The Journey of Grace (click here)

March 14, 2021

Preacher: Rev. Ena van Zoeren

Passage: Numbers 20: 1-12; Ephesians 2: 1-10

Service Type: 4th Sunday in Lent

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church

March 14: Lent 4

Welcome to worship at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Salmon Arm. We are delighted that you have joined us online.

Announcements:

We direct your attention to a resource called Lenten Gardens. It is found under the DEVOTIONS tab on the website. It will take you to a garden to explore, with Adult Studies, Children’s stories, crafts for all ages, music, recipes and so much more. The link will change weekly through Lent, daily during Holy Week.
Next Sunday we will be participating in a service I wrote, to memorialize our first Sunday of Worship from isolation. The vision for this service arose from a series of lectures I attended during study leave, which focused on the Church coming out of the Pandemic. Hopefully the service will be meaningful to us all.
Maundy Thursday: we will repeat last year’s anointing with oil service from last year.
Good Friday: This year we will focus on walking the stations of the cross. There will be a sign up sheet (call Ena 250-253-0338 to register) where by one bubble groups can come to the church and walk through the stations. There will also be a video of John and Janet walking the stations to join as you worship from home. As always for those who prefer to read and mediate on the worship service there will be a full written script. Peace and Blessings on you all as you journey.

Lighting the Christ Candle

The light of Christ has come among us.
Thanks be to God

CALLED TO WORSHIP

Abandon the illusion you're a self-contained individual.

Be a part of this wounded world, and find yourself with Christ.

We set aside our own desires, give ourselves fully for others; and become the hands and heart of Jesus.

Renounce self-protection, accept your brokenness, and reach out for love.

We let go of our own plans. We join in the healing of the world. In God we will not be alone.

Follow your soul, not your ego. Follow it right into people's suffering. Follow it right into the heart of God.

We are created in Christ Jesus for good works. Our obedient works complete the gift of salvation. The demonstrate our enjoyment of our faith.

HYMN: Seek ye first

PRAYER OF APPROACH

Gracious and Compassionate God,
As we journey through our time of Lent
Our time in deserts and low places
Our time on the mountains and high places
We continue to seek you.

We need you more than ever
in our busyness
our loneliness
our sadness
our depression
our anger
our happiness
our joy
our excitement

We need
your presence
your compassion
your grace
your comfort
your renewal
your healing
your peace
your joy
your love
your salvation

Lord we are
reminded that
all this is embodied
in your son Jesus
in his life
his death
and his resurrection

and that all
this was freely given
that we may have
abundant life
eternal life
fullness of life
freed lives
loved lives
loving lives
grace giving lives

Come Lord
pour your mercy and grace and love and salvation over us
And for these gifts from you we are grateful. Amen.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION:

Even when we were dead, Paul writes.

Even when we turned away from the One who had created us.

Even when we lived in the grip of what drew our gaze from God.

Even when we were oblivious.

Even when we followed a path fashioned of nothing

but our own desires.

Even when we wandered far and willfully away.

Even when we forgot to look past our own feet and to see

the wonders not of our making.

Even when we failed to stand in awe, to breathe thanks,

to lean into the love that had waited long for us.

Even when, Paul writes.

Even when,

even then:

grace.

We open our hearts to your grace, forgive us Lord. Amen

Kyrie Eleison

(The Greek will come first, wait and then the English words come)

PASSING THE PEACE

The peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

And also with you.

Share a sign of peace with those nearby, or ask the Spirit to bring his peace to another you may know, or to a world situation.

HYMN When we are living

WE HEAR GOD’S WORD

Listen, hear and remember, these portions of the revelation of God’s word for us.

Numbers 20: 1-12

In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.

2 Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. 3 They quarreled with Moses and said, “If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord! 4 Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? 5 Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!”

6 Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. 7 The Lord said to Moses, 8 “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

9 So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. 10 He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

12 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

Ephesians 2: 1-10

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Sermon: The Journey of Grace

Going on a trip with children always has its drawbacks. The long period of sitting makes them (and us) tired and cranky. There are the inevitable complaints of hunger and thirst and “are we there yet.”

