God Calls Back
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For March 13, 2022:
God Calls Back
by Tom Willadsen
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Luke 13:31-35
God calls back. That’s the thing a lot of people fail to realize about being called by God; God calls back. Today’s reading from Genesis is significant, but it is one of several conversations that God has with Abram/Abraham. Put today’s reading into the context of God’s living, unfolding relationship with Abe.
In the Scriptures
NB: Check your translation of Genesis 15:17; some renderings have תַנּ֤וּר as “brazier,” which non-professionals may pronounce “brassiere.”
The Genesis reading is the first time the Lord promises an actual, biological heir to Abram / Abraham. The Lord tells Abram to count the stars — if he can. Abe’s descendants will be as numerous (uncountable) as the stars at night. This image of the sky being a symbol of God’s blessing of children is the origin of the Jewish tradition of having sky blue as a color for weddings.
The Lord imposes the promise of offspring on Abram. Abram is asleep, totally passive, when the Lord enacts the covenant, binding Godself to the promise the Lord has made to Abe.
The Pharisees come to warn Jesus about Herod. What’s up with that? Aren’t the Pharisees always the bad, clueless foils for Jesus’ superior wisdom and virtue? Maybe the Pharisees were afraid that Jesus would call attention to them, sort of guilt by association. Some have contended that Jesus was himself a Pharisee — such that all the disputes he had with them were internecine. It’s an intriguing possibility.
Jesus calls Herod “that fox” (NRSV); is that so bad? We regard foxes as clever and attractive here in 21st century America. Foxes were not so well thought of in first century Palestine. In Psalm 63:10 (KJV) “foxes” are regarded as disreputable scavengers. Ezekiel 13:14 and Lamentation 5:18 views foxes as signs of desolation. Non-biblical contemporary writing contrasts foxes with lions. Foxes were not praised for their cleverness; they were distained for their weakness and timidity that forced them to rely on cleverness to get what they want. One wag said “Foxes are only brave in the henhouse.”
In the News
Covid-19 numbers have plummeted!
Russia invaded Ukraine and while Ukrainian resistance has been fierce, apparently much stronger than Russia anticipated, it is simply a matter of time before Russia’s superior numbers and military might seize control. Western opposition has been unified, and our economic sanctions have been “crippling” and “unprecedented,” but Putin appears determined to prevail.
Major League Baseball players are locked out — they’re not on strike!! — and the start of the season has already been delayed. There are several sticking points in the negotiations; the easiest to understand is the minimum salary. Right now, the minimum salary for a player on a major league roster for the entire season is $700,000. Players are asking for more. Will the 12 or 14 teams in the playoffs division shelve the entire season? Does anyone have sympathy for either side?
In the Sermon
It’s the Second Sunday in Lent and Jesus’ last words in the gospel reading foreshadow Palm Sunday. Jesus is warned of a coming threat but appears resolute and brave in response to hearing that Herod wants to kill him.
God calls back. That’s the thing a lot of people fail to realize about being called by God; God calls back. Today’s reading from Genesis is significant, but it is one of several conversations that God has with Abram/Abraham. Put today’s reading into the context of God’s living, unfolding relationship with Abe.
Back in Genesis 12 Abram was called to leave his home and his grandfathers back to his “eight times great” grandfather and walk off the map to a place he had never heard of. He took his wife and nephew. Later in the story, (today’s reading) after parting from Lot, his nephew, God appears to Abram in a vision at night. This time the Lord promises descendants to Abram and land, lots of land. Abram accepts God’s promise of descendants and the Lord “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abram sleeps and God enacts a covenant, binding God to the promise God had made to Abram for the land. (The promise of descendants was separate.)
Still, when God appeared to Abram in chapter 17, first Abram bowed in worship, later he fell on his face, laughing at the idea that he and Sarah would have their own child. Had Abraham forgotten the promise, or did he just need to be reminded?
In the next chapter when three figures visit Abraham at Mamre, they again inform Abraham that Sarah will have a son. This son had been promised of the Lord twice already. When Sarah hears this news, she laughs. But really, is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Really. The Lord asks that very question of Abraham and Sarah.
You know how the story goes: Sarah has a son and names him Yitzak, Isaac, “Laughter.” She says, “Laughter God has made for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me!” (Genesis 21:6, my translation).
It’s still early in Lent. Why not give the people a lesson on the unfolding promise God gave Abram/Abraham? A promise that led to the birth of Laughter. After all, Easter, the end of the season of Lent, is God’s laugh at the power of death and evil. But remember, it’s a process. God calls, yes, but God also calls again, nudges, reminds, encourages, calls back.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Red-Letter Living
by Dean Feldmeyer
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
A Life-Altering Event
When I was about six-years-old, one night my father came into my room before I went to sleep and kissed me goodbye. He was dressed in a military uniform and he told me that “the guys” were picking him up and, by the time I woke up in the morning, he’d be gone. He told me he loved me and I hugged him around the neck and kissed his whiskered cheek.
He stepped across to my little brother’s bed but Scot was already asleep so he just kissed him goodbye then quietly left the room, closing the door behind him.
I tossed and turned in my bed and, finally, unable to sleep and overwhelmed with worry, I got up on my knees and looked out the window above my headboard. I gazed up at the stars and folded my hands under my chin and prayed as hard as a six-year-old can pray, crying as I did, asking, begging, pleading with God to protect my daddy in the war and bring him safely back home to me.
My mother must have heard me because she came into the room and asked why I was crying. I told her that I didn’t want daddy to go to war and die and I wanted him to come back safely to us.
She gathered me into her arms and hugged me. She explained that my daddy wasn’t going to war. The (Korean) war had been over for four years. He was going to National Guard summer camp for two weeks where he, a medical corpsman, would spend the days in class, learning how to help people who were hurt, and the evenings playing poker with his buddies.
He was, she said, in no danger whatsoever except from her if he lost too much money at poker. We both laughed and she hugged me, kissed me, and tucked me back into bed, and when she closed the door I cried again, but this time from that tremendous sense of relief that flooded over me, knowing my daddy was safe.
I tell this story because that night was a life-shaping event for me. At the age of 70, I still carry it with me and it is still informing my take on the world and how I respond to it.
It came starkly to mind last week, as I watched those Ukrainian children hug their fathers at the train station and send them off to war, not knowing if they would ever see them again.
There are things — big things — that happen to us that can change our lives forever. How we receive and appropriate those events determines what kind of effect they will have on us and what direction our lives will go as a result.
On The Mountain Top
Peter, James, and John had one of those life-altering experiences on the mountaintop with Jesus but their response to it nearly nullified its effect.
