God says in Isaiah 58:6-7
Isn’t this the fast I choose:
releasing wicked restraints,
untying the ropes of a yoke,
setting free the mistreated,
& breaking every yoke?
Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry
& bringing the homeless poor into your house,
covering the naked when you see them,
and not hiding from your own family?
The purpose of Lent is to be a season of fasting, self-denial, Christian growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. Lent, which comes from the Teutonic (Germanic) word for springtime, can be viewed as a spiritual spring cleaning: a time for taking spiritual inventory and then cleaning out those things which hinder our corporate and personal relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to him. (John Birch)
May these 40 days before Easter be a time of spiritual spring cleaning, of removing what hinders and renewing what facilitates our relationships with God, the world, and one another.
The Worship of God for First Sunday in Lent
Passing the Peace
Say to one another, “May the peace of Christ be with you.”
And reply, “And, also with you.”
Invitation to Worship
Listen to the invitation and/or read below.
God does not remember us
according to our sins and wrongdoing.
God remembers us
according to God’s own compassion and faithful love!
God teaches us God’s paths
and leads us in God’s truth.
God saves us.
We put our hope in God all day long!
Opening Prayer
Listen to the prayer and pray along, or offer your own prayer to God.
Creator God
the sun, moon, and stars
shower us with light
yet clouds form and vanish
the earth turns
and the light changes
Redeeming God, you are the true light
constant, never dimming
stable, never wavering
anchored, never shifting
eternal, never ceasing
Sustaining God
shower us with your light
shatter the darkness
clear the clouds
sharpen our vision
so we might see and live
so as to love you better
and live for your glory.
Amen.
Song of Praise
We Will Walk With God
Words: Eswatini Traditional (trans. J.L. Bell)
Tune: SIZOHAMBA (Eswatini Traditional)
Here are the lyrics in Swazi:
Sizohamba naye
wo wo wo,
Sizohamba naye. (Repeat)
Ngomhla wenjabula
sizohamba naye. (Repeat)
“Sizohamba naye” means “We will go with him.”
and “Ngomhla wenjabula” means “On a happy day.”
Now, here is how to pronounce the Swazi words:
See-zoh-hahm-bah nah-yay,
woh woh woh,
see-zoh-hahm-bah nah-yay,
see-zoh-hahm-bah nah-yay.
Ngahm-hlah wen-jah-boo-lah,
see-zoh-hahm-bah nah-yay
see-zoh-hahm-bah nah-yay
Listen, sing along, and smile!
Sizohamba naye
wo wo wo,
Sizohamba naye. (Repeat)
Ngomhla wenjabula
sizohamba naye. (Repeat)
We will walk with God, my brothers,
we will walk with God.
We will walk with God, my sisters,
we will walk with God.
We will go rejoicing,
till the kingdom has come. (Repeat)
Psalm 25:1-10
Common English Bible
Listen to the Psalm and/or read below.
I offer my life to you, Lord.
2 My God, I trust you.
Please don’t let me be put to shame!
Don’t let my enemies rejoice over me!
3 For that matter,
don’t let anyone who hopes in you
be put to shame;
instead, let those who are treacherous without excuse be put to shame.
4 Make your ways known to me, Lord;
teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth—teach it to me—
because you are the God who saves me.
I put my hope in you all day long.
6 Lord, remember your compassion and faithful love—
they are forever!
7 But don’t remember the sins of my youth or my wrongdoing.
Remember me only according to your faithful love
for the sake of your goodness, Lord.
8 The Lord is good and does the right thing;
he teaches sinners which way they should go.
9 God guides the weak to justice,
teaching them his way.
10 All the Lord’s paths are loving and faithful
for those who keep his covenant and laws.
Song of Praise
My Soul in Stillness Waits
Author: Marty Haugen
Tune: O LORD OF LIGHT, OUR ONLY HOPE OF GLORY
For you, O Lord, my soul in stillness waits,
Truly my hope is in you.
O Lord of Light, our only hope of glory,
Your radiance shines in all who look to you,
Come, light the hearts of all in dark and shadow. (Refrain)
O Spring of Joy, rain down upon our spirits,
Our thirsty hearts are yearning for your Word,
Come, make us whole, be comfort to our hearts. (Refrain)
O Root of Life, implant your seed within us,
And in your advent draw us all to you,
Our hope reborn in dying and in rising. (Refrain)
O Key of Knowledge, guide us in our pilgrimage,
We ever seek, yet unfulfilled remain,
Open to us the pathway of your peace. (Refrain)
Come, let us bow before the God who made us,
let every heart be opened to the Lord,
for we are all the people of God’s hand. (Refrain)
Here we shall meet the maker of the heavens,
Creator of the mountains and the seas,
Lord of the stars, and present to us no. (Refrain)
Lenten Prayer
Listen to the prayer and pray along, or offer your own prayer to God.
