Pentecost 9 2021

Greet you and welcome you to this service of praise and thanksgiving to our God on this eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

Our service begins on page three hundred and fifty-five, but the first part of the service, you probably won't need your uh prayer book.

You'll just need the service sheet.

For the second part, you will need the will need the prayer book.

My name is Jim McGill, and I am uh pleased and privileged to be here with you today.

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Together.

Almighty God.

To you all hearts are open.

All desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.

Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask.

Through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

When the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, See now, I am living in the house of Cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.

Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.

But that same night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan.

Go and tell my servant David, thus says the Lord, are you the one to build me a house to live in?

I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day.

But I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.

Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, Why have you not built me a house of Cedar?

Now therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel.

And I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you.

And I will make for you a great name like the name of the great ones of the earth.

And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, so that they may live in their own place and be disturbed no more.

And evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

No enemy shall deceive him, nor any wicked man bring him down.

I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him.

My faithfulness and love shall be with him, and he shall be victorious through my name.

I shall make his dominion extend from the great sea to the river.

He will say to me, You are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.

I will make him my firstborn, and higher than the rulers of the earth, I will keep my love for him forever.

My covenant will stand firm for him.

I will establish his line forever and his throne as the days of heaven.

If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my judgments, if they break my statutes and do not keep my commandments, I will punish their transgressions with a rod and their iniquities with a lash.

But I will not take my love from him, nor let my faithfulness prove false.

I will not break my covenant, nor change what has gone out of my lips.

Once for all I have sworn by my holiness.

Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he is our people.

In his flesh he has made both groups into one, and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us.

He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he may create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, through putting to death that hostility through it.

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near.

For through him both of us have access in one spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone.

In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.

As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And he began to teach them many things.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesar and moored the boat.

When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick en masse to wherever they heard he was.

And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak.

And all who touched it were he.

You saw it on the Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know.

That was the real ark, don't you think?

Well, that is called the mercy seat, and that flat top is where God, according to Israel, that's where God sits.

That's where God actually rests, where God is.

So David wants the Ark of the Covenant to be housed in a nice, a glorious temple.

I mean, David lives in a house of cedar.

Why shouldn't God live in a house of cedar?

And David says, you know, things are pretty quiet around here.

And I will do something glorious for God.

Now, if you were here last week, you heard about David doing glorious things for God.

You heard last week a sermon that kind of took David to task for his disingenuous glorification of God.

Well, you're going to hear another one today, and this is not because Mike and I have anything against David.

It is a reminder that as good as we are, and as much as God loves us, every single one of us, we continue to be scoundrels much of the time.

Because the truth is, God loves us in spite of us sometimes.

It's like you love your kids and your grandkids.

Sometimes you are called on to love them in spite of them.

It doesn't matter what you have done, God still loves you.

It doesn't matter how you have decided to live your life.

You know, all these people, all these people we see throughout the Bible who are friends of God.

David is one of them.

David is a friend of God.

We know that.

Oh, I think it was David.

As a great pain to the great love that God has for David.

I'm not here to tell you that that uh psalm was wrong or anything, but I am here to tell you that just like you heard last week and just like you're gonna hear today, David is sometimes one who can confuse the glory of God with the glory of David.

David says, I'm gonna build this great temple to house the Ark of the Covenant.

That's what the temple was for, you know.

And David says, it's gonna be gorgeous and beautiful because I live in a house.

Why shouldn't God live in a house?

Benevolent person that I am.

It's going to be a magnificent thing, he says.

And before Nathan has that dream, Nathan says, Yeah, go ahead and do what you want.

But David forgot something that he should have done first.

David says, This is gonna be a great temple that I am going to build.

Do you think David intended to pick up a hammer?

No.

Do you think David was gonna dig deep into his own pocket to pay for the temple?

No.

David was gonna take this from the taxes of the people.

And David was not gonna lift a finger, and David was planning to stand beside this and say, look what a great thing I'm doing.

For the glory of God.

No?

Sorry, David, it's not for the glory of God.

Clearly, it's for the glory of David.

That doesn't mean we don't remember David as the great king.

We do remember David as the great king.

But we also remember that David, along with Moses, along with Abraham, along with all the other Joshua, the son of Nun, all of them were scoundrels in their day.

They had their days just like you do, and just like I do.

David forgot that the glorification of God is not only up to David, and it doesn't come by way of glorifying David either.

That's not how it works.

