​Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
 
*Call to Worship         Psalm 116
The Lord is gracious and merciful,
and hears us when we call.
The Lord has been good to you.
The Lord has delivered my life from death,
my eyes from tears,
and my feet from stumbling.
We come with thanksgiving,
and call on the name of the Lord.
 
*Hymn   664  Morning Has Broken
 
Prayer of Confession
O God, whose presence is veiled from our eyes,
when we do not recognize you,
may our hearts burn within us,
and when feeling is lost,
may we cling in faith to your Word
and the power of bread broken.
We confess that we do not always live in the spirit of new life.
We worry and grow discontent about our circumstances and deny the transforming power of the resurrection.
Forgive us and call us back to the sacred walk you take with us,
be it on the highway, or the quiet path.
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forever. Amen.
 
*Hymn    698     Take, O Take Me As I Am
Assurance of Forgiveness
Friends, in Jesus Christ we are called to a new way of life, one that overflows with hope, love, forgiveness and reconciliation. Let us walk forward together on this journey of faith, assured that our Lord never leaves us or forsakes us. Be at peace.  Amen.
 
 
First Reading        1 Peter 1:17-23  
 
Time With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading   Luke 24:13-35
The Morning Message
 
This is a favorite Scripture passage for many of us. My affection for it has been influenced by the beautiful Robert Zund painting of the scene which we have included in worship today.
 
The setting is so lush and green. Fertile. The soil soft and worn as they tread it.  The trees providing a cool canopy above them. Three friends moseying along, enjoying each other’s company. They could be any group of guys walking around Lake William at Barboursville Park. Maybe they’re walking off that biscuit they just had a Tudor’s.
 
But they’re not just any trio of buddies. This is Jesus with two of his friends. Post-resurrection. They didn’t recognize him yet.
 
We know what has happened in recent days in Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in deed and word before the people, had been arrested and crucified. How they had hoped he was the one to rescue Israel, but the authorities had ordered his death.
 
They had witnessed his crucifixion and had carried him to the tomb. The tomb that the women had found empty on the third day, but did encounter angels and Jesus himself, though they didn’t recognize him at first. They didn’t know what to make of these mysterious events.
 
When the stranger joined them, the disciples recounted the events. Their hearts were heavy with grief and confusion. But, into their sad reverie, Jesus brought some good news. He recalled stories from Scripture, stories they would know by heart. Jesus reminded them that the Savior would suffer trials before his entrance into glory. Was not this the testimony of the law and the prophets?
 
They walked and talked ‘til the sun was low in the sky. Close to their lodging place, they invited Jesus to join them for a meal and a night’s rest.
 
And so he did, and though he was not the owner of the house, or the host of the meal, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it. And they recognized him in the breaking of the bread.
 
A friend of mine says that when she was growing up, she and her sisters shared the task of setting the table for meals. They were taught by their parents to set an extra place, for Jesus, the unseen guest at every meal.
 
There is an expectation in that, an intimacy that says Jesus is familiar in a tangible way. He is family. He is friend.
 
Sometimes, when a person is near death, they report that they see Jesus waiting for them, at the foot of the bed, or by the door, to take their hand and lead them into the next life. Their good and trusted friend has come for them. There is no fear. No hesitation. There is recognition. And that  is a great comfort for them and for us.
 
Can we know Jesus in that way? In a time when we send and receive “Friend” requests and “Like” requests with a tap on our iPhones, can Jesus be our friend? What kind of friend? Can we “Unlike” him when we disagree or when he “Likes” someone or some cause we don’t?
 
Ruth is one of the saints in light now, but she lived 96 years on earth, before her friend, Jesus, led her into the Church Triumphant.
 
One day when I was visiting her, she spoke of how Jesus became her closest and most reliable friend.
 
Ruth was born in Massillon, Ohio. She came to Huntington and graduated from Huntington High School. She went on to Marshall College, where she would be a member of Kappa Theta Sorority. She served on the Pan Hellenic Council. She was a long-time supporter of one of our county political parties. Ruth had many friends.
 
That was no surprise to me. Even in advanced years, she was beautiful, energetic, articulate, and social. She loved football…or at least she loved “that Tom Brady…um!”
 
It is also no surprise that Ruth caught the eye and the heart of a handsome young man, Julian. They married and were blessed with a son and a daughter. Life was good.
 
Julian worked for the US Post Office as a letter carrier, as they were called in those days. On October 24, 1950, while he was on the job, in Salt Rock, here in Cabell County, Julian was shot and killed. He was forty years old. Ruth was left to grieve his death and raise their children, who were not yet in school, the youngest still a babe in arms.
 
Ruth says she was strolling her baby one day, a million thoughts running through her troubled mind. How in the world could she carry on, how could she raise her children without her husband? Would they even remember their father?
 
She says she remembers praying that day as she walked, repeatedly asking, “What am I going to do?”
 
And then she felt the warmth and comfort of a hand on her back. A hand she couldn’t see, but, knew, was the hand of Jesus. And in that moment, she heard him say, “I will be your friend.”
 
And her burden was lifted.
 
With that reassurance, Ruth did find strength and courage and everything needed to raise two faithful, healthy, accomplished children. She had a forty year career in one of our local businesses. She had a church family. She had friends. Jesus was her friend and I’m sure it was Jesus who took her hand and led her home on a January day a few years ago.
 
Jesus is always with us, though we may not see him, or hear him, or even acknowledge his presence. But we have evidence. How have you recognized him? In the breaking of bread on a Communion Sunday or in the breaking of an addiction? In seeing a solution to some problem? A break-through? When we are alone and scared, when the diagnosis is undesired, and we get a call or a handful of flowers from a neighbors garden? Have you recognized him when you’ve reached a milestone, succeeded at a difficult assignment, aced a high-set goal? Do we acknowledge his help when we learn something important? Or when healing comes?  Or when a relationship is mended?
 
Our old friend William Barclay included these words in his discourse on Luke 24:
“It is not only at the Communion Table that we can be with Christ. We can be with him at the dinner table, too. He is not only the host in his church. He is the guest in every home.”
 
And he leaves us with these verses by Fay Inchfawn: Barclay was Scottish and as I read these lines again in preparation for this message, I could see some of the little villages we passed thru in rural Scotland last summer. Life is so much less sophisticated in much of the world. People are much more dependent on the elements in the planning of their days. Geography may require long rides on public transportation to buy groceries or go to see a doctor. It may even involve boarding a ferry to get from one island to another. On our way to the Isle of Iona, we boarded a ferry in Mull. You may have heard that the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Mull this week. Our ferry was to set sail around 5pm and it was crowded with whole families-kids with back-packs coming from school, parents from their jobs, many accompanied by their dogs. We realized too late that we had taken seats in the pet-friendly section.
 
I share this in hopes that we can get a clearer understanding of life in Barclay’s time, when days were and still are filled with mundane but necessary tasks, days that are pregnant with the hope that Jesus is our companion along what can be wearisome hours.
 
“Sometimes when everything goes wrong,
when days are short and nights are long;
when wash-day brings so dull a sky
that not a single thing will dry.
And when the kitchen chimney smokes,
and when there’s not so odd as folks.
when friends deplore my faded youth,
and when the baby cuts a tooth.
When John, the baby last, but one,
clings round my skirts ‘til day is done,
and fat, good-tempered Jane is glum,
and butcher’s man forgets to come.
Sometimes I say on days like these,
I get a sudden gleam of bliss.
Not on some sunny day of ease,
He’ll come…but on a day like this!”
 
 
*Hymn   246   Christ Is Alive, Verses 1, 4, and 5
 
*Affirmation of Faith     Apostles Creed p. 35
*Hymn 581  Gloria Patri
 
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
Offertory      
*Hymn 606    Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
 
*Hymn  826   Lift High the Cross
 
*Blessing
May the work of your hands bring Christ honor.
May your speech and actions reflect the Word of Life.
And may the service you offer be driven by the indwelling Spirit.  Amen.
 
*Postlude

Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
 
*Call to Worship      1 Peter 1:3                                                           
By God’s great mercy,
we have been born anew to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
 
*Hymn   238      Thine Is the Glory
 
Prayer
Living God, for whom no door is closed,
no heart is locked,
draw us beyond our doubts,
til we see your Christ
and touch his wounds
where they appear in others.
This we ask through Christ our Savior,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forever. Amen.
 
*Hymn  698   Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
God’s mercies are from everlasting to everlasting. They are new every morning and sure as the sunrise. Know you are forgiven and be at peace. Amen.
 
First Reading    John 20:19-25
 
Time With Our Young Disciples
 
Second Reading                John 20:26-31
The Morning Message
 
Today, just one week from Easter, we observe what is affectionately known as “Holy Humor Sunday.” The idea is that on this day we shake our fists in the devil’s face. What the forces of evil intended for Jesus’ death, God redeemed. God is greater than the Roman Empire. And God raised Jesus from the dead, making a way for all believers over time and space to follow him into paradise when our lives on earth end.
 
Our Scripture today points us in the direction of surprise and victory and maybe some holy laughter.
 
Let’s set the scene: the disciples had gathered in a familiar meeting place, very likely the upper room where they had observed the Passover meal and the room in which Jesus instituted the Last Supper. The room was locked up tight for fear of the Jewish authorities. Any footfall upon the stair, a knock, or command to open the door, could signal certain death for them.
 
Then suddenly, Jesus is there with them. He gave them the customary eastern greeting, “Peace be to you.” A more accurate translation would be, “May God give you every good thing.”
 
We can imagine both the shock and the profound peace that would wash over the disciples in that moment. Jesus must have anticipated their need to see for themselves that this man was truly their friend, the crucified one, Jesus. The things he had taught them about dying and being raised to new life were indeed true.
 
He shows them his wounds, his hands and his side. He lets them touch his body. Note, this is the same gesture Jesus will make for Thomas, but we never call these disciples doubters. Just an observation.
 
And then Jesus commissions them for their life’s work, their magnum opus.
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
 
Let’s place ourselves in that room: dark and stuffy, with the curtain covering the only window, everyone still as a stone, the snapping electricity of fear running through all of them.
 
Rev. Marci Auld Glass writes that , “Jesus could have gone and sent other people, presumably people with more courage, people who weren’t hiding, or whomever. But, he’s sending his people. His friends. His disciples. The one who denied him three times in eight hours.  The ones who loved him til the end. Even Thomas, who isn’t there at the moment, but who will get his chance in a bit.”
 
