PIONEER
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 9th Sunday after Pentecost July
25, 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.
-
Deacons
do not meet in July
-
On
Saturday, July 31st, a Pool Party & BBQ will be held at Judy
Hook’s home, 305 W. Jameson, Hines at 4:00ish with the BBQ starting around 5:00.
Bring your own meat and a potluck dish to share. Let Judy know by Friday, July
30, if you’re coming (541-413-0750). Bathing suits or shorts and tops can be
worm.
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
Be glad in God, and rejoice, O righteous;
Shout for joy, all upright of heart.
God
has called us by name
And
poured out abundant mercy upon us.
God has multiplied our resources
And blessed us with food for body and
soul.
Christ
dwells in our hearts through faith
That
we may be rooted and grounded in love.
God grants us power to comprehend
Love’s breadth and length, its heights and
depths.
The
love of Christ surpasses knowledge
And
fills us with the fullness of God.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Great God, whose glory is beyond the reach
of our imagination, and whose response to us is more generous than we can ask
or think, deliver us from the limitations we impose on our own humanity. You
call us from our hiding places to find refuge and strength in you. You summon
us from our self-interest to share what we have, that all your people may eat.
Help us to hear you in this hour, that we may respond every day to your will.
Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “In the Bulb There Is a Flower” LU#88
CALL TO CONFESSION
Let us come before God, who understands us
as we are, yet is always ready to help us become all we are intended to be. Let
us never seek to hide the guilt we know or to perpetuate the blindness that
keeps us from realizing the full extent of our sin.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
O
God, you know our secret hearts. You are aware of our distortions, our
jealousies, our lust. You observe our unfaithfulness, our treachery, our
unwarranted fears. We are corrupted by greed, self-indulgence, and desire to be
entertained. We do not take responsibility for our misconduct, our abuse of
power, our lack of trust in you. We have little sense of vision to see beyond
immediate circumstances or to embrace new possibilities. We miss the signs of
your grace and resist the empowerment of your Spirit. Mighty God, still the storms
within us with your transforming peace and boundless forgiveness (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 6:1-21
After this Jesus went
to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a
multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who
were diseased. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his
disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his
eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to
Philip, "How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" This
he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him,
"Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a
little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him,
"There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are
they among so many?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now
there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five
thousand.
Jesus then took the
loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were
seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their
fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing
may be lost." So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with
fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the
people saw the sign which he had done, they said, "This is indeed the
prophet who is to come into the world!" Perceiving then that they were
about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to
the mountain by himself.
When evening came,
his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea
to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea rose
because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four
miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat. They
were frightened, but he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid."
Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at
the land to which they were going.
SCRIPTURE 2: Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow
my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes
its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that
you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and
grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all
the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to
accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory
in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
SERMON “Filled with the Fullness of God” Rev.
Jean Hurst
Paul is a pastor.
This might sound like a pretty normal pastoral prayer that Paul is offering on
behalf of the little church he started in Ephesus—if it wasn’t for the fact
that Paul is in prison in Rome awaiting execution. You get attached to churches
that you pastor. You develop a love for the people in the pews. I can imagine
how much more so that would be for Paul who founded that church.
And what does it mean to the
people, those in the figurative pews? Well, they’re scared. Paul is their
spiritual leader. They know he is in prison and they don’t know what’s going to
happen to him, but they’re seriously worried for him. They’re worried for themselves as well. What will
happen to them? How will they manage to go forward without Paul to guide them?
Paul reaches out, trying to reassure them and prepare them for what is coming.
Despite his own dire straits, Paul is thinking of his flock, remembering how he
started that little church, having watched them come into the faith and grow in
that faith.
Let’s examine what Paul was
asking God on behalf of his flock. First he asks that they be strengthened in
their inner being with power through the Holy Spirit. Think about that inner
self. Don’t we show one side of us to the world and keep another part hidden, shared
only with those we truly trust? And then there are certain aspects of our inner
selves that no one gets to see. We have areas of shame or fear or less than
noble thoughts and feelings we don’t want others to know about.
Paul is praying that the
inner person, that very private and personal side of us be strengthened—and not
just made stronger but empowered by the Holy Spirit. Imagine that through the
Holy Spirit you are given extra power—that power gives you the ability to
control and determine how you think and feel and live.
It’s not simply being empowered to do more or better in
your actions and in your work for the kingdom. Rather it is the making of you
into a better person, who you are inside. From that flows the way you live your
life in the world, the things you think, the things you feel, the things you
do. Rather than throwing up your hands in defeat, saying, “I can’t,” you are
empowered to go beyond what you thought was in you, to draw from a reservoir of
strength that you didn’t have before.