David forgot something.

So what was the problem?

Why didn't God want, why didn't God want David to build God a temple?

Well, it turns out that the thing is, God's lived in a tent all this time.

God got pretty comfortable in the tent.

God is not confined.

And it turns out that God doesn't like to be put in a box any more than you do.

Oh, you know him.

He's a priest.

Oh God.

Come on.

You know him.

He's a West Point graduate.

Oh, no.

Come on.

You know him.

He's a Democrat.

Oh, gee, come on.

He lives on the other side of the street, or on the other side of the tracks, or on the other side of the bayou.

I was talking to a guy at the cathedral.

He said, you know, in a lot of towns it's uh the people who live on the other side of the tracks are the low class.

He said, for us it was on the other side of the bayou because I was one of them.

I lived on the other side of the bayou from River Oze.

God, it turns out, doesn't like to be put in a box.

Oh, I get it.

So why doesn't God want David to build him a build God a temple, a tabernacle to hold the Ark of the Covenant?

Well, it turns out that God has another idea.

Now David did not have access to the writings of Paul.

And David did not live, uh did not have access to uh David did not live in Ephesus either.

Paul wrote to the people in Ephesus, and he says this.

Now the people in Ephesus, as you will certainly recall, the people in Ephesus were not Jews.

All of the first Christians were Jews.

You know, Jesus and his friends, the people around him, they were all Jews.

So the very first Christians were Jews first.

But when Paul started Paul's ministry, the primary focus of his ministry was to bring in the Gentiles as well.

A Gentile is someone who is not a Jew.

Actually, the word Gentile means someone who's not us.

But in this context, it means someone who is not a Jew.

Sometimes they are referred to in the Bible as Greeks.

Paul is reaching out to the people in Ephesus who have come to Jesus, who have come to know Christ without being Jews first.

And he is crazy about the people in Ephesus.

He says, you know that at one time you who were without Jesus were not heirs to the covenant of the promise.

Now he talks about circumcision and uncircumcision and all that kind of stuff, but what he's saying is you were outside and now you're inside.

You were far off and now you have been brought near.

Because Paul understands that God will not be the God only of the Jews.

This God was frequently referred to as the God of Judah or the God of the Jews.

Judah meaning the place of the Jews.

But this God is not content, according to Paul, according to what Paul has learned, according to what has been revealed to him by meeting Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, and by understanding Judaism better than practically anybody else.

And by listening to what God is saying, God is not satisfied with being the God only of the Jews.

God wants to be free.

In fact, God declares God's self to be free, to be the God of all people.

No matter where they are, no matter who they are, no matter how they act, and no matter whether you like them or not.

God wants graciousness and great things for all people.

There is a hymn in our hymnal somewhere in the early 400s.

I mean, page number of hymn numbers, called Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise.

You may have heard that.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light.

Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might.

God is not in a hurry.

God is not confined.

God is quiet sometimes.

And God doesn't waste time.

God is always slow, but God is never late.

You ever notice that?

God is always slow, but God is never late.

So the second part of that, after they say, after it says, Nor wanting nor wasting, thou rulest in might, thy justice, like mountains high, soaring above thy clouds, which are fountain of goodness and love.

God rains down the rain of goodness and love, the showers of blessing and hope and grace from the clouds on everybody, on you, on your families, on your neighbors, on your neighbor whose dog barks all night long, on the people that you hate.

God brings down all that goodness and love and mercy.

But God's justice, which is to be for all people, soars above even those clouds.

Before there can be goodness and justice and mercy coming from God into your life, there is supposed to be justice for all people.

This is your work.

This is my work.

This is James' work.

This is David's work.

This is Donna's work.

This is the work to which we are called to work for that justice.

Because for better or worse, God is not in charge.

Now, you probably don't hear that very often.

I went to a church last week of a denomination that I will not disclose.

I went to it to see my grandson baptized for the second time.

In which during the sermon, the pastor was trying to tell everyone, trying to teach us how to overcome obstacles in our lives.

And it was a pretty good sermon.

But in that sermon, he said, you've got to remember three things, and I don't remember what the other two were, but I remember the first one.

The first one is you've got to remember God is in charge.

Well, I got lost about that time.

Because when I read Genesis, I read that God put the man and the woman in the garden to take care of it and have dominion over it.

Dominion means a number of things, but one of the things it means is it is supposed to be treated like your domicile, like your house, like the place where you call home, because you are going to run it.

