"Can't A Guy Get a Break?" a sermon on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
“Can’t A Guy Get a Break?”
Preached Sunday, July 21, 2024

Before I start, I want to say that I truly make an effort to prioritize Sabbath rest in my life. And we’ll talk about that in the sermon today. But when life gets in the way of Sabbath - I try to have a sense of humor about it. For example, whenever I find myself putting on my clergy collar or getting ready for work on what is supposed to be my day off, I listen to or sing the 2008 song, “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant. I am not sure with the age demographic in the room if you’ll have heard it but it goes:

“There ain't no rest for the wicked
Money don't grow on trees
I got bills to pay
I got mouths to feed
There ain't nothing in this world for free
I know I can't slow down
I can't hold back
Though you know, I wish I could
Oh no there ain't no rest for the wicked
Until we close our eyes for good"

I chuckle at the irony of singing “there ain’t no rest for the wicked” while getting ready to do church ministry, and if I am working on my Sabbath, it is often because of my other priorities of care and compassion for others - funerals are a common example of Sabbath exceptions.

And, the fact of the matter is, rest is holy. I wouldn’t like to go as far as to say a life without rest is wicked because a life without rest can be forced upon someone, but there is a kernel of truth in that. Sabbath rest is holy. And a life that revolves around Sabbath rest is a holy one, one that pleases God. Robbing ourselves and others of Sabbath rest is, indeed, a wicked thing.

Sometimes we think of “Sabbath” in Christian circles as something just for clergy but it isn’t just for ministers. We all need rest and we all are commanded to observe the Sabbath. Observing the Sabbath and keeping it holy is one of the ten commandments. And, yet, I often hear it is the commandment that we treat as optional, a suggestion, rather than an edict.

The odds are that you - we - most of us if not all of us in this room - struggle with the concept and observation of Sabbath. And you may therefore find some modicum of comfort in today’s Gospel reading where we see Jesus’s plans for rest waylaid. We see throughout the Gospels that Jesus prioritizes rest - even when it doesn’t exactly work out, like in today’s reading. Sabbath rest and renewing time with God was a pillar in his life. For him Sabbath was not a strict observance but something that enhances our lives, our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another. As he says to the religious leaders: “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Sabbath is a gift that God wants for our lives - why don’t we accept it?

Indeed how we observe the Sabbath has changed from the Mosaic Laws found in the Hebrew Bible and that some sects of our Jewish siblings still follow this day - rules about cooking and opening doors and such. Our Christian understanding of Sabbath has diverged from this concept - including the day - our Jewish siblings practice Sabbath rest on Saturday - the seventh day of the week, the day in the Creation story when God rested from the work of Creation. Christians, generally, think of Sabbath as Sunday - the day Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

For Christians who take the commandment of Sabbath seriously, the details of how it is followed isn’t as important as the priority of it being observed at all. That Sabbath is a priority for and in our lives. That we come to the one whose yoke is easy and his burden is light and find rest. That we set the example of what it looks like to rest in God and in doing so, participate in re-wiring the system of our world and culture so that all may find rest in Christ.

In his book, “Sabbath as Resistance,” Christian theologian Walter Brueggemann writes about the commandment of observing Sabbath. The whole premise of this book is that the commandment to observe Sabbath, which comes fourth in the ten commandments, is a bridge commandment. He opens his book with this thesis statement:

“…the fourth commandment on the Sabbath is the ‘crucial bridge’ that connects the Ten Commandments together. The fourth commandment looks back to the first three commandments and the God who rests. At the same time, the Sabbath commandment looks forward to the last six commandments that concern the neighbor; they provide for rest alongside the neighbor. God, self, and all members of the household share in common rest on the seventh day; that social reality provides a commonality and a coherence not only to the community of covenant but to the commands of Sinai as well.”

In order to understand the importance of the commandment of Sabbath as a bridge commandment, we have to understand the context of the book of Exodus that is alluded to in the preamble to the commandments and the first commandment: “And God spoke all these words: ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

The book of Exodus has followed the slavery and oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, in the land of Pharaoh. And then God, through Moses, guided them out of slavery, out of Pharaoh's grasp, through the Red Sea, and delivered into the hands of God. It is then that Moses goes up the Mount and receives the Torah, the Law, from God.

