St. Paul's Presbyterian Church

Call to Worship

More than those who watch for the morning,we wait faithfully for God.

With our questions and our cries, in our hopes and expectations,we wait faithfully for God.

Prayer of Adoration and Confession

God of the past, present and future,
God in whom all things are renewed, we praise you.
In the face of all that wearies us and worries us,
your words echo through the centuries with love and hope.
As we follow the footsteps of Jesus in this Lenten season,
His Cross stands before us.
And so, we trust you are never far from our sorrows.
In him you walk with us; you share our tears.
You stand beside us when we don’t know which way to turn.
In this moment, renew our trust in your resurrection promises
and draw near to us when we need you the most,
whenever we can’t even find the words to call on your holy name.

God of our lonely places and hard times, there is no place dark for your presence. There are no situations beyond your grace. Yet we confess we sometimes lose track of you, when sorrows stack up or loneliness surrounds us. Forgive us our hopelessness. Stay with us as we go through every valley of shadow. Bring life where there is death, healing whether there is pain, and courage where there is fear. Stay with us as we make our way along the path Jesus walked.

Assurance of Pardon

Friends, remember the promise St. Paul declares: “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship? Distress? Peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through the God who loves us. Neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” So, let us rejoice that no matter what is happening around us, no matter what we have done, God’s deep love will never let us go.

Prayer for Understanding

Life-giving God, steady us with your Spirit. Create deep inner peace within us, so that we may attend to your words of hope and promise for the sake of Christ, your Living Word. Amen.

Ephesians 1:1-14

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace
8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight
9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ,
10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will,
12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.
13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;
14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.

Can you drink the cup – The Cup of Salvation?

Our own experience of life has shown us that we will have times of sorrow, times of joy and times of blessings. When we look at the cup that is our life, hold it and lift it up, we are looking to our God to bless that cup that is our life. For we know that to try and drink of the cup that is our life without such a blessing would be to drink a cup of bitter sorrow or unfulfilled joy. In fact, without asking for our cup – our life – to become a cup of blessing, we would go through this life with an attitude of simple survival of our times of sorrow and with a fleeting memory of our times of joy.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. It will begin with a triumphal and joyous entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He will be celebrated as a hero of the people, seated on a donkey with palm branches and coats strewn on the road and the people shouting praises for they will see Jesus as the one sent by God to be the Saviour. This joyous moment will soon change, and moments of great sorrow and suffering will take place before once again a joyous moment appears again. And so, it is that our lives move between sorrow and joy, between moments of pain and moments of pleasure.

The cup of sorrow, the cup of joy, the cup of blessings – not three cups but one cup representing all that life was, is and shall be. That cup now becomes the cup of salvation. On that fateful night before His crucifixion, on a night when betrayal was in the air, Jesus took hold of the cup, lifted it, blessed it and declared that the cup now contained His blood, the blood of the New Covenant that would be shed for the forgiveness of sin – a cup of salvation.

Our cups contain our blood too for they symbolize our life – the life granted to us by God. And while we may never suffer what He suffered, symbolically, as we live our lives as God’s people, our lives are poured out. And so, our cups too become cups of salvation because as we let our lives be poured out, be drained as we live this life, they become opportunities for God to refill them with new life – His peace, presence, strength and guidance.

So finally, we will drink our cup – the cup that has been given to us by God and that is constantly renewed by God. Henri encourages us to not be afraid to drink our cup, to let it become empty to the bottom, to not hold back for to do so is to hold on to sorrows, to hold on to those things that prevent God from fully entering our life. We need to drink it to the bottom in order that God might fill it and fill it with new life.

When I was in China, our host served wine. At the meal, he raised his glass and encouraged us to empty our glass. He encouraged us with these words: “No more tears.” Tradition in China is that as much wine as you leave in your glass, that will be the number of tears you will cry in your life. There will always be something left in the glass for we can never avoid tears, but we are encouraged to empty our glass, to pour out our life so that we can be blessed by God.

Just as Henri has given us stories and thoughts around holding our cup, lifting our cup and blessing our cup, he now shares thoughts about drinking our cup. He sees three disciplines that can help us drink our cup of salvation – the discipline of silence, the discipline of the word, and the discipline of action.
Drinking our cup in silence may seem like a silly thing but so often we use distractions such as radio, television, books, films, long hours of work and even an overactive social life in order to avoid dealing with the sorrows of our life. Silence is a discipline that helps us to go beyond the entertainment quality of our lives. There we can let our sorrows and joys emerge from their hidden place and look us in the face, saying: “Don’t be afraid; you can look at your own journey, its dark and light sides, and discover your way to freedom.” At first silence may frighten us. In silence we start hearing the voices of darkness: our jealousy and anger, our resentment and desire for revenge, our pain over losses, abuses and rejections. Our most spontaneous reaction is to run away from them and return to our entertainment. But if we have the discipline to stay put and not let these dark voices intimidate us, they will gradually lose their strength and recede into the background, creating space for the softer, gentler voices of the light.

