Worship on the Lord’s Day
Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
10:00 am November 03, 2024
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs
Music Director: Binu Kapadia Vocalist: Rom Rhoad
Welcoming Elder: Sam Malayang
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: Bless the Lord at all times;
P: God’s praise will always be on our lips.
L: Make great the name of God;
P: We will lift up God’s holy name together.
L: For the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
P: We will love the Lord with heart, mind, strength, and soul, and praise God now and always.
Opening praise: Praise the Lord
Prayers of approach and confession
Creator, Christ, and Spirit: God of life and of blessing, you created all that exists,
In Christ, you redeem all situations and heal each soul, and so it is our greatest joy in life to be united by your Spirit in community to give you thanks and praise.
And so we join our voices with the angels and archangels, with the saints and disciples of every time and place in worshipping you as Creator, as healer, and as the source of all joy and goodness, now and forever the world without end.
Eternal God, we confess that we have been indifferent to your will and silent when we should have spoken for justice.
We have heard your call to faithful living, but fear holds us back.
There is work to be done, but we have been idle.
Forgive us, O God, and give us courage that we may be your saints in our own time.
Response: I will trust in the Lord
Assurance of God’s grace
The day is coming when the home of God will be among mortals. God will dwell with us, and we are God’s people. God will wipe every tear from our eyes, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things will have passed away. Accept the newness you are offered in Christ and share that promise with others.
We listen for the voice of God
Song: Lift up the gates eternal (12: vss1-5)
Scripture readings: Nebat Marilyn
Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; and John 11:32-44
Response: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
Message: ‘Normal’ People
“If we join together, just imagine what we can do”.
Luke is a companion of Paul’s. He is a physician and historian by trade and is generally thought to be the only non-Jewish author in the New Testament. His book, which does not actually bear his name makes up what we call both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (a history of the early church). While the stories in Matthew show Jesus as a new Moses, and Mark shows a miraculous healer, Luke’s vision of Jesus is of a man desperately calling the people into the service of others. Luke’s Jesus is constantly focused on the sick, the uplifting of women, the oppressed and the poor.
Early on in Luke’s gospel Jesus returns home to preach in the synagogues of Nazareth (his hometown) and Capernaum (the city to which Nazareth is a bedroom community). Neither instance goes very well.
In both places Jesus says essentially the same thing. He says (though in somewhat cryptic language) that he is the Messiah and that he has been sent to declare good news to the poor, freedom to captives, sight to the blind and the Year of the Lord’s favor.
Arminta Ross was born into slavery. Because records were few and far between and because her age was seen to be unimportant, we’re still not sure whether it was 1819 or 1820 when she first came into this world. Arminta Ross was born in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was the first person in her family not to be born on African soil – though this was not exactly a choice made voluntarily by her parents.
Arminta Ross was raised under harsh conditions and subjected to whippings even as a small child. Contrary to popular belief the severity of such instances has been exaggerated over the years though not because of the masters’ good nature. Rather the true reason is that if a slave is injured too badly the master loses a worker and so also losses money. In general slaves were very rarely beaten severely: but not because it would be immoral – rather because it wouldn’t be economical.
In any case Arminta did suffer quite horribly on occasion and had no real quarters to speak of. She slept as close to the fire as possible on cold nights and later reported that she sometimes would place her toes into the smoldering ashes to avoid the threat of frostbite. Cornmeal was her main source of nutrition and occasionally meat could be added to the mixture when her father later gained the rare privilege to hunt and fish (though this came with fairly extreme restrictions).
At age six (do you know any six-year-olds?), Arminta was considered by her owners to be an able worker. She was quite luckily loaned out to some neighbors for a short time and this more relaxed family did not demand Arminta to perform the rather harsh labor of the fields but instead sent to produce weaving work.
