Worship for Sunday, September 27, 2020

Sunday, September 27, 2020 Sermon

 

Matthew 21:23-32                    Sept. 27, 2020              “The Public Relations Nightmare”

            Jesus was setting up a public relations nightmare.  He is in Jerusalem, head to head with the chief priests and elders of the people.  Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  There is no more hiding from the authorities.  He openly challenges them on his journey to the cross.    

            The question on the table, “Hey Jesus, by what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?”  The leaders know Jesus claims God’s power.  But THEY need public opinion, the crowds, in Jerusalem, to back them.  If Jesus says His authority is from God, they can charge Him with blasphemy and whip the crowds up against him.  The chief priests and elders then have the lever they need to get the Romans to carry out the death penalty-fear of a popular uprising-because Roman law took the death penalty out of the hands of the local authorities. 

            But Jesus flips the situation, answering the question with a question, and one that seems innocent on the face of it.  “Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin?”

            The baptism of John was a very particular part of his ministry.  In Matthew 3, John appears in the Judean wilderness, proclaiming (vs 2) “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”  In vs. 6, “They were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.”  This was taking place around John’s proclamation to make way for Jesus.  And we know that it was by John’s baptism, then the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that began Jesus’ ministry.  

            Last week, I said the Kingdom of Heaven came when the plan of God was fulfilled at Jesus’ resurrection.  John simply says the Kingdom of Heaven is near, and Jesus was near.  The entire life and ministry of Jesus embodies what the Kingdom of Heaven is going to be.  His life is the model that continues to serve as the ‘how to’ of Kingdom making to this very day.  

            But first, Jesus’ public relations nightmare.  The crowds love John, they believe him to be a prophet.  Remember a few weeks ago, Jesus asked the disciples “Who do the people say that I am?”  John the Baptist, equivalent to Elijah, equivalent to Jeremiah, the Prophet.  If the leadership says John’s ministry was of human origin, they deny his Godly obedience, and the crowds will turn on them.  So they cannot choose that response.

On the other hand, His baptism by John was Jesus’ “Coming Out” moment into ministry.  So to say John’s baptism came from heaven would, first, push the leaders into a corner to try and answer they question of why they do not believe what John did.  Although, Matt 3:7 records that a lot of leaders DID believe as many Pharisees and Sadducees came to the Jordan to be baptized.  To believe that John’s ministry is from heaven will force the leadership to accept Jesus’ ministry as well, because it was at John’s baptism where the Spirit came down FROM HEAVEN to land upon Jesus.  So, to prevent themselves from completely undermining their own position, the leaders cannot choose that response.

Was the crowd really that powerful?  In vs. 26, it says they leaders would not deny the authority of John for fear of that crowd.  They thought he was a prophet.  Is the crowd really this tool that can be used to manipulate events?  Well, consider what we read about during Holy Week.  The crowds build to such a frenzy that they are crying out for blood.  Pilate found no fault in Jesus, wanted to release Him.  But the anger of the mob, the cries of “Crucify him!”, fomented by the leadership, the potential for a violent uprising, they forced Pilate’s hand.  The death of Jesus became a political expedient to quiet the crowds.  That is the power the leadership is trying to harness in our passage today.  That is the power that Jesus is foiling, for now.

            This is where Jesus is, in a city where the mood of the crowd can cause even the religious leadership to back down.  So they look like weaklings.  “We don’t know.”  To which Jesus replies, “You did not answer my question, I will not answer yours.”  Left them even angrier for being played the fool. 

But Jesus is not done.  Time to press the point.  He tells a parable.  A man has two sons.  He tells one to do something and the boy says he won’t but then goes and does it anyway.  He has another son who says he WILL, but then doesn’t.  Who does the will of the Father?  It is the son who says he will not do as his father orders, but then goes and does it anyway.  These are the tax collectors and prostitutes, Jesus says, naming the two lowest orders of sinners in the culture of the time.  They sinned, did not do the will of the Father, but, in John, they were baptized on the confession of their sins, obeying the call to repentance, and did the will of the Father.  But the leadership, Jesus takes another shot at them.  They say they do the will of the Father, they claim the authority of God as their political authority, but do NOT do what the Father wills.  According to Matthew 3, they tried to get John’s blessing.  They came down to where he was on the Jordan, but John basically chases them off, calling them a bunch of snakes.

