PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Worship
via Blog Sixth Sunday after Epiphany February 13, 2022
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.
-
M&M
meets following worship
-
PNC
meets Tuesday at 9:00 in the Pastors office
-
Women’s
Spirituality meets Tuesday at 10:30
-
No
Host Luncheon meets Friday the 15th at noon at The Hilander
-
Worship
& Music meets next Sunday following worship
-
Prayer
Shawl meets next Sunday at 1:00
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
Blessed are those who trust in God,
who delight to meditate on God’s law.
We
long to hear the Word of God
And
let the Word shape our lives.
Blessed are all who seek the realm of God,
who hunger to find meaning in their lives.
We
intend to give our best to our Creator,
Bearing
fruit in all we say and do.
Blessed are the ones who serve God with
joy,
who risk all they have in faithfulness and
hope.
We
come now to worship and find new life,
To
receive healing and empowerment for our journey.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Come, Holy God, to search our minds and
try our hearts. Grant us in this hour wise counsel and clear direction. Touch
us, teach us; hear us, heal us. Send your Spirit to walk with us, as Christ
walked with the disciples long ago, that your realm may become for us a present
reality as well as a future hope. Grant us living water to quench our thirst
and sound preaching to feed our hunger. Amen.
OPENING
HYMN: “Healing Grace” LU#68
CALL TO CONFESSION
Come with your troubled spirits and
confused values to seek forgiveness. Come from your misplaced trust and limited
vision to open yourself to the transformation God offers. Come from the parched
places where doubt and cynicism block God’s revelation.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Sovereign
God, we confess that we have chased after wealth and temporal security while
neglecting matters of the spirit. We put our trust in things and in sinners’
empty promises. We even deceive ourselves, shaping our words and actions to
please the crowd. We have doubted the resurrection, surrendering to a sense of
futility and skepticism. Turn us around, God, so we can learn to trust you and
find strength in giving of ourselves. (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
TIME
WITH CHILDREN
SCRIPTURE 1: Psalm 1: 1-6
Happy are those who
do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or
sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and
on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams
of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not
wither. In all that they do, they prosper. The wicked are not so, but are like
chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the
judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord
watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
SCRIPTURE 2: Luke 6:17-26
And he came down with them and stood on a level place,
with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all
Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him
and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean
spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth
from him and healed them all.
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:
Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be
satisfied.
Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude
you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of
man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in
heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
But woe to you that
are rich, for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you that are
full now, for you shall hunger.
Woe to you that laugh
now, for you shall mourn and weep.
Woe to you, when all
men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
SERMON “Blessed or Cursed” Rev. Jean Hurst
If I tend to look at the rafters when I say anything that might
make folks squirm a bit, it’s because I’ve listened to your comments following
sermons. One is, “when you said thus and
so, you looked right at me!” Or,
“I wish you wouldn’t look at me when you say thus and so.” Well you’re in good company.
Our text today, the Lukan version of the beatitudes, has Jesus
looking right at his disciples when he delivers the list of blessings and
woes. This wasn’t just the twelve, it
was a large crowd of disciples. There
were others there as well-- a great number of people from the surrounding area
of Judah and as well as gentiles from Tyre and Sidon along the coastline of
Syria--what is now Lebanon, just south of Beirut. They’d come to hear Jesus and to be healed.
But it was the disciples that he looked at, that he spoke to. He directed his comments at those who had
already made a commitment to follow him.
At first, the words are comforting.
If you’re poor, you’re blessed, for God’s kingdom is yours. If you’re hungry right now, you are blessed
because the time is coming when you’ll have plenty. Blessings are on you even if you weep,
because your sorrow will turn to joy.
And even if, because of me, you are rejected, ostracized, excluded, and
even considered evil, you’re in good company and you’re blessed because heaven
awaits you.
Frankly, most of them were poor and hungry and lived lives of
sorrow and tears. Poverty does that to
you. At the writing of this gospel, the
persecutions Jesus spoke of were already upon those called Christian. Those words of blessings had to be a comfort
to them. They are a comfort to us as
well. But Jesus followed the blessings
with a matching list of woes. And those
aren’t so comforting. Those make you
want Jesus to look at somebody else.
Woe to you, cursed are you who are rich because you’ve got what
you’re going to get. Woe to you, cursed
are you who are well fed because your time of hunger is coming. Woe to you, cursed are you who laugh and make
merry; it’s not going to last.
