October 6, 2002 - World Wide Communion - Food Bank Sunday
God provides the law – sweeter than honeycomb – and has sent the prophets, to teach and guide us in God’s way. When we reject that, we set our own course for destruction. When we choose it, we choose life.
If you would like to stay seated for any or all of the “standing” parts of the service, please feel free to do so.
Prelude “The Solid Rock” by E. Broughton
A time of silent preparation—Lighting the Christ Candle
Call to Worship (Responsive)
One: We look at each other,
All: to see God working in us.
One: We look at each other,
All: to honour what God can do with us. Let us worship our creative, transforming and life-honoring God.
One: Let us continue to pray. This is the spirit of our worship on Worldwide Communion Sunday:
All: A glorious offering of voices praising, prayers offered, with bread and wine uniting us all.
One: This is the community of faith we celebrate on Worldwide Communion Sunday:
All: A diversity of disciples advancing the way of Christ in our city, in our country, and throughout the world.
One: This is the Gospel we honour on Worldwide Communion Sunday:
All: Jesus Christ, who brings us together in joy, and sends us out to change our world for good. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hymn #291 “All Things Bright and Beautiful”
Time with the Young & the young at heart
The Sunday School & Youth leave for their classes.
We Remain in God’s Presence Through Confession
O God, the promise of food for tomorrow is about and before us. The promise that we will be able to survive another day, another year, stands around us. How easy it is to forget those who do not have that hope. How easy it is to forget those who stand in line and wait. How easy it is to forget that the harvest is not just for us, but for all your family. Forgive us…(Silent Confession)
Assurance of Pardon (One)
God is ever more ready to hear us than we are to approach, ever more ready to forgive us than we are to forgive ourselves. Accept God’s gift of forgiveness, given freely, unconditionally. Then forgive yourself, and live as free people.
Biblical Notes
Ten Commandments
There’s something about “thou shalt not” that raises the “old Irish” in us and makes us want to challenge the law. Perhaps we want to see whether the implied threat will come to pass. That prompts the thought that if we want these laws to be taken seriously, we should perhaps label them “the ten invitations to freedom.” We’re not too frightened by threats, but our ears prick up at the promise of freedom.
Think of it. Worshipping and serving one God would set us free from all the other “gods” that make demands on us. Worshipping the gods of pleasure, success, materialism, power, and sex, can tear us apart. To make God our only and central allegiance would be a wonderfully freeing and integrating experience. The conflicting things we so easily get entrapped in and give loyalty to can make our lives a misery. We don’t really need any more temptations to do wrong, but some incentives to do right would be helpful. The church I grew up in majored in prohibitions. Let’s try another approach.
The Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard
(Read from the New Revised Standard Version)
Have you ever wondered why the owner of the vineyard built a lookout tower? It must have been so that marauders, human or animal, could be guarded against. Throughout the ages, the church has been building watchtowers to guard against perceived marauders. In our town, we are studying world religions. People’s interest is far beyond what we expected a year ago when planning for the course started. As we study Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and the Muslim religion, I suspect there are some in this town who consider such activity a threat. Someone asked me if there might be pickets when we examine the Muslim faith. While I doubt that, the speaker, a Muslim from Toronto, will no doubt be regarded with some suspicion.
“Enemies” are by no means all from without. Almost any non-mainstream denomination can be regarded with suspicion and fear. Surely the sects also bear watching. In the past, we have been no less violent with these “infidels” than the vineyard leasers were with the owner’s servants. We have acted as though we owned the grapes. I suspect that when the owner of the vineyard comes, we’ll get an eye-opener. Milton Schwartzentruber
One: This is the Good News of Jesus Christ
Hymn #374 “Come and Find the Quiet Centre”
We Respond In Giving And Gratitude
Offertory “Let Us Break Bread Together” arr. R. Wilson
Gracious God, it is in thanksgiving for you revealing yourself to us in Jesus that we choose to make known to others the good news of the gospel. We dedicate ourselves, and commit ourselves to showing Christ’s caring and compassion in practical ways to those in need. Bless our giving and guide our serving, we pray. Amen.
One: Today we celebrate Communion with followers of Jesus the world over. We owe this fact to a man named Jesse Bader. He spent his whole life working to get Christians to worship and work together. More than sixty years ago, he started this idea of all Christians everywhere celebrating Communion on the same Sunday, no matter where they lived or what denomination they belonged to. His dream came true, and today we can celebrate Worldwide Communion Sunday as one big family of those who love and follow Jesus!
One: God be with you.
All: And also with you.
One: Come to the festival table.
One: to the feast of transformation.
All: We come in memory of love poured out for the sake of the world.
One: God we give thanks for the vividness of your mercy: that in the beginning through the waters of creation you delivered the earth and all that is in it; that in all times and ages you come as Wind and Wisdom and Word.
You come in prophets and midwives overpowering all oppression, embracing hope.
You come in Jesus, your anointed one, born by the Spirit yet flesh of our flesh, giving birth to all justice, redeeming your people. You come in our sisters and brothers from all parts of the world, signs of your promise that
we are not alone. With the church around the globe we are one family, one
worldwide communion, with one song.
One: At this table, God, we remember the nameless children, men, and women on whom Jesus poured out his passion. We remember the woman with the alabaster jar who anointed his head with myrrh, regardless of the cost. In memory of her, we too proclaim the good news of Christ, your love poured out for all people.
At your table, we remember the powerless, the poor, the sick, the oppressed. We recall all for whom Jesus broke open traditions and laws of exclusion anointing their hopes, feeding their hungers. Regardless of the cost, he joined insider with outsider, race with race, in holy hospitality proclaiming we are all your children; all in him are friends.
