Worship
Service for July 28, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Why have you come to this place?
P: We have come to find Christ.
L: Why have you come today?
P: We are tired in body and spirit.
L: Come, rest awhile and be fed through music
and word.
P: We are here to worship and to be renewed.
L: Then let us worship God together.
Opening Hymn – O Worship the
King #476/104 5 verses in Blue
Prayer of Confession
God of steadfast love, fools
say in their hearts: “There is no God.”
How often, O Lord, are we the fools who confess You with our lips, but
deny You with our actions? How often do
we act as if You sleep, O God confident that You know not what we do? How often do we cause others to stumble, when
we act hypocritically in our faith? Help
us be constant as the north star, O God, that others have no occasion to
witness our example and say: “I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for the
Christians.” Forgive us, O Lord. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God’s love is lavished upon you. It is always there for you, offering healing
and hope.
P: Thanks
be to God for God’s steadfast love.
AMEN.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead. I believe in the
Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness
of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Gracious
God, we give you thanks for all the blessings that come from your hand,
especially for the invitation to live as your holy people, the body of
Christ. We lift in prayer today your
church, in all its various forms, as it struggles to proclaim your gracious
reign in a world dedicated to wealth and possessions. Strengthen the people of this planet for an
attitude of peace and goodwill and all who lead them. For the nations that struggle with war,
violence, and injustice, grant your full measure of peace and
righteousness.
We
especially lift up to you the people of other countries that have been torn
apart by violence, civil war, invasions, and radical ideologies that hurt and
destroy, but we also must include our own country in the midst of so many acts
of violence against one another.
For the
sick and those facing death, we pray that you send your Spirit and your people
to bring comfort and hope. We pray for…
For this
congregation, as we endeavor to let Christ rule our hearts, open those hearts
that we may give and serve gladly; that the witness of those who have gone
before us is a guiding hand.
In this
time of silence, we lift our personal petitions to you…
These and
all other things you know we need, we ask in the name of Jesus, the only name
that matters as we pray together saying... Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, forever.
AMEN.
Hymn – Alleluia! Sing to Jesus #144/377 Brown/Blue
Scripture Reading:
First Scripture Reading – Psalm 14
Second Scripture Reading – John
6:1-14
Sermon
– Much More Than Just Loaves and Fishes
(based on John 6:1-14)
Last
week we read the passages that came right before and right after this miracle story
of the feeding of the 5,000 in the gospel according to Mark. This morning we read the miracle itself from
John’s point of view. How many times
have you read it or heard it read? Probably
for most of you, that we be a fair number, right? After all, it is one of those astounding
miracles that amaze us; how Jesus took two fish and five loaves of bread and
somehow managed to feed 5,000 or more people.
Over the years Biblical Scholars and various Commentators have had much
to say about this miracle, one debate that has endured over the centuries is the
estimate of 5,000 people in attendance.
Several scholars have alleged that the normal counting of people in attendance
was to only count the men, not women and children, pushing the crowd size to
perhaps 10,000 or more. However, the original
Greek term used here in this passage of John 10:6 is anthropolous which
literally means human beings, therefore both male and female. Regardless of the number of actual people in
attendance, it was a huge number that far exceeded the ability of the disciples
to feed everyone. Even the largest amphitheater
in the area, in the town of Sepphoris, only held 3,000 people and no town in the
area would be able to come up with enough food to feed that many people.
But
this miracle story is much more than how five loaves of bread and two fish fed
such a large number of people. One of my
contemporaries asked the question, “under what circumstance would you retell
this miracle story?”
A
lot of my colleagues had comments to share.
One said that they planned to focus on Jesus' invitation for everyone to
sit on the grass together. To ask the question:
What does it mean to sit with God, especially when we hunger for something? Imagine all the different ways those 5,000
people, and all of us, are in need of something. And upon recognizing the
crowd and the need, the first thing Jesus does is invite them to sit down in
the grass with him and with one another. How do we live into this non-anxious presence?
How do we learn to trust God and one
another when experiencing need? And
maybe it was this sitting down together that allowed for the "multiplying
of generosity.”
Another colleague said, of course the
most obvious take is “stone soup”. An
aside for a moment before I go on; you all know the story of stone soup, right? For those of you who have never heard the
story, it is an old European folktale story in which a hungry stranger in town
convinces the town-folk to share a small bit of food in order to make a meal.
It goes something like this: “Once upon
a time, there was a great famine. The
people in one small village didn't have enough to eat, and definitely not enough
to store away for the winter. People
were afraid their families would go hungry, so they hid the small amounts of
food they did have. They even hid their
food from their friends and neighbors. One
day a wandering stranger came into the village. He asked the different people he met about
finding a place to eat and sleep for the night.
"There's not a bite to eat in the whole county," they told
him. "You better keep moving on."