This is great good news for us. These two thousand years later, we are called and sent, even with our human inadequacies and our brokenness. No research project, no finals, no certification test, no bar exam, no ordination exam required. Belief. Even shaky, “I’ll believe it when I see it” faith. That is qualification enough to bear the good news of the gospel into the world. Yes!
 
And then we remember all the insults and abuse Jesus suffered. I don’t want to volunteer for that.
But, hang on. Here comes help: After Jesus gives the faithful their instructions, he breathes on them. Nearly four years of life in the age of Covid has me concerned about  someone breathing on me intentionally. But, that was the method. Jesus breathed.
 
The Greek word for breath is “pneuma.”  In Latin, it comes to us as “Spiritus.” You can see the relatedness of breath and spirit…without breath, we have no life, no spirit. What is the first thing every mother wants to hear the moment her baby enters the world? Her baby’s cry. That is the sign that air is filling the lungs, the heart is beating and blood is circulating through the newborn body as it should.
 
“The risen Christ breathes, filling the disciples with his quickening, life-giving Spirit.”
And what is the Spirit? We will hear more about that on Pentecost Sunday, but, here’s a start: “The Spirit is like wind, like fire, like a bird, like a breath-moving through every language and every culture of this world, bursting out of every category and defying every metaphor.”
 
And it’s a good thing because the first task Jesus assigns is this:
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, then they are retained.”
 
I confess, it’s much easier to preach on the six verses at the end of this text- the ones about Doubting Thomas-than it is these curious words about forgiveness. But, let’s try.
 
Let’s face it…it’s hard to forgive. I spent a great part of the past week trying to help some people find a way to tolerance, a cease-fire if you will upon the revelation of serious sin. Forgiveness is not expected now and this occasion of sin may well never be forgotten. When we witness the worst of human nature, we aren’t expected to immediately forgive and forget. In fact, righteous indignation may just energize us to commit ourselves to the relief of suffering for victims of wrongdoing. We can work to change systems that cause people harm. If we can’t do that ourselves, we can support the efforts of others.
 
We forgive so that we are no longer holding onto the pain, the anger, the fear that can damage our lives.
 
When I was almost one year old, I had an accident. I was learning to walk, and like all babies everywhere, I needed to pull up on things around me to stand and take those first tentative steps.
Most days, I stayed with my grandmother. She heated her home with gas space heaters. You know where this is going…I am sure I had been told a hundred times not to touch the space heater. “No-no. Don’t touch. That will hurt baby.” A little smack on the hand may have accompanied the warning if I got too close.
 
But, in spite of careful watching and grave warnings, one day I reached for the flaming heater in order to pull myself up to standing. Both hands. I don’t remember everything, but I do remember my grandmother holding me in the front seat of the car. My father was driving. There was a parade that day in downtown Huntington. My dad drove on the sidewalk to get through. I remember a police officer looking in the driver’s side window and speaking with my father. I remember a siren which I later learned came from the police escort we received. I remember arriving in the ER and the kind doctor who was first to see me.
 
What I don’t remember is the pain. I don’t remember any details of being examined or treated. I don’t remember what my mother described as little boxing gloves that encased my hands with holes cut out for my thumbs because I was a thumb-sucker. 
 
And I don’t remember ever blaming my grandmother who was charged with my care. I do remember adults talking about it from time to time and looking intently at my little hands and showing them that I was alright.
 
The outcome could have been worse. And as I have had my turn raising children, I became uber-aware of the millions of things that could harm them, and tried as best I could to keep them safe. I didn’t always succeed. 
 
Obsessing over our missteps is futile. And that’s when we have to consider the benefit of self-forgiveness.
 
I have referenced Rachel Held Evans several times.  Rachel was raised in an evangelical Christian family. Her father was a pastor and professor at a Christian college in Tennessee. Her whole life and education was bathed in the climate of evangelical Christianity. She was grateful for that foundation, but, as she moved into adulthood, experiencing life outside that sheltered environment, getting married, having children, she began to ask questions of her faith. She began raising questions about and to God. She wrote a blog. She wrote NYT best sellers. She was a much-sought-after preacher.  She preached and taught at Montreat Conference Center.
 
Rachel’s books and blogs are rich and humorous and insightful. She can make you laugh til you cry. She can be blunt. She can make the pages just sing with octaves of notes.
 
But, as she pushed the margins of her more fundamentalist faith, particularly the beliefs about women’s roles in the church, she suffered terrible, hate-filled insults. Her church condemned her work. Friends fell away. But, she clearly felt the breath of God on her as she was making these changes. She was on that not-so-easy path many of us fear when saying yes to Jesus.
 
A few years ago, during an especially difficult time, Rachel took up a new practice for Lent. She turned her hate mail into Origami. This is what she said about it: “As much as I try to ignore the most vile of these messages, they can still be quite painful, and I think that’s okay. It’s important to grow thick skin, but I also want to keep a tender, open heart…which means unclenching my fists and letting some of these words hurt every now and again.”
 
At the end of her Lenten journey, Rachel wrote: “What I learned, turning my hate mail into origami, is that we’re meant to remake this world together. We’re meant to hurt together, heal together, forgive together, and create together. And, in a sense, even the people who continue to hate me and call me names are a part of this beautiful process. Their words, carelessly spoken, spent the last 40 days in my home- getting creased and folded, worked over…stepped on by a toddler, read by my sister, stained with coffee…blacked out, thrown away, turned into poems, and folded into sailboats and cranes and pigeons that now sit smiling at me from my office window.”
 
Jesus said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
 
I doubt you and I have ever received the volume of hate mail Rachel Evans did.
 
But, I’d bet we could all name someone or something that hurt us or made us miserable. And, this is saying the quiet part out loud… I have been known to hang onto nasty emails and memos and evaluations for a long time. I used to pull them out of file folders and stew over them, maybe shed a few tears and vow to get even one day…you get the drift.
 
But, praise God from whom all blessings flow…it doesn’t last… the risen Christ throws open the locked door of the heart, or the memory locked into the mind, and says, “Blow. Blow. Blow all of that stale, grudging, judging, lifeless air out…
 
…And breathe.”  
 
 
 
*Hymn   233     The Day of Resurrection!
*Affirmation of Faith   Apostles’ Creed      p. 35
*Hymn    581   Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
Offertory
*Hymn   606   Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
We are so filled with the joy of the resurrection that
we offer these gifts of our time, abilities, and treasure to you, O God. May they be signs of hope, peace, life, and community to all in need of your gifts and grace.
In Jesus’ name, who gave his life that we might live.  Amen.
 
*Hymn  268   Crown Him With Many Crowns
 
*Blessing
The risen Christ says: Peace be with you.
May you be filled with all joy and hope in believing. 
We have seen the Lord! Alleluia! Amen.
 
*Postlude

Welcome and Announcements
Minute for Mission    One Great Hour of Sharing
*Call to Worship
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
 
*Hymn  232          Jesus Christ Is Risen Today
 
Prayer for Easter
O Christ, in your resurrection,
The heavens and earth rejoice,
Alleluia!
By your resurrection you broke open the gates of hell
and destroyed sin and death.
Keep us victorious over sin.
By your resurrection, you raised the dead,
and brought us from death to life.
Guide us in the way of eternal life.
By your resurrection you confounded your guards and executioners,
and filled your disciples with joy.
Give us joy in your service.
By your resurrection you proclaimed good news to the women and apostles,
and brought salvation to the whole world.
Direct our lives as your new creation.
God of mercy,
we no longer look for Jesus among the dead.
for he is alive and has become the Lord of life.
From the waters of death, you raise us with him
and renew the gift of life within us.
Increase in our minds and hearts
the risen life we share with Christ,
and help us grow as your people
toward the fullness of eternal life with you.
Where we have strayed from your example, forgive us and restore us to right relationship with you and those with whom we live, love, work, and play,
through Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forever.  Amen.
 
Hymn   698      Take, O Take Me as I Am
Assurance of Forgiveness
Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, our beginning and our ending, has come to save us from our sins and turn us toward the grace and mercy of God.
Friends believe the good news of the gospel. In Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.
 
First Reading       Luke 24:1-12
 
Choral Anthem    
 
Time for Young Disciples   
 
Gospel Reading       John 20:1-18
The Morning Message
 
* Hymn  240     Alleluia! Alleluia! Give Thanks
*Affirmation of Faith    The Apostles’ Creed p. 35
*Hymn    580            Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
   Celebrating One Hundred Years of Faith and History          Jack Dilley
   Dedicating the Chapel for the Future
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings including One Great Hour of Sharing
*Hymn   606   Doxology
 
*Hymn   250   Hymn of Promise
 
*Blessing
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
 
*Postlude

Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
 
Lenten Reading    
Mark 11:1-11 
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he set two of his disciples  and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it.. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’”  They went away and found the colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said to them,  and they allowed them to take it.  Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around,  at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
 
Litany of Response
Humble and riding on a donkey,
we greet you.
Acclaimed by crowds and caroled by children,
we cheer you.
Moving from the peace of the countryside
to the corridors of power,
we salute you, Christ, our Lord.
You are giving the beasts of burden a new dignity;
You are giving majesty a new face;
You are giving those who long for redemption
a new song to sing.
With them, with heart and voice,
we shout, “Hosanna!  God save us!”
 
*Hymn 197     Hosanna, Loud Hosanna
 
Prayer of the Day
We praise you, O God,
for your redemption of the world through Jesus Christ.
Today he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph
and was proclaimed Messiah and King
by those who spread garments and branches along his way.
Let these branches be signs of victory,
and grant that we, who carry them, may follow him in the way of the cross,
that dying and rising with him, we may enter into your kingdom,
through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns forever.  Amen.
 
First Reading                    Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
 
Prayer of Confession
Holy and merciful God, in your presence we confess our failure to be what you created us to be.
You alone know how often we have sinned in wandering from your ways, in wasting your gifts, in forgetting your love.
By your mercy, help us to live in your light and walk in your ways, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.
 
Hymn   698   Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.
I declare to you, in the name of Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we may dwell in peace.  Amen.
 
Moments With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading                   Luke 19:28-40
Morning Message
 
“The Lord has need of it.”
 
Years ago, on one of our trips to Ireland, our tour director took Ed aside to consult about a situation. The issue was the hotel had two guests, two older women traveling together, who were stranded in Dublin. Overnight, the country was ground to a halt due to a transportation strike. The women suddenly had no way to reach their destination. If they could ride with us to a particular town, a family member could meet them and drive them the rest of the way.
 
