Welcome to the Mantua Center Christian Church

• We are a community seeking to have open minds, open hearts, and open arms, building community in a fragmented world. 
• We want to welcome everyone who is in the house today and everyone online.  We are grateful for all the many ways you can join us for worship on this Lord’s Day.  
• Announcements will be on one sheet at the back of the sanctuary.  
  •  Today, after Children’s Moment the kids can go outside with Ally and Avery.  
  •  Chi-Rho/CYF Canoeing Kayaking at 2pm has been Postponed until 10/10
• In worship today…we will listen for a word from God in the music, the scripture, the silence.  Together we’ll reflect on the age-old story of the Burning Bush and the learning of God’s Name.    

• Let’s prepare our hearts and minds for worship with our Opening Scripture Reading...

Opening Scripture                          John 15:5-8           

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

Let’s sing together Weave

*Response - Weave

Weave, weave, weave us together,

Weave us together, in unity and love.

Weave, weave, weave us together,

weave us together, together in love.

*Call to Worship

ONE:  This space for us is Holy Ground...

ALL: The place where we sing songs of praise to the Lord,

and repeat the stories of faith that inspire us to 

respond to Christ’s love.

ONE: God called us here...

ALL: in whispering winds and in burning flames 

to break down the barriers placed around us.

ONE: God meets us in our vulnerability, our humanity.

ALL: Let us worship the Lord.

— written by Rev. MaryAnn R. Rennie

*Opening Hymn           “Great is Thy Faithfulness” #86

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,

there is no shadow of turning with thee;

thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not;

as thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

Refrain:

Great is thy faithfulness!

Great is thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

all I have needed thy hand hath provided.

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Offering of Praise Nora Brant

Children’s Moment Ally Bozeka

Pastoral Prayer Rev. Chad Delaney

When I say, “Gracious God,” you say, “Hear our prayer”

Living God,

In love You created us, and in love You sustain us, day after day.

So it is with confidence that we bring our prayers to You, knowing that You hear us, and will respond.

We pray for the world around us, for the many who continue to suffer and call out for help:

            for those without enough to eat in East Africa and elsewhere;

            for those caught up in violence and political uprisings in Afghanistan and elsewhere;

            for those picking up the pieces after a natural disaster in the southern US and elsewhere;

            for those desperate to find work to support their families in all places...

Gracious God...hear our prayer…

We also pray for family and friends who are suffering:

            those struggling physically or emotionally,

            those working to overcome mental illness;

            those facing challenges at home or at work;

            those grieving the death of a loved one.

Gracious God...hear our prayer…

God, You have called us to pray for our enemies;

to bless, rather than curse, those who deliberately seek to harm us.

We bring their names before You now—

            those who have hurt us, physically or emotionally;

            those who have stolen from us,

                        or cheated us of what was rightfully ours;

            those who have spread rumours about us,

                        or turned our friends against us.

We ask You to bless them.

Open our hearts so that we may see them as You see them,

and be able to respond to them with Your love.

Gracious God...hear our prayer…

We pray for Your church around the world,

that it would be a living demonstration of Your coming kingdom:

            offering hospitality to all,

            ready to help in times of need,

            showing love to friends and enemies alike,

            seeking to live in peace with all.

Gracious God...hear our prayer…

In the name of Jesus, our Saviour and Lord,

Amen.

Communion                                                            

           Meditation Beth Schabel

           Communion Hymn     All Who Hunger, Gather Gladly   #419

All who hunger, gather gladly; holy manna is our bread. 

Come from wilderness and wand’ring. 

Here in truth, we will be fed. 

You that yearn for days of fullness, all around us is our food. 

Taste and see the grace eternal, taste and see that God is good.

Prayer & Lord’s Prayer                                                             Beth Schabel 

            Words of Institution     Rev. Chad Delaney

            Distribution

Scripture Reading                         Exodus 3:1-15

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ ⁴When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ ⁵Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ ⁶He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ ¹¹But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ ¹²He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

13 But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ ¹⁴God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.” ’ ¹⁵God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you”:

This is my name for ever, and this my title for all generations.

Sermon                                 God of Freedom                      Rev. Chad Delaney  

In 1998--way back in the 90s--I was sitting in my first religious studies class -- Introduction to the Old Testament -- and my professor, Professor Slingerland, stood up in front of the class and read the beautiful passage Psalm 91:1-4

¹ You who live in the shelter of the Most High,

   who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,

² will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;

   my God, in whom I trust.’

³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler

   and from the deadly pestilence; (listen to this part…)

⁴ he will cover you with his pinions,

   and under his wings you will find refuge;

   his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

Professor Slingerland turned to the class and said, “So then...what can we conclude from this passage of scripture about who God is?”  

In my mind I thought of the strength of God, the healing power and faithfulness of God.  God as a Protector and Fortress.  About to raise my hand.  Professor Slingerland said, “Clearly we can conclude...that God is Big Bird.  God is big and strong...and has feathers.  God is Big Bird.”

