In the Midde of the Mud Worship FPC 5.5.19

Bulletin Cover

SERVICE OF WORSHIP 
May 5, 2019
First Presbyterian Church
Baker City, OR

ANNOUNCEMENTS and GREETINGS FRIENDS and NEIGHBORS (Peace of Christ)

CALL TO WORSHIP     (Adapted from Stuck in the Swamp by Silvia Purdie)

We were stuck, stuck in mud

Up to our knees in it, sinking down

Help! We yelled, Hurry!And help came, 

strong hands pulled us out to safety.

Solid ground never felt so good!
What a great God we serve!
You inspire new songs
you multiply your awesomeness!
We love to live in your love
With your law written on our hearts!

OPENING HYMN:  #485  To God Be the Glory

PRAYER OF CONFESSION 

Faithful God, you call us to be saints,but we are more comfortable with the role of sinner;you call us to be your servants,but we worry that we lack the skills to do your work;you put a new song of praise in our mouths, but we stumble on unfamiliar words;you show us the work to be tackled,but we turn away defiant or angry, insisting on our own way or agenda.Put your song on our lips and in our hearts,and remind us of the joy that awaits us when we put our trust in you.Guide us into the light of your unwavering, never-ending,and grace-filled, forgiving love. Amen.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON 

God is faithful and ever-present.
The God who knew us before our birth
loves us still and strengthens us,
that we will one day be blameless.
Through the gift of Jesus Christ,
God offers forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

Thanks be to God!!

GLORIA PATRI

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE

     How many of you like to play in the mud? Make mud pies or get that green slimey stuff you can buy in the store?

     I want to tell you a muddy story – it’s a true story from when I was a little girl about Silas’ age. I had just received a brand new pair of bright white tennis shoes. They glowed! It was springtime in California and it had rained a few days earlier. The first time I wore my new shoes to school, I was walking home by myself along the road – there was no sidewalk. There were two puddles ahead of me with a strip of bare muddy ground in between them. I didn’t want to walk around the puddles, so I went across the mud. Guess what happened? Yep, my shoes were a MESS!  I got stuck in the mud and it squished all over my shoes.

     When I got home I was so ashamed I made my life even worse – I lied to my mom. I told her I had been looking at a book and didn’t see the mud. When you are 10 years old, Moms are kinda like God. I think she knew I was lying, but she took my very dirty muddy shoes and later in the week – I think she deliberately made me wait - she washed them several times with bleach. I hardly slept that week I felt so guilty for lying to my Mom-God. But my shoes came clean. Later as an adult when I asked my mom about the incident, she didn’t remember this story – that’s how God is – he cleans us up, forgives and forgets. But I didn’t forget. I learned that God works through the mud to teach us some important lessons about love and forgiveness.

OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES:

Psalm 40: 1-6 The Mud Psalm (Silvia Purdie) 


I waited patiently for the Lord.
Yeah right!  King David is famous for many things;
but patience is not one of them! 

Psalm 40 tells a story of a young David out in the 
wilderness with his troop of men hiding from a crazed
king, exploring the land. 
Suddenly David stumbles into a swamp,
sinking into mire, stuck in the mud.
Alone. 

He cries out: Help me!
Anyone? Lord!!?

Help!

Then comes the waiting
trying not to struggle
slime rising up his legs
panic rising in his blood.

If you fight the mud it claims you
You must fight the fear and keep still
you have to be patient
all you can do is cry for help.

Here I am!

And help comes
friends come running

Stop! careful!

Extracting man from mud requires thought and planning
team work and tools
lest another too is lost.

Slowly, with strength and gentleness
David is pulled up and out
feet connect with rock

He has never been so grateful for solid ground.
He drew me up from the pit of tumult, 

out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, 

making my steps secure

He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God
Happy are those who trust in the Lord

Great is our God!

Jonah 2:1-9 CEB

From deep inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God:

In my distress, O Lord, I called to you, and you answered me.

From deep in the world of the dead I cried for help and you heard me.