Right from the start, God defines God’s self as the God who led them out of Egypt and then says they are to have no other gods before God’s self. We don’t think of Pharaoh in this way today - but to the ancient Egyptians and to the Israelites - Pharaoh was a god. He was seen as divine and had immense power and control over the Israelites - he forced them into slavery at the whims of the Pharaoh, pushing them to produce for the wealth and gain of Pharaoh and of Egypt, and gave them no allowance for rest.

Right off the bat the God of the Israelites, our God, is telling God’s people - I am not like the god of Egypt. I am not like Pharaoh. I am above Pharaoh. My ways are different from Pharaoh's. We then are given the second and third commandments about idols and misusing God’s name. The first three commandments are then primarily about our relationship with God. In the Gospels, Jesus sums up and the commandments, law, and prophets as “Love God and love neighbor as self.” So the first three commandments can be seen as primarily being about loving God. Then we come to the bridge commandment, the Sabbath commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” In this commandment we see a shift, a pivot, a bridge being built. For the next 6 commandments are all about how we treat, how we love, our neighbors, our fellow human beings. Sabbath, however, is about both love of God and love of neighbor. It connects the first three commandments to the last six and is absolutely vital for this connecting work.

When we observe Sabbath, in light of it being the bridging commandment, we are recognizing that God is our God and not Pharaoh. We are recognizing that the world we live in is God’s, not Pharaoh's, and we will follow God’s way which includes Sabbath rest. Pharaoh's way is the way of slavery. It is the way of using humans as tools and things rather than beloved children of God. Pharaoh’s way is the way of a system built on production and wealth and the anxiety and pressure to produce wealth. It is the way of mammon - the word used for wealth when Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” While we no longer have a literal Pharaoh that we view as divine in our world, the kingdom of Pharaoh and all that Pharaoh represented is still going strong in our world. That is the constant desire to produce enough. To make enough. To have enough. At any and all cost.

Brueggemann says, “Rest as did the creator God! And while you rest - be sure that your neighbors rest alongside you. Indeed, sponsor a system of rest that contradicts the system of anxiety of Pharaoh, because you are no longer subject to Pharaoh's anxiety system.”

Now here’s the hard question: How come we still live like we are slaves in Egypt under the system of Pharaoh? At least when it comes to the systems of anxiety, production, and lack of rest that drives our lives? Why do we live under this system for ourselves and allow our neighbors to live under it as well?

Which brings to me a sin that we don’t often name for what it is, a sin, and contrary to God’s desires for us: The Protestant Work Ethic. The term was coined in 1904 by an economist, Max Weber, as he talked about the correlation between Calvinism and Capitalism. The Protestant Work Ethic has largely defined our American capitalistic culture for at least the last 100 years if not much more. The basic premise is that how hard you work is a reflection of how much you are worth, how good you are, if you are “saved.”

The Protestant Work Ethic tells us our value comes from what we produce. And not produce as in Fruit of the Spirit but produce in terms of economical gain, of blood, sweat, and tears poured into the cog of the economy, how much we grind, how much and how well we run the rat race. This can be applicable in any profession and stage of life. How many hours we work, how many meetings we have, how much we earn, how far we advance, what our supervisors or evaluations say about us… And that also all translates to the house we live in, the cars we drive, how many children we have and how they behave, how many and how luxurious of vacations we can take, whether we can afford the fancy lattes, etc., etc.. It can even relate to our lives in the church: is the church producing attendance and offering numbers that are up to par?

The Protestant Work Ethic though is just another term for the culture or system of Pharaoh that God commands us to not follow. It is a system that robs us of God as our God with no other Gods before God. We cannot serve both God and Pharaoh. We cannot serve both God and the endless drive to produce without rest.

And so allow me to ask: what would it look like for you, for you specifically, to make Sabbath rest a priority in your life? What would it look like to center yourself in our God who desires to make us lie down in green pastures besides still water? What would it look like to center yourself in Jesus whose burden is easy and whose yoke is light? Practically - what could taking the commandment for Sabbath seriously look like for you?

For me, I try and frame Sabbath rest as having one day off every week that honors God. AND, one day off a week to be human. My God honoring time can look like worshiping, praying, napping, gardening, spending time in loving community…and when I’m at my best, putting down my phone and its relentless stream of notifications and information. My day to be human is about errands and appointments and all that is required of me to function as a basic human and member of society.

