PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 10th Sunday after Pentecost August 1, 2021
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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.
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.
-
M&M
meets next Sunday following worship
-
Pastor
will be on vacation 8/2 through 8/16
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, children of the Creator,
to learn the fear of God.
We
bow in awe before Divine Majesty
and
cry out for God’s help.
God is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
God
hears us when we call
and
delivers us from our troubles.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but God delivers them from their pain.
God
redeems our lives and gives them purpose.
God
is with us in this time and place.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
We hear you calling us, loving God, to a
life of humility, gentleness, and patience. Keep your call before us in this
hour that we may recognize and celebrate our oneness in Jesus Christ. May your
Spirit unite us in the bond of peace. Speak to us of the Savior, who bore
humanity’s shame that we might learn to bear with one another in love. Draw us
to a common faith, in spite of our differences. Lead us into new depths of
trust beyond our knowing, and along new pathways of service outdistancing our
fears. Amen.
OPENING
SONG: “From the Sun’s Rising” LU#25
CALL TO CONFESSION
We who are tossed about in a sea of
competing images and priorities are summoned before God to be drawn back to a
life centered by faith. Let us call upon God’s mercy and forgiveness.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
O
God, our transgressions are many. We have sinned against you and done evil in
your sight. We have wandered far from your truth. You alone know the extent of
our guilt. You are justified to pass judgment and sentence us. We are crushed
by the wrong we have allowed and the good we have avoided. We plead for mercy.
Wash us thoroughly and cleanse us deep within. Put a new and right spirit in us
and restore to us the joy of your salvation. Help us to lead lives worthy of
your call to us, (continue
with personal prayers ….) in Jesus’
name. 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 34:11-22
Come, O children, listen
to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Which of you desires life, and
covets many days to enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from
speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The
eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry. The
face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from
the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them
from all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the
crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord
rescues them from them all. He keeps all their bones; not one of them will be
broken. Evil brings death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will
be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take
refuge in him will be condemned.
SCRIPTURE 2: Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the
calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with
patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in
all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. …
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of
ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the
measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to
and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by
their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must
grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole
body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as
each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up
in love.
SERMON: “Living a Life Worthy” Rev. Jean Hurst
You are special! And as a Christian
you get special treatment. Among the many benefits of being a follower of
Jesus, you get gifts! Uh….it’s not quite like the pretty wrapped packages with
lovely bows that you get for your birthday. It’s a bit more complicated. We’ll
come back to that.
Since I’ve already named you as
Christian, what does that mean to you? What is it that you expect to get out of
your faith experience? Those gifts I mentioned? Maybe it’s the warm and fuzzy
relationship with Jesus. Or it might be Jesus as a source of friendship and
guidance and forgiveness. Or perhaps the real motivation is that ultimate
prize—salvation and eternal life. Those are certainly good things, but they’re
only part of the picture. And if your expectations stop there, you’re likely
falling short of your calling.
Sometimes we’re very like children.
It’s all about me and I am the center of my universe. Do we tend to want
everything done for us or like infants do we want to be fed and comforted and
cared for without having to do anything ourselves? Is that something we would
really want, to be relegated to a corner and feel that we had nothing to give
back in response to the love and grace we receive?
Today’s passage assures us that is not
the case. There are three themes in this scripture. One is the centrality of
Christ. Another is the unity of the church. The third is the sanctification of
believers. Sanctification is kind of a tough one to understand. It basically
means to be made holy.
According
to the Apostle Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in
all our unloveliness that we start to become godlike or sanctified. Frederick Buechner in his book Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, uses
the analogy of Beauty and the Beast, saying, “it is only when the Beast
discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself
becomes beautiful.” (p. 104)
Buechner
maintains that it is a slow and often painful process in becoming sanctified.
He says there is often a part of ourselves that prefers our sin and that there
are few of us who don’t drag our feet most of the way. Sin has its attractions.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t lure us. We have a love/hate relationship with sin.