            But while Jesus is very careful to keep the conversation about John’s ministry, it is very obvious that ultimately, these leaders are condemned for their denial of Jesus’ ministry.   

            Yet even as Jesus runs rings around the leadership, he tells them again what they must do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  They must repent.  Repentance is opening our sinful lives to the Lord, confessing, apologizing, asking for, and receiving the forgiveness offered in our salvation.  This is where the Kingdom of Heaven finds its beginning in the life of each believer, then and now. 

            Last week, we spoke about election, how God picks each of us for the Kingdom of Heaven.  Today, it is our response, the response of the sinner, by the means of repentance, that we are welcomed into the Kingdom.  Knowing that we are sinners, knowing that we need God’s forgiveness, and acting on that knowledge, repenting, is how we receive the merciful grace of Christ and gain entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.   

            Repentance today is a difficult concept.  To repent is to admit there is something we must repent from, that there are behaviors in our lives that are unacceptable to God and in need of forgiveness and change.  I wonder if Jesus’ examples make it even harder for us.  Tax collectors and prostitutes, consider how they translate to the present day.  Prostitution is an illegal activity, one that ‘good people’ would never stoop to.  And as much as we realize today about how many women are forced into the sex trade, there is still a huge taboo in our culture against people who sell their bodies for money.

            In the modern day, the tax collector is a little harder to condemn.  This is not about IRS agents.  The tax collector in the days of Jesus we might consider as a state-sponsored loan shark, a Roman collaborator.  They got rich, the Romans got rich, and the people had no recourse against them.  We have no context today about collaborators with the invaders who have conquered us.  We might remember stories going back to the end of World War 2, when areas were liberated from the Nazis, there was a reckoning with the people who had collaborated.  They were routinely hanged, shot, and humiliated.

            In either case, it is a HUGE jump from there to us.  We can say that sin is sin, but does the heart really put on the same level our ‘petty’ sins as those who would sell their bodies for money or those who would collaborate with an enemy against their own citizens.  It is the imposition of a rather draconian black and white system of good and evil on a world where sin feels far more like multiple shades of grey. 

            But the repentance Jesus calls for, that the leaders would have needed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is a cultural level of sin.  The chief priests and elders of the people are actively working against the ministry of God through Jesus.  What is the cultural level of sin today?  Something we would not consider necessary for repentance?  How about the Black Lives Matter movement?  The statistics are clear, if you are black, the odds of dying or being injured or simply abused by law enforcement aremuch higher.  But it is hard for the white Christian who thinks in terms of personal sins to see what we have to repent.  “I didn’t do it.”  Collectively, we do not approve of a culture in law enforcement that stereotypes and disproportionately picks on people of color.  But I did nothing that needs me to repent.  Or did I?

            I would suggest that there is a cultural context for repentance today.  We live on a world where there are more people than at any time in our history.  But we are also living in a world where we can provide equality for these people better than at any time in our history.  Poverty no longer needs to be a thing.  Hunger no longer needs to be a thing.  We do not have to better ourselves at the expense of environmental degradation.  The individual sins pale in comparison to the systemic ones.

            That is what the leadership is being condemned for by Jesus.  They are systematically trying to squash the love of God come through Jesus Christ.  So the sin that we might need to repent from is the one that feels too big for me to fix.  Because it is something that the collective of Christians are not taking a stand on, not saying together, “We believe Jesus says ‘This is wrong’.”  Or our righteous anger gets politicized.  Consider the pro-life movement.  The political right love to make the argument that this is THE Christian response to the unwanted pregnancy.  To accept that premise is then to accept everything else that the political right stands for.

            And yet we live in a time where pregnancy can be universally prevented.  Do we make the call that birth control should be universal?  Do we make the call that men must also take responsibility for preventing pregnancy?  Or do we simply buy into the dominant message of the Church that there is no conversation but abstinence?  Or that command must be taken of the mother’s body?  Or that once the baby is born, the voice of the Church disappears and all the responsibility is dumped on the woman? 

Why is there no comparable Faith movement to support babies born into poverty?  To tackle childhood hunger?  The headlines focus more on childhood obesity.  Why is there no comparable Faith movement against violence in schools?  We have in place every measure that we can think of against fire in the schools.  But hundreds of thousands of our children are killed, injured, bullied, stolen from, victimized each year.  But the silence in the church is deafening.

