Fairhaven UMC

So as I mentioned earlier this morning, we’re starting our journey through Lent with a new sermon series. The series is called Steadfast Love, a Lenten playlist, and a playlist as in a list of songs, right? The songs will help to illustrate various aspects of this time of year. And each week we will have a different song to listen to. Also during the coming weeks, of course, we’ll be praying our way through the Breakthrough Prayer Book, either as individuals or in small groups.

So we’ve got a lot of things, a lot of new things sort of coming at us this Lent. Before I dive into these though, I wanted to also mention the Ashes to Go this past week with, first off, thanks to everyone who helped out with that. I wanted to share with you how very much the Ashes to Go was appreciated by the people who stopped in. Many people told us they were on their way to work and didn’t think they’d have a chance to get to a service later.

They were so glad we were here. That’s okay. Grab him. And anyway, so the folks who stopped in, they told us that they were so glad that we were here.

And the person who came, we gave them some Lenten prayers to pray. We also gave them an invitation to the Wednesday night services, and they were very much appreciative of this. And I also wanted to mention that many of them said how much they love our sign out front. They look at it every day when they go by, and they just really appreciate that.

So I just wanted to share with you some of that feedback. We had about 15 people, I think, came through for Ashes, and I think maybe next year, if we just advertise a little better, we might get more than that. But even so, it was a good day, not cold like it was last year, so it just went very, very well. So before I get to the song for this week, as sort of a lead into this, on Ash Wednesday, for those of us who attended service, when we received our ashes, we received them with the words, Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Now, the older I get, the less I feel like I need to be reminded of that. In the words of Stephen King, in the movie The Green Mile, We each owe a death. There are no exceptions. But sometimes, oh God, the green mile is so long.

And this echoes the feeling in the song for today. What is it that we need when the green mile starts to feel too long, and how can we help people who are feeling that way? Andra Day had an answer in this week’s song, Rise Up. In her song, the singer has a friend who is feeling really, really down, so far down, that he or she feels like giving up. Now, the song doesn’t say what the trouble was.

Might have been illness, might have been losing a friend, might have been a job situation, but the singer says to her friend, You can’t find the fighter in yourself, but I see it in you, and we’re going to move mountains, she says. The phrase moving mountains means a lot to me personally, as well as to many people of faith, because God has moved mountains for us, and God has promised that if we have faith just the size of a mustard seed, we’ll be able to move mountains, too. And I imagine the person that she’s singing to doesn’t feel much like moving mountains at that particular moment, but she says, We’re going to walk it out, walk it out. It reminds me of an old college friend who suffered from a mild form of epilepsy.

Every now and then she would just sort of zone out and become unaware of her surroundings. And those of us who knew her knew what to do. We would just take her for a short walk, like down the hill, down the hall, and back again, and she’d just sort of zone back in, and she’d be fine. Like the song says, we’re going to walk it out.

And in a similar way, God walks with us. God walks it out with us, even if we’re not always aware of it. It’s a great song to hear, especially this year when it feels like the past two months have been a year already. I mean, this past two months we have had people who’ve lost loved ones, people who’ve taken family or friends to hospital, while every day seems to bring new bad news.

The song, this song is good because it reminds us that when God looks at us, the eyes of God’s love see what is possible, even when we can’t see it. So we’re going to walk it out with Jesus. We’re going to move mountains with Jesus. Which brings us to Psalm 91, which we read a moment ago.

This Psalm talks about God as my refuge and my fortress. The Psalm talks about leaning on God and relying on God’s strength. Interesting note, by the way, for those of you who are familiar with Amy Grant’s song, El Shaddai, if you’ve ever heard that, the opening verses of Psalm 91, the words in Hebrew include the names El Shaddai and El Elyon, both of which Amy Grant uses in her song. The name El Shaddai implies provision as taken from the word for breast, as in a mother feeding her child.