We all experience, from time to time, those kinds of eye-opening events that change how we see the world and our place in it, don’t we? They are the events after which we can never see the world or life itself the same as we did before. That night, when I prayed for God to bring my father back safely from a war that existed only in my imagination was one of those for me. I think it was the fear I felt that night and the relief as well that helped set me on a course that led to the ministry and my commitment to peace and peacemaking. There were others, of course. The birth of my children. My marriage. And my ordination. Those things shined a big, bright light on my life and the world I lived in. After them I couldn’t look at the world as I had before and I could never go back.
Well, that’s what happened to Peter, James, and John that day on the mountain top. They saw Jesus as they’d never seen him. Until then, he was always the rabbi, the teacher, the wise guru who seemed to have a really close connection with God.
Now, however, he was no longer just one of the guys. Now they understood that he lived on a higher plane, in a higher order than other people. He lived and saw life at the same level as Moses and Elijah, the two great prophets who shaped their religion.
Luke says they slept through the part where Jesus actually conversed with Moses and Elijah, so they didn’t know what the three of them had talked about but they realized that this was a life altering moment and they thought they ought to respond in some important way.
An Inappropriate Response
Peter, the spokesperson, the talker, is the one to speak and, as usual, he gets it wrong.
His first reaction to this life-altering event is to evaluate it. “Master, it is good for us to be here.” This is great. It’s awesome. It’s really, really cool. Just wanted you to know that I fully approve of what is happening here, whatever it is.
Then, realizing that this is a pretty lame response, he takes it a step further. He suggests that they all do something and not just anything but something religious. If he were a Methodist, no doubt he would have suggested a pot-luck dinner. Or maybe he would have insisted that they all join hands and sing Kum-Ba-Yah. Or maybe they could hold a meeting and produce a “white paper” outlining why they approve of and support Jesus’ decision to associate with Moses and Elijah.
But Peter was a product of his time so he suggests that the religious thing they should do would be to build three lean-to shelters in case Jesus, Moses, and Elijah decided to spend the night on the mountain. No doubt, he and James and John then began scurrying about, gathering sticks and leaves and the things it would take to build three small shelters.
In Mark’s version of this story, Mark says that Peter said these things because he was scared and he didn’t know what to say. Luke says that Peter said them because he didn’t know what he was saying. Matthew doesn’t offer any excuse or reason for what Peter says. In any case, Peter seems to make what I call the “preacher’s error.” When he has nothing to say or doesn’t know what to say, he talks. He makes the mistake that words spoken aloud, any words, are better than no words at all, so he just says the first thing that comes to mind, the thing that seems right or, at least, harmless.
And it’s then that God decides to step in.
An Appropriate Response
This big, dark cloud appears around them like a thick fog and a voice (probably male in those days, probably baritone or bass) is heard to say: “Peter. Shadup.”
Okay, God doesn’t actually say those words but that’s pretty much the subtext. “Peter, stop talking. Stop running around doing things. This is my son, my chosen (or beloved).” And here’s the clinker, here’s what God wants Peter and James and John…and us… to do: “LISTEN to him.”
Did you get that? That’s how you have a relationship with Jesus.
Listen to him.
God does not say “Worship him!” God does not say, “Fall down before him.” God does not say, “Run and tell everyone about him.” God does not say, “Confess him as your personal Lord and Savior!” God says what? That’s right. “Listen to him.”
That is what our relationship with Jesus Christ is supposed to be based upon: Our capacity for listening to him.
But how are we supposed to do that? How can we listen to him if he has been raised from the dead and ascended into heaven? How can we listen to him 2,000 years later?
Listening To Jesus
My grandmother, Ruth Clark, came to Christianity late in life and when she did, she came at full gallop with guns blazing. For the first six months or so of her conversion experience, she tried going to several churches but none of them had it right, as far as she was concerned. Finally, she settled on a church with only two members — God and her. It was a small congregation with a very stern and demanding doctrine.
Early on in her partnership with the Lord, she decided she needed a Bible and, of course, the only thing that would do was a King James version with the words of Jesus all rendered in red. Thirty years later that was, let me tell you, one heavily creased and dog eared, scribbled in and read over Bible and, when she died, she left it to me and I have treasured it ever since — one, for the beauty of the language, even though I don’t always find the King James translations all that helpful and, two, for those passages and phrases that are rendered in red.
After spending my entire adult life, 55 years, give or take, studying, struggling, and contending with the words of scripture, I’ve pretty much decided that concentrating, primarily, on those red passages is the best, maybe the only way to live my life as a Christian. It’s the only way to obey God’s command to Peter to “Listen to him.”
We listen to Jesus by going to his words in scripture, the ones he actually spoke, the ones in red. We read them. We study them. We write them on our hearts.
Adam Hamilton says that we use them like my grandma used a colander. She took the vegetables from her garden and she put them in it and she ran water over them and everything that wasn’t a radish or a carrot or a spud was washed away and down the drain and only the real vegetables remained.
We put the words we hear in the other parts of the Bible, the words we hear in our culture, the words we hear from our politicians, the words we hear, yes, even from our parents and grandparents, and we put them in the colander of our critical thinking mind and we let the red-letter words of Jesus wash over them. If we do that, what is good and true and of God will remain while all the inauthentic stuff is washed away.
Then we live according to what’s left in that colander.
And that, my friends, is how we listen to him. That is Red-Letter Living.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:
Psalm 27
Though an enemy encamp against me
Any pretense of normalcy in Ukraine has been set aside, writes Kyiv-based journalist Joshua Yaffa. What remains, however, is a strong sense of determination and resilience. British-born photographer Mark Neville, who is also living in Kyiv, has been documenting Ukrainian resolve in the face of Russian aggression since 2015. Yaffa asked Neville, who has published a book about his travels through Ukraine titled, Stop Tanks With Books, to describe what he is seeing throughout the war-torn country:
“What I find most remarkable is the resilience of the people there,” Neville says. “As a photographer, I’ve been in many places where people are going through incredible trauma. They would reach out to me for help, for money, to get them out, and I would say, ‘The only way I can help is to take your picture and tell your story.’ But with Ukrainians, and with some of the many hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, no one — not one — has asked me for anything. The only thing they want is to sit me down and tell me what’s happened to them. They have lost people, seen people wounded terribly, seen their streets obliterated. All I want is for people who are looking at these pictures to recognize a version of themselves. Schoolkids taking gymnastics lessons, people just going about their lives despite the shelling and more. For eight years! Can you imagine?”
* * *
Luke 13:31-35
Pharisees: more than just a meme
Luke does not share why Pharisees warn Jesus about Herod’s intentions, which offers the preacher an opportunity to address the church’s tendency to reduce the Pharisees to a nothing more than a meme or one-dimensional stereotypes. In a book edited by New Testament Scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers, scholars offer a reappraisal of the Pharisees as being more than hypocritical and soulless religious leaders.