Christian author Rob Bell framed Sabbath like this:

“Sabbath is taking a day a week to remind myself that I did not make the world and that it will continue to exist without my efforts.
Sabbath is a day when my work is done, even if it isn’t.
Sabbath is a day when my job is to enjoy. Period.
Sabbath is a day when I am fully available to myself and those I love most.
Sabbath is a day when I remember that when God made the world, he saw that it was good.
Sabbath is a day when I produce nothing.
Sabbath is a day when at the end I say, ‘I didn’t do anything today,’ and I don’t add, ‘And I feel so guilty.’
Sabbath is a day when my phone is turned off, I don’t check my email, and you can’t get a hold of me.”

I’ve heard it phrased this way as well - Sabbath is a day where you ask yourself - what would I enjoy doing or not doing today? And what could I do - or not do - that would center me in God who is Lord of the Sabbath? Where does our enjoyment and centering God meet? That is a day of Sabbath rest.

Now here’s my disclaimer or warning to you - when we first start practicing Sabbath…it does not feel good. We often think, “Oh I’m so tired, I’m so overworked, I’m so busy” that we must think OF COURSE a day of rest will feel good, like a tantalizing treat for our overworked selves. But the reality is, it feels good to be needed. It feels good to do and to produce. We get endorphins when we check items off of our to-do lists. When those phone notifications go off, our brains are flooded with hormones - someone needs me. Someone wants me. I can help.

We are so embedded in the culture of Pharaoh, in the culture of Productivity, that we need to detox from it. And detoxing doesn’t feel good at first. We may feel restless and listless as we have to force ourselves to rest, centering ourselves in God - and rest centered in God is different from the vegetative state we can enter when binge watching a favorite show. We have to actively engage our minds and our souls to turn toward God rather than turn toward productivity.

And if we stick with it, eventually we will find enjoyment in Sabbath rest. We will realize that rest and Sabbath is not a reward for the hard work well done, Sabbath is rest for the work we have ahead of us. It’s a small mental shift but a meaningful one. If we only rest when we feel we deserve it, when we feel the work is done, then we will never truly rest. But if we rest because we know we need rest and we know we need to be centered in God for the compassionate, caring, loving work God calls us to do… that’s different.

We rest so that we can love God and love neighbor more fully. We rest so that we can have compassion.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’s plans for rest don’t go exactly as planned - something that I can certainly relate to and assures me that Jesus was human and the world he lived in, while different in some ways, is still the same world we experience here today… Even though Jesus’s plans for rest don’t go exactly as planned - Jesus still had compassion for the crowds who needed him. He was able to love his neighbor. For as much as he was human, Jesus was also Lord of the Sabbath. And as the bridging commandment, Sabbath is just as much about love of God as it is about love of neighbor. Jesus prioritized rest and renewal, spread throughout his whole ministry, so that he could serve with compassion and love. I trust that even if Jesus didn’t catch a break in this passage, he continued to make rest a priority. He continued to pray and center himself in love. Sabbath was just part of the rhythm of his life.

My invitation to all of us today is for us to center Sabbath as a priority in our lives, to make it a part of the rhythms of our lives, to view it as the highly important bridging commandment it is. Let us hear the voice of God inviting us to lie down in green pastures and besides still waters, let us heed that voice and through Sabbath rest, find better love of God and love of neighbor.

May it be so. Amen.

"An Invitation to Wonder & Praise" a sermon based on Ephesians 1:3-14

Ephesians 1:3-14
“An Invitation to Wonder & Praise”
Preached Sunday, July 14, 2024

What is the best gift you have ever received?

I asked this question online as I worked on this week’s sermon and got an array of responses: surprise trips, a gaming console, a complete collector’s edition of a book series, custom made gifts, homemade crafts from children, a clock-making kit, family Bibles and heirlooms, gifts that were the “last” gifts from a loved one before they died… People shared gifts of thoughtful affirmations and hand-written notes they have received, one person received a video gift of friends and family from all over the country.

There were also the less tangible gifts: time with family, the gift of children, of love.

When I considered people’s answers to this question and my own experience I seemed to notice two common things. People’s best gifts they’ve ever received are one or both of these things:

1. Lavish and generous - a gift that just floors you for how the giver went above and beyond in giving it to you. And
2. A gift that is personal and it’s less about the gift and more about how much the giver knows you, “gets” you, loves and appreciates you.