And the name El Elyon means God most high. So we see in these names both God’s tenderness and God’s power. Another interesting side note, number two here, El Elyon in the book of Genesis is connected with the name Melchizedek. Now those of us in the Bible study might remember that.

Melchizedek was that mysterious priest who met Abraham and who later King David wrote about in the Psalms saying, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, which is a prophecy of the Messiah. So we have a connection here from Abraham to Jesus, all in the first few verses of Psalm 91. Anyway, back to the Psalm. Our hymn on eagles’ wings, which we just sang, is basically Psalm 91 set to music.

It’s no wonder this song means so much to so many people. The first time that I heard the song, my college roommate and I, both of us were music majors at the time, and we were at a funeral. And the soloist sang On Eagles’ Wings. We’d never heard it before.

We looked at each other and went, Wow, what a great song. It was one of those moments where we’re like, We’re going to hear this one again for sure. I doubt that Psalm 91 was written for a funeral, but it was written to remind us of God’s loving protection no matter what. It was written to help us express that wonderful feeling of contentment and well-being when we are in God’s comforting presence.

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, say to the Lord, My refuge, my fortress, my God in whom I trust, and he will raise you up on eagles’ wings. What a great comfort that is. Psalm 91 doesn’t promise that we will never have trouble, but it gives a foundation to our faith that helps us get through those times of trouble. So given this, it’s interesting that in our gospel reading for today in the book of Luke, the tempter who tempts Jesus starts out with a line from Psalm 91.

The tempter says, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you. On their hands they’ll bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. Let me back up to the beginning of the story now. So the past few Sundays we have been reading about the beginning of the end of Jesus’ time on earth, his transfiguration, his final journey to Jerusalem.

But Luke 4 that we just heard just takes us back to the beginning, the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. And at this point in time, Jesus has not yet done anything in public other than be baptized. And immediately after that, the Spirit led him into the wilderness for a time with God and a time of testing. So Jesus is in this dry, rocky wilderness for 40 days without food.

The number 40, by the way, is important in Scripture. Noah had 40 days of rain. Moses had 40 days without food on Mount Sinai. Israel was 40 years in the wilderness and we have 40 days of land.

But number 40 keeps repeating itself, so we kind of watch for that. While Jesus was there in the wilderness, the tempter came and tested him. And all three temptations start out with the words, If you are the Son of God. If Jesus had any doubts about who he was or what he was born on earth to do, these temptations were designed to bring those doubts to the surface.

Likewise with us, by the way, one of the tempter’s greatest attacks on us is to call into question whether or not we are really children of God, whether or not we are really saved, to make us doubt. And we can answer temptation the same way Jesus does, with the words of God. Jesus was human, just like us. He had the same Scriptures that we have.

He had the Old Testament. His mother Mary, I’m sure, told him about his birth and who he was, that he was the promised Messiah. But Jesus had to learn, just like we did, as he grew up, one day at a time, who he was, what he had come to earth for. God was with him and the Holy Spirit was with him as he learned and grew.

But only at Jesus’ baptism do we actually hear God speak out loud in Jesus’ hearing, where he says, This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him. Up till then, he hadn’t seen or done that. The miraculous wasn’t there.

Everyday living. So Jesus didn’t have a whole lot to go on, really, growing up. But we know that Jesus knew the Scriptures well. He understood the law of Moses.

And Jesus understood the law not as a list of do’s and don’ts, but as a means to human thriving. The Ten Commandments and all of the law are given so that human society would thrive as God says, so that you may live and increase. Jesus also understood that God is our provider and that God showed this to Israel by giving manna to Israel in the wilderness, day by day, one day at a time, everyday, without fail, in order to teach the people to trust God on a daily basis. God could have given the people a week’s worth of manna all at one shot.

But God did not do that. God gave the manna daily so the people would learn to look to God for their needs everyday. And this is what the tempter wants to destroy, this relationship of trust. So temptation number one, the tempter says to Jesus, If you’re the son of God, turn these stones to bread.