The Pharisees is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that attempts to refocus preaching away from dangers, and often anti-Semitic, tropes about Pharisees. Levine, who is Jewish, recently retired from teaching New Testament at Vanderbilt University’s School of Divinity. She notes that for Jews, Pharisees are “our spiritual ancestors, those who preserved the interpretations of Israel’s scriptures and adapted them for the people apart from the Jerusalem Temple. Many Christians, following certain Gospel passages, regard the Pharisees and, by extension the Jewish tradition, as lifeless, legalistic, and so toxic. After two millennia of misunderstanding and in consequence, bigotry, it’s time for a more historical, less negatively stereotypical understanding both of the Pharisees and of Jesus’ interactions with them.”
* * *
Luke 13:31-35
Go and tell Mr. Putin
Warned that he is “target number one” for the advancing Russian troops, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky remains steadfast in his commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. Last week, he invited reporters into his office building for a press conference. Exhausted, unshaven, and dressed in military fatigues, Zelensky voiced pride in his country, and spoke realistically of the possibility of his own death.
“I’m an alive person, like any human being,” he said. “And if a person is not afraid of losing his life, or the lives of his children, there is something unwell about that person.” He added, though, that as president, “I simply do not have the right” to be afraid.
If he were not president, he said, he probably would have joined the volunteers who accepted rifles when the military started handing them out last week, and so would be facing risks in any case. He said he might also have chosen to help by handing out food to soldiers instead. He quipped that, “I am probably not as good a shot as some other people.”
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
Psalm 27
Shelter
The psalmist praises God for the gift of shelter, saying, “For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.” The gift of spiritual shelter is important, and so is the blessing of physical shelter for people who are homeless. The danger of Covid spreading in shelters prompted some areas to become more nimble about providing housing for people who need it.
Having physical shelter has allowed Jeff Smith to begin his life anew. “Smith has been unhoused for nearly 10 years, and before the Covid-19 pandemic, he bounced among the homeless shelters of Portland, Oregon. There, he’d sleep in crowded rooms that offered only a brief reprieve from the streets. Each day between 5 am and 6 am, per shelter rules, he had to leave, only to get back in line at 5:30 pm in hopes of getting a bed that night. On top of the relentless stress of finding a safe space to rest, Smith had spent the past five years battling thyroid cancer. In that time, he also had three heart attacks, cellulitis, and an infection at the base of his spine. Between shelter stays, Oregon’s Medicaid program gave him rides to the hospital for bloodwork, surgery, and radioactive iodine therapy. By the end of the five years, Smith was engaging less and less with his medical care — he just didn’t have the energy or will. He still made most of his doctor’s appointments, but had completely stopped taking the medication he needed to survive. “I had given up,” Smith says.
When Covid came, and shelters needed to house people elsewhere, hotels, emptied by the pandemic’s blow to the travel industry, seemed the logical solution. Smith was reluctant to take a room at first. “But at his case worker’s request, he accepted. He’s glad he did. “This place is a lifesaver,” Smith says. In his room, he’s been able to catch up on years of lost sleep. He can shower whenever he likes. He has his own toilet. Most importantly, he has privacy and the stability to access medical care. Each day, he uses his new Chromebook to check his medical chart. He has a place to store the 31 pills he needs each day; onsite caseworkers remind him to take the medication on time and drive him to his doctor’s appointments.”
Shelter, whether physical or spiritual, is a powerful gift.
* * *
Philippians 3:17--4:1
Examples of Faith
“Observe those who live according to the example you have in us,” Paul writes to the church in Philippi. Examples of faith leave a lasting impact on us, as Roshi Joan Halifax recalls. Now Zen Buddhist abbot, she remembers an important example in the formation of her faith. “My father was a businessman. My mother was a kind of — she liked to play golf. And my parents hired this amazing Afro-American woman to take care of me, and this woman’s mother had been a slave. Just tells you how old I am [laughs]. And she was free. Her name was Lilla Robinson. She had three daughters. All her daughters ended up being preachers, so I was like a daughter too. She definitely — her values and spirit got inside of me. But she really infused me, as did my parents, with a sense of social justice and of responsibility for this world. It’s like Teilhard de Chardin writes about — the more aware we become, the more responsible we recognize we are for what is and what will be. And this woman really gave me a big dose of that.” The gift of examples in faith comes from all directions.
* * *
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Faith-O-Meter
Writer Bayo Akomolafe recalls wishing for a faith-o-meter. He wanted some kind of tool that would measure his worthiness and assure him of his place in heaven. “In church Bayo repeatedly responded to calls to the altar to profess his devotion to God (“just to be sure.”) Abram, later Abraham, gets as close to a faith-o-meter, the assurance of God’s promises, as anyone is scripture. God makes a promise to Abram and his descendants, and seals the promise with this covenant ceremony.
Akomolafe recalls, “Of course I didn’t get my prayer answered,” he says. “But I got something better than an answer, I got bewildered, and I am in a state of bewilderment now.” That same bewilderment may have happened to Abram, too, as God’s promises were so slow to unfold.
* * *
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
A Slow Promise
The story of Abram reminds us that a promise that is slow to unfold is still a powerful promise. Alice Ozma and her dad know the truth of this. “When Alice Ozma was in the fourth grade, her family was going through a rough patch. Her parents had just split up, and her older sister had recently left for college. Ozma was suddenly spending a lot more time alone with her dad, Jim Brozina, an elementary school librarian. So Ozma and her father made a pledge: to read together every single night for 100 days. But after 100 days, they just kept going. Their streak ultimately lasted 3,218 days — spanning from Ozma's fourth-grade year to her first day of college.”
Reading each night quickly became a habit, Ozma explains. "I think that once you start something like that, it's very difficult to stop; it seems very weird after 100 nights of reading in a row to say, 'Let's not read tonight.' " When things were rough financially, “reading together was one thing they knew they could depend on. As Ozma got older, it got harder to keep it up, but the pair persisted — even on the night of Ozma's prom. "Before I went out, I had my hair in my up-do and my fancy dress on," Ozma recalls. "And I just sort of climbed into the bed next to him and he read to me.” For Brozina, the hardest part wasn't maintaining the streak — it was ending it. Ozma was heading off to college at Rutgers, and it was time to bring the nearly nine-year tradition to a close. On the last night, Ozma chose to read from the same book they'd read for their first father-daughter reading: The Wizard of Oz. "That was the single hardest thing to do," Brozina recalls, "to read, choked up, tears in eyes — both of us. That was the most difficult, to stop it."
The promise unfolds slowly, and grows in weight with time.
* * * * * *
From team member Katy Stenta:
Luke 13:31-35
Healing in the Midst of Danger
Jesus will not be deterred from healing. He is willing to name Herod as the fox, wild dog he is. He will not stop just because he is in danger. Tim Man, an NPR reporter, spoke of this sort of work that goes on in the world. As he was reporting in Ukraine, he ran into Free Burma Rangers who were helping with humanitarian aid. They implored the world not to forget Myanmar where massacres are still commonplace. It is remarkable that those who are suffering in Burma are themselves offering humanitarian aid, and still call out the evil that is in the world. This is the work of Christ.