You threw me down into the depths, to the very bottom of the sea,

where the waters were all around me, and all your mighty waves rolled over me.

I thought I had been banished from your presence and would never see your holy Temple again.

The water came over me and choked me; the sea covered me completely and seaweed wrapped around my head.

I went down to the very roots of the mountains, into the land whose gates lock shut.

But you, O Lord my God, brought me back from the depths alive.

When I felt my life slipping away, then, O Lord, I prayed to you,

And in your holy Temple you heard me.

Those who worship worthless idols have abandoned their loyalty to you.

But I will sing praises to you; I will offer you a sacrifice and do what I have promised.

Salvation comes from the Lord!

NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE:  John 9: 1-11 (CEB)

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been born blind. His disciples asked him, “Teacher, whose sin caused him to be born blind? Was it his own or his parents' sin?”

Jesus answered, “His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents' sins. He is blind so that God's power might be seen at work in him. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light for the world.”

After he said this, Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with the spittle; he rubbed the mud on the man's eyes and told him, “Go and wash your face in the Pool of Siloam.” (This name means “Sent.”) So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.

His neighbors, then, and the people who had seen him begging before this, asked, “Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “He is the one,” but others said, “No he isn't; he just looks like him.”

So the man himself said, “I am the man.”

“How is it that you can now see?” they asked him.

He answered, “The man called Jesus made some mud, rubbed it on my eyes, and told me to go to Siloam and wash my face. So I went, and as soon as I washed, I could see.”

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MUD

(Sermon)

Wow. What a topic for a sermon. Mud. Muck. Mire. The pit. The belly of a whale. I’ve kinda had fun thinking about this for several weeks. What in the world do all these scriptures have in common...other than they involve yucky slimy stuff. Is Ginger out of her mind? (Probably!) Is this the lectionary for today? Absolutely not. But during Lent I came across an article in Presbyterian Today, written by its editor, Donna Jackson. She was lamenting the mud season of New England – we can relate. That period of time in spring when the snow is melting, everything is brown and still bare and dead, and what is left is muck. Muck that sticks to everything. Jackson wrote, ‘When stuck in the mud, where is God?”

The topic of mud reminded me of when Rick and I visited Alaska ages ago and we stopped along Cook Inlet on the Kenai Penninsula. The tidal waters here are immense – 30 foot differences between high and low. During low tide, to walk on the tidal flats is to risk the muck. The water laden sand pulls one down and the more you struggle, suction begins to hold your feet fast. People have died on these flats. Your only recourse is to wait patiently for help...and hope it comes before the tide returns. Is this the pit of David? Where is God in the tidal mud?

The events in the life of our congregation over the past year made me pause when reading Jackson’s article. For we have been in a mess, stuck in the mud, caught in the slime of the whale’s belly. We have felt at times like we wanted to just run away from it all. The church seemed like Ninevah, and Tarshish looked really appealing! And once we got our feet caught in the muck, like David, we wondered if we could ever get out. The mire seemed to just keep pulling us down. We had pride – we could solve this! Yet with that attitude, we just sank deeper. Where was God? Where was the holy in the mud?

I picked up a book by Mike Howerton, a pastor in Redmond, WA, titled Glorious Messes. The essence of his message is simple: we encounter God most profoundly in the middle of the mud. I am not even going to try to summarize the highlights of this 200 page gem, but I do want to focus on several questions that spoke to me and perhaps might speak to you and our church as well. Questions we might all try to answer for ourselves.

First did we run? I probably have. No, I haven’t run to the extent of avoiding church, but I am a non-confrontational person. I don’t like conflict, I try to avoid it. I found Tarshish looked a lot easier than diving into the mud of Ninevah. We run sometimes because we have a different agenda from God. We run because of pride. We run because of our fears. We run when we fail to act in a positive way. But running doesn’t solve the problem. Closing ones eyes and hoping we don’t step into the muddy part of the roadside doesn’t help. Running simply doesn’t make the mud go away! Just ask Jonah.