Let us pray,
God, we have fallen short of the life you created for us.
We may confess to you what we have or have not done,
but we don’t take responsibility.
Instead we believe it isn’t our fault
or we couldn’t have done anything different.
On the other hand,
sometime we only apologize when everyone else does the same.
But you are God.
You know us better than we know ourselves.
So instead of saying to you,
“I’m sorry” or “I apologize” or “I regret.”
we humble ourselves and ask,
Reveal to us, God
the extent of what we have done.
Provoke us, God
until we understand the hurt.
Inspire us, God
to see how it’s possible
to live by your principles.
Transform us, God
holding us tight until we believe
in fresh starts
and the value of trying again.
silent prayer and meditation
Words of Assurance and Hope
God loves us.
We do not need to be afraid.
Jesus said,
“I am the light of the world.”
“Stand up and do not be afraid.”
“You are my friends. I am always with you.”
Amen.
Anthem
Steal Away
Arranger: Malcolm Archer
Tune: Traditional
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus.
Steal away, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.
My Lord, he calls me, he calls me by the thunder;
The trumpet sounds within-a my soul;
I ain’t got long to stay here.
Green trees a-bending, poor sinner stands a-trembling;
The trumpet sounds within-a my soul;
I ain’t got long to stay here.
Genesis 9:8-17
Common English Bible
Listen to the scripture and/or read below.
God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “I am now setting up my covenant with you, with your descendants, 10 and with every living being with you—with the birds, with the large animals, and with all the animals of the earth, leaving the ark with you. 11 I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut off by floodwaters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 God said, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I am drawing up between me and you and every living thing with you, on behalf of every future generation. 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being among all the creatures. Floodwaters will never again destroy all creatures. 16 The bow will be in the clouds, and upon seeing it I will remember the enduring covenant between God and every living being of all the earth’s creatures.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I have set up between me and all creatures on earth.”
Reflection
Rev. Jeffrey Vickery
Listen to the reflection and/or read below
The season of Lent began a few days ago on Ash Wednesday. I have come to think of these seven weeks leading up to Easter as unique. The Christian observance of Lent is unlike the hopeful anticipation and joy of Christmas, or the glory and praise of Easter. Lent asks us to focus on the limits of our humanity, but not in a way that is hurtful, shameful, or false. During this season, our faith draws us into a healthy and honest appraisal of ourselves, without tearing us down or beating us up. Every year as the winter landscape turns grey and brown and cold, Lent hands us a mirror into which we see ourselves honestly. Far too often someone else has told us what we see in that mirror, and they use their words that they have presumed are God’s words to describe what they see – harmful words that paint much too dire a picture of God’s children made in God’s image. Pastors and preachers and parents and partners have all pronounced us – totally depraved, sinful from birth, incapable of love, bound to original sin and thus incapable of goodness. In short, they have told us we are hell-bound and are deserving of its punishment. These are not the intentions of the season of Lent. Now is not the time to be scared into heaven, or reprimanded for our human limitations, or led to believe bad theology based upon old patriarchal idealism that demeans being human.
The season of Lent is, instead, a reminder that we are God’s children, created in God’s image, yet not God ourselves. We don’t live forever. We can’t do anything we want. We do have the ability to practice self-discipline, or seek to follow God in humility, or show the grace of gentleness, or celebrate the gift of knowing we are limited.
Lent calls us to a re-discovery of the basic truth of our humanity: we are not God, and we are not evil. As God’s good creation we hold a balance between these two poles. We are not God and we are not evil. And yet we often find ourselves pulled toward one or the other of these two extremes. When we manipulate and threaten and control others to our benefit we are presuming that we are the human extension of God’s authority and we have the right to command others. When we live as though we are the ultimate reality of life, as though all others revolve around us, as though we are deserving of all that is right and good beyond what others should have or receive, we are claiming ourselves nearly divine. Likewise, when we pity ourselves, underestimate our goodness, sweep aside the necessity of our life as part of God’s will in the world, we push away from the inspired goodness of the life God has given us. Lent is a season to bring our humanity into its center, balanced between the temptation to act as though we are God and the fall into a misappropriated view of human sin. We are not God and we should stop acting like it. We are not evil, and we should let our goodness lead us into a right relationship with God and others. For the next seven weeks, we are called to return to this human center.