Well, of course they were welcome to join us. The tour guide seated them up front and we treated them to both Irish and American hospitality.
 
For me, what immediately came to mind was this text, of Jesus sending his disciples into town to retrieve a donkey. If they were questioned about it, they were to simply say, “The Lord has need of it.”
 
What was needed on that brisk spring morning in Dublin appeared to be a ride to the next town.  The Lord didn’t need a donkey that day. He needed a bus.
 
Let’s take a closer look at the donkey in the story.
 
We may think of donkeys as slow and stubborn, not particularly intelligent, homely, certainly not as impressive as a horse. A donkey was more affordable for the average family. It would not run away. Its lack of speed is a blessing. Donkeys are strong. They are loyal. They are protective. I have heard stories about donkeys intentionally placing themselves between a flock of sheep and a coyote, taking the attack upon themselves to save the other, more vulnerable creatures.
.
So, Jesus sits upon the humble donkey, the disciples and the crowd placing their cloaks along the road, waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! God save us!”
 
Now contrast this with what was happening on the other side of Jerusalem:
New Testament scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, write that the triumphal entry was less of a parade and more of a protest. They maintain it was political theatre. Jesus’ entry into the Holy City was to mock the obscene pomp and circumstance of Rome.
 
They argue that there were two processions to enter Jerusalem that day. Every year, the Roman governor of Judea would ride up to Jerusalem from his coastal residence in the west, specifically to be present in the city for Passover-the Jewish festival that swelled Jerusalem’s population from its usual 50, 000 to at least 200, 000 people.
 
The governor would come in all his imperial majesty to remind the Jews that Rome was in charge.
 
“It would have been a visual display of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather, armor, helmets, weapons, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums, the swirling of dust. The eyes of the silent on-lookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.”
 
According to Roman belief, the emperor was not simply the ruler of Rome, he was the Son of God. So, this entry of Pilate was both a potent military threat and the embodiment of a rival theology.
 
Pilate clanged and crashed his way into Jerusalem from the west, Jesus approached from the east, looking pretty absurd. This was the procession of the powerless, the explicitly vulnerable. You can’t get more defenseless than to ride on a nursing mama donkey, with her colt walking along beside her.
 
We’ve been back from that trip for three years. Sometimes it takes awhile to settle in and process it. There’s a lot to process. We were a group of 43. Each of us having expectations and some minor challenges. The word of the day was always ”adapt.” If you want to travel, you have to be flexible.
 
On our trek across the country we came upon a rag-tag camp of sorts. The only thing I can compare it to is a homeless encampment along the riverbank here. A couple of broken down trailers. Windows boarded up, others with towels tacked up to the windowframes. Trash strewn everywhere, a few discarded toys, tattered clothing hanging on a rope between two trees. And a few hungry-looking dogs, a pig or two, chickens walking about, and a donkey. It was tied to a picnic table.
 
I had seen places like this before on previous trips. But, it was still shocking and painful to know people lived in these desperate conditions. They are alternately called Roma, travelers, tinkers, and gypsies, although the word “gypsy” is not used in Ireland. It would be akin to using the “N” word here.
 
The people who inhabit the camp are nomadic. They move from place to place looking for work. It is an impoverished lifestyle. Children are uneducated for the most part. We can imagine that access to health care is limited. One look at the camp told us that they were living in squalor, without adequate food, clothing, or shelter. Do they want to live this way? They can’t. Like some here in our country, these people are caught in generational dysfunction.
 
I’ve done a little research since we’ve been back. There are public measures being undertaken to address the plight of these people. There is special concern for the children and the elderly, as you can imagine. But any attempt to rehabilitate a community requires cooperation and that is unpredictable.
 
I wonder if that donkey will spend its life tethered to a picnic table.
 
“The Lord has need of it.”
 
 It strikes me that this is the type of community and the circumstances of the men, women, and children for whom Jesus’ heart broke. Poor, needy, rejected. Their possessions few and the most valuable tied up so it can’t escape.
 
Where is their hope? Where will they ever find relief? Do they want relief? We don’t yet know.
 
And we don’t know whether anyone who lined the street that day in Jerusalem understood what Jesus was enacting by riding into the city mounted on a donkey.
 
I doubt they grasped the ultimate meaning in it. They weren’t interested in the donkey. They were primed for revolution. They wanted and expected something world-changing, a revolution. But Jesus knew what it would cost him to spit in Rome’s face.
 
Debie Thomas says that what he accomplished on that loud and chaotic day was to fulfill the will of God. He fulfilled the scriptures that prophesied that the Messiah would come riding on a donkey. He died because he exposed the ungracious sham at the heart of all human kingdoms, and ignited fury. Even when he knew his actions would send him to his death, Jesus set his face “like flint” towards Jerusalem. He mounted a donkey and took Rome for a ride.
 
Blogger Andrew King describes that special day in poetry:
 
Jerusalem’s past had been quite a blast
when David was monarch and splendid.
But centuries had gone since David passed on,
and God’s blessing seemed to have ended.
 
Jerusalem’s streets had seen happy feet
taking people to great holy places.
A place it was now of deep-furrowed brows,
on saddened and wearisome faces.
 
Rome, you recall, had control of it all,
and its soldiers could be pretty scary.
A grumbling noise might upset Caesar’s boys
so the people had learned to be wary.
 
How Jerusalem longed to sing happy songs
that would celebrate their story;
they dreamed and they prayed to give
a parade
for a new David marching in glory.
 
Then came a year when they got some cheer;
there was a man to whom people pointed.
Of him it was said he could raise the dead-
he just might be God’s anointed!
 
A carpenter’s son, he became someone
with words that could set hearts singing;
his caring stand for woman and man
had the title “Messiah” now ringing.
 
“He’s coming straight to Jerusalem’s gate,”
the folk were excitedly saying;
“Let’s get out there in the open air
and show the Romans what we’ve been praying.”
 
They cut branches down and handed them ‘round,
a symbol of of joy and praising
And they lined the way for Jesus that day,
palms and voices ready for raising.
 
Jesus, meantime, had his followers find
a young donkey on which he could ride.
He’d come to that place to show God’s saving grace,
that God’s on the sufferers’ side.
 
Loving and meek, no power would he seek,
as he sat on the donkey so humble.
Soon enough on that road he’d be bearing a load;
a cross that would cause him to stumble.
 
So in Jesus came, and the strong and the lame
tossed their palm leaves and shouted their praise,
“Hosanna!” they cried. “The King has come by!
Hosanna! God grant us new days!”
 
Hosannas like “God save us!” and what Jesus gave
was the way that God’s love makes that happen.
So lift up your palms, get your happy smile on,
and be ready for singin’ and clappin’;
 
Because every day can be Palm Sunday
when you know that Jesus is near you;
Give praise to God, from the sky to the sod;
shout “God saves!”so all folks can hear you!
 
Untie that donkey! The Lord has need of it!
The Lord has need of you.
 
Hosanna!
 
 
* Hymn
*Affirmation of Faith      The Apostles’ Creed   p.35
*Hymn   580        Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
* Hymn  606   Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
Blessed are you, O God, maker of all things.
Through your goodness you have blessed us with these gifts.
Use us and what we have gathered,
In feeding the world with your love,
Through the one who gave himself for us,
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
 
*Hymn 196   All Glory, Laud, and Honor    
 
*Blessing
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  Amen.
 
*Postlude

 ​Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
Lenten Reading          Based on Ezekiel 34, John 11, and Romans 8
Reader 1: In the midst of life, we acknowledge death. In the face of death, God’s Spirit comes to bring us life. Can dry bones live? Can life emerge from death? Only God knows. And yet, Christ promises just such a miracle through the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
 
Reader 2: All who are dwindling and dying…come forth to new life.
All who are lying in darkness and despair…come into the light.
All who feel separated and alone…come to the presence of God, whose Spirit finds us here.
 
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit,
breathe new life into our lives and our worship.
Create new possibilities, in our imaginations and in our dreams.
Send the promise of your hope into our depression and despair.
Expand our hearts and our minds, as we enter your presence this day.  Amen.
 
*Hymn   164    He Lives!
 
Prayer of Confession
God of mercy, you sent Jesus Christ to seek and to save the lost. We confess that we have strayed from you and turned aside from your way.
We are misled by pride, for we see ourselves pure when we are stained, and great when we are small.
We have failed in love, neglected justice, and ignored your truth.
Have mercy on us and forgive our sin.
Return us to paths of righteousness through Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.
 
Hymn   Take, O Take Me As I Am
Assurance of Forgiveness
Jesus Christ spoke peace to a sinful world and brought humanity the gift of reconciliation by his suffering and death.
He will teach those who bear his name to follow the example he gave us.
May our faith, hope, and charity turn hatred to love, conflict to peace, and death to eternal life.
Friends, believe the good news of the gospel: know you are forgiven and be at peace.
First Scripture Reading     Isaiah 43: 16-21
 
Moments With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading     John 12:1-8
Morning Message
 
