Dear Sandy,
“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing”
The Tabusintac Pastoral Charge
St John’s, Tabusintac; St. Matthew’s, Bartibog-Oak Point & Zion, New Jersey
The Presbyterian Church in Canada
Minister: Rev. Alexander [Sandy] D. Sutherland; B.A., B.Th. M.Div
Manse/Office #: 506-779-1812 Cell #: 506-779-6452
Email: tabusintacpc@ webpage: pccweb.ca/tabpc
Organist/Accompanist: Mrs. Mary Bryenton, Mr. Stanley MacDonald,
Mrs. Marly Sutherland
September 23rd 2018
Order of Service
Welcome & Announcements
Church announcements: - If you would like a visit from Rev. Sutherland please call to make an appointment. There is an answering machine that will take a message if he is out or otherwise unavailable.
- Rev. Sutherland is calling a Joint Meeting of the sessions of the Tabusintac Pastoral Charge (St. John’s, Tabusintac; Zion, New Jersey; St. Matthew’s, Bartibog) to meet with him in the upper room of St. John’s on September 24th 2018 at 7pm.
- The presbytery of NB will meet this coming Wednesday in Hanwell and also in Fredericton (in the evening, for the induction of Rev John Van Den Berg)Rev. John Crawford is to be installed as Moderator.
Community Announcements: - There will be a Pumpkin Weigh-Off & market at the Union/Senior’s Hall in Burnt Church from 11am-3pm. Weighing at 2:30pm.
The provincial Giant Pumpkin contest is in Neguac at the community arena next Sunday afternoon.
Call to Worship (from Living Faith: Our hope in God)
L: Life had its beginning in God.
R: In God it will come to completion and its meaning be fully revealed.
L: All creation will find fulfillment in God.
R: Christ will come again. Only God knows when and how our Lord will return.
L: Now we see in part.
R: Then we shall see face to face.
L: May the God of hope fill us with joy and peace in believing
R: So that by the power of the Holy Spirit we abound in hope!
All: Come, Lord Jesus!
Open my Eyes Lord Robert Cull
Open my eyes, Lord Open my ears, Lord
I want to see Jesus. And help me to listen
To reach out and touch Him Open my eyes, Lord
To show Him I love Him I want to see Jesus
Prayer of Adoration & Confession & 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.
Forgive us our debts
As we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil;
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory; now and forever. Amen
Hymn: BoP 328 Stand up and bless the Lord
Prayer for Illumination
Responsive Reading: Psalm 1
Children’s Story
Hymn: BoP 378 Jesus loves me, this I know
Old Testament Reading: Proverbs 31:10-31
10Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. 11The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. 12She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 13She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. 14She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 15She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. 16She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. 17She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. 18She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night. 19She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 20She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 21She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet. 22She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. 23Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. 24She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 25Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 26She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 27She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 28Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. 29Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. 30Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised. 31Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.
New Testament Reading: James 3:13-18
13Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. 14But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. 15This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
Choral Anthem
Sermon Text Scripture: Mark 9:30-37
30And they departed thence, and passed through Galilee; and he would not that any man should know it. 31For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, “The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.”
32But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.
33And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, “What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?”
34But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. 35And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.”
36And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, “37Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.”
Choral Anthem Prayer before the Sermon
Sermon: First Place
Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are.
José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955)
What we have for priorities in our lives may not be always our choice, there are social and cultural normals that we have to deal with. Our society does not place spirituality, especially a public spirituality as a first goal, or as a high achievement. It is one of the aspects of Christianity that makes in blatantly counter-cultural.
And while - in Jesus’ life time and society – religiosity was a normal, how it was expressed and how Jesus and his disciples taught faith and religious practice was also not always in line with cultural societal norms.
This was especially true for the Gentile audience that the Apostle Paul wrote and ministered to, that other Apostles and later disciples would also write to and speak to. Life in the early Christian Church was not easy. Event though they were much closer to Christ in some sense there was so much they had not worked out, and were not able to discuss in the open. There has been so much that the church has had to learn and struggle through and is still struggle through.
We still have much to learn in order to be like Christ. We still have temptation to fall in to old bad habits. There is still the human tendency to sin, to doubt, to fear and to turn our backs on God, and then to pretend as though we did not put other things before God.
