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First Congregational Church of Geneva
United Church of Christ
Sunday, March 22, 2020
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF GENEVA
United Church of Christ
Fourth & Hamilton Streets * Geneva, IL 60134 * 630.232.7143
www.genevaucc.org
Rev. Rebecca Clancy, Pastor
Rev. Dr. James Erickson, Associate Pastor
March 22, 2020 10:00 a.m.
TODAY: Fourth Sunday in Lent
Pulpit Associate: In-person services cancelled for this week
NEXT SUNDAY:
Sunday, March 29 In-person services cancelled for this week
ON THE CALENDAR:
Sunday, Mar 22 11.30 am Council Meeting, postponed to March 29, conference call
Wed, March 25 5.00 pm Lenten Soup Supper, cancelled
Wed, April 1 5.00 pm Lenten Soup Supper, cancelled
Friday, April 3 7.00 pm Book Club meeting, cancelled
Sunday, April 5 10.00 am Palm Sunday (WATCH EMAIL)
11.30 am Mission Board meeting, cancelled
Wednesday, April 8 5.00 pm Lenten Soup Supper, WATCH EMAILS
Friday, April 10 7.30 pm Good Friday Service of Darkness, WATCH EMAILS
Sunday, April 12 9.30 am Egg Hunt WATCH EMAILS
10.00 am Easter Sunday WATCH EMAILS
CALL TO WORSHIP (please stand)
Leader: Welcome to the time of covenant renewal.
The God of our salvation greets us here. People: We are reminded of God’s promises to us;
We remember the promises we have made.
Leader: Sense the Spirit descending on us now.
Hear God’s welcoming voice. People: Surely God is with us.
We can hear God calling our names.
Leader: See the rainbow in the sky.
Wonder at God’s steadfast love. People: All creation proclaims the wonders of God
We come together to learn what God wants to teach us.
PRAYER OF INVOCATION
Leader: Please join in our Prayer of Invocation: All: Lead us in your truth this day, gracious God. We long to know your ways and to be guided by your Spirit. Direct us into the realm where your purposes govern the hearts and minds of all your children. We want to grow in the likeness of Jesus, to learn to live in ways that are pleasing to you. We wait for you now, eager to respond to your instruction. Let nothing cut us off from you or separate us from one another, not only in this time of worship but as we face the challenges of another week. Amen.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Leader: In our day, we cannot escape temptation, for it comes in so many forms, from so many sources. As Jesus was tempted, so are we. But we have yielded to temptation, and Jesus did not. Sometimes we do not even recognize the sins into which we have slipped. We seek to recall them now. Repent, and believe in the good news. Let us confess our sin before God and one another, and may God have mercy. People: May Christ have mercy.
Leader: May God have mercy. All: Have mercy on your church, O God, for we forget the covenant into which you call us. We muddle along in our self-serving schemes rather than waiting on your word. We follow the path of least resistance without seeking your higher way. We forget our baptism into a faith community built on trust and forgiveness. O God we turn to you to lead us to a new day. According to your steadfast love, forgive us, we pray. Amen.
WORDS OF ASSURANCE
Leader: Hear now these words of assurance:
God is faithful to the covenant, even when we forget. In mercy and steadfast love, God lifts us above the sins of our youth and the transgression of today. Christ brings us to God that we might receive a new spirit and a good conscience. We are God’s beloved children who are welcomed into God’s realm right here, right now, in the midst of life.
All readings are from the English Standard version bible.
OLD TESTAMENT LESSON Genesis 9:8-17
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."
And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."
PSALTER RESPONSE Psalm 25
Leader: Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
Teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
For you are the God of my salvation;
For you I wait all day long. People: To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in you I trust.
Leader: Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord,
And of your steadfast love,
For they have been from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
According to you steadfast love remember me,
For your goodness’ sake, O Lord! People: To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in you I trust.
Leader: Good and upright is the Lord;
Therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
And teaches the humble his way.
All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
For those who keep his covenant and his decrees. People: To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in you I trust.
EPISTLE LESSONI Peter 3:18-22
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
SERMON The Rainbow Rev. Rebecca Clancy
As much as we like to think of it as a children’s story, the story of Noah and the Ark is by no means a children’s story. The story of Noah and the Ark is, rather, a horror story, a horror story that culminates two horror stories that precede it.
The first of the three is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As primordial mists rise on the first day, the Lord God forms a man from dust of the earth. He plants a garden to serve as his habitat. Among the trees of the garden are the tree of life – a tree whose fruit bestows endless life; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – a tree whose fruit bestows moral knowledge. The Lord God warns the man, sternly, threateningly, and in no uncertain terms, that he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil -- for he is incapable of moral knowledge apart from the Lord God.
The Lord God then determines that it is not good for the man to be alone, that the man is in need of a helpmate. Accordingly, he fashions all manners of birds and animals, but all prove insufficient. And so, causing a deep sleep to befall the man, the Lord God removes one of his ribs and from it fashions a woman – the man’s perfect complement. Had the story only ended here, it would not be a horror story. Quite the contrary, it would be a fairy tale with a happy ending. But the story, as we all know, continues.
The serpent is the craftiest of all the animals that the Lord God fashions, and craftiness is one of those traits that is driven to self-expression. So the serpent beguiles the woman. The serpent assures her that the Lord God’s warning about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is but a pretext to prevent her from being like him. Clearly that is what she desires – to be like the Lord God, because the serpent’s facile and meager assurance is all it takes. The woman eats of the fruit and shares it with the man, who eats as readily as her.
