August 8, 2021 Worship

 PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Worship via Blog          11th Sunday after Pentecost        August 8, 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.

 

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BAPTISM:         Friends, remember your baptism … and be thankful.

 

CALL TO WORSHIP

Wait for God, who deals gently with us.

Watch for God’s appearance among us.

Out of the depths we cry out to God.

Will God hear the voice of our supplications?

In all times and places, we can rely on God.

We can know steadfast love, here and now.

We keep our morning watch together.

We will support one another as we seek to know God.

Find hope in God’s power to redeem us.

Give thanks for the new day God promises to us.

Life’s battles cannot destroy us.

The losses we suffer are not the last word.

 

PRAYER OF THE DAY

We come to you Holy God, with our many needs. Some of us are people facing weighty decisions. Some of us are fighting battles we cannot win. Some have faced unexpected losses that tear at the very fabric of life. There are broken relationships among us, feelings we do not want to admit, realities we do not want to face. There are also joys we have not really celebrated, reasons to give thanks to which we have never given voice. We come, O God, to be lifted out of our ruts and routines, seeking instead to find fullness of life with you. Amen.

 

OPENING HYMN:     “Justified Freely”                                    LU #77

                      

                     

CALL TO CONFESSION

If God should mark iniquities, who could stand? If God counted our sins, how would we ever find forgiveness? Yet, the attitudes and actions that build barriers among us and shut God out of our thinking and decision-making can be overcome. God is ready to help us.

 

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

O Holy Spirit, how we have grieved you! How often our words have been bitter, filled with malice and anger. How easily have we uttered lies of pretension and self-protection. How readily we take for ourselves the rewards of another’s labor! Forgive all that is false and evil within us and among us. Free us from the self-justifying excuses that keep us from reaching out to one another. We want to believe, to trust, to live as imitators of Jesus Christ. Help us, gracious God.  (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 34:1-8

I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together! I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good! Happy is the man who takes refuge in him!

 

SCRIPTURE 2:  Ephesians 4:25-5:2

 

Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

 

SERMON           “Divine Anger”   by Barbara Brown Taylor

 

[This sermon is by Barbara Brown Taylor, taken from her book, God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering.¹  Taylor is an Episcopal priest, a popular speaker and workshop leader, and has been named one of the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world.  She is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College and is the author of numerous books.]

 

          Even before it became politicized, one of the most popular books of the nineties was The Book of Virtues, edited by William J. Bennett.  Subtitled A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, it is full of poems, hymns, fables, and true stories that Bennett has organized under headings such as “Compassion,” “Responsibility,” “Honesty,” “Self-Discipline,” and “Faith.” He wrote it, he said, as a how-to book for moral literacy, a kind of primer on the do’s and don’ts of life with others. He also wrote it as a source of encouragement. “There is a lot we read of or experience in life that is not so encouraging,” he says in his introduction. “This book, I hope, does otherwise....I hope it points us to ‘the better angels of our nature.’”

          Paul could have said the same thing about his Letter to the Ephesians. Written from his jail cell while the known world fell apart, his letter is a treasury of his own teachings, meant to encourage the faithful in a way of life that was in danger of extinction. “Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” he coached them. “Be angry but do not sin.” “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

          If the Christian church has lost its moral authority in our time, it is at least partly because we have not taken Paul’s advice. We have our own book of virtues, but we still struggle with its teaching. We do not, on the whole, speak the truth to our neighbors. We are polite but noncommittal, wanting above all to be liked. We do not live as though we were members of one another. We fight with as much malevolence as any bunch of pagans, dividing ourselves into “us” and “them” at the drop of a hat. We are not kind so much as we are nice, which is about as bland a virtue as you can find, if it is a virtue at all. Like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when we are good we are almost too good and when we are bad we are horrid.

          Paul has a different vision of Christian community. Niceness does not concern him. He does not give two hoots about being liked. No one ever taught him that if you cannot say something nice you should not say anything at all. He knows that when real people live in real community with one another, they will discover real differences and suffer real discord. This is true whether the community is a marriage, a family, a neighborhood, a church, or a whole society. It is not possible to love one another without also hating one another from time to time. When that time comes, Paul says, do not shut up and disappear. Speak the truth in love. Be angry but do not sin. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

          Very few of us were ever taught that anger is part of true love. Even fewer of us have been taught how to handle our anger so that it is part of our health and not part of our sickness. Paul seems to know that being angry and sinning are two different things. The one does not have to lead to the other. It often does, which is why so many of us were taught to hide our anger, but it is entirely possible to be angry with people without sinning--that is, without separating ourselves from them or hurting them in order to spare ourselves the same thing.

          At its most basic level, anger is what is called an “emergency emotion.” Someone or something threatens you--your safety, your loved ones, your home, your values, your self-esteem--and some very predictable things happen inside of you. Your heart rate and blood pressure go up. Your pupils dilate. Your breathing gets shallow and your blood flows away from your hands and feet (in case of injury), which gives you sweaty palms. Your body is now physically prepared to fight the threat or to flee it, but none of this is a conscious decision on your part. It is a reflex, that is all--your body’s ancient way of defending itself against danger. Meanwhile, all your mind knows is that you are M-A-D. Right underneath that madness, of course, is mortal fear, but the mind translates this into anger for purposes of self-defense. This fits well with human nature, which seems to prefer “I’m mad” to “I’m afraid.”