You, the man and the woman, are to till the ground and to work it.

This is your place.

God gave it to us and didn't even charge rent.

Sadly, all of the things that are going on in this life are not because of God.

God is not in charge.

If God was in charge, George Floyd would be alive.

And so would Brian Taylor.

I'm too interested in what's good for me.

I'm too interested in building a temple glorious to God so that people will know who Jim is.

That's the way I live my life.

I'm probably the only one here.

I hope that's nervous laughter.

The thing is, we are in charge of this world.

Which means not only do we are not we are in charge of it, we didn't make it.

That glory belongs to God.

But we have made it what it has become.

May God save us from ourselves.

So Paul says, you who have been far off are now brought near, because we have this work to do.

You who have been far off have been brought near in order that you might inherit the promise.

That's good news, isn't it?

Well, the other side of that is the promise comes with hard work.

It comes with serving day and night.

It comes with receiving wonderful gifts from God and rejoicing in those gifts, but they're not for you alone.

All these people up here have a gift of music.

And where are they every Sunday?

They're here sharing that gift with you and me.

It's not just for them, and they've realized that.

When it's not Sunday morning and they are not here sharing that gift, then they're scoundrels, just like you and I are.

But I'm serious, this is what God has in mind.

God has in mind that you take what you do and make it for the community.

That's why Paul is reaching out to the Ephesians.

Okay, Eric, I know Paul didn't write Ephesians, but somebody who claimed to be called, wrote, called Paul, wrote Ephesians, and he wrote a lot like Paul.

So a little disclaimer there.

Full disclosure.

So the author of Ephesians is telling those who are outside, you are now inside because we can't do all this work ourselves.

We cannot be in every place and at every time.

We need all human beings the world over.

Paul didn't know about the world over, but we need human beings the world over to understand that justice and mercy and peace are the things that God wants for every single person.

So what did David forget?

If God is, if what God wants is to be free, to be among all people, what did David forget?

Well, the clue comes in the gospel lesson for today.

The gospel lesson today starts off with uh that the disciples returned.

Well, where'd they return from?

Well, we skipped that part.

Last week we heard about uh the death of John the Baptizer and all of that, and that was very terrible.

And then the next part, which we didn't read, is where Jesus sends the disciples out two by two to go into the neighboring towns and villages and preach the word.

Preach the gospel, heal people, and cast out demons.

So they went out, and what did they discover?

They were inspired to preach the gospel.

They healed people, or God healed people through them, and demons were indeed cast out.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you walked into a hospital room and said, be healed, and the person got up?

Can you imagine?

That would rock your world, wouldn't it?

Well, it rocked their world, and they came back fairly babbling about all of the things that they had seen and that they had done in Christ's name.

And so Jesus is kind of, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And he says to them, come away to a deserted place.

And they did.

They got in the boat, went to the other side, and they went to a deserted place.

And he said, Rest, rest a while.

Well, they rested some, but mostly what they did was they talked.

And Jesus listened.

They talked, and Jesus listened.

They told Jesus what was on their mind.

And Jesus listened.

And he blessed them.

There's more in the story.

But the point here is that the first thing David didn't do was go find God.

Go find God first.

And when you've got that down, then go ahead and do whatever it is you want to do.

One of the prophets said, said, you say, next week we'll do this, and next Friday we're going to do that.

And what you should say is, if it's God's will, we'll do this and we'll do that.

That was pretty good.

That was one of the prophets.

Who was it, Eric?

Eric doesn't know.

He's only in his second year of seminary.

Give him a break.

We don't go to God and find out what it is that God wants first.

And the truth is that God loves every single person that I hate.

I try not to hate anybody, but I'm not successful in that endeavor.

Every one.

Every single one is as special to God as I am.

I am forced to say that because I know it's truth.

Because I am charged with preaching the gospel.

And that is gospel.

If you ask God, the result of your project is supposed to be justice.

It's supposed to be beauty.

It's supposed to be peace.

It's supposed to be merciful.

It is supposed to be forgiving.

The result of your project is supposed to edify and amplify the gospel.

The result of your project is supposed to be according to God's will.

And you already know what that is.

Well, I don't know what God wants.

Oh, come on.

God doesn't care if you're building a dining room table or a toy car for your grandchild or dinner.

God knows about all of those things.

Your work is to be for the values of the kingdom of God.

The ones that last.