            Those are the hot button issues where repentance finds its place in the 21^st century.  When John said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near” encompasses the individual sins of people needing Christ AND the cultural sins of not living out the full love of neighbor.

            This is especially true when we understand that the Kingdom of Heaven is not coming at the end of time, but came in Christ, is already here, is being built.  Repentance is not only gaining God’s forgiveness before we appear before the Judgement Seat.  Repentance is the way to build the Kingdom of Heaven NOW.  I am sorry if this sounds like the advertisement for a new housing development but “The Better Life Starts Now.”  We need to understand the full implications of the Kingdom of Heaven.

            The Kingdom of Heaven is not just about the End of Time.  It is about now.  In fact, it is more about now.  It is not simply about the individual Christian repenting to receive Jesus’ individual forgiveness.  It is about the entire community of faith repenting to receive Jesus’ forgiveness when we fail to take on a culture in need of redemption-especially when we see in the voices that claim to speak for Jesus messages that are ultimately harmful to the Children of God.  These messages come from a point of view that now, this earth, this time, doesn’t matter, that only the End matters. 

            But the Kingdom of Heaven is already here.  Repentance is now.  The investment of God’s love through us is for all of God’s children.  We have the technical capacity to make the world a better place.  What we need is the spiritual will to follow God’s path and make the world a better place for all God’s Children.  Amen.

 

Sunday, September 27, 2020 Scripture Lesson

 Matthew 21:23-32                           Sept. 27, 2020

21:23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"

21:24 Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.

21:25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?'

21:26 But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet."

21:27 So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

21:28 "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.'

21:29 He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went.

21:30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go.

21:31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

21:32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

Sunday, September 27, 2020 Order of Worship

 

First Presbyterian Church

September 27, 2020

10:00 AM

Worship Service Unified Order of Worship

  

CALL TO WORSHIP

John said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

Let us repent to know once more the joy of forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

May we give our lives over to building Heaven’s Kingdom.

May we bring God’s blessings to all of God’s children.

Let us worship the Living God

 

Hymn Today: “All People That On Earth Do Dwell”

All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell; come ye before him and rejoice.

O enter then his gates with praise; approach with joy his courts unto; praise, laud, and bless his name always, for it is seemly so to do.

 For why! the Lord our God is good; his mercy is forever sure; his truth at all times firmly stood, and shall from age to age endure.

     PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)

 Dear Father in Heaven, we confess to You all our sins and shortcomings.  Not only for the sins we have committed do we ask forgiveness, but we ask Your forgiveness when we dare not rise up to share and pursue Your love for the world.  Grant us courage to take on the sins of the world, confident in Your power and strength.  Amen.

 *SILENT PRAYERS OF CONFESSION

*THE GLORIA PATRI 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

INVITATION

LESSON: Matthew 21: 23-32

SERMON:                      “Taking on the Sins of the World”                      Rev. Peter Hofstra

PASSING OF THE PEACE

THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS

If unable to drop the tithe and offering at church for Sunday morning worship, it can be mailed to First Presbyterian Church, 45 Market St., Perth Amboy, NJ  08861 or sent via Venmo, search email address office@fpcperthamboy.org 

*DOXOLOGY  

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

*OFFERTORY PRAYER

JOYS AND CONCERNS

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

It is in the sanctuary that we share and lift requests to the Lord as a community.  Online, we are deliberately more general, as a community, in the joys and concerns we lift, knowing that, almost like the Kingdom of Heaven, things remain on the Internet forever and we are very aware of people’s privacy.  However, people are encouraged to lift their requests to the Lord in the privacy of where they are viewing the service.  In either case, the appropriate response to these requests is “Lord, Hear Our Prayer”.

*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 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever.  Amen.

 

SONG OF RESPONSE: “Just as I Am, Without One Plea”

Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, thy love unknown hath broken every barrier down; now, to be thine, yea thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

*BENEDICTION

*THREE FOLD AMEN

POSTLUDE

 

Worship For Sunday, September 20, 2020

Sermon for Worship Service, September 20, 2020

 

Matthew 16: 1-20                     September 20, 2020                  Rev. Peter Hofstra

            Jesus’ parables are colloquial.  That means he uses illustrations familiar to his audience.  It also means it can feel unfamiliar to us, two thousand years later.  In this morning’s parable, Jesus is describing a day laborer economy, a cash economy.  American jobs come with I-9’s and W-4’s and a ton of paperwork before we even start day one.   

