PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 6th Sunday of Easter May 9, 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
-
Session
meets Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.
-
Men’s
Prayer Group Thursday at 8:30 a.m.
-
Worship
& Music meets following worship next Sunday
-
Prayer
Shawl Ministry meets at 1:00 next Sunday
- Highway Pickup 9:30 a.m. Sunday May 22
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
Come, all who are born of God.
Abide in the love revealed in Jesus
Christ.
We
come in response to the one who calls us friends.
We
are here in obedience to Christ’s command.
Remember God’s steadfast love and
faithfulness.
Let hands and voices echo God’s praise.
Let
our lips pour out a joyful noise.
Let
our hands reflect a serving Savior.
Sing a new song to God who does marvelous
things.
Obey God’s commandments which are not
burdensome.
We
clap our hands and sing for joy.
We
live by faith that conquers the world.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Come, Holy Spirit, to lift us from empty
routines to the surprising joy of your love. Loosen our tongues to praise you
with sincere delight. Open our hearts to trust your leading through times of
difficulty and days of despair. Calm our doubts and guide us through the mires
of fear. You have called us together for mutual support in a time of worship
that unites our spirits. We remember that we have been baptized in the name of
Jesus Christ. Teach us to follow where Christ leads. Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “In the Bulb There Is a Flower” LU#88
CALL TO CONFESSION
God judges the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity. God knows all that we have done and all that we
avoid. God is aware of our obedience to the way of love and our rebellion
against it. We are invited to confess all that God already knows so healing and
freedom can be ours in Christ Jesus.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Ever-present God,
we confess to you our unloving thoughts and deeds. We live by standards that we
bend and break in our own favor, while ignoring the commandments you have
given. We find it hard to love everyone, for so many act in unloving ways. It
is easier to treat people as things than to listen for their needs. We withhold
ourselves rather than offer our lives, even for our friends. We hoard the gifts
you entrust to us instead of letting them bear fruit for you. Cleanse us from
these destructive ways, freeing us to love as you have loved us, we pray in
Jesus’ 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: John 15:9-17
As the Father has
loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments,
you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and
abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in
you, and that your joy may be full. "This is my commandment, that you love
one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command
you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his
master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from
my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and
appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should
abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
This I command you, to love one another.
SCRIPTURE 2: Psalm 98
O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous
things! His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. The Lord has
made known his victory, he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the
nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of
Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God. Make a
joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing
praises! Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of
melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the
King, the Lord! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those
who dwell in it! Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy
together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the
world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
SERMON “Same
Old Song and Dance?” Rev.
Jean Hurst
Have you ever had a tune stuck in your
head and it just keeps replaying even when you’re not thinking about it? A hymn
from the last worship might wake me in the night and then keeps popping up
during the day. I recently read a book on Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812.
Then the lyrics of The Battle of New
Orleans started running through my head. All through the day, I’d discover
I was humming it again or that find that it was running in the background of my
mind while I was doing other things. “And they ran through the briars and they
ran through the brambles and they ran through the bushes where a rabbit
couldn’t go…..” How do you stop it? Sometimes I substitute something else—then it gets caught there and I’m in the same
boat. Boat. “Row, row, row your boat ….”
Songs,
even jingles from old commercials aren’t the worst of it. Those can be
annoying. There are others that are harder to get rid of because they become
habit. And they can be damaging. It’s funny what can trigger that repetitive
loop. It could be a memory or an incident or an interaction with someone.
Really, anything in life can set it off. And I’m not talking just about lyrics
set to music. It’s about the tapes in our heads. Do you know the ones I’m
talking about? We call it self-talk.
When
you mess up, when you don’t have the right answer or the right way of doing
things, when you’re passed over for someone else, when nothing seems to go
right, when you have altercations with someone, when you face a failure in your
life, those are too often the times we start beating up on ourselves. We begin
the recital of how awful we are and how no one could love us because we’re not
worthy of love. We’re useless, no good, can never do anything right. Sometimes
it could be the simplest of incidents that can set it off.
Negative
self-talk isn’t the only thing that triggers our old songs. Worry is another.
We worry over things for which we often have no control. Or we worry over the
unknown—the ‘what might happen’ or the ‘what if’. Have you noticed that when we
go into that worry mode we start imagining and that imagining is not about the good things that could happen? We tend
to imagine the worst. There they go—around and around in our heads.
Or
how about our perception of the world? Do we generally look on the bright side
of life and see the good or do we have an Eeyore mentality? When given a bright
red balloon, Eeyore mopes, “Sure is a cheerful color. Guess I’ll have to get
used to it.” When told to have a good day he responds, “If it is a good day,
which I doubt.” Eeyore could find a black lining in a rainbow. How about you?
When you look at the world, do you see all the possibilities of what could go wrong and why it probably will go wrong? Same old song.
How
about our reaction to people? Do we repeatedly suspect the motives of others?
Are we sure the world is out to get us? When someone does something good for us
are we looking for the catch? Are we sure people are talking about us behind
our backs? Do we see put downs in innocent remarks? Are we resentful that
people don’t appreciate our efforts?
We
even do it with God when we pray. We present God with a litany of all the
things that are wrong in our lives and in the world. And, of course, we’re
telling God what to do about them.
All
of these songs or attitudes that loop repeatedly in our heads boil down to our
mindset. Think about your own reactions to what happens in your life. How do
you think about those things? What is your self-talk? How do you talk about it
to others? How do you pray about it? Is it the same old song and dance? Are you
living out a habit of experiencing the world in a negative way, of anticipating
the worst of what life might bring, of putting yourself down, of viewing others
in the worst light? Is your prayer life one of complaint rather than praise? If
any of these are true for you, is that really the way you want to live your
life? Is that who you want to be? Or is there a better choice?
