The Presbyterian Church at Woodbury
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
02-20-22
Worship Notes
WELCOME
OPENING PRAYER
Lord, the eyes of all look to You in hope; and You give them what they need. You open Your hand and satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing. We, too, turn to You again, longing to be filled— to eat of the Bread of Life, to drink from Your life-giving streams, to taste Your goodness and live. May the time we spend together in Your presence nourish our hearts and minds; may it strengthen our relationship with You, and renew our commitment to live in this world as Your faithful disciples. For You alone are God, the Source and Sustainer of life. Amen.
PRELUDE “Prepare Your Hearts” Gilbert Martin
CALL TO WORSHIP
Trust in the LORD, take delight in the LORD, commit your way to the LORD.
We trust in God, who acts with justice and shines God’s light.
Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for God.
Our salvation comes from the LORD, who is our refuge and our strength.
*HYMN No. 774 “There Is Now a New Creation” vs. 1-4
1 There is now a new creation
through the grace of Jesus Christ,
peace and reconciliation
with the God of endless life.
2 Call the lost and found together;
tell the news to everyone:
now the past is gone forever
and a new life has begun.
3 Wrap the prodigal in welcome;
run to greet the wayward child.
All is finished and forgiven;
let us now be reconciled.
4 Come and join the celebration;
come and join this happy feast;
Jesus makes an invitation
to the greatest and the least.
*CALL TO CONFESSION
The world says that we get what we deserve. When we believe that, we hide our true selves from God and pretend to be without sin or deny the reality of our falling short of our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus teaches us the truth. Grace is God’s gift to us. God is merciful. God’s love is the final word. Trusting in the grace, mercy, and love of God let us confess our sin together.
*CONFESSION OF SIN
Loving God, you call us to your merciful, gracious love freely given without expectation or strings attached. While we are eager to experience your mercy and grace in our own lives, we are quick to make our extension of your mercy and grace conditional for others. We would rather show mercy to those we judge worthy. We would rather extend grace to those who will show us grace in return. We would rather love those who are easiest to love. Forgive us, Redeeming God. So transform our hearts with your amazing grace and unconditional love that our relationships are transformed as we extend your mercy and grace as an expression of our gratitude for your saving love we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.
*SILENT PRAYER
*DECLARATION OF FORGIVENESS
God’s grace overflows and brings us new life. Friends, trust the good news: through the grace of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven! Thanks be to God.
*RESPONSE No. 774 “There is Now a New Creation” v. 5
There is now a new creation through the grace of Jesus Christ. Sing, with thanks and adoration, to the God of endless life!
*PASSING OF THE PEACE
Our peace comes from knowing how much God loves us in Jesus Christ. With God’s help, we try to love and forgive one another as Christ loves and forgives us.
“The peace of Christ be with you,”
“And also with you.”
ANTHEM
CHILDREN’S SERMON
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
Gracious and Loving God, through your Holy Spirit open our hearts and minds to your transforming word in scripture that we may experience anew the height and depth and breadth of your love and be inspired to live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.
SCRIPTURE Luke 6:27-38
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.34If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
SERMON
The lectionary reading of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain happens to fall around Valentine’s Day each year. If you glance at social media during this time, you may notice a surge in posts about feeling loved or sometimes a simple photo of a couple with the description “#blessed.” Now, in case you don’t know, a hashtag is a word or a phrase that is preceded by a pound sign or a hash sign [#], and it’s used on social media to categorize or identify similar messages on a specific topic or theme. A type of metadata, hashtags allow anyone to tag content on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Just for fun, I searched for “#blessed,” which is widely used on social media to express gratitude for fortunate circumstances. Here are some more memorable ones:
…Turns out my cats snuggle all day while I am at work. #blessed
…Finally replaced my old iPhone with a new one. #blessed
…Found the perfect parking spot. #blessed
…My favorite ice cream is on sale. #blessed
I could go on, but it may take me a while. Expressing blessedness is clearly a popular sentiment. Instagram alone has more than 138 million blessed hashtags and if you search “#blessed+praying-hands-emoji” you jump to over 4 million hits! Linguist Deborah Tannen said that “blessed is used now where in the past one might have said lucky.”
What I didn’t know is that this hashtag brings with it a fair amount of controversy. Critics claim that it borders on self-gratuitous expression and a little humblebragging, as they say. I came across a New York Times article in which the author quips, “There’s nothing quite like invoking holiness as a way to brag about your life. But calling something ‘blessed’ has become the go-to term for those who want to boast about an accomplishment while pretending to be humble, fish for a compliment, acknowledge a success (without sounding too conceited), or purposely elicit envy.” Others critique the word’s overuse for trite things which lessen its meaning. As one person put it, “Now, it’s just like strawberries are half price at Trader Joe’s. I feel so blessed.”
In addition to its ubiquitous overuse, there is also the issue of its meaning. That is, if one connects “#blessed” with a particular circumstance in life, does it conversely mean that those who do not share that circumstance are thereby cursed? Think about it. I’m so blessed to have good health, we might say. I’m blessed to have this job. Or – I’ve heard before – I’m blessed not to work. So, for those who do not have those things, are they then, by contrast, cursed? How does blessing work exactly?