Now, could Jesus have done that? Sure. The ancient Hebrew prayer says, Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. Jesus had the ability and it would not have been wrong for Jesus to do it, except that the real temptation was to use one’s own power to take care of oneself while losing sight of what God had in mind, that is, God’s bigger picture, and also losing sight of God’s trustworthiness. Jesus’ reply shows that he identifies with us, with the people of God.

Because we can’t make bread out of stones. We wait everyday for God’s provision. And since the people of God are in the position where we need to depend on God everyday, our Savior does the same, in solidarity with us. Jesus is committed to living the way we live and walking with God in ways that we can also walk with God so that we can see how it’s done.

So temptation number two, the tempter says, All power over all the earth has been given to me and I will give it to you if you will bow down and worship me. Of course the first question is, is he telling the truth about this? Does he really have control over everything on earth? And if so, he seems to be offering Jesus a shortcut, a way of becoming the ruler of the earth without having to endure the cross. Now for those of us here on the planet, it may seem to us like the evil one is in charge of this planet sometimes. I mean, C.

S. Lewis once wrote a book, a science fiction book called Out of the Silent Planet in which all the planets in the entire universe that have life on them were always singing praises to God and making beautiful music except for the planet earth. Because of our sin and rebellion against God, earth was the silent planet. And the story is about how music was brought to our world.

Planet earth certainly is in rebellion against God. There are unspeakable evils that are done in this world every day. But I think the tempter’s lying when he says he’s in control of it. The tempter’s power is in making us think he’s in control.

He brags and he boasts and he swaggers and he makes himself bigger than he is. And his power is in blinding the eyes of non-believers to how near to us God really is. But Jesus doesn’t fall for it, not for one minute. It’s written, he answers, it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.

That’s commandment number one in the Ten Commandments. But more than that, Jesus knows his Father God. He knows how good God is. There’s no way he’s going to worship anybody else.

So temptation number three. The tempter says, If you really are the Son of God, throw yourself off the temple. Because it says in scriptures, namely Psalm 91, which we just read, He will command his angels concerning you to protect you. And on their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Now again, could Jesus have done this? Could he have leaped off the top of the temple? Are God’s angels really at his command? Yes. Jesus said to the people who arrested him on Good Friday, Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? See yes, Jesus could have, but he didn’t. Because Jesus loves and trusts his Father God, and Jesus loves us. So Jesus answers, It is also written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

‘ Interesting footnote to Psalm 91, where the tempter, which the tempter quoted, in the very, very next verse after what he quoted, it says about the godly person, You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. It’s interesting because in scripture the devil is sometimes referred to as a young lion looking to devour or a serpent who deceives. So Psalm 91 takes care of both. Jesus does not indulge himself in heroic self-reliance.

Instead he trusts in a strong relationship with God, and this Lent we are invited to renew that relationship. Jesus declares the good news. God loves us, and therefore we can trust God even in times of temptation, even in times of darkness, and especially in the tough times. We can trust that God is with us, and we can live in the comfort of knowing that God loves us.

No matter how low we go, when Jesus is with us, in the words of the song, we’re going to rise up. We’re going to rise up. Amen.

Well, good morning again. This week we have the final installation of our mini-series on worship. Next Sunday will be the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, which you believe we’re here already, almost in Lent, which also means spring won’t be far away, thank goodness. But before we start with today’s message, there were a couple of anniversary days today in the almanac for February 23rd, and I wanted to share these with you.

First one is that on this day in 1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed the Bible on the printing press for the very first time. Before that, Bibles had to be copied out by hand. Can you imagine that? Also on this day in 1741 was the first ever performance of Handel’s Messiah, and that was a benefit concert. People loved it, but it was considered in those days to be way too dramatic and contemporary to be done in church.

