PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 4th
Sunday in Lent March
14, 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.
-
M&M
meets following worship
-
Women’s
Spirituality meets Tuesday at 10:30
-
Lenten
Soup Supper is Thursday at 5:30
-
Worship
& Music meets next Sunday
-
Prayer
Shawl Ministry next Sunday at 1:00 p.m.
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
Light has entered our world; rejoice!
Light is God’s gift to each, and to all
together.
Give
thanks to God for days of watchful care.
The
steadfast love of God endures forever.
Let those whom God has redeemed rejoice!
Let them tell the world of God’s good
news!
We
will thank God for wonderful works.
We
will rejoice in God’s love for all humankind.
By God’s word, we are delivered from
destruction.
By God’s mercy, we are healed and made
whole.
Our
voices will join in songs of joy.
Our
lives will offer sacrifices of thanksgiving.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
God of infinite patience, we call on you
once more, knowing that you have every reason to question our coming together.
We have worshiped without expectation. We have gathered without diligent
preparation, as if meeting you laid no requirements on us. Amid the
complexities of our lives, we have forgotten to set aside times to be still
before you. Sometimes we feel as if we are bitten by snakes all week long, so
we assemble here for some relief and healing. O God, will you meet us as we
are? Amen.
OPENING SONGS:
“Grace Greater Than Our Sin” LU#76
“Lay It All Down” LU#92
CALL TO CONFESSION
Our time of penitence before God gives us
the opportunity to rid ourselves of the weight we carry, the lingering sense
that we have not lived up to our full potential, that we have not fulfilled
Jesus’ command that we love as he has loved. Let us bring to God all that is on
our hearts.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Merciful
God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by
what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with
our whole heart and mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as
ourselves. In your mercy forgive what we have been, help us amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be, so that we may delight in your will and walk in
your ways, to the glory of your holy name. (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: Numbers 21:4-9
From Mount Hor they
set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the
people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and
against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the
wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless
food." Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit
the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses,
and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against
you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses
prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent,
and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall
live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a
serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
SERMON: “The
Cure for Snake-Bite” Rev.
Jean Hurst
Strange
thing, this snake business. What was God was thinking? After all, our early
biblical experience with the snake got us all into a lot of trouble. That was
back in the garden when animals could talk. That snake smooth-talked his way
into Eve’s confidence and convinced her that if she ate the forbidden fruit she
would be wise. Eve bit. So did Adam. he
rest is our history.
Then
here are the Israelites roaming around the wilderness with Moses. They’re
whining and complaining--that’s our history, too. They desperately wanted out
of Egypt, away from slavery and oppression. But now they’re sick and tired of
manna from heaven and hey, what’s a bit of brick-making when you get to eat
cucumbers and melons and onions--and meat! God is infinitely patient, beyond
our knowing, but apparently even God has his limits. Enough is enough.
God
sends poisonous snakes that start nipping at their heels. Now they’re
repentant. So God tells Moses to make an image of a snake and mount it on a
pole and have the snakebit people look at it and they will live. Moses does as
he’s told.....and the people are desperate enough to play along. And it works!
They get bit. They look at the snake on the pole. They get well.
All
those centuries later, listen to what Jesus is saying in our reading from the
third chapter of the Gospel of John.......................
SCRIPTURE 2: John 3:14-21
And as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life." For God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but
have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the
world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is
not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has 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 men loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and
does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does
what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds
have been wrought in God.
..........Here
we are, back to the serpent. Jesus is
saying that just as that serpent was lifted up by Moses in the wilderness in
order to save the Israelites from death, he, too, must be lifted up in order to
save the people from death. This lifting up of Jesus has three meanings. One is
that he will be lifted up onto the cross to die. The second is that he will be
lifted up from the grave, conquering death. The third is that he will be lifted
up to heaven, to his glorification.
I
still keep struggling with the serpent part, though. The typical reaction to
snakes is one of revulsion and fear. We say it’s because the snake is scaley
and slithery. A lizard is scaley; so is a fish. A worm is slithery. We don’t
react the same. The image of the snake is so inseparably linked with the fall
of man that it has become a cultural symbol of evil. I think that is the root
of our fear.
As
a child one time I walked to the back of our orchard. I loved it because of the
oak trees whose branches hung over the fence. I looked up into one of those
oaks and to my horror I saw a snake hanging from one of the branches. The
terror that seized me was totally disproportionate to the size of that little
snake. Whether my thoughts were grounded in the Bible or the old Tarzan movies
I used to watch, I don’t know. I didn’t hang around to figure it out. I went
tearing back to the house as fast as I could run with my heart pounding like a
jackhammer, looking over my shoulder to make sure it wasn’t following me.