Turns out, Jesus has something to say about blessed as we heard in today’s scripture from Luke 6. Both Matthew and Luke recorded Jesus’ sermon that includes a series of blessings. We commonly refer to them as the Beatitudes. There are nine in Matthew and only four in Luke, and each blessing in Luke has a corresponding woe.
Luke’s sermon is given on a level place, not on a mountain like in Matthew. In Luke, Jesus is with the people who came as far as Jerusalem and Judea to the south and Tyre and Sidon to the north. Luke’s broad geographical audience is intentional – this gospel is for all.
What’s more, Luke addresses his audience directly. “All except the last of Matthew’s blessings are general statements in the third person (for example, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’ [Matt. 6:4], whereas Luke’s are in the second person, directed to his immediate audience (‘you will be filled,’ ‘you will laugh’ [6:21]). The fact that both the blessings and the woes in Luke are in the second person suggests that the audience described as present for the sermon included both some people who benefited from the status quo (and thus would hear the woes directed to them) and those who suffered from it (and thus heard a word of blessing).” They are all there together: poor/rich, hungry/full, weeping/laughing, rejected/-accepted, hearing the blessing and the hope; hearing the woes and warnings.
And, I’ll hand it to you, Luke’s beatitudes can be difficult to hear for those with privilege. Matthew’s version may be more palatable: “poor in Spirit” is preferable to the blessing going to the real poor, or the ones who are literally hungry, grief-stricken and outcast. But the discomfort of the well-off is not Luke’s primary concern, if you remember. In Luke, Jesus promises a world turned upside down, from the poor lifted up and the mighty cast down in Mary’s Magnificat in chapter 1 to the captives released and good news preached to the poor in Jesus’ sermon in chapter 4. There is an intentionality in Luke to name the poor as those who inherit, embody, and illustrate the kingdom of God.
It’s true that throughout Luke, Jesus seems clear that wealth and privilege are real dangers that have the power to separate one from God and from the human community. More than any other gospel, Luke is concerned with issues of wealth and poverty. Jesus spells out the woes of which the comfortable and wealthy better beware. We learn that the kingdom of God belongs to those who have nothing except God.
But it seems a far reach to say that those who experience poverty and hunger and grief and exclusion could count any of these as blessings. I doubt these are the folks in our social media feed that are using the #blessed moniker. “Choosing between paying rent and medical care. #blessed.” Can you imagine? How can Jesus say these are the blessed ones?
Let’s begin with a definition. When we say blessed, we typically refer to circumstantial happiness or fortune. We equate it with the good life, whatever that would be for us: a loving partner, a successful career, an excellent education, obedient children, healthy body, trusted friends, financial abundance. But does having these things then make you blessed? Because what if you don’t have them? Is the converse true?
When Jesus uses the word blessed in Luke, it’s the Greek word “Makarios” which means “favored by God” or fully satisfied, regardless of the circumstances, even if one is hungry or outcast or poor or grieving.
These are not aspirational goals. As Sharon Ringe says in her commentary: “In each case, the blessing makes a statement of fact: one is blessed because of a future that is a sure part of God’s reign. There is no note of threat or challenge in these blessings. Nowhere do they say, ‘Do this in order to guarantee a specific result.”
In other words, these beatitudes are not meant for us to achieve – they are a simple statement of how things are in the kingdom of God. They are an announcement of God’s agenda. They signal to both the rich ones and the well-fed and the laughing and the insiders that in order to participate in God’s new kingdom, we need to align our lives and priority with God’s new order.
This is Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain – leveling the playing field, lifting the lowly, challenging the elite. Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. This theme is not new in Luke – the thread runs throughout scripture. Our welfare is bound up in the welfare of others.
The kingdom of God teaches us that we are all connected. We are not isolated individuals making posts about how great our life is on social media without concern of how our lives affect others. We are not separated from one another with what we classify as fortune or its opposite. We are, all of us, from Jerusalem and Judea, from all parts of the world gathered with Jesus on a plain level listening to a new way of thinking that honors those discarded, that lifts up weakness as power and forgiveness as strength.
And we’re all there in our different social conditions and life circumstances: rich and poor, hungry and fed, mourning and laughing, insiders and outsiders. We’re all there knowing that life is fragile and that these conditional situations could change at any moment. Whether we think life is quite random – who gets diagnosed with diseases and who gets promoted with raises – or whether we see our lives with plan and providence and design. Whether we recognize that patterns of privilege and structural inequities impact humans’ ability to flourish, or whether we blithely ascribe advantages to luck and disadvantages to lack of effort, and even if we see life as little of all of these things, we’re all there. We’re all gathered on the plain with Jesus, receiving blessings and hope or listening to woes and warnings to pay attention to God’s kingdom that transforms life as we know it.