Today we are headed to a home in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, where Jesus stopped in to see his old friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus before he entered the city for the last time.  He loved them, John tells us, although he does not tell us why.  Maybe there is no "why" to love.  They called him Lord, so they knew who he was, and yet they were not his disciples, at least not in any formal sense.  They were his friends, the three people in whose presence he could be a man as well as a Messiah.
Just days before, Jesus had worked a miracle at their house.  He had been across the river when the sisters' urgent message reached him.  "Lord," it read, "he whom you love is ill."  So he had come to them, knowing full well it was too late.  Lazarus was so dead that he stank, so dead that Jesus stood in front of his tomb and wept.  Then he roared so loud at death that he scared death away.  While the sisters tried to decide whether to run away too, their brother Lazarus came stumbling from his tomb, trailing his shroud behind him like a used cocoon.
Now Jesus has come back to Bethany with the temple posse hot on his trail.  By raising Lazarus from the dead he has graduated from the category of "manageable nuisance" to "serious threat."  News of the incident has sent his followers over the top.  There is not a chance Pilate is going to ignore them during the Passover festival.  It is time for Jesus to be disappeared before he leads hundreds to their deaths.  So his days are numbered and he knows it.  When he arrives at his friends' house in Bethany, they can see it on his face.
So they take him in and care for him, shutting the world out for this one night at least.  Lazarus is still clumsy from his four days in the tomb.  He sits and stares while Martha makes a stew.  Mary, meanwhile, has slipped away, gone to find something in her room.  Martha is used to this.  Mary is always disappearing, even when she is sitting right there with everyone else.  She gets this look on her face, like she's listening to music no one else can hear.  Martha knows there is nothing to be done but to work around her, being careful to reel Mary in when she drifts too far.
Finally, supper is on the table and they all sit down to eat, saying what they hope and hiding what they fear.  Lazarus sits near his friend Jesus, unaware of the trade that has occurred.  Jesus was safe across the river, beyond the reach of his enemies.  By returning to Bethany, he has traded his life for the life of his friend.  Funny, huh?  The recently deceased Lazarus of Bethany will outlive the savior Jesus of Nazareth.
No one notices that Mary has gone again until she comes back holding a clay jar in her hands.  Wordless, she kneels at Jesus' feet and breaks the jar's neck.  The smell of spikenard fills the room--sharp scent halfway between mint and ginseng.  Then, as everyone in the room watches her, she does four remarkable things in a row.
First she loosens her hair in a room full of men, which an honorable woman never does.   Then she pours perfume on Jesus' feet, which is also not done.  The head, maybe--people do that to kings--but not the feet.  Then she touches him--a single woman rubbing a single man's feet--also not done, not even among friends.  Then she wipes the perfume off with her hair--totally inexplicable--the bizarre end to an all around bizarre act.
Most of us are so moved by the scene that we overlook its eccentricities, or else we don't care. The point is that she loved him, right?  Right.  But we also confuse this account with three others in the Bible--one each from Matthew, Mark and Luke.  In the first two, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head at the house of Simon the Leper during the last week of his life.  In the third story, the scene happens at Simon the Pharisee's house, much earlier in Jesus' ministry.  There Jesus is eating supper when a notorious sinner slips into the room and stands weeping over his feet, then drops to the ground to cover them with kisses before rubbing them with oil of myrrh. 
Only in John's version of the story does the woman have a name-Mary--and a relationship with Jesus--not a stranger, not a notorious sinner, but his long-time friend--which makes her act all the more peculiar.  He knows she loves him.  He loves her too.  So why this public demonstration, this odd pantomime in front of all their friends?  It's extravagant.  It's excessive.  She's gone overboard, as Judas is quick to note.
"Why wasn't this perfume sold for a whole lot of money and given to the poor?"  That's what Judas wants to know, but Jesus brushes him aside.          
"Leave her alone," he says.  "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.  You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me"--which is 
about as odd a thing for him to say as what Mary did.  Here is the champion of the poor, always putting their needs ahead of his, suddenly reversing course.  Leave her alone.  Leave me alone.  Just this once, let her look after me, because my time is running out.
Whatever Mary thought about what she did, and whatever anyone else in the room thought about it, Jesus took it as a message from God--not the hysteric ministrations of an old maid gone sweetly mad but the carefully performed act of a prophet.  Everything around Mary smacked of significance--Judas, the betrayer, challenging her act; the flask of nard--wasn't it left over from Lazarus' funeral?--and out in the yard, a freshly vacated tomb that still smelled of burial spices, waiting for a new occupant.  The air was dense with death, and while there may at first have been some doubt about whose death it was, Mary's prophetic act revealed the truth.
She was anointing Jesus for his burial, and while her behavior may have seemed strange to those standing around, it was no more strange than that of the prophets who went before her--Ezekiel eating the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the word of God around inside of him (Ezekiel 2), or Jeremiah smashing the clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem (Jeremiah 19), or Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot as an oracle against the nations (Isaiah 20).  Prophets do things like that.  They act out.  They act out the truth that no one else can see, and those standing around either write them off as nuts or fall silent before the disturbing news they bring from God.
When Mary stood before Jesus with that pound of pure nard in her hand, it could have gone either way.  She could have anointed his head and everyone there could have proclaimed him a king.  But she did not do that.  When she moved toward him, she dropped to her knees instead and poured the perfume on his feet, which could only mean one thing.  The only man who got his feet anointed was a dead man, and Jesus knew it.  "Leave her alone," he said to those who would have prevented her.  Let her finish delivering the message. 
So Mary rubbed his feet with perfume so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year, an act so lavish that it suggests another layer to her prophecy.  There will be nothing economical about this man's death, just as there has been nothing economical about his life.  In him, the extravagance of God's love is made flesh.  In him, the excessiveness of God's mercy is made manifest. 
This bottle will not be held back to be kept and admired.  This precious substance will not be saved.  It will be opened, offered and used, at great price.  It will be raised up and poured out for the life of the world, emptied to the last drop.  Before that happens, Jesus will gather his friends together one last time.  At another banquet, around another supper table, with most of the same people present, Jesus will strip, tie a towel around his waist, and wash his disciples' feet.  Then he will give them a new commandment: Love one another, as I have loved you. 
At least one of the disciples will argue with him, while others will wonder if he has lost his mind.  But a few will watch him working on their feet and remember Mary bending over his feet like that--the prophet Mary--who knew how to respond to Jesus without being told, the one who acted out his last, new commandment before he ever said it.  Remembering her may help them leave him alone while he finishes delivering his message. 
At home in Bethany, the storm clouds are still piling up against the door when Mary gives the forecast: it will be bad, very bad, but that's no reason for Jesus' friends to lock their hearts and head to the cellar.  Whatever they need, there will be enough to go around.  Whatever they spend, there will be plenty left over.  There is no reason to fear running out--of nard or of life either one--for where God is concerned, there is always more than we can ask or imagine--gifts from our lavish, lavish Lord.
Amen.
 
 
 
*Hymn   279    There Shall Be Showers of Blessing
*Affirmation of Faith     The Apostles’ Creed
*Hymn   Gloria Patri
 
Sharing the Congregations Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Gifts of Tithe and Offering
Offertory
*Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
 
*Hymn   177    God Be With You
 
*Blessing
As you go out, may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and keep your whole being-
spirit, soul, and body- free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.
 
*Postlude

Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
 
Lenten Reading     John 3:1-8Betty and Kevin Dennison
Reader 1:  Friends, we ask you again to observe a holy Lent. With prayer, fasting, and demonstrating the love of Christ through benevolent acts, we prepare for Holy Week and the passion of our Lord and Savior.
 
Reader 2: In John’s gospel we read:
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
 
Prayer (in unison)
All:  Gracious God, seeker of the lost; draw your children back to your loving embrace, restore us to our inheritance as daughters and sons, and reconcile our hearts to you, that we may become ambassadors of your reconciling love to all the world.Through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit we pray.  Amen
 
*Hymn“Live into Hope”                                            No. 772 (Glory to God)
 
Prayer of Confession
Leader: We pause to consider how far we may have wandered from our home with God. Have we turned away from responsibility in order to seek shallow pleasures and selfish gratification? Or do we consider ourselves above reproach, looking down on those mired in the pigpens of life? Wherever we are, whoever we are, there is much to confess.
 
Hymn Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
Leader: We are assured that God forgives the guilt of our sin. Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom God assigns no wrongdoing and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Rejoice, for God has brought us back to life!
 
First Reading    2 Corinthians 5: 16-21
 
Moments With Our Young Disciples
 
The Gospel Reading   Luke: 1-3, 11b-32
The Morning Message - R.S.V.P.
 
