World Communion Sunday
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 2nd, 2022
Call to Worship:
One: Come, all who look for God with unseeing eyes.
Come, all who listen for God but hear nothing.
Many: Oh, that we knew where to find God!
We want to hear and understand God’s Word.
One: The word of God is living and active.
It pierces and judges and opens us to God’s grace.
Many: We cannot hide from God who knows us.
God understands our thoughts and intentions.
One: Open your hearts to hear God’s voice.
This is the time to embrace new ways.
ALL: Here we set the patterns for everyday life.
Here we are strengthened for every day’s challenges.
*HYMN: As We Gather at Your Table
A TIME OF PRAYER:
Pastoral Prayer
Silent Prayer
Lord's Prayer:
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 and forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory, now and forever. Amen.
SCRIPTURE LESSONS:
Lamentations 1.1-6 OT Page 720
Psalm 137 Hymnal Page 713
2 Timothy 1.1-7 NT Page 187
Luke 17.5-10 NT Page 69
SERMON: “Keep the Faith”
As I watched the news coverage of Hurricane Ian this week, I wondered about the God impact. Do such tragedies lead more people to look to God in prayer or are they more prone to cause people to question God, even the existence of God?
In the midst of the howling winds and pounding rain, as flood waters raged through neighborhoods, I’m sure there was many a prayer offered. It’s long been said “there are no atheists in the foxholes.” Even those not taken to prayer, likely cried out to God in fear. But I wonder about the post-storm reality.
In the pictures of the aftermath that the NY Times ran, there was one of a group of people in a prayerful circle. I took them to be mourners or lamenters and not thankful survivors. Prayers of thanks were likely most rare. I know that here, too, even far from the reaches of Ian, there were many prayers offered: Prayers for relief, prayers for help and hope.
But it’s likely that lament, spoken or unspoken, prayed or merely thought, was the most common chorus of the people. Our first reading from the book of Lamentations, opens not with any thanksgiving or even prayer for help, but simply lament, passionate expressions of sorry. Yet rather than the weeping prophet Jerimiah, it’s the city, Jerusalem, that is pictured as weeping.
Prayers of hope, words of faith and of a loving rather than a punishing God would soon come to the prophet’s pen, but first there is sadness. It’s only upon further reflection that hope and faith come to the fore. In chapter 3, we find:
“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”
It is my hope and my prayer, that as the people catch their breath, as they find places to settle and to rebuild, that faith and hope will come bounding back. But that may well take some time. Even prayers of thanksgiving may well be slow to come.
Given our time, our age that is seemingly less and less filled with people of faith, I’m not sure that such tragedies bring more people into the fold of God. But what I do pray is that those of faith can find help, solace, and hope with the God of their hearts. For them I pray: Keep the faith.
The expression “Keep the faith,” is said to have roots with the earth Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. When people of color struggled for basic civil rights and met a wall of resistance, the word was to keep the faith, to stay true to one’s beliefs, to the good notion of a loving God who even makes the seemingly impossible possible. It was by keeping the faith, the “We Shall Overcome” was born.
Faith: The word was adopted into Middle English in about 1250, according to The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. It was originally spelled “feth” or “feith” and was borrowed, as many words were in those days, from Old French (feit or feid), which ultimately got it from the Latin fides (trust).
I like that trust is the heart of faith. Ultimately, when we take faith in God, we trust God. We trust God to lead, to comfort, to heal and mend, to provide confidence of a new resolve even to suffering souls. We trust God to thwart the evil, to give strength of recovery, to make God’s spirit of power and love shine anew. And with that trust, there is hope. Keep the faith.
The tragedy of natural disasters is but one challenge of faith. The more common and even more natural challenge is that of sickness and disease. How do we, in the dim light of a grim diagnosis respond? At first, I belief, for people of faith, faith abounds. At first there are more prayers offered as hope itself is grasped or at least sincerely sought. But what happens when the healing doesn’t come, when hope itself seems unrealistic, when the grip of disease only becomes tighter with time. What happens when it not we ourselves in the bed but our child or the love of our life? Can we, will we, still keep the faith? Will trust in God again take hold and win the battle?
Keep the faith. Bad things do happen to good people, this we know, this we’ve seen. Times of loss, of suffering and sadness come to us all. The challenge is always to take hold of the faith of your heart. It is to trust again the goodness of our living God. And scripture reminds us too that “if we have hope in this life only, we are most to be pitied.” For hope and faith still abide beyond the grave. “And the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’” Yes, may faith abound. And may we, in all things, in all times, in all ways, keep the faith and remain strong in the embrace of our God.
*HYMN: God Moves in a Mysterious Way # 412
Unison Prayer of Thanksgiving:
We give you thanks, Almighty God, that you have refreshed us at your table through the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Continue to heal us, we pray, and strengthen our faith. Increase our love for one another, and send us forth into the world in courage and peace, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit; we ask these things in the Name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
PASTORAL BENEDICTION