            Still, this cash economy is typical to many immigrant communities here.  At a given location, workers and employers will come together.  Someone needs three guys for a certain job, with a certain skill set.  Connections are made, guys are hired, family is supported for the day, and there it is.  We may frown on it, but for many, this is how they know they can support their families.    

            Thus Jesus’ parable begins.  The vineyard boss picks up a crew at 6am, 12-hour day, 6-6, for the standard day’s wage, a denarius, like we talked about last week.  There is more work than this crew can finish, so the boss goes out again at 9 and 12 and 3 and finally at 5pm to pick up more workers.  The day ends and it is time to get paid.  The boss starts with the crew who came at 5pm and pays them for one hour what he agreed to pay those who worked for 12 hours.  Everyone gets the same no matter how long they worked.  The 12-hour shift crew, paid last, figured they would get paid more for the greater time they put in. 

            Then they grumble when they are paid the same, as per their agreement before 6am.  The boss has a compelling response.  We agreed on a wage, it is my vineyard, my money, I will do with it as I please.  Why are you complaining?  Are you jealous?  You have a problem with that?

            I do have a problem with that.  It is not fair, in a culture that measures wages on an hourly basis.  Same work, different rates of pay.  Sounds like the gender gap in salary, men averaging 30% than women to this day.  Sounds like a company trying to replace union workers with cheaper non-union employees.  And if this was a parable about faith and employment, I would have a huge problem.

            But Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven-as he does in a lot of parables.  What is the Kingdom of Heaven?  It is the result of the Plan of God, fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Starts at the resurrection, completed on the Last day, overlaying all of history, already here but not yet fulfilled.  But there are complaints before it has even come to pass.

            It seems to be a question of how much glory will we receive in the Kingdom of Heaven?  If someone has been with Jesus the whole time, and somebody else shows up to accept salvation on their death bed, it is the same salvation?  How is that even fair?  We have been here the whole time and all of a sudden we have these strangers just showing up.  Have we not earned more due to longevity?  The people who have been believers for the long haul, they are suddenly joined by people who have come to the faith at all different points of their lives.  With all different kinds of life experience.  They come from all different kinds of backgrounds-including a lot that were REALLY sinful.  The reaction is one of envy.    

            Jesus’ response?  Deal with it.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  It doesn’t matter if you have sixty years or sixty minutes in the faith.  Salvation is salvation.  The Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t pay by the hour.  There is one agreed upon wage, eternal life.  If you are a cradle to grave Christian, born and raised, confirming Christ in your life or you sin and frolic and squander the years that you have been given, accepting Jesus at the very end, you shall also receive eternal life.  Because that is how the plan of God works to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.

            In theological terms, this is called God’s election.  God calls us.  Sometimes at the beginning of our lives, sometimes at the very end.  The call to come to Jesus, and in turn to offer our hearts to the Lord, it can be at a young, middle, or old age.  There are some who go to church their whole life but only respond to that call late in life, if at all.  That is God’s plan, beyond our understanding.  This is why the Invitation we make each week is structured the way it is.  Coming to Jesus for the first time?  Have you been on the edge for a while?  Same prayer.  It happens in God’s time, not our own.    

            Thus the Kingdom of Heaven is like God who has elected us at all different points in our life.  Jesus speaks to a community that is jealous of all the new people coming in.  It might have been all the tax collectors and prostitutes that Jesus was always having dinner with.  It might have been members of the leadership who the disciples saw threatening Jesus one week and now asking his aid in the next.  This is the story of every community that has known profound change.

            I ran into this at a funeral service.  Our Lady of Czestochowa is a Roman Catholic church on the way into S. Plainfield from 287.  It is named for a famous representation of the Mother of Jesus from Poland, a church established to serve, what was at that time, the predominantly Polish Catholic community.  Change has come.  Now, this church is focused on the Vietnamese Catholic population to reflect that change over the last generations. 

The funeral was for an old-time member of the Polish community.  The friend I was there for talked about the difficulties the church had gone through in its evolution.  It lived out the parable Jesus told.  Here were people who’d been in this church their entire lives, doing things meaningful to them, and they felt themselves pushed to the margins by all these ‘newbees’.  