The only time in Handel’s lifetime when Messiah was ever done in a church was 17 years later at the Bristol Cathedral, and John Wesley was present in the audience. How cool is that? All right, so this last couple weeks we’ve been talking about worship and why we worship and who we worship. This week we look at the questions, how do we worship and who do we worship with? And the way we worship on a Sunday morning is in a way designed to be sort of like a covenant renewal. When we first became Christians, we made a commitment to Jesus and to God to be people of God, to learn God’s Word, to live it as best we could.

We committed ourselves to live our lives with and for Jesus. Sunday morning worship is meant to be in a way sort of like a renewal of those vows. We actually do renew our vows literally once a year when we have that renewal of baptismal vows, and God’s vows to us are renewed every year at Easter and also every time we take communion. So given that this is sort of the shape of worship, the United Methodist Book of Worship and our hymnal as well contain liturgies, forms of worship for us to use.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel also had liturgies, which are described in the books of Moses. In the New Testament, the house churches also had sort of a basic order of worship that over the centuries developed into something like the liturgy that we use today. And if you visit other churches in other denominations, the liturgies that they use are related to our communion liturgies, similar but not exactly the same. If you happen to have a hymnal near you, by all means grab one if you would like to and take — join me in taking a look at what we’ve been given to worship with.

Page two of our hymnals, way in the front, page two, which is actually probably about 12 pages in, says the basic pattern of worship at the top of the page there, page two. This outline on page two gives us four general parts to a worship service, the entrance, which might include a prelude, an opening hymn or a prayer. This part is designed to help welcome us into the house of God and to focus our attention on spending time with God. And at this point in the service, we may feel the weight and the concerns of the past week sort of slip off of our shoulders, not because those concerns are gone, but because we are now in the presence of the one who can help us with our concerns.

The second section of the service is proclamation and response, and this might include scripture readings, a sermon, testimonies, music or art or drama, responding to God’s word through prayers and gifts and acts of service. And at this point in the service, we hope to learn more about God. We hope to come closer to God. We may sing songs of praise or listen to others as they sing.

We may pray either together or separately, and all these things are meant to draw us closer to God and make it easier for us to hear God’s words and God’s love for us. The third part of the service is thanksgiving and communion, and this may or may not actually include the sacrament of communion. In this section, we give thanks for what we’ve heard, and whatever we do in this part of the service are actions of the family of faith coming together. And then the last, fourth and final part is ascending forth, and that includes the closing hymn, pastoral blessing, and this prepares us to go back out into the world in Jesus’ name to do God’s will.

This pattern of worship has been used by Christian churches around the world for hundreds of years. It may be expressed differently in different denominations. Some churches, for example, sing almost every part of the service. Some churches put psalms in between the various parts.

Some churches bring in a rock band. There’s lots of variations here, but the pattern itself will repeat in just about every church except for maybe the Baptists and the non-denominational churches. In our hymnal, don’t put them away yet, we’re not quite done. In our hymnal, this pattern of worship is then fleshed out in a way that is specifically Methodist.

And this fleshing out begins on page three, the very next page, where it says, In order of Sunday worship using the basic pattern, okay? And this basically, page three through five, sets up the outline of a service. This is sort of the liturgy right here, pages three through five, which may or may not include communion. You can see you can use the same pattern whether you’re having communion or not. That’s the basic setup.

And this is essentially what we use still to this day. Under this in the book, there are a couple of other variations on the communion service itself. There’s one service of Word and Table number one that starts on page six. There’s service of Word and Table number two that starts on page 12.

And then there’s a third one over on page 26, service of — actually four, it says, service of Word and Table four. This one’s really unique to the Methodist church. This is a service that was designed for right after — remember the Methodist Episcopal Church merged with the Evangelical brethren, the EUB church back in the ’60s. They came together.

And this service contains aspects of the traditions of both of those denominations. So this one’s really unique to the Methodist church, and I really appreciate that. So, all these orders of worship are meant to be tools for us, things that are given to us by the church to help us worship God. And the orders of worship here are given to us, are not meant to limit us.

