2024 Ash Wednesday (2)

Prelude Instrumental https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A7tkSuo4PI

Greeting................................................................................................ Pastor Lauri

Welcome and thank you for joining our Ash Wednesday service. Ash Wednesday is thought by many to be a Catholic tradition, however, it has a long tradition and, in our generation, has made a comeback in protestant circles. Though Ash Wednesday is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, sprinkling oneself with ashes has been a mark of sorrow for sin from Bible times.

In the Protestant tradition, it is important to regularly examine our lives and take time to repent. Ash Wednesday is by no means an obligation; however, it is a special way of preparing ourselves for the Lent season. In taking time to observe Ash Wednesday and Lent, we slow down and prepare our hearts for a greater appreciation of Easter.

To help make this time more personal, I have used mostly the Message Bible version. It is unique as Eugene Peterson translates these passages in a way more like we would say them and in a way that is more relevant to our culture and era. As you arrived today, you were given a packet of materials for your use throughout Lent. There is a flyer explaining the idea of the ashes and their use in the Ash Wednesday service. There are a couple flyers regarding the call to fast and safe ways to fast if you choose to fast food. Fasting can be a variety of things, not just food. Fasting has always been a part of the Lent practice. However, let me stress, fasting is between you and God. It is not something to be exhibited among people. In humble obedience we fast for a greater connection with God. Keep in mind that during Lent, you fast six days a week but Sundays are celebratory, and you do not fast on Sunday. Another item you will find in your packet is a devotional. This devotional provides the theme we will follow this Lent season. There is also a token to carry with you or to place in a key location to help draw your mind to Lent. It can also be a reminder of your fast. Use it as you wish. On Thursday of Holy Week, what we call Maundy Thursday, I have an event planned for that day with more items from this theme for your use. I will give greater details on that as we get closer, but you may wish to mark off an hour on that day now to reserve it. That event will be self-directed, so you can pick the time during that day that you wish to come and participate. It is a unique prayer event. {Prayer for the service}

Reflection Video

Worship Songs

• "Here In Your Presence" "Lead Me to the Cross"

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17a................................................................................... Pam Hardy

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17a [MSG]

Our first scripture reading tonight is from the Old Testament. Hear the words of the prophet Joel:

Blow the ram’s horn trumpet in Zion!

Trumpet the alarm on my holy mountain!

Shake the country up!

God’s Judgment’s on its way—the Day’s almost here!

A black day! A Doomsday!

Clouds with no silver lining.

Like dawn light moving over the mountains,

A huge army is coming.

There’s never been anything like it

And never will be again.

Change your life…it’s not too late—

God’s personal Message!—

“Come back to me and really mean it!

Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!”

Change your life, not just your clothes.

Come back to God, your God.

And here’s why: God is kind and merciful.

He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot,

This most patient God, extravagant in love,

Always ready to cancel catastrophe.

Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now,

Maybe he’ll turn around and show pity.

Maybe, when all’s said and done,

There’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!

Blow the ram’s horn trumpet in Zion!

Declare a day of repentance, a holy fast day.

Call a public meeting.

Get everyone there. Consecrate the congregation.

Make sure the elders come,

But bring in the children, too, even the nursing babies,

Even men and women on their honeymoon—

Interrupt them and get them there.

Between Sanctuary entrance and altar,

Let the priests, God’s servants, weep tears of repentance.

Let them intercede: “Have mercy, God, on your people!

Don’t abandon your heritage to contempt.”

{a brief pause}

This is the word of the Lord.

He Will Lift You Up, James 4:8...........................................................Mark DeViney

Isaiah 58…………............................................................................... Mark DeViney

Isaiah 58 [MSG]

Our second reading tonight is from the prophet Isaiah. Listen carefully to his admonition to the returning exiles that we do not make the same mistakes.

“Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout! Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives, face my family Jacob with their sins! They’re busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people— law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’ and love having me on their side. But they also complain, ‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’

“Well, here’s why:

“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit. You drive your employees much too hard. You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight. You fast, but you swing a mean fist. The kind of fasting you do won’t get your prayers off the ground. Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, God, would like?

“This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

“If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.

“If you watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’ making money, running here and there— Then you’ll be free to enjoy God! Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all. I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.” Yes! God says so!

{a brief pause}

This is the word of the Lord.

Message.................................................................................................. Pastor Lauri

The Dust Bowl, also known as "the Dirty Thirties," began in 1930 and lasted for about a decade. Severe drought hit the Midwest and southern Great Plains, and massive dust storms began in 1931. By 1934, an estimated 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming, while another 125 million acres was rapidly losing its topsoil. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.

The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939-1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.

Regular rainfall returned to the region by the end of 1939, bringing the Dust Bowl years to a close.

In Joel chapter one, we find a plague that was every bit as devastating to Israel’s economy and physical security. However, where the dust bowl of the 1930’s was caused by drought and over worked land, this one was caused by drought and locusts. They came in swarms, and they birthed successive generations of locusts. Let us look at what Joel has to say about it.