            We know about community evolution here in Perth Amboy.  In 1685, Scottish immigrants and their pastor washed ashore.  By the Revolution, Anglicans made it a loyalist city and the Presbyterian meeting house stabled British horses.  Neighborhoods in this town, like the Budapest Neighborhood, were named for their immigrant communities.  In this congregation, remember Sue Niemeira?  She was the last connection to the Slovak Presbyterian Church that existed in town.  Things continue to evolve.  Have you heard the stories of the signs put up in the airports in Puerto Rico to “come to Perth Amboy”?  Drive through town now, see the Peruvian, the Dominican, and the Mexican influences.  Newbee after newbee after newbee.    

            That is the Kingdom of Heaven reflected here on earth.  I have heard sermons on this parable that focused only on the new Christian, someone who had just come to Christ.  So the first crew are those who have been Christians all their lives and it is the new converts, with different expectations, that are threatening the status quo.  There is truth there too.  It can be difficult for mature Christians to adapt to a bunch of newly enthusiastic “wet-behind-the-ears” Christians eager to turn the world upside down.

            But that is not the only ‘new’ group.  This Kingdom of Heaven encompasses people of different theological points of view where, who often reject each other as, at best ‘different’ or, at worst ‘erroneous’.  Some have no concept of the confessional nature of the Presbyterian Church and would dismiss it with “I believe the Bible”.  As if we did not?  We Presbyterians DO believe in the Bible, a belief honed in history, from the second century’s Apostle’s Creed to the Westminster Standards of the sixteenth century to the Belhar confession written in the 1980’s at the of apartheid in South Africa, with all the lessons and learning and devotion and worship and blood, sweat, and tears that came in between.  See all the different kinds of people that can be tossed into the melting pot of the Church? 

            This is all going to get straightened out when the Kingdom of Heaven is fulfilled.  When Jesus returns, on the Last Day, at the Final Trumpet, in the Twinkling of an Eye, all the differences that we perceive will fall away and we will all stand together as Children of the Living God, co-heirs with Christ to the promises of salvation.  

            Until then, the work of offering our hearts to the Lord includes building that Kingdom of Heaven.  It is already here, but it is not yet fulfilled.  We need to open our hearts and our minds to accept that we too can fall to the prejudice against ‘new people’.  We have been here since the earliest morning, they come midmorning?  At noon?  In the afternoon?  At day’s end?  Our call is to see them as fellow believers, as fellow members of God’s elect, as fellow workers to spread the love of Jesus Christ to a world in need.  It is not to see “them”, it is not to see those “newbees” as competition.

            Therein is the expression of offering our hearts to the Lord.  We will welcome all to join who come into this Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.  While that is a grand and wonderful statement of universal love and welcome to make, it exposes many tendencies of the sinful life that have crept into our Christian community. 

            Because the world is a dangerous place.  Not to acknowledge that is naïve.  For example, on Sunday mornings, the Market Street door stays locked during Sunday worship because I do not want persons unknown getting into the church behind us as we worship and count, gathering in Jesus’ name.  I am all about trusting the Lord, but it is people that make me worry.

            This parable could easily become a biblical bat with which to beat on us in this church for not adapting to the community around us.  We know who is here, we know who lives in the community around us, we know there has been great change during our lifetimes in Perth Amboy.

            Instead, this parable causes me to grieve.  How much of the joy of being a Christian is never celebrated because focus on “newbees” is that they are different, not gifts to expand the horizons of our faith?  In the Kingdom of Heaven, we have tasted of the love and joy and forgiveness that come in Jesus.  Christianity is a life lived in Jesus, something that continues to grow and renew who we are into the wondrous beings that God has planned for us to be.  It is the invasion of sin that takes our eyes off the prize.  Instead of seeing someone coming into our midst as a gift from God, someone to be taken in, sheltered, helped as we are able, sin turns our vision inward, to holding onto what we have, to seeing ‘them’ as suspicious interlopers to our piece of the Kingdom.

            It is the other reason we have a prayer of confession.  It is not just to ask for forgiveness.  It is to have God remove the blocks from our lives that hold us back from living into the true joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  When those blocks are down, we can worship with a spirit of Joy for all who are in the Kingdom.  We can touch the Hand of God and truly know how all things are possible.  It is to know that the new brother or sister in Christ is cause for celebration and not suspicion.  For a time, we can shed the fears and prejudices and judgements that seem hard-wired into our beings and we can taste what it will be like when sin is finally banished from the Kingdom and we can truly enjoy God forever. 