The story of the prodigal son from today’s passage is
perhaps one of the most written about parables Jesus ever told.
But the word prodigal is rarely used in conversation because of
its negative connotation in association with this story. I have
never heard the word used outside the context of this parable.
Prodigal means to spend resources recklessly or with
wasteful extravagance. (as I demonstrated with the kids)
Prodigal can also mean doing something on a lavish scale. Here’s
the example of its use from the dictionary, “The dessert was
crunchy with brown sugar and prodigal with whipped cream.” It
sounds odd doesn’t it? The next time you ask for a dessert, tell
the server to be prodigal with the whipped cream and watch for
the reaction you get!
When writing a sermon I normally read the verse several
times and think about it, make some notes, and review some
commentaries to see if my thoughts are on track. For this
sermon I chose to avoid the commentaries because I did not
want to be clouded by other people’s ideas of what this parable is
about. I didn’t want to fall into arguments about whether the
story’s focus is on the Father or the prodigal son or the elder
brother. I didn’t want to just restate the work of Henri Nowen
who wrote a book that discussed how each of us at some point in
our lives plays the role of the Father, the Prodigal, and the Older
Brother.
BTW – Nowen was allowed to sit in front of Rembrandt’s painting
of this parable for two weeks in The Hermitage Museum in then
Leningrad, USSR in the 1970s. I’ve had the privilege of seeing it
there as well and it is amazing. It’s almost life size. Now all of
these are valid for discussion and these different interpretations
point out how God’s word really is the living word, but today I
want to focus on how this parable is about us, today in 2025, in
Barboursville WV. I think it’s really all about the party!
If we really listen to the words of the Father – the party
never really started or stopped. He says, “Son you are always
with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The sons were free to get
whatever they wanted – any time they wanted. They could call
upon the resources of the Father anytime and he would provide
whatever they needed but it had to come through the Father.
(that thought alone is a master’s thesis). The point is they are
totally in his care – as are we. They had an open invitation; they
just didn’t know how to respond properly in faith. Do we have
the faith to know how to respond?
We are all familiar with the abbreviation R.S.V.P. It comes
from the French, (ree-pon-days C-vu play) which simply means,
“please reply.” God, who is characterized by the Father in the
story, sends out the invitation to the party and requests an RSVP
“please reply.” (repeat) Today, we might think about it as the
endless ping sound our cell phones make when we get a message
from someone.
In the story the Father sees his prodigal son “while he was
still far off.” Can you visualize the Father standing on his porch
of his large home that sits on top of a hill? Every day his heart
pines away – hoping – praying – that his son will return. Every
day he looks out over the landscape below searching for some
sign of his son’s return. Then his heart leaps for joy when at long
last his son returns.
The prodigal son didn’t see the opportunity the Father
presents until he came to his senses. He underestimated the
value of staying with the Father. He had decided years ago to
have his own party and asked for his inheritance early so he
could be on his merry way. His reply to the Father at that time is
an implied – No, thanks you – I will not be attending your party.
Note that the Father puts up no argument when the younger
son asks for his inheritance. This is our free will. This is our
freedom to choose. Sometimes our responses hurt. In Jewish
culture the younger son’s request for his early inheritance is like
wishing his father dead and in effect, his Father was dead to him.
By cutting off his Father, the younger son is really the one who
became spiritually dead. The younger brother then falls into dis-
solute living.
Dissolute is another word we don’t hear or use very often,
but we see it all the time. Watch any newscast, read any
newspaper, watch most any TV program or listen to popular
country or rock music and you will see and hear dissolute living in
action. We are bombarded with it! Dissolute simply means
immoral conduct; wild, decadent, and self indulgent behavior.
The results of this kind of living seem to be inescapable. The
younger brother barely survives hitting bottom and is not even
allowed to eat the pods given to the pigs.
The pods are the horned shaped leathery shells from the
carob tree native to Palestine and the Mediterranean area. Inside
the pod are several pea like seeds separated by a sweet, sticky,
edible pulp. Through the grafting of trees we now can produce a
higher quality and sweeter carob which is used as a substitute for
chocolate.
Well, there was nothing sweet about how the prodigal felt.
Yes he survived hitting bottom but he did not survive his guilt,
shame, and remorse. He considers himself unworthy and returns
to his Father hoping to become a slave. Perhaps, he thinks, he
can at least serve the guests at the party, but again, he
underestimates the love and grace of the Father.
This is when the real miracle happens - Without a judgmental
word, the Father restores him as a prince and gives him the royal
symbols of a robe, a ring, and sandals. Now the prodigal’s
response is yes. Yes, I will enter into the party. Yes, I will be
part of the kingdom. Yes I will let go of the past. Yes, I will be a
son of my father. ------ He was given a second chance. The
prodigal was dead and REBORN in the eyes of the father. And
the Father too was brought back to life in the eyes of the son.
This is what it means to be born again by faith through
grace. Just as in our earlier reading about Nicodemas from John.
God says, “Please reply.” (ray spon days c-vu play) R.S.V.P. And
when we say yes, we come to life spirituality because God’s spirit
comes to life in us. Through Christ we are adopted into the family
of God. His death on the cross becomes our re-birth right.
Later in the parable we are introduced to the older brother
who is also invited to the party. He was out in the fields and tells
the father he has been working like a slave. This refers to
seeking righteousness through our own efforts. The older brother
can never work hard enough to obtain what the Father possesses.
Just like we can never be good enough to earn God’ favor. Grace
is a free gift. God’s grace is the gift of unmerited favor and like
the older brother all we have to do is ask. The Father tells the
older brother and us, “All that I have is yours.”
We gain a lot of insight into the older brother in this brief
passage. He follows all the rules yet does not comprehend love
and grace. He is possessed by pride, envy, and resentment. He
indicates his harsh feelings towards his father when he whines
about not being given even a young goat for him and his friends.
Notice he even excludes the Father in his celebration! No, it will
just be he and his friends. He also behaves in an unacceptable
manner in the Jewish tradition by saying no to the Father’s
invitation to the party.
Like the younger brother, the older brother also
underestimates the love and grace of the Father. He cannot
understand how the father can have compassion for the younger
brother. He has also underestimated the love of God since he
has been blinded by his sense of duty. He has followed the
letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. In the end we are
left to wonder how the older brother replies to the Father’s
invitation to enter the party. “Please reply” (ray spon day c-vu
play) God asks – please enter into a relationship with me.
We are given a very subtle hint, though, in the last few
verses. Listen for the use of the word “yours” in the ending
dialogue. First when talking to the Father, the older brother refers
to the prodigal as, “this son of yours.” He disavows any kinship
with the prodigal son and his phrase is derogatory. Second,
when the older brother asks for the goat, the father says “all that
is mine is yours.” All of God’s riches are in plain view. (like
in the painting). At this point what God owns includes the
younger brother who while restored to royal status, is really a
dependent of the father. Third, the father confirms this to the
older brother, when he turns the tables on the elder son and
refers to the prodigal as, “this brother of yours.” The point is,
they are interconnected in a family relationship through blood; he
is a son and brother and that relationship; that connection
cannot be undone. Being an optimist, I believe the older brother
ultimately gets it! I believe the older brother cannot deny the
grace revealed to him by the father and the model of repentance
shown by the younger brother.
And so it is among us today. We are all connected:
daughter, sister, mother; all of us are connected to God’s family.
We belong to each other and there is enough for everyone.
Remember what the father says, “All that is mine is yours.” The
party never ends. The invitation is always there. (ray spon day c
vu play) – “Please reply.”
 
Amen.
 
 
*Hymn  450 Be Thou My Vision
*Affirmation of Faith            Apostles’ Creed   p. 35
*Hymn   581       Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
Offertory
 
*Hymn   606   Doxology
 
*Prayer of Dedication
Thank you, God, for proclaiming our worth when we do not value ourselves. Thank you for welcoming us to a celebration of life with so many precious gifts. Thank you now for the privilege of sharing so others may be led to your joyous embrace. Help us to be generous in gratitude for your lavish provision for all our needs. Amen.
 
*Hymn   611 “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee”
 
*Blessing
Return
(inspired by Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)
 
let this be the welcoming place
the place of return
 
and let it be built by a love
that bends towards those who return here
 
for it is a love that has been waiting
like a candle in the window
ever lighting the way back
and never willing to let go
the hope that each child
will return home
let it be the place where
the only appropriate response
to love that has come to the end of its longing
is to kill the fatted calf,
feast and celebrate
send up balloons
and prepare the party
for that which has been lost
has returned to be among us
once more
 
~ written by Roddy Hamilton, and posted on Mucky Paws. http://www.nkchurch.org.uk/index.php/mucky-paws
 
*Postlude

Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
 
Lenten Reading    Michael and Stephanie Noel
Reader 1: Friends, once again we invite you to observe a holy Lent-by prayer and fasting, reading and meditating on the Word of God, by acts of service done in Jesus’ name.
On this third Sunday in Lent, we see Jesus in an unexpected way. We witness him overturning the tables of the money changers at the temple. His actions surprise us. Yet, in our lives and in our world, we find much that needs to be overturned and driven out that the kingdom of God may be more fully revealed.
 
Reader 2: In John 2:13-22 we read this account.
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found people selling cattle, sheep, doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.       
 
Prayer
Merciful God, in Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.
 
*Hymn    475     Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
 
Prayer of Confession
Holy God, you have called us to love you
with heart, mind, soul, and strength,
and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
But, if we are honest, we know
that sometimes we hurt each other and fail to keep our promises to you.
Forgive us, God of grace.
Teach us, day by day,
to turn away from what is wrong
and to turn to you in faith,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
 
Hymn   698       Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
Hear the good news:
We are dead to sin and evil
and alive to God in Jesus Christ.
Friends, I urge you to walk in his light- forgiven, reconciled, and free!
 
Old Testament Reading      Exodus 20:1-20
 
Time With Our Young Disciples         
 
Gospel Reading     Luke 13:1-9
Morning Message
 
Is the Lord with us or not?
 
When calamity strikes, or a disaster occurs, when a loved one is hurt, when our jobs are in jeopardy, have you ever said, “Is the Lord with me or not?”
 
I sure have. Scripture teaches me that God is always present, but, when I am troubled by something that is too big for me to solve, I wonder if and when God is going to show up.
 
The Rev. Sarah Jackson Shelton says she was driving home from the church one day, after collecting her toddler son from the church’s day care center. She fastened him safely in his car seat and started toward home.
 
She says her son was quite active and was always talking. But he surprised her that with one of those questions- you know the kind you have to think though for awhile before answering. Why is that? Because children, especially very young children, think in concrete terms, not abstract ones.
 
So when he asked, “Mom, can we have a baby at our house?” Sarah was caught off-guard and barely stammered out what most parents say when asked such a question.
 
“Well, we’ll see.”
 
To which her son responded with, “How do we get a baby, Momma?”
 
Not wanting to get into a biology lesson, Sarah simply said, “God will give us a baby.”
 
Now this is turning into a real volley between mom and son.
 
“Momma, where is God?”
 
“Son, God lives in your heart.” And without missing a beat, the little boy stuck his head inside his shirt and shouted, “Hey, God! Can we have a baby at our house?”
 
And sure enough came this announcement: “God said, Yes!”
 
The next day, also while driving, her son had another probing question: “Momma, where is God?”
 
And Momma was prepared for this question. “Oh, son, there is nowhere you can go that God won’t be there. God loves us so much that God wants to be with us all the time.”
 
There was silence from the back seat. Sarah looked in her rear view mirror to see her son turning his head side-to-side as if looking for someone or something.
 
“Son, what are you doing?”
 
“I’m looking for God.”
 
“Well, did you find him?”
 
“No, Momma, my God ran away.”
 
This conversation was between a young child and his seminary-trained mother. On the surface, it seems like such a simple exchange, just a request for information. But it is a profound one, containing questions we may ask at all ages and stages and circumstances of our lives.
 
When God’s people, Israel, were traveling through the wilderness, they became weary, worn, hungry and thirsty. They begin to lose faith in their leader, Moses. So, they turn on him in this text and blame him for their plight.
 
And we hear them raising their voices, too:  “Did you just bring us out here to die? Is God with us or not?”
 
The late Rev. Dr. Andrew Greeley, a Catholic priest and academic, offers these thoughts in his book, The Great Mysteries:
“Life is filled with so many senseless events. Mindless tragedies fill our newspapers every day-airplane crashes, the murder of innocent children, insane terrorism, natural disasters. And much of our own lives seems without purpose or meaning-like a rainstorm on a picnic day, a bad cold when we are having a party, a handicapped child, the early death of a parent or spouse, a broken marriage, a car that won’t start in the morning, a wrong number in the middle of the night, the treason of friends and envy of our neighbors.”
 
We aften wonder why these things happen and if there is a purpose or point to them? Do they come as some kind of judgment on us for the sins we have committed?
 
Is God with us or not? Does God even care?
 
The Israelites aren’t the only ones to ask those accusatory questions, are they?
 
Many years ago, one of my church people, the mother of two children, a boy and a girl, called to inform me that her son, elementary school age, had tried to take his own life the day before. The conversation in the car on the way to the hospital went something like this, “Honey, what is wrong? Why are you so sad? How can Daddy and I help you? We love you. God loves you.”
 
“God does not love me. I have talked to God all my life and asked him for only one thing: I have asked God to give me a friend and he hasn’t. So, I don’t think God loves me.”
How do you respond to that pain?
 
The good news is that eventually things began to work out for this child but it took maximum effort. He is now leading a successful life and has been blessed with a family.
 