Our story this morning comes from the end of the story of Noah. Although we sanitize this biblical masterpiece with cute pairs of our favorite animals and cheery rainbows that decorate our minds, in many ways the story of Noah is problematic. God looks at people and feels regret. That’s not the kind of assessment I want God to pronounce over me. Yet in Noah’s day the intent of people had turned to something other than goodness, or holiness, or righteousness. When the Noah story begins in Genesis 6, we are not given a description of what the people are doing wrong, only a clear declaration from God that their thoughts and intentions were only on sin. As Genesis 6:4 says, “… humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and … every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil.” And so one answer … destroy all creation. Maybe I should end that sentence with a question mark. Destroy all creation? I told you it was problematic. It’s also no surprise that some people read this story as an example of what God is secretly planning for us: create them, regret having created them, and then kill them all. But don’t be misled. That’s not the point of the Noah story.
Like other stories in Genesis, these stories are intended to communicate a certain meaning rather than facts. I’m certain that a major destructive flood did in fact effect a widespread area of the ancient Middle East. The Egyptians, Sumerians, and Akkadians (just to name a few) all had a story of an epic flood that involved their god. Some remarkable flood did in fact rain upon that part of the Earth at some point in history. At the same time, the parts of the story that are exaggerated are in fact used to make a point rather than to be taken literally. No, not “every kind of animal” was on the ark. No, the waters did not cover all the mountains on all the earth with 23 feet of water. No, not every single living creature on Earth was killed by this one flood. These exaggerations are used to highlight the meaning of the story, not the details. If we use this story as a prop for the kind of fundamentalism that must have a literal interpretation of every word of the Bible, then we will miss the meaning of it. More directly, when the Noah story becomes a bit player in the argument for creationism against evolution, it runs the risk of completely misunderstanding the biblical intent and ends up using it to argue for something that the Bible never intended. We must consider both what the story says and what it means, and do so in a way consistent with its original message and God’s divine nature.
I don’t claim to have all the insight into the Noah story, but on this Sunday in Lent, I find these three meanings in Genesis that I think are worth our prayerful consideration.
First, the most important meaning is found in the overall movement of the story. Through Noah, his family, the animals, and the flood, God un-creates Eden, preserves a faithful remnant of that original creation, and re-establishes the world with a new covenant. More succinctly, God’s purposes are always to create, re-create, and restore relationships with humanity. While the flood story follows this pattern, so does an individual human life. We are born, but not in Eden. We are pronounced as “very good” (see Genesis 1:31) when we are created by God and born. Yet we all lose our sinless created state. We all choose disobedience at some point. The end of the story could simply be destruction. God could become angry and just kill us when we sin. But the biblical story of God’s relationship with humanity is not “be perfect or be killed.” Story after story in the Bible shows that God’s intent is to create, forgive, and restore – to create, forgive, and restore – and then to do it again – create, forgive, and restore. Noah’s story uses water as a central character in the story to illustrate this idea. What begins as a means of destruction (the flood waters) becomes transformed from a vehicle for death into an image of birth (as in the issuing of water from a mother’s womb before a baby is born). We humans are re-born by God through the water. God gives birth to us again. This mothering of God that brings us into life and also re-creates our life is consistently present in the biblical stories. There’s no “three strikes and you’re out” with God. When Jesus said to “forgive seventy times seven” times, he was asking us to treat each other with the kind of patient forgiveness that God extends. The real surprise in the Noah story may not be enormity of the flood, but that God does not give up on us. In fact, when humans were at their worst in all of human history, God continues to give life.
Second, Another crucial meaning I find in the Noah story is that all creation is affected by human sin. Not just the people who were continually evil, but the animals and the Earth is affected by the flood in Genesis. In a more positive perspective, not just eight humans were saved on the ark, so was creation – bird and animal, domestic and wild. It is not difficult, then, to come to the conclusion that this story tells us that all creation is loved by God, and the consequences of human sin take a toll on the non-human created world as well. If human thoughts are always evil, then we will exercise that same evil in our relationships with the environment, with animals, with creation as a whole. It seems to me that when Christians take the Noah story seriously alongside our insistent confession that God is Creator of all, then Christianity will be at the forefront of helping the Earth heal from a century of human sinful action against it. It is without a doubt that we are at a tipping point in the human destruction of creation. By one estimate, we are down to nine years’ time in which we must re-program our human sin against of creation before its doom (our doom) is assured. It’s not a stretch, then, to say that our relationship with God’s creation has been sinful, and it must become a central understanding of our faith that the restoration of creation is a matter of faith in God and love for God’s gift of life. Honestly, I think we’re passed the time in which theological “problems” like original sin, or speaking in tongues, or biblical inerrancy take priority. If Christians ignore the detrimental effects we continue to have on God’s creation, then we risk violating God’s law in ways that we willfully ignore. If we don’t repent of our ravaging of the environment during Lent, in this year, on this day, then we risk continuing the evil that seeks to undo God’s goodness in creation.