We make vague promises of “soon” and “not much longer now” and hope it will hold those restless children for another hour, or two.

But as adults we also learn that preciseness in our language matters. And we always learn that lesson the hard way.

Like the day my parents and I took my daughter to Coombs. My father promised her “she could eat with the goats.” He meant the place where the goats live on the roof. She understood that she would actually be able to get on the grass with the goats and have her lunch.

A frustrated child and a frustrated Opa are not a good combination. To make matters worse, neither was able to explain themselves to the other’s understanding.

Frustration ensued.

This is a truth so strongly displayed in the journey where Moses led the people of Israel through the desert.

Hunger complaints. Complaints about the boring repetition of meals. Complaints about no water to drink.

Every time Moses goes to God and God supplies.

But the last time, Moses was given a specific set of instructions to follow, and when the people complained yet again, Moses, forgot the instructions from God and allowed his frustration to dictate his actions.

The instructions were clear: The Lord said to Moses, 8 “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

Speak to that rock before their eyes, and it will pour out its water.

But the manner in which the people greeted Moses when he came back it caused him to do something else altogether. So Moses said, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”

And then, Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

This was meant to be yet another miraculous display of God’s love and provision and it instead became a fit of temper as Moses forgot God’s instructions and did his own thing.

Whereas God’s grace continued in the life of Moses, there was a consequence, and Moses was not able to enter into the Promised Land with the people when they crossed the Jordan River.

There is a deep theological principle at play here. When Moses failed to obey God to the letter, it meant that he missed the opportunity to demonstrate Gods’ power in a new way to the rebellious Hebrew people. What’s more, this great leader, handpicked by God, showed that he didn’t fully trust God. He is just like the people he is leading.

That is so true of the humanness of each of our walks. But for Moses, it also meant that he missed God’s blessing and God’s authority on his leadership.

That blessing and authority was seen in his encounters with Pharoah as he said time after time, “Let my people go”. He spoke God’s words and repeated God’s words and he had authority as a prophet and a servant of God. At that moment in the wilderness that blessing vanished; God was not glorified and Moses was not confirmed as God’s servant.

And you know, the same thing can be said of us. We have our frustration moments and our angry responses. We can be rebellious.

We get the result God promised, but not because we obeyed God. In those moments, it is so marvelous that God’s grace prevails, and yet we miss out on the bigger blessing.

The people got water, but they missed out on the blessing of knowing that the water was a gift from God.

God’s word was precise, and Moses did not heed the words.

As the people of God we are aware of that. When God calls on us to love our neighbour, and to serve the lowly, he asks us to be a part of his blessing. But when we make a big deal of how we are important and we gave our valuable time or a cheque for a huge amount, we hide God’s grace in what we do.

We see this truth in the lives of the prophets who say again and again, “thus says the Lord”.

Using God’s words, as God uses them is important. Precision in our speaking matters.

In creation God said, “let there be light”, not let’s have some shiny thing in the sky.

In creation God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear,” not, “let put the wet stuff there and then the dry stuff should show up”.

God’s word to us comes with precision. God uses words like “you shall” and “I will” God says what he means and he means what he says.

So when he says, “Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water,” that is exactly what he wants Moses to do. When Moses struck the rock in anger, he changed the whole balance of ministry and he made it about himself, and his frustration with the people, and his exhaustion with all the complaints.

And while we, who deal with people all the time understand Moses’ frustration and impatience, we also see that it caused him to miss what God was offering.

We’ve been there ourselves. We get impatient and we just do things our way rather than wait for God to reveal himself. We think that what we are asked to do is too strange, too hard, too impossible (take your pick) and we do it our own way.

We miss the bigger truth that Ministry and Mission is never about us. It is about God.