And it’s in that moment with Rabbi Jesus that we realize it is not ours to determine who is blessed and who is not, including ourselves. It’s Jesus who pronounces blessing, and his pronouncement of who is blessed cuts across our sensibilities, so counter-cultural that we are often uncomfortable. The blessing of God is not found in our temporal circumstances but in our theological stances, our posture before God who desires healing shalom for all of the world that God so loves.
In 2007, I traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in partnership with sister church from the Presbytery of Eastern Virginia, and we spent 2 weeks learning about the ministry in that wonderful country. We stayed at a guest house while they were there, and there was a little sign in the bathroom like the ones you’ve seen in hotel guest rooms. Instead of “Let us know if you forget your toothbrush or razor, and the front desk can bring you one,” this Congolese sign said, “Let us know if there is anything that you forgot; we will show you how to live without it.” #blessed. Those who live without what we normally consider to be blessings may have much to teach us about vulnerability and trust, about suffering and hope.
So, it is that Jesus pronounces blessing, not according to our circumstance; instead, he encourages our stance, our posture to trust in God’s redemptive love. Maybe the better hashtag for us as followers of Christ is not so much #blessed as much as it is #grateful. In gratitude for God’s grace, may we align our lives with God’s vision of the kingdom and find the blessing inherent in that. May it be so, Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy God, you untangle our understanding of blessing from our cultural trappings of temporal and material happiness. By your Spirit, you give us the grace to see gratitude in your kingdom priorities of liberation for all people. Transform our hearts to proclaim your blessings, through Jesus Christ, our incarnate beatitude, we pray, Amen.
Commentary and Liturgy provided by Teri McDowell Ott, Brian Christopher Coulter, David Oliver-Holder, Jo Anne Taylor, Elizabeth Lovell Milford, Robyn Michalove, and David Lose
*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH The Apostles’ Creed
I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
*HYMN No. 821 “My Life Flows On”
1 My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the clear, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.
Refrain:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?
2 Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing.
It finds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing? (Refrain)
3 What though my joys and comforts die?
I know my Savior liveth.
What though the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth. (Refrain)
4 The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
a fountain ever springing!
All things are mine since I am his!
How can I keep from singing? (Refrain)
THE PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER
O Holy One, as you spoke your creative Word in the beginning, as you spoke through prophets and teachers, as you spoke through evangelists and apostles, so you still speak to us today. You speak to us words of invitation to live into your abundant mercy. You speak to us inviting us to seek your thoughts and live your love. You speak
to us inviting us to delight in your grace freely give to us and all creation.
Your Word, O God, sings to us a melody of peace. A peace which passes all understanding. When our lives are filled with anxiety and worry, when our lives our filled with fear and uncertainty, when our lives lack direction or purpose or a sense of self-worth, sing to us once again of your life- giving love. Hold us in your loving arms and draw us deep into your very heart as it beats with the steady rhythm of your grace.
Knowing that your love is sure, knowing your covenant is steadfast, knowing your peace, send us out as your church, O God, as we join you in your ongoing transformation of the world. Where drumbeats of war and violence rage, may we sound the harmonies of peace and hope. Peace that is deep and true and just. Peace that blends our voices into a mighty chorus of hope. Hope that inspires and transforms even the most desperate of situations and circumstances.
As your church sings with our very lives, O God, give us a deep sense of joy as we bear witness to the power of your transforming love in Jesus Christ. This day we pray for the church around the world:
For those whose witness of faith comes with great risk…
For those who need to know they are not alone as they work tirelessly on our behalf as mission co-workers…
For our beloved denomination…
For the church universal…
Be with our congregation, O God. Continue to blend our voices and weave our lives together in ways beautiful, faithful, profound, and holy. May all we say and do as disciples of Jesus Christ, who alone is the head of our church, be an offering of praise
and thanksgiving for your steadfast love.
And blend our voices now with the saints who have gone before us and with disciples throughout the world as we pray as Jesus taught us, “Our Father …”
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
TITHES & OFFERINGS
God is generous beyond measure. With thanksgiving for God’s generosity in our lives, let us be generous as offer ourselves and our resources for the ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ in the world.
OFFERTORY
*RESPONSE
Praise God, from whom all blessing flow, Praise God, all creatures here below. Alleluia, Alleluia Praise God in Jesus fully known; Creator, Word and Spirit one. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Generous God, receive our gifts offered in joy and gratitude and do more with them than we can ask or imagine. In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who alone is the Head of the Church. Amen.
*HYMN No. 39 “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”
1 *Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee.
Thou changest not; thy compassions they fail not.
As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.
Refrain:
Great is thy faithfulness!
Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
2 Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
join with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.
(Refrain)
3 Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow:
blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
(Refrain)
*BENEDICTION
Jesus calls us to live as his faithful disciples: to love our enemies, to do good expecting nothing in return, offering mercy and forgiveness to others just as God is merciful and forgives. Friends, live into our high calling in Jesus Christ. And go with the blessing of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.
The Presbyterian Church at Woodbury
67 S. Broad Street
Woodbury, NJ 08096
856-845-1244
www.pcwoodbury.com