The second thing Paul prayed
was that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith even as they are
being rooted and grounded in love. Think about what it is to have a house
guest. Don’t you make sure before they come that the house is clean and ready
for them? Don’t you try to serve them better food than you might make just for
yourself? You try to do all you can to be hospitable, making them comfortable,
ensuring that they feel welcome. The conversation is different when there’s a
houseguest. You’re more polite to each other in the family than you might be if
there weren’t a guest present to observe.
Now, what if that guest were to stay an extended
time—months or years? How would things change? Would you be a bit less
attentive, letting them fend for themselves more? You’d settle into normal,
less formal eating patterns. And interactions within the family would normalize
as well, not as carefully guarded, not so much on best behavior. That new
resident would see and experience you as you really are.
Do you see the difference between dwelling with someone
and simply being a guest? With Jesus dwelling in our hearts, it’s not a
temporary arrangement. It’s a living with, day in and day out. It’s being able
to be who you truly are. As Paul says, it is through faith. Part of that is
believing that Jesus wants what is best for you.
This isn’t a prison guard to keep you shackled. This
isn’t watching to catch you doing something wrong. It is the faith that lets
you believe Jesus loves you and supports and encourages and empowers you. This
is the friend who will never leave you, the one you can lean on, the one who is
there for you. It is the one who stays beside you through every pain and sorrow
and obstacle in your life. Jesus is your salvation. He loved you enough to die
for you and reconciled you to God. But
it didn’t end there with Jesus moving on to the next person, the next
challenge. Jesus stays with you, abides with you, dwells with you and continues
that relationship.
And Paul’s prayer is that it is all rooted and grounded
in love. Without love, what’s the point? Jesus said loving God and loving each
other is more important than all the laws and commandments in scripture. He
said that it was important to love the unlovable—even to love our enemies. Jesus
said people would know we were his followers by our love.
Paul said we should be rooted and grounded in that love.
If a tree is rooted in the soil, those roots draw their nourishment and life
from that soil. If we’re rooted in love, we’re anchored there. That’s what we
hold onto and draw our life from. It’s what keeps us steady and moored, keeps
us from sinking or drifting away on a sea of chaos. Love is what we hold onto.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. Being grounded is being solidly connected
with who you are—a child of God, a child of love.
That rooting and grounding gives us the power to grasp
the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love and to know the love
of Christ. That knowing is not a mental exercise, not a head thing. It is
totally heart. It is not reading about God’s
love, it is experiencing it. To know, not just intellectually but with your
whole being, that love of Christ—not just for yourself but for all of the
family of God. To know the love of Christ is to know the depth of that love as
being great enough for Jesus to willingly give his life on our behalf. To know
the breadth of the love of Christ is to know that it is not just our individual
privilege but a circle big enough to take in all of humanity. To know the expanse
of that love is to know that no matter what we do, God will never love us any
less.
Having that power to comprehend the unknowable love of
God then allows you to be filled with the fullness of God. And how do we
explain the fullness of God? What is the fullness of God? Paul makes it sound
simple but the mystery of God is so big, so deep we can’t get our minds around
it, much less our hearts.
Debi Thomas is a writer and blogger in California. She
wrote an article that appeared in the July 5, 2017 edition of Christian Century. She wrote this piece
as a conversation with God and titled it Why
I Stay. Women’s Spirituality used this as a discussion focus around the
topic of why we keep coming to church. We came up with reasons like community
and relationships, support and encouragement, caring and sharing and learning
and worshiping. And yes, sometimes because it is habit or tradition.
Thomas’ article actually went a little deeper. I think
she was talking as much about why she stays in relationship with God and not
just why she goes to church. She began with childhood experiences within the
church and how now, as an adult, there is a visceral response to the
accoutrements of stained glass and altar cloths and candle wax. Flowing from that visceral response, she says
her breathing slows, her muscles unclench, and she remembers how to sing loud
and clear. She speaks of God as her rootedness, her air and water. She says to
God, “You are the closest I ever come to flourishing.”
Stories were part of that rooting. She resonates with
those biblical stories and characters. In them she finds her own story, a story
that aches to be told. She says God was
her first house, first father, first mother, first love, first hate, first
heartbreak, first safety, first terror. Agreeing with Peter she says, “Lord, if
I left, to whom would I go?”
According to Thomas, God
asks good questions and her answers don’t shock God. I love these questions and
responses because I think they reflect the honesty of what we feel even if we
wouldn’t say it aloud. God asks, Why are
you so afraid? She responds, “Are you kidding me?” Do you still not understand? (Nope, not even a little bit.) What do you want me to do for you? (Um,
how much time do we have?) Do you want to
get well? (Occasionally.) Do you love
me? (I think so. Or, I want to. Or, not yet. Or…) How long shall I put up with you? (A little longer, please.)
