All Hallows Saturday Evening Service (February 11, 2023)

The order of worship for this Saturday evening is based on the basic pattern of worship in The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992). The songs are taken from The Faith We Sing (2000) and Worship and Song (2011), supplements to The United Methodist Hymnal (1989).

Opening Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Thomas Troeger’ adaptation of John Milton’s “Let Us With a Joyful Mind.” [TFWS #2012]

1 Let us with a joyful mind
praise our God forever kind,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

2 New-made earth was filled with light
through God's all commanding might,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

3 Dazzling bright the sun obeys
God who shines with brighter rays,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

4 Stars and moon that spangle night
all depend on heaven's light,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

5 Creatures of the sea and land
all are fed by God's own hand,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

6 Therefore with a joyful mind,
praise our God forever kind,

Rich with mercies that endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

Greeting:
Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth;
sing the glory of his name;
give to God glorious praise.
Say, ‘How awesome are your deeds!’

Hymn of Praise:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Natalie Sleeth's "Praise the Lord with the Sound of Trumpet." [TFWS #2020]

Praise the Lord with the sound of trumpet,
praise the Lord with the harp and lute,
praise the Lord with the gentle sounding flute.

Praise the Lord in the field and forest,
praise the Lord in the city square,
praise the Lord anytime and anywhere.

Praise the Lord in the wind and sunshine,
praise the Lord in the dark of night,
praise the Lord in the rain or snow or in the morning light.

Praise the Lord in the deepest valley,
praise the Lord on the highest hill,
praise the Lord, never let your voice be still.

Praise the Lord with the crashing cymbal,
praise the Lord with the pipe and string,
praise the Lord with the joyful songs you sing.

Praise the Lord on a weekday morning,
praise the Lord on a Sunday noon,
praise the Lord by the light of sun or moon.

Praise the Lord in the time of sorrow,
praise the Lord in the time of joy,
praise the Lord in the every moment, nothing let your praise destroy.

Praise the Lord in the peace and quiet,
praise the Lord in your work or play,
praise the Lord every where in every way!

Opening Prayer:
Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Silence.

Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Scripture Reading:
A reading from the New Testament (2 Timothy 3)

Remember that there will be difficult times in the last days. 2 People will be selfish, greedy, boastful, and conceited; they will be insulting, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, and irreligious; they will be unkind, merciless, slanderers, violent, and fierce; they will hate the good; they will be treacherous, reckless, and swollen with pride; they will love pleasure rather than God; they will hold to the outward form of our religion, but reject its real power. Keep away from such people. Some of them go into people's houses and gain control over weak women who are burdened by the guilt of their sins and driven by all kinds of desires, women who are always trying to learn but who can never come to know the truth. As Jannes and Jambres were opposed to Moses, so also these people are opposed to the truth—people whose minds do not function and who are failures in the faith. But they will not get very far, because everyone will see how stupid they are. That is just what happened to Jannes and Jambres.

But you have followed my teaching, my conduct, and my purpose in life; you have observed my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, 11 my persecutions, and my sufferings. You know all that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the terrible persecutions I endured! But the Lord rescued me from them all. Everyone who wants to live a godly life in union with Christ Jesus will be persecuted; and evil persons and impostors will keep on going from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived themselves. But as for you, continue in the truths that you were taught and firmly believe. You know who your teachers were, and you remember that ever since you were a child, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living, so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed.

Silence

This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Searching the Scriptures: A Means of Grace

In the eighteenth century John Wesley began what came to be known as the Methodist movement, a spiritual renewal movement in the Church of England, a church of which Wesley was an ordained minister. The Methodist movement would evolve into the Methodist Church after Wesley’s death. The Methodist societies whose formation Wesley had encouraged became licensed chapels, congregations that were independent of the Church of England, and which embraced the doctrine and practices that Wesley had espoused in his preaching and writing. In the United States the Methodist Church has several different expressions. The largest is the United Methodist Church.

To foster the spiritual growth of those who joined the early Methodist societies Wesley established three general rules that all members of these societies were expected to observe. The first was to do no harm to anyone and to avoid all forms of evil. The second was to do good to all people, particularly to their fellow believers, their brothers and sisters in Christ. The third was to engage in the means of grace. The means of grace are ways that God works in us, quickening, strengthen, and confirming faith so that God’s grace spreads through our lives, is present in every part of our lives, and spreads from our lives to the lives of others, to the lives of those around us. They are outward signs, words, and actions which God has ordered to happen and which God has appointed for this purpose.