Think now of a gift or gifts you have received that have been among the best. That floored you with the generosity and love behind them. When you have been given a gift that just amazes you at the generosity, thoughtfulness, kindness, love and appreciation behind it…

The writer of Ephesians, is GUSHING about a gift that he - and we all - have received: the gift of God’s love, the adoption of us as God’s children, redemption, forgiveness, salvation, an inheritance through Christ… Actually, you can tell he is just gushing, that he’s floored, amazed at these gifts by the writing. In the Greek today’s 11 verses are all basically one convoluted run-on sentence. The translators of most English versions, including what we read today in worship, normally make it more palatable and understandable by breaking it down into sentences but in the original Greek it reads as one long gushing sentence. I can relate to him here, when I’m excited over something, REALLY excited about something, I tend to talk faster, my voice gets higher, and I can go on and on and on… And that’s basically our reading from Ephesians today.

This week’s Scripture is an invitation to wonder and praise. It is an invitation for us to marvel at the lavish love, the generous gifts, that God has given us - as it lists in today’s Scripture: the gift of God’s love, the adoption of us as God’s children, redemption, forgiveness, salvation, an inheritance through Christ.

The sacrament of Baptism is a way we recognize, celebrate, wonder, and give thanks for God’s lavish gifts that we have received from our Maker. Today we celebrate the lavish gifts and love that God has bestowed upon the child we baptized - and we remembered and recognized that same love was and is given to all of us. I’ve had the joy of sharing in multiple baptisms with you and getting to preach on it several times so what I am going to say to you today, many of you will have heard it before, but it never hurts to be reminded.

One of my favorite ways to frame baptism is a signing of the adoption papers. Before we are baptized, we are all already loved by God. We are all already God’s children in God’s eyes. Yet through the sacrament of baptism we are saying, “Okay, God - I know you love me as your child. I love you as my parent. I know you love me and I will respond to that love with more love - and let my life be shaped by you, the God of Love.” When a child is baptized, their parents bring that child forth as a recognition that this child belongs to God, even more than this child belongs to those who formed them in this world. It is a recognition that they will raise this child as God’s child, loving them, surrounding them in a loving Christian community, and teaching them about God’s love.

The sacrament of Baptism, this holy, mysterious, and wonderful ritual is part of how we participate in God’s divine plans of God’s love for us and for all. Through baptism we wonder at God’s love, we praise God’s goodness, and recognize the lavish and generous gifts God gives us. Being baptized, bringing a child forth to be baptized, remembering our baptism - it was a way we acknowledge, we recognize before God and before one another, that we know we are loved by God.

Part of the reading from Ephesians today is not only to marvel and wonder at God’s love, but the writer’s intent is to assure Gentile readers in the church of Ephesus that God always had a plan for them. That their acceptance into God’s covenant, their adoption as children of God - these things are not afterthoughts. That like their Jewish siblings, God always planned to gather them up in love and offer them an inheritance through Christ. The Scriptures say: “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.” It says that before the foundation of the world, this was all part of God’s plans, we were always part of God’s plan - God has always, since before Creation, planned to adopt us, to love us.

This again is another invitation to marvel and wonder and praise God - you were never an afterthought to God. Before creation, God already knew that you would be divinely loved, a child of God.

And, the Scripture goes on to give us even more reasons to just be floored at the lavish generosity of God’s gift of love. It reads, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” That is, God’s divine plan, God’s BIG big picture plan, is to draw all things to God’s self in love. As the first verse of our Psalm today declares: “The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”

We started worship this morning by singing “He’s got the whole world in his hands'' - a children’s song which sums up so succinctly these points our Scripture readings make: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it…God’s got it in God’s hands! We know this truth as children when we sing this song but the hardships and motions of everyday life can make us forget this fundamental and awe inspiring truth - we are all God’s. We are all loved by God. God’s got us all in the Divine’s loving hands. This song is another invitation to marvel and praise God for the lavish and generous extent of God’s gift of love for us - for them - for all - for the whole world.

This morning I wanted to extend to you an invitation to wonder and marvel at God’s gifts of Love for us, for the baby we baptized today…AND to marvel and wonder at God’s divine, mysterious, generous, lavish plan for the redemption of all God’s creation. If we truly believe that none of us are an afterthought, that God holds all of us, that God’s end game is to draw us all into God’s hands, cradle us all in the loving hands of God… wow! What a reason to give God praise!