See, there are certain values that obtain in this life and in the next one.

And I've just named some of them.

Justice and mercy, truth, and love and grace.

If I start all my projects by praying to God, I may or may not have success in my project.

But I probably ought to start out by giving it a shot.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten and not made, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us is our salvation.

He came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate with the Virgin Mary and was saved.

For our sake, he was crucified under conscious father.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge living in the dead.

And his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

With all our heart and with all our mind, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace from above, for the loving kindness of God, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the peace of the world, for the welfare of the Holy Church of God, and for the unity of all peoples.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the people and clergy of the church, for bishops and other ministers, the priests in our community, Mike, Jim, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, our bishops Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kai, in the Diocese of Texas, Trinity Jacksonville, Trinity Longview, and Trinity Marshall, the Archbishop of Conterbury, Justin, and our presiding bishop Michael, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord have compassion.

For our parish and our vestry, that the source of wisdom may guide us, the source of strength may support us, and the source of love may unify us.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord have compassion.

For St.

Thomas the Apostle School, that those who teach and those who learn may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, that we may teach our students to love whatever is just and true and good, and that we may be bearers of your grace to all who come through our doors.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion for all who govern and hold authority in every nation, for the members of the armed forces throughout the world, and for all who struggle for peace and justice.

That they may act with prudence and vision to plant the signs of your dominion everywhere.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion for this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion for us.

For the good earth which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For the aged and infirm, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, especially Chris, Jean, Jerome, Mickey, John, Lavon, Paxton, and Rick.

Let us pray to the Lord.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebrations or petitions silently and aloud.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion for the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For all who have died in the hope of resurrection, and for all the departed, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degradation.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

That we may end our lives in faith and hope, without suffering and without reproach.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

In the communion of Saint Thomas and of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

Things done and left undone.

And so uphold us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the honor and glory of your name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Almighty God have mercy on you to forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life.

Amen.

We ascend it.

Like a warden or something?

No?

Okay.

I have a couple of announcements to be uh made.

First of all, a week from this Saturday, the 31st of July, is the next time we will have a new food distribution uh here at Chicago.

I've been to it, and it's a wonderful thing.

Come at 7.45 in the morning, done by 10 o'clock.

Food truck comes in with the food, you're going to have to bring the food.

It helps if you if you assist in uh breaking down the food into the bag, and then you list the bags and people drive by the call.

So it's a good thing to do.

The second thing is that on Wednesday, the third of the coming Monday week in August.

On the 3rd of Monday, Monday, the 3rd of August at 6 o'clock p.m.

At 6 o'clock p.m.

in uh in the parish hall, in the parish hall, there will be a uh barbecue uh dinner, and get together there will be the first time when we get together since the COVID, and uh we asked, and also to welcome Alex to uh Killis, who will be the family minister uh going forward and look forward to his work as well.

Um so if you plan to come, and I encourage you to do so at the end, uh please let us know that you're gonna be here so that only talkers will know how much food to prepare.

You can do it online if you're an online person.

If you're not an online person, just call the church office and let them know you'll be here, and there you go.

Yes, and what's the first Wednesday?

It's the first Wednesday in August.

Oh, there'll be bingo, barbecue and bingo, yeah.

And you can do that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Um the third thing is uh you will have noticed perhaps that uh Eric is among us.

Eric, could you stand up?

Eric is a second-year seminarian, which is why he doesn't know which prophet it was.

He doesn't get all wisdom until the end of the seminary.

Eric, uh beginning in September, Eric will be assigned to St.

Thomas as for his field work.

And he will be among us to learn about ministry.

He will work with Alex, some in family ministries, he'll work with Mike, uh, as he prepares for ordination.

He is a seminary at the Iona School, which, as you know, is the uh diocesan school for people to go through seminary work in preparation for ordination.

The Iona School, my sister graduated from the Iowa School in West Sex, which was modeled after the Iowa School here, and I know a lot about it because I used to get a lot of thoughts from her.

And so the thing is, the Iona School is done on weekends and in a retreat in the summertime.

So it's uh sort of like an extra target, but not really.

But what it means is that most of the work gets done by the seminarian.

If you go to a residential seminary like I did, you open the top of your head and some professor pours in there all the stuff that he's learned over the past 65 years of ministry, and then off you go.

But the work is mostly done by the seminarist themselves.

They are led very ablely, by uh by faculty and staff members, and that's kind of what the research is going through right now.

