March 10, 2024

Fourth Sunday in Lent

10:00am

 

WELCOME

 

OPENING PRAYER

Almighty God, through Jesus Christ you bring
salvation to the world.
Give us strength to believe in him
that we may share in his victory over the power of death
and fulfill the purpose for which you have made us,
for he dwells with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever. Amen.

 

PRELUDE

 

CALL TO WORSHIP

O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good; for God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those God redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.

Let them thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love, for God’s wonderful works to humankind.

And let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices, and tell of the Lord’s deeds with songs of joy.

 

*HYMN No. 794                    “O Savior, in This Quiet Place”

1 O Savior, in this quiet place,
where anyone may kneel,
I also come to ask for grace,
believing you can heal.

2 If pain of body, stress of mind,
destroys my inward peace,
in prayer for others may I find
the secret of release.

3 If self upon its sickness feeds
and turns my life to gall,
let me not brood upon my needs,
but simply tell you all.

4 You never said “You ask too much”
to any troubled soul.
I long to feel your healing touch;
will you not make me whole?

5 But if the thing I most desire
is not your way for me,
may faith, when tested in the fire,
prove its integrity.

6 Of all my prayers, may this be chief:
till faith is fully grown,
Lord, disbelieve my unbelief,
and claim me as your own.

 

*CALL TO CONFESSION

The faithfulness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. The mercies of God are new every morning. Beloved, confession of our sin before God is an act of trust in the goodness of God. In confession, we draw near to our maker in candor, knowing that nothing can be hidden from God. As we are honest with God and with one another about those places in our lives that stand in need of God’s healing, we are opened to the mercies of God. So let us confess our sin,

 

*PRAYER FOR CONFESSION

Holy God, giver of all that is good, we rejoice that you are the source of all that is. The breath of life is a gift from your generous hand. The food we eat is grown in the world you sustain. The community that supports us is called into being by your saving activity. Everything we have is a gift from you. Why, then, do we complain as though the manna, raining down from heaven for us even now, is not enough? Why do we worry that your well of living water will someday run dry? It is surely our sin that causes us live as though we do not trust your goodness. Forgive us, we pray. Teach us again to put all our trust in your promises that never fail. Remind us that we are always in your loving care. Fill us with grace, so that our lives might show forth the fullness of your love for all people.

 

*SILENT PRAYER FOR CONFESSION

 

*RESPONSE No. 551             “Lord Have Mercy”

Lord, have mercy;
Christ, have mercy;
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy;
Christ, have mercy;
Lord, have mercy upon us.

 

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord:

‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,’ and he adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’

Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”

Believe the promise of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.

 

*RESPONSE No. 552            “Holy, Holy, Holy”

1 Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.

2 Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest,
hosanna in the highest.

 

*PASSING OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST

Christ is our peace.

He has reconciled us to God in one body by the cross.

We meet in his name and share his peace.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

And also with you.

 

ANTHEM                   “Call to Lent”             arr. Jerome Williams

 

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE

 

UNISON PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION

Please join me in the unison prayer…

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

 

SCRIPTURE               John 3:14-21

¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.^[a]

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸ Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹ But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”^[b]

 

Pause…

 

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!!

 

SERMON                   “The Light Has Come”

The most famous verse in the Bible?

The Gospel summarized in one verse?

The most-quoted verse in Scripture?

These are a few of the descriptions you might hear for John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.”

For many of us, if we need to hold onto one verse for our faith, this would be it.

And yet, in our desire to center ourselves on one verse, we can lose perspective on the context in which it is found.  For instance, how many of us would know before this morning’s reading, that this verse comes in the midst of a dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus?  What is the larger context of this passage, and how might that influence how we understand this single verse?  It can be very dangerous to preach or promote a single verse of the Bible without a full understanding of where it comes from.

This scripture from John, though, is one of the most powerful texts we will ever hear, even more so by the fact that it is Lent and we are all walking along a road which leads to Jerusalem, and the culmination of our faith.  It is for no other reason than that, then, that we should take a fresh look at why God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, so all who would believe would not perish but have eternal life.

To begin, let’s consider who Jesus is talking to – Nicodemus – when he shares these words from John 3.  The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible calls him a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews (3:1).  Other translations call him a “ruler” or “a member of the ruling council” (NIV).  As a member of the Pharisees, he belonged to a pretty select group.  There were likely no more than 6,000 Pharisees at this time in Israel’s history.  Their role was to serve the Lord by studying the Torah and keeping the law in a strict and faithful manner.  As a part of this “religious fraternity” as William Willimon calls the Pharisees, “there was also the expectation of solidarity with other members of the group, of finding one’s identity primarily within the company, of presenting a united front”.  In essence, once you became a Pharisee, you were expected to hold tight to the party line, not striking out on your own adventures.

