Worship on Healing and Reconciliation Sunday
10:00 am May 25, 2025
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Linda Farrah-Basford Welcoming Elder: Renita MacCallum
Children’s time: Brad Reader: Sabir Aziz
We gather to worship God
Music Prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: Lord in your mercy,
P: Bring us peace
L: May the peoples praise you, O God for your healing and reconciliation.
P: We gather seeking peace and unity in Your grace.
L: As we lift up our prayers, may Your peace fill our hearts.
P: Lord, in your mercy, bring us peace.
Opening praise: This I believe
Prayers of approach and confession
God of promise and purpose, we greet you this day with thankful hearts.
As flowers unfurl and buds open, the beauty of your world lifts our spirits in praise.
As children grow and students prepare to graduate, their energy and enthusiasm encourage us toward your future.
Your world is full of such variety and detail, we stand in awe of your creative imagination.
Draw close to us in this hour of worship and show us the promise and purpose in our own lives.
May we unfurl with your gift of new life, and move into the future, renewed by the energy of your Holy Spirit.
God of diversity and detail, the wonders of your creation amaze us.
Yet we confess we often fail to honour its beauty and variety in the details of our lives.
When voices differ in opinion, we listen to those we agree with.
We fail to honour experience different than our own.
We resist calls to honour the earth as if it were ours for the taking.
Forgive our narrow perspectives.
Open our eyes and our hearts to the pain and perspectives of others, and renew us all with your healing grace.
Response: Glory, glory hallelujah
Assurance of God’s grace
Jesus said, “My peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Let his forgiveness set you at peace with God and yourself, and make peace with one another. Amen.
Musical Offering: Dayspring Singers
We listen for the voice of God
Song: Jesus we are gathered (514)
Children’s time
The Lord’s Prayer (535)
Song: Joyful, joyful we adore you (410: vss 1,3,4)
Scripture reading: Psalm 67
Sung Response
Message: Called to Praise
Psalm 67 was written by an unknown author. It’s one of four songs in a row (from Psalm 65-68) dedicated to the music director of the Temple and intended to be played on stringed instruments. All four of these psalms also use a word for earth found in the creation story of Genesis which makes sense because each of the four is a call for a return to creation whereby everything that exists, exists to praises the creator.
Psalm 67 is about the universal call to praise and a request for universal blessings. In other words, the whole point is that God is asked to enlighten and bless all people everywhere, in every time resulting in more glory to God’s name as all people bring Him praise.
The psalm starts with a call for God’s blessing and mercy. In what likely sound familiar the psalmist asks God to be gracious and to shine His face upon us, so that His way may be known on earth and His salvation among all nations. The focus here is on God’s grace, which should extend universally, bringing light to all peoples. And the words you probably recognize. Verse 1 says, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.” This of course, is a quotation from the book of numbers from when God commanded Moses to instruct Aaton and all his sons (the Cohen or first priests of Israel) to bless the congregation announcing “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance (or smiling face) upon you and give you His peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
Blessings are interesting. In the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, blessings are significant expressions of favor, grace, and divine approval. They encompass both spiritual and material well-being and are seen as powerful affirmations of God’s presence and provision in a person’s life. It’s also important to note that blessings, just like curses were phrases spoken over a person and were believed to carry the power to affect outcomes. To be cursed by someone truly meant bad things would happen to them. And to be blessed meant good. It sounds simplistic and some might think even silly but just consider the value of positive reinforcement, or how research uses the placebo affect. Neuroscience is pretty clear as well that positive thinking can help rewrite neural pathways. In other words, modern phycology and science are just now catching up to what spiritual practitioners have known since the invention of prayer.
Here the Psalmist asks for blessing, asks God to smile upon the whole of the world and for everyone to see it.
