PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 5th Sunday after Pentecost June
27, 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.
-
Reminder:
no Deacons meeting in June
-
Session, M&M, Worship & Music, PPW
on summer break
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
Arise, people of faith, that Christ may
give us life.
This is the day of meeting in Christ’s
name.
We
reach out for health and wholeness.
We
embrace one another with concern and care.
God is attentive to us and hears our
cries.
God challenges us to eager engagement in
life.
Like
those who watch eagerly for the morning,
We
wait in joyous anticipation of God’s Word.
The word of life is ours to receive.
The good news is available to be shared.
We
will sing praises to God’s holy name.
We
will tell of God’s faithfulness day by day.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
We thank you, gracious God, for those
times when we have been lifted up by you and have known your healing touch. You
have clothed us with joy and filled us with hope. We are grateful that even in
our days of deepest gloom and despair, you have surrounded us with a love
stronger than all our pain and doubts and grievous losses. Come to us now that,
together and individually, we may sense larger realities than the narrow focus
of our daily concerns. We await your word. Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “Great and Mighty” LU
#29
CALL TO CONFESSION
Surrounded by the steadfast love of God,
we gain courage to examine our lives and our relationships. Together we confess
the sin that cuts us off from our Creator and separates us from one another.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
God,
we are a self-focused people. We extol our accumulation of gadgets over a
balanced sharing of resources. We are more interested in securing your support
for our desires than in conforming ourselves to your will. You have given us
much, and we have misspent this abundance, creating idols and pursuing illusions
of pleasure. O God, forgive us and re-center us in ways that really matter. (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: Psalm 30
I will extol you, O Lord,
for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord my
God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you brought up my
soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy
name. For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping
may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. As for me, I said in
my prosperity, "I shall never be moved." By your favor, O Lord, you
had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. To
you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication: "What profit is
there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it
tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my
helper!" You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my
sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be
silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
SERMON “There May Yet Be Hope” Rev.
Jean Hurst
Do you know how to lament? Not simply to grieve a situation in life, but to
wallow in it? I think it takes a certain skill to do it justice. That may be
where the folks of the Old Testament have it over on us. They weren’t afraid to
let it all out. We tend to sanitize our expressions of unhappiness. After all,
there are so many people who have it so much worse than we do, right? And as
Christians, we think we’re supposed to be nice and positive and upbeat even if
that’s not what’s roiling around inside of us.
But you’re not alone
in your feelings. Lamentations comes from a Hebrew word that means to cry out
in pain. That’s exactly what the writer does. Listen to these words of
Lamentations that precede today’s
reading:
o
I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of God's
wrath;
o
he has driven and brought me into darkness without any
light;
o
against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all
day long.
o
he has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken
my bones;
o
he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and
tribulation;
o
he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago.
o
he has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has
put heavy chains on me;
o
though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer;
o
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made my
paths crooked.
o
he is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he
led me off my way and tore me to pieces;
o
he has made me desolate;
o
he bent his bow and set me as a mark for his arrow. He
shot into my vitals the arrows of his quiver;
o
I have become the laughingstock of all my people, the
object of their taunt-songs all day long.
o
he has filled me with bitterness, he has sated me with
wormwood.
o
he has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower
in ashes;
o
my soul is bereft of peace;
o
I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, "Gone
is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord."
o
the thought of my affliction and my homelessness is
wormwood and gall!
o
my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within
me.
Wow! And I thought I had it bad! Can you feel the total
desolation this writer is expressing? Can you relate to it? Have you ever had
times in your life when things felt just that bad, that overwhelming? Have you ever been that miserable? Have you
ever wanted someone to blame?
In those ancient
times, whatever happened in life was God’s doing. If you were good, God
rewarded you. If you were not, God punished you. So, if bad things happen in
your life, God is punishing you. We view things differently nowadays, believing
that God is good and God does not do hurtful things, not to teach, not to
punish, not to direct. Rather we understand God to be with us in the midst of
our pain and struggles and to not only bring us through them, but to bring good
out of the bad that happens.
Saying that, I also
have to acknowledge that for us, the feeling is often there. Why did God let
this happen? Why is God doing this? What have I done so bad that God would
punish me like this? So while it’s not part of the theology in this day—at
least in this denomination—it is still part of our lived reality. We want
explanations for what happens and if we don’t readily find it, we create our
own. It’s easier to believe that God is doing it, and for a reason, than to accept
that sometimes life just happens.
Going back to the
text, the author doesn’t just leave it with pouring out the pain of his soul.
The last verse of that section leads us into today’s reading, “But this I call
to mind, and therefore I have hope.” Now listen for God’s word to you in the
reading from the 3rd chapter of Lamentations:
SCRIPTURE
2: Lamentations 3:22-33
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an
end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The Lord is
my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The
Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good
that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for one
to bear the yoke in youth, to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed
it, to put one's mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope), to give one's cheek
to the smiter, and be filled with insults. For the Lord will not reject
forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the
abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve
anyone.
