Order, Words & Voices 11.10.24

Order, Words, & Voices – 11.10.24, Jonah & Luke 18:9-14, ‘Inescapable’

Pre/Post Worship Music – Spotify – Open and Close

Lighting of Christ Candle Segun

Songs The Solid Rock CCLI Song # 25417 Lynn/Linda

Passage/Prayer Jonah & Luke 18:9-14 Isaiah

Lord’s Supper Rick

Song Living Hope CCLI Song #7106807 Lynn/Linda

Impact/Message Inescapable Rick

Song Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) # 4768151 Lynn/Linda

Community/Closing Peace Rick

Closing Music Glorify Thy Name CCLI Song # 1383 Lynn/Linda

Record message on memory card. – leave Room above Speaker’s head

Christ Candle (Slides) (Lynn softly plays ‘Solid R’ during final line) Segun

Our God is the God of Hope even when No Hope can be Seen.

Our God is the God that is Present even when no Presence can be Felt.

Our God is the God of Eve, of the Widow, of Mary and Martha.

Our God is the God of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Elijah, Peter, Judas, Paul, and Jesus on the cross, in the Grave, and all over the Resurrection.

Our God is the God of the Promised Land, of Sodom, of Babylon, of Rome, Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.

Our God is present on the continents and to all of the people of Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.

May we remember the deceit behind Jesus’ arrest, the brutality of the cross, the exhilaration of the empty grave, the Hope at the ascension, the Joy of the spirit.

May we hold tight to God’s words, ‘Peace’ and ‘Do not Fear’.

May our guide be Light that pierces the darkness, May our Hope be in God.

May we know that God is Near, and that God is here today and tomorrow

Music (Slides) Lynn/Linda

The Solid Rock CCLI Song # 25417

Verse 1

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name

Chorus

On Christ the solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

Verse 2

When darkness veils His lovely face

I rest on His unchanging grace

In ev’ry high and stormy gale

My anchor holds within the veil

Chorus

On Christ the solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

Verse 4

When He shall come with trumpet sound

O may I then in Him be found

Dressed in His righteousness alone

Faultless to stand before the throne

Chorus

On Christ the solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

Passage (Slides) Jonah 3 Isaiah

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

So, this time, Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water.

Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.

Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

Join me in the prayer of Jesus,

Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be your name.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our trespasses, while we forgive those who trespass against us.

And, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

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

Lord’s Supper Slide Rick (Lynn gently play at post communion prayer)

The Anglican church of St. James Anglican Church,1793/1853

Guided to box, door open and Communion Offered

Hands opened and turn upward, Bread and Wine offered and taken

Hands Open…Open to release barrier to clear Remembrance

Significance of doing it with community of faith

Jesus sitting at table with one that had already betrayed him, one that would soon betray him repeatedly, and all but one would be absent from the crowd as Jesus hung on the cross.

After Judas had betrayed Jesus, and before Peter would deny Jesus three times, all the disciples, including Peter and Judas, sat at the table with Jesus, Jesus broke the bread and gave thanks to God. As he broke the bread he said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Then, in similar fashion, Jesus took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” I Corinthians 11:24-26

Partake – May we remember… Close with PRAYER

Music (Slides) Lynn/Linda

Living Hope CCLI Song #7106807

Verse 1

How great the chasm that lay between us

How high the mountain I could not climb

In desperation I turned to heaven

And spoke Your name into the night

Then through the darkness Your loving-kindness

Tore through the shadows of my soul

The work is finished the end is written

Jesus Christ my living hope

Verse 2

Who could imagine so great a mercy

What heart could fathom such boundless grace

The God of ages stepped down from glory

To wear my sin and bear my shame

The cross has spoken I am forgiven

The King of kings calls me His own

Beautiful Savior I’m Yours forever

Jesus Christ my living hope

Chorus

Hallelujah praise the One who set me free

Hallelujah death has lost its grip on me

You have broken every chain

There’s salvation in Your name

Jesus Christ my living hope

Verse 3

Then came the morning that sealed the promise

Your buried body began to breathe

Out of the silence the Roaring Lion

Declared the grave has no claim on me

Chorus

Hallelujah praise the One who set me free

Hallelujah death has lost its grip on me

You have broken every chain

There’s salvation in Your name

Jesus Christ my living hope

Message Rick (Leave Title Slide up for entire message)