During the Depression in 1933, William Strider was in a restaurant with friends who were all talking about how terrible things were becoming for the people he knows. There were suffering people everywhere, previously wealthy people committing suicide, jumping out of buildings, and joblessness everywhere. The conversation got more miserable as it went on. One man in the group interrupted. In two weeks, I have to preach a sermon. It’ll be Thanksgiving Day, he said. What can I say that’s affirmative in a period of world depression like this? Strider didn’t really know what to say but he felt the Spirit of God speaking to him, “Why don’t you give thanks to those people who have been a blessing in your life and affirm them?” He didn’t say anything, but he couldn’t shake the thought.
Strider remembered a schoolteacher who was very dear to him, a wonderful teacher of poetry and English literature, who had gone out of her way to put a great love of literature and verse in him, which had affected all his writings and more. So, later that day Strider sat down and wrote a letter to the woman, retired, now fairly up in years. It was only a matter of days until he got a reply, in the feeble scroll of age. It read as follows. My dear Willie. I can’t tell you how much your note meant to me. I’m in my late eighties now, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, fairly lonely and like the last leaf of autumn, lingering behind. You’ll be interested to know that I taught in school for more than 50 years, and yours is the first note of appreciation I have ever received. It came on a blue chilly morning, and it cheered me up as nothing has ever done. I’m not sentimental, but I found myself crying.
After reading the message Strider thought of a kind Bishop he knew, also now retired, who had recently faced the death of his wife and was all alone. The Bishop had taken a lot of time giving Strider advice, counsel, and love when he first began a ministry, so he sat down and wrote to the Bishop. In just a few days after sending that letter, a reply came back. “My dear Will” it stated,” your letter was so beautiful, so real, that I sat reading it in my study, tears of gratitude falling from my eyes. Before I realized what I was doing, I rose from my chair and called my wife’s name to share it with her, forgetting she was gone. You’ll never know how much your message warmed my spirit. I’ve been walking around in the glow of your words all day long.”
Blessings matter and they are meant to be shared.
Here the author continues adding to his request for blessings with a reason. The author states a purpose, “2 That Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations.”
Jason McElwain is sort of famous on the internet. A video of him went viral back in 2006. Back then Jason was a high school senior and three-year team manager for the Greece Athena High basketball team. Jason also happens to be autistic, and he loved to play. Going by the nickname J-Man, Jason diligently fetched water, chased down rebounds, helped with the warmups, and mopped up sweat. However, in February 2006, for the last game of the season, Jason’s coach decided to surprise J-Mac. Near the end of the game with his team up by twenty points, the coach asks the young man to suit up and play. Jason ran back to the change room and readied himself. With only four minutes to go, Jason came back, and the coach put Jason in the game. Jason missed his first two shots, but people cheered and clapped anyway. His third shot was a three-point swish. As the ball went through the net, the gymnasium absolutely erupted with applause.
Jason went on to make 6 more 3 pointers, a ream record, and finished with twenty points. In a little more than 4 minutes, with each basket, the crowd became more enthusiastic. By the time Jason hit his last shot, everyone was jumping up and down. When the game ended, the bleachers emptied onto the court and the crowd gathered around the boy. Jason’s teammates hoisted him onto their shoulders after the game and paraded the hero around. Jason’s mother later noted “This was the first moment Jason truly felt he had succeeded and could be proud of himself. I look at autism as a Berlin Wall, and he cracked it.” But Jason’s success touched many more lives than his own, as those who celebrated with him also experienced the selfless joy of delight in others.
Today J-Mac is an ESPY award-winning athlete who words in autism advocacy, public/inspirational speaking and continues to volunteer with his old team.
Because Jason was blessed, he’s been blessing others.
The Psalmist asks God to bless the whole world and wants every nation on earth to know God and God’s blessings.
