Third Sunday in Lent

GATHERING FOR WORSHIP

As the bell sounds, may we quiet ourselves and allow the music of the prelude to lead us into a worshipful place in our hearts and minds.

*  Those who are able, please stand.

Prelude                         'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

William J. Kirkpatrick, arr. Johnie Dean

Welcome and Announcements

Choral Introit

Call to Worship 

Leader: Pilgrims, we are invited to journey through this season of Lent

People: towards the One who calls us each by a new name.

Leader: Disciples, we walk with Jesus wherever he leads us,

People: pulling our fears, our doubts, our longings behind us.

Leader: Believers, we seek to trust the God who always surprises us,

People: whose promises take on flesh and blood in the good news call Jesus.

*Opening Hymn            Standing on the Promises               

Unison Prayer of Invocation 

O God, our promise for today: We will follow you, O Christ, into the needs of the world, into the truth of our lives, into the pain of our hearts, into the presence of God.  Amen.

SHARING GOD’S WORD

Scripture Reading                   Mark 8:31-35    

Leader: This is the Word of the Lord.    

People:   Thanks be to God.

Musical Interlude   

THE COMMUNITY AT PRAYER

Sharing of Joys and Concerns

Call to Prayer               Lead Me, Lord

Lead me, Lord, lead me in thy righteousness, make thy way plain before my face. For it is thou, Lord, thou, Lord, only, that makest me dwell in safety.

Pastoral Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer

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. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.

*Hymn of Preparation   I Would Be True      

SERMON                     "A Seed Is a Promise . . ."                  Rev. Ritts

THE SERVICE OF OFFERING

Collection and Offertory     

*The Doxology (#46)

*Unison Prayer of Dedication   

  God of all goodness and grace, fulfill-er of promises; receive the gifts we humbly offer; and grant that our whole life may also be a fulfillment of your promises, giving you the glory and the praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

WE GO FORTH TO SERVE

*Hymn of Parting          O Jesus, I Have Promised            

*Benediction             (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Now to him who, by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. 

All: And now, may we bear fruit as we go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord, In the name of Christ. Amen.

Congregational Response     Go Now in Peace

Go now in peace. Never be afraid, God will go with you each hour of every day. Go now in faith, steadfast, strong and true. Know He will guide you in all you do. Go now in love, and show you believe. Reach out to others so all the world can see. God will be there, watching from above. Go now in peace, in faith, and in love.

Postlude                      Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

George J. Webb, arr. Cindy Berry

Poet, Sharilyn Adair writes:

The butterfly and the rose have this in common:

they are both promises fulfilled.

For a cocoon is a promise and so is a bud.

Judy and the grandchildren started their annual planting of seeds a week ago - about 100 of them - and, excited by a promise fulfilled, have already transplanted a couple dozen seedlings. Seeds, containing the promise of miracles, soon to be realized.

On this Third Sunday of Lent our Scripture texts bring us to the subject of promises.

The approach this morning will be on three levels, not unlike the challenges and choices we may have in various life activities, like: skiing (cross-country or down-hill), playing video games, ordering buffalo wings, climbing onto a machine at the fitness center, picking a hiking trail - what might all of these activities have in common?

Beginner, intermediate, expert

Mild, medium, hot

Easy, moderate, difficult

All expressing levels of increasing challenge and expertise.

Same with promises: It's easy to make them; it's a little more difficult to believe them, and for the really big ones, it's often a real challenge to fulfill them.

Now before we get started, I hope we can all agree not to take the easy way out:

A crusty old hermit spoke almost defiantly:

“I'll tell you, preacher, there's but one rule I've made for myself, and no man can say I ain't kept it.  I'm eighty-four years old - eighty four - and in all those eighty-four years, I've never made a promise I couldn't keep."

“Well, how many did you make?”

“Only the ones I knew I could keep - Somethin' might happen, ya never can tell."

Without promises, our lives become empty.  Reaching to keep those promises gives us more to strive for and, when fulfilled, look back on with pride.  Even if all the seeds don’t germinate, our planting with hope will carry us well beyond the point at which we started.

  At the outset, promises are easy to make.  If we have the admirable habit of keeping our promises, there may be some serious consideration and deliberation before we make those big promises, but they are still easier said than done.

  God is one who, throughout the Scriptures, makes lots of promises.  

  For Noah, the rainbow became the symbol of that promise.

  Today's lesson lesson from Mark, Jesus is making some promises as well:

  The first, more like a prediction, explaining that he will suffer, be rejected and eventually killed, then rise after three days.