We’re not limited to what we see here. They’re basic outlines. So these orders of worship are meant to help us find the words to talk to God and to worship God, especially when we’re not quite sure what to say when we come in. The downside of using these forms of worship, which have been time-tested and they’ve stood well for hundreds of years, is that they might start to feel boring, a little bit rote.

And I know Pastor Dylan, when he works out the weekly liturgy, he does his very best to put a few things here and there that are new so it doesn’t get boring. The other downside to something that’s been around for as long as this has is that people get to know it very well. And people like me who thrive on tradition and like to have things the way they’ve been, you know, we run a risk of almost getting hooked on this. If something changes, I might think, Well, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.

But for those of us who love tradition, we have to be careful that we don’t end up worshiping the tradition instead of worshiping God. The purpose of the liturgy is to guide us into God’s presence, not to have us say, Oh, what a beautiful liturgy. So two things I can guarantee you. Number one, God is never boring.

And number two, making variations on the liturgy is okay. The word liturgy is an old-fashioned word which literally means work of the people. So we as the people are expected to add to it our thoughts, our prayers, our hearts for God, our dreams, our concerns, all these things get added into the liturgy and work within the liturgy. And God’s promises to us and God’s word for us and God’s love for us are also expressed here in this liturgy.

But without faith and love between us and God, the liturgy is just words. I should also add that it’s important for the liturgy to leave room for the kind of thing that happened at Asbury not too long ago. You all heard about that, the Asbury renewal. When people kept worshiping for days and didn’t want to quit, they kind of got caught up in the spirit.

Not that I recommend ever trying to deliberately create that, but if it happens that God’s spirit takes hold of the congregation one morning and we want to keep singing praises and don’t want to stop, go for it, do it! So having said all this about the liturgy, let me just share a few thoughts on the scripture readings that we heard a moment ago about worship. We’ll start out with Jeremiah. So Jeremiah, he was a very young prophet by the way. Some scholars say he started his ministry at around the age of 13, if you can imagine.

And the message that God gave him throughout his life was that God’s grief over the sins of Israel, that the people had been worshiping Baal, a false god, and God had warned them many times about this. And as a wise person once said, Human beings have a tendency to become like what we worship. If we worship God, we will become more like God. But if we worship a falsehood, we will become people of falsehoods.

And Jeremiah’s message is in this passage, First off, hear the word of the Lord. So the first thing that people need to do is to hear what God is saying. The second part of Jeremiah’s message grows out of the first. If the people hear God’s word, then they will amend their ways and doings.

That’s a reason, there’s a reason why we have a prayer of confession in the service every Sunday. But that’s really just a beginning. Confession is not necessarily about what we do wrong. Confession is about speaking truth, both about who we are and about who God is.

And we confess sin in order for God to forgive our sin so that our relationship with God can be restored. Why do we do this? Because God and sin cannot coexist. God is by nature perfect and holy and perfect love. And God simply by being God cannot occupy the same space with sin.

Just like light does away with darkness, God’s presence does away with sin. And sin is not necessarily something horribly awful. Sin is just imperfection of some kind, anything that falls short of God. So we come to God and we ask God to take away our imperfections, not because we deserve it, but because this is what Jesus gave his life for.

Jesus lived for us the life that we’re not able to live and died for us the death that we could not bear so that we could be reunited with our creator God. Only God can provide this. Going into a church building does not make a person holy. Going through all the motions of worship without encountering God is a waste of time.

As we come to worship, we pray for God’s presence with us. We pray to hear God’s word. We pray that God would lead us into living lives outside the church that reflect God’s truth and God’s love to the world. God says through the prophet Jeremiah, If we truly amend our ways and our doings, if we act justly with one another, if we do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood, and if we do not go after other gods, then God will dwell with us in this place in the land that God has given.

