Ebenezer eNews and Worship eService

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Prelude (Murphy Hung)
 
Welcome (Joan Chinnery)
 
Land Acknowledgement (Joan/All)
We acknowledge this land on which Ebenezer United Church serves our community.  For thousands of years, this land has been on the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.
Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to worship, pray, and practice our faith on this land.
 
Announcements (Joan)
 
Affirmation of Faith (In unison) The United Church Creed (Voices United 918)
“We are not alone, we live in God’s world. We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God.
We are called to be the church: to celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.” ***
 
Call to Worship (Rev. Dr. Shin & Joan/All)
We come to this place because we want to know God,
who helps us set aside the past, to walk the path to new life.
We come in these moments because we want to know Jesus,
who anoints us with the resurrection, who shares our lives with us.
We come with these people because we want to know the Spirit,
who shapes us for life with God, so we may praise God forever! AMEN!
 
Lighting of the Christ Candle – (Joan or person lighting the candle)
Jesus came to share the good news of God. He came to share in our joy and sorrows so that we may know God more fully. Let us take a moment to share our joys and sorrows in community with God’s people.
We light this candle for the good news we shared, the good news in hearts, and the good news that wherever you go, God is with us.
 
Hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" - (VU 333)
                       
Opening Prayer (please listen) (Rev. Dr. Shin)
O God of sight and insight, send your Holy Spirit to remove the scales from our eyes, so that we might see your truth and grasp your wisdom. Grant us fresh understanding of your Word and your will for our lives. In the name of Christ Jesus, Amen.
 
Hymn, "Shall We Gather at the River" - (VU 710)

Scripture Readings (Joan)

Genesis 1:26-27 NRSVUE

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
²⁷ So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Hebrews 12:1-2 NRSVUE

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

“This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!”
 
Children’s Time
 
The Lord’s Prayer (In unison)
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 trespasses, as 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, for ever and ever. Amen.
 
Hymn, "It's a Song of Praise to the Maker" - (MV 30)

As we discussed before, 80 to 90 percent of our life is small things. We spend most of our lives in tasks and habits and things that you just have to do to get through the day. And if we take God out of all those small things and God has nothing to do with those things, then there's not a lot of life left for that big stuff. We've got to learn to find God to experience God in the dailiness of life. Sometimes we tend to misunderstand that a resurrected life is a big-stuff life, but that’s not true. As a resurrected life means a life in new norms and values out of the gospel, our dailiness should be considered as a big part of it.
 
Today we're going to talk about organization. When you’re organizing, you’re doing God’s work. And there are four ways that we organize alongside God’s work:
 
1. cleanness; 2. fixing; 3. eliminating; and 4. focusing on ‘inside’ as much as ‘outside.’ 
 
As you know, Genesis 1 is a sort of story of God’s organization work though overall we cannot put it all in God’s creation. God works to create order from disorder. Like we reorganize a junk drawer that is filled with trash and useless items. We separate the white socks from the colored socks, the dress shirts from the casual shirts in our closet. Or the wrenches from the hammers in the garage, or the cumin from the cinnamon in the pantry. That’s what God is doing. He’s separating. He starts with chaos, and water is the symbol of that chaos. It is over all creation. And he starts separating, night from day, sky from water, then earth from water. Creating, organizing.
 
Let me say that I’m awfully glad that God allowed there to be some randomness in this world. That’s how we’ve experienced evolution. That’s how this amazing beauty. Everything does not need to look like a master-planned community, little boxes on the hillside made of ticky-tacky. Nice to see a small house in the midst of large ones. Diversity is a powerful thing, and one of God’s great gifts.
 
And then the highlight of creation, the very pinnacle God created us. You and me - in God’s image. “In God’s image” means we can work God to do the same thing God is doing. Imago Dei. When we order the world, we are co-working with God.
 
Now at the end of each day of God’s creating, God says, “It was good.” And at the very end of all of God’s creating, he said, “It is very good.” That sense of satisfaction.
 
Have you ever cleaned out a storage or the garage or organized the books on your shelves or organized some part of your home or your office, and then when you get done, you sort of cock your head and look at it? There’s that deep sense of satisfaction, “Yes, I have ordered that which is chaos.” And he looked at it, and it was good.
 
Yes, of course, there are more important things to do than to organize your spice rack. It is truly one of the small stuff that we’ve been talking about. But we can find the presence of God in that small stuff. And when we bring order from the chaos, it can be an act of worship, an offering to God, and a co-working with God.
 
Now the second way that we can organize alongside God’s work is to fix what is broken. What happens in Genesis 1 to 10 is that God’s perfectly ordered world goes to pot. There is sin against God. There is murder in the Garden. There is pride in building a tower. Soon the waters of chaos return to flood the earth. And God thinks it’s time to just start over. But something inside says, “But not completely over.” God holds onto Noah and his family and two of every kind of creature. And ever since then since sin entered the world God has been in the business of fixing that which is broken.
 
I must say that sometimes I am annoyed at the things that need fixing, and they just sort of pile up. The computer printer doesn’t work; the Internet doesn’t work, the car won’t start, the tree in the backyard is dying and probably dead. The downstairs windowsill is showing some sort of rot, and you can push on it, and its soft, and the fence gate won’t stay shut. And the lightbulbs on the back patio all need replacing. And oh, those fire detector batteries - just at the worst time begin to start beeping and need to be replaced.
 
Friends, so many more things need fixing as well; we have social systems that are broken. A judicial system that’s broken. We have marriages that are strained or breaking. We have friendships or other relationships that are broken. We have hearts that need to be fixed. These are not small stuff either, but these things are the work God is doing. And when we participate in any one of these, if we join in helping one little way, if we give food to one child or one family. If we help one person find one job, if we befriend one person across cultural lines, it’s a small thing, but it’s work of fixing that which is broken. When we fix what’s broken, it’s an act of worship, an offering to God.
 