But Arminta was found to be a “day dreamer” and so was reassigned to the duty of checking muskrat traps. She didn’t do so for long though. Arminta caught the measles while performing this regular task and was quickly returned home to her owners as “damaged goods”. After recovering, Arminta would fill the role of both housekeeper and babysitter. The woman of the house though did not care much for Arminta Ross and did in fact have her whipped quite severely one night when it was believed that she had taken a single sugar cube from the pantry. She was 10 when the incident took place. At the age of 12 she lost her “basket name” and started going by the name Harriet. But Harriet’s life got worst.
When a young boy and fellow slave she knew had been caught running way, Harriet refused to take part in tying him to the large cotton wood tree in the front yard for a whipping. The boy was later killed and for her concern, Harriet suffered a severe head injury from the wrong side of a wooden club.
Just a few years later, Harriet would marry. His name was John. But they were not in love. Fearing that she might gain her freedom, John, her own husband (a freed slave) threatened to inform her master of any plans to escape and as a way of keeping control of her.
Courageously Harriet left her husband and made her escape at the same time. In the end Arminta Ross became one of the most successful and certainly one of the most famous Stationmaster of the Underground Railroad. Now going by her chosen first name and married last name, Harriet Tubman, (Arminta Ross), led over seventy slaves to Freedom.
It is an amazing story and certainly one that bears repeating. And at this point in my life, I have to ask… is this what Jesus meant when he said he came to free the oppressed?
I think sometimes when we read our bibles it’s easy to bring things down to a level we can handle. “It’s too much for God to ask us to really free the oppressed”, we reason with ourselves. And so, we say, “he must have meant that figuratively”. But did God mean that figuratively? Truth be told, if this story came from Matthew than I might be inclined to agree with that. But Luke doesn’t think that way. When Matthew’s Jesus stands on the hill and says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, Luke’s just says “Blessed are the poor”. His memories of Jesus are packed to the brim with in the present actionable things.
Luke’s Jesus, not to put it to plainly… is very practical. When he says he brings freedom to the oppressed, I think he means me literally. When he says, “take care of widows and orphans” or “feed the poor and give clothes to the naked”, I think he actually means, go care for a child, share with a widow, consider adoption, make a meal for the hungry and give clothes from your closet to someone in need. When he says, bring sight to the blind. I think he means that too, study, become a doctor – Jesus said together we could do far more miraculous things than he did. Well yes, Jesus made the blond to see but perhaps more importantly he inspired countless physicians and scientists to work throughout the entire world to provide sight to those who cannot see.
Anne was born on April 14th, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. According to her baptismal certificate, her name at birth was Johanna Mansfield Sullivan however she was always called Anne or Annie. She was the oldest child of her parents Thomas and Alice Sullivan. When she was only five years old, she contracted a bacterial eye disease, which created painful infections and over time made it’s victim blind. When Annie was 8, her mother died, and her father subsequently deserted her and her little brother Jimmie. And so little Annie and Jim were sent to live at the Almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Two months later Anne’s brother Jimmy died as well.
Annie was hard to control, and she became harder. She was such a troubled child that at times she had to be tied down. But there was another girl named Maggie who cared for Annie at the Almshouse. Maggie talked to her and fed her, even though Annie would throw her food on the floor, cursing and screaming with every ounce of her being. But Maggie would just say, “I am a Christian and it’s my Christian duty to care.” Maggie was determined to love this dirty, unkempt, spiteful, unloving little girl. It wasn’t easy, but slowly it got through to Annie that she was not the only who was suffering. Maggie also had been abandoned. That’s why they were both there together. They were the same.
Gradually Annie began to respond. And that’s when Maggie told Anne about a school for the blind and Annie began to beg to be sent there. Finally, consent was given, and Annie went to the Perkins Institute and School for the Blind. After a series of small operations Annie’s sight was partially restored. For the first time since she was 5 years old, she saw, light and dark, shadows and figures. Later she saw colors, shapes, faces and eventually almost anything anyone else could see as well. The doctors literally gave sight to the blind.
