PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog 25th Sunday after Pentecost November 14, 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.
-
M&M
meets following worship
-
Women’s
Spirituality meets Tuesday at 10:30
-
Worship
& Music meets next Sunday following Worship
-
Prayer
Shawl Ministry meets next Sunday at 1:00 p.m.
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.
CHOIR INTROIT
CALL TO WORSHIP
Come, let us present ourselves before our
God.
Bring all your troubles and anxiety to God
in prayer.
Surely
God knows our thoughts and hears our prayers.
We
find strength for living as we praise God.
Lay down your arrogance and false pride.
Admit your needs as you seek God’s favor.
We
pour out our souls before the living God.
We
do not withhold from God our misery and distress.
God grants our petitions and gives us
peace.
The counsel of our God gladdens our
hearts.
In
God’s presence there is fullness of joy.
As we
meet together, we are encouraged and comforted.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Our hearts exalt in you, O God. All
knowledge has its origin in you. Our deepest hungers are satisfied as you give
counsel and instruct our hearts. Be known to us now, that our covenant with you
may be strengthened. Give confidence to all who enter this sanctuary, that our
faith may grow, our love expand, and our hope find fulfillment. Show us the
path of life, and grant us courage to walk in your ways. Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “We Are the Family of God” LU#16
CALL TO CONFESSION
Let us approach our God in all truth,
confessing the deeds and distractions that have kept us from honoring God and
have divided us from other human beings. We cannot undo all the wrong we have
done, but we can be cleansed from an evil conscience to live a more wholesome
and joyous life.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Mighty
God, we confess the arrogance of our doubts and the falsehood of our denials.
We have neglected to pray and have forgotten to give thanks. Many activities
have become more important to us than gathering for worship. Our busyness
crowds out times of private prayer. We shake our heads at the evil around us
but do little to witness to a better way. Your will is seldom considered and
your pathways of self-sacrificing love rarely explored. Turn us around, God.
Only you can meet our need. (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 16
Protect me, O God,
for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no
good apart from you." As for the holy ones in the land, they are the
noble, in whom is all my delight. Those who choose another god multiply their
sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names
upon my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The
boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not
be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests
secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the
Pit. You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
SCRIPTURE 2: Hebrews 10:11-25
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same
sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all
time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to
wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. For by a single offering
he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after
saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,
says the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their
minds," then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their misdeeds
no more." Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any
offering for sin.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the
blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the
curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the
house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,
with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed
with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another
to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of
some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing
near.
SERMON “We Are the Church” Rev.
Jean Hurst
The writer of today’s passage speaks
to an early church. According to the biblical scholars, the congregation is in
a decline. The congregants are basically tired and discouraged. They are tired
of trying to live the Christian life in a culture that offers no support for it
and are discouraged about the way evil still seems to persist in the world.
Some question the value of following Jesus. Attendance has dropped and
enthusiasm for mission has diminished. They aren’t seeing among themselves a
congregational life that is rich with love and compassion.1
As
this church loses heart, the writer of Hebrews reminds them first of the
priesthood of Christ, the sacrifice Jesus made in order to save them from their
sins, and reminds them of who they are—saved, baptized, sanctified, people of
hope.
He
concludes with the challenge, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to
love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another.” That message says we should consider how to stir
one another up—not for argument, for dissension, for proving who’s right and who’s
wrong, not for divisiveness, but for love and good works.
Perhaps ‘stir one another up’ isn’t
the best choice of words since, in our modern culture, it has more of a
negative, divisive connotation. In fact, various Bible translations have tried
to soften the sound of this passage by using the words ‘stimulate’, ‘spur’, or
‘encourage’. The original Greek does, in fact, use the words ‘provoke’ and
‘stimulate’. Whichever term we choose, let’s look at the ‘why’ before we choose
our intent. The author of Hebrews makes it plain.
In the tradition of the era,
sacrifices were made to atone for the sins of the people. It’s a daily process
for the priests because, then as now, our perverse natures repeatedly lead us
into sinful behavior. The Old Testament laws for the Jewish people made clear
what kind of sacrifice had to happen for various types of sins. Very often it
was a male goat that was killed and burned as a sacrifice to atone for what
someone had done. Leviticus 16 tells of a process where the priest symbolically
transfers the sins of the entire nation onto a goat and sends it out into the
wilderness, carrying those sins with it. That’s how the term ‘scapegoat’ came
to be.
Did God require those sacrifices? Was
blood required for the atonement of sins? Some scholars suggest that it was not
God who needed the blood sacrifices but that the people themselves desired
something concrete to meet that human need to have a clean conscience. It was
not a bloodthirsty God, but a sense that something of value had to be given up
in order to restore them to a state of purity in their relationship with God.2
But this Hebrews passage says even
those repeated daily sacrifices and offerings cannot take away sins. Day after
day they sacrifice, yet their nature is not changed. They keep returning to
their sins. It is only through the sacrificial blood of Jesus that lasting
atonement occurs. Jesus’ sacrifice of himself was one sacrifice for all times
and all people. Never again does blood have to be spilled on an altar in order
to seek forgiveness. Jesus has done it for us.