* * *
Philippians 3:17--4:1
Pray for your enemies
The crying that Paul has for those who are lost to God is poignant. The suffering that he knows they will undergo is hard and true: “Their god is the belly; their glory in their shame; their minds are set in earthly things.” It is so hard to know that someone else is completely wrong in the things they value and the relationships they have, because in the end they are hurting only themselves. This is revealed very forcefully in the confession of a Russian POW, who is widely being acclaimed as a brave lion, as he faces, himself, what he valued and what has changed.
* * *
Psalm 27
Fear in the Midst of Danger
“Though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” Do we feel confident facing war? I do not. We do not want war? To feel fear is human. To not to want to be at war is human. But, alas, to be at war is also human. I was 5 years old when I heard my parents praying for peace. “Why are we praying, there is no war here?” I, at that point, had thought that war was something humans had outgrown and overcome — probably something that filtered into by child brain post-Cold War. Then I learned the horrible news, that not only was there a war, but war is happening all the time. It is because war is ceaseless, I must lean on God, and pray. Because, for me, prayer is not what to do instead of doing nothing, but its what I do when I am no more than human and have no solution. So I turn to God, my stronghold, who knows how to make war cease, when I do not.
* * * * * *
WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship
One: God is my light and my salvation; whom shall we fear?
All: God is the stronghold of our life; of whom shall we be afraid?
One: Teach us your way, O God, and lead us.
All: We shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
One: Let us wait for God and be strong.
All: We will let our hearts take courage as we wait for God!
OR
One: God comes to us as our Redeemer and our Sovereign.
All: We welcome God as people who need redemption.
One: God comes to redeem us and enlist us in the mission.
All: What is the work God is calling us to do?
One: Bring all people into the reign of God’s love and grace.
All: With God’s help, we will commit to God’s mission.
Hymns and Songs
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
UMH: 139
H82: 390
AAHH: 117
NNBH: 2
NCH: 22
CH: 25
ELW: 858/859
AMEC: 3
STLT: 278
Renew: 57
Lift High the Cross
UMH: 159
H82: 473
PH: 371
AAHH: 242
NCH: 198
CH: 108
LBW: 377
ELW: 660
W&P: 287
Renew: 297
The God of Abraham Praise
UMH: 116
H82: 401
NCH: 24
CH: 24
LBW: 544
ELW: 831
W&P: 16
Renew: 51
O Christ, the Healer
UMH: 265
NCH: 175
CH: 503
LBW: 360
ELW: 610
W&P: 638
Renew: 191
I Need Thee Every Hour
UMH: 397
AAHH: 451
NNBH: 303
NCH: 517
CH: 578
W&P: 476
AMEC: 327
O Zion, Haste
UMH: 573
H82: 539
NNBH: 422
LBW: 397
ELW: 668
AMEC: 566
O Worship the King
UMH: 73
H82: 388
PH: 476
NNBH: 6
NCH: 26
CH: 17
LBW: 548
ELW: 842
W&P: 2
AMEC: 12
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
UMH: 126
H82: 408
PH: 483
NCH: 6
CH: 6
W&P: 56
Renew: 52
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
UMH: 133
AAHH: 371
NNBH: 262
NCH: 471
CH: 560
ELW: 774
W&P: 496
AMEC: 525
At the Name of Jesus
UMH: 168
H82: 435
PH: 148
LBW: 179
ELW: 416
W&P: 321
Renew: 133
May You Run and Not Be Weary
CCB: 99
Make Me a Servant
CCB: 90
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is steadfast and trustworthy in all things;
Grant us the courage to reflect your image
as we persevere in the work of your realm
despite the roadblocks the world employs;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are steadfast and trustworthy. You are the one who always reflects your nature which is love. Help us to be true reflections of your image by also being steadfast as disciples of Jesus. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially the ways in which we are quick to abandon our mission as disciples.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have called us to be your presence in this world and to bring all into your realm. You have gifted us with your own Spirit to equip us for our task and yet we hesitate. We think the task is too big for us and that it comes with too big a price for us to pay and so we hold back. We are not fully committed to your reign and to our role in bringing it to fulfillment. Forgive us and renew us that we may be true disciples of your Son, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
One: God is steadfast and sure and will not forsake the work of salvation. Receive God’s grace and Spirit and enter into the work of the world’s redemption with joy.
Prayers of the People
Glory and honor are yours, O God, by right. You are the creator and foundation of all that exists. Your love is the energy that makes life possible.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have called us to be your presence in this world and to bring all into your realm. You have gifted us with your own Spirit to equip us for our task and yet we hesitate. We think the task is too big for us and that it comes with too big a price for us to pay and so we hold back. We are not fully committed to your reign and to our role in bringing it to fulfillment. Forgive us and renew us that we may be true disciples of your Son, Jesus the Christ.
We thank you for the world you have given us and for the work you invite us into. We thank you for the privilege of being your children and your ambassadors that invite all people into your reign. Thank you for Jesus who comes among us and leads us into life eternal, here, now, and always.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for those in need. We pray for those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit and those who struggle to find their way in this life. We pray for the poor and hungry and the homeless. We pray for the people of Ukraine in the midst of the violence and war that is their daily life now. We pray for peace and sanity among the world’s leaders.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Hope and Trusting in the Lord
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Psalm 27
This lesson is focused on ensuring children have a healthy sense of self and high self-esteem.
(Here is an excellent source of tools to help nuture self-esteem in children.)
How many of you would say you are brave or courageous? (Ask the children to share a time they felt they were brave or courageous.)
How many of you would say you've been scared before? (Let them answer.) When you're scared, what do you do? (Let them answer.)
(This would be a time to share back to all the times they were brave.)
Do you think you can be both scared and brave?
Guess what…I think you can and this is why: Sometimes it is not easy to be courageous when we are scared but our Psalm reading for today models what courage in the face of danger.
(Focusing on verses 6, 11, and 14 as points of modeling, trusting in the Lord for guidance.)
Trusting in the Lord is not the only thing we are called to do. We are also called to trust in ourselves. When we trust in ourselves we are saying “I might be scared but I am brave. I can do this because I trust in God and myself”
Can we all try that?
At this point it would be nice to lead the children in saying out loud together:
“I am brave! I am loved by God! I trust in my feelings! I trust in God!”
Prayer
The Lord is my light who shines upon me.
Loving God, help me to hold my head up high and remind me that I am worthy of your love.
Teach me to have courage enough to stand up for myself and others. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, March 13, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- God Calls Back by Tom Willadsen.
- Second Thoughts: Red-Letter Living by Dean Feldmeyer.