The Israelites in our text  have witnessed the presence and power of God.  God saved them from the plagues and recues them from Pharoah’s army, allowing them to cross the Red Sea. They have been led by the pillar of fire, and have been fed by manna and quail. They have experienced God’s work in the darkest of circumstances. They have evidence, but what they want now is personal satisfaction, according to author Peter Gomes.
 
“I’m hungry! I’m thirsty! I’m broke! I’m lonely! I’m mistreated!”
 
Sarah Shelton says the wilderness is no longer a geographic place. The wilderness has become a state of mind and faith.
 
But before we ridicule those ungrateful Hebrew children, we should probably stop and consider our own states of mind and faith.
 
How often do we think about what we want God to do for us, how we want God to conform to our needs, and to perform these things on our timetable? I admit that I have done this.
 
I remember one time years ago when the church I was serving was experiencing some turbulence. One of the women with whom I worked closely, who was one of the most troubled at the time, said, “Cinda, we just have to pray really hard for God to change this situation.”
 
To which, another wise friend and church member said, “Let’s just hope God wants the same thing we do.”
 
The truth is there are often long pauses when it seems God is not present and is not active in the world, much less in our lives. But that would be a wrong assumption.
 
Sarah Shelton says that when she shares glimpses of her own life, or her family’s experiences and challenges with her congregation,  it gives her flock permission to open up and share of their own experiences. What she has discovered is that their faith is deep and mature. Those who have endured the suffering of this world are those who see God not as a solution waiting to happen, or a quick fix to numb their pain. No. They see God as present in and with our challenges.
 
When we look for the bigger picture, when we think about how our hardships stretch and change us, then suffering is seen as an opportunity to discover the presence and activity of God.
 
When this happens, we practice what Paul encourages in Romans 5- that God neither leaves us in our problems nor attempts to solve them for us, but that God joins us in our darkness.
 
So then, we understand when Paul says, “We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurances produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given us.
 
I’ve shared the story of Carrie ten Boom before, so I’ll just refer to her briefly. In the midst of the Holocaust, Corrie, a Dutch watchmaker, had the courage and strength of character to house endangered Jews in her home. That is what we could call radical hospitality. She was eventually arrested for this practice and she and her family were herded off to concentration camps, where most died. Corrie survived and upon her release, she established a post-war home for other camp survivors trying to recover from the horrors they suffered. She went on to travel widely as a missionary, preaching the gospel and encouraging forgiveness of sins and moving forward with life post-Holocaust. One Sunday she encountered one of the prison guards who had treated her so cruelly. It took every ounce of faith and courage to face this man with the love of God and offer him forgiveness.
 
If you want to learn more about Corrie ten Boom, read her book, The Hiding Place.
 
Where was God that morning as Corrie recognized her captor? God was with Corrie and the former Nazi guard and with all who had gathered to hear Corrie’s message and God was even with those who rejected the gospel that day. Because that’s who God is. God always initiates the relationship and we only love because God first loved us.
 
“Momma, where is God?”
“God is in your heart and everywhere.”
 
May it be so for all of us.
 
“
 
 
 
*Hymn     168   Within Your Shelter, Loving God
 
*Affirmation of Faith     Apostles’ Creed p. 35
*Hymn   580        Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
*Hymn   606   Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
Thank you, Lord, for your many gifts-for the world’s helpers, peace and security,
recreation and rest, friends and family, life and health.
We thank you for your Son, Jesus, who came to embody your love and compassion for the world, calling us into lives of joyful service.  We offer these gifts in his name. Amen.
 
*Hymn   443   There Is a Redeemer
 
 
*Blessing
May God bless you and keep you safe.
May God smile on you with grace.
May God watch over you always
and give you peace.  Amen.
 
*Postlude

Prelude
Welcome and Announcements 
 
Lenten Reading      Jeremiah  31: 31-34     
Reader 1: Friends, once again, we are asked to observe a holy Lent, that by prayer and supplication, meditating on the Word of God, and being in service to others, we might grow closer to the heart of Christ and joyfully witness to his love and grace.
 
Reader 2:  Hear the words of the prophet:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt-a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.  
 
Prayer 
God of the covenant, in the glory of the cross, your Son embraced the power of death and broke its hold over your people. In this time of repentance, draw all people to yourself that, we who confess Jesus as Lord, may put aside any deeds that deny the depth of his sacrifice and accept the life of your kingdom.  Amen.
                  
*Hymn    664    Morning Has Broken
 
Prayer of Confession
Merciful God, we are a people prone to wander, tempted to satisfy our immediate desires, or the most efficient solution to our challenges, instead of seeking a wider view that would lift up a just, peaceful, and plentiful world for all. Holy One, remind us of your love and purpose for all your children.  Restore all our relationships and guide us home. Amen.
 
 Hymn   698    Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
 
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
Our God is loving, just, and merciful. God delivers us from sin and restores us by grace. Friends, I declare to you, in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we can be at peace.
 
Epistle Reading    Philippians 3:17-4:1          
 
Moments With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading   Luke 13:31-35
Morning Message
 
I’m still trying to get used to reading the paper late in the day, as the paper is delivered with our mail now. I usually get to it after dinner with a cup of tea-Twinings English Breakfast, if possible.
 
And so it was that on a Thursday evening some time ago, I opened the paper to see that a very dear friend of ours had died. I had no idea what had happened. Though our families had been close for many years, brought together by our daughters and their school friendship,  he and his wife had moved to the Cincinnati area to be near their daughter and her family, which included their one grandchild.
 
The visitation was from 6 to 8, and it was 6 on the dot. So, I rushed upstairs and got myself put together enough to make a visit to the funeral home. I tried to reach Ed on the way. He was in Charleston for the All State Music Conference.  I knew this news would hit him hard. I was right. I finally reached him as I was walking into the funeral home. I could hear the grief and disbelief in his voice. I detected a note of regret that we had lost contact with our friends. I was feeling it, too.
 
When we confess our sins each week in worship, we sometimes ask God to forgive those things we have done that we should not have done, and to forgive those things we should have done, that we failed to do. I was feeling the full awful truth of that in those moments.
 
Feeling plenty convicted, I waited behind a long line of friends and neighbors and colleagues to speak to the family. Then I was wrapped in a fierce embrace that closed the gap that absence and neglect had created.
 
I started to apologize that I was so completely out of the loop and so sorry to learn of her husband’s death. She gave me one of those looks that said, “Stop. You need to hear the rest of the story.”
 
And so I did. I learned that for nearly the whole time they had lived in Cincinnati, her husband had been battling a brain tumor. He undergone surgery and radiation treatment to no avail. He suffered two massive strokes. The illness devastated his body and his mind.  His death was a blessing. His suffering and theirs was ended. He had been received into the arms of mercy and everlasting peace.
 
My friend further let me off my guilty hook by saying their lives had been consumed by her husband’s health issues. There was no time for much of anything else. And, the pastor and members of the church they had joined had been very supportive and helpful and present with them through the whole ordeal, just as their friends here would have done.
 
And then she said, “I want to tell you something. You will understand.”
 
“One Sunday, our pastor spoke about finding your purpose. And I spent a good deal of time that day really thinking about that. What was my purpose? What is my husband’s purpose?”
 
Now, I would have said she had found her purpose in being a devoted daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother, and for thirty years, a teacher. And her husband found his purpose in being a son, brother, husband and father and in his career as an engineer. And those are but minimal descriptions of their rich and meaningful lives.
 
Then she said the most interesting thing happened. “I went to the facility where my husband was a patient, and found myself at the nurses’ station asking them if they had ever thought of holding a worship service at the facility. The nurse said no, but, did I know of a church that might be approached about it?”
 
 My friend said, “See that church across the field? I go to that church. I’ll ask the pastor about it. The next Sunday, there was a worship service at the nursing facility and from then until now there has been an on-going relationship with the church and the facility that is far more than a single weekly service.
 
She said that was confirmation that she and her husband were exactly where they were supposed to be. Their lives still had purpose. In fact, they had a fresh purpose, even at 70 years of age.
 
Why do I tell you this story? Because the kingdom of heaven and eternal life are gifts of God and we don’t have to wait until life on the other side to appreciate them. They may be enjoyed now. Today.   
 
When we pray, as we will shortly, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are affirming our belief that our lives are centered in a realm that began 2000 plus years ago, accomplished for us on the cross of Calvary, and now we can be living witnesses to that truth.
 
Remember when Nicodemus, in the Gospel of John,  asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life, how he could be born again. Surely, he couldn’t enter into his mother’s body to be birthed again.
 
That is a powerful, naked, question. It strikes at the heart of the matter. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, one of the most devout Jews of his day. He was one of the most highly educated people of his community. He was important, respected.
 
Now, it was believed that the most serious, most intense, study was a discipline to undertake at night. And so, here he was, a Jew, a scholar of the law, asking Jesus about life after death and how to secure it.
 
What do we understand in our reformed tradition about life after death?
 
We start with what we know of Jesus’ experience. The Jesus story is also our story. That Jesus died, was raised, ascended into heaven, and sits at God’s right hand prefigures our own story. We will follow him. This means our confessions of faith describe the life, death, and resurrection  of Jesus as we understand it.  From the earliest confessions, it is understood that we are destined, when we die, to follow Jesus into God’s presence.
 
We also take counsel from the church confessions of faith. The Scots Confession declares, “The chosen departed are in peace, and rest from their labors, not that they sleep and are lost in oblivion as some fanatics hold, for they are delivered from all fear and torment, and all the temptations to which we and all God’s chosen are subject in this life.”
 
Westminster is even more precise, declaring that ‘the bodies of men, (and women), after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God.” In heaven these souls “behold the face of God.”
 
If there is a Presbyterian narrative about life after death, this is it: when you die, your soul goes to be with God, where you enjoy God’s glory and wait for the promised day of Christ’s return.
 
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
 
This is the gospel in a nutshell, isn’t it? It is the most-often-quoted verse in the Bible. And this was the ultimate answer to the deep and probing questions Nicodemus asked of Jesus.
 
That verse says the origin of our salvation begins with God. God initiates a relationship with us. Why? Because God loves us. God sent his Son out of love to live among us, to be one of us,  and save us. So, behind everything is the love of God.
 
The Letter of First John says,  “God is love. Those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.”
 
This is not the picture of God that some present, with God as an angry monarch whose subjects must follow strict orders to please God.  The God Jesus speaks of in his answer to Nicodemus is the Father who cannot be satisfied until all his wandering children come home.
 