Now
that is how we should react to sin. Run in terror from it. When we allow
ourselves to be lulled into false security and are seduced by sin, it will turn
around and bite. Unlike that little snake in the tree, sin has the power of
death over us......unless we look to the one who is lifted up. That One has the
power over sin, over evil, over death.
When
God required the Israelites to look on the serpent in order to be healed, he
was making them look at the symbol of their own sin, to face their own
failings, to see what they had caused. It wasn’t the serpent itself that saved
them. It was looking at the symbol of God’s power over sin that saved them.
We
have that in the image of Jesus on the cross as well. By looking at the One who
is lifted up, we have to face our own sinful nature. We have to look at the
consequences of that sin. As we do that, we see not a symbol of evil but a
symbol of love and the extent that love is willing to go to in order to save us
and to reconcile us to the God of love. For God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life. God, in Jesus, willingly laid down his own life for each of us.
It
is so very difficult for us to grasp what that really means. We have all these
pictures of the splendor of heaven, of the glory of God--all light and
brilliance and pureness--perfection. So here is the divine--all powerful,
creator of the entire universe. Here is God, all knowing, all being. There is
nothing greater, nothing more awesome. And yet God is so full of love and
compassion for this vulnerable creature called man, who has become so confused,
so lonely, so lost, that God’s heart is moved.
God
brought this creature into life in order to love and be loved by it. God
breathed his own self into that creature. God expected us, that creature formed
from the ground and God-breathed, to love each other as well. God did not
create puppets, God did not force the Divine will on these creatures. But given
the choice, we chose self. And in that choice we alienated ourselves from God
and from each other.
God
is all powerful. It would have been easy for God to beat us into submission.
God could have forced our obedience. But God cannot force our love. God loves
us and wants our love in return. God loved us first. And because he did, God
shed the cloak of power and might and took on the cloak of flesh and
blood.
You
know life is hard and you know suffering is part of life. you know the disappointments life brings. You
know what it’s like to have people let you down, misunderstand you, betray you,
even hate you. You know the many ways you are tempted. You know the times of
loneliness, the sense of abandonment, the dark times. Because Jesus was also
human, Jesus knows exactly how we suffer. Because we are human and experience
it, we at least partially know how Jesus suffered.
Men,
those of you who have been to war, who is going to have the greater
understanding of your experience? Will it be the one who has read books on war
and watched the movies or will it be the guy who has crouched next to you in
the trench in the mud and cold with mortars exploding, who has felt the gut
clenching fear and seen his buddies die? Now imagine God as the one who draws
the enemy fire, who takes the bullet, so that you and your fellow soldiers can
make it to safety. That is love.
God
loved us and poured himself out for us in order to restore us to that for which
we were created. God died on the cross for us so that we might have life. And
that isn’t just some far off, after-the-grave-life. That’s life now. It’s not
about sitting around on a cloud strumming a harp for all eternity, it’s about
having hope and healing and reconciliation now.
John
3:16 is called everybody’s verse. It is not directed at just the select or
chosen, it is for all of God’s people. For God so loved the entire world, all
those who carry God’s own breath. It is a verse of promise, a verse of hope. It
is not a verse of condemnation. Jesus goes on to say that he came in to the
world, not to condemn it, but to save it. It is a gift held out to us. All we
have to do is accept it.
There
is a story about a flood. Not the big one of Noah’s time. The rains have been
relentless. The swollen rivers are cresting their banks and the evacuation
order comes. A sheriff goes door-to-door telling people to leave immediately.
The man answering the door assures the sheriff he’ll be okay, that God will
take care of him. The rivers spill their banks and the water is two feet high in
the houses. The man moves to the second story and watches from a window. A
neighbor comes by in a rowboat and urges the man to come with him. He refuses,
assuring his neighbor that God will take care of him. As the water continues to
rise, the man is forced to the roof of his house. A rescue helicopter comes by
and lowers a rope. Still the man refuses, shouting out to his would-be rescuers
that God will take care of him. The house is washed away and the man perishes
in the flood. He comes before the golden gates and is granted an interview with
God. He says to God, “I just have one question. Why didn’t you save me? I
trusted you.” God said, “I tried. I tried to save you three times and each time
you refused.”
The
gift is life. All we have to do is accept it. The acceptance of that gift is
believing. We have a choice. God won’t force us. And God won’t condemn us for
not accepting. That sounds radical. It sounds contrary to what we’ve been
taught about salvation. God does not condemn us. God wants nothing more than
for us to believe, to accept God’s love, to accept life. God wants it so much
that God became flesh. God wants it so much that God suffered derision,
betrayal, humiliation. God wants it so much that God hung on that cross and
died a slow, excruciating death--so that we can live.