So our takeaway, our “go out into the world and do” from worship today is simply this: go and lose yourselves in the wonder of God’s gifts towards us and all creation. Think about how much a mindset of marveling at God’s love for all - how much it will change how we all interact with the world, the people we meet, our day to day lives, etc. Think about how much living a life filled with praise for God’s generous and lavish gifts of love - think about how much that will color every interaction we have. How our knowledge of God’s love for us - for them - for all - how our knowledge of God’s plan to redeem all creation, to hold us all in God’s hands…how it will change…everything.

May we be absolutely floored at these gifts of Love that God has given us. May we offer God praise and thanksgiving. And may they change everything for us, as beloved children of God held in God’s hands.

Amen.

"Shake It Off" a sermon based on Mark 6:1-13

Mark 6:1-13
“Shake It Off”
Preached July 7, 2024

One of the best pieces of advice that was ever given to me - was to talk to yourself like you would talk to a good friend or, in my case, a parishioner, a church member. If a friend or one of you came to me and you were absolutely beating yourself up over something, being hard on yourself, lamenting a “failure” - we would talk about that. We would talk about where you could give yourself grace and forgiveness. We would talk about how you could see this as a learning opportunity and a fresh start. Sure, maybe you didn’t have the outcome you wanted but that doesn’t mean that YOU as a person are a failure…

But, if I’m being totally honest with you, I struggle with this myself. I think most of us struggle with the F-word…we don’t even like saying it…You know the word I mean: Failure. (Yeah, I really debated using that joke in my sermon - hopefully my joke didn’t fail…Haaa). Anyway, I don’t always talk to myself the way I would talk to one of you or a good friend.

I am the type of person who has goals and benchmarks and a certain idea of what it means to succeed. And so when things don’t turn out the way I planned or the way I wanted…I struggle with this. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think a lot of us struggle with failure because our culture puts a high emphasis on success and what it looks like to succeed. To succeed in our careers, to succeed in our popularity and social standing, and even to succeed at what our families look like… we are constantly comparing ourselves to a societal expectation of what it looks like to succeed and we don’t often realize how much power our cultural definition of success has over us.

All of us could probably benefit from recognizing this, naming this, and taking a step back away from it and instead looking at how Jesus approached failure and how our definitions of success change in light of that.

After traveling around the Israel-Palestine countryside, teaching, preaching, healing. After going head to head with authorities over religious law. After casting out demons. After quieting the waves and the wind. After healing a chronically ill woman and raising a little girl from the dead, Jesus returns to Nazareth, he returns to his own home town. And he is rejected there. Those who knew Jesus best. Those who raised him, those who held him as a baby, those who were his playmates as a child - they were not impressed with Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark it just tells us that those in his hometown “took offense at him.” In the Gospel of Luke, they ran him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff! As a sports metaphor, that would have been like LeBron James returning to Cleveland after winning a championship in Miami and no one wanting him, being so unimpressed with him that we ran him out of town. Or, perhaps, it would have been like me returning to the Mahoning Valley a year ago to serve as pastor at Boardman UMC and both Canfield and Boardman UMCs teaming up to drive me out of town - thanks for not doing that, by the way!

Anyway… to take his hometown’s response seriously, it would mean Jesus failed. His own kin rejected him, spurned him, and his mission and goals there were stymied. And how did Jesus respond?

He sent his disciples out, two by two, to teach and to heal. He shook the dust of his failure off of himself and told his disciples to do the same if they should ever meet rejection. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” That is, literally, shake it off! Do not let the dust of failure cling to you.

Or, as Taylor Swift so eloquently puts it for our modern age:

“'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off. Woaaaaah.”

Because failure can cling to you like dust. Settle on you. Make you feel burdened, or less than you are, less than God created you to be. And that’s not what God wants for us, or how God wants us to respond to failure. So like the dust from the disciples’ sandals, and like Taylor Swift, we are to shake the dust of our failures off, and we keep on going, like Jesus who moves on from Nazareth to Capernaum and he continues his message and his ministry.

But this isn’t the last time that Jesus will fail. In fact, to many, and to the world’s standards, Jesus’s whole ministry was a failure.