In the story of Gideon, we hear God give him the instruction to reduce the number of his army So Gideon brought the people down to the water, and the LORD said to him, “Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel to drink.” And the number of those who lapped the water with their hands to their mouths was three hundred men; and those were the only men Gideon took into battle.

And then God gave them the victory. God was glorified and Gideon’s God given leadership was confirmed.

If we make it about us, God’s grace still prevails, but the bigger blessing wherein God’s love is seen and God’s mercy is displayed is absent.

Following instructions are important. They are important in life and they are very important in the Journey of Grace.

In the journey of life, turning left instead of right means a delay in our trip as we struggle to figure out where we went wrong. In the journey of grace we have the same struggle as we miss the blessing that God wants to bring us to.

The missed blessing is so important as Paul points out to the Ephesians, writing: All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

The blessing is always a gift of God’s grace. All of us fail. We fail ourselves, we fail each other, we fail God. Then God responds with mercy.

Mercy, grace, love these are the gifts God gives us. And they are ours forever.

How can that be? Because of Jesus. Because of Jesus.

We see Jesus struggle with his own reluctance to do all that God was asking. In the Garden he prays from the depth of his being that the cup be removed from him.

Again, he prays from the depth of his being that the cup be removed from him.

And again. But the third time we see his rise up and say, “not my will but yours be done.”

Not my will but yours. Jesus understood that Mission and Ministry are all about God, not his own desires. He understood that the blessing came from following God’s plan, not his own plan.

God says what he says and asks what he asks for a reason. And that reason is always and only to be able to bless us to the fullest extent of the blessing of heaven.

Yes, as Paul reminds us, our floundering and our failing will always be covered by grace. Yet when we are diligent to obey God despite our current spiritual, emotional, or physical strength we will know the full blessing of God.

Our obedience, says Paul, is how we fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Paul reminds us that we were created, and recreated in Christ for the purpose of good works.

The commentators in the Spiritual Formation Bible point our that works are to faith, as exhaling is to inhaling. One is not complete without the other. If we inhale and don’t exhale, we will die, or at the very least pass out.

If we have faith, but not works we do not enjoy the complete gift of salvation. What we do in the service of God, how we live our faith, how we touch the lives of others ,they are not just for God’s benefit. They are primarily for our benefit.

The real truth here is that when we fulfill our faith by our works, we not only demonstrate our faith, we also enjoy it.

I am reminded of the catechism question. What is the chief end of humankind?

To glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

When we glorify God his grace and mercy are unleashed to flow without measure in our lives and the lives of those whom we touch. And we know the fullness of his joy, the greatness of his blessing, and the confirmation that we are his true and faithful servants. We hear God’s “well done” echoing all around us as God blesses those we care for and affirms the mission and ministry he has given to us.

And then, we will walk with God, talk with God, speak for God, love for God and in the end, we will have God’s full blessing every day.

Amen. Glory be to God.

HYMN: Lord of all power

OFFERING

Today we remember the gift of Jesus Christ given to us, giving thanks to God for the many ways in which we too may bring our offering into the storehouse. Please check the front page of the website for ways in which you can contribute. Thank you.

OFFERTORY PRAYER

Infinite Love, heart of all life,
you loved this word into being
with such love
as to birth yourself among us,
Love begotten as the Beloved.

Opening ourselves to your love
we live beyond our mortal selves
and join your eternal Oneness.

Trusting this we know
we are loved, never rejected.

Trusting this we bring our offering,
our lives
our service
our faithful words
the gifts of our heart and substance

knowing that what we bring with
faith is received with love
multiplied by grace
and shared to bring your Glory to the world.

In our living and our living we are opened to love
the only source of life Amen

PRAYERS OF THANKSGIVING AND INTERCESSION

God our Friend and resourceful Helper, as we call to mind other people in their numerous needs, we pray that you will encompass them with your loving Spirit, and enable your churches to find practical ways of ministering to them.

Somewhere at this moment there are thoughtful, kindly men and women who are staring at prison walls because they dared speak out for truth and justice.

Loving God, give your people the faith to counterbalance despair