Sunday, July 19, 2020
Hiram & Mantua Center Christian Churches
Remote Worship Order
Order of Worship
Sunday Zoom WELCOME - Sarah
Welcome to Hiram Christian and Mantua Center Christian Church’s online service.
- Logistics
- Bulletin
- Communion
- Rev. Chad Delaney is on Vacation. Keep his family in your prayers
- Pre-Recorded to Live
- Announcements
- Our Anti-Racism Study is continuing on Wednesdays as well as our Wednesday afternoon Prayer Time
- Fellowship Time after the service to reflect and respond to the sermon and continue the discussion.
PRE-RECORDED PART
PRELUDE Jesus is all the world to me
WELCOME & CALL to Worship - Sarah
Good morning beloved people of God! It is a beautiful day in the house of our Lord this morning and I am so excited to get to worship with you. You might find that having a Bible, a candle, and communion elements help tie you into the flow of the service, so feel free to pause at any time to go and grab those.
This week we will receive the message from Rev. Chris McCreight, hear beautiful music from our wonderful music ministers, and take communion with our elders this week: Katie Baird and Marcia Muster.
Whether you are joining us live on zoom or are on your own time on Youtube, we are blessed to be in community together this week. Take a deep breath in… and out… as we light a candle signifying the importance of the time we spend together this week.
As we come together, join me in breathing deeply as I offer the call to worship.
Let us come together rejoicing. For nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Not life nor death.
Not prejudice nor power.
Not our grief nor our fears.
Not the wrongs we have done nor the wrongs done against us.
Love comes to us still.
When nothing feels certain, this truth remains:
The Spirit is our constant companion, ushering us toward life.
Let every heart be lifted!
The kingdom of God is so close.
Nothing can keep love from enfleshing among us.
OPENING PRAYER - Sarah
Spirit of God, you intercede through us with your sighs too deep for words. In the midst of all that aches, we know that you are with us. As we feel it all. As we hope for more. As we work together to find our way through uncertainties and loss. You accompany us with compassion and wisdom. Encourage us, O God, in the journey before us.
The kindom is like a mustard seed, Jesus said. The kindom is like the smallest offering. Where our gifts are nurtured in community, they will grow and multiply and blossom into sites of Divine hospitality. With joy, let us bring what we have together, trusting that it is enough.
Holy One, we bring our gifts to you with thanks. Though the gap between what we know and what we hope for can feel like a chasm that cannot be bridged, you renew our faith. Do not let us dismiss the small wonders of love that heal and transform. Help us to perceive the ordinary miracles of life that surround us, that we may be eager participants in the everyday grace of your kindom. Amen.
HYMN “Come Holy Spirit Heavenly Dove” (In Folder)
SCRIPTURE & SERMON
KOG and Good Trouble - Rev. Chris McCreight
A couple of weeks ago, our family settled in for a movie night.
We chose The Sandlot, and this has been a movie that Jen and I have been recommending to our daughter, Linden, “for-ever…”
The Sandlot is a coming of age story centering on a young boy who is new in town - he’s always been good at school, good at independent play, and well behaved - but he’s struggled to make friends and has no idea how to play baseball.
This is a new town, a new neighborhood, a new chance to make friends.
There is a scene early on in the movie when the boy’s mother is speaking to him - encouraging to get out into the neighborhood and make some friends;
Her encouragement evolves from a plea into wild permission as she tells him:
“Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty.
Climb trees, hop fences.
Get into trouble, for crying out loud.
Not too much, but some.”
At that moment, Linden - who is a bit of a straight-laced kid, herself - looked over at Jen and I with amazement in her eyes,
As if a parent - any parent - might not only give permission, but instruction, to their child to get into trouble.
Trouble is often presented to us as a dangerous territory we are instructed to avoid. We are even taught that there are not only troublesome behaviors and actions, but that there are behaviors and actions that can lead to trouble…
and all of this is to be avoided,
Because good folk… don’t get into trouble.