This answer tells us of the width, the expanse, of God’s love. It was the world God loved. It was not a nation. It was not the good people. It was not only the people who loved God. It was for the world. The unlovable and the unlovely. The lonely who have no one else to love them. The person who loves God, and the person who never even thinks of God. The one who rests in the love of God and the one who spurns the love of God. All are included in this vast inclusive love.
 
Augustine said, “God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.”
 
And that is the essence of the story my dear friend shared with me that Thursday night some years ago. God loved them so much that God used the opportunity of their suffering to bring the good news of the gospel of Christ to others who were in need of love and hope and courage and Christian fellowship, if even for a brief hour.
 
 And if that was God’s final purpose for Richard’s life, God’s kingdom did come.
 
 
*I Cannot Tell   (insert)
*Affirmation of Faith           The Apostles’ Creed p. 35
* Hymn   580                        Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
*Hymn   606     Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
Gracious, loving, and abundant God, we praise you for the gifts presented today and for the intentions of your people in giving. Bless these offerings, of hearts and resources. May they equip the saints for their ministry and be a comfort to those in need.  Amen.
 
*Hymn  702         Christ Be Beside Me
 
*Blessing
The cross…we will take it.
The bread…we will break it.
The pain…we will bear it.
The joy…we will share it.
The gospel…we will live it.
The love…we will give it.
The light…we will cherish it.
The darkness…God will perish it.         
    From Stages On the Way: Iona Community, Wild Goose Worship Group
 
Congregational Meeting
*Postlude

​Prelude
Welcome and Announcements
Lenten Reading       
Reader: Brothers and sisters in Christ, I invite you to observe a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer and fasting, by self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s Word. 
Congregation: Lent is a period of forty days- like Moses’ sojourn at Mt. Sinai, Elijah’s journey to Mt. Horeb, like the story of Noah and the flood, Jonah’s call to Ninevah, and of Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness.
Reader: In Genesis 9:8-17 we read: “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you- the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you- every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you, never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, a covenant for all generations to come. I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and all the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures of all kinds.  Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Congregation: So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
 
Prayer
Merciful God, in Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
*Hymn  12   Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
 
Prayer of Confession
O God, our strength and fortress, forgive us when we fail to trust in you.
We fall easily to temptation,
swayed by false words,
and false statements of our own making.
We choose ease and comfort over the claims made upon us
as Christians devoted in faith and service.
In turning from you, we settle for less than the abundant life you intend.
We keep the Good News to ourselves and neglect to demonstrate your generosity to those desperate to find relief.
Forgive us, Lord, and do not put us to shame.
Show us your salvation when we call upon you.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who died that we might live.  Amen.
 
*Hymn   698      Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
The Lord is generous to all who call on him.
God does not turn us away, but, desires to bring us into the glorious freedom offered in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Friends, know you are forgiven and be at peace.
 
Moments With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading    Mark 1:9-15
Morning Message
 
It wasn’t until I walked into my bedroom Wednesday night and caught sight of myself in the mirror that it dawned on me why I’d received some funny looks when I stopped at a store on my way home from the Ash Wednesday service.
 
I had a black smudge right in the middle of my forehead. It was pretty unattractive.
And that’s as it should be, isn’t it?
 
Ashes, dark and grimy, traced on our foreheads in the shape of a cross. Two symbols in one: ashes to remind us of death and the sobering words, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” But in sort of a secret language, that truth is overlaid with the sign of resurrection…the empty cross.
 
Christians do not receive the sign of the cross to attract attention. They receive the sign of the cross to focus on who they are as human beings, bound in death and life to Christ.
 
Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent provide time to explore the mystery at the heart of the Gospel… that being a Christian means a new life through Christ.
 
And so Lent begins…forty days, except Sundays, between last Wednesday and Easter. The forty days remind us of other big events in the story of God and God’s people: the flood of Genesis, Moses’ sojourn at Mt. Sinai, Elijah’s journey to Mt. Horeb, Jonah’s call to Ninevah, and Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness, as we read just now.
 
In the early church, Lent was a time of preparation for baptism, which was done at the Easter vigil.
 
Imagine for a moment what that may have looked and felt like. New believers, many of whom were converts from some other faith, or no faith at all, were given months of instruction before the final act of commitment, baptism.
 
We light candles each Sunday, and special candles for baptism. In the early church, because baptisms were done in living, or running, water, they were conducted outside, and held just after midnight.
 
I can close my eyes and visualize the scene. Believers lining the riverbank or the lakeshore with torches, maybe singing songs of the faith, praising God in prayer, witnessing the uninitiated wade into the water, plunged beneath the surface, washed clean, raised as new-born brothers and sisters in this great communion of saints we call the Church.
 
Men and women were baptized in separate ceremonies, and they were baptized without a stitch of clothing on. When they came up from the water, they were wrapped in new robes, to symbolize the new life they put on in Christ.
 
Today, we still observe Lent. Catholics and Orthodox Christians have observed it for centuries. Presbyterians are late in coming to the practice. As you remember from church history, the Reformers, like Calvin and Zwingli, tossed out rituals that could not be found in Scripture and anything that they deemed “too Catholic.”  That was unfortunate. Our rituals teach us form, they shape our practices. We find layers of meaning in them as the years, and our life experiences unfold.
 
I am most appreciative that we have re-claimed Lent as a time set apart in the church year. Unlike the four weeks of quiet expectation we observe in Advent, the outcome of which is Christ’s birth, Lent plunges us into six weeks of somber reflection on our humanness, our penchant for sin, and our mortality. Remember those ashes.
 
In the lectionary texts, we will walk through the final days of Jesus’ life, and feel the pressure building between spiritual power and civil power.
 
And we will pray, as Jesus prayed, and sought God’s purpose and will for his life those forty days in the wilderness, as he prayed that night in the garden when all his friends fell asleep, and as he cried out to God in agony, in those excruciating final hours on the cross at Calvary. All of it adding shape and texture to the purpose of Jesus’ life.
 
What is your spiritual purpose? How did you come to faith? Did God call you in a dramatic way to love and serve him? Or was it a more gradual process? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know God. As you’ve grown and matured, has your faith been strained or has it grown stronger?  I’ve experienced both. How is your faith different from your earlier years?
 
Dr. Ernest Thompson was Senior Ministerat First Presbyterian Church for about ten years. He was in many ways, my spiritual father. I worked with Ernest as the Christian Education Director at First Pres for several years. Time with Ernest shaped my faith in specific ways. I learned so much about being a pastor from him. He taught me to be brave, to stretch for the next goal, and not to take myself too seriously. On his last Sunday at the church, we had Communion. It was a solemn occasion. You could hear sniffles and muted crying all around the sanctuary. ET himself looked at the floor while the trays were being passed through the congregation. We had already begun to mourn our loss.
 
But, Ernest would be the first to say as important as the moment was, we would always be connected through our faith, and we must remember that we do not live by bread, even holy bread, alone, but by finding our purpose in the true bread of heaven, Jesus Christ.
 
In a staff meeting one day, we were all called on to share something of our faith story. Ernest had grown up in faculty housing at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, where his father was an esteemed professor. He was also heavily involved in the civil rights movement and was instrumental in launching the Presbyterian Outlook magazine, which is still published today.
 
ET, as he was affectionately known, was fully immersed in the life of the church, but yet, he didn’t show much interest in cultivating his faith. He described it as superficial. That is, until one summer, while working at Montreat, he heard the gospel message in a way that woke him up to the good news of the gospel, of life and death, and life after death, all wrapped up in the irresistible love and grace of Jesus Christ.
 
Upon his return home, he sat with his father and shared this newly-ignited faith.
 
To which, with a tear coursing down his cheek, his father said, “Son, that’s what I’ve been trying to teach you all along.”
 
In the Companion to the Book of Common Worship, we find this description of the Lenten season.
 
“What we hear during Lent is the power and possibility of the paschal mystery, and that the way of the cross, the way to Easter, is through death.
 
To appropriate the new life that is beyond the power of death means we must die with Christ who was raised for us.
 
To live for Christ, we must die with him.
 
New life requires a daily surrendering of the old life, letting go of the present order, so that we may embrace the new humanity.
 
“I die every day!” asserts Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:31.
 
Resurrection necessitates death as a preceding act.
 
The church’s peculiar Lenten claim is that in dying we live, that all who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death. To be raised with Christ means one must also die with Christ.
 
In order to embrace the resurrection, we must experience the passion of Jesus. The way of the cross, the way to Easter, is through death of the “old self.”
 
In dying, we live.
 
Therefore, at the beginning of Lent, we are reminded that our possessions, our rulers, our empires, our projects, our families, and even our lives do not last forever.
 
The difference in age between my daughters, Katy and Sarah Beth, is nearly six years. Like most kids who have enjoyed first or only-child status, Katy had a wee streak of jealousy that sometimes came out in devilish behavior.
 
When SB became mobile, I put her in a playpen while I took cooked or did something that required both hands to accomplish. She wasn’t pleased about that habitat, but she could tolerate it for a little while.
 
One day, I noticed she seemed to be crying a lot. I let that go for awhile, but, soon walked from kitchen to living room to see what the problem could be. And, what I saw made me laugh and it made me hurt: Sarah Beth had just learned to pull herself up to standing, her little fingers gripping the padded rail around the playpen, quite pleased with herself, her eyes firmly focused on her big sister, whom she adored. And her adored big sister was peeling those baby fingers off the rail, one by one, until SB lost her grip and fell backwards with a thud and let out a stunned cry.
 
I was concerned for years that she was irreparably scarred, until I caught SB lowering a giant stuffed clown down the wall from her top bunk-bed to the bottom bunk to scare Caroline, who had clown phobia. That’s the way it goes in the world of siblings.
 
I tell you this story because the liturgies throughout Lent try to pry loose our fingers, one by one, from presumed securities, and plunge us into unknown baptismal waters, that turn out to be not only our death tomb, but surprisingly, our womb of life. Rather than falling back into nothingness, we fall back on everlasting arms.
 
Death? How can we fear what we have already undergone in baptism?
 
It is the power of the resurrection on the horizon ahead that draws us into repentance toward the cross and tomb. Through the intervention of God’s gracious resurrection, lifelong changes in our values and behavior become possible.
 
By turning from the end of the old self in us, Lenten repentance makes it possible for us to affirm joyfully, “Death is no more!” and to aim toward the landscape of the new age.
 