The means of grace are NOT works by which we earn God’s grace. God’s grace cannot be unearned. But they are ways that God shows his merciful kindness toward us and by which God exercises his divine influence upon us.

In employing the means of grace, we open our hearts and minds to the infinite supply of grace that God provides us and take advantage of the provision that God has made for us. Our ability to benefit from the grace that we receive from God is itself a gift from God. God gives us that gift, not because we deserve it or are entitled to it. God gives that gift to us because God is who God is.

Among the means of grace is what Wesley described as “searching the Scriptures,” based upon a verse in the Gospel of John, John 5: 39: “You study the Scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life. And these very Scriptures speak about me!”

What exactly did Wesley mean by “searching the Scriptures?” First, he meant hearing passages of the Bible read. Wesley took seriously what the apostle Paul wrote about faith coming by hearing God’s Word, as did other Anglican clergymen before him.

In Wesley’s day a devote family might gather in the evening and a parent or one of the older children read a passage from the Bible while everyone listened. A large segment of the English population, however, was illiterate. Members of a Methodist society who were unable to read might gather at the home of a member who was able to read, and this member would read a passage of the Bible for the benefit of those present. One of the things the early Methodists did was to start their own schools as well as Sunday schools to teach adults and children to read so they could read the Bible for themselves.

In Wesley’s day schoolteachers and private tutors were also responsible for the religious instruction of their pupils. They might read a passage of Scripture to their charges or have one of the older children read the passage. One could not become a schoolteacher or private tutor unless licensed by the Church of England. This law would be changed to permit members of licensed chapels to teach and tutor but teachers and tutors were still expected to give their pupils religious instruction. When I was boy in England, every school day began with a Bible reading and prayers.

Today we might listen to an audio recording of a Bible reading played on our laptop, tablet, or phone.

Second, Wesley meant reading the Bible ourselves and reading the Bible to others. Wesley himself read and studied the Bible for two or more hours every morning. It was the first thing that he did every day, rising before the cock crowed to do so. Wesley practiced what he preached and taught.

A practice that I recommend is that when you read the Bible, read it aloud and not silently. In this way you hear God’s Word as well as read it. This is a very old practice going back to the early days of Christian monasticism. When we read aloud, we read more slowly and consequently have more time to comprehend and digest what we are reading. We both hear God’s Word and read it. When we read silently, we are apt to skim over what we are reading.

I also recommend reading a passage a second time and a third time. Each time you read, something that you did not previously notice may be drawn to your attention. This too is an old practice and comes from the method of reading and meditating on the Bible known as Lectio Divina.

Third, Wesley meant meditating upon what we heard and/or read. We think about the passage or the verse and what it tells us about God, about Jesus, and about humanity. We give serious thought to how it might apply to ourselves. Meditating upon Scripture ca be compared to holding up a jewel to the light and turning the jewel in our had so the light strikes each facet of the jewel in turn. We see the jewel differently each time we turn it. Meditating upon a particular passage or verse of Scripture helps us not only understand it better but also to assimilate what it teaches.

Wesley recognized that God works through our hearing, reading, and mediating upon Scripture to reshape our thoughts and our way of thinking, renewing our minds, as Paul put it.

In his sermon, “The Means of Grace," Wesley draws our attention to what Paul draws to Timothy’s attention in this evening’s New Testament reading. Scripture is good for “teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living.” What we need to know for our salvation and to live a holy life, a life pleasing and acceptable to God, is found in the Bible. We do not need to look elsewhere.

In our personal reading and study of Scripture I offer three suggestions. The first suggestion is to let Jesus be our guide too Scripture and interpreter of Scripture. As well as being our Savior and Lord, Jesus is also our Teacher and Exemplar. The Holy Spirit that he promised to send his disciples and to whom we look to illuminate the Scriptures for us is the Spirit of Jesus. It makes sense then to see the Scriptures through Jesus as we see things through a pocket lens or magnify glass, to see the Scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, through Jesus’ message and teaching.

The second suggestion is to treat the Scriptures as a meeting place with God. This means looking at the Bible as more than a collection of writings that have been gathered together over the course of several centuries, more than human reflections upon the divine, but as a way God makes himself present and known to us, a way that God opens his mind to us, reveals his thoughts to us. As Jesus himself pointed to the attention of his disciples, “for God everything is possible.”