The author of this psalm starts off
with the call to “sing the Lord a new song.” The writer proclaims the goodness
and sovereignty of God. God has done marvelous things. God has given
vindication and victory. The word victory comes from the Hebrew root for redeem
and save. The Israelites have been through much grief and struggle including
exile to a foreign land. Yet God redeems them even in the midst of their pain.
God’s steadfast love and faithfulness has been evident through all their
trials.
That
victory extends throughout the earth. God’s redemption of the earth is worthy
of praise even from the seas and the mountains; even from humanity beyond the
tribe of Israel. God is to be praised and the psalmist calls forth all of
creation to join in that song of praise and joy. In fact, the psalmist declares
that it shouldn’t be just the same old song and dance but instead calls forth a
new song.
And that call to respond is not just
claimed on the basis of what God has done for Israel in the past but what God
is doing now and what God will do. It speaks of hope for the future, not just
for Israel, but for all the world. God will come to judge the earth with
righteousness and justice.
We are invited into that hope. God’s
steadfast love and faithfulness are at work in our lives as well. It seems that
we can best see the truth of that as we look back on our lives and the
struggles we’ve faced. We can see how God helped us through it. Sometimes it’s
harder looking forward and trusting that God will continue to be faithful.
Especially if we’re one of those people who worry about the future. And it’s
hard when we’re smack in the middle of a struggle to believe that God is
already there, working on our behalf—especially if we view today’s realities
all in a negative light.
As part of God’s creation, we, too,
are called to sing a new song. What would that look like for you? What if we
could change those old tapes that play in our heads? Would that be a better way
to live? How do we do that? One way is to look again at what the psalmist was
saying. Look at what God has done—all the marvelous things that a negative worldview
can blind us to. But don’t stop there. Look also at what God is going to do.
And be thankful. It is amazing what a difference gratitude can make in the way
we perceive things.
I confess that I am often one of those
people whose head plays the negative tapes, who sees what’s wrong in the world
instead of what is right, who jumps to the wrong conclusions, and I spend too
much time beating myself up. That’s not stuff I like about myself. Change
starts with awareness. Each time I catch myself in a negative mode, playing
those old tapes, I try to stop myself and offer instead a prayer of gratitude
for what God is doing in my life. Sometimes I simply remind myself, ‘sing a new
song.’
Our negative tapes are habit. It takes
time and determination to change a habit. It’s a process. You won’t catch
yourself every time. But you’ll catch yourself part of the time and that will
increase your awareness. And as your awareness increases, you can begin singing
a new song to God, a song of thankfulness for what God might yet do,
thankfulness for a God who loves and cares and acts, thankfulness for a God who
gives us a new song to sing. Thanks be to God.
HYMN: “Open
My Eyes That I May See” Glory #451
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
God of peace and glory, who sent Jesus
to teach and inspire the multitudes and call us all to discipleship, help us to
celebrate the triumph of humility and the satisfaction of servanthood. We
rejoice that Christ shared our humanity and welcomed all into your grace. May
all the world receive Christ’s spirit and give thanks for your steadfast love.
Lord, you taught us to love one
another. It is in that love that we lift up to you those of our community. We lift
up to you Sandy Cargill … Larry Koskela …. Linda and Bill Kaesemeyer … Lari
Higgins … Somer Bauer … Tasha Sizemore … Beverly Patterson … Lois White … Virginia … John Matthews … Margaret Dunbar … Darlene
… Trisha … Dave … Jacob … George and Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck … Courtney …
Ethel. (Additional prayers …………)
For your children around the world,
for those who suffer from oppression and violence, for war torn countries, for
families who await the return of our soldiers, for those who hunger, who have
no homes, who are bound by the chains of addiction, for those whose only hope
is in your kingdom, Lord we pray for your comfort, protection and provision.
We pray for our own faith journey, for
our doubts and struggles, for our growth in the faith, for our discipline as
your servant disciples, for the challenge of loving as you taught. Lord
strengthen and guide us and grant us the courage to live out your call.
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
We
are people whom God has blessed with many gifts. God has done marvelous things
for us. How will we, who have been baptized by water and the Spirit, respond to
God’s generosity?
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Generous and loving God, we dedicate to your service
the work of our hands, the earnings of our time and efforts, and our vision for
the future. May faith sustain us as we offer our best to you in praise and
thanksgiving and joyous dedication. We seek to work for the reign of your truth
and extension of the friendship granted to us in Jesus Christ. Let our offering
bear fruit in the lives of all who are helped by it. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “I
Sing the Mighty Power of God” Glory
#32
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
This week listen for the song you sing
to the Lord. Is it what you would wish? If not, start composing a new song to
the Lord. Every time you hear yourself singing old refrains that need to be
changed, pause and do that.
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
May 9 following worship M&M
May 11 6:00 p.m. Session
May 13 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
May 16 following worship Worship & Music
May 16 1:00 p.m. Prayer Shawl Ministry
May 18 10:30 a.m. Women’s Spirituality
May 22 9:30 a.m. Highway Pickup / Meet at Church
May 23 following worship Deacons
May 25 noon PPW
May 27 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
PRAYER
CARE:
Sandy Cargill
(pre-cancer surgical procedure), Larry Koskela (stomach and joint issues), Linda
and Bill Kaesemeyer (Bill’s heart/breathing issues) Lari Higgins (breast
cancer), Somer Bauer (breast cancer), Tasha Sizemore (Krohn’s?), 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 and 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 5/16/211
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, Psalm 1, 1 John 5:9-13, John
17:6-19
No comments:
Post a Comment