Yikes! Just when we thought
we could be comfortable and comforted, Jesus yanks the rug out from under
us. If we’re honest and have an
understanding of world economics, we know we are the rich and well fed and
happy folk compared to the majority of the world.
Several points here. One is
that you’ll notice the difference between the more familiar beatitudes found in
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. That
version of the beatitudes spiritualizes Jesus’ words. For example, instead of ‘blessed are the
poor’ Matthew has ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’ and it has ‘blessed are
those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’ rather than ‘blessed are those
who hunger’. And it lacks all the
woes. That is consistent with Matthew’s
emphasis on righteousness and Luke’s emphasis on the physical, day-to-day
reality of the human condition and of the inclusion of all people in Jesus’
ministry.
But we can’t dismiss Luke’s version on the basis of it being just
the writer’s own agenda around poverty.
Jesus was very much concerned with the day-to-day reality of the people
he ministered to. Poverty was an issue
for him. He fed the hungry. He challenged the rich to part with their
wealth for the sake of the poor, to lay up treasures in heaven rather than on
earth. Jesus reached out to, included
and drew in, loved and accepted those who were marginalized.
Throughout the Old Testament we see God as the God of the poor, of
the exploited, of the hungry, of the oppressed.
We see promises in the prophets and in the Psalms of God’s provision for
the poor and hungry, of God’s restoration of their prosperity. Psalm 126 foreshadows Jesus’ words saying, When the LORD restored
the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled
with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy ... those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy! He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for
sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
The liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez, said “God has a
preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than
others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in
an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged
position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the
gratuitousness and universality of God’s agapeic love.”
That love Gutierrez speaks of is translated into blessing, which
means living under God’s favor. A woe or
curse means living under God’s disfavor.
In the faith community of that era they addressed one another with
blessings as a celebration of someone’s pleasant and happy circumstance or with
woes as a lament over someone’s plight.
I can well believe Jesus expressed those woes as laments. Jesus would lament the fact that the wealthy
were too often focused exclusively on themselves. They are less concerned with the needs of
their brothers and sisters than on how to hold onto the wealth and status they
have and accrue even more. They think
they have everything. Their short
sightedness leads them to think there’s nothing more they need, not even God.
How can we find joy in God’s restoration if we think we’ve already
got it all? How can hope in God then be
the most important thing in our lives?
By contrast, the poor are those whose desperate need and inability to
help themselves have driven them to turn to God for their hope.
Jesus looked to his disciples, his followers, to those who had
committed to his ministry and mission to be the means through which God
fulfills the hope of the poor and oppressed.
Going way back, almost to the beginning, God told Abraham, our father in
faith, father to the major world religions, “I have blessed you to be a
blessing.” God has blessed us to be a
blessing as well.
We have a choice between blessing or curse. The eleventh chapter of the Old Testament
book of Deuteronomy speaks it straight as Moses tells the Israelites, “I am
setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you obey the
commandments of the Lord your God, that I am commanding you today, and the
curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God....”
Old Testament, New Testament, today...it still stands. If we obey our Lord’s commandments we will be
blessed and we will be a blessing. At
that last supper with his followers Jesus told them, “I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another.”
And after his resurrection when he met with some of his followers on the
beach and had a breakfast of fish and bread, he told Peter, “Feed my sheep.”
In her book, Searching for Shalom, Ann Weems wrote a piece
titled by that title. She wrote:
He said, “Feed my sheep.”
There were no conditions. Least
of all, feed my sheep if they deserve it.
Feed my sheep if you feel like it.
Feed my sheep if you have any leftovers.
Feed my sheep if the mood strikes you, if the economy if okay, if you’re
not too busy. No conditions, just...
“Feed my sheep.” Could it be that God’s
kingdom will come when each lamb is fed? We who have agreed to keep covenant
are called to feed sheep even when it means the grazing will be done on our own
front lawns.
I keep thinking about how Jesus didn’t speak to the crowd in
general--all those throngs of people who gathered from all over the region to
be healed and taught, most of whom were also mired in poverty. Instead of speaking to the whole crowd
gathered, he looked directly at his followers and spoke to them. They were the ones he had called to do the
kingdom work, that he was empowering to be the instruments of blessing, that he
believed in and trusted with this sacred work.