[Title slide for entire message]

I attempted to find out this week the number of children’s books that have been written about Jonah. I quickly found that it is an impossible feat. Even AI admitted that she, or he, or them, could not begin to tell me how many Jonah related books have been written about the character Jonah in the Bible. AI did, however, offer to tell me the story of Jonah. Even when you just do a search of Children’s Bible Stories the majority of those found are about Jonah. My attempt at a count on Amazon revealed that there are hundreds, which are mostly recent publications.

What makes the abundance of Jonah books written for children is that the story is definitely not a children’s story. The main figure is definitely a racist, possibly would be considered a nationalist, He attempts to disobey God’s calling, which is a not a good trait for a prophet of the true God, and he tries to run away from God and from God’s presence. He is a self centered person who carries a great deal of resentment and hatred. He is entitled in regard to his religion and his faith seems to show no heart, and, in the end, he seems to have no trust in God. He is a horrible life witness of his faith, and it would seem that his life witness would have done more to discourage people from believing in God. He is not the example of a solid prophet.

On the other hand, Jonah definitely has the unmatched best conversion record of anyone in in history. His heartless verbal negative witness did more to win more people over than anyone or anything else. The fact that he is able to do this while just being a horrible nasty person is bizarre.

Commentator Christopher B. Hays describes the story of Jonah as “a prophetic tale with many paradigmatic elements, and can be understood to bring into focus important theological questions: What is the nature of prophetic calling? Are humans free to resist the will of God? Does God change God’s mind? What is the role of human repentance? And how do foreign nations figure in God’s plans?”

Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Seminary

Is the storu about Ninevah and their acts of repentance or about Jonah and his messy heart and mind? Is it a clarification to entitled humans who forget that the transformation it not about us, it is about the work of the Spirit that graciously invites us into the process?

Jonah, a man we know very little about, who possibly had a file sitting in the human relations office filled with complaints, nevertheless was called by God. The universal call to love God and to love others. But in today’s passage, we see God giving him a specific calling, a calling to go to Nineveah.

Jonah tried to run away from God and God’s calling, fleeing in the opposite direction. Still, even though he was in full on disobedience of God, the Spirit still used him to lead a group of gentile sailors to a worship and praise of the unknown God. The story of Jonah is a bizarre story a work done by the Spirit in spite of the prophet calling to that very work.

Nineveah was not a pleasant place. Around fifty years later we know that the Ninevites, many of whom were probably there in Jonah’s day, were much of the power for the Assyrian military forces when they attacked and conquered the Northern Kingdom of Isreal – enslaving most of the Isrealites.

But it is in this moment of history, as Jonah finally begrudgingly and heartlessly runs through the city screaming we see a moment of amazing repentance took place. The repentance is an odd story in itself. They removed their nice fancy clothing and replaced it with feed sacks, and they even dressed their animals in the feed sacks. And then their ruler joined them in this heart filled act.

The only person who did not recognize the moment was the prophet called to this very moment. While he sat outside the city, Jonah pouted outside the gates. A miracle he missed, a monumental moment in God’s relationship with a people and Jonah failed to experience awe at God’s miracle.

You have to wonder if the ultimate story of Nineveh would have been different if Jonah had stuck around and led the people to recognize what the moment meant. If he had led the people, even days, weeks, and months later to move to a deeper understanding of God’s mercy and love.

How different would history have looked? How different would the ultimate path of the Ninevites been if they had allowed their transformation to flourish and grow? What would our world look like today?

What if Jonah had actually cared?

