Sermon
August 9, 2015
Worship in the
Park
Patten Pioneer
Days
by Ray Foss
Stetson Memorial
United Methodist Church
“Community”
Let us be in the spirit of prayer. Almighty God, living Savior,
Holy Spirit, fall down upon us now here, in worship, in prayer, in holy
communion one with each other as part of this circle, as part of this family,
as part of this community we call home. May this moment, this hour, be a time
of renewal, of coming together as one body of believers. May this time together
be holy in your sight, acknowledging our differences, the hurt we may feel, but
embracing the hope we have in this community and in You, Lord.
Amen.
=================
Good Morning; I pray you have all been having a good week with all
the Patten Pioneer Days activities. We’ve been awful busy. But it is a good
busy, spending time with family, with our churches, and within community. We
feel the greatest connection one to another at times like these.
As Pastor Ruth said at the worship service two years ago when we
gathered in this space, this ultimate tabernacle, under the dome God created, “we
find peace and hope in community”, no matter our circumstances.
I know I was feeling the Holy Spirit moving on Thursday night at
the “Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet” Concert and when we joined together in
prayer for the addicted, for our community, and for the world. Some of the Methocostal congregation, some of
us that others call the “frozen chosen” held up their glow sticks and danced in
the aisles! I pray that the Holy Spirit would be moving in a mighty way this
morning as well within this time of worship.
I would like to start out with a few questions.
-
How
many here love this small town?
-
How
many here are related to someone in the assembled congregation, other than
immediate family who came with you?
-
How
many can claim being from here, this place, not “from away”?
-
Here’s
a harder one (and no, you don’t have to raise your hand), how many here have
been hurt by someone here now, by our churches, by fellow Christians? How many
of you haven’t forgiven them for that hurt, whether or not they asked for
forgiveness or apologized? How many may have found out you hurt someone without
even knowing it until later?
(Love, forgiveness, grace), (faith, hope, love), (hope, honor,
community), these are all words of connection, of family, of communion, within
God’s Word, in the commands of Christ, in the example He gave us, and in the
words of the Good News.
In one of the most beloved of
scriptures, 1 Corinthians 13, we are told about love within community, words
which teach us still how to love and what love is. We share these words of love
in many weddings. How many here had these words as part of their wedding? You
too?
Well, this is a good thing, but the
origin of these words is not in familial love, the love of a husband and wife
as we know it. The original Greek words refer to Divine Love, to Agape Love, to
the same abundant love, charity and mercy that sent Christ to the cross. The
KJV translation, interestingly, is not love but charity that is the “greatest
of these”.
When Christ tells us we are to love
as He loved us in John 13:34-35, He is talking about loving sacrificially, as
He loved us going to the cross for us. We must love everyone as He loved, all
of our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, all of our family, our community.
And we abide in the vine, within the
family tree, as Christ describes in John 15:1-17, only so long as we follow Him
and produce fruit for the kingdom, not fruit of this world. Gossip and talking
behind our neighbors’ back are words of death, not words of life.
===============
How many have ever said, “It’s a small world?” Well, it is a small
world, because God made it that way.
Just a couple of Sundays ago I had a good friend from college,
Diane Rush, in worship with us. She was here for the Rush Family Reunion.
Someone I have known for 35 years comes from a family line from Benedicta and
Patten.
And I found out not that long ago that our good friend Ann
McCarthy remembers fund raisers 22 years ago for my nephew Luke Scaringi in
Millinocket when he was battling brain cancer and they had to travel to Bangor
for treatments.
=================
As I thought about sharing a message on community today, I thought
about the sermons of Pastor Ruth and Pastor Rodney Lord and the Jeremiah’s Corner
presentations at our church.
We have to find our hope, together. We have to trust in God. We
have to pull together in prayer and on purpose as one people of
faith, as one community together.
No matter if you are more liberal than Bernie Sanders or more
conservative than Lindsay Graham, whether you can’t stand the word “catholic” in
the Apostle’s Creed, if speaking in
tongues or being slain by the Spirit scares you, we are all part of one
community, warts and all.
We need each other. We need to lean on each other in times of
trial and we need to rejoice when our neighbor has good fortune. We need to
pray for one another in good times and bad.