God is true to God’s word. And for this reason and many others, we worship. And then moving on to our passage from Romans, Paul talks about spiritual worship, which he like Jeremiah sees as being connected to moral behavior. Paul says that we are to offer ourselves for the service of others.

Paul appeals to the believers who live in the imperial city of Rome, the very center of empire, not to live according to the ways of Rome, but to live out the faith on the basis of what God has done through Jesus. Now back in those days, there were people in Rome and elsewhere in the empire who believed that Caesar was a god, or if not a god, then at the very least appointed by and blessed by the gods. And when Paul was writing this letter, the man on the throne of Rome was Nero, the guy who played the fiddle while Rome burned. Imagine thinking of him as a god.

Rather than worship this, the followers of Jesus worship God. And real worship of the living God results in loving relationships between God and ourselves and ourselves and others. So real worship is not just for Sundays, it spills over into everyday life. The way we live shows the world God’s righteousness and God’s love for all people.

Real worship also prevents us from drowning in individualism, which is, I confess I’m as independent as anyone, but us Christians, as Christians, we are all parts of one body. And because of this, we care for each other. When one part of the body hurts, we all hurt. When one part of the body is thriving, it brings us all joy.

And Paul also talks about worshiping with our bodies. Now we Methodists don’t do that so much in the Methodist tradition, but not the way the Catholics do, you know, with the up and the down and the kneeling and the getting up, we don’t do that so much. But there is something about the thought of worshiping with our bodies. And I think that might be one of the reasons why we stand to sing and sometimes stand to pray.

It focuses our attention. Worship also builds us into the body of Christ. And when we take communion, we share Jesus’ body symbolically, but in a very real way. The fact that we all share from the same bread and the same cup, again, symbolically, especially post-COVID, but we share from the one.

And in the sacrament, we are made one. We are made one with Jesus and one with God and one with each other. And because we take it into ourselves, our faith is truly, really embodied. It’s not just theoretical.

Paul then wraps up this passage with a review of faith, hope, and love, those big three that he talks about so often, for strangers and for newcomers, as well as for those who’ve always been here. And speaking of worshiping in the body, I wanted to wrap up today with a very touching story that I read this past week. It’s a testimony of a Christian woman living in Canada who, as she got to know Jesus, she began to think about the fact that Jesus had a body, just like yours and mine. That when Jesus was a kid, he would have run around and gotten dusty and dirty and thirsty and tired, just like kids do.

And when Jesus grew up as a rabbi, that he used his body to touch and heal people. This woman, as she grew in her faith, came to believe that we give to others because Jesus has given to us. And she took this in a very literal way, not recommending we all do it exactly like she did, but she heard the message in church that we should love one another and show hospitality to strangers and contribute to the needs of others, as Jesus did. And as she thought on these things, she felt called to give a very unusual gift.

Her husband had just recovered from a kidney infection, and that experience made her realize just how important our kidneys can be. And she felt called to donate one, not to anyone in particular because her husband was fine, but she realized that she had something that she didn’t need two of that might save someone’s life. Here’s what she wrote. These are her words.

She says, Our bodies are wonderfully made. When you donate blood, you don’t go around for the rest of your life with less blood. Your body replaces that blood within a few weeks. When you donate a kidney, the remaining kidney grows in size to do the extra work.

If you donate part of your liver, in two months your liver will grow back to the same size as it was. And she concluded, I think we all want to live in a world where we save each other’s lives. And that’s the kind of world that Jesus came to tell us about, and he showed us exactly how to do it because he donated his body to us. And we follow in his footsteps.

She said, Take our lives and let them be consecrated, Lord, to thee. She ended up donating a kidney to be used as a transplant. She never found out who it went to, but somebody today is alive and well because she followed where Jesus was leading. And again, like I said, not that all of us are called to donate kidneys, but all of us are called to be a part of the body of Christ in our worship and in our lives.

And as we begin to learn how to do this, we do this as we join together as the body of Christ in worship. In Jesus’ name, amen. Thank you.