- Sermon illustrations by Chris Keating, Mary Austin, Katy Stenta.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Hope and Trusting in the Lord by Quantisha Mason-Doll.
God Calls Backby Tom Willadsen
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18, Luke 13:31-35
God calls back. That’s the thing a lot of people fail to realize about being called by God; God calls back. Today’s reading from Genesis is significant, but it is one of several conversations that God has with Abram/Abraham. Put today’s reading into the context of God’s living, unfolding relationship with Abe.
In the Scriptures
NB: Check your translation of Genesis 15:17; some renderings have תַנּ֤וּר as “brazier,” which non-professionals may pronounce “brassiere.”
The Genesis reading is the first time the Lord promises an actual, biological heir to Abram / Abraham. The Lord tells Abram to count the stars — if he can. Abe’s descendants will be as numerous (uncountable) as the stars at night. This image of the sky being a symbol of God’s blessing of children is the origin of the Jewish tradition of having sky blue as a color for weddings.
The Lord imposes the promise of offspring on Abram. Abram is asleep, totally passive, when the Lord enacts the covenant, binding Godself to the promise the Lord has made to Abe.
The Pharisees come to warn Jesus about Herod. What’s up with that? Aren’t the Pharisees always the bad, clueless foils for Jesus’ superior wisdom and virtue? Maybe the Pharisees were afraid that Jesus would call attention to them, sort of guilt by association. Some have contended that Jesus was himself a Pharisee — such that all the disputes he had with them were internecine. It’s an intriguing possibility.
Jesus calls Herod “that fox” (NRSV); is that so bad? We regard foxes as clever and attractive here in 21st century America. Foxes were not so well thought of in first century Palestine. In Psalm 63:10 (KJV) “foxes” are regarded as disreputable scavengers. Ezekiel 13:14 and Lamentation 5:18 views foxes as signs of desolation. Non-biblical contemporary writing contrasts foxes with lions. Foxes were not praised for their cleverness; they were distained for their weakness and timidity that forced them to rely on cleverness to get what they want. One wag said “Foxes are only brave in the henhouse.”
In the News
Covid-19 numbers have plummeted!
Russia invaded Ukraine and while Ukrainian resistance has been fierce, apparently much stronger than Russia anticipated, it is simply a matter of time before Russia’s superior numbers and military might seize control. Western opposition has been unified, and our economic sanctions have been “crippling” and “unprecedented,” but Putin appears determined to prevail.
Major League Baseball players are locked out — they’re not on strike!! — and the start of the season has already been delayed. There are several sticking points in the negotiations; the easiest to understand is the minimum salary. Right now, the minimum salary for a player on a major league roster for the entire season is $700,000. Players are asking for more. Will the 12 or 14 teams in the playoffs division shelve the entire season? Does anyone have sympathy for either side?
In the Sermon
It’s the Second Sunday in Lent and Jesus’ last words in the gospel reading foreshadow Palm Sunday. Jesus is warned of a coming threat but appears resolute and brave in response to hearing that Herod wants to kill him.
God calls back. That’s the thing a lot of people fail to realize about being called by God; God calls back. Today’s reading from Genesis is significant, but it is one of several conversations that God has with Abram/Abraham. Put today’s reading into the context of God’s living, unfolding relationship with Abe.
Back in Genesis 12 Abram was called to leave his home and his grandfathers back to his “eight times great” grandfather and walk off the map to a place he had never heard of. He took his wife and nephew. Later in the story, (today’s reading) after parting from Lot, his nephew, God appears to Abram in a vision at night. This time the Lord promises descendants to Abram and land, lots of land. Abram accepts God’s promise of descendants and the Lord “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abram sleeps and God enacts a covenant, binding God to the promise God had made to Abram for the land. (The promise of descendants was separate.)
Still, when God appeared to Abram in chapter 17, first Abram bowed in worship, later he fell on his face, laughing at the idea that he and Sarah would have their own child. Had Abraham forgotten the promise, or did he just need to be reminded?
In the next chapter when three figures visit Abraham at Mamre, they again inform Abraham that Sarah will have a son. This son had been promised of the Lord twice already. When Sarah hears this news, she laughs. But really, is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Really. The Lord asks that very question of Abraham and Sarah.
You know how the story goes: Sarah has a son and names him Yitzak, Isaac, “Laughter.” She says, “Laughter God has made for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me!” (Genesis 21:6, my translation).
It’s still early in Lent. Why not give the people a lesson on the unfolding promise God gave Abram/Abraham? A promise that led to the birth of Laughter. After all, Easter, the end of the season of Lent, is God’s laugh at the power of death and evil. But remember, it’s a process. God calls, yes, but God also calls again, nudges, reminds, encourages, calls back.
SECOND THOUGHTSRed-Letter Living
by Dean Feldmeyer
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43a)
A Life-Altering Event
When I was about six-years-old, one night my father came into my room before I went to sleep and kissed me goodbye. He was dressed in a military uniform and he told me that “the guys” were picking him up and, by the time I woke up in the morning, he’d be gone. He told me he loved me and I hugged him around the neck and kissed his whiskered cheek.
He stepped across to my little brother’s bed but Scot was already asleep so he just kissed him goodbye then quietly left the room, closing the door behind him.
I tossed and turned in my bed and, finally, unable to sleep and overwhelmed with worry, I got up on my knees and looked out the window above my headboard. I gazed up at the stars and folded my hands under my chin and prayed as hard as a six-year-old can pray, crying as I did, asking, begging, pleading with God to protect my daddy in the war and bring him safely back home to me.
My mother must have heard me because she came into the room and asked why I was crying. I told her that I didn’t want daddy to go to war and die and I wanted him to come back safely to us.
She gathered me into her arms and hugged me. She explained that my daddy wasn’t going to war. The (Korean) war had been over for four years. He was going to National Guard summer camp for two weeks where he, a medical corpsman, would spend the days in class, learning how to help people who were hurt, and the evenings playing poker with his buddies.
He was, she said, in no danger whatsoever except from her if he lost too much money at poker. We both laughed and she hugged me, kissed me, and tucked me back into bed, and when she closed the door I cried again, but this time from that tremendous sense of relief that flooded over me, knowing my daddy was safe.
I tell this story because that night was a life-shaping event for me. At the age of 70, I still carry it with me and it is still informing my take on the world and how I respond to it.
It came starkly to mind last week, as I watched those Ukrainian children hug their fathers at the train station and send them off to war, not knowing if they would ever see them again.
There are things — big things — that happen to us that can change our lives forever. How we receive and appropriate those events determines what kind of effect they will have on us and what direction our lives will go as a result.
On The Mountain Top
Peter, James, and John had one of those life-altering experiences on the mountaintop with Jesus but their response to it nearly nullified its effect.