But of course, it doesn’t make them like the Lord God at all. It makes them even more unlike him than they were before, and their eyes are opened to their pride and their guilt. In their shame they attempt to hide from the Lord God, but they quickly discover what in time Elijah and Jonah would come to discover – You can’t hide from the Lord God. He discovers them, interrogates them, curses them, and banishes them east of the garden, with an angelic beast guarding the way back; lest they eat from the fruit of the tree of life and prolong their days.
Humankind, the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden teaches, is prideful and guilty, living out its days under the Lord God’s judgment, far distanced from him and from an innocence to which it will never return. That, my friends, is a horror story.
The second of the three horror stories is the story of Cain and Abel. East of the Garden of Eden, the woman bears the man two sons – Cain and Abel. Cain is a farmer, Abel a shepherd. Both bring offerings to the Lord God -- Cain, as a farmer, from the fruit of the earth; and Abel, as a shepherd from the firstlings of the flock. Abel’s offering is accepted; but Cain’s offering is somehow defective, and the Lord God rejects it. Cain feels as we all feel upon being rejected in the face of another’s acceptance – angry, humiliated, and jealous. The Lord God warns Cain not to act out of those feelings, warns him that sin lurks at his door. Ignoring the Lord God’s warning, Cain invites Abel to accompany him to the field. There Cain rises up against Abel and kills him. Again, the Lord God discovers him, interrogates him, curses him and banishes him further east of the garden.
Alienation from the Lord God, the story of Cain and Abel teaches, breeds alienation within humankind – disunity, violence, and murder. That, my friends, is another horror story.
And then the culmination of these two horror stories, the story of Noah and the Ark. Cain becomes the progenitor of human civilization. Unsurprisingly, therefore, things go from bad to worse. Increasing alienation from the Lord God breeds increasing alienation within humankind, which breeds increasing alienation from the Lord God, which breeds increasing alienation within humankind, until there is nothing but disunity, violence and murder. The Lord God looks down upon what he set in motion and sees nothing but irrevocable perversion. All he feels is regret. And so, as a sort of mercy killing, he determines to flood the earth and annihilate everything he created.
Everything but one family: the family of the upright and blameless Noah. The Lord God instructs Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every living thing. And then comes the flood – a deluge lasting forty days and forty nights, waters covering even the highest mountains; waters which indeed annihilate everything the Lord God created – every man, woman, and child, every animal, every plant. Everything…save what was in the ark.
But the Lord God’s effort to preserve a righteous remnant of what he creates proves futile. Noah emerges from the ark, gets drunk; and curses his son whose only crime was to have stumbled upon his father in a naked stupor.
Humankind, the story of Noah and the Ark teaches, is doomed. And that, without question, is a horror story. And it only adds to the horror that these stories hit awfully close to home, for indeed, they were written for and about us. We need only search within ourselves or look outward at our larger world for confirmation. They were written for and about us.
And so how are we to respond to these horror stories? Well, we could take the predictable route, the easy course: the way of evasion in one of its many manifestations: We could say nothing at all – dwell for a moment or two in that awkward silence that occurs when unpleasantness sounds, a silence tha harbors the judgment that the real problem is the sounding of unpleasantness. We could make some juvenile quip or joke that would offer release and diversion, and the perfect segue for a change of subject. We could summon one of the many platitudes that neutralize existence by reducing it to a hackneyed moralism. We could simply deny it. Though denial engenders illegitimate subsistence, it seems to work so well for so many.
Or we could take the less predictable route, the more difficult course: We could stand squarely as responsible and mature men and women and acknowledge the truth that these horror stories are written to convey: That sin is the horror story of our existence.
And having done so, we can then be grateful, yes grateful, that these stories give sin its full measure. They plumb its depth and breadth and height. For having done so, they still proclaim the rainbow.
“Then God said to Noah…. ‘As for me I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature……I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood…. And…. this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature…. I have set my bow in the clouds…”
Yes, having given sin its full measure, having plumbed its depth and breadth and height, these stories still proclaim the rainbow. They still proclaim God’s eternal promise of mercy, a promise that the God made good on as his beloved son hung on the cross bearing our due punishment for sin, a promise so vast that it extends to those “who in former times did not obey…in the days of Noah…” so vast that it extends forward to the end of time and history.
And what is the aim of so wide a mercy, finally, but to lead us to repentance so that we can receive God’s grace in Jesus Christ and become the individuals and body he has created us to be. May this be our aspiration, this Lenten season and always. Amen.
TITHES AND OFFERINGS Note: In addition to our regular collection, we collect spare change in the collection plate. You can find a note in the bulletin announcements for information on our current collection goal.
Offering Invitation
Leader: We dare to believe that the Power holding together the infinite reaches of time and space has entered into a covenant relationship with people on this tiny planet, and God gives us responsibility to be co-creators in the covenant community which is intended for all humanity. Our giving is dedicated to that end.
Offertory & Silent Meditation The whole Christian life is that we are totally one with each other in his Church, that Christ has given himself totally to us in this oneness.
Prayer of Dedication
Leader: Please join in our Prayer of Dedication.
All: Thank you, God, for the signs and wonders that reveal your presence. Thank you for the covenant fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We want to do our part to share your love with the world. Use our offerings and our lives to bring a realization of your reign among us. Extend your realm by re-creating the church as a true representation of Jesus Christ. May we be humble, reachable, and faithful as we seek to lead others into covenant community. Amen.