But in this story, Nicodemus is striking out on his own.  He is struggling with his long-held beliefs and the identity of this man called Jesus of Nazareth.  We learn from the beginning of chapter three that he must not have wanted his fellow Pharisees to know about his trip, for he came to Jesus under the cover of darkness at night.  And in approaching the man whom he has sought out, he identifies him by what he has seen and heard: “We know you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (3:2).  Nicodemus wants to believe that Jesus is sent from God, and yet Jesus’ life does not match the understood notion of the Messiah as noted in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Implied in Nicodemus’ statement is the question: “You are from God, aren’t you?”

And in Jesus’ response, we realize Nicodemus’ lack of understanding.  When Jesus says that to see the kingdom, one must be born from above, Nicodemus cannot think of any other level than human: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (3:4).  And as Jesus explains to him that everyone must be born not of the flesh, but of water and the Spirit, Nicodemus is truly baffled.  “How can these things be?” (3:9).  He goes from initially having an inkling of faith in Jesus, to not comprehending other than on a human level, to finally disbelieving the words of Jesus.  Nicodemus came under the cloak of darkness to seek the light which would illumine the night.  But all he left with was more darkness, for he would not allow the light to shine into his heart and soul.

At the heart of this passage is what it means to be saved by God – the doctrine of salvation.  For just as the people of Israel were in need of saving from the serpents in the wilderness, so too is the human race in need of saving by the Son of God.  God took pity on the Israelites after they repented, and made for them a statue of a serpent, which they could look at and be healed of their poisonous bites.  That serpent statue was to be lifted up for all to see, for all to gaze upon, for all to seek healing and forgiveness.  Now, too, Jesus says that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (3:15).

Author, Brian Stoffregen writes: If the solution in Numbers was a snake raised on a pole — because the problem was poisonous serpents on the ground; so, in John if the solution is a human (the Word made flesh) on a pole, the problem must be the humans on the ground.  Our problem is that we are human, so a human being had to be lifted up on the pole . . . so that we might look at him and live . . .

The symbol of Jesus on a pole indicates that the problem with us is us — and that Jesus is the solution . . .  Often, rather than admitting, “I am the problem,” we are more likely to confess that a few bad deeds are the problem: “I’ve lied, so I’d better stop lying.”  “I stole a comic book and I’d better stop doing that.”  “I was driving fast and I’ll try to keep my speed down.”  Whenever the problem is defined as doing something bad, the solution is simply to stop doing that bad deed — or start doing good deeds.  Salvation becomes nothing more than doing good things and avoiding the bad.  Such a solution doesn’t need Jesus — or Jesus simply becomes a model of doing the right things.  This watered-down, cheap salvation comes about when we don’t see that we are the problem.  The problem is not the things we do; but that we are us — sinful human beings 

Perhaps that is why John 3:16 is so important.  Despite our best attempts at solving our salvation by eliminating bad habits and starting good ones, God loves us still.  Despite our best efforts to gain eternal life without Jesus or acknowledging that we are the problem, God loves us still.  Despite our lack of understanding and walking in darkness like Nicodemus, God loves us still.  God acted out of love, not condemnation or judgment (3:17).  God acted out of love to save us from ourselves, and the only way for that to happen was for another human being, in all his divinity, to be raised up on a cross, to suffer for all the world’s sins, and to die a death reserved for a criminal, even though it was, in fact, the death of a king.

Theologian Kerry Hasler-Brooks writes the following: The verse’s words are, in a way, lonely ones, read and recited most often on their own, broken away from the chapter and the Gospel where they live.  I rediscover Nicodemus each time I read John 3 in its entirety, surprised again to find that the verse belonged first to this ancient Pharisee.  It is Christ’s answer to his simple, wondering question: “How can these things be?”  I forget that this all-American verse was born in an ancient world and has lived in the mouths of millions these last thousands of years.  I forget that these words aren’t mine alone.

Perhaps this should have been obvious.  The verse carries a big promise, not a private one.  A promise, as it says quite clearly, for the world.  But the mythical individualism of my childhood faith, which rested exclusively on the idea of a personal relationship with Christ, wrapped itself around this verse.  Right now, in this time of social distancing, as I long to wrap my arms around my sister or to share a meal at a table filled with friends or to smile at a stranger in the store and see them smile back, I am desperate to look up from the words on the page.  I am desperate not for the words tucked in the private recesses of my heart but for the people who carry these words as I do.  I cling not only to the promise of love written into the verse but to the promise that I am not reading alone 

The great power of this passage, and of this particular verse from John’s Gospel, is that we are never alone, even when we feel incredibly isolated.  We are never forgotten, even when it seems the world keeps passing us by.  Our pain, our grief, our anxieties do not go unnoticed, because our God loves us unconditionally through God’s only Son.  Our triumphs and failures, our greatest joys and deepest lows, they all take place in the context of our lives that are grounded in the love which God gives us in Jesus Christ.  That is a powerful promise not just for us who are Christ’s disciples, but for the entire world, a world which God loved and is loving so deeply.  The sooner we embrace that tenet of this famous passage, the sooner we will walk in the light of God.

