PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 14th Sunday after Pentecost August
29, 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.
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 to listen for all God seeks to teach
us.
God has given us birth by the word of
truth.
We
are drawn to God by the power of the Spirit.
Our
hearts are touched when we know God’s care.
Every perfect gift comes to us from God.
God’s image is a part of each one of us.
God’s
grace has been poured into our lives.
Wisdom
and understanding are offered to us.
Who will dwell on God’s holy hill?
Those who walk uprightly and speak the
truth.
We will
honor God by honoring our neighbors.
We
will act toward them as we wish to be treated.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Our hearts overflow with longings too
great for words, gracious God. You have been so good to us, yet we are
dissatisfied. We have many things to enjoy, but seldom have we found our home
with you. Meet us here and awaken us to your presence. Speak your truth to draw
us away from the lure of temptations. May this time of worship help us to
become wise and understanding people, eager to live as the body of Christ,
making a difference in the world as Jesus did so long ago on the shores of
Galilee. Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “Change My Heart, O God”
LU#61
CALL TO CONFESSION
How easily we notice the sins of others,
finding ways to criticize what they do or do not do. How much harder it is to
believe that we are sinners needing to repent of habits that separate us from
God and set us against neighbors who are different from us. Let us seek
forgiveness.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
O God, we admit that all is not well with us.
We are easily angered and slow to forgive. We speak without listening and
pretend to listen without really hearing. Our tongues become weapons rather
than instruments of healing. We are more critical than helpful toward the poor
in our midst. Hidden in our hearts are the attitudes that produce avarice,
deceit and violation of our promises to you and to one another. Turn us around
so we can accept your forgiveness and learn to love ourselves as you want us to
be. (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 15
Lord, who may dwell
in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless
and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no
slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his
fellowman, who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who
keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does
not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be
shaken.
SCRIPTURE 2: James 1:17-27
Every good endowment
and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights
with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he
brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits
of his creatures. Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to
hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the
righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of
wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save
your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving
yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a
man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes
away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect
law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a
doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is
religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's
religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father
is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself
unstained from the world.
SERMON “What Are You Doing?” Rev.
Jean Hurst
Is it all just
words or does it mean something? That
seems to be the premise of this text. The author of James appears to hold a
mindset that goes something like this: God loves you. God loves the people you
love. God also loves all those people you don’t like, who look and think and
act and believe differently than you do. God’s way and will are love. Because
God loves each and every one of us, God wants us to do the same. God wants us to
love ourselves and God wants us to love each another. And that shows that we
love God.
The author emphasizes that
God does not change. This isn’t about conditional love. This isn’t about loving
under certain circumstances and withholding love if those circumstances change.
God doesn't love us if we're good and then turn the cold shoulder to us if
we're bad. God is love all the time. God expects us to strive for the same
standard. Love God and love each other.
According to James, that’s not
simply about what is in your heart. It’s more about what comes out of your heart. Loving God, then, is
more than just words, more than hearing words and speaking words. It is about
what we do with those words. If God
wants us to love, then love becomes action, not some warm and fuzzy feeling and
not empty words claimed but not lived.
Our faith and our relationship with
God is not simply about embracing the right religious doctrine. That would be
very like the Pharisees believing all they had to do was follow the dictates of
their religious laws to be right in God’s eyes. Jesus quashed that notion in
Matthew 12 when he called them a brood of vipers and said, “How can you who are
evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil
man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” He went on to say
that each of us would have to give account on the day of judgement for evey
careless word we have spoken.
I wonder if Jesus’ warning to the
Pharisees is what prompted James to give this advice: Let every person be quick
to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Have you ever wished you’d followed that
advice? How often have we jumped to the wrong conclusion because we didn’t wait
long enough to hear the truth of a situation? How many times have we spoken
words that we wished we could pull back as soon as they were out of our mouth?
How often have we been more
concerned with mentally formulating our own retort rather than really hearing
what the other person is saying? We want to be ready to get our opinion in when
they pause to draw a breath. Often we are intent on proving ourselves right and
the other person wrong. If we were asked to paraphrase what the other person
said, we’d be at a loss.
How many times have we let our
anger flare up and ended up regretting it? Notice that James doesn’t tell us not to get angry. There is a time and
place for anger. Anger can prompt us to take appropriate action to correct
wrongs and fight injustice.
James says be slow to anger. Don’t let a quick temper lead you to harsh words or
regrettable actions. Don’t let anger send the wrong message about who you are
as a follower of Jesus. Often anger is ego driven, concerned about ourselves
and not about the other person. And anger gives rise to anger. It damages relationships.
If we’re slow to anger, that pause might give us time to consider less hurtful
ways to resolve an issue.
That is a point that James would
make. This passage is about how we live our faith. According to James our faith
is not just about our devotion to God. It is also about our care for each
other. By caring about and for others,
we are witnessing to the truth of God’s word. The admonishment to be
quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger is very much about how we
care for other people.
Do our actions demonstrate our
faith? It’s an important consideration about living out what we believe, not
about securing our salvation. The letter of James often gets dismissed as
contrary to salvation by grace. With its emphasis on ‘works’—the things that we do, people may think it’s saying that
we can be saved by the things we do. Through the Reformation, we embrace the
words from Ephesians 2:8-9: For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--not the
result of works, so that no one may boast. But James isn’t saying that the behavior he advocates
is works salvation. He’s saying that it’s proof of our faith.
In Chapter 2, the letter tells us
in no uncertain terms that faith without works is worthless. Just professing
our faith without living it is useless. It also doesn’t touch anyone else in
life-giving ways. James says that genuine faith, a faith based on covenant and
relationship, requires actions.
