October 23, 2022

Lighting the Christ Candle

Welcome and Announcements

Called to Worship:

Men and women, old and young, see God’s visions, dream God’s dreams.  Young and old, women and men, feel the Spirit fall like rain.                  People everywhere on earth, join creation, shout for joy:                              Praise is due you, O God, for all that you do, for all that you have done, for all that you promise to do.

Hymn: 290 Immortal Invisible God only wise

Prayer of Adoration

O God we are your church:

You have given us your Word:

You have filled us with your power:

You have called us into your family:

You put his words on our lips and filled us with your compassion:

You have given us your Spirit: and showered us with riches:

You have planned for us a glorious future:

We are your church:

You showered us with blessings by revealing in Jesus just how precious we are to you,

and through him you delivered us into a new and living relationship with you and with one another—with a new commandment—a commandment of love. May we reveal the depth of our love for your world and your people as we praise and adore you, O God, Now, that we may trust you more completely, we confess what holds us back, from fully entering your grace….

 

Unison Prayer of Confession:

Loving God, we know that in every generation you call forth prophets to proclaim your word. We give you thanks that you are still speaking even today. Your Spirit inspires the young to see visions of a new creation and elders to dream of a time not yet known. Yet we confess that we fail to hear your voice when it comes from an unexpected place. Convinced that we are right, we miss the Good News of your reconciling love. Forgive us, God. Restore us with humility and awaken us anew to your presence and your promise. Amen.

Assurance of Pardon

The God of creation is a God of mercy. God is quick to forgive and God’s promise of restoration is for all people.

Friends believe the Good News of the Gospel in Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

The Peace

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you

 

Share a sign of peace

Hymn: 399 Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness

Scripture Lessons:

Joel 2; 23-32

Sermon: Showered by God

The passage from Joel includes two rather distinct sections. The first is Joel’s prediction of the end of the locust plague that has eaten the country into a famine. Good weather and good crops are promised for the coming year.

The second section is part of Joel’s vision of the Day of the Lord. One of the benefits of that day is that God’s Spirit will enable great dreams and visions. From this, we learn that God’s Holy Spirit is the source of our best dreams for ourselves and for the world. In fact, one job of the Holy Spirit is dream-making. So, our dreams are to be taken seriously as gifts from God.

All of this, together, the restoration of what the locusts have stolen, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the ways in which God chooses to shower blessings on his people. They may look like two different blessings, but they do come together. The first blesses and restores the earth that cares for us, the second blessed and empowered the people as we care for all that God has created.

The first blessing is easy to see when it happens; yet requires great trust in the moment to believe that God will restore the earth. The second blessing also requires us to put our deepest heartfelt trust in God’s direction and leading, as the Holy Spirit challenges us to dream God’s dreams and live out God’s vision for the church. Both blessings are equally difficult to envision when we are in the midst of the difficult days.

Because the blessing can be difficult to see, this prophecy is meant to make us take notice as well. Can we dream of the blessing to come to the earth? Can we capture the vision of what God is calling us to do and be? Trusting

God and embracing the Spirit are essential as we reach out to grasp the blessing.

For that reason, this passage speaks to us in many ways. The world is in tough shape right now. Things have not resettled into what we knew before COVID, and may never do so. Added to that, the supply chain issues that began in COVID continue and are getting worse. Then come the problems created by the heat, drought and fires of the past years which have devastated crop production around the world. Additionally, the war in the Ukraine is creating even more challenges in the availability of essential crops.

As all of this affects the world economy, we see the prices rise and rise for all those things we need for everyday life. The current situation points out that all countries of the world are interdependent for the economic benefit of all. We are not in this alone, we all need each other and we all need God.

That means that our healing comes from God; yet it also relies on us to place our trust and confidence in God.

I remember a conversation I had many years ago with a prairie farmer who survived the “Dust Bowl” of the 30’s. He was talking about the challenges of those days. Crop after crop failed. Without the house garden and the livestock for their own use they might not have survived through the winter. Yet the winter survival was not what he counted as the blessing he saw in those years. What he counted as the blessing was the knowledge that although they did not take off enough grain to sell; they did take off enough grain to replant in the spring.

Enough to replant in the spring. Enough to start again is the source of hope and blessing.

Planting, and certainly replanting after a crop failure takes a great deal of trust and confidence in the blessing that God provides. Enough to plant, is enough to be blessed.

We are reminded that our God is able and willing to restore that which the locusts have stolen. Our task is to simply replant, or if not farmers ourselves to trust in those who will replant and start again in the Spring.

Spiritually, there is also a replanting that is necessary. The pandemic has certainly changed congregations. We got a little too used to worshipping from our living rooms as we read the service or watched the videos. Although many of us are grateful to be able to come together again, there are also many who are happy to continue to worship from home. The community that we knew has been altered and will never again be the same.

But the blessing is also there, as we welcome one another back, and rejoice with those who have come along to join us.

The blessing of God is on the congregation in so many ways. We see it all around us. Yet the blessing that God wants to give to us is even greater that we can imagine.

In the past few weeks, we have touched upon the power that we have in our relationship with God in prayer. When we pray and dare to believe in the miracle that God will provide, the results are a cause for praise and rejoicing.

Joel calls the people to prayer, as they come together to weep and beg God to see them in their plight. We are reminded that our intercessions with God are meant to be transformative—for the earth and for us.

In all of this, Joel reminds the people not to be fearful. Do not be anxious. Do not be distressed. Rather says Joel, be confident, sing, dance, shout and

rejoice. The abundance of the harvest and the abundance that the Spirit provides will bring meaning and bring a whole new way of living.