Amen

  

Scripture Lesson for Worship Service, September 20, 2020

 

Matthew 16: 1-20                             Scripture Lesson                              Sept. 20, 2020

20:1 "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

20:2 After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

20:3 When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace;

20:4 and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went.

20:5 When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same.

20:6 And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?'

20:7 They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.'

20:8 When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.'

20:9 When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.

20:10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.

20:11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,

20:12 saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.'

20:13 But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?

20:14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.

20:15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

20:16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

 

Order of Worship for Sunday, September 20, 2020

 

First Presbyterian Church

September 20, 2020

10:00 AM

Worship Service Unified Order of Worship

  

CALL TO WORSHIP

We come today to worship in the Kingdom of Heaven

May we taste the joy of the Kingdom lived in Jesus Christ.

May we welcome all who come to join us.

Let every soul coming to Christ lift our spirits in wondrous celebration.

Let us worship the Living God

 

Hymn Today: “Lead On Oh King Eternal”

1. Lead on, O King eternal, the day of march has come; henceforth in fields of conquest thy tents shall be our home. Through days of preparation thy grace has made us strong; and now, O King eternal, we lift our battle song.

2. Lead on, O King eternal, till sin's fierce war shall cease, and holiness shall whisper the sweet amen of peace. For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums; with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.

     PRAYER OF CONFESSION (In Unison)

 Dear Father in Heaven, we confess to You all our sins and shortcomings.  We come to You not only in the sure confidence of Your forgiveness, but also to ask that You will remove everything in our way that keeps us from knowing the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Renew our lives and renew our worship of Your Holy Name.  Amen.

 *SILENT PRAYERS OF CONFESSION

*THE GLORIA PATRI 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

INVITATION

LESSON: Matthew 16: 1-20

SERMON:                      “What Does the Kingdom of Heaven Grant?”                  Rev. Peter Hofstra

PASSING OF THE PEACE

THE OFFERING OF OUR TITHES & GIFTS

If unable to drop the tithe and offering at church for Sunday morning worship, it can be mailed to First Presbyterian Church, 45 Market St., Perth Amboy, NJ  08861 or sent via Venmo, search email address office@fpcperthamboy.org 

*DOXOLOGY  

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

*OFFERTORY PRAYER

JOYS AND CONCERNS

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

It is in the sanctuary that we share and lift requests to the Lord as a community.  Online, we are deliberately more general, as a community, in the joys and concerns we lift, knowing that, almost like the Kingdom of Heaven, things remain on the Internet forever and we are very aware of people’s privacy.  However, people are encouraged to lift their requests to the Lord in the privacy of where they are viewing the service.  In either case, the appropriate response to these requests is “Lord, Hear Our Prayer”.

*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 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever.  Amen.

 

SONG OF RESPONSE: “Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart”

1. Rejoice, ye pure in heart; rejoice, give thanks and sing; your glories banner wave on high, the cross of Christ your King.

Refrain: Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, give thanks and sing.

2. Your clear hosannas raise, and alleluias loud; whilst answering echoes upward float, like wreaths of incense cloud. (Refrain)

*BENEDICTION

*THREE FOLD AMEN

POSTLUDE

 

Sermon for Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020

 

Matthew 18: 21-35                     September 13, 2020

            There is nothing that God will not forgive us for, based on how we, in turn, forgive.  There, one sentence, covers the whole passage.  This is the lesson of the parable that Jesus tells to answer Peter’s question, “How many times should we forgive a member of the church?”  Is seven enough?  In this version, Jesus says no, it must be seventy seven times.  In earlier translations, this passage is translated as seven times seventy times.  The number is not important, only the practice.

            How then do we understand forgiveness?  To explain, Jesus offers a parable, of forgiveness in the Kingdom of Heaven.  A slave owes more than he can pay.  The judgement is that he, his family, his possessions, everything is to be sold to pay off the debt.  This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  What is the Kingdom of Heaven? 

