There is the temptation to get even in
order to salve a wounded ego or to voice the cutting remark to put someone in
their place. It hurts the other person, however much one may think they deserve
it. At the very least, it’s mean spirited.
There is the
temptation to profit by claiming something is due us. We’ve earned it or it was
something taken from us. That’s called a sense of entitlement. Back when I had
family working for Weyerhaeuser, they told of workers who would take supplies
or tools home in their lunch boxes claiming they weren’t paid enough so they
were justified in supplementing their income. They were only taking what was
due them. Sometimes that even extended to carrying home truckloads of lumber
after hours. It’s theft.
There are the
insidious temptations that whisper “no one will know,” or “it won’t hurt
anyone,” or “just this once.” Act on those and you know and it changes you. And usually, someone does get hurt. And ‘just this once’ is a
toe in the door to repeated wrongs because each time it gets a little easier.
Temptation is part
of the human condition. Each of us has something or many things that we want. Temptation dangles in front of us what we
want. The result is sin. Sin is also part of the human condition. As the
Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God.” Sin is caving in to the temptation. It is making
the choice for ‘me’ rather than the choice of what is right.
When we choose
ourselves to the detriment of someone else, that fractures relationship. When
we fracture relationships with our fellow humans, we fracture our relationship
with God. Sadly, we make that choice--time after time. This is the season to be
honest with ourselves.
When Jesus came
out of the wilderness, having triumphed over temptation, he started his
ministry, calling the people to repent. To ‘repent’ means to turn—turn away
from what separates us from God, turn back to God. But it wasn’t just a
scolding or a judgement Jesus was making to those who would listen. It was an
invitation and a promise. “Believe in the gospel” he said. Gospel means ‘good
news’. Believe in the good news, Jesus said. Accept it for yourself.
The gospel, the
good news of Jesus Christ is one of grace. We are not cast aside for our
failings. Jesus came as our redeemer, gave himself for us to heal us and to
restore us to our relationship with God. As Paul phrased it in his letter to the
Ephesians (2:8-9), we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus, not by what we
do but by what God has done as a gift. That gift is extended to us not because
we have earned it, not because we deserve it, not because we’ve done it
ourselves, but simply because God loves us.
We don’t have to
go through life carrying the weight of our wrong choices. We don’t have to live
in shame or fear. We simply have to trust that Jesus was telling the truth.
When we do that, we can also know that when we face those temptations, he will
give us the strength to resist. We can make different choices and, in doing
that, live into the life to which we are called.
When
we fail, when we make the wrong choices, we turn to the one who died for us and
by his grace receive the forgiveness for which our hearts yearn. Then we start
fresh once again. Knowing God’s forgiveness, we can easier make the right
choices—the choice for life, the choice for love. The Lenten journey has begun.
As we walk that road, we do it knowing that Jesus walks by our side.
HYMN: “Forgive Our Sins As We Forgive” #444
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
We come to you, O God, from our own
places of guilt, loneliness, fear, and sorrow. We bring it all into the warmth
of your light, your love and grace. In you we find truth and forgiveness,
reassurance and comfort.
How grateful we are, tender God, for
people who love easily, quietly, and universally. We are blessed by people who
look beyond their own suffering long enough to see the hurt of others, who
courageously leave their own loneliness to embrace the lonely, who quiet their
own doubts by comforting the fear of others, who look to you with an
indestructible conviction of hope. Thank you, Lord, for the courage of ordinary
people who inspire our own.
And so we pray for those close to us,
for Tasha Sizemore … Stephen Meinzinger
… Phyllis Bauer … Beverly Patterson … Darlene Wingfield … Lois White … Virginia … Cherry … John Matthews … Margaret
Dunbar … Trisha … Dave … Jacob … George … Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck … Courtney …
Ethel … Helen. (Additional prayers …………)
We
pray for strangers, for those whom we disagree, even for those we might call
enemy. Lord, we lift up the lonely, the scared, the aging and infirm, those
bound by addictions, those mired in poverty, those impacted by Covid. Show us,
Lord, how we can be the hands and heart of Jesus, how we can respond to their
needs with generosity and compassion. We entrust to you these prayers and those
that remain unspoken as we pray as Jesus taught:
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
In this season of reflection we are
invited to reexamine our use of all the resources and abilities God allows us
to manage. God has entrusted us with almost limitless opportunities and
obligations. Take a moment to consider how you respond to God’s trust and what
you bring as an offering to God’s kingdom work.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER
OF DEDICATION
Holy God, through the offerings of our lives and our
resources, we give thanks for your patience and loving-kindness. Direct our
gifts toward the realization of your purposes for us. We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “How
Firm a Foundation” #463
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Your
charge for the week is to watch and see where the good news is especially need,
then share it.
As you
do, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit is with you now and always. 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
February 21 following worship Worship & Music meets
February 23 noon PPW lunch meeting
February 25 8:30 a.m. Men’s
Prayer Group
February 25 5:30 p.m. Lenten Soup Supper
February 28 following worship Deacons meet
PRAYER
CARE:
Tasha Sizemore,
Stephen Meinzinger, Phyllis Bauer (aging issues), Beverly Patterson (Sheila
Cunningham’s mother) (aging issues), Lois White (lymphoma), Virginia DesIlets
(broken hip), Darlene Wingfield (heart valve, pulmonary fibrosis, breast
cancer), Margaret Dunbar (fall/broken tailbone), John Matthews (cancer), Trisha
Cagley (health problems), Dave Clark (kidney cancer), Jacob Cunningham, George
Sahlberg (knee infection), Joyce Sahlberg (health issues), Jennifer Schirm
(Parkinson’s), Chuck VanHise (leg/walking rehab), and Courtney Ziegler
(Huntington’s).
LECTIONARY
FOR 2/28/21
Genesis 17:1-7,
15-16; Psalm 22:23-31; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38
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