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Wholeness

9/13/2020

Psalm 103: 1-5, 10-13; Luke 6: 12-19
Service for Wellness 9/13/20

“for power came out from him and healed all of them.” Jesus had the power to heal others, but what do we do when we are faced with illness or depression or suffering or fears...our own or others? As pastor, I can be privy to many sorrows and troubles. It can be a heavy load. But I try to remind myself that my sharing the load does not make it my load, and that sharing can be a way to lighten the load. What do I do? I pray. Do my prayers work? I can't say I always see them answered how I like, and I do recognize in light of gospel passages, they are not as effective as the prayers of Jesus.
In our gospel message today, we find Jesus on the mountain in prayer all night long. His prayers are perfect prayers. But do you ever find yourself frustrated when you don't see specific answers to your prayers? Especially prayers for healing-- whether for yourself or a loved one? And does that lack of healing mean you are praying wrong, or your faith is too small?
Today is what I'm calling a wellness service.

Note I don't call it a healing service. We do pray for healing but with the understanding that God is in control here. I get frustrated by preachers or authors who insist that if we have enough faith, if our prayers our right, God has to answer our prayer. And we know where they get that. In last week's gospel we read these words from Jesus, “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” But too often we don't see even the things we agree on being done the way we want.
So why pray when we find that the prayers are not being answered the way we want? We pray in obedience to God. We pray in submission to God. We pray because prayer does change things... maybe us, maybe the person for whom we pray, even sometimes scriptures tell us, God's mind has been changed. I mentioned Dorothy Hunt's sermon in my newsletter article on today's service. Here's what she said in the midst of her journey with cancer, “We all carry many pains and hurts in our lives, yet in the power of the Holy Spirit we can be instruments of healing – “wounded healers” for one another. We offer our prayers for others, always recognizing our own vulnerability.
This ministry of prayer complements the work of medicine which is itself a miracle, a gift of God. Healing comes in many ways. The spirit of the living Christ can enter our bodies and our minds - healing us, renewing us, and making us whole.”
We prayed for healing for Dorothy... and I will be sharing a long list of people for whom we've prayed, over many years some of them. And Dorothy was not healed, many for whom we've been praying are still on the prayer list. so why don't we give up? Because there is no way of knowing how our prayers are working. Do we need complete healing to be satisfied? Is our idea of healing what God's healing actually looks like? Do we need a return to perfect health for healing to take place? Pastor Heidi Husted Armstrong shared this thought in The Presbyterian Outlook, “'sometimes the greatest healing of all is to be healed of the need to be healed.' To trust the departing to God's mercy and grace.” Death is the enemy, God makes that clear in scripture. But death does not have the final victory-”death, where is thy victory, death where is thy sting”. (1 Corinthians15: 15)
So the heart of our message today is to keep on praying and trusting in God's goodness. The Psalmist put God's care this way, it is God “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” And we understand that wellness includes physical as well as spiritual gifts... and we are both physical and spiritual beings. Pastor Truman sent me a sermon written by Paul Tillich. He made this point using the terms historical for human things and eternal for spiritual, “The two orders, the historical and the eternal, are within each other. The historical order is not separated from the eternal order.” The eternal is almost always beyond our vision here on earth. But we can trust that God is working in both orders, human and divine, physical and spiritual. And while we aren't promised we will not suffer in the physical order, God does promise that spiritually we are made perfect through faith.
So as we pray for our brothers and sister who are suffering in the physical realm, we will pray for physical health. But more, we will pray that God is with them, giving strength, encouragement, peace and even joy. We proclaim with and claim the promise of the psalmist, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.” God's love is steadfast, is infinite, is there for each of us. So pray without ceasing for your needs, but more for those who suffer. It is fulfilling God's command, it is changing you, and it changes the course of this world. And one more note from Dorothy Hunt who continues to teach us God's view of healing, “We all have the power to heal…whenever you pray for someone who is ill, or take them food, or send them a card, or call them, YOU are healing. It may not be as dramatic as the healing stories in the Bible, but you ARE healing.” Now join me in a time of prayer for those who are sick, who are caring for the sick, who are suffering, who are suffering fatigue, who are in need of care.

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Liturgy in a Pandemic

9/6/2020

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Exodus 12: 1-16 Matthew 18: 15-20
September 6, 2020

I found kind there was a church theme in our two readings todays. In the gospel reading, Jesus spoke of the church, of keeping the fellowship relatively pure and the promise of God's presence when we gather together. It's interesting to note, Jesus seldom spoke of the church proper. In fact, only 4 times in the gospel is he recorded using the term church. All four are in Matthew's gospel and two of them in today's reading. The church as we know it today came well after Jesus walked on the earth. We are still struggling to figure out exactly how to do church in ways that both are giving glory to God and being the hands and feet of Jesus in the here and now.