Christianity is not a western religion. It begins in Israel, spread to Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta and Ethiopia. Later it made way to France, Spain and the Balkans all before coming to Britain and long before the US or Canada. Still in the 20th century only 10% of the world’s Christians lived in the southern continents and the east, while 90% lived in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Today at least 70% of the world’s Christians live in the non-western world. This morning more Christian’s worship in Anglican churches in Nigeria than in all of the Episcopal and Anglican churches of Britain, Europe and North America combined. There are more Baptists in the Congo than in Britain. More people in church every Sunday in Communist China than in all of Western Europe, and ten times more Assemblies of God members in Latin America than exist where they were founded in the southern United States.
Psalm 67 calls for all nations to praise and worship God, acknowledging that His reign is over the entire earth. The psalmist desires that all the earth worships God, recognizing His sovereignty and justice. The texts reads: “3 Let the peoples praise You, God; Let all the peoples praise You. 4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, For You will judge the peoples with fairness And guide all the nations on the earth.”
And this pray has come true and still continues to.
Notice as well that it’s not just about evangelism or mission here. It’s about blessings. In Let the Nations be Glad, JOHN PIPER writes: “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.”
The verse reads, “Let all the peoples praise You. 4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy”
Our Job is to praise! When we do that everything else falls into place.
The WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM may explain it best: The question is asked “What is the chief end of man” (or put more simply, “what our purpose” and “the meaning of life”). The answer in response is this: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Our chief reason for being is to bring our creator praise.
If we do not genuinely enjoy our faith, nobody is going to catch the fire of enjoyment from us. If our lives are not totally centered on Christ, we will not be Christ bearers for others, no matter how pious our words might appear.
You know this week at the pastoral care meeting Nesta mentioned that one of the best ways to see miracles is to look at what could’ve happened but didn’t.
It’s easy to get upset if you crash your car into a fender bender. But it’s better to notice that a single second’s difference in your response might have cost someone their life. It makes sense to be annoyed that you hit another car but it’s better to notice the pedestrian on the corner who was given a tiny change in time getting out of the house could have ended up crushed between the two cars.
How many miracles happen every day that we don’t notice because we’re focusing on the wrong things.
To this end, I remember hearing a story Dr. Frederick Beachner told while working at Northwest University. Luckily, I found the story recorded in one of his books. In his work The Sacred Journey Beachner recalls,
“One winter I sat in Army fatigues somewhere near Anniston, AL, eating my supper out of a mess kit while the infantry training battalion that I had been assigned to was out. There was a cold drizzle of rain and everything was muddy. The sun had gone down. I was still hungry when I finished and noticed that a man nearby had left something that he was not going to eat still in the box. It was a turnip.
When I asked him if I could have the turnip, he tossed it over to me. But I missed the catch, and the turnip fell into the ground. But I wanted it so badly I picked it up and started eating it – mud and all. Time deepened and slowed down. With the Lurch of the heat, I saw suddenly that not only was the turnip good, but the mud was fairly good too. Even the drizzle and cold were good. Even the army that I had dreaded for months was good. Sitting there in Alabama’s winter with my mouth full of cold, turnip and mud, I could see, at least for a moment, how if you ever took truly to heart the ultimate goodness and joy of things, even at their bleakest, the need to praise someone or something for it would be so great that you might even have to go out and speak of it to the birds in the air, if no one else would listen.”
The psalm concludes with a joyful acknowledgment that God blesses the earth, making it fruitful and abundant, and brings nations to rejoice and sing for joy. It’s a call for universal praise and acknowledgment of God’s goodness. It goes, “5 Let the peoples praise You, God; Let all the peoples praise You. 6 The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. 7 God blesses us, And all the ends of the earth will fear Him.”
I hope I have time for just one more short story. Mr. Langley writes, After worrying for half an hour that we wouldn’t get on the overbooked flight, my wife and I were summoned to the check-in desk. A smiling agent whispered that this was our lucky day. He was bumping us up – First Class. This was the first and only time we had been pampered on an airplane with tasty food, hot coffee, and plenty of elbow room. We couldn’t afford such luxury. And so, we decided to play a little game of Guess who? We were trying to guess who else didn’t really belong in first class. One man padded around the cabin in his socks, restlessly sampling all the free magazines, playing with but never actually using the inflight phone. Twice he sneezed so loudly we thought the oxygen masks would drop. He stuck out like a sore thumb. Then the attendant brought linen tablecloths for our breakfast trays. Another person tucked him into his collar as a bib. He didn’t seem to belong in first class either.