Annie was able to finish her schooling and graduate at the age of twenty. And yet, Anne remembered what it was like to have no one. But more than anything she remembered what Maggie had done for her, and she wanted to do the same thing for someone else. Having been blind so long she told the director of Perkins that she wanted to work with the blind too and particularly she said, she wanted to work with the most “difficult children”. After much contemplation and searching… Annie was hired. And that is when Anne was sent to meet a little seven-year-old girl in Alabama who had been blind and deaf from the age of two. So, Annie Sullivan went to Alabama and unlocked the door of Helen Keller’s dark prison and to set her free because that is what Maggie had done for her.
Jesus said that he came to set the captives free and to give sight to the blind. And we are told in his world that we are called to be imitators of Christ. In other words, we are told to set the captives free and give sight to the blind. And honestly, I think he really did mean those things literally. So now what? I don’t know about you but I can’t do what Harriet Tubman did. I can’t do what Maggie did for Annie or what Annie did for Helen Keller. I mean, we can’t all be heroes, can we?
In the late seventies, Firefighters in London, England went on strike. Thus, the British army was required to take over emergency firefighting for a time. As the story goes, one day, a squad of soldiers received a call from an elderly woman in London to come and rescue her cat, Bittsy. Poor Bittsy had gotten stuck in a tree. They arrived quickly and without much trouble saved Bittsy from her high perch. As they were getting ready to leave, the woman invited her heroes in for a victory spot of tea. Very British of her. After the tea break, and many fond farewells and waving of hands, the soldiers hopped on the fire truck and drove away. Thud! Only to find that they’d just run over sweet little Bittsy and killed her.
Okay so it’s a goofy story and it may or may not be fun, but, we can all relate. We all have those moments when we fail. Despite our best efforts, things come crashing down on us. We’re left holding the bag, or in this instance, the cat.
We all make mistakes and maybe in our attempts to make the world a better place we might just run over a cat or two. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying anyway.
When, in 1 Thessalonians, Paul tells us to be imitators of Christ, He uses the word “you.” As in, whoever is reading the text. It’s Me and You! And I think Jesus literally does mean that we are called to literally give sight to the blind, visit those in prison, set the captives free and on and on.
But the thing is, in Greek that word he uses (for you) … It’s plural. It’s not just the reader. It’s the reader and every other reader. It’s all of us. We are together called to do this work. We aren’t alone. We’re a team.
We are called to do all those things because we are many, because we all have tons of different talents, because we can gather together to do amazing things.
And no it’s not always easy, it will be scary, it will be difficult. When Jesus tried to do it they try to throw him off a cliff.
And yeah, perhaps I can’t heal blind eyes, but some of us can. And perhaps I can’t argue the cases of people unjustly persecuted or placed in prisons but some of us can. And perhaps I can’t do a whole lot, but together WE can!
At the very least, we can try. And we can start right here on 40th Ave.
I bet everyone here in this room can bring good news to the poor in some way…
I bet everyone here knows someone oppressed by illness or sadness, or loneliness or suffering that they can call…
I bet everyone here can proclaim the year of the Lord
You know in the first chapters of Genesis how God calls everything good.
In Gen. 1:4 it says, God saw that the light was “good”
In 1:10 he divides the sea and land and then calls it “good”
In 1:12 he calls the fruits and vegetation “good”
In 1:14 he divined of light and dark by luminaries and calls it “good”
In 1:21 he creates everything that fly’s or swims and calls it “good”
In 1:25 God makes the beasts of the land and calls them “good”
And then, in verse 31, it says “And then when God saw all that he had made he called it טוֹב מְאֹד (towb m’od) “Very Good.”
And then in Chapter 2 God created the man and the man looks at all creation and see’s its goodness. And the bible says that the Adam saw the food was good and the trees were good and the gold was good and the onyx was good and the stones were good and then God (it says) looked at the man and said “It is NOT good”
In 2:18 God looks at the man that he has made and for the first time he is not pleased. Because the man is alone. And so God says, “It is NOT good for him to be alone.”
Human beings are finally called “good”, when we are brought together. He calls them “good” when he has made two of them.