Following on the
heels of the despair portion of this chapter, this second part is an amazing
contrast. It is a proclamation of hope and trust. The first portion is a focus
on pain and misery and being a victim. The second is about the very nature of
God and why, with everything so desperately wrong in the writer’s life, he
chooses to believe in what God will do.
God’s love is steadfast, never wavering,
never changing, never stopping. The Lord is a God of mercy and those mercies
will never end. Not only that, but however much it feels on one day like
nothing has changed or will change, tomorrow is a new day and each day brings
new mercies, new ways that God acts for good. God will be faithfully present
even in our pain. God is, indeed, faithful beyond comprehension.
The Lord is my portion, my inheritance—and
in that era, any inheritance went to the children. So this is an
acknowledgement of God as Father—the father who looks out for, protects,
provides for, and seeks the best for his children. The author knows this, not
just in his head but in his very soul, and therefore has hope that God will not
fail him.
And so he waits. The writer advocates waiting
patiently, holding on through all the trials, humbling himself prostrate in the
dust, putting up with the abuse of his enemies, trusting that God’s compassion
and steadfast love will lift him from the dust and restore his joy in life.
Recall the words from Psalm 30, our first
reading: “O Lord, I cried to you for help
and you healed me. … Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the
morning. … You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my
sackcloth and clothed me with joy…”
The author of Lamentations affirms even
facedown in the dust, “There may yet be hope.” Are you willing to believe that?
The Bible is the living word of God. The Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts
through the words of scripture. What is the Spirit leading you to hear? For
what pains you in life, for whatever your struggle, for your despair over the
state of the world, for the anguish of your heart, for fears that seem
insurmountable, for relationships that are so fragile, for dreams that lay
crumbled around you, can you claim the words of these passages for yourself?
For whatever you
might be going through, it’s real; your feelings are real. There’s much over
which you have no control. That feeling of helplessness is not fun. It’s okay
to feel what you feel and even to give voice to it. You don’t have to bury it.
You don’t have to pretend it’s not there.
How can you ever move
past those feelings if you’re not able to acknowledge them and even to
acknowledge resentment toward God for allowing it to happen? Acknowledging and
owning the feelings are like a Step 1. The question then becomes, what now?
Where do you go from here? You can choose to make that place of lament your
ongoing reality or you can look for hope and move forward into a different
reality.
Perhaps what
determines that next step is what you believe in more. Do you believe in the
goodness of God more than you believe in the evil of the world? Do you believe
in the power of God’s light more than you believe in the power of darkness—even
the darkness inside of you? Do you believe more in the love that God embodies,
proclaims and commands than you believe in the hate and violence we’re seeing
in the world?
If you can believe in
the goodness of God and that God has power over evil and that love can win over
the hate and darkness of the world, then we can agree with the author of
Lamentations: “There may yet be hope.” And we, too, can proclaim, “The
steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they
are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Thanks be to God, always
our source of hope. Amen.
HYMN: “I
Will Come to You” Glory #177
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Tender God who knew us before we were
even formed in the womb, we come before you with prayers of thanks for the very
life you have granted us. Lord, you know us better than we know ourselves. You
know our deepest needs, which we often confuse with our wants, and you know
what will satisfy those needs. God, we trust that you will take all that we
are, all that we have done, all the pain as well as the joy, all the failures
as well as the successes, all our hopes and dreams and use them to fulfill your
purpose for our lives.
God, you know the struggles of our
lives right now. You know the relationships that hurt, the financial
uncertainty, the fragile state of our bodies and minds and emotions. You know
those things we cling to as false securities, the things that hold us in
bondage. God, this moment we give these over to you. Help us, each day, to keep
putting these into your care, trusting that you will redeem and renew.
God who loves all people, we lift up
to you prayers for our community. We ask for your tender presence and healing
touch for Joe Hendry … 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 …………)
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
God’s generous act in Jesus Christ invites
our generosity. Identifying with our poverty, Jesus leads us to true riches. We
are called to give according to our means, that God’s bounty to us may be
shared through us.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Bless
these gifts, we pray. May these gifts relieve suffering and reveal hope. May
they give meaning to all who give and all who receive. We dedicate them, God,
to your kingdom work.
CLOSING HYMN: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” Glory #39
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Wait and watch for all that God is
doing in your life, even when you don’t understand what is happening or why.
Wait on the Lord and trust that God is faithful.
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
June 27 No
Deacons meeting
July 1 Begin yard sale donations - leave on stage downstairs
July 6 10:30 a.m. Women’s
Spirituality
July 8 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
July 11 no M&M
July 13 6:00 p.m. Session
July 15 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
July 18 No Worship
& Music
July 18 1:00 p.m. Prayer Shawl Ministry
July 20 10:30 a.m. Women’s Spirituality
July 25 following worship Deacons
July 27 no PPW lunch meeting
PRAYER
CARE:
Joe Hendry (hip
surgery), Sandy Cargill (pre-cancer surgical procedures), 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 (pulmonary fibrosis, breast cancer), and Courtney
Ziegler (Huntington’s).
LECTIONARY
FOR 7/4/21
Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark
6:1-13
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