We see misfits at church too, people who obviously don’t seem to belong, people who might even embarrass us and cause us to feel little superior. But the truth is that we don’t belong any more than they do. We come as guests invited.
The blessings of God abound, even when they seem hidden. But the blessings of God belong to all people. Let’s receive them and share them. Let’s notice the miracles happening all the time. Let’s affirm the good we see, share the blessings and sing God’s praises the all creation did on the day they were made. Let’s have the kind of faith that sees God smile and gives us joy. Let’s enjoy Him forever and help all the nations to do the same.
Psalm 67:1-7 (NASB) — Literal Approach
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us,
And make His face shine on us—
2 That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your salvation among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise You, God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
For You will judge the peoples with fairness
And guide the nations on the earth.
5 Let the peoples praise You, God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
6 The earth has yielded its produce;
God, our God, blesses us.
7 God blesses us,
And all the ends of the earth will know Him.
Song: Praise, my soul, the King of heaven (407: vss 1,2,4,5)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Prayer of gratitude, and for others and ourselves
Generous God, we thank you for your gift of new life in Christ Jesus. Receive our gifts this day, and bless each gift and each giver. Use each one to witness to your purposes through our congregation and throughout the world you love, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Lord, our God,
The earth and all its peoples belong to you.
As we come before you in prayer, we are painfully aware that the earth itself is at risk,
from the ways your people live on it, and the conflicts we provoke among each other.
We seek your healing and hope this day for the earth and all its creatures, and for your people of every nation.
God of healing and hope, we pray for peace with justice to emerge in war torn lands, and in every place of conflict where power struggles put innocents at risk.
We name before you the people and places on our hearts today:
…
Send your Spirit of wisdom and compassion to break open the hearts of leaders to work with each other to protect the innocent and restore order for the wellbeing of all.
May your ways of truth and justice prevail In every heart and in every land.
God of mercy,
Hear our cry.
God of healing and hope,
We pray for Presbyterian World Service and Development and its partners,
and all groups offering aid and renewal in places where disaster and conflict have left people at risk.
Support those who have lost homes, families and livelihoods to find courage to go on
and open hearts of those in safety to share with those in need.
God of mercy,
Hear our cry.
God of healing and hope, we know that this land we call home faces conflict and pain,
and that communities are divided by deep disagreements.
We pray for healing and understanding to deepen between Indigenous people and those who settled this land with no thought for those who already called it home.
Protect those who face racist attitudes and actions in daily life, and restore dignity and hope to those who have suffered injustice in a system that benefitted others.
Open our eyes to the creativity and courage in communities that feel unfamiliar to us,
and open our hearts to build new relationships with each other and grow closer as neighbours and friends.
God of mercy,
Hear our cry.
God of healing and hope, we pray for the renewal of your creation and for the protection of species at risk.
By your Spirit, teach us to change our ways when they are harmful to the earth, and inspire our ingenuity to find solutions to problems that seem so vast.
God of mercy, Hear our cry.
God of healing and hope, we pray for those who know sickness or pain, for all who live in grief, loneliness or anxiety, and all who find these uncertain times overwhelming in any way.
In silence, we remember before you those for whom we have special concern this day:
…
By your Spirit, surround each one with strength and love, and equip us to offer support for those whose lives are woven into ours.
God of mercy,
Hear our cry.
God of healing and hope,
Jesus walks with us day by day to see us through every challenge,
and so we claim the healing and hope he offers. Amen.
Song: You are holy, you are whole (828)
Sending out with God’s blessing
Response: He is Lord
Music postlude
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.