With a glint in his eye, he proceeded to exaggeratingly take the passage as literally as possible and just absolutely robbing the passage of its meaning.  

We got the point and obviously it stayed with me.  

The power of image, metaphor, parable, symbol is all that we have available to us to describe the indescribable.  Words fail, but the scriptures provide us with so many ways of seeing and experiencing God.  

The ancient philosopher Aristotle offered the image of the Unmoved Mover.  He believed that all must move from something else, but ultimately there must be an unmoveable mover who began it.  

There is the image of the Clockmaker put forward by Deists, which many of the founding fathers of our country were.  God is like a clock maker.  Put all the pieces together, wind it up, and set it loose.  Now God just observes.  

When you think of your own image of God….what comes to mind?   

I was introduced recently to a wonderful book called “Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God.”  In her book she digs deeply into scripture and finds many symbols for God that may surprise us.  She says that most of us restrict ourselves to just a few metaphors...Father, Light, Shepherd, King, or Great Physician.  Yet there are many more.  

She writes, “the Bible offers hundreds of images of God—images the church has paid a great deal of attention to in earlier centuries, although many are largely overlooked now. Drunkard. Beekeeper. Homeless man. Tree. “Shepherd” and “light” are perfectly wonderful images, but in fixing on them—in fixing on any three or four primary metaphors for God—we have truncated our relationship with the divine, and we have cut ourselves off from the more voluble and variable witness of the scriptures, which depict God as clothing. As fire. As comedian. Sleeper. Water. Dog.”  

As we look at our scripture today, we see God introduce this to Moses in a powerful way.  However diversely God was depicted in the Egyptian culture he was raised in, nothing probably prepared him for God to appear to him via burning bush.  Maybe he would have hoped for God to appear as the Sun or a Sphinx.  Or even more simply, because Moses was a shepherd, we may have expected God to appear to Moses as a shepherd--something he could relate to.  Instead, God chose a bush aflame on the side of a mountain out in the wilderness.  God, indeed, loves to surprise.  

And while the burning bush is astonishing to Moses and to all of us hearing the story, perhaps the most revealing moment in the story is when Moses asked for God’s Name.  Now in our modern time, the exact name of God, would not be one of the main things on our list of questions.  But for the ancient person, there was power in the name itself.  To know and evoke the power of a name of a God was to have the powers of life and death itself.  And here in Exodus 3, Moses has the courage to ask and God answers with a powerfully enigmatic phrase.  

It is YHWH, sometimes shortened as Yahweh in the Hebrew.  But really it is 4 Hebrew letters, Y-H-W-H...the tetragrammaton for which no living person has the proper pronunciation.  Prof. Slingerland also told us that there was no way any of us could actually take the Lord’s Name in vain because we have no way of knowing how to pronounce it! 

Here Yahweh is translated as “I am who I am” or as many translators put it “I shall be, who I shall be.”   The God of our ancestors--of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebeckah, Jacob, Joseph and the rest has no interest in being defined quickly and easily.  But instead as a force and will independent of our words and phrases, images and symbols.  God is not the unmoved mover or clock-maker or Father or Mother or Light or Shepherd ONLY....but God shall be who God shall be.  Unrestrained and free of whatever feeble definitions we can come up with.  So God is Light, but not only Light.  God is Shepherd, but not only Shepherd.  God is Fortress, but not only fortress.  God is Mother Hen, but not only mother hen.  

So then, People of God, embrace your words and images and symbols of God….but do not cling too tightly to them otherwise you may miss the burning bush that is quite nearby.  God revealing God’s self in a way you had not anticipated.  

And People of God, we know a God who is not so easily defined...who is always BECOMING and who shall be who God shall be….as ones made in the image of this God...what does this mean for us?  

Perhaps, in your own life people have only seen you or maybe you’ve seen yourself through a certain lens or image.  Perhaps, the definition of yourself is constrained by what other people have thought of you or how you have thought of yourself.  But you are a Child of a God of Freedom.  Unrestrained and free to become who we are.  Our God who loves us and calls right where we are...and who beckons us in freedom to keep becoming.  To be transformed by the renewing of our spirit.  To be continuously called to create justice and mercy.  To be defined not by the constraints of the world, but to be set free by the one who knows our name and every hair on our head.  

Family of God, may you feel that Freedom today in the power of this name that was revealed to Moses long ago.  May the God of many names, images, and metaphors...this God of Freedom release us from what binds us….always to be the people we were created to become.  May it be so. Amen.  

Closing Hymn                   Take Time to be Holy #572

Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;

abide in him always, and feed on his word.

Make friends of God's children, help those who are weak,

forgetting in nothing God's blessing to seek.

*Benediction Rev. Chad Delaney

— Based on the writings of Joanna Harader

Go out into the world to join God

in the work of love, of peace, of justice.

Take in the breath of life.

Take off your shoes.

Know that you are ever in the presence

of the Holy and Living God.

Go in Freedom to be who you are becoming.  Go in grace and peace! Amen.

Departing Music              All Glory Be to God on High Jan Green

 [Joseph Prentiss]