Faithfully adhering to the Lenten journey of “prayer, fasting and almsgiving” leads to the destination of Easter.
 
So, I invite you to observe a Holy Lent. Take up a spiritual practice. Read one of the gospels from beginning to end. Take your time. Pray. Experience God in silence. Wait for a sense of God’s presence and listen with your heart. Help someone. Practice fasting if your health allows.
 
In all things, I urge you to ponder these words,
“Lent is the season of penitence. To be repentant is to be aware of your human nature, your tendency to sin, and the remorse you feel as a result. And, to repent means to turn around…to turn from sin and to turn toward Christ, that your life speaks of your love and devotion.
 
In our baptism and confirmation rites we are asked, “Do you reject sin and its power in your life, and is it your intention to turn from sin and toward God?”
 
And the answer is, “I will, with God’s help.”
 
And so, my dear friends, we will, with God’s help.
 
 
*Hymn   166   Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days
 
*Affirmation of Faith         Apostles’ Creed p. 35
*Hymn   580     Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns
Prayers of the Faithful and the Lord’s Prayer
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
*Hymn   606   Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
Gracious God, we give you thanks for all your gifts, including these forty days of Lent.
May they be to us a time of deep searching, be it during walks in the wilderness or by making courageous choices.
May we dedicate ourselves anew to discipleship, even as we dedicate our gifts to your kingdom.  Amen.
 
*Hymn   215   What Wondrous Love Is This?
 
*Blessing
These Lenten days will take us to the cross of Christ.
Go forward, knowing that you do not walk this way alone.
Do not fear, for the Word of God empowers us and the Holy Spirit sustains us.
May the God of the exodus lead us into freedom.
May the Holy Spirit bind us to God’s will and to fellowship with believers over time and space.
May Christ Jesus, God’s own Son, show us the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
 
Announcements
 
Please remain in the sanctuary after worship for a brief annual meeting.
 
The session will meet after worship and meeting today.
 
A congregational meeting will be held immediately following worship March 16 for the purpose of electing a member of the congregation to the Nominating Committee.
 
 
 
 
*Postlude

Prelude
*Call to Worship
“Listen to him!” Our God cries from the mountaintop.
It is good for us to be here. We bow before our God in worship.
May God’s Word resonate in our ears and sink into our innermost beings.
May our hearts be transfigured, our minds filled with understanding
 
*Hymn 1    Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!                       
 
Prayer of Confession
God of compassion,
in Jesus Christ you reveal the light of your glory.
But we turn away, distracted by our own plans.
We confess that we speak when we should listen,
and act when we should wait.
Forgive our aimless enthusiasms.
Grant us wisdom to live in your light
and to follow in the way of your beloved Son,
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
 
*Hymn  698          Take, O Take Me As I Am
 
Assurance of Forgiveness
Though we were blinded by sin,
God’s saving light has been beamed into our hearts
that we may see the radiant mercy of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
Sisters and brothers, I declare to you, your sins are forgiven. Be at peace.  Amen.
 
Old Testament Reading       Exodus 24: 12-18                 
 
Time With Our Young Disciples
 
Gospel Reading         Luke 9:28-36
Morning Message
 
Pastors love to tell their “war stories.” This is one of Rev. Janet Hunt’s.
 
She had officiated the funeral of a veteran. When the church service was over, they traveled in caravan to the cemetery. After prayers and some final words, Janet turned the graveside service over to the honor guard that they might do their part. If you’ve witnessed this, you know how moving that is. They played taps and gave a gun salute. Then, two of the honor guard removed the flag, folding it as they do before presenting it to the family.
 
Now, Janet has been a minister for a long time and was familiar with these rituals. She knows how much they mean to the families of departed loved ones. Everything had gone per expectation, until the folding of the flag. At that moment, the funeral director, someone with whom she hadn’t worked before, appeared at her side, explaining the ritual in a rote and practiced manner of what they were witnessing. She says she just wanted to kick the man.  There are times for words and times for silence and clearly this was a time for silence, in Janet’s opinion.
 
We aren’t very good at silence. It makes some people uncomfortable and we want to fill it, make some noise, assuring ourselves that we are not alone. Maybe that’s what the funeral director was attempting to do- make people less uncomfortable.
 
I’ve done some reflecting on this idea that there is a tme for words and a time for silence. I’ve experienced both amd you have probably, yourself as well.
 
One time in particular comes to mind. It is a painful memory, but it illustrates the point.
 
Years ago, the head of staff of a church I served was displeased with my performance. He asked me to come to his office on a certain day and time for a conversation, which I did. It soon became apparent that this conversation was really going to be a one-sided diatribe listing my offenses. I was simultaneously hurt, scared, insulted, and ridiculed. I could feel my blood pressure going up and tears threatened to spill down my face.
 
At the end of his strident remarks, he asked me for a response.  I couldn’t respond. I was stunned. If I opened my mouth, I don’t think I could have made a coherent remark. And then came these words, “Is no response your response?”
 
You bet. It was the best option if I wanted to deescalate the situation.
There is a time for words and a time for silence. And there would come a time for me to respond regarding this situation. There is also a time to speak up.
 
The text today reveals a most stunning event.  It was so extraordinary, so far beyond anything Peter, James, and John could possibly imagine. Jesus is transfigured in the presence of his friends and disciples. Miraculously, Moses and Elijah appear in this scene. They are awestruck. Peter hurries to fill up the silence. He jumps in and announces they must build tents for the greats of the faith. I think that’s ok. Peter recognizes the ethereal nature of what they have witnessed and wants to set it apart as a holy moment and a holy place.
 
But, in the end, they all fall silent.There are simply no words to explain what they had just experienced. They will make their way down the mountain, full of awe and wonder. What will they do in response?
 
Janet Hunt says even though she was perturbed by the interference of the funeral director during the honor guard ritual, she could see something of herself in the moment. She says she is often uncomfortable with silence, too, and may find herself compelled to jump in with words or stories or analogies to fill up the space. Later, she realizes that none of what she has interjected is necessary. It didm’t provide any helpful insights at all.
 
So, she invites us to add some silence to our days, to stand still and notice with her these things:
 
Jesus took his closest friends and together they climbed the mountain. A mountain is the  place where the Holy is often encountered.
 
Jesus prayed. In the midst of his praying, Jesus was transformed. Jesus became light itself.
Jesus is joined by Elijah and Moses, heroes of the Hebrew people, who had long since died.
 
And that they are in conversation about what is before Jesus nowL That Jesus will suffer and die on the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. We are led to understand then that even though this path may be unexpected and tragic for his followers and his family and closest friends, Jesus has come to fulfill his mission, the one prophesied through the ages.
 
Peter, you gotta love him, wants to do something to preserve this moment, so they might stay there in this light, in this encounter with God. There’s a sermon in that, too. Sometimes we have mountain-top experiences, where our faith is deepened, but, upon returning home or work or school, the experience fades and seems to lose its meaning.
 
Notice at the same time, the disciples experience fear as the cloud descends upon them…I think that would be a rational response in view of this stunning scene. Have you ever driven through heavy fog? Or flown through it? We returned to Huntington from Charlotte in a smallish plane this summer. We were warned that turbulence was possible as we had to fly through a storm. Well, we were soon enveloped in a thick cloud, but we could still see fierce lightening. And then the shaking and shuddering commenced and some of the passengers cried out in fear. That’s a normal response. We landed safe and sound.
 
In this scene in our text, a voice is heard from the cloud…echoing the words Jesus heard at his baptism. Only this time the words are not meant for Jesus alone. They are also meant for Peter, James, and John, and for all of us. God says we are to listen to Jesus.
 
And listening implies that we fall silent and wait upon Jesus’ voice. That’s a challenge sometimes. We fill our days with work and obligations; we experience life in a community. Everywhere we live and move and have our being, there is noise. To be fair, it’s not all bad. But to connect with Jesus, we have to intentionally set aside time for silence and waiting. This is absolutely essential for prayer/
 
A member of our church family is navigating a cancer diagnosis. Things have not gone as well as hoped for. As we texted back and forth Friday night, she said all she can do right now is pray and wait. So I told her, we would pray and wait with her.
 
There’s a time for words and a time for silence.
 
I admit, I’m sometimes uncomfortable with silence. My habit of turning the TV on as soon as I walk in the door at home attests to that. I am comforted by the noise, even if I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on.
 
But, could it be that in filling the silence, I am missing out on hearing the voice of God?
Could we, in the six weeks of Lent, reflecting upon the last days of our Savior’s life, set aside time for quiet contemplation? Would this equip us to respond in confidence when we are asked to give witness to our faith? I think it might.
 
That is our challenge as we are about to enter a holy Lent.
 
I offer these verses by Rumi:
 
There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude.
There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost.
There is a senxe of holiness on you the thought of sin has never touched.
 
 
*Hymn      Be Thou My Vision
*Affirmation of Faith     Apostles’ Creed  p. 35
*Hymn  581      Gloria Patri
 
Sharing Our Joys and Concerns 
Pastoral Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
O Lord, our God,
you are great indeed, clothed in majesty and splendor,
wrapped in light as with a robe.
In the solitude of a mountain height,
you revealed your glory in Jesus Christ
even as he faced his crucifixion.
We praise you for this glimpse of the mystery of our redemption.
Transfigure us by your Spirit,
and let your love shine in all we do and say
that all the world may see the radiance of your light,
Christ Jesus, your Son,
Who guides all creation to the fullness of your glory.
We lift up those in our community of faith, our friends, and family members who are in need of healing and wholeness, all those in need, the forgotten, lost, and abused,
and pray for the coming of your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
We pray as Jesus taught us, saying, Our Father…Amen.
 
Presenting Our Tithes and Offerings
*Hymn  606   Doxology
*Prayer of Dedication
God of grace, you provide for us in more ways than we can know or understand. Accept these offerings as signs of our gratitude and bless them to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ, that the radiance of his light may transform hearts and minds and wills.
 
*Hymn  193        Jesus, Take Us to the Mountain
 
*Blessing                      Nathan Nettleton, Laughingbird.net
Go now, and speak of what you have seen of God.
Do not cling to the holy moments when heaven overshadows you.
But, as the Lord lives, listen to Christ and follow him
from the places of revelation to the places of mission.
And may God shine the light of glory into your hearts.
May Christ be with you and never leave you.
And may the Spirit renew the image of God within you.
 
*Postlude