Family, school, law, and religion itself can teach this particular order to maintain a quality of goodness and purity…
But, we have heard and remembered well from siblings such as Representative John Lewis that this is not so binary -
That there is a kind of “good trouble” one can get into,
That may breach some social mores and standing,
But is far outweighed by the goodness it reveals and brings.
Trouble is the lens I want to approach our scripture today,
Because many of these parables are troubling.
Our lectionary text today moves through five parables to reveal something about the Kindom of God - what it would be like - what it will be like and is like - when any particular person and peoples give themselves over to love - every day - every hour.
This is a bit much to move into in one sermon, so I’d like to center our attention on the parable of the mustard seed.
Conventional interpretations have conveyed a message that this parable is about the wild and spectacular growth of the Kindom of God - that it starts small and blossoms into an enormous shrub - and therefore, look at the power and might of love to grow.
There is wisdom and goodness within this interpretation,
And Bernard Brandon Scott wants us to also remember that:
The mustard plant doesn’t become a tree by standard definition;
Rather, it becomes a bush.
And, the mustard plant was considered by farmers in this time to be a weed - Something no farmer would have wanted in their field.
So when Jesus comes around to share this parable within a community whose prime occupation is agriculture,
And Christ says, the kindom of God is like a mustard seed, that someone took and sowed in his field…
We can imagine that the crowd is baffled…
How is anything of God - anything good -
Associated with this weed
That we can’t get out of our fields -
That takes claim and crowds out our crops -
That we have spent hours and hours ridding our fields,
So that the birds do not gather, nest, and feast on our harvest.
That goes to seed in one field,
And is carried by the birds to another…
Anyone who would sow this seed in their field,
Is asking for trouble;
Trouble to their life and work and income;
Trouble with their neighbor;
Trouble with the state when they come by to ask how much their field has yielded to calculate their taxes owed (it better be more than last year!)
This is troublesome.
And yet, it is a good trouble.
For what each and every farmer knows within that crowd is that it wasn’t too long ago that their fields were lush landscapes with towering trees - where rich canopies created a dwelling place for flora and fauna.
That is how it was before it was purchased, cleared, and subdued to not only feed a family but to feed an empire that was always hungry for more.
Each and every farmer knows that they are caught up within a system that is corrupt and unsustainable,
That takes from the vulnerable and profits the few;
Each and every one of them has had to cut back on the divine law to leave the edges of the field so that gleaners could come by and have something to eat;
Each and every one of them has had to plow every square inch of their property,
There is nothing for gleaners;
Nothing for the birds;
No time for the farmer;
No prosperity for the family;
It is all to supply a system that is designed to take and to hoard…
And here comes the Christ with a parable of one with a pocket full of seeds that once scattered, cannot be collected; that will germinate and populate to litter the landscape with weeds that get in the way of the productivity and profit, but hold shelter and invitation to those who were first dismissed from the property -
here come the birds,
To find rest
To find shelter
To find food,
And here they are bringing with them seeds from other fruits,
And their song is a call to the other creatures that have been excluded, to come once again, and work for repair - for return.
The person who carries and scatters these seeds is a troublemaker -
Worthy of prosecution and penalty;
They dismiss the conventional order of things, they are beholden unto a deeper wisdom, giving themselves over to an endless grace, to plant seeds of repair.
This parable may be less about growth;
And more about good trouble.
When the landscape has been cleared for profit and productivity -
For ease and ego -
And conventional order requires that it remain so,
The kindom of God requires beloved children of God get into some good trouble…
Planting what others see as weeds;
to become what those excluded identify as salvation.