We are good when we are a community. We are good when we are together, because we are meant to have relationships, meant to have an effect on each other’s lives.
Hellen Keller wrote, “Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much.” This week I challenge all of us to serve others fearlessly. “If we join together, just imagine what we can do”. Amen.
*Song: Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love (229)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
God of all things, source of all blessings; accept the gifts of our hands, the thankfulness of our hearts, the praise of our worship and the bounty of our lives. We pray that this offering will be used for the building up of your kingdom of justice, peace, love and reconciliation and that you bless us and our offerings to be a blessing. Amen.
Prayers of thanksgiving and intercession
God of blessing and loving-kindness; hear our prayers for those things your world and in our lives that cause us to rejoice and those things that cause us deep sorrow.
Eternal God, we give you thanks for the people in our lives who have shown us a reflection of your love and kindness; those who live with us now and those who now live in the peace of your eternal rest. Keep our relationships with one another healthy and life giving.
Loving God, we praise you for you have been a refuge to the poor and to those in need; protect those whose comforts are few and wants are many. Open our hearts and eyes so that we can see how we might extend comfort and actively pursue your justice.
Living God, you are new life for those turn towards you, a resting place for those who are tired, and joy to those who know you.
God of order and strength, bless those who lead this country and all the countries of the world; give judges and politicians hearts of service and the courage to do what is right.
God of creation, we praise you for the beauty of this world. Awaken our sense of responsibility towards the earth and strengthen our resolve to protect and care for it.
God of all wisdom, hear us now as we pray for the needs and desires that are close to our hearts in the silence of this moment.
The Sacrament of Holy Communion
Invitation
Come, not because you are strong but because you are weak.
Come, not because of any goodness of your own but because you need mercy and help.
Come, because you love the Lord a little and would like to love him more.
Come, because he loves you and gave himself for you.
At Dayspring any baptized person from any Christian tradition is offered Holy Communion. This is a gift of God for the people of God and for all those who love and serve the Lord.
Song: Worship the Lord (555)
The Lord’s Prayer
The Communion Prayer
Gracious God, we praise your holy name, giving thanks to you with our lips and our lives.
For the power and mystery of your Word by which you created us and called us to yourself, we give you thanks.
For the power and mystery of your Word by which you took flesh and lived among us
through your Son, Jesus Christ, we give you thanks.
For the power and mystery of your Word by which you choose common people,
forming the church to be the body of Christ in the world, we give you thanks.
Faithful God, we offer you our praise and thanks as we return to you these holy gifts of bread and wine.
Remembering our Lord’s command to take and eat we ponder the mystery of his promise that in this meal we are joined to him and to one another as a holy people uniting heaven and earth.
We offer you our praise and thanks for Jesus Christ, who took flesh and lived among us, was baptized for our sins, taught us your way of truth, loved us in our lovelessness and died that we may have life.
And now O God, we celebrate with great joy the resurrection of our Lord, his presence with us in this feast, and his promise of a new creation.
God of grace and power, you invite us to share in mysteries that are beyond our understanding. In straightforward trust we seek the transforming power of your Spirit
on this assembly of your people,
on these words and actions,
on this bread and wine,
in order that, by the miracle of your grace, we may be united to Christ and to one another– one in body, one in spirit, one in faith. Amen
Sharing of Bread and Wine
The Lord Jesus, on the night before he died, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, he broke it and said, “This is my body, that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
The minister may pour wine into the cup, then lifts it, saying:
In the same way, he took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do it in remembrance of me.”
Every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Song: Eat this bread (527)
Prayer after Communion
Loving God, we thank you that you have fed us in this sacrament, united us with Christ, and given us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in your eternal realm.
Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Song: He’s got the whole world in His hands
Sending out with God’s blessing
The God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in every good gift so that you may do God’s will. May God work among us all that which is pleasing in God’s sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Response: The blessing
Music postlude
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The Communion liturgy is based on the liturgies of the PCC’s 1991 Book of Common Worship. 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 (© 2024) 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.