The Kingdom of Heaven was ushered in with the accomplishment of God’s plan, at Jesus’ resurrection.  Jesus talks about what it ‘will be like’, when it is complete on the Day of Judgement.  Yet it is a process.  In the meantime, the blessings and the consequences of this Kingdom are already here, but not yet complete in the lives of each one of God’s children.

So, in parable terms, the reality of the Kingdom is that we are all sinners, that we cannot be ‘good enough’ to balance the scales.  The judgement against us is death as punishment for our sins.

            In our parable, the slave cries out for mercy to his king, verse 26, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”  Consider the math.  The slave owes ten thousand talents.  A day’s wages was a denarius.  That was the basic unit of wages and prices.  There are, according to my google search, six thousand denarii in a talent, so, twenty year’s labor goes into a talent.  That is 60 MILLION denarii.  Which is two hundred thousand years of work.  In other words, the slave cannot pay the debt on his own.  This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  We who are sinners come to the Lord and promise to do the best that we can to overcome our sin natures, to live according to the law of love.  But claiming that we will not sin is like claiming that we will not breathe.  On our own, we cannot overcome sin.

            In our parable, verse 27, “Out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him, and forgave him his debt.”  This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  We have been forgiven our debt of sin.  But this forgiveness comes at its own cost.  We are forgiven because Jesus died in our place, was punished in our stead, because of Jesus’ love for us and obedience to God.    

            This passage is not about the plan of God, that Jesus has already gone over in detail.  With God’s plan in place, forgiveness in place, the Kingdom of Heaven proceeds in this fashion.  It is about our response to our forgiveness.

            In our parable, the forgiven slave meets a fellow slave who owes him far less, one hundred denarii.  That is approximately a third of a year’s wages for the working man.  Not a small sum for the working class.  But when the indebted 100 denarii slave repeats the same cry for mercy as the forgiven 60 000 000 denarii slave, the forgiven slave ignores the grace he has received and has the indebted slave tossed into prison.  But the forgiven slave throws the indebted slave into prison until the full amount is paid.  In the Kingdom of Heaven, the forgiven slave is the child of God who puts aside what they have received from God, and condemn without mercy their fellow sinners, without consideration of what God has done for them.

            In our parable, the fellow slaves see what is happening and they are distressed.  So they report what they have seen to the king.  The king recalls the forgiven slave and un-forgives him.  How could this ungrateful slave not in turn show mercy?  The result was debtor’s prison and torture.  In the Kingdom of Heaven, God sees all and knows all.  God will know when forgiveness has not been offered to another, God knows the distress of God’s Children when they see this kind of behavior in their fellow Christians. 

            In the Kingdom of Heaven, the one who considered themselves forgiven by God will have that forgiveness stripped away because they have not shown the forgiveness they have received.  Not only will the punishment for their sins be put back upon their shoulders, but torture, what we would associate with the fires of hell, will also be heaped upon them. 

            That is a tough one, theologically speaking.  Can our salvation be taken away?  Or is it something else?  If one asks for salvation, but nothing changes in their life, was that request just a mockery of the Lord?  Because the Lord will not be mocked.  And while salvation is a gift, it is also a covenant, binding life change on those who receive it.  

            Jesus concludes by connecting the parable to reality, “So my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

            So to give my heart to the Lord presumes we will forgive our brothers and sisters from our heart.  To do so eagerly and sincerely comes from knowing the joyful power of forgiveness.  Because Jesus regards forgiveness as so important, as so necessary to the Kingdom of Heaven, to the plan of God, that without it, we have not received salvation.

Peter’s question infers that forgiveness is a burden.  Do not forgive just seven times or seventy seven times or seven times seventy times, but as many times as necessary.  But remember what Paul told us last week, do not owe anything to anyone else, except love.  We talked then about how we live out the law of loving our neighbor. 

            But the law is summed up by Jesus in two commandments.  Before we are called upon to love neighbor, we are called upon to love God.  But because of sin, we are cut off from God.  Forgiveness restores our connection to God.  Forgiveness does nothing less that allow for the love of God to flow freely once more.  It is the foundation on which our renewed relationship with God is built.

            The love of neighbor is, in turn, built upon the foundation of our love of God.  If forgiveness is the foundation of our relationship with God, how much more is it the foundation of our relationship with neighbor?  Because as we confess each week, it is not simply the sins against God that we ask forgiveness for, it is also sins against neighbor.  Forgiveness is how we restore and renew our relationships one with another.