Third, and finally, the Noah story reminds us that God is in power, but we are responsible. God determines life and death and life again, and those things are beyond us. Yet the Noah story insists that we are responsible for how we live our life, we are called to a goodness that is within our capacity to achieve, we are responsible for the welfare of both the human community and the created world around us. Upon leaving the ark, God makes a new covenant with Noah. God willingly doubles-down on the commitment to sustain human life. Never again will this kind of destruction and flood come our way. Again, like the other portions of the Noah story, it is rich with meaning even if not literal. It means that we can read this new covenant as God’s unwillingness to give up on human goodness despite any past human evil. In popular lingo, it’s time to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps and rise to the moment. God continues to have confidence in our ability to respond and re-enliven our world. God’s not going to magically heal creation for us. God’s not going to unilaterally bring about a healthy human community on our behalf. God’s not going to impose God’s will on our social or political or economic systems and resolve the injustices of our society. We must do these things, and we must do them as part of God’s calling to live in God’s Way. And, we can have the confidence that God thinks we are capable of peaceful, holy, righteous, equitable living. Go and populate the Earth, God says to Noah at the end of the flood. What does God say to us? The same thing. Go and populate the Earth, with justice and mercy.
Just maybe we come to the end of the Noah story, and we can still ooh and aah when we see a rainbow, but also begin to see the colors in the sky as a calling to take responsibility for a just and merciful Earth in a way that brings life to all. And we can do so, as God’s good creation who have been created, re-created, and restored to what God intends for us all.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Thank you, God for constant love.
Please help our church family grow
deeper and deeper in your love. Amen.
Song of Faith
Shades of purple, shades of blue
Text: Carolyn Winfrey Gillette
Tune: DIX (Konker)
Shades of purple, shades of blue, green and yellow, orange, red —
Noah and his family, too, saw the rainbow overhead.
God, Creator, high above you displayed your sign of love.
Soon new life was springing forth, filling land and sea and air.
God, you chose to bless the earth with the promise of your care —
And your promised love extends far beyond our human friends.
In the rainbow, you were clear: every living thing has worth.
You love every creature here on this planet we call Earth.
God, forgive when we destroy gifts from you that bring you joy.
May your church begin to see in that rainbow high above:
We are daily called to be stewards of this world you love.
Since the earth is dear to you, may we treat it kindly, too.
Blessing
Listen to the blessing and/or read below.
Know that the ever-present mystery we name God
is in your past forgiving you,
in your present loving you,
and in your future meeting you.
And may the blessing of the Source of life, love and hope,
the Word of life, compassion and wisdom
and Breath of life, grace and truth
surround, sustain and surprise you,
this day and all your days. Amen
Blest Be the Tie
by John Fawcett
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.
The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
When we are called to part, it gives us inward pain;
but we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
This glorious hope revives our courage by the way;
while each in expectation lives and waits to see the day.
Acknowledgements:
- The words by John Birch are posted on “Prayers for the season of Lent (faithandworship.com).” Accessed February 18, 2021. https://www.faithandworship.com/prayers_Lent.htm.
- The image was retrieved from https://i2.wp.com/www.catholicteacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Lent-prayer-service.png?fit=1000%2C667&ssl=1.
- The call to worship and opening prayer were written by Tonya based on Psalm 25 and James 1:17 respectively. The call to worship is read by Tyler and the opening prayer is offered by Kendall.
- The first song of praise is sung by Mindy, accompanied by Kendall on the djembe.
- Psalm 25 is read by Laura.
- The second song of praise is sung by Mindy; accompanied by Tonya on the piano, Michelle on the guitar, and Emily on the oboe.
- The Lenten prayer was written and is read by Tonya who adapted it from a prayer written by Katherine Fox, “It’s easy to say sorry,” Ruth Burgess, ed., Spring: Liturgical Resources for February, March, and April, Wild Goose Publications, a division of the Iona Community, copyright 2019.
- Steal Away is sung by Ally, Elizabeth, Laura, Michelle, Mindy, and Tonya.
- Shades of purple, shades of blue is played by Tracy on the organ and sung by Mindy.
- The blessing is offered by Jeffrey and comes from “Words of Dismissal and Benediction | The Billabong.” Accessed February 18, 2021. http://thebillabong.info/lectionary/additional-resources/words-of-dismissal-and-benediction.
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-724755. All rights reserved. All writings have been used by permission from the posting sites or authors.
Cullowhee Baptist Church 
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