God's Plan for us?

March 20, 2022 3rd Sunday of Lent God’s Plan for us? Isaiah 55:1-9 Year C Opening Song Welcome Introit Invocation Author of abundance, God of change, we come into this hour with holy expectations. As we travel on our journey of transformation this Lenten season, we know that you are with us. You walk beside us. Your presence surrounds us. Help us to bear fruit as we walk this road. Remind us that you will never leave us nor forsakes us, that your rod and your staff comfort us, that you have prepared a feast for us when all can come and eat. Keep us forever in the path as we worship you in spirit and in truth. Amen. (Rev. Mia McClain) Hymn of Praise Guide Me O thou Great Jehovah UMH 127 Responsive Reading Psalm 63:1-8 UMH 788 Prayer of Confession This is the season of turning. We are called on this journey to turn our lives to the Lord, to turn away from all those things which have harmed us and others; to separate ourselves from actions and attitudes that demean and destroy. It is far too easy for us to sink into the mire of self-pity and self-serving attitudes, wondering why everything isn’t coming our way. We want comfort, contentment, no stress, no struggle. Yet our lives are filled with stress and discontent. We hurt, Lord. We hurt in our bodies and our souls. We hurt in our relationships with others. How we must try your patience! We don’t want to be like this - we want to feel the warmth of your love, the freedom of your spirit, the joy of serving you. Forgive us for our selfishness and stupidity. Heal us. For we ask these things in Jesus’ Name. AMEN. Words of Assurance You are given another chance! God has heard your cries. Turn again to the Lord. Find comfort and strength in God’s eternal love for you. Be healed. AMEN. (Nancy C. Townley) Passing of the Peace Scripture Isaiah 55:1-9 Common English Bible Invitation to the feast 55 All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat! Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk! 2 Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts. 3 Listen and come to me; listen, and you will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful loyalty to David. 4 Look, I made him a witness to the peoples, a prince and commander of peoples. 5 Look, you will call a nation you don’t know, a nation you don’t know will run to you because of the LORD your God, the holy one of Israel, who has glorified you. 6 Seek the LORD when he can still be found; call him while he is yet near. 7 Let the wicked abandon their ways and the sinful their schemes. Let them return to the LORD so that he may have mercy on them, to our God, because he is generous with forgiveness. 8 My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. 9 Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. Anthem Sermon – God’s Plan for us? One of my most endearing childhood memories – was the ice cream truck driving through the neighborhhood. Whenever our household would hear that music, everyone would stop what they were doing and run outside, and somehow come up with the money to buy ice cream. I don’t know if there was an ice cream truck around here, but in Cicero he came every day. I lived across from a elementary school, so as a matter of fact he parked outside my house every day to wait for the kids. It was a good humor truck, and I preferred cones, so I didn’t buy from him all of the time. When I lived in Oak Park, it was the knife sharpener guy. He would drive down the streets and ring his bell in his truck – and if you had dull knives, then you bought them to his truck. If you go to a ball game, it is the peanut vendor who calls out to you. And for a while, you would go downtown Chicago and a street vendor would call out – get your Streetwise newspaper. People have been calling out of our homes and our comfort zones for years – and no matter what they are selling, we come running to spend our money on whatever they have. That is why the prophet Isaiah begins his message in chapter 55 by calling out to us to come. Don’t Spend your money – but bring your appetite. But God is here – come closer. Come says the prophet – listen to the good news. The good news? Usually the good news comes from the gospel and the new testament, and the Hebrew bible gives us a judgement. But here we are with Isaiah giving us the good news – come on, God is here. As a matter of fact, come is God’s favorite phrase in the bible, right behind Do not be afraid. " One time workmen were blasting rock in a quarry. After attaching the fuse and withdrawing to a safe distance, they noticed a three-year-old child wandering in the danger zone. They called to him and waved their arms for him to run away, but he only looked at them with amusement. Then his mother appeared and sized up the situation. She did not run to him nor yell for him to come to her. Instead, she knelt down, opened wide her arms, and smiled for him to come. Instantly, her son ran to her, and when the explosion took place, he was safe in her arms. So God in Christ looks at us with love and with open arms and says to us, "Come." If we respond to this invitation of love, we, too, will escape the explosion of an evil world. Come all who are thirsty, come to the water, all who don’t have any money- come and eat. Isaiah invites us to all of the Lenten practices to bring us closer to God - Isaiah invites us to repent, return, renew and