We cannot be envious; we cannot hold onto old hurts. This is a
small town for better and for worse; but look around. These are the people, our
sisters and brothers, who we share this walk, this moment of worship, this
opportunity to praise God at the end of the Patten Pioneer Days.
====================
Family, community, can be our strongest cord, our tightest bond,
and it can be our weakest link. It can be the glue that holds us together and
it can be our Achilles’ heel.
In Patten, I think the words family
and community are interchangeably, as most people are related by blood, by
marriage, by work, or by friendship and we are related by our communities of
faith and our belief in Jesus Christ.
One other short story - I once knew
a lady who was hurt by something her brother said in 1946. Even though they
lived in the same community they never spoke again. He never apologized and she
never forgave him. She lost a brother and she lost her best friend because she
was his wife.
They rekindled their friendship
starting at his funeral, in 1986. That was forty years after that hurt, that
schism, that open wound that never became scar tissue until that moment.
I know some of that same kind of
hurt, often unintentional, often unknown to the person who supposedly did it,
exists here in Patten within and between families and within and between
communities of believers. That is part of the human condition and part of why
churches are called hospitals for sinners and not hotels for saints.
And this struggle is not new. Peter
even asked Christ how many times he had to forgive a brother in the faith and
he was told he had to forgive seventy times seven, an infinite number of times.
Like Peter, we have to forgive for ourselves and for our neighbors, even to
those who seek to do us harm.
We must remember that the Lord’s Prayer asks God to “forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Christ meant it when
he taught us that prayer. We must
forgive and we must love.
=================
Pastor Ruth two years ago reminded
us that “we find peace and hope in community”.
Pastor Ruth also said, at the beginning of her message, that a week like
this is, “a time when community comes together to celebrate a time in its
history… a time when community sets aside it’s differences… it’s pain… it’s
sorrow… and finds one common bond to celebrate. There is truly strength in
community.” Amen.
Pastor Rodney challenged us last year when he said that, “we are
to be a people of honor who find and elevate honor in others.” He went further
and said, “Honor will break through our natural tendency to criticize and
isolate… honor will lead us down the path of forgiveness, honor will look for a
way to elevate another’s status.” Those are important words too, because he too
is from this place. He knows us.
=================
To truly be a community, to find
peace in the storms that will come, to have hope no matter what, to really be a
family, to be able to combat the forces of the world, and to bring honor, we
need to forgive those here and around town. We need to apologize and ask for forgiveness.
We need to focus on that which unites us now and break down what divides us. We must unite together, love as Christ did and
shine our lives into the darkness.
Now is the time, now more than ever, we must work together to
invite others into the circle, to find those who once were active with us and
bring them back, to shine the love of Christ truly to the least, the last, the
lost, so that this small town can grow and thrive in hope, in honor, in praise
of our God.
The world wants to pull us away from
each other and away from God. We must cleave to God and to each other. Together
this community, this family, can withstand these storms and can bear witness to
Christ’s power and saving grace here and to the ends of the earth.
Amen.
August 9, 2015
Worship in the Park
Scripture:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
John 13:34-35
John 15:1-17
Lord’s Prayer
message: “Community”
by Raymond A. Foss
&
praise music led by
Stetson Memorial United Methodist Church Praise Team
Director, Chuck Loucka
&
opening prayer, prayer over offering, benediction
by Pastor Ruth Foss
sermon blog
meditation blog
“God’s Whisper” blog
Stetson Memorial United Methodist Church
&
Prayers of the People and Pastoral Prayer
and songs of praise over the offering
by Pastor Franklin Randall, Jr.
Patten Pentecostal Church
&
Pastor Rodney Lord’s sermon, 2014
Worship in the Park
======
Psalm 133
Psalm 84:5
Revelations 4:11
Revelations 5
Deuteronomy 5:16
Leviticus 19
John 4
1 Peter 3:15
Jeremiah 29:11
Hebrews
Romans 15:13
&
message by Pastor Rodney Lord
August 10, 2014
Patten Academy Park
Patten, ME
&
Pastor Ruth Foss’ sermon, 2013
“There is Hope in Community”
August 11, 2013
Worship in the Park
Patten Pioneer Days
Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIV
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