Because we do not fully understand the way God works, because God does not manifest himself in the ways that we would like him to evince himself, we are apt to take a diminished view of God or to question God’s existence altogether. But if we look at the history of the human race and the thorny problems that even the best of our scientists has yet to fully understand, much less solve, it is evident that there are limits to what the human mind can grasp and we know far less about the world around us than we think we do. There is much that we do not know and which we may never know. Therefore, it behooves us to keep an open mind not only to God existence but also to God’s ability to do things that are humanly impossible or which we have not seen so far in nature.

Whether we are listening to the Scriptures read, reading them ourselves, or meditating upon a particular passage or verse, let us not forget that the Bible is a gift of God’s grace to us. It not only contains an account of God’s relationship with one people, the people of Israel, but also an account of God’s love for all humankind. It tells us how God was present in Jesus of Nazareth, reconciling not just the Jews but all peoples to himself. It shows us the path to everlasting life, a life that begins in this life and continues in the life to come.

When we open the pages of the Bible and start to read, we open a door and step across its threshold into an antechamber where God is waiting to welcome us. We may not realize it but God has been gently and quietly urging us to meet him there.

This leads to my third suggestion. Approach reading the Bible with a positive attitude. Some folks will read the Bible, looking for inconsistencies, seeming contradictions, factual errors, and things that they do not like. They approach the Bible with a negative attitude and this attitude colors what they read. It is not surprising that they find fault with what they read. Rather look for God’s hesed, God’s “completely undeserved kindness and generosity,” God’s faithfulness, God’s compassion, God’s mercifulness, God’s forgiveness, God’s grace, The joy of childless women who conceive. The joy of a captive people free to return to their homeland. The joy of a leper whose skin disease is healed. The joy of parents who dead child is restored to life. The joy of Mary who discovers the man whom she mistakes for a gardener to be her risen Lord. I believe that when we approach reading the Bible in this way, we will come away with a better idea of what God is telling us through its pages.

As we come to know God better in the Bible, we also come to know God better in our own lives and the world around us. As well as being a door into God’s presence, the Bible also gives us a broader perspective of the world, a world in which God is present and active even though we may not be able to perceive God with our senses—to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel God. God is not watching us remotely from a distance but is on the move in the world. God does not regard us with indifference but takes a benevolent interest in our lives.

Silence

Hymn of Response:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Bryan Jeffery Leech’s “We Are God’s People.” [TFWS # 2220]

1 We are God's people the chosen of the Lord
Born of His Spirit established by His Word
Our cornerstone is Christ alone
And strong in Him we stand
O let us live transparently
And walk heart to heart and hand in hand

2 We are God's loved one, the Bride of Christ, our Lord,
For we have known it, the love of God outpoured.
Now let us learn how to return the gift of love once given;
O let us share each joy and care
And live with a zeal that pleases Heaven.

3 We are the Body of which the Lord is Head,
Called to obey Him, now risen from the dead.
He wills us be a family diverse, yet truly one;
O let us give our gifts to God
And so shall His work on earth be done.

4. We are a Temple, the Spirit's dwelling place,
Formed in great weakness, a cup to hold God's grace.
We die alone, for on its own
Each ember loses fire;
Yet joined in one the flame burns on
To give warmth and light and to inspire.

Concerns and Prayers:
The following is prayed, during which any person may offer a brief prayer of intercession or petition.

After each prayer, the leader may conclude: God of mercy and all may respond: Hear our prayer.

Together, let us pray

for the people of this congregation...

for those who suffer and those in trouble...

for the concerns of this local community...

for the world, its peoples, and its leaders...

for the earth you have given to our care…

for the Church universal—its leaders, its members, and its mission...

in communion with the saints...

Accept our prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught
us to pray,

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 trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.

Closing Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Natalie Sleeth’s “Go Ye, Go Ye into the World.” [TFWS # 2239]

Go ye, go ye into the world
And make disciples of all the nations
Go ye go ye into the world
And I will be with you there

Go ye go, ye into the world
And take the Gospel to all the people
Go ye go ye into the world
And I will be with you there

Go ye, go ye into the world
And tell the story to all the believers
Go ye go ye into the world
And I will be with you there

Benediction:
May the God of peace equip us with everything good for
doing his will, working in us what is pleasing to him,
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.