            In our parable, when the king forgave the slave, a renewed relationship was returned, for the king.  When slave did not forgive slave, he shunned that renewed relationship. 

            When we truly forgive someone, we have wiped out a debt, whether it be financial or emotional or something else.  Someone hurt us, someone did bad by us, there is an action or an event that now stands between me and the other person, friend, family, spouse, parent, child, church member, whomever.  To forgive is to make a choice to remove that thing between myself and the other person.  This is separate from compensation or from forgetting or anything else.  Those may be part and parcel of restoring a relationship, but where it begins is with a choice.  I will no longer hold on to the choice that I have made that this “thing” stands between us. 

            For the king in the parable, it is ten thousand talents.  For the forgiven slave, it was not putting down the one hundred denarii.  For God, it is releasing us from sin.  Perhaps the ultimate moment of what it means not to forgive someone comes when Jesus on the cross and he cries out “MY God My God, why hast though forsaken me?”

            The fruit of forgiveness ripens to its fullest when it is mutually accepted.  God has forgiven us, through Jesus Christ, which creates the foundation for a life of joy and wonder when we embrace and live into the love that God has for us, letting it flow out of us into the lives of others.  Two people who have had a terrible fight, when there is forgiveness and acceptance, the relationship can come out even stronger than before. 

            But the reality of life is that sometimes forgiveness happens only on one side.  Perhaps someone has hurt me but they don’t even know it, or they will not acknowledge it or, even worse, they know what they did but they will not repent.  I choose to forgive them and I can put that emotional burden down.  Perhaps I had a very contentious relationship with a parent, one that was broken our entire lives.  Then that parent dies before anything can be resolved.  I can lay down that burden when I make a choice to forgive.  It can be liberating.  It can be critical for one’s own mental and spiritual health.

            Forgiveness is the key to living in the Kingdom of Heaven now.  Because we are still surrounded by sin.  For each generation of the Children of God coming into the world, forgiveness is not simply how we survive, but how we thrive in a life of sin.  It is an incredible message that we have to carry to those whose lives are broken, stunted, and impaired because of the unforgiven events in their own lives.  Because, as there is nothing in life that God will not forgive us over, there is nothing that another can do to us that we cannot, with the love and support of our Creator, in turn forgive them for.

In the world of sin that we still inhabit, it can be so easy for the joy we know in Jesus Christ to get crushed by the weight of the world.  That is why Jesus said, “Come to me all who carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Forgiveness is a key to putting down those heavy burdens.  Yet, that rest can be fleeting.  It is easy for us to become bored, even jaded, that even our faith becomes a matter of rote.  But Jesus goes on to say that his yoke is light.  Practicing the art of forgiveness, it binds us to do something in the Lord’s name, but the result is an ever renewed knowledge of God’s love when we actively carry it out in a sinful world.

Because that is one of the realities of a sinful world.  There will ALWAYS be something else to forgive.

Peter asks “If another church member sins against me, how often do I have to forgive them?”  Whenever I read that, it seems to me that Peter is not so much asking about forgiveness, so much as what can he do when it is time not to forgive.  The subtext feels like, “You gave me the keys to the kingdom Lord, when can I use them to punish, not just to forgive forgive forgive?”

Jesus offers us this parable because Peter is missing the point.  Forgiveness is an outworking of love, a tool of joy and renewal and reconnection in a sinful world.  Punishment is God’s, not ours.  So as surely as street racing is not in the covenant when we give our car keys to our kids, neither is punishment in the covenant when we get the kingdom keys from God.  This is so fundamental that if we do not forgive from the heart, we are threatened with hellfire.

Which is why is it SO important to understand what forgiveness offers.  It is the opportunity to lay down our emotional burdens, knowing that the guilt we carry for what we have done has already been forgiven from God’s heart.  People who actively practice forgiveness live into things like “liberation”, “freedom”, and “new purpose”.  We know that sin and death and crying and illness will end when the Kingdom of Heaven is fulfilled on the Day of Judgement.  What forgiveness provides to us is a foretaste of what that life is going to be like as we can already lay down the burdens of the life of sin and know the joyful, forgiving love of Jesus Christ.  It is nothing less than the foundation upon which our lives, renewed in God’s plan of salvation, is lived joyfully and wondrously in a sinful world. 

            May we be so blessed today.  Amen.