We, too, are called. It is
to us, his followers today that this passage still speaks. Yes, it is a promise and a comfort to those
who are most in need, who are weighed down by poverty, whose lives are full of
tears. And we are the ones who can do
something about it. We are the ones who have
been blessed. We are the ones who can
choose whether to retain the blessing or to let that blessing become a curse on
us.
I like the way preacher Barbara Brown Taylor put it: “You are
loved; act like it. You are redeemed;
act like it. You are a saint; act like
it. Become what you already are, and you
will be blessed with every breath you take, because blessedness--which means
happiness, which means joy, which means fulness of life--is just what happens
when you are who you were created to be, living the life you were created to
live.”
God created us for love. If
we ever struggle with that question of the meaning of our lives, the purpose of
our existence, why we are here on earth, what this mortal life is about, you
can go back to that one. You are here to
love, to love God and to love each of God’s beloved children. When we love, when we bless others with our
blessings, we are fulfilling our purpose, God’s purpose, that all will have
fullness of life.
That mission has been entrusted to us by the one who created us
for the purpose of love, by the one who has so richly blessed us that we in
turn might be a blessing. Thanks be to
God.
HYMN: “Come
Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Glory #475
PRAYERS OF THE
PEOPLE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER
Almighty God, you call us to be
kingdom builders. You call us to obedience. You call us to hear Jesus’ words
and then to do them. You call us to be wise—to live with the Spirit within us.
Help us, Holy God. You know our hearts. You know our hesitations. You know our
desire to be perfect in what we do and how that often keeps us from doing what
we know we should do. It keeps us from being who you call us to be. God, we
carry so much baggage. We have all those things that have happened in our lives
that have hurt us—that still hurt us.
You want us to forgive our enemies. Do
you know what you ask? We can’t even forgive ourselves. The things we have done
in our lives—with our lives—still weigh heavily on us. It makes it so hard,
Lord, for us to even believe that you forgive us. Help us to let go of those
things, Lord, right this moment. Help us to forgive ourselves so that we can
know your forgiveness. Then give us a heart to forgive those who have hurt us.
What you ask of us seems more than we
can bear, more than we can do. You want us to love our enemies, to love those
who have wronged us, to love those who believe differently than we do, to love
those who live their lives in ways we don’t approve. God, how do we love them?
We can’t even love ourselves. The truth is, we feel so unworthy of love that we
can’t believe that others would love us either. God, help us to see ourselves
as you see us. Help us to love others as you see them.
God you call us to action, to do, not
just to hear. As we lift up to you our prayers for others, help us to live out
our prayers, not just offer empty words or expect you to be the one to carry
through. Guide our actions as well as our prayers as we remember those who are
hungry, those without homes, the oppressed, victims of war and other violence,
the lonely and abandoned, the abused, those who struggle in so many ways, those
whose minds and bodies are fragile.
We pray for those close to us, ………..
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
Quenched by living water, we are
privileged to bear fruit. Contributing our material riches, we discover
unanticipated spiritual rewards. The blessings we share are multiplied in the
service of God. Let us give with joy.
DOXOLOGY
PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Thank you, God, for the consolation you offer, the
hunger you satisfy, and the healing you produce in those who respond to your
love. You have touched our lives in ways that make us rich. Now use what we
have shared to provide fulfillment in other lives, among our neighbors, near
and far. Enlist our best efforts in the extension of your realm, that our
offering of ourselves may bear fruit daily. Amen.
CLOSING HYMN: “O For
a World” Glory
#372
CHARGE AND BENEDICTION
According to Jesus, there are
blessings and woes. During this next week, see if you can see which category
you fall into. 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
All of February the HHOPE Competition
February 22 PPW at Noon
February 24 Men’s Prayer
Group at 8:30am
February 27 Deacon Meeting
PRAYER
CARE:
For Ron Schirm
(complications from surgery), Tina Bossuot (Alzheimer's) Mary and Ray
Swarthout, Somer Bauer (breast cancer), Trisha Cagley (pneumonia), Virginia DesILets, Margaret Dunbar (Ashley Manor), George and Joyce
Sahlberg, Darlene Wingfield (pulmonary fibrosis and breast cancer), Courtney
Ziegler (Huntington's), Verna's sister (COPD), Tasha Seizemore
(Crohn's), Virginia Tabor and family on the death of her daughter Carol,
Bobby Vanderdasson and family on the death of her husband Jim, continued
prayers for those in our congregation dealing with chronic conditions.
LECTIONARY
FOR 2/20/22
Genesis 45:3-11,
15; Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
1 Corinthians
15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38
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