Pentecost 11 2021

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

Blessed be God's family and forever.

Amen.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open.

All desires men.

And through you protected.

Cleanse.

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.

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your church.

And because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Let us be seated.

When the morning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.

He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.

The rich man had many, very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.

He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children.

It used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.

Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him.

But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man.

He said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.

He shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he has no pity.

Nathan said to David, You are the man.

Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul.

I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.

Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight?

You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with a sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

Thus says the Lord, I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun.

For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.

David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.

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

Thanks be to God.

The psalm for today is Psalm 51, verses 1 through 13.

Psalms 51:1–13

We will receive read responsively by the half verse.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness.

In your great compassion, blot out my offenses.

Wash me through and through from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.

And so you are justified when you speak, and upright in your judgment.

Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb.

For behold, you look for truth deep within me, and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

Purge me from my sin and I shall be pure.

Wash me and I shall be clean indeed.

Make me hear of joy and gladness, that the body you have broken may rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Give me the joy of your saving help again, and sustain me with your bountiful spirit.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, the Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all in all.

But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Therefore it is said, When he ascended on high, he made captivity itself a captive.

He gave gifts to his people.

When it says he ascended, what does that mean?

That he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?

He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

To maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ, we must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness and deceitful scheming.

But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

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

On the next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here?

Jesus answered them, Very truly I tell you, you were looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.

Then they said to him, What must we do to perform the works of God?

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent.

So they said to him, What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you?

What work are you performing?

Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Then Jesus said to them, Very truly I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

The gospel of the Lord.

Amen.

Good morning, Saint Thomas.

I'm a lucky Nessa Bay resident, and so I walk by your beautiful church during my early morning walks, and when Mike invited me to fill in for him this morning, I was glad for the opportunity to come inside and worship with you.

It is an honor to be amongst you all today.

I'm the Reverend Stacey Stringer, and I work out of our Houston diocesan office serving as the Director of Disaster Recovery.

I did not choose to be a disaster pastor, but it chose me when Hurricane Harvey blew through Dickinson four years ago, where I was serving as rector.

With 80% of that town flooded, I felt entirely unequipped to be of real use to my parishioners and to the wider community.

But Bishop Dina Harrison told me, in so many words, don't let what you cannot do get in the way of what you can do.

Six months later, I was called to serve the diocese as the leader of this disaster recovery program, which assists the most vulnerable among us, families for whom conventional disaster recovery mechanisms simply do not work.

And they are the worst hurt when disaster strikes.

Advocating for these dear ones has been the privilege of a lifetime, even though there is so much that I and we cannot do for them and with them.

This program is fueled by incredibly generous funding from Episcopal Relief and Development and our Diocesan Quinn Foundation.

And every dollar comes voluntarily from folks like you who realize that though you cannot do all things, you can do some things.

Your gifts, gathered together and blessed by God, have given thousands of families across our diocesan footprint tangible evidence of God's love for them and of the care and generosity of total strangers.

Through three storms, a winter freeze, and a pandemic, we know that disasters come in many forms.

And one day, a friend pointed out to me that Hurricane Harvey was not my first time as an unintentional disaster pastor.

Prior to ordination to the priesthood, I had worked for a company once known by Fortune magazine as America's most innovative company.

But then Enron became America's most bankrupt company.

After the so-called smartest guys in the room used their power and their God-given intellect to cook the books, all in the service of satisfying their insatiable hunger for more and more and more money.

Twenty-nine thousand employees lost their jobs and benefits, and all across the country, people lost retirement accounts, vanished overnight.

Chaos reigned, and the company imploded, and layoffs began, and I felt powerless to do anything good.

But there was one thing I could advocate for my staff and do everything in my meager power to treat people with respect and courtesy on their way out the door.

Respecting the dignity of every human being, that phrase from our baptismal covenant gave me purpose and focus during that disaster.

I could not restore lost jobs, but I could give my deepest, deepest gratitude.

Don't let what you cannot do get in the way of what you can do.

And we were given a prime gospel example of this wisdom in action last Sunday from the gospel lesson in John.

That crowd of people have been following Jesus and they're hungry.

So Jesus tasks the disciples with dinner.

And Philip and Andrew can only see what they can't do.

It's a child, a child, a young boy who sees what he can do.

And he contributes his five loaves of bread and his two fish, which, cooked up with a blessing from Jesus, serve the hungry masses.

In John's Gospel this morning, this is still so dazzling the people that they asked Jesus, how can we do this?

But they missed Jesus' deeper object lesson.

They didn't fully comprehend what Jesus was doing with his power.

Yes, he fed them with physical food because they were physically hungry, but he doesn't want to stop there.

Work for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, he urges.

The kind of life Jesus is pointing to here is not physical, earthly life, biological life.

Jesus is speaking of divine life, spiritual life, eternity, shared life in God.

It's about a quality of life, not quantities of things.

It's the facet of our own God-given being that we overlook the most because it's so quiet in this very noisy world around us.

There's unanimity in all the major world religions about this truth that deep within us there is a hunger that the physical world alone cannot satisfy.

The seventeenth century French mathematician Blaise Pascal described it this way: there's a God-shaped hole in the heart of every person which can be satisfied only by God.