"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I would like to make some stone
soup to share with all of you." He
pulled a big black cooking pot from his wagon. He filled it with water and built a fire under
it. Then, he reached slowly into his
knapsack and, while several villagers watched, he pulled a plain gray stone
from a cloth bag and dropped it into the water.
By now, hearing about the magic stone,
most of the villagers were surrounding the stranger and his cooking pot. As the stranger sniffed the stone soup and
licked his lips, the villagers began to overcome their lack of trust. "Ahh," the stranger said aloud to
himself, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage is even
better." Soon a villager ran from
his house into the village square, holding a cabbage. "I have this cabbage from my
garden." he said as he held it out for the stranger. "Fantastic!" cried the man. The stranger cut up the cabbage and added it
to the pot. "You know, I once had
stone soup with cabbage and a bit of beef, and it was delicious." The butcher said he thought he could find
some beef scraps. As he ran back to his
shop, other villagers offered bits of vegetables from their own
gardens--potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. Soon the big black pot was bubbling and
steaming. When the soup was ready, everyone
in the village ate a bowl of soup, and it was delicious.
The villagers offered the stranger
money and other treasures for the magic stone, but he refused to sell it. He had many offers for a cot to sleep on that
night. And the next day he traveled on
his way.” Pause
My colleague continues: Nobody (in
Jesus’ day) would have gone out into the wilderness with nothing to survive. The real miracle is, that in a limited goods
society, where people lived in fear of scarcity, Jesus got people to
share. And scarcity becomes abundance. He said that he was going to
contrast this banquet with the banquet that was part of the lectionary passage
two weeks ago that I skipped. It’s a
story that I don’t like very much from Mark when Herod held a banquet for his
friends and his daughter danced before him.
In a show of male bravado, so pleased with her dancing, he offered her
whatever she wished as a gift.
Conspiring with her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist.
Very different kinds of banquets, don’t
you think? Which banquet would you wish
to live into? Pause. But, when we are spending more than 800
billion dollars on defense (more than the next 10 countries combined) and
incarcerating more people than any other country in the world, while 1 in 5
children in the US go to bed hungry, and 15,000 children a day across the globe
die of starvation, which banquet are we choosing? That of fear,
scarcity, domination and death, or are we choosing the banquet of peace,
abundance, freedom and life?
And
the final comments of another colleague; I have always thought this was a story
of the multiplication of generosity and not the multiplication of fishes and
loaves. It makes no sense that all the
multitude was so irresponsible as to leave home without food, especially in
that culture when most workers packed a lunch of bread and dried fish when they
left home in the morning. My thought is
some had food and some didn’t. The
example of offering all one had and sharing it, I think inspired some to open
their bags and put food in the baskets as others who had none removed enough
for their need. When it was all over,
all were fed and an abundance was still available. The miracle of generosity is if we open our
hands and hearts to share, instead of grasping and believing the lie of
insufficiency, we will discover the miracle of God’s gift of enough for all and
blessings in abundance. Pause.
So,
when would we retell this miracle story?
I think we’d retell it when the crowd is afraid of losing
something, when they are afraid of using up when little they have left, when we
are afraid of scarcity. In which case,
this miracle story speaks of abundance. In
spite of there being only five loaves of bread and two fish, all were fed with
twelve full baskets of leftovers.
I
think we should retell this miracle story when we feel sad, when we think everything
is wrong with the world. Imagine the
wonder and joy on the faces of over 5,000 people sitting there on the hillside
at the end of the feast.
I
think we should retell this miracle story when we are tired of doing mission,
when we feel burned out, when we feel worried about the future, when we feel
bone-sick – perhaps an extension from last week, “come away for a while to
rest.” To sit down on the grass and rest
awhile in the presence of Christ. To
allow him to minister to us. Allow him
to fill that empty void in our bodies and souls. To curl your toes in the dirt and the grass
and to be re-grounded, re-rooted in the wonder and awe of creation.
And
finally, I think we should retell this miracle story when we feel isolated from
one another, when our politics make us enemies, when our beliefs and worldviews
are at odds with one another, when we are in conflict and have stopped seeing
God in each other’s eyes. Because, the
truth is, we are all part of the same human family and should be ready and
willing to break bread with one another and share a meal in spite of our
differences.
Yes,
my friends, this story is much more than just about two fish and five loaves of
bread.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Lord,
you have called us to be the very presence of Christ in this hurting
world. We offer these gifts to you as
symbols of our willingness to spend our time, energy, and material resources to
continue Christ’s ministry of sacrificial love. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee #357/665
Blue/Brown
Benediction –
The world is
thirsting for God’s good news of love and grace. People struggle for words of hope and peace. As you have been blessed, now go to be a
blessing in God’s Name. AMEN.
Postlude
No comments:
Post a Comment