Many people see life as a race. We have goals and we have to chance them down in order to feel we succeed in our lives. We live in constant pursuit of things just at the edge of our reach, and once we have achieved than it is usually expected that we move onto the next goal, sometimes in sequence. Relationships lead to commitment and perhaps eventually marriage, which leads to children and raising them and then the numerous signs of success in both marriage and child-rearing that comes with that, all to a marked satisfaction of the reflected celebration of our achievements in the life of those children and the family and friends that surround us. Is it any wonder that there are some people that fear the beginnings of any commitment, are terrified of the assumed tasks which follow in the societal norm.
There is a wonderful image drafted for us in the book of Proverbs; our Old Testament reading today. While the rest of the book of proverbs could be a commentary or manual in general human living, and perhaps is more focused in male and masculine pursuits, this conclusion of the book of proverbs outlines the nature of a virtuous woman.
As last word on anything that is significant, but as a last word on human wisdom it becomes a teaching of great importance both for the initial audience in the wisdom-school of the Solomonic school and subsequent academies throughout the world. Its influence can be seen on cultural texts spanning across into Asia (pre-Confusion), throughout North Africa, and through southern Europe to the regions that would produce Schools of wisdom such as Socratic, Plutonic and Aristocratic learning.
The humility of our humanity, not our dominance or our forceful control is what all these schools of taught and thought. That in order to be great we show effort and compassion together without seeking to oppress someone in gain positions of trust and influence, was a revolution in its time and considering our day and age needs to be rediscovered, taught and exemplified against a societal norm that celebrates conquest, control, and not just a pursuit of life’s goals but a conquests against everything else in life.
Jesus brought a child into the midst of his disciples’ arguments and reminded them of their deepest truest selves, that while we may grow up, learn more, control more, we are still the same people we were as children.
You can grow up, but you can never grow out of being who you are. And if we forget that we fall into folly. How foolish we must seem to our Creator when we pretend to be anything but ourselves; when we forget that we are but – and always- children before God.
Proverbs may give a list of things for the virtuous woman to do, but the underlying meaning of the illustration is that the virtuous woman is unquestionably herself, doing her very best with the skills she has and the abilities that are hers to encourage and empower the people around her. Such a life is exemplary to all of us, and we have the great advantage of having such people, woman and men to be our examples. They are all around us, and if we are seeking to follow Christ in our lives, e may even be such people to others.
Can we have any greater honour, than to be the ones who help bring others into a closer relationship with their Saviour, with God their Creator?
A lot of people come to worship services like these looking to get something out of it. I mean, you would not want to think that you wasted your time here would you? But our first priority in coming to worship is to give.
We come here to humble ourselves before God, to be together a humbled people, rediscovering our place in life, and in relation to each other lives in the midst and through the experience of worship and devotion to God.
So, we get to leave a lot of our baggage behind. All that other stuff that the rest of the world tells you is important, we get to leave it at the door and if our prayers are sincere than we never pick it up again on our way out. That is hard to do, and it is hard not to pick up new priorities in a world of deceptions.
What is first? Who is most important in God’s kingdom or in this life? Where are our priorities as Christians?
One of the great ancient scholars of the Church - Augustine, Bishop of Hippo – wrote:
“When a person is renewed from day to day by growing in the knowledge of God, in righteousness, and in the sanctity of truth, that person transfers its love from things temporal to things eternal, from things visible to things intelligible, from things carnal to things spiritual.”
God knows how we muddle from life, from our mundane to our greatest achievements, God knows we struggle, we envy we face strife and we get things wrong – and then we hide it. And we get things right, yet do not always celebrate God in our success, and so even as we reach our goals we fail to recognize their real purpose.
But if we love. If we like Christ consider the lives of those God has given to us, our goals are ot about us, but about God’s presence in our lives, and our achievements are not about what we have, but about how God’s love is evident from us. And then no matter where we stand in the scheme of earthly things, we stand up tall – not in who we have made ourselves seem to be – but in who God’s love is us shows the world we really are.
And that is when we are out our best, when we might seem to be at our very least, when everything else is stripped away, and we are simply the Lord’s. Those are the best moments in our lives. For then we are not just children, but we are finally rejoicing in being children of God.
Pastoral Prayer
Offering
Doxology
Offertory Prayer
Hymn: BoP 345 The Son of God proclaim
Benediction
Anyone can build a house: we need the Lord for the creation of a home. John Henry Jowett (1864–1923)
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