God
does not condemn us. We condemn ourselves. Verse 18 assures us that those who
believe in Jesus are not condemned, but those who do not believe are already
condemned, because they have not believed in God’s love. How can we be saved if
we reject the very thing that is meant to save us? How can we be reconciled to
God, if we do not believe in God’s love and in the power of it?
Jesus
used the metaphor of light. Darkness hides. Light reveals. Alcibiades, a spoilt
Athenian man of genius, was a companion of Socrates. Every now and again he
would say, “Socrates, I hate you, for every time I meet you, you let me see
what I am.” The light of Jesus is like that. The light of Jesus exposes us. In
Christ’s light we cannot escape seeing the reality of what our lives have
become. But in that light of Jesus we can also see who we can become. We can
see ourselves as God sees us.
Sometimes
we shun the light for fear of what we will see or out of fear that we can never
be any different. But we can be different. A few chapters further in the Gospel
of John, Jesus says, “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.” It was
for all of us that Jesus gave himself. No matter what we have done or thought
or felt, God’s love is unchanging.
It
is not God’s words of love that are so convincing; it is that very act of
laying down his life for us...for you...for me ... that proves God’s love. It
is an act of grace--totally unearned, totally undeserved, totally personal. As
Augustine, one of the early church fathers, said, “God loves each one of us as
if there was only one of us to love.”
Because
of that very personal, very individual love, we look to the one who is lifted
up. We look to him on the cross, knowing our own guilt, knowing God’s love. We
look to him lifted up from death, knowing we have hope, knowing that we have
new life. We look to him in his glory, knowing that, indeed, God is faithful
and the promise is fulfilled. All thanks and glory be to God. Amen.
HYMN: “Amazing
Grace” Glory #649
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
God of mystery, you created in us a
yearning for you that we cannot even begin to understand. We just know, Holy
One, that we are incomplete without you. Because of our rebelliousness we seek
to fill that void with all the wrong things. Help us remember the price Jesus
paid to redeem us. Continue to draw us to you, Loving God. And as we come near,
let your Spirit guide us in living in ways that please you. Jesus taught us to
love our brothers and sisters and so we lift them to you in prayer.
We pray for Brenda Wright ... Lari Higgins … Sommer
Bauer … Bill Kaesemeyer … Tasha Sizemore … Stephen Meinzinger … Phyllis Bauer …
Beverly Patterson … Lois White … John Matthews … Jacob Cunningham … Virginia …
Cherry … Darlene … Margaret … Trisha … Dave … George … Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck
… Courtney … Ethel … Helen. (Additional prayers …………)
We pray for our brothers and sisters
around the world, especially for the lonely, the lost, and those without hope.
We pray for the nations and those who lead them. We pray for peace.
God
who guides our lives, we entrust to you these prayers and those that remain yet
in our hearts as we pray the prayer 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 joyous thanksgiving, we offer
sacrifices of time and resources to announce God’s healing grace to the world.
It is our privilege to share the steadfast love that is saving us. Let us
consider those gifts.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
For life-sustaining gifts that we so often take for
granted—for shelter, food, and meaningful tasks to do; for your steadfast love,
for your word that guides and heals us—we give you thanks, gracious God. We
bring the gifts of our resources, our time, and our abilities to be used to
share the Good News of the Gospel. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “To
God Be the Glory” Glory #634
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Your charge this week is to embrace
the incredible gift that has been offered you—Jesus Christ who came into the
world to save and redeem us.
As you do 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
March 14 following worship M&M
March 16 10:30 Women’s
Spirituality
March 18 5:30 Soup
Supper
March 21 following
worship Worship & Music
March 21 1:00 p.m. Prayer Shawl Ministry
March 23 noon downstairs PPW lunch meeting
March 25 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
March 25 5:30 Soup
Supper
March 28 10:00 a.m. Palm/Passion Sunday Service
March 28 following
worship Deacons
PRAYER
CARE:
Brenda Wright (death of her sister Joy),Lari Higgins
(breast cancer), Sommer Bauer (breast cancer), Bill Kaesemeyer (breathing
problems), Tash Sizemore (medical problems), Stephen Meinzinger (Covid-19), Lois
White (lymphoma), John Matthews (cancer), Jacob Cunningham, Trisha Cagley
(health problems), Dave Clark (kidney cancer), Virginia DesIlets (age 99!), Margaret
Dunbar (aging issues), George Sahlberg (infection in knee), Joyce Sahlberg
(health issues), Jennifer Schirm (Parkinson’s), Chuck VanHise (leg/walking
rehab), Darlene Wingfield (heart valve, pulmonary fibrosis, breast cancer), and
Courtney Ziegler (Huntington’s).
LECTIONARY
FOR 3/21/21
Jeremiah 31:31-34,
Psalm 51:1-12, Psalm 119:9-16,
Hebrews 5:5-10,
John 12:20-33
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