What we really believe is
demonstrated, not in what we say, but in what we do. If Jesus tells us over and
over again to love, then we will live that love. We will act in a way that
shows compassion and mercy and caring for others, especially those who are
vulnerable and powerless.
James provides a little parable to
help make his point. If you listen to the words of Jesus’ teachings but don’t
follow through and live them, it’s a lot like looking at yourself in a mirror
and then walking away. Pretty soon you’ve forgotten what you look like. If you
listen to the word but don’t follow through, you forget who you are as a
Christian and a follower of Jesus.
Being a follower of Jesus, living
his teachings, loving as he commanded can be played out in many ways. It
involves our time, our abilities, our resources, and our activities. It can be
intentional actions like working at Hhope to prepare rooms for women who have
to escape a violent home environment. It can be financial, like giving money
for earthquake relief in Haiti. It can be through your special abilities to
serve on boards and committees that serve the needs of the community. It can be
your time as you make items for the PPW Harvest Bazaar to raise money for PPW
to help other organizations serve the needy.
Those giving and doing things are
important. Remember how the passage started: Every generous act of giving and
every perfect gift comes from above. Your time, your labor, your resources,
using your abilities are all gifts that you offer in the name of Jesus. And
there’s more.
There is the option of going out
into the community and reaching beyond to make a difference. There is also a
living out of your faith in your personal life—in your family, your work, your
social activities, your church relationships, your neighborhood. Going back to
James’ admonishment to listen, hold your tongue and keep your anger in check
applies to our day-to-day life.
The family is the best place to
practice that. It is in the family that we have the closest relationships that
most try our patience. Within the family setting we tend to let our guard down,
that we ‘let it all out’. It is there that we so often speak without thinking,
that we allow our anger to flare unchecked, that we fail to truly listen, that
we take one another for granted. It is there, within the family setting that
fragile people are so often wounded by careless words.
Going out from there into the
reaches of our daily lives, if we listen with our hearts, we find children of
God who are in need of a kind word, a listening ear, a caring heart. It is
there that we can show what it means to be a follower of Jesus and a fellow
child of God as we offer comfort and encouragement and compassion and the gift of
presence.
We are in a better position to know
what another person is going through in their lives if we follow James advice
to be quick to listen and slow to speak. When we do perceive the needs of
another human being in front of us, then we can be a Christ-presence for them.
Our actions matter as we put what
we believe into action in our relationships with one another. As James urges,
be doers of the Word and not hearers only. As we follow that advice, God will
bless us. Amen.
HYMN: “Lord,
I Want to be a Christian” Glory #729
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Spirit of the Living God, open our hearts
to a far-reaching compassion that extends to the most obscure corners of this
troubled planet. Remind us that you are the God of all people. Teach us the
meaning of love that knows no boundaries and has no second thoughts. Guide our
acts of mercy and generosity. Open us to the cries of our brothers and sisters.
We pray for our broken world and ask
that your Spirit would act in the midst of it: the wildfires here and around
the globe, the droughts everywhere, the horrible spread of Covid, the situation
in Afghanistan, the recovery from the earthquake in Haiti, the violence in our
country, the divisiveness we have so much trouble healing.
We pray for those close to us: for Sandy
Cargill … Elaine LaChapelle … Larry Koskela … Linda and Bill Kaesemeyer … Somer
Bauer … Tasha Sizemore … Beverly Patterson … Virginia … Margaret Dunbar …
Darlene … Trisha … Dave … Jacob … George and Joyce … Jennifer … Chuck …
Courtney … Ethel … and Pastor Jean. (Additional prayers …………)
We pray for ourselves. There are times we
walk on the dark side of the soul, when we despair of life ever being normal
again, when fears and worries dominate our thoughts. We often grow weary or we
feel lost and alone. We struggle with the ways others have hurt us or
disappointed us. Remind us that the way of love is complicated, difficult, and
fraught with pain, yet it is the only way worth following, the only truth worth
believing, the only life worth living. Grant us faith to live it and to look
for it.
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
Let us not forget that the bounty we enjoy
is only loaned to us for a little while, to be managed to the glory of God.
Every generous act of giving is prompted by God’s own generosity toward us. We
are invited to be part of the church’s outreach to those who most need to know
that someone cares.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Our hearts overflow with thanksgiving for all the
bounty you entrust to our stewardship, O God of light. As you have been so
generous to us, we bring these gifts of our labors and our lives that others
will experience your generous love. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “God of
Grace and God of Glory” Glory #307
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
Your charge comes from the author of
James: be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. And
always, be doers of the word as Jesus taught 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
-
September
5 no service in the park
-
September
7 no
Women’s Spirituality
-
September
9 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
-
September
12 following worship M&M
-
September
14 6:00 p.m. Session
-
September
19 following worship Worship & Music
-
September
21 10:30 a.m. Women’s Spirituality
-
September
23 8:30 a.m. Men’s Prayer Group
-
September
26 following worship Deacons
-
September
28 noon PPW lunch meeting
PRAYER CARE:
Sandy Cargill
(breast cancer), Larry Koskela (stomach and joint issues), Linda and Bill
Kaesemeyer (Bill’s heart/breathing issues), Somer Bauer (breast cancer), Tasha
Sizemore (Crohn’s), Jacob Cunningham, Trisha Cagley (health problems), Dave
Clark (kidney cancer), Virginia DesIlets (age 99!), Margaret Dunbar (home now),
George and Joyce Sahlberg (health issues), Jennifer Schirm (Parkinson’s), Chuck
VanHise (leg/walking rehab), Darlene Wingfield (pulmonary fibrosis, breast
cancer), Courtney Ziegler (Huntington’s), and Pastor Jean Hurst (kidney cancer
returned).
LECTIONARY
FOR SEPTEMBER 5
Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-10 (11-13),
14-17, Mark 7:24-37
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