Now the third way that we can organize alongside God’s work is to eliminate that which is extra. You know, it’s hard to let some things go. A few years ago, I had to call a tow truck to scrap my old car. It was already a junk car, and its engine was gone, and many parts in it should be replaced. It was hard for me. I didn’t need it anymore, and it reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what it was - maybe memories of some sort - touched something inside of me. Nobody wants to be useless or forgotten or discarded.
 
But things are, after all, just things, and they can weigh us down. They can prevent our growth. There are all sorts of things in our lives that need to be discarded. The trash needs to be taken out.
 
At some point, one of my students said something about what someone did, and they said, “Wow, that was really extra!” And she explained that it means overdramatic, like over the top, more than you need. I’m not sure it’s the exact way to think of it, but I think there are a lot of things in my life that are just “extra.” They are suckers, and they suck energy. They don’t give me joy, they don’t give God joy, but I hold on to them for some reason. And they just suck attention, and they feed bad attitudes. I find myself focusing on things that are not excellent and pure and true, as Hebrews 12:1-2 teaches. When we eliminate that which is extra, we’re doing God’s work.
 
Let me recap what we have discussed so far. When you’re organizing, you’re doing God’s work. And there are several ways that we organize alongside God’s work: When we order that which is disordered, when we fix that which is broken, when we eliminate that which is extra, we’re doing God’s work, and we can make it an offering of God in worship. It can be holy work. That’s the whole point of this message to help you understand the daily nitty-gritty work you’re doing as a way of offering yourself to God.
 
Yet, here is another way that we can organize alongside God’s work and it’s the most important: Include the important inside.
 
The early Jews believed that it was the case that “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” The dairy was to be separated from the meat; the Sabbath was separated from other days, everything in its place. Regular cleansing in a ritual bath. And Jesus recognized these laws, but he was far more concerned with people confusing this external cleanliness from internal cleanliness. An external purity from an internal purity.
 
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup so that the outside may also become clean.” Then he goes on to talk about the Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs” who looked beautiful on the outside but were full of bones and all kinds of filth on the inside.
 
You see, there’s internal work to do as well. And I suggest to you that as you do the external work, you allow that to guide you to do the internal work. You can order that which is disordered internally. When we get our priorities out of order, when we don’t put first things first, we bring chaos into our lives. Here is a question. Then what is or should be our priority out of order? Jesus says it to us clearly and undoubtedly like this: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be added to you as well.” Put first things first, and the other things will fall into place.
 
God is interested in fixing that which is broken not just in your life, but in your soul. And we can open ourselves to that kind of healing. It’s called sanctification, making us both holy and whole. It’s about replacing our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. It’s about replacing greed with generosity. It’s about removing our resentment and replacing it with forgiveness. It’s about replacing our lust with authentic love and respect. It’s about moving from loving things and using people to loving people to using things. Psalm 51 says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
 
There are some things I need to prune from my life, I know. Attitudes, behaviors, and things I do that your spouse or friend or counselor would say, “Well, how’s that working for you?” Maybe it’s time to give them up.
 
Here’s what I do believe, and I believe it with all your heart. God is not finished with you yet. That by the power of the Holy Spirit, God is at work putting your life in order and setting your priorities straight. God loves you even with your brokenness but isn’t content to leave you that way and is at work repairing all those broken places. And God is at work rooting out all the sin, which is sucking the abundant life out of your soul. That’s the kind of God we have.
 
Therefore, Ebenezer brothers and sisters! You don’t need to hide yourself. You don’t need to feel ashamed of yourself. Just open yourself up to the Holy Spirit who so much wants us to be made whole. And accept the small things as the ways that God co-works with you in ordering the world. Receive them as an act of worship.
 
I pray that is true in your life and in mine.

Invitation to the Offering (Murphy’s special music dedication)                      

God gave it all once and for all and God is still giving. God gives the living hope we know in Christ Jesus. Because God always gives us everything we need; Accordingly, we take this time to give a gift back to Him with gratitude and appreciation.
 
Intercessory Prayer (Rev. Dr. Shin)
“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Psalm 118:26a)
Let’s pray:      For God's Kingdom, glory, and righteousness
For Dedicating our beings to God with offerings
For Social issues in Canada
                        For Ebenezer and its families
                        For Personal needs (Murphy Hung – 1 min. piano)
 
Prayers of the People (read from the prayer binder by Joan) "Healer of our every ill, light of each tomorrow, give us peace beyond our fear, and hope beyond our sorrow.”  We pray for all those in need, whether in body, mind or spirit, that your healing light and presence will bring comfort and peace.  We pray for: Roy Dixon…, Angie Fix..., Michele Gillette..., Mavis Grange and her daughter…, Dorothy Grant..., Joan and Clyde's friends: David and Donnalee Gullison..., Phyllis Harvey...,  Manique's mother, Iris ...,Doug's friend Carole's brother...,Tanya's cousin Edwin...,Tanya's friend, Jenna..., Sarah’s father-in-law, Pavlos who was diagnosed with dementia and his wife Flora who is caring for him..., Diane's friend, Tokiko..., Joseph Salins…, Mary's brother, Basil and sister Cathy..., Connie's friend, Elaine Leiba and her daughter Andrea..., Rehana Sumar and her mother..., we pray for the family and friends of Linda Wilson’s friend, Linda who passed away on Mother’s Day...,
And all those we name in silence.  
 
Prayer for offering and people (Rev. Dr. Shin)
 
Hymn, "You Shall Go Out with Joy" - (VU 884) Sing twice!
 
Benediction (Rev. Dr. Shin)

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