Yes, God ultimately used the Ninevites along with the Assyrians to confront and correct the Israelites, but what if God’s path to correcting the Israelites could have been through the lasting and ongoing transformation of the Ninevites?

What if believers around the world actually cared?

What if we were to truly accept the same calling that God gives to all humanity – the calling to recognize the life giving breath of God that exists in all of humanity – God’s created?

The Ninevites were undoubtedly guilty of many horrible things. It is likely that Jonah had personally experienced the evilness of the Ninevites himself. His hatred is probably justified. God thought so, otherwise why would God have planned to destroy the Ninevites and their city?

The problem was that in Jonah’s refusal to care, his inability to care because of his own justified and hateful resentment, the only person who ended up in a negative space was Jonah himself. While the Ninevites were praising God following their repentance, Jonah sat outside of the city angry and his hatred had only grown.

The fact is Jonah was unable to care, not because he had a hardened heart but because he had a bruised mind. The pain of his past, or the pain of his loved ones, had consumed him, it had blinded him so that he could not see the breath of God in the people of Nineveh.

He was unable to follow God’s most basic of calling, a calling on all people regardless of their faith, or lack of faith, to a calling to recognize, respect, and even love all of God’s creatures to who carry the breath of God which gave them life.

Maybe, just maybe, the primary takeaway from the story of Jonah is not the mass repentance of the Ninevites, nor is it the fact that the powerful ruler of Nineveh took a stance of repentance. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be so bold as to say probably, the main takeaway for us is that take account of those things that keep us from recognizing God’s breath of life in others is the resentments, hatreds, racism, condemnation and Judgment, that we carry in our minds and in our hearts.

When we lessen a person’s status or possibilities because they have offended us, or have belittled us, or someone we love, or because they are a different color and religion than us, or because they carry a label we are uncomfortable with or that we cannot understand… or have we mistakenly classified them as being bigger and more unworthy sinners than we are, or any other reason, we are then, because of what we carry, what we cannot release and are therefore unable to notice that the breath of God they carry.

Remember that Jesus expanded our understanding of the act of murder which included our minds and hearts of hate someone we are guilty of murder. Think about it, when we murder someone we render their breath useless and frail, until it negated – when we hate someone we do the same to them, when we hate someone we, in the end, hurt ourself.

Jonah failed to see the glory of his calling, the possibilities for his future, he failed to recognize the enormity of God’s road map. Jonah failed to honor God’s breath, he missed the opportunity to experience the greatest experience possible – God’s work of transformation, not just in an individual, but in an entire people group.

13th Century Persian Poet – Rumi, said.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

It comes back to those open hands. The open hands that can receive communion are the same open hands that can release those things that keep us from following God’s calling. The open hands that can release that which hinders us from seeing God’s breath in other. The same open hands that can empower us to step onto the path of God’s calling – the path to be able to be a part of God’s wondrous work all around us.

(Slides) Lynn/Linda

Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) CCLI Song # 4768151

Verse 1

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost but now I’m found

Was blind but now I see

Verse 2

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed

Chorus

My chains are gone I’ve been set free

My God my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy rains

Unending love amazing grace

Verse 3

The Lord has promised good to me

His word my hope secures

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures

Verse 4

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow

The sun forbear to shine

But God who called me here below

Will be forever mine

You are forever mine

Chorus

My chains are gone I’ve been set free

My God my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy rains

Unending love amazing grace

Community (Slides) Rick

Fall-Advent Sermon Series, ‘My Eyes Have Seen”, Next Sunday –

11.17.24, ‘Woe Is Me’, Isaiah 5:1-8, Luke 5:8-10

Leadership Meeting Today
Jack’s BDay

Closing Peace (Slides) Rick (Slide)

Leader: May the peace of the Lord go with you.

Response: And also with you.

Closing Music Lynn/Linda

Glorify Thy Name CCLI Song # 1383

Verse 1

Father we love You

We worship and adore You