Our response to this incredible love which God shows us is to walk in the light.  To shine God’s light of hope into the darkest recesses of people’s lives, who cannot see hope through the poverty they are enduring.  To shine God’s light of peace and justice into the dark shadows of hatred, enmity, racism, and despair.  To shine God’s light of nurture and grace into the darkest areas of grief, woundedness, and shame.  We are not called to keep God’s love to ourselves – for God’s love is for all the world.  As we allow that love to redeem and transform our lives, we must be changed in a way that compels us to shine God’s light in ways that shatters the darkness of this world, making clear to others that God indeed loves them.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

Commentary and Liturgy from the Book of Common Worship (PCUSA), “Call to Worship” Website, Will Willimon, Kerry Hasler-Brooks, Brian Storoff, Thomas P Groome, III, AJ Levine, Teri McDowell Ott, Scott Hoezee, Ginna Bairby, and The New Interpreter’s Commentary

 

*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

I am empowered by God and led by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  I will be a living witness through prayer, preaching, teaching, and outreach to all people.  I will encourage and challenge all to grow spiritually, to care for others, to share the Good News, and to do so with a loving, joyful heart.

 

*HYMN No. 169                    “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”

1 *Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise.

2 In simple trust like theirs who heard
beside the Syrian sea
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word
rise up and follow thee.

3 O Sabbath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love!

4 Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.

5 Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

 

THE PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER

Eternal God, our story together is one of your unending faithfulness to us, even as we are not always faithful to you. Holy source of all that is good, you have shown us yourself in abundance and mercy, in grace and abiding care. Knowing of your enduring providence, we may come to you with the concerns that weigh heavily on us.

 

We pray to you for world affairs beyond our control. For the people of Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza, we pray for peace, knowing that you alone are the source of true shalom, peaceable kingdom. Where there are those in harm’s way, we pray protection. Where we ourselves harbor enmity and prejudice, we pray awareness and grace that we may learn forgiveness. Teach us how we may serve you more fully in ways we cannot imagine.

 

We pray for needs closer to home, for our own community. As we enter the season of Lent, we ask that you open our eyes to the needs of our very doorstep. May we see those whose names are known to you and offer compassion and goodwill. We pray for victims of violence, and gun violence in particular. We offer our prayers for those who seek solutions for intractable problems. Let us not give up hope. Let us not abandon the work of healing the world — we remember that all healing comes from you.

 

We pray as well for ourselves, our own material, and spiritual needs. Where our members suffer from illness and affliction, grant your healing touch, bringing wholeness. For any in our midst who suffer from depression or addiction, give us understanding and compassion. For those who are lonely, may we be a place of friendship, a warm haven where love is shared. To that end, we pray for the church: Universal, Presbyterian, and our own congregation. Enrich our lives with your grace that we might also be repairers of the breach.

We make these and all of our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us to pray together, “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

 

OFFERING OF TITHES & OFFERINGS

From the providence of God, all that we need has been given to us, in sufficient abundance that we might share. Let us return our offerings as a sign of our commitment to follow the one who has loved us, even unto death.

 

OFFERTORY

 

*RESPONSE N0. 605                        “Praise to God the Father”

Praise to God the Father;
praise to God the Son;
praise to God the Spirit:
praise to the Three-in-One.
Sing praise, sing praise to the Lord on high.
Praise to God Almighty;
praise to the Holy One.

*PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Gracious God, from the overflowing of your love, we have been giv- en abundance upon abundance. Receive, we pray, our offerings and bless them. May we be blessed by their work, as we see your reign among us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

*HYMN No. 812                     “O Save Me, God, and Hear My Cry”

1 O save me, God, and hear my cry:
my prayer to you ascends.
And vindicate me by your might;
on you my hope depends.

2 You, Lord, my help shall ever be,
though evil powers assail.
From their designs, my life redeem
through grace which cannot fail.

3 My sacrifice I offer you
as thanks for all your grace.
Let me so live that I in death
may greet you face to face.

*BENEDICTION

Beloved people of God;
I invite you, in the name of Christ, to observe a holy Lent
by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting,
by works of love,
and by meditating on Gods’ Word.

May the grace, hope, peace and love of God our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer be with us all, now and forever. Amen.