Joel 1:1–12MSG

1 God’s Message to Joel son of Pethuel: 2 Attention, elder statesmen! Listen closely, everyone, whoever and wherever you are! Have you ever heard of anything like this? Has anything like this ever happened before—ever? 3 Make sure you tell your children, and your children tell their children, And their children their children. Don’t let this message die out.

4 What the chewing locust left, the gobbling locust ate; What the gobbling locust left, the munching locust ate; What the munching locust left, the chomping locust ate. 5

Sober up, you drunks! Get in touch with reality—and weep! Your supply of booze is cut off. You’re on the wagon, like it or not.

6 My country’s being invaded by an army invincible, past numbering, Teeth like those of a lion, fangs like those of a tiger. 7 It has ruined my vineyards, stripped my orchards, And clear-cut the country. The landscape’s a moonscape. 8 Weep like a young virgin dressed in black, mourning the loss of her fiancé.

9 Without grain and grapes, worship has been brought to a standstill in the Sanctuary of God. The priests are at a loss. God’s ministers don’t know what to do. 10The fields are sterile. The very ground grieves. The wheat fields are lifeless, vineyards dried up, olive oil gone.

11 Dirt farmers, despair! Grape growers, wring your hands! Lament the loss of wheat and barley. All crops have failed. 12 Vineyards dried up, fig trees withered, Pomegranates, date palms, and apple trees— deadwood everywhere! And joy is dried up and withered in the hearts of the people.

This is a grim description equal to the 1930’s. In each case, men contributed to this problem. In the 1930’s, the drought was made worse by the overworking of the land. In fact, in the Bible God gave instructions of how to use the land. Men did not follow God’s instructions and the overuse stripped the land of the nutrients it needed to retain any kind of vegetation. The result, the topsoil, so important to good farming blew away in the wind.

For Israel, the problem was also from a lack of obedience to God. God had promised to bless them if they obeyed Him, but He also promised to bring upon them curses if they did not. I encourage you to look at God’s blessings and curses stated in Deut 28. Here are a sampling of God’s actions when Israel did not obey.

Deuteronomy 28:15,20-24, 42 NIV

15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:… 20 The Lordwill send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. 21 The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lordwill strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lordwill turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed…42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.

As we read Joel, his cry to the elders, the drunks, the priests and the people give us a picture of people dumbfounded, standing around not sure what to do with all of this. How do you stop locusts? However, Joel understands that this is no ordinary event, but an act of God’s justice. The cry to tell them to tell the next and the next and the next generations echo Exodus 20:5.

Exodus 20:5NIV

5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

Joel specifically names 3-4 generations.

In verse 15 he declares this as a “day of the Lord.” The day of the Lord always represented times when God was moving in a righteous act of judgement upon His people.

Earlier in our service we read Joel 2 where Joel cried out for the people to assemble, fast and repent. That was for a later “day of the Lord” which we will talk about in a few weeks. However, in chapter one Joel cried out for the same response, as it is the prescription for such times of God’s acts of judgement.

When everyone stood around in shock and frustration, not knowing what to do, Joel knew what to do. He had read God’s word. He called for that fast and for repentance. If they did so, he knew there was a chance. He knew there was hope because God has the power to reverse the order of things. These current events were God’s way of waking them up. He had called and they had not listened. Now God would speak in a way that would get their attention. You see, if they want things to change, they have a part in making it happen. All it required wase a change in attitude. They just needed to regret their sin and repent, turning once again to God.

This dusty tale in Joel reminds us of another scripture that talks about dust. It is found in Genesis. We read early in Genesis that man was formed from the dust of the earth and later in Genesis 3, Adam is told that because of his sin he will return to dust.

Dust…such a colorless, common commodity. That is all we are…dust. And for all our vanity, the things we produce are no better than dust compared to what God can do. What God can create! Only God can take common dust and create a living, breathing, thinking, person. God formed us out of dust, but He formed us in His image. This makes us special only because of who He is. And yet, He loves us enough to come and die for us.

Joel’s scripture has long been a key scripture for Ash Wednesday. I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at this short book named after its author Joel, for our Lenten journey this year. As we look at these prophetic poems of Joel, we will also be walking along a journey with Jesus on His path to the cross. I must admit to you that I am not quite sure how I am going to blend these just yet. It will be a challenge for me, but I hope it will be an eye-opener for you and I. A journey of dark and light. Joel speaks of three different days of the Lord. There we see the darkness of judgement for sin. But even as we glimpse that dark abyss, we will discover a light pulling us back from the abyss through Jesus and His death on the cross that provides salvation if we will only reach for it. Jesus is like a handrail in a dark tunnel that is always there offering us a means to find our way out to safety. But we must reach out for it and take hold of it. When we do, we realize it has been there all along just waiting for us to recognize that it is there, but it can only help us reach safety if we trust it enough to follow it.

I have given you a glimpse into the journey we will take with Joel through darkness. Now I have a short preview video of our journey in light as we follow in Jesus footsteps toward the cross.

In His Step Bumper Video

Next Sunday, we will continue to look at Joel chapter one and begin our journey with Jesus as we walk “in His steps” to the cross. You will find that the devotional in your packet is on this theme as well.