That
reminds me of a favorite poem called The Vagabond House by Don Blanding which
describes the perfect (and fictional) house. There’s a section where he
describes the artwork:
The second picture .
. . a freakish thing . . .
Is gaudy and bright as a macaw’s wing,
An impressionist smear called “Sin”,
A nude on a striped zebra skin
By a Danish girl I knew in France.
My respectable friends will look askance
At the purple eyes and the scarlet hair,
At the pallid face and the evil stare
Of the sinister, beautiful vampire face.
I shouldn’t have it about the place,
But I like . . . while I loathe . . . the beastly thing,
And that’s the way
that one feels about sin.
We like, while we loathe. But sin doesn’t have to maintain a
hold on us or define us. Buechner offers hope, saying “But little by
little—less by taking pains than by taking it easy—the forgiven person starts
to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the
loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the
process, Paul says, is eternal life.”
It is not a solitary journey to that eternal life. We do it
together, as a faith community. Paul puts much emphasis on unity within the
church. It is a critical aspect of living that worthy life. The church is the
body of Christ in the world. The word and concept of ‘one’ permeates the
passage. It is repeated seven times: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. How can we be divisive within
the church and still claim to be the body of Christ which is ‘one’? We are
called to build up the body of Christ in all that we do.
But does that mean we have to be in lock step with each other?
Is it okay to have different viewpoints and understandings? Of course. What
becomes the challenge is to navigate those differences in a way that allows us
to continue being the church rather than creating barriers or breaking up the church.
We get into trouble when we create absolutes and draw unnecessary lines in the
sand. We need to beware of human constructs as opposed to God’s purposes,
plans, and truths—and God’s grace and love.
To that end, we are each gifted with certain abilities to be
used in the work of the church and for the building up of the church. This
passage lists just a few of those gifts. Many others are listed elsewhere in
Paul’s letters. We might be intimidated by the thought of having to use some
gifts while for other gifts we might realize we’re already doing those things.
God gifts each according to their own ability, experience, skills and perhaps
even according to how they need to grow and mature in the faith.
For those put off by the term spiritual gifts, 1 Corinthians 12 offers the word ‘activities’ as
well and emphasizes that it is for the common good. So to list some of those
other gifts or activities, there is wisdom, knowledge, faith, teaching,
healing, serving, encouraging, leading, and mercy. If those aren’t enough to
make you believe there’s an important part for you to play in the church and in
God’s kingdom work, consider the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness
(Gal 5:22 RSV).
If, even after hearing those options, you’re still hesitant,
consider Paul’s assertion in Romans 11 that the gifts and the
call of God are irrevocable (Rom 11:29 RSV). We
can run but we can’t hide. Being gifted is part of the call.
These gifts are to be used for the good of the whole to equip
each other for ministry. That word ministry doesn’t mean just doing the work of
the church. The word equip comes from the Greek word meaning ‘the setting of a
bone’ which comes from a verb meaning ‘to reconcile’, ‘to restore’, to create’,
‘to prepare.’ It is to align ourselves with what God intends.
And part of what God intends is for us to lead a life worthy of
our calling and to do it with humility and gentleness, with
patience, bearing with one another in love, and doing our best to maintain that
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And there, once again, is our
admonishment to love. Remember that love is not simply an emotion, but rather a
choice, an act of will.
We are to bear with one another in love. The first reaction
to that might be the thought that we are to put up with one another, tolerate
each other despite our differences and disagreements. But bearing with one
another in love also means to sacrifice for another and to help carry another
person’s burdens. It is not to feel warm and fuzzy about each other but to act
according to our calling, to live out love by serving one another.
As I said at the start, you are special. As a follower of
Jesus, you are set apart, named by God, gifted by Jesus. Knowing that, we are
to live lives worthy of our calling. ‘Worthy’ is an uncomfortable word. It
conjures up a sense of judgement and fear of failing. And often, here in
church, we are told that God sees us as worthy and loves us no matter what. So
we cringe a little at the implication. What if I am seen as unworthy?