These voices speak of peace, kindness, gentleness, goodness, joy, hope, forgiveness and most of all love. They come from a very deep place and from very far. They have been speaking to us since before we were born and reveal to us that there is no darkness in the One who sent us into the world, only light. They are part of God’s voice calling us from all eternity. The powers of this world will attempt to drown out these gentle voices, but they are the voices of truth. Remember Elijah found God not in the earthquake or hurricane but in a still small voice. Being in silence is the first way we learn to drink our cup.

The second way is with the word. By this Henri means living our life in a trusted circle of friends. To know ourselves truly and acknowledge fully our own unique journey, we need to be known and acknowledged by others for who we are. We cannot live a spiritual life in secrecy. We cannot find our way to true freedom in isolation. Silence without speaking is as dangerous as solitude without community. They belong together.

Last week I spoke of the need for mutual vulnerability in order to build trust with one another and deepen our community bond with one another. Henri sees this as the true goal of Christian community but realizes that we need to exercise caution as we build these bonds. We need loving and caring friends with whom we can speak from the depth of our heart. Such friends can take away the paralysis that secrecy creates. They can offer us a safe and sacred place, where we can express our deepest sorrows and joys, and they can confront us in love, challenging us to a greater spiritual maturity. When we dare to speak from the depths of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. Nothing will give us so much strength as being fully known and fully loved by fellow human beings in the Name of God. It will allow us to not only live well but to die well. When we are surrounded by loving friends, death becomes a gateway to the full communion of saints.

The third discipline is in action. Action is not so much about what we do but how we do it. Discovering who we are, discovering friends, companions with whom we can share our life leads to action in our life. We will find opportunities to be the person we are and offer to others the gift of our life through words or deeds that will bring encouragement and hope.

Silence, speaking, and acting are three disciplines to help us to drink our cup. They are disciplines because we do not practice them spontaneously. In a world that encourages us to avoid the real issues, these disciplines ask for concentrated effort. But if we keep choosing silence, a circle of trusting friends to speak with, and actions that flow from our life, we are in fact drinking our cup, bit by bit, to the bottom. The sorrows of our lives will no longer paralyze us, nor will our joys make us lose perspective. The disciplines of silence, word and action focus our eyes on the road we are traveling and help us to move forward step by step to our goal. We will encounter great obstacles and splendid views, long, dry deserts and freshwater lakes surrounded by shadow-rich trees. We will have to fight against those who try to attack and rob us. We also will make wonderful friends. We will often wonder if we will ever make it, but one day we will see coming to us the One who has been waiting for us from all eternity to welcome us home.

And so, I say to each of you: Take hold of your cup, lift it up, ask a blessing upon it and then drink. God has given you this life. Live it to the fullest – l’chaim.
AMEN

P.S. When I decided to deliver this series on the cup, I never imagined the situation we would find ourselves in. This is a time when we need to truly take hold of our cups and share our lives with one another. We need to stay connected through whatever means we can and pray for one another’s safety and sanity.

God created us mind, body and spirit. We are one person – not three. I pray that each of you are healthy in body, healthy in mind and healthy in spirit.

I have the list of members of each congregation and am regularly remembering each of you in prayer.

We will be able to touch one another again in body but until then may we touch one another in mind and spirit through prayer and message.

God be with you all.
Bruce

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession

O God, we thank you that in Christ, you call each of us by name and unite us in his body, the church. Give us love enough to make a difference in your world; and trust enough to follow even when the way before us is a challenge.

Christ of majesty and mercy,bring your compassion to this world once more.

O God of peace and promise, in Christ you call us to love our enemies and to be peacemakers in the word you love. We pray today for people and places divided by ancient bitterness and current hostility

Christ of majesty and mercy,bring your compassion to this world once more.

O God of the bruised and broken, we are grateful that, in Christ, you have taken up the cross and know by heart the things that bring us suffering and pain. We pray today for all those in need of healing and comfort, whatever the source of their pain…
(Keep silence for 10-15 seconds)

Christ of majesty and mercy,bring your compassion to this world once more.

O God of the lonely and sorrowing, in Christ you faced the loss we know when loved ones die or when friends let us down. We remember before you those who grieve the loss of their beloved and those who face a lonely future…
(Keep silence for 10-15 seconds)

Christ of majesty and mercy, bring your compassion to this world once more.

O God of hope and new possibility, in Christ you opened the way into the future for us through the power of your redeeming love. Give us the courage we need to face our future, assured of your presence and power to sustain us.
We offer all that we are and all that we hope for through Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together as his people, saying

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. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Forever and ever. AMEN

A Blessing:

As you conclude this time of prayer and reflection may you remember that we live in God’s world and that we are to be people of peace. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest and abide with each one of us this day and forever more. AMEN