  And the second is a promise that the life given up for Jesus' sake will be saved.

  We, too, can make promises.  The frequency, I suppose, depends on our own personal style.  Some of us may use the word constantly as a re-assurance that we will complete a particular task: I'll take the trash out, I promise.  A promise is implied every time we have to attach our signature to something.

Others of us may use spoken promises more sparingly, for the really big agreements we make:

Weddings, baptisms, loan or contract agreements, Lenten goals.

But Promises are usually easy to make.

  Far easier than they are to believe.  Promises given to us can be difficult to believe, and sometimes they are simply downright unbelievable!

  Promises made by God are often difficult to hear, let alone absorb and believe.

For most of the Old Testament stories, the voice and promises of God were always clear and specific.

In Jesus' time, the visions are less frequent.  To be sure, the messenger himself was walking among them.  But even in this morning's lesson, Peter isn't ready to hear what Jesus is “promising" will happen.

Get behind me, Satan.  For you (Peter) are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.

Promises can be like that.   Difficult to believe either because they're too good to be true or they're too “far out.”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Christ the Center prescribes the following:

“We must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus in order to learn what God promises and in what manner he fulfills them.”

That first step in embracing the promise is to see its deeper roots and ramifications - where it's coming from and where it's taking us.  Seldom an easy task.

  Also making promises difficult to fully accept is all that goes into their maintenance.

Promises will test our level of trust, call into play our experience, challenge the depth of our faith and push the boundaries of our hope.

Trust is built through experience.

Faith is a mixture of love and hope.

Hope is believing in the possibility.

All three play a role in promise-making and keeping.

  To accept and believe in the promise made by another, is to trust and have faith in the one making of the promise.

Did Peter trust Jesus?  Sure he did.  He took his hand and came up out of the water he was sinking in.

Did Peter have faith in Jesus?  Sure he did.  “. . . you are the Christ, the son of the living God.”

Did Peter have unbounded hope - he's working on it.  That was his growing edge.

  To make a promise is to place that trust, faith and hope in ourselves.  That can take a serious amount of sacrifice, in Jesus’ words:

. . those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, will save it.

To make and then embrace a promise is to invite God to work through us.

To make a promise is relatively easy.

To believe in a promise is more difficult.

And the hardest of all is to live our lives based on the promises we make and the promises offered to us.

In their truehearted acceptance, promises will change behavior.

  Our Scriptures reveal typical human reactions.

For Peter, we can surmise that Jesus' words didn't help him catch the big picture. He was always the impetuous one, reacting to the immediate threat rather than the divine design: the night Jesus is arrested, he cuts off the soldier's ear, then later, three times he denies even knowing Jesus.  Even at the very end, there at the grave, he was still Peter, not being able to imagine life beyond the empty tomb. He always needed reassurance.

To act and live a life based on a promise is a very difficult task.

  God promises healing, new life, life after death, a kingdom of love and peace - definitions must be clarified, but the promises are still there. 

To be reminded of them is to cause the seeds of promise to germinate.  

Richard Bach in his book, Illusions offers an interesting insight:

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

(Elsewhere he says)

Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to your transition. .  is not generally understood by less-advanced (souls).

Accepting God's promises as true will effect our behavior.

To accept the promises God means our behavior will change.

To accept and embrace the promises others make means our behavior will change.

  And, to be sure, if we've made the promise ourselves, in order to reach fulfillment, our behavior

will have to change.

  One helpful angle in all this might be to realize that promises are always about the future, yet to be fulfilled.  

Even as we climb our Lenten mountains or prepare ourselves for that wonderful springtime celebration of ultimate promise, we can begin to see the promise coming true in the seedlings breaking through the soil.

Each incidence of rain and snow and sunshine along the way are all a part of the promise reaching fulfillment.The cocoon, the bud and the seed are promises unfolding.

Without Lent, there would have been no Easter.  The empty cross would not exist without the crucifix.  No sacrifice, no glory.  It's all a part of the fabric of a life with all its promises: making them, struggling to keep them and experiencing their fulfillment.

Judy’s already filled another dozen starter trays in which the grandkids can plant their seeds with hope.

Nikki Giovanni writes a wonderful poem entitled “Winter Poem" about this notion of our own participation within the promise unfolding: 

once a snowflake fell on my brow 

and I loved it so much and I kissed it; 

and it was happy 

and called its cousins and brothers 

and a web of snow engulfed me. 

then I reached to love them all 

and I squeezed them 

and they became a spring rain 

and I stood perfectly still and became a flower.