Secondly, have we waited patiently for the Lord? Waiting is sometimes risky. Waiting means trust that God is in the mud with us, beside us, that God loves all of us in spite of the mud, and wants what is best for all of us. Waiting is HARD WORK! It means letting go of our fears and agendas and giving God time to work through us and in us. It means Letting go….like the phrase ‘Let Go and Let God’. But so often we listen to ‘God helps those who help themselves’, so we squirm and wiggle with our pride and fears and manage to dig ourselves just a little deeper into the belly. But God doesn’t wait to act until the mess is figured out. God is a work all THROUGH the mess. Have we noticed?

Have we listened for God’s voice? Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale. That’s a long time to wait patiently for God’s rescue. Especially with all that slime and belly guts hanging around you! And the smell couldn’t have been great. But what else do you do when in the belly? It’s dark! You can’t read or play games! Your cell phone doesn’t get reception, So you might as well have a good long conversation with God and make sure that God does most of the talking and you do most of the listening. I have trouble with that sometime. It is so easy to tell God, ‘this is how I want you to fix this mess’, so make sure such and such happens. Sometimes we are so focused on OUR solution, what we perceive as right and just, that we fail to see how God is at work making mud pies. But like a loving father, God really does know best. Like my Mama God, God works through the mud with forgiveness and grace.

Listen to the end of Jonah’s prayer. :I will sing praises to you” Listen to the end of David’s plea. “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God!” , Have we really celebrated our blessings with praise and gratitude? Have we given God credit for the ways in which God’s love has been manifest in our congregation and through our missions. Have we taken a really good look at the positive over the past years? Have we truly celebrated together as a faith family? Rejoicing in God’s glory! Singing our praises! Or has the mud stuck in our throat and rendered us silent while we dwell on on the mess. God’s help comes through the Hallelujahs.

Back to the blind man. Yes, mud in this story as well. But notice what Jesus does with that mud – he heals the blind man. Jesus uses his spit and dirt to heal. How much muckier can you get than that? And in the same way, God uses the mud to heal us, not in spite of the mess, but using the mess as an agent of change and transformation. How can we be re-created through our mess? Where is the Hallelujah as this church moves forward?

Editor Jackson again closed with. “Our mud season – those times of sorrow, challenges and dashed dreams – is a redemptive time to slow down, grab tighter to Christ’s hand and remember that God will always get us through. We need to slosh through the mess knowing that something beautiful, something sweet awaits. For there is always something waiting beneath the messes of life. God is always there, preparing new life, preparing an Easter Alleluia, beneath the mud. It’s rather like finding that first crocus blossom. Sing praise to God! Alleluia! Amen!

CONGREGATION RESPONSE: 

On one side of your insert you’ll find a place to reflect for just a couple minutes. What is your personal mud at the moment? Perhaps it involves family, perhaps your faith, perhaps our community or world. Jot down a few words of where you find yourself in the belly of the whale right now. Then pause, listen, and write a couple words of how you might praise God in that situation, and in so doing allow God to bring you out of the pit.

SERMON HYMN:  Christ, You Made the Blind Man See  (Carolyn Winfrey Gillette)

PRAYERS of the PEOPLE and LORD'S PRAYER

OFFERING

CALL TO OFFERING 

Generous God,

you have already given us all that we need. Help us trust your continued care, that we may share with others the abundance of your blessings.

OFFERTORY:  "All That I Am"  Congregation Sing

PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Accept our gifts, O God, and give us new songs of praise as we celebrate the opportunity to be in ministry. May we use these gifts to further your work through First Presbyterian Baker City in our church, our community, and our world.
In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

CLOSING HYMN:  You Brought Me Out (Old 1898 Hymn) 

BENEDICTION AND CHARGE 

Lead us God,

Out of the mud and the muck and the mire,

Out of the belly of the whale

To hear YOUR call,

To proclaim our Hallelujahs through

Compassion, Grace, and Forgiveness

To celebrate our rescue by responding in kind

to our neighbors, to our faith family,

And especially to those with whom we differ.

Thank you, God, for your unending mercy.

Go forth and let God’s grace and mercy flow forth!