For
that we offer sincere thanks. But our passage prompts us to more than just
thankfulness. It also draws us into deeper worship, deeper relationship.
Through that sacrifice of Jesus, we have the confidence to come into the
presence of God. Before that great act of sacrificial love, the symbol of God’s
presence was hidden behind a heavy curtain in the Jewish temple and though the
people came to worship, no one but the priest could pass through those curtains
and enter the presence of God. Now, thanks to Jesus, nothing need separate us
from God.
We
should not disdain that gift by failing to come together to worship as a faith
community. The church is not the building. It is not the denomination. It is
not the doctrine. It is not the pastor. It is the people of God, the body of
Christ in the world—a people forgiven, sanctified, and transformed, a people
given hope and a calling. The original audience for this passage suffered
persecution and exhaustion as a result of being the church, of following Jesus.
In that era, it was risky to gather for worship. It was tempting to sit it out.
They had to be reminded of who they are and why they are to gather together.
We’re
told to hold fast to the confession of our hope. Don’t vacillate. Don’t waver.
Don’t give up. Hang in there. God is faithful. God promised and God keeps those
promises. To be reconciled to God is to be drawn back into relationship.
Relationship is interaction. It is a relationship that transforms, that changes
us into what we were created and called to be. Sometimes it’s tempting to say
we don’t need the church in order to worship God, but the church needs us. It’s
not the time to sit on the sidelines. It is the time to act.
We
are told to go out there and stir things up—not in the sense of creating
divisiveness. Rather we are to stir the faith community into acts of love and
goodwill. No longer bound by sin, we are freed in order to live out our faith
in love. Being in whole relationship with God through the reconciling act of
Jesus means that we become participants in the kingdom work. As Sheila
illustrated in her sermon last month, we are the only hands Jesus has. It is
our task to continue the healing, reconciling work of Jesus in the world.
Our scripture passage urges us to stir people up and
provoke them to love and good works. How can we do that? One way is to consider
the vows we make at baptism. In our baptism we pledge to trust in God’s mercy
and to turn from sin and renounce evil and its power in the world. We affirm
that we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and trust in his grace and love. We
pledge to be his disciples and to obey his teachings, including the command to
love.
As we become members of Christ’s church through
Pioneer, we pledge to be faithful, to share in Pioneer’s worship and ministry
through our prayers and gifts, through our study and service. It doesn’t stop
there. As each person is baptized, we pledge as a congregation—and as
individuals within the congregation—to guide and nurture the person being
baptized, no matter their age. We promise to do that by what we say and what we
do, to do it with love and with prayer, to encourage them and help guide them
in knowing and following Jesus. We promise to do what we can to help them be
faithful members of Christ’s church.
It means offering that prayer and encouragement and
guidance to the little children in our congregation, that they would grow into
the knowledge of the love and grace of Jesus, that they would understand what
it really means when we sing Jesus Loves
Me. It is our task to show them what it is to be a follower of Jesus.
It means praying for and standing in solidarity with
our elder members who are frail and facing the challenges of aging and
diminished health and limited abilities. It means showing them that their years
of faithful service have not been forgotten, that it still means something. It
means showing them that they still have value, that their lives still mean
something, that we still love them and learn from their years of wisdom, that
their own prayers are still powerful.
It means praying for and supporting your pastor who
repeatedly reminds you that you are beloved of God, who maintains that love is
stronger than hate and we can each make a difference, who reminds you who you
are and whose you are in a world where hate and divisiveness pulls at the
fabric of our faith. It means praying for a pastor who has feet of clay, who
struggles as you do in holding to God’s promises of a world healed and made
whole.
It means praying for and supporting each other when
all that is wrong in the world seems to carry more power than the good promised
by scripture. It means supporting and encouraging those among us who struggle,
those who doubt. It means believing for those who have lost their faith until
they can regain their footing and believe again for themselves. It means
reminding them of the promises that will carry them through when life feels too
overwhelming and tomorrow feels without hope. It is reminding them that there
is always hope, that God is faithful, that they are not alone. It means walking
with them through their trials, crying with them in their sorrows, laughing
with them in their joy, working alongside them in their kingdom work.
For them and for the world, it means living out what
it means to be the church. It means loving even the unlovable. When you
encounter those who don’t deserve love, those who reject love, those who scorn
your love, it means loving anyway. It means demonstrating our love through the
things we say and do. It means putting love to work.
A
LITANY OF THE CHURCH
We
are Pioneer, a community of faith, followers of the risen Jesus, our Savior.