Jesus wasn’t only rejected by his own hometown, he was rejected by those he came to save. The Messiah was supposed to come and overthrow the empire, free the oppressed, and save the Judeans. During his life and teaching, many would have considered him a failure too. The most numerous complaints against Jesus were that he was a drunkard, hanging out the lowest of the low, with tax collectors and sex workers, with sinners, with the least of these. And he was arrested for treason, received the death penalty, and was executed by the State for his crimes. His followers all deserted him, denying they ever knew him, locking themselves up in rooms, hiding from the government.

Yes, Jesus rose from the grave, conquering death, we as Christians believe this. This is the scandal of the cross. That we took what the world would perceive as a total failure, the life and death of Jesus, and we view it as a victory.

And Jesus asks us to be like him. To pick up our crosses - the sign of Jesus’s largest failure, his execution - and to follow him.

What does this look like? It looks a lot like taking what this world considers a success, and turning it on itself.

It looks like failure.
It looks like being a peacemaker and turning the other cheek in a world that is obsessed with war.
It looks like hanging out with sinners, with the lowly, in a world that prioritizes the “right” kind of people.
It looks like loving our neighbors AND our enemies as ourselves in a world that separates “us” versus “them.”
It looks like meekness in a world that values strength.
It looks like humility in a world that values flaunting power.

It looks like kindness, mercy, and forgiveness in a world that tells us to get even.

It looks like us, living like Jesus lived - and when the world deems US a failure for not playing the rat race, for giving away more than we should, for loving others too much, for caring about those beyond our circles, beyond our own families, for loving those who don’t look this us, for working tirelessly for freedom from oppression for ALL, for mercy, for forgiveness, for grace in a graceless world! When the world deems us as failures for living as disciples of Jesus Christ...

We shake off the dust of failure that the world is trying to put on us. Shake the dust off your sandals, shake it off, shake it off, woooaah...and then boast in Christ. For Paul says, “So I will boast more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Yes - by the world’s standards, Christ failed.
By the world’s standards, the peacemakers and the lowly and the meek and the kind… are failures!
By many standards, worshiping a God who could be killed, especially in a public and humiliating way…is a failure.

But not to us. For in Christ we will BOAST of our weaknesses! What the world sees as weakness: love, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, helping others, fighting for humanity and dignity for all, even being part of a church community like ours - what the world may see as a weakness, in Christ Jesus, it is our strength.

Hear this, friends, Our failure is our strength when our failure is in and for Jesus Christ.

So continue to be a follower of Christ. Continue to be God’s hands and feet in the world: loving, serving others, working toward peace, putting others first, being generous to and with the least of these. Continue loving God and serving your neighbors as self. And whenever you get rejected, insulted, discouraged by others for following Christ Jesus, well...shake it off. And continue God’s work.

May we do so - turning what the world views as failures, into success for Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

Call to Worship inspired by Ephesians 6:10-20

L: What does it mean to serve God?
P: To live in truth and righteousness.
L: What should we proclaim?
P: The Gospel of Peace.
L: What should we hold on to?
P: Faith and the Word of God.
L: And at all times, what should we do?
P: Persevere in prayer.
L: May we do so today in worship today and every day.
All: Amen.

Call to Worship inspired by John 6:51-58

L: We cry out to the Lord:
P: Lord, we want to live!
L: Eat this bread.
P: Lord, we want to live!
L: Take this cup.
P: Lord, we want to live!
L: Follow me.
P: We will follow the Living God.
All: Amen.

Call to Worship based on "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"

L: Bread of Heaven,
P: Feed me till I want no more.
L: Strong Deliverer,
P: Be thou still my strength and shield.
L: Songs of praises,
P: I will ever give to thee.
L: Let us worship our God, the Bread of Heaven, our Strong Deliverer, and the One worthy of our praise.
All: Let us worship! Amen!

Call to Worship based on John 6:1-21 & Ephesians 3:14-21

L: We come to worship today hungry.
P: Hungry not just for food - but for the Gospel.
L: We come to worship today longing for more.
P: More Love, more Hope, more Truth.
L: We come to worship today in need of spiritual nourishment.
P: Fill us, Lord! May we know the breadth and length and height and depth of your Love.
All: We come to worship today to worship the One who is the Bread of Life. Amen.