rejoice. Isaiah’s invitation is to seek God while God can still be found. When we listen to the news, we can easily ask where is God in the midst of all that is happening. When we listen, we listen less and less. A search for God is made because we do not see God. A pastor once visited the kindergarten class of his church school. The teacher, in introducing him, explained who he was and what he did, "Children, we have a special guest this morning. Do you know who he is?" One little fellow tentatively answered, "God?" "No," she said, "but he works for God." Then the pastor told about his work. As he started to leave, the same lad called out, "Next time, bring God with you. I’ve never seen him." Many adults could say the same. That is why we need to seek him. Isaiah gives us four reasons to seek God. First of all what all of those other vendors that call out to us to eat, to buy, to consume will not really satisfy us – eventually we will need to buy more. Moreover, we may experience an emptiness in our lives. We are empty of food and drink, and we do not know where to go to get filled. One time, Marge wrote to Ann Landers: "I’m forty-four, husband same age. We get along okay - no drinking, no gambling, no skirt chasing. He has a good job and our home is paid for. Our four children are healthy and normal. They do well in school and the three older ones have never caused us any trouble. So why am I writing? Because my life is blah. Something is missing. It’s like stew without salt. I feel a certain emptiness. What is it?" How can a person have so much and so many blessings and yet feel unfulfilled? Yet, many of us are in the same position as Marge whose life is "Blah"! Life has lost its zip, its excitement. We want true life, something worthwhile to do and live for. Many of us are like the Easter chocolate bunnies - hollow inside. Second, it is time to turn away from the ways of the sinning world. One Pastor put it this way – the devil takes visa, but the master’s card the bible leads us a different way. Third God shows us true love “What’s that?” I asked. She said, “You mentioned in your talk that God loves me. Do you believe that? Because I don’t believe anyone has ever loved me. My dad left me and my mother abused me, and I have gone from one institution to another. I’ve been sexually abused, neglected, and you are telling me that God loves me?” “That’s right,” I said. “God loves you!” She paused for a moment as tears began rolling down her cheeks. Then she said simply, “Well, if God loves me, then nothing else matters. If God loves me, that’s all that matters.” Fourth – our ways are not God ways I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew, He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; It was not I that found, O Savior true. No, I was found of Thee. • Forgive, when you feel like condemning. • Accept when you feel like blaming. • Love when you feel like hating. • Give more when you feel like quitting. • Return when you feel like running. Perhaps some of you hearing this sermon feel like I am writing directly to you. Maybe you have accepted every invitation this world has to offer and it has been like salt water to your thirsty soul, making you thirstier than ever. Perhaps some of you have attended church your whole life yet never really have come to grips with the love of God. Oh, you have heard all about it before but never really allowed yourself to experience it. Perhaps some of you have accepted The Invitation before, but now your relationship with God is stale and you need to taste the fresh Bread of Life again. The good news is that God’s banquet of blessings has been prepared, and you are invited! There is a place at God’s table reserved for you. A special engraved invitation written by a pierced hand is yours. Isn’t it time for you to accept it? There are people like those in Zaire who hunger for spiritual food which they find in the Scriptures. Some years ago a shipment of 750 Bibles was sent to a merchant to be sold at three dollars each. With the average annual income of only eighty-five dollars, the people literally broke down the door of the merchant before he opened for business - just to buy a Bible! Would that we all were hungry for spiritual food found in the Word of God! "Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters ..." CSS Publishing Co., Inc., Old Truths For New Times, by John R. Brokhoff So, lets face it. No matter where we are in life, no matter what we are doing, we can’t escape the call to come. It may not be the ice cream truck, but it is the television, it is social media, it is the bright lights of restaurants and stores, it is the need to go shopping at the mall to pick somethings up, it is the news, it is our family, our friends, it is our needs, our fears, our concerns. There is always something that says come. It is never ending. Now is a good time to listen to the call of Isaiah to come to God. In the midst of it all God is calling. This morning we heard the church bells calling us to come. Lent is a call to come Worship and songs are a call to come. Come to a place where we will finally be fed and satisfied, where we will have meaning, where we will know true love, where what we gain will be eternal. Where are the places that you can go in your life to find God? The church, the bible, in social settings, in prayer, in nature. God speaks to us in so