          So there you have it. A hoodlum jumps into your path. Your bloodstream fills with adrenaline and either you give the guy a karate chop or you run for your life, fueled with energy that seems to have come out of nowhere. This is what we call anger--a strong feeling of displeasure at a perceived threat, accompanied by a rush of energy we can use to flee or fight back. I call it one of God’s good gifts--our ability to recognize danger and respond to it--only like so many of God’s gifts, it has some real subtleties to it.

          There are all kinds of ways we can mishandle our anger so that it hurts us instead of helping us. The most popular way is to deny it, especially when the threat is a minor one such as a friend who is always ten minutes later than she says she will be. “Oh, gosh, I’ve done it again,” she says, looking at your watch (she doesn’t wear one). “Are you mad at me?”

          “Nonsense,” you say, smiling at her through clenched teeth. “I’m just glad you’re here.” You are mad, but it seems petty of you to say so, so what you do instead is you save it up and you save it up until one day your friend arrives at her usual time and you take her apart limb by limb. “What is the matter with you? Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? My time is as valuable as yours is, in case you didn’t know, and I am sick and tired of twiddling my thumbs while you take your sweet time doing whatever it is you do while I sit here waiting for you!”

          Almost no one denies anger successfully. It either erupts like that or else it burrows inward. You blame yourself for getting mad in the first place. You tell yourself that you are a wretched person, that you should be able to forgive those who trespass against you no matter what they have done to you, and you resolve once again to ignore your anger in hopes that it will go away. Only it does not go away. It just turns into an ulcer or a bad back or a depression that deepens every day.

          Some people seek help at this point, and the advice they often get is to “let their anger out.” If that is as far as they go, they generally become walking volcanoes, spewing unpleasantness on whoever gets in their way. It is a surprising thing, but psychological studies show that venting anger does not diminish angry feelings. It actually increases them, by stimulating that emergency emotion all over again.

          So what is an angry person to do? “Be angry but do not sin,” Paul says. Speak the truth. Be kind. Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. There is another way, which begins with Paul’s distinction between the emotion of anger and the sin of anger. The emotion is nothing more than a flashing red light that says, “Danger here.” Granted, it tends to come with a surge of energy that can make you dizzy, but it is up to us what we will do with that surge. The crucial thing, for me, is to take responsibility for my anger. It is mine, and it is subject to my interpretation. The more curious I can become about it, the better.

          Why am I feeling threatened? Is the threat real? Is it intentional?  What is my own part in what is going on? Have I got my facts straight? If Paul is right that we are members of one another, then my enemy is part of me. What part, I wonder? Is there something I hate in him because it is easier than hating it in myself? Most important of all, where is God in all this? What is my anger trying to teach me?

          Your mother taught you to count to ten when you were mad so that you could think about these things. If we would still count to ten--or ten hundred, maybe--chances are that we might have something decent to say when we opened our mouths again. We might be able to say how we feel and what we want from our neighbors without expecting them to change on the spot because we said so. We might learn to express ourselves to that we can be heard--without blame or bitterness--and to listen as carefully as we wish to be listened to ourselves. We might even figure out how to be imitators of God.

          Christians, of all people, should know that there is such a thing as a good fight. Read the Bible! God fought with those God loved the most: Abraham, Moses, David, Job. Jacob wrestled the angel. Jonah got sent to his room inside a great fish. Jesus yelled at his disciples as if they were a bunch of truant schoolboys. He called the Pharisees every name he could think of in order to get their attention, but from day one, divine anger has been anger that means to heal and not to harm, to unite and not to divide. That is what makes a fight a good one, and every one of us can learn how.

          Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice, polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not our virtues. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness, and yes, even anger--as long as it is the anger that is part of true love--through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.  Amen.

¹Barbara Brown Taylor, God In Pain; Teaching Sermons on Suffering, p. 32, 1998, Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tennessee

 

HYMN:     “Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive”                      Glory #444

 

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER

          Teach us your ways, O Lord. Take our hand and lead us in your path. Guide us through the storm of grief and fear. Take us through troubled times. Walk with us through our worries and heartaches. Plant seeds of hope in our hearts. Let us be peacemakers for those troubled by tragedy or threat. Grant that we may follow your way of loving acceptance that lifts the heart that is alone and brings hope to dark despair.

          We rely on your loving, healing presence and so we ask that of you for those who are close to us: for Joe Hendry … Sandy Cargill … 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. (Additional prayers …………)

          We lift up our brothers and sisters around the globe. We ask for sufficiency and safety for them, for peace in a violent world, for hope where there is despair, for grace in their every day.

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 has blessed us abundantly. We have the opportunity to express our gratitude for God’s goodness. May our giving reflect the fragrant offering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ!

 

DOXOLOGY

 

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Thank you, God, for your continuing providence. Thank you for the living bread, Jesus Christ, who feeds our spirits. In gratitude, we dedicate our offering and ourselves. May the needs of many be addressed in ways that bring hope, grace, and love to your children. Amen.

CLOSING HYMN:  “O Day of Peace”                            Glory #373

 

CHARGE AND BENEDICTION

I offer you Paul’s admonishment: Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. Let your expression of anger be from a heart of love.

          As you do, know that 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

8/15/21      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:

Joe Hendry (hip surgery recovery), 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), 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 8/15/21

Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58