We
are the hands and voice and heart of Jesus to a broken and hurting world.
We
welcome the children and joyfully receive them in our worship.
Jesus
said we must become as little children in order to enter the kingdom of God.
We
promise to guide and nurture the children by word and deed, with love and
prayer, encouraging them to know and follow Jesus.
We
will walk with our elderly members in the twilight of their lives, remembering
how they have served the church and loved and supported us.
We
will love them, help them, listen to their stories, learn from them, and
gratefully accept their prayers and encouragement.
We
will pray for and support our pastor and the leaders of our church as we work
alongside them.
Remembering
that they, too, are human and have times of struggle and doubt, we will love,
encourage and extend God’s grace to them.
We
commit to you, our church family, our love and support. We will be servants to
you, hold your hand when you stumble, and help bear your burdens. We will
remind you that you are a child of God.
We
will pray for you, work with you, cry with you and laugh with you. We will
shine the Christ light when you are in dark places. We will remind you that you
are created in God’s own image. We will, together, be the church.
Through
the love of Jesus, we are forgiven. As Jesus commanded we will love and forgive
one another. Having received God’s grace, we will live as a people of grace. We
will be healers and peacemakers.
Beloved
by God, we will love one another—those within the church and those outside of
the church. We will continue Jesus’ ministry of love and service to those in
need. We will feed his sheep and take care of his lambs.
We
are the church.
HYMN: “The
Servant Song” Glory #727
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Holy God, your word has been planted
in our hearts, but how seldom we call upon it. We have learned how to love from
your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, yet what poor students we are! How quickly we
forget. Lord, open our eyes and our hearts so that we see those who are
hurting, so that we feel the pain of those who are cast aside, so that we feel
the darkness and solitude that closes around those who are in prison or a care
facility or are simply alone. Give us compassion for those who walk the cold
streets shivering and hungry. Give us, O Lord, the eyes of faith that perceive
the pain and the heartache of the world and the will to respond with a word of
hope, an act of compassion. Remind us that we have all been called to Christian
service, to discipleship, to evangelism—sharing the ‘good news’ of Christ’s
love by what we say and do so that one day every knee will bow in gratitude and
joy for the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives. And Lord God, grant that
our every act of compassion and mercy will be part of our own healing and the
building of our own faith.
We lift up to your tender care those who
need your healing presence … for RaeJean Newman … Dave Clark … Tina Bossuot …
Verna’s sister … Mary and Ray Swarthout … Sandy Cargill … Elaine LaChapelle … Somer
Bauer … Tasha Sizemore … Beverly Patterson … Margaret Dunbar …Virginia … Darlene … Trisha … Jacob … George and Joyce
… Jennifer … Chuck … Courtney … Ethel … and Pastor Jean. (Additional prayers
…………)
Lord, in silence we lift up to you the
prayers of our hearts—the concerns we
have for family, our own faith struggles, our fears, our worries, our hopes.
Heal those wounded places in our hearts that we keep picking at. Help us
release the anger and resentment we may hold for others. Help us to love and accept
ourselves.
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 are encouraged to give as God has
blessed us, bringing our offerings, not to win God’s favor but to express our
thanks, not out of habit but as a caring community that provokes one another to
love and good deeds.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Our hearts are glad and our souls rejoice in the
opportunity to share. Here are the fruits of your generosity and our hard work.
In thanks for the perfect offering of Jesus Christ, we bring ourselves with our
gifts. Show us how to use these gifts to bless your people. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “Called
As Partners in Christ’s Service” Glory#761
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
We all need a little nudge now and
again. We all appreciate the encouragement of those who care and who walk this
path of faith with us. So watch for opportunities this week to stir up one
another. And when you’re the one being stirred, recognize it as an act of love
and encouragement.
As you do may the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be 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
-
November
14 following worship M&M
-
November
16 10:30 a.m. Women’s
Spirituality
-
November
21 following worship Worship &
Music
-
November
21 1:00 p.m. Prayer
Shawl Ministry
-
November
23 noon PPW
lunch meeting
-
November
25 all day Thanksgiving
Holiday
-
November
28 following worship Deacons
-
November
22-28 Pastor
on vacation
PRAYER CARE:
Rae Jean Newman (Covid recovery), Tina Bossuot
(Alzheimer’s), Verna’s sister (Covid recovery), Mary and Ray Swarthout, Sandy
Cargill (breast cancer), Somer Bauer (breast cancer), Tasha Sizemore
(Krohn’s?), Jacob Cunningham, Trisha Cagley (health problems), Dave Clark (recovery
from brain surgery, kidney cancer), Virginia DesIlets (age 99!), Margaret
Dunbar (Ashley Manor), 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).
LECTIONARY
FOR 11/21/21
2 Samuel 23:1-7;
Psalm 132:1-12 (13-18); Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14;
Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
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