many ways – This lent we are invited to come - Come to the ways of God. Let us pray……. Prayer Living God, whose son Jesus conquered death and lives forever, giving us cause for hope we hold before you those places and situations in our world which seem lifeless and hopeless. We pray for those who go without or have to pay inflated prices which they can ill afford in order to feed their families. We pray for those in positions of authority and responsibility. We pray for those who feel their voice and plight is ignored by the world. We pray for your church. We pray that you would fill all in our churches with the vision to see where the barren parts of our church and community life might bear fruit. We pray for those who are ill, or recovering from illness. We pray for those who are dying and those caring for them. We pray for those who are living with loss and grief. We pray for ourselves. Living God we pray that you bring life to the areas of our own lives which are lacking life and hope. We bring you our anger and frustrations, we bring you our fears and our lack of courage, we bring you our anxieties and stress. And we ask you to fill us again with your presence, peace and hope that through our prayers and our actions, relying on you to strengthen and encourage us, we might bring your light to a barren world waiting to burst into life. Amen. (Christine Dutton) Lord’s Prayer Stewardship Moment Jesus is a master story-teller. Often he spoke in parables, using everyday situations to help those listening comprehend more about God. In Luke 13, Jesus tells of a man with a barren fig tree in his vineyard. That man was annoyed, and eager to get the tree cut down and carted away. However, the one who cared for this tree and the others in the vineyard, pleaded for enough more time and an opportunity to provide manure (“rich dirt” some folks say) for the tree. Do you recognize our church in this parable? Are we a fully fruitful tree, bearing fruit for the world? Or would you see we’re more like this fig-less tree? What about if we each ask the question of our own life? As individual “trees” in Christ’s vineyard, do we – do I – bear fruit? With thanks for the many ways we can be nurtured – and we can nurture – within the life of this congregation. (Name a few specific ways which can be in your own congregation) Let those who are bearing fruit share our morning offering as a symbol of our fruitfulness. And let those who are currently without fruit commit to seeking ways to be made fruitful. For one and for all, may the Master Gardener strengthen each of us for active and fruitful ministries in the days to come. Prayer of Thanksgiving All things come from you, God of all Creation. Please receive these gifts as signs of our desire to be fruitful and productive parts of your created world. Do not cut us down, but offer us opportunities to be proclaimers of life through Jesus, in whose name we pray, AMEN (Center for Faith and Giving) Hymn of Dedication Balm in Gilead UMH 375 Announcements Closing Prayer for Facebook I invite you, in the name of Christ, to observe a holy Lent by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by works of love, and by reading and meditating on the Word of God. May the grace, hope, peace and love of God our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer be with you now and always. Amen. (Terri McDowell Ott) Community Time Benediction Turn to the Lord, for God is go Repent of your sins and find God's forgiveness Go forth as new creatures, able to serve and quick to love. (Erik Alsgaard) Choral Response Prelude Children’s Time Eat What Is Good By Lois Parker Edstrom Suggestions: Display various foods as a part of the lesson and allow the children taste, if appropriate to your situation. What are your favorite foods? Pizza? Hamburgers? Ice cream? Chocolate pudding? Cookies? These foods are fun to eat and it’s okay to enjoy them once in a while, but our food choices should also include lots of fruits and vegetables, milk and yogurt, good cereals and breads. Have you ever tried a peanut butter and banana sandwich, sweet potato chips, or a crisp, juicy apple with a wedge of cheese? Delicious!! There are so many tasty foods to enjoy. The prophet, Isaiah in the Bible speaks about God’s message and it is this: “Listen diligently (carefully) to me, and eat… that which is good” (55:2). God is not speaking about food, but about his words of wisdom. As we read the Bible and spend quiet time praying and thinking about God, we learn God’s lessons. We learn about good choices, such as how to honor God, how to respect ourselves, how to treat others with kindness. We learn about things that help us have a good life. God’s ways are good ways. They help you become a loving, thoughtful, and healthy person. God says, “Listen diligently to me, and eat…that which is good…” Eat good food and fill your hearts with the goodness of God’s words. Scripture quotations from the World English Bible Copyright 2012, Richard Niell Donovan Additional Illustrations The Master's Card entitles us to . . . Be wild. Be weird. Be predictably unpredictable. Do not, under any circumstances, be normal. It's the Devil who takes Visa, and shops until the hooves drop. The Master's Card is the only way to fill your spirit with the joy, the abundant life that God has promised. ChristianGlobe Networks, Collected Sermons, by Leonard Sweet