At this time, Mark will come and share with you more about the Lent journey.

Call to the Observance of Lent........................................................ Mark DeViney

Since the beginning of the church, Christians have always observed the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection with great devotion. It became one of the great traditions of the church to prepare for these events through serious examination of our spiritual lives through prayer, repentance, and fasting. The early church determined that this period of fasting, and renewal should correspond to Christ’s fasting as recorded in Matthew chapter 4, and by counting forty days back from Easter (excluding Sundays, which remain “feast” or celebration days), they arrived at the Wednesday seven weeks before Easter Sunday. During these 40 days, which have come to be known as Lent, the church recalls its understanding of creation and the fall, and of new birth and Christlikeness.

We invite you, therefore, in the name of the Lord and His Church, to take this 40 day journey—a spiritual pilgrimage if you will, by self-examination, repentance, prayer, fasting, and sacrificial giving; to further your discipline of reading and meditating on the word of God.

Tonight, it is fitting that we take a moment to acknowledge our need for Christ in this process and entreat Him to enable us to take up our cross and follow Him. In these next few moments of silence, let us bow our heads and humble ourselves before God our maker and Christ our redeemer.

(a brief silence is kept)

Ashes Video

Thanksgiving over the Ashes............................................................. Pastor Lauri

Let us pray:

Almighty God, you created us out of the dust of the earth. Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and contrite hearts, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Imposition of Ash………………………………………………..……Pastor Lauri

We invite those who wish to come and identify with Christ through the imposition of ashes, to come forward.

{extemporaneous instruction}

Video Plays in background softly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQjYYtUZLY

(Name), remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Corporate Reading of Psalm 51:1-17............................................... Pastor Lauri

Let us stand together, and corporately pray David's prayer of repentance found in Psalm 51.

Psalm 51CEB

1Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion! 2 Wash me completely clean of my guilt; purify me from my sin! 3 Because I know my wrongdoings, my sin is always right in front of me. 4 I’ve sinned against you—you alone. I’ve committed evil in your sight. That’s why you are justified when you render your verdict, completely correct when you issue your judgment. 5 Yes, I was born in guilt, in sin, from the moment my mother conceived me. 6 And yes, you want truth in the most hidden places; you teach me wisdom in the most secret space. 7 Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and celebration again; let the bones you crushed rejoice once more. 9 Hide your face from my sins; wipe away all my guilty deeds! 10 Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me! 11 Please don’t throw me out of your presence; please don’t take your holy spirit away from me. 12 Return the joy of your salvation to me and sustain me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach wrongdoers your ways, and sinners will come back to you. 14 Deliver me from violence, God, God of my salvation, so that my tongue can sing of your righteousness. 15 Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise. 16 You don’t want sacrifices. If I gave an entirely burned offering, you wouldn’t be pleased. 17 A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God. You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed. 18 Do good things for Zion by your favor. Rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. 19 Then you will again want sacrifices of righteousness— entirely burned offerings and complete offerings. Then bulls will again be sacrificed on your altar.

Absolution Blessing........................................................................... Pastor Lauri

May our almighty and merciful God, the source of our salvation in Christ, who desires not the death of a sinner but rather that we turn from wickedness and live; accept our repentance, forgive our sins, and restore us by the Holy Spirit to newness of life. Amen.

Please be seated.

Thanksgiving...................................................................................... Pam Hardy

We praise you, Lord Christ, for your pilgrimage on this earth

for your obedience even to death,

and for your victory over death.

Teach us, we pray; to walk in your ways.

Communion........................................................................................ Pastor Lauri

“On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; {take the bread} and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, {break the bread in half} and gave it to his disciples and said, ‘Take, eat: This is my body, which is given for you. {extend the bread toward the congregation} Do this for the remembrance of me.’

After supper he took the cup of wine; {take the cup} and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, ‘Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you {extend the cup toward the congregation}and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.’ "

Prayer of Consecration......................................................................... Pastor Lauri

Our loving God, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit upon these offerings of bread and cup, making them for us communion in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ our Savior. Father, gather into one all who share in these sacred mysteries, filling them with the Holy Spirit and confirming their faith in the truth, that together we may always praise you and give you glory through your servant, Jesus Christ.

Invitation to the Table.......................................................................... Pastor Lauri

What I have received from the Lord, I pass on to you.

At this time, take the communion elements you received as you entered...

The body of Christ, given (or broken) for you.

The blood of Christ, given (or poured) out for you.

Closing Song............................................................................................ Pam Hardy

"Jesus Paid It All"

Closing/Dismissal.................................................................................. Pastor Lauri

In baptism we proclaim that the baptized are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. The ashes on our foreheads remind us that we are children of God and disciples of Christ. As we die with Christ so too will we be raised with Christ.

Go in peace to live for Christ, to serve him alone and to walk in holiness and righteousness all your days, through the Grace of our Lord and the power of his Holy Spirit. Amen!

You are dismissed to depart in quiet reflection.

Video - Post service Music