We all experience, from time to time, those kinds of eye-opening events that change how we see the world and our place in it, don’t we? They are the events after which we can never see the world or life itself the same as we did before. That night, when I prayed for God to bring my father back safely from a war that existed only in my imagination was one of those for me. I think it was the fear I felt that night and the relief as well that helped set me on a course that led to the ministry and my commitment to peace and peacemaking. There were others, of course. The birth of my children. My marriage. And my ordination. Those things shined a big, bright light on my life and the world I lived in. After them I couldn’t look at the world as I had before and I could never go back.
Well, that’s what happened to Peter, James, and John that day on the mountain top. They saw Jesus as they’d never seen him. Until then, he was always the rabbi, the teacher, the wise guru who seemed to have a really close connection with God.
Now, however, he was no longer just one of the guys. Now they understood that he lived on a higher plane, in a higher order than other people. He lived and saw life at the same level as Moses and Elijah, the two great prophets who shaped their religion.
Luke says they slept through the part where Jesus actually conversed with Moses and Elijah, so they didn’t know what the three of them had talked about but they realized that this was a life altering moment and they thought they ought to respond in some important way.
An Inappropriate Response
Peter, the spokesperson, the talker, is the one to speak and, as usual, he gets it wrong.
His first reaction to this life-altering event is to evaluate it. “Master, it is good for us to be here.” This is great. It’s awesome. It’s really, really cool. Just wanted you to know that I fully approve of what is happening here, whatever it is.
Then, realizing that this is a pretty lame response, he takes it a step further. He suggests that they all do something and not just anything but something religious. If he were a Methodist, no doubt he would have suggested a pot-luck dinner. Or maybe he would have insisted that they all join hands and sing Kum-Ba-Yah. Or maybe they could hold a meeting and produce a “white paper” outlining why they approve of and support Jesus’ decision to associate with Moses and Elijah.
But Peter was a product of his time so he suggests that the religious thing they should do would be to build three lean-to shelters in case Jesus, Moses, and Elijah decided to spend the night on the mountain. No doubt, he and James and John then began scurrying about, gathering sticks and leaves and the things it would take to build three small shelters.
In Mark’s version of this story, Mark says that Peter said these things because he was scared and he didn’t know what to say. Luke says that Peter said them because he didn’t know what he was saying. Matthew doesn’t offer any excuse or reason for what Peter says. In any case, Peter seems to make what I call the “preacher’s error.” When he has nothing to say or doesn’t know what to say, he talks. He makes the mistake that words spoken aloud, any words, are better than no words at all, so he just says the first thing that comes to mind, the thing that seems right or, at least, harmless.
And it’s then that God decides to step in.
An Appropriate Response
This big, dark cloud appears around them like a thick fog and a voice (probably male in those days, probably baritone or bass) is heard to say: “Peter. Shadup.”
Okay, God doesn’t actually say those words but that’s pretty much the subtext. “Peter, stop talking. Stop running around doing things. This is my son, my chosen (or beloved).” And here’s the clinker, here’s what God wants Peter and James and John…and us… to do: “LISTEN to him.”
Did you get that? That’s how you have a relationship with Jesus.
Listen to him.
God does not say “Worship him!” God does not say, “Fall down before him.” God does not say, “Run and tell everyone about him.” God does not say, “Confess him as your personal Lord and Savior!” God says what? That’s right. “Listen to him.”
That is what our relationship with Jesus Christ is supposed to be based upon: Our capacity for listening to him.
But how are we supposed to do that? How can we listen to him if he has been raised from the dead and ascended into heaven? How can we listen to him 2,000 years later?
Listening To Jesus
My grandmother, Ruth Clark, came to Christianity late in life and when she did, she came at full gallop with guns blazing. For the first six months or so of her conversion experience, she tried going to several churches but none of them had it right, as far as she was concerned. Finally, she settled on a church with only two members — God and her. It was a small congregation with a very stern and demanding doctrine.
Early on in her partnership with the Lord, she decided she needed a Bible and, of course, the only thing that would do was a King James version with the words of Jesus all rendered in red. Thirty years later that was, let me tell you, one heavily creased and dog eared, scribbled in and read over Bible and, when she died, she left it to me and I have treasured it ever since — one, for the beauty of the language, even though I don’t always find the King James translations all that helpful and, two, for those passages and phrases that are rendered in red.
After spending my entire adult life, 55 years, give or take, studying, struggling, and contending with the words of scripture, I’ve pretty much decided that concentrating, primarily, on those red passages is the best, maybe the only way to live my life as a Christian. It’s the only way to obey God’s command to Peter to “Listen to him.”
We listen to Jesus by going to his words in scripture, the ones he actually spoke, the ones in red. We read them. We study them. We write them on our hearts.
Adam Hamilton says that we use them like my grandma used a colander. She took the vegetables from her garden and she put them in it and she ran water over them and everything that wasn’t a radish or a carrot or a spud was washed away and down the drain and only the real vegetables remained.
We put the words we hear in the other parts of the Bible, the words we hear in our culture, the words we hear from our politicians, the words we hear, yes, even from our parents and grandparents, and we put them in the colander of our critical thinking mind and we let the red-letter words of Jesus wash over them. If we do that, what is good and true and of God will remain while all the inauthentic stuff is washed away.
Then we live according to what’s left in that colander.
And that, my friends, is how we listen to him. That is Red-Letter Living.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:Psalm 27
Though an enemy encamp against me
Any pretense of normalcy in Ukraine has been set aside, writes Kyiv-based journalist Joshua Yaffa. What remains, however, is a strong sense of determination and resilience. British-born photographer Mark Neville, who is also living in Kyiv, has been documenting Ukrainian resolve in the face of Russian aggression since 2015. Yaffa asked Neville, who has published a book about his travels through Ukraine titled, Stop Tanks With Books, to describe what he is seeing throughout the war-torn country:
“What I find most remarkable is the resilience of the people there,” Neville says. “As a photographer, I’ve been in many places where people are going through incredible trauma. They would reach out to me for help, for money, to get them out, and I would say, ‘The only way I can help is to take your picture and tell your story.’ But with Ukrainians, and with some of the many hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, no one — not one — has asked me for anything. The only thing they want is to sit me down and tell me what’s happened to them. They have lost people, seen people wounded terribly, seen their streets obliterated. All I want is for people who are looking at these pictures to recognize a version of themselves. Schoolkids taking gymnastics lessons, people just going about their lives despite the shelling and more. For eight years! Can you imagine?”
* * *
Luke 13:31-35
Pharisees: more than just a meme
Luke does not share why Pharisees warn Jesus about Herod’s intentions, which offers the preacher an opportunity to address the church’s tendency to reduce the Pharisees to a nothing more than a meme or one-dimensional stereotypes. In a book edited by New Testament Scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers, scholars offer a reappraisal of the Pharisees as being more than hypocritical and soulless religious leaders.