So you know one of the proofs of the distance of a lot of is that some liberals in the seminar actually continue to exist after all.

Jack and Brent, will you all please come up here, please?

Yeah, we're gonna leave it at the first week.

Uh the reason I'm calling them up is that we have the opportunity today, you and I have the opportunity today, to observe something rather remarkable.

Not very many people are called into the ministry that makes them stand out from everyone else.

All of us are called ministry.

You are called to minister to your family and your friends and the people you meet in the grocery store.

But these guys right here are uh beginning of this is Jack's very first day as an acolyte, and this is Grant's second time as an acolyte, and they are beginning where I began.

Acolite is uh at once service, it's helpful, it is it helps the priests not have to worry about carrying the candles and carrying the crosses and all that kind of stuff.

And it also is a way for them to understand that service is a good thing.

And so I want you to pray with me as they begin this ministry.

Lord God will lift up Jack and Frank as they begin their life of service to you and your church.

We ask you to strengthen them and bless them under the guidance of those who will direct them and teach them, so that they may be faithful ministers in your temple, so that they may help others and they may always see your glory and not their own.

We ask you to name our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's say that we're not pleased.

Thank you for reminding me.

A preacher is no better friend than they they work behind the scenes, they they never ask to be recognized, they and their job is to pray.

Oh my god.

Their job is to pray.

My job is to pray too, but I don't really as much of it as I should.

And the daughters of King Missaries are very happy.

They are involved in self-giving service, and please, please come uh church uh next week and celebrate with the daughters all the things they have done.

And you'll be able to find out then, or you can find out now, if you want to, how to become a member of the dollar kid.

I highly recommend you.

I don't have specificals, so I'm not a daughter, but I highly recommend for all men to uh divide the other.

And give us all the usual and offering the sacrifice to God.

So come.

You who have much faith, and you who have you have been here often and you and who have not been for a long time or ever before, you who have tried to follow Jesus and you who have failed.

Come, not because the church invites you, it is Jesus Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.

The Lord be with you and also with you from your Lord our God in his praise.

God of all power, ruler of the universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

I'm sorry, we're on page 369 of the prayer book.

At your command all things came to be, the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth our island home.

By your will they were created and have their being.

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill.

You made us the rulers of creation, but we turned against you and betrayed your trust, and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again you called us to return.

Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous law.

And in the fullness of time you sent your only son, born of a woman, to fulfill your law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.

By his blood he reconciled us.

By his wounds we are healed.

And therefore we praise you, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope to proclaim with them your glory and their unending hymn.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the night he was betrayed, he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

After supper, he took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sin.

Whenever you do this, do it for the remembrance of me.

Remembering now his work of redemption and offering to you this sacrifice of thanksgiving, we celebrate.

Lord God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Hagar and Sarah, God of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand and work in the world about us.

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal.

Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

Accept these prayers and praises, Father, through Jesus Christ, our great high priest, to whom with you in the Holy Spirit your church gives honor, glory, and worship from generation to generation.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say, 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 trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

And now in the season of Pentecost, we pray as written by George L.

Olive.

Our Mother, who art in the kitchen cooking us up, hallowed may we see all that is your king here delivered into our hands.

Your will is children and trees leaping out on earth as if it were heaven.

Give us this day bread we could feed the world and snatch us bald head if we try to swallow it all.

Don't forgive us till we learn it is all forgiving.

That salve we've got in a pot on the back of the stove only heals when everybody has some.

And he does not if we believe you look like us and love us best and gave us the true truth with a license to kill others writ inside.

Deliver us from this evil, for it is yours, this kitchen we call the universe, where you stir up our favorite street, the Milky Way, falling deep into our little sphere, with its powerful glory of rainforests and oceans and mountains in featherfollow mist forever if we don't blow it up, and ever if we don't tear it down.

Amen.

Ah women she's about fed up.

We better make room at the table for everybody before she yells out and turns our table over before she calls it off this banquet we've been hoarding this paradise we aim to save with bombs.

Let us pray.

God of truth, we have seen with our eyes and have touched with our hands the bread of life.

Nourish our faith that we may grow in love for you and for each other, and nourish the world in your image.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Go forth into the world in peace.

Be of good courage.

Hold fast to that which is good.

Render to no one evil for evil.

Strengthen the faith harder.

Support the weak.

Help the afflicted.

Honor everyone.

Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you this day and always.