I am reminded of the devastation that Job endured. Loss of crops. Loss of cattle and camels. Loss of children. There was not one part of his life that had not been affected. Yet he remained confident in his relationship with God. He did not yield to the doubt and despair that his friends demonstrated and counseled. Faith, trust, and confidence carried him through.

And then, God restored it all, and multiplied it with abundance. Crops, cattle, camels and children all restored and increased.

We may not see the blessing when in the midst of the problems of the day, but when we remain confident and hopeful in our relationship with God, in God’s time we will see the blessing.

The second part of that blessing was important for Job and for the people to whom Joel prophesied. None of us can have confidence in God without the leading, prompting and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Faith is not a human construct. Faith is a gift from God lived out in believing.

So, Joel promises that the Spirit will be poured out. Poured out on the men and the women. The elderly and the children. The community will be unified in the Spirit as God leads them into the blessing. There will be dreams and there will be visions and God’s Spirit will lead all the people into the future that God has planned for them.

When the people came together in prayer and weeping and begging, God restored them and gave them more than they asked for.

Gaffeny in his commentary reminds us that God actually gives more than the people asked for. The gift of the Holy Spirit is seen in how the people work with God to bring the blessing to the whole community.

They planted and they harvested in the agricultural sense; but they also planted and harvested in the spiritual sense.

They dreamed dreams of what would be possible with God. They shared visions of what God wanted to do among them.

It is more than just the praying, lamenting and crying. It involves the people moving forward with God.

The commentator Mann writes that the people received the blessing of the Spirit because they returned to God with their whole heart. They understood the pivotal message that God had a better blessing for them. They placed hope in God’s promise in the midst of the turmoil of the day and they trusted the promised blessing would become reality.

The blessing was announced before the circumstances changed. In the middle of the problems they were having, both physically and spiritually God made the promise of abundance and a new Spirit.

This is the promise that the people believed. Nothing had changed, except the hearts of the people who chose to believe that God would bless them even in the trauma of their circumstances.

This trust and faith involved returning to God with their whole heart. Mann describes it as a changing of their minds and well as their hearts. She pointed out that they were changed in the Spirit as the Spirit moved among them. And then, God responded as they offered themselves completely to God. They bloomed where they were planted.

They were commanded to demonstrate their grief, but not in the normal ways. They were told to rend their heart and not their clothes. This demanded a shift in their priorities as they responded to God in spite of their circumstances.

Returning to God indicated more than a new mindset and a change of priorities, it was a demonstration of the complete witness of the people to the divine presence of God that grounded their faith.

That faith resulted in God turning to them with a blessing in keeping with his divine nature. And then…. God poured out that nature on all people.

The blessing of the Holy Spirit is seen when God pours himself into our hearts and being. We can’t help but respond and we can’t help but to participate.

The blessing of the Spirit was not just for some; but for everyone. Young and old. Weak and strong. Men and Women. This radical inclusivity was a sign that God is the God of all people and that the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to everyone.

Joel models a faithful response to uncertainty, fear and chaos as the community gathers in prayer and commits themselves to God as his servants. We are reminded that God has been a stronghold and fortress in the past and will be so again.

The commentator Bouzard points out we may well be anxious about many things and we may feel as if our resources are threatened. Yet, in response to our worry the Lord promises abundance. Joel tells the people, God gives rain for your vindication.

Abundant rain.

Early rain.

Later rain.

Rain that leads to a super abundance of oil, grain and wine, all of it overflowing into vats and baskets.

We are reminded of the words in Luke 6: Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be

poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” The blessing comes after the faithful trust, after the returning to God and after the faithful outpouring of the people.

When we are participants in God’s kingdom through the Holy Spirit working in us, then we dare to dream big dreams and dare to have visions of great things yet to come; and that blessing will overflow in our lives and our congregation.

Bouzard points out that when we live in that manner, then believers can and will live freely, hopefully, and generously because we share a secret.

That secret: that the God of abundance has promised to care for us. For that reason, we participate with sharing the abundance and then the whole world will be forever satisfied.

And God’s Spirit will be poured out on all people with overflowing abundance, and everyone will be saved in ways that we cannot always anticipate. God will do more than we can ask or imagine.

So let us dare to dream. Let us seek a vision from the Spirit and let us place our whole heart and our whole trust in God.

Amen

Hymn: 624 Blessed are they

Offering Doxology Offertory Prayer

Gathering Prayer Requests Prayers of the People and the Lord’s Prayer

Heavenly Father: thank you for bringing about a new creation through you Son, Jesus Christ. And thank you for giving us a place in your new world by the power of the Holy Spirit. Keep us and all your people awake to the dreams inspired by your Spirit and supply us with faith.

Let your Spirit guide us today and in the week ahead as we go about our daily lives. Thank you for the many blessings you have showered upon us and give us confidence as we look ahead. Keep us and all your people awake to skepticism and confusion and supply us with listening hearts and sound judgment.

Keep us and all your people awake to our duties as citizens and neighbours, and supply us with clarity in distinguishing law and gospel, and keep us focused on the calling of your Spirit.

 

Have mercy, Lord, on the sick and bereaved, and on all who are in despair. Help us to see and respond to the needs of others, and supply us with compassion for those who suffer, including those we know personally to be in want, and whom we now name silently in our hearts… (brief silence).

hear our prayers for:

 

 

 

 

 

Heavenly Father, when we are tired, give us strength; when we are careless, make us alert; and when we feel like giving up, fill us with the hope of the day your Son will be revealed in glory. So hear the prayers we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray saying:

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, the power and the glory, forever. Amen

 

Hymn: 384 O Breath of life come sweeping through us

Charge and Benediction

Sung Blessing 457 Now thank we all our God

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom God’s world rejoices, who from our mother’s arms has blessed us on our way, with countless gifts of love and still is ours today.