So this raises some questions for us this morning.

Are you hungry for that which you cannot hold in your hand?

Are you hungry for something that money or your best friend can't provide?

If yes, do you know what you're hungry for?

And if no, well, what's making you full?

I don't know about you, but for me, when I pay too much attention to the loud voices in our culture and the myriad distractions on my calendar and my cell phone, which wants to play games with me, I'm oblivious to my sensations of holy hunger.

I just don't feel them.

But when I am faithful to my morning walk, the moment I round the bend and I see Clear Lake, I am suddenly at peace.

Christ is palpably present.

Creation is ablaze with beauty, and I'm full to overflowing with God's gracious providence.

I might skip my morning walk from time to time, but God never fails to set that exquisite table with the bread of life that so deeply satisfies my hungry soul.

Is there such a place for you?

If not, would you like to discover one?

You could ask a child for some ideas.

I've learned the hard way that the Creator has configured us to need consistent infusions of the bread of life and the peace that passes understanding in this uncertain and constantly changing world.

With the challenges of just being human and with disasters of all kinds befalling God's beloveds near to us and far, far away, we all need that bread of heaven, strength for the journey, for our own sakes, and for the sakes of them who God calls us to serve and care for in his name.

Feeled by this bread of heaven, you will be surprised at what you can do.

So I'll close with this powerful prayer from St.

Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which we heard this Sunday and last Sunday, and which he prays across the ages to us here right now.

This is just a piece of it.

I, Paul, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, bearing one another in love.

The gifts Christ gave are to equip you to come to maturity and to the full stature of Christ.

I pray that you may comprehend the breadth and the depth and the length and the height, to know the love of Christ that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

That you may be filled with all the fullness of God, whose power working in you can do abundantly more than you can ask or imagine.

Amen.

Amen.

Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, of all that is seen and unseen.

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 not made, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

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 the living and 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 worshiped 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.

Father, we pray for your Holy Catholic Church.

That we all may be one.

Grant that every member of the church may truly and humbly serve you.

That your name may be glorified by all people.

We pray for Michael, our presiding bishop, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kai, our bishops.

In the diocesan cycle of prayer, Holy Spirit, Waco, St.

Alban's Waco, and St.

Christopher's Killian, for Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the priest in our community, Mike, Craig, Jim, Bill, and Lillian, and for all bishops, priests, and deacons.

That they may be fulfilled in the service of your word and sacrifice.

We pray for all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world, for all the members of the armed forces, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plant the seeds of your kingdom everywhere.

We pray for our parish and our vestry.

We pray for St.

Thomas the Apostle Church for those who teach and those who learn.

Give us grace to do your will in all that we undertake.

Have compassion on those who suffer from any grief or trouble.

That they may be delivered from their distress.

Give to the departed eternal rest.

Let us give thanks for our blessings and pray for our own needs and those of others.

Especially Chris, Sean, Jerome, Mickey, John, Lavon, Paxton, Rick, Nick, Martha, and those of the congregation, those that the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.

Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit, you have made us one with your saints in heaven and on earth.

Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy.

We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit and who lives and reigns forever and ever.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you.

Wrong prayer.

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father.

In your compassion, forgive us our sins, known and unknown.

Please done and love 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.

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.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

Thanks to Bob.

Does anyone else, or is someone here in charge of announcements this morning?

It is I.

Okay.

I am told that there will not be Wednesday night barbecue.

I'm not being corrected, so I think that's the case.

And that there will be the Govsden food pantry on Saturday.

Okay, no corrections from the audience.

So we're good with that then.

I just also want to thank you for your gracious hospitality.

Yours is a beautiful community in here in the heart and outwardly in this beauty.

And so now, walk in love as Christ loved us, engage himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

From a distance the world looks blue and green, and the snow capped mountains wide.

From a distance the stream and takes to fly from a distance, we all have enough, and no one is in me.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love him and want to love him more.

So come, ye who have much faith and you have little.

You who have been here often and you who have not been for a time.

You who have tried to follow and you who have stumbled, come.

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

Our service continues on page 369 in the Book of Common Prayer.

The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give God thanks to praise.

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

Glory to you forever and ever.

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 stewards 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 call 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 you reconciled us by his life.

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 in their unending Hymn.

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

And so, Father, we who have been redeemed by him and made a new people by water in the Spirit, now bring before you these gifts.

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 sins.

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

Remembering now his work of redemption and offering to you this sacrifice of thanksgiving, we celebrate his death and resurrection as we await the day of his coming.

Lord God of our fathers, God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world around 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.

Risen, Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Accept these prayers and praises, Father, through Jesus Christ, our great high priest, to whom with you and 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.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the peace.

For you, the people of God, take them in remembrance that Christ lived and died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

Let us pray.

God of truth, we have seen with our eyes and 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.

For Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Go forth into the world in peace.

Be of good courage.

Hold fast to that which is good.

Render no one evil for evil.

Strengthen the faint-hearted.

Support the weak.

Help the afflicted.

Honor everyone.

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

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this morning and remain with you through all eternity.

Amen.

So be swift to love, make haste to be kind, and go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Thank you.