But let's turn to the story of the Passover from Exodus, what does it say bout church and worship? We heard only a small portion of the story of God setting the Israelites free from the slavery in Egypt. Most of us know the story from movies rather than the scriptures--The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt are the two biggies. And they give a good broad picture of the call by God to Moses, his reluctance to follow and how he eventually demonstrated God's power in many ways; particularity the plagues culminating with the death of the first born in the land. Our account today gives the instructions for that night, the night the angel of death visited Egypt. Slaughter a lamb, mark your dwelling with the blood, eat bread without yeast and be fully dressed ready to escape. A little further along in the chapter, we read this, “The Israelites then went and did what God had commanded Moses and Aaron. At midnight God struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, right down to the firstborn of the prisoner locked up in jail. Pharaoh got up that night, he and all his servants and everyone else in Egypt—what wild wailing and lament in Egypt! There wasn’t a house in which someone wasn’t dead. Pharaoh called in Moses and Aaron that very night and said, “Get out of here and be done with you—you and your Israelites.” And God called on the people to remember that night of salvation through the blood of the lamb in the ceremony of the Passover, ““This will be a memorial day for you; you will celebrate it as a festival to God down through the generations, a fixed festival celebration to be observed always.”
You've probably realized the sense in which we as the Christian community of faith also commemorate the Passover memorial. For we too have been saved by the blood of the lamb. We celebrate the Lord's Supper today, instituted during the Passover feast when Jesus used the elements of bread and wine to demonstrate his body broken and blood shed. Paul tells us in Corinthians to commemorate that meal in remembrance of Jesus. He concludes his instructions with these words, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The Passover celebration was and is about remembering and proclaiming the saving power of God. The Lord's Supper was and is about remembering and proclaiming the saving power of God's Son, Jesus Christ.
And I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But we also know that our worship, from communion to the singing of hymns to greeting each other with the peace of Christ, our liturgy is different than it was 7 months ago. We have a dozen people here and a couple dozen on line. We don't get to hear Jayne's music or share treats after the service. We don't pass the bread and the cup to each other in the pew. There are no hugs or shaking hands. But that doesn't change the fact that we are called to gather and worship. Hebrews 10:24-25 puts it this way, “ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.” Today this happens both in person and online. And there is one advantage of online worship, instead of looking at the back of so many heads, you get to see the faces of so many fellow worshipers. And follow Theo's climbing on the furniture.
We gather also because Jesus encouraged us to gather, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” This provoked a question in this week's These Days devotional reading. Daniel Benson wrote, “Jesus seems to suggest that a minimum attendance for him to show up is two or three. What about one?” Does this suggest Jesus does not meet with us individually? I don't think that's what Jesus is saying, he seems to be emphasizing the importance of gathering in community. And while that looks different today than it did last year, we are gathering in Jesus' name and Jesus is here among us, and there among us.
Like this call to gather and like the command to observe and memorialize the Passover, we have received a call for liturgy, ritual, memory, and tradition. There is comfort and strength to be found in our liturgy; confessing our sins together, sharing the cup and the bread/wafer. The ritual of announcing together, “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again” reminds us of the eternal nature of who it is we worship. The words of institution quote Jesus, “eat, drink in remembrance of me” and so we remember. And tradition binds us with the saints who have gone before us. In what was to be a year of celebrating our 150th anniversary as a church, we have been thwarted in our gatherings. We remembered with by ringing the bell 150 times on the date of incorporation (even though the rope broke and we had a quick repair done) and on that Sunday we had a bagpiper and communion and potluck. But most of the events scheduled have fallen victim to the virus.
But gathering in the name of Jesus has not fallen by the wayside. It is different. Communion is different. But Michael J. Chan, Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary in St. Paul points out that “The Passover meal... ensures that (the Israelites) are regularly attentive to the memory of liberation. The ritual offers its participants a specific promise, bound to the concrete reality of the sacrificial victim’s blood.” The promise is freedom and the blood seals the promise. Our gathering to worship ensures that we are attentive to the memory of God's grace shown in Jesus. Our worship offers us all a specific promise of salvation by faith through grace.
One final thought on the Passover command that kind of fits with our worship style these days, it doesn't call for a priest or pastor or minister to lead the ceremony. It has been and is being done in the home, by the family, around the table or, today around the computer or phone. I am here saying the words of institution, but out there, the priesthood of all believers is demonstrated. At home it is your bread, your juice, your preparations. It is not my words or my hands that consecrate the elements but the presence of Jesus where two or more are gathered.
And so in the midst of a pandemic, we gather. We worship. We eat the bread and drink from the cup. We pray. We carry on the liturgy of redemption and freedom and salvation and grace in a pandemic because we trust that God is Lord even of this. As we gather in the name of Jesus, we remember the blood of salvation, from the Exodus to the cross. And we give our thanks. May our bonds of fellowship fill our hearts and minds with hope and peace and power and love for others. Amen.

Hymn: Blest Be the Tie That Binds

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Wholeness

Liturgy in a Pandemic

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