The Pharisees is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that attempts to refocus preaching away from dangers, and often anti-Semitic, tropes about Pharisees. Levine, who is Jewish, recently retired from teaching New Testament at Vanderbilt University’s School of Divinity. She notes that for Jews, Pharisees are “our spiritual ancestors, those who preserved the interpretations of Israel’s scriptures and adapted them for the people apart from the Jerusalem Temple. Many Christians, following certain Gospel passages, regard the Pharisees and, by extension the Jewish tradition, as lifeless, legalistic, and so toxic. After two millennia of misunderstanding and in consequence, bigotry, it’s time for a more historical, less negatively stereotypical understanding both of the Pharisees and of Jesus’ interactions with them.”
* * *
Luke 13:31-35
Go and tell Mr. Putin
Warned that he is “target number one” for the advancing Russian troops, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky remains steadfast in his commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. Last week, he invited reporters into his office building for a press conference. Exhausted, unshaven, and dressed in military fatigues, Zelensky voiced pride in his country, and spoke realistically of the possibility of his own death.
“I’m an alive person, like any human being,” he said. “And if a person is not afraid of losing his life, or the lives of his children, there is something unwell about that person.” He added, though, that as president, “I simply do not have the right” to be afraid.
If he were not president, he said, he probably would have joined the volunteers who accepted rifles when the military started handing them out last week, and so would be facing risks in any case. He said he might also have chosen to help by handing out food to soldiers instead. He quipped that, “I am probably not as good a shot as some other people.”
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:Psalm 27
Shelter
The psalmist praises God for the gift of shelter, saying, “For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.” The gift of spiritual shelter is important, and so is the blessing of physical shelter for people who are homeless. The danger of Covid spreading in shelters prompted some areas to become more nimble about providing housing for people who need it.
Having physical shelter has allowed Jeff Smith to begin his life anew. “Smith has been unhoused for nearly 10 years, and before the Covid-19 pandemic, he bounced among the homeless shelters of Portland, Oregon. There, he’d sleep in crowded rooms that offered only a brief reprieve from the streets. Each day between 5 am and 6 am, per shelter rules, he had to leave, only to get back in line at 5:30 pm in hopes of getting a bed that night. On top of the relentless stress of finding a safe space to rest, Smith had spent the past five years battling thyroid cancer. In that time, he also had three heart attacks, cellulitis, and an infection at the base of his spine. Between shelter stays, Oregon’s Medicaid program gave him rides to the hospital for bloodwork, surgery, and radioactive iodine therapy. By the end of the five years, Smith was engaging less and less with his medical care — he just didn’t have the energy or will. He still made most of his doctor’s appointments, but had completely stopped taking the medication he needed to survive. “I had given up,” Smith says.
When Covid came, and shelters needed to house people elsewhere, hotels, emptied by the pandemic’s blow to the travel industry, seemed the logical solution. Smith was reluctant to take a room at first. “But at his case worker’s request, he accepted. He’s glad he did. “This place is a lifesaver,” Smith says. In his room, he’s been able to catch up on years of lost sleep. He can shower whenever he likes. He has his own toilet. Most importantly, he has privacy and the stability to access medical care. Each day, he uses his new Chromebook to check his medical chart. He has a place to store the 31 pills he needs each day; onsite caseworkers remind him to take the medication on time and drive him to his doctor’s appointments.”
Shelter, whether physical or spiritual, is a powerful gift.
* * *
Philippians 3:17--4:1
Examples of Faith
“Observe those who live according to the example you have in us,” Paul writes to the church in Philippi. Examples of faith leave a lasting impact on us, as Roshi Joan Halifax recalls. Now Zen Buddhist abbot, she remembers an important example in the formation of her faith. “My father was a businessman. My mother was a kind of — she liked to play golf. And my parents hired this amazing Afro-American woman to take care of me, and this woman’s mother had been a slave. Just tells you how old I am [laughs]. And she was free. Her name was Lilla Robinson. She had three daughters. All her daughters ended up being preachers, so I was like a daughter too. She definitely — her values and spirit got inside of me. But she really infused me, as did my parents, with a sense of social justice and of responsibility for this world. It’s like Teilhard de Chardin writes about — the more aware we become, the more responsible we recognize we are for what is and what will be. And this woman really gave me a big dose of that.” The gift of examples in faith comes from all directions.
* * *
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Faith-O-Meter
Writer Bayo Akomolafe recalls wishing for a faith-o-meter. He wanted some kind of tool that would measure his worthiness and assure him of his place in heaven. “In church Bayo repeatedly responded to calls to the altar to profess his devotion to God (“just to be sure.”) Abram, later Abraham, gets as close to a faith-o-meter, the assurance of God’s promises, as anyone is scripture. God makes a promise to Abram and his descendants, and seals the promise with this covenant ceremony.
Akomolafe recalls, “Of course I didn’t get my prayer answered,” he says. “But I got something better than an answer, I got bewildered, and I am in a state of bewilderment now.” That same bewilderment may have happened to Abram, too, as God’s promises were so slow to unfold.
* * *
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
A Slow Promise
The story of Abram reminds us that a promise that is slow to unfold is still a powerful promise. Alice Ozma and her dad know the truth of this. “When Alice Ozma was in the fourth grade, her family was going through a rough patch. Her parents had just split up, and her older sister had recently left for college. Ozma was suddenly spending a lot more time alone with her dad, Jim Brozina, an elementary school librarian. So Ozma and her father made a pledge: to read together every single night for 100 days. But after 100 days, they just kept going. Their streak ultimately lasted 3,218 days — spanning from Ozma's fourth-grade year to her first day of college.”
Reading each night quickly became a habit, Ozma explains. "I think that once you start something like that, it's very difficult to stop; it seems very weird after 100 nights of reading in a row to say, 'Let's not read tonight.' " When things were rough financially, “reading together was one thing they knew they could depend on. As Ozma got older, it got harder to keep it up, but the pair persisted — even on the night of Ozma's prom. "Before I went out, I had my hair in my up-do and my fancy dress on," Ozma recalls. "And I just sort of climbed into the bed next to him and he read to me.” For Brozina, the hardest part wasn't maintaining the streak — it was ending it. Ozma was heading off to college at Rutgers, and it was time to bring the nearly nine-year tradition to a close. On the last night, Ozma chose to read from the same book they'd read for their first father-daughter reading: The Wizard of Oz. "That was the single hardest thing to do," Brozina recalls, "to read, choked up, tears in eyes — both of us. That was the most difficult, to stop it."
The promise unfolds slowly, and grows in weight with time.