Thomas stays in her faith
because of life—the sorrows and desires for answers, the disappointments and
struggles. She stays because she wants to know the ends of the stories, because
she yearns for more than she has. She senses that her yearning comes from God.
Because, she says, “Death, where is thy sting?” is a mockery, but “Jesus wept”
is not.
She stays because God hounds
her and she can’t get rid of God and doesn’t seem to want to because there is a
mutual pursuit and every once in a while she has an epiphany and the hunger
within her becomes a luminous moment. She said God is not who she thought God
was so she waits for the revealing. She speaks of wanting to contain God but
not wanting a God that small.
She stays because she has a
God worthy of perilous journeys, a God she can wrestle with, a God who feeds
her hungers, a God who knows the loneliness of her desert times, a God who can
contend with who she is inside.
I’ll read the balance of her
article because it says much about why she stays in this thing called faith: “Because
you suffered, and only a suffering God can help. Because you spoke of joy, and
I need to learn how to laugh. Because I am wired to seek you, and I will not
let you go. Because my ache for you is the heart of my aliveness. Because I am
still your stubborn child, and I insist on resurrection.”
What is the fullness of God
that we should be filled with it? It is more than the vastness of creation,
more than the miracle of life. It is much about who we are because of who God
is. It is about who we will become because God believes in us and challenges us
and draws us into the full potential of who we were created to be. It is about
our story and God’s story intertwined. It is about one who loves and accepts us
exactly as we are, though we are fragile, fallible, sometimes failing, most
often imperfect human beings with the spark of the divine. The fullness of God
is the very image of what we were created into.
This is the God we worship.
This is our creator. This is the one who loves us with a breadth and length and
depth and height that we struggle to get our hearts around. This is the God
whose Spirit strengthens our inner being with power. This is the God who gives
us the indwelling and love of Jesus Christ. This is the God who roots and
grounds us in love. This is the God who is able to accomplish abundantly more
than you can ever ask or imagine. This is the fullness of God.
~~~~
Once again I will pray as Paul prayed. This time, hear it
as an individual prayer rather than collectively for the congregation. This
prayer is for you in your own faith
journey, in your own life situation. Let us pray: According to the riches of
God’s glory, may God grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with
power through the Holy Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your heart through
faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have
the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length
and height and depth of God’s love, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And may the God of grace, work within you to
accomplish abundantly far more than all you can ever ask or imagine.
HYMN: “Love
Divine, All Loves Excelling” Glory #366
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
God of abundance, you have blessed us
in countless ways. All that we have is by your grace. For family and friends,
for home and health, for all the things and activitiesin our livds, for
freedoms and opportunities, Lord we thank you. And sometimes in the midst of
all those gifts, Lord, we find ourselves scared and hurting. God those areas
where we still find lack, uncertainty, and brokenness, we ask for your healing
presence and touch. Continue to sustain us, gentle God and guide us in our
actions and reactions.
We pray for those close to us: for the
family and friends of Kathy Dryer in Kathy’s death last week … for 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 …………)
We pray for our country, for its
leaders, for those who serve in the military, for our law enforcement,
emergency response people, and medical providers. We pray for those fighting
wild fires and pray that those fires would soon be contained. Help those who
have lost homes and belongings and perhaps even loved ones to the fires. We
pray for our brothers and sisters around the world, for wisdom for their
leaders, for healing and protection from the Covid virus, for their health and
wellbeing and sufficiency. We pray that they might have hope for a better tomorrow.
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 have gladly taken more than our share
of the world’s good. Let us give in proportion to the blessings we have
received. May the church be at the forefront of feeding, healing, caring for,
and loving God’s people. We are the church, the body of Christ, making a
difference in the world.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
We join with Jesus in giving thanks for the little
things we can see, that our eyes may be opened to the great possibilities we
had not imagine. May our efforts be multiplied by your grace so there is more
than enough for all. Bless these gifts we pray and multiply them to serve your
kingdom. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “Praise Ye the Lord” Glory #633
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Your charge this week is to imagine
the possibilities. You are challenged to re-examine what you might dismiss as
insignificant and see what God can do with it.
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
July 31 4:00ish Pool
party/BBQ @ Judy Hook’s
8/2-8/16/21 Pastor on
vacation
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:
Family of Kathy
Dryer (Kathy died following surgery 7/19), Sandy Cargill (pre-cancer surgical
procedures), 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, fire loss), 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 8/1/21
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16;
John 6:24-35
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