The image finds us,
We can all find ourselves within the story where we have known of the lush landscape we once inhabited,
And how it has been cleared for ease - for gain - for protection -
And how the promise is within our hands -
Maybe this finds you overlooking a clearing -
That once was a vast scene of family, friendship, and harmony -
But someone broke that -
and the path you took was to rid the landscape of everything…
there’s a great distance between you and the person who caused the pain, and here you stand…
Seeds of forgiveness,
In hand…
Maybe this finds you overlooking a clearing -
It was once so full of forests and fields -
But the work that you devoted yourself to -
Required that you take and conquer everything in your path,
and now you have done so,
And the earth is empty and exhausted,
And although you’ve gained everything,
You are also empty and exhausted,
And here you stand…
seeds of repentance and repair in hand…
Maybe this finds you overlooking a clearing -
And it’s all you’ve ever known…
but now because you’re listening to your neighbors who remembered from their ancestors…
You’ve come to learn that this land was never just found;
Never acquired by honest purchase;
never worked by honest labor;
and here you stand…
with a handful of desire,
To plant something new.
It may be that family,
Neighbors,
And even the state may discourage you;
May say that to cast this seed is to get into trouble…
It may be.
And it may be good trouble.
Christ emerges within a world that is broken and comes to individuals whose lives are broken - and knows that the way to healing is not always by following the conventional wisdom and worldly paths sticking to law and order and social mores…
sometimes - sometimes…
the path to healing and wholeness comes through good trouble.
Troubling worlds that keep friends and family apart,
That ties may once again be honored…
Is a good trouble.
Troubling worlds that can only imagine conquest and profit as definitions of success,
That work and achievement and what it means to be human all align…
Is a good trouble.
Troubling worlds that are built on foundations of abuse and violence and injustice,
That truth may be told, that wounds may be cared for, that healing may come…
Is a good trouble.
Christ invites us,
Each in our own landscape,
Each to our own harvest,
And together as the Church,
To get into some good trouble when it is needed;
To plant something good within the earth,
Within the neighborhood, your home, and your soul.
So may we have the wisdom to discern between trouble and good trouble;
The courage to sow what others may caution;
That not only us - but all of creation - may come to abide within the blessed canopies of the kindom of God.
Amen.
SPECIAL MUSIC - Sydney (NOT FOR YOUTUBE) Sub with CenterPeace or other music
Video Ends, ZOOM Live Begins
Zoom TRANSITION
Sarah or Chris: May God add blessing to the hearing of the word in music. Thank you Emliss. Now, as we turn over to the live parts of the service we want to invite the children to get ready for the Children’s Moment.
CHILDREN’S MOMENT - Ally Hurd
COMMUNAL PRAYER - Chris
This morning, I find reason to return to the words of Padraig O’ Tuama within his work, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community.
As much is changing within this season - unearthing the past and revealing the foundation for what may come into being - there is goodness in a sustained prayer of grace and strength to retain our stance and retain an open spirit through all of this movement. We proceed into this time, with the recognition that what is defined as unrest and uprising may be the work of the spirit; we proceed into this time with attentive hearts to discern our place within it all and the work that is before us; and so, I would like to offer to our congregations this day, Prayers in times of change, that O’Tuama’s words of ‘yesterday,’ endings, and change may bring comfort, confidence, and courage.
Let us begin in stillness, offering to God that which is upon our heart,
Confessing that which we must name,
And then, we will continue in our prayer.
DOXOLOGY
HOLY COMMUNION
Communion Hymn - "Let Us Break Bread Together" #425 (Chalice Hymnal) by Carlton R. Young
Meditation - Marcia Muster
Communal Prayer & the Lord’s Prayer - Katie Baird
Words of Institution - Katie or Pastor
Sharing Communion Together
BENEDICTION - Chris
Christ invites us,
Each in our own landscape,
Each to our own harvest,
And together as the Church,
To get into some good trouble when it is needed;
To plant something good within the earth,
Within the neighborhood, your home, and your soul.
So may you know that you are created in the image of GOd;
You are a beloved child of God;
And you have permission - and perhaps instruction -
to get into some good trouble so that the kindom of God may be sown and flourish for all of God’s beloved creation.
Amen.
HYMN - Sydney 535 Faith While Trees Are Still In Blossom (In Folder)
POSTLUDE - All to Jesus I Surrender, arrg. Winfield Weeden {Hallelujah…CharityBookPutnam}