* * * * * *
From team member Katy Stenta:Luke 13:31-35
Healing in the Midst of Danger
Jesus will not be deterred from healing. He is willing to name Herod as the fox, wild dog he is. He will not stop just because he is in danger. Tim Man, an NPR reporter, spoke of this sort of work that goes on in the world. As he was reporting in Ukraine, he ran into Free Burma Rangers who were helping with humanitarian aid. They implored the world not to forget Myanmar where massacres are still commonplace. It is remarkable that those who are suffering in Burma are themselves offering humanitarian aid, and still call out the evil that is in the world. This is the work of Christ.
* * *
Philippians 3:17--4:1
Pray for your enemies
The crying that Paul has for those who are lost to God is poignant. The suffering that he knows they will undergo is hard and true: “Their god is the belly; their glory in their shame; their minds are set in earthly things.” It is so hard to know that someone else is completely wrong in the things they value and the relationships they have, because in the end they are hurting only themselves. This is revealed very forcefully in the confession of a Russian POW, who is widely being acclaimed as a brave lion, as he faces, himself, what he valued and what has changed.
* * *
Psalm 27
Fear in the Midst of Danger
“Though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” Do we feel confident facing war? I do not. We do not want war? To feel fear is human. To not to want to be at war is human. But, alas, to be at war is also human. I was 5 years old when I heard my parents praying for peace. “Why are we praying, there is no war here?” I, at that point, had thought that war was something humans had outgrown and overcome — probably something that filtered into by child brain post-Cold War. Then I learned the horrible news, that not only was there a war, but war is happening all the time. It is because war is ceaseless, I must lean on God, and pray. Because, for me, prayer is not what to do instead of doing nothing, but its what I do when I am no more than human and have no solution. So I turn to God, my stronghold, who knows how to make war cease, when I do not.
* * * * * *
WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship
One: God is my light and my salvation; whom shall we fear?
All: God is the stronghold of our life; of whom shall we be afraid?
One: Teach us your way, O God, and lead us.
All: We shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
One: Let us wait for God and be strong.
All: We will let our hearts take courage as we wait for God!
OR
One: God comes to us as our Redeemer and our Sovereign.
All: We welcome God as people who need redemption.
One: God comes to redeem us and enlist us in the mission.
All: What is the work God is calling us to do?
One: Bring all people into the reign of God’s love and grace.
All: With God’s help, we will commit to God’s mission.
Hymns and Songs
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
UMH: 139
H82: 390
AAHH: 117
NNBH: 2
NCH: 22
CH: 25
ELW: 858/859
AMEC: 3
STLT: 278
Renew: 57
Lift High the Cross
UMH: 159
H82: 473
PH: 371
AAHH: 242
NCH: 198
CH: 108
LBW: 377
ELW: 660
W&P: 287
Renew: 297
The God of Abraham Praise
UMH: 116
H82: 401
NCH: 24
CH: 24
LBW: 544
ELW: 831
W&P: 16
Renew: 51
O Christ, the Healer
UMH: 265
NCH: 175
CH: 503
LBW: 360
ELW: 610
W&P: 638
Renew: 191
I Need Thee Every Hour
UMH: 397
AAHH: 451
NNBH: 303
NCH: 517
CH: 578
W&P: 476
AMEC: 327
O Zion, Haste
UMH: 573
H82: 539
NNBH: 422
LBW: 397
ELW: 668
AMEC: 566
O Worship the King
UMH: 73
H82: 388
PH: 476
NNBH: 6
NCH: 26
CH: 17
LBW: 548
ELW: 842
W&P: 2
AMEC: 12
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
UMH: 126
H82: 408
PH: 483
NCH: 6
CH: 6
W&P: 56
Renew: 52
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
UMH: 133
AAHH: 371
NNBH: 262
NCH: 471
CH: 560
ELW: 774
W&P: 496
AMEC: 525
At the Name of Jesus
UMH: 168
H82: 435
PH: 148
LBW: 179
ELW: 416
W&P: 321
Renew: 133
May You Run and Not Be Weary
CCB: 99
Make Me a Servant
CCB: 90
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is steadfast and trustworthy in all things;
Grant us the courage to reflect your image
as we persevere in the work of your realm
despite the roadblocks the world employs;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are steadfast and trustworthy. You are the one who always reflects your nature which is love. Help us to be true reflections of your image by also being steadfast as disciples of Jesus. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially the ways in which we are quick to abandon our mission as disciples.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have called us to be your presence in this world and to bring all into your realm. You have gifted us with your own Spirit to equip us for our task and yet we hesitate. We think the task is too big for us and that it comes with too big a price for us to pay and so we hold back. We are not fully committed to your reign and to our role in bringing it to fulfillment. Forgive us and renew us that we may be true disciples of your Son, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
One: God is steadfast and sure and will not forsake the work of salvation. Receive God’s grace and Spirit and enter into the work of the world’s redemption with joy.
Prayers of the People
Glory and honor are yours, O God, by right. You are the creator and foundation of all that exists. Your love is the energy that makes life possible.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. You have called us to be your presence in this world and to bring all into your realm. You have gifted us with your own Spirit to equip us for our task and yet we hesitate. We think the task is too big for us and that it comes with too big a price for us to pay and so we hold back. We are not fully committed to your reign and to our role in bringing it to fulfillment. Forgive us and renew us that we may be true disciples of your Son, Jesus the Christ.
We thank you for the world you have given us and for the work you invite us into. We thank you for the privilege of being your children and your ambassadors that invite all people into your reign. Thank you for Jesus who comes among us and leads us into life eternal, here, now, and always.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for those in need. We pray for those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit and those who struggle to find their way in this life. We pray for the poor and hungry and the homeless. We pray for the people of Ukraine in the midst of the violence and war that is their daily life now. We pray for peace and sanity among the world’s leaders.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMONHope and Trusting in the Lord
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Psalm 27
This lesson is focused on ensuring children have a healthy sense of self and high self-esteem.
(Here is an excellent source of tools to help nuture self-esteem in children.)
How many of you would say you are brave or courageous? (Ask the children to share a time they felt they were brave or courageous.)
How many of you would say you've been scared before? (Let them answer.) When you're scared, what do you do? (Let them answer.)
(This would be a time to share back to all the times they were brave.)
Do you think you can be both scared and brave?
Guess what…I think you can and this is why: Sometimes it is not easy to be courageous when we are scared but our Psalm reading for today models what courage in the face of danger.
(Focusing on verses 6, 11, and 14 as points of modeling, trusting in the Lord for guidance.)
Trusting in the Lord is not the only thing we are called to do. We are also called to trust in ourselves. When we trust in ourselves we are saying “I might be scared but I am brave. I can do this because I trust in God and myself”
Can we all try that?
At this point it would be nice to lead the children in saying out loud together:
“I am brave! I am loved by God! I trust in my feelings! I trust in God!”
Prayer
The Lord is my light who shines upon me.
Loving God, help me to hold my head up high and remind me that I am worthy of your love.
Teach me to have courage enough to stand up for myself and others. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, March 13, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