All creation is your table, O God; on hillsides, at seasides, in an upper room, Jesus took bread and broke it. On that fateful night he also took wine and poured it. Jesus gave thanks, as we give thanks, then shared the loaf and cup, saying to his friends, “I give myself for you and for many. This is the new covenant. Do this in memory of me.”
And so, recalling the wonder of his life, the agony of his death, and the hope of his resurrection, we proclaim the mystery of faith:
All: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
One: God of life, pour out your Spirit on us and on all we do, that all who share this loaf and cup may become vessels of Christ, wombs of new life. We pray that the taste of hope and justice in bread of all kinds and rice might be shared among every nation and race. We pray that the sweet juices of friendship might flow to all the world. All this we pray, thankful that we may turn to you as to our Mother who would deliver us, as to our Father who would welcome us home, through Jesus who imaged you as Father and who calls us to pray together by saying …
All: (The Lord’s Prayer)
Partaking of the Elements
Those wishing gluten-free bread (rice cakes) please signal James
Prayer after Communion (Unison)
Loving God, we have been fed here by your love. Thank you for the ways in which you care for us and for all people. We give thanks for all people of this world and pray that one day we may all be one in your spirit. Amen.
Hymn #312 “Praise with Joy the World’s Creator”
Commissioning
And may the blessing of God the Creator of Heaven and Earth, Jesus, the source of our life-giving water, and the Spirit who guides and directs us to the well, be with us this day and forevermore.
Choral Amen
#298 “When You Walk From Here”
When you walk from here, when you walk from here.
Walk with justice, walk with mercy, and with God’s humble care.
Postlude “Hymn for Brotherhood” by R. Hughes
The Life And Work Of The Congregation
October Celebrations
Birthdays: Crissie Allen (101), Gladys Leitch, Leota Steele, Irene Cunnings, Beulah Barby
Anniversaries: Pearl & Jim Kellington (60 years)
Bette & Herb Frisch (55 years)
Marion & Alex Shand (56 years)
Thought For Today
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
by Sir Winston Churchill
For more than two thousand years, and, throughout Christendom, there has been an understanding that God is vengeful and militant and sure and exacting in the area of disbursing punishments.
It is from parables and stories like the one I just read for you that this understanding of God is perpetuated. Whenever we anthropomorphise God we are apt to create this view of God. What I mean by that is that when we put upon God the ideas of justice that we may hold as true in any given age, we also put upon God our limitations as the definitive understanding of the mind and heart of God.
We hear the story of this particular parable and we think…those miserable evil tenants…indeed they deserve to be trashed! If I were Matthew writing this part of the life of Christ I would want to make sure that vengeance carried through in the message.
Why wouldn’t I? There is a sense of injustice here that screams for our participation. That cries out to be made right.
Besides you may be thinking, “so James, if you are talking about God taking on human form and human aspirations why wouldn’t God behave like that? After all, are we not made in the image of God? So isn’t the reverse true. When we cry out for justice and retribution, does that not mirror God’s response?”
Why would we think that God is any different?”
////
But wait a minute; in this parable there is MORE concerning the image of God, particularly as we encounter that image in Jesus of Nazareth.
What is that like? Let’s visit a bit of the parable again. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”? 43Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’
That stone falls upon us every time we allow the spirit of God to challenge all that stuff that we just think of as human. It falls on us and crushes our hate and our envy and our desire for revenge and it crushes our need to “make it right” from the view of our understanding.
This is what Jesus was offering. The insult was all the scribes and Pharisees could hear … but there was something else being offered them. It was the opportunity to be made new, different, and he was offering his own life as an example to them as the type of person that they might aspire to.
////
Let’s bring it home a little bit. Where have you felt the crush of God? I felt it, as I have shared before, in the solitude of a ship’s cabin on the great lakes. I feel it when I encounter a different perspective that comes to me as a breath of fresh air.
I feel it sometimes when I experience the bewilderment of interpersonal relationships…when someone full and vulnerable in their humanity is touched by the life of another and overwhelmed, they embrace the wave of emotion that needs no explanation…it simply is.
These are glimpses of the kingdom of God among us. If we are open to them these glimpses of the kingdom of God are NOW and HERE not “somewhere out there”.
Being made in the image of God offers us possibilities to encounter the holy in the ordinary and in the unexpected.
Jesus had a way of turning things upside down. He spoke at one level knowing full well that it would irritate his listeners…especially those who were not prepared to look outside the box. But on another level he offered life from new perspectives to all who would take a chance and hear differently, see differently, be willing to love differently and consequently live differently.
To these he offered an opportunity for abundant living and an opportunity to experience the kingdom of God right here and right now.
We are they …as have been all willing to open their hearts from the time that life began.
Gathering as seekers and questors today, we do so, realizing that we miss the vision and we avoid the kingdom from time to time and we need to gather with others who miss the vision and avoid the kingdom that is eternally all around us. By doing so, we come together in the possibility of meeting Jesus anew.
At the table today we take time to think of what it means to let Jesus’ upside-down message find a place in our lives. We gather today with people the world over who also are open to that touch, that encounter, that anointing in life.
Confronting that place, this World-wide Communion Sunday, let us join in prayer: God, may we sense yet again the touch that you offer us and the joy that comes from being open to your kingdom here and now. As we seek to be those who embrace the kingdom that you constantly offer, may we also be willing to embrace your abiding presence that lives within all people, regardless of religious affiliation… and as we approach your table may we do so as those whose sense of welcome and intrinsic value are held in tension with our innate desire to be more like the Christ at whose table we gather. Amen.