What if, instead of judgement, we considered it a
challenge, something to strive for? We are Christians. We are followers of
Jesus. We are children of God, children of grace. We are created in the image
of God, created according to the nature of God. All that gives us much to live into. The challenge is to
live up to who we are.
Look at the standards this passage calls us to: humility,
gentleness, patience, extending grace, carrying one another’s burdens, peacemakers,
creating unity, gifted, people of hope, people of faith, builders of the
church, and people of love. We have a special calling as followers
of Jesus. But we don’t always, all at once, or consistently live into those.
Don’t despair. For one, it’s a process and in that process is our growth as
Christians. As well, remember that each of us, special in God’s eyes, has been
given a measure of Christ’s grace. It is that grace that enables us to lead the
worthy life.
So
when you are faced with a difficult or challenging situation, remember that
Christ’s grace will empower you to remember who you are, to draw on your gifts,
and to respond with humility, gentleness, patience and love. It’s who you are.
And you are worthy. Thanks be to God.
HYMN: “Help
Us Accept Each Other” Glory #754
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
God of grace and steadfast love, you
are beyond our imagining. All that our hearts yearn for in your presence, you
provide. When we stumble, your hand is there to steady us. When we are lonely
and feel cut off, you pursue us and embrace us in your persistent love. In our
darkest hour, in our deepest despair, you are there to comfort us and lead us
out. You refuse to let our guilt, our shame, or our sin to rule our lives.
We seek wholeness, integrity, and
peace. In you we find acceptance and self-worth. You fill our emptiness, rub
smooth the rough spots of our selfishness, self-justification, pride, prejudice
and fear. Your Spirit opens up our tight spaces to feel the freedom of the
skies, the hope of the morning sun, and the joy of the after-rain color.
Tender God, as we seek and find all of
this with you, we pray for those close to us, for Joe Hendry … Sandy Cargill … Larry
Koskela … Linda and Bill Kaesemeyer … Somer Bauer … Tasha Sizemore … Beverly
Patterson … Lois White … Virginia …
Margaret Dunbar … Darlene … Trisha … Dave … Jacob … George and Joyce … Jennifer
… Chuck … Courtney … Ethel. (Additional prayers …………)
And God of all, even as we experience
this incredible acceptance, forgiveness, and transformation in you, the grace
that heals and makes us whole, we pray that for all your children, for the
lost, the lonely, the hurting, the hungry, for those who live in fear and
despair, for those we are alienated from, those we dislike even though we are
called to love, even for those we call enemy.
We
pray in the name of the one who heals and redeems:
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 supplies the resources we have to
give. We are simply stewards. Let us participate in God’s redeeming activity
through our offerings of self and substance.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER
OF DEDICATION
Holy
God, may our gifts be a worthy response to your call, and our service be a
faithful reply to the love we have known in Christ. May these offerings and our
lives be poured out in all humbleness, meekness, and patience to communicate
your love and your peace. Amen.
THE LORD’S SUPPER
Song
of Preparation: “I
Come with Joy” Glory #515
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. Our
Lord invites us 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 …………….
*portions of
prayer adapted from prayer by Rev. Steve Kliewer, Interim General Presbyter,
EOP
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: “Joyful,
Joyful, We Adore Thee” Glory #611
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
You have been fed by the Spirit. Walk
now where the Spirit leads. Love one another with patience and trust, living a
life worthy of your calling.
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.
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LOOKING
AHEAD
8/3/21 10:30 a.m. Women’s Spirituality
8/15/21 1:00 p.m. Prayer
Shawl Ministry
8/17/21 10:30 a.m. Women’s
Spirituality
8/22/21 following worship Deacons
PRAYER
CARE:
Sandy Cargill (radiation),
Larry Koskela (stomach and joint issues), Linda and Bill Kaesemeyer (Bill’s
heart/breathing issues), Somer Bauer (breast cancer), Tasha Sizemore (Crohn’s),
Lois White (lymphoma), 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 8/8/21
1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25—5:2; John
6:35, 41-51
