A Gathering in Worship Offered by the People of the Church of Christ, Union
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28) 10:30 am
Meditation “Humanity’s great wisdom traditions are given not to compete with each other but to complete each other. We need each other as much as the species of the earth need one another to be whole.” ~ John Philip Newell
The First Path: Recognizing the Inherent Goodness of Creation
The first path invites us to celebrate! The pulse of creation is singing the goodness of God and God’s gift of goodness in all things. We become more aware of the beauty of all that is and tap into gratitude as our first task in creating more goodness in the world.
Prelude “Corta Jaca” Chiquinha Gonzaga Antonella Franco, Pianist
Welcome and Invitation
We Begin
¨ Sung Response Gathered Here In the Mystery of This Hour
¨ Prayer in 360°
Please stand and join as we look at the goodness of God all around us. As we turn and pray, you are invited to sing the last line of our song when indicated.
Sung Response
You are invited to sing our refrain as a round. You can follow the choir, Rev. Kent or other song leaders as we make a communion of harmony.
¨ Lighting the Christ Candle (unison)
Creating God, You who spun the galaxies and breathed into us the breath of life, Open us to an awareness of the life coursing through us that is connected to all creation so that we might become more tuned in to your life force, feeling more vitality in our lives, and more loving towards all.
We praise you as the One in whom we have life and being. And all God’s people say, Amen.
¨ Hymn #391 Black In the Midst of New Dimensions New Dimensions
In the midst of new dimensions, in the face of changing ways. Who will lead the pilgrim peoples wandering in their separate ways?
[Refrain] God of rainbow, fiery pillar, leading where the eagles soar, We your people, ours the journey now and ever, now and ever, now and ever more.
Through the flood of starving people, warring factions and despair, Who will lift the olive branches? Who will light the flame of care?
As we stand a world divided by our own self-seeking schemes, Grant that we, your global village might envision wider dreams
We are man and we are woman, all persuasions, old and young, Each a gift in your creation, each a love song to be sung.
Should the threats of dire predictions cause us to withdraw in pain, May your blazing phoenix spirit, resurrect the church again.
¨ Passing the Peace
The Second Path: Befriending the Dark Places
This second path invites us to acknowledge the pain that coexists with goodness and gratitude. We listen to the groans of the world and the Spirit helps us to grieve and to intercede on behalf of all those who suffer, letting go of our fear that can make things worse at times.
Listening
Silence and Sound mingle to bring us to mindfulness. We ring the Peace Bell to call us to holy work.
The Union Church Peace Bell was created by Jeff Enge in honor of Union Church member Carl Eschbach (1904-1998). A twin bell hangs in Berea’s sister province in Japan and is also rung in the hope of peace for all nations.
Letting Go and Holding on with Love
We hold communities in need and loved ones known and unknown in our hearts during our prayers. We bring the light of God’s to our own needs as well, as we pray. Please join in singing the refrain twice when indicated. You are invited to hum, add harmony or participate with movement as we unite through word and song.
Please join in singing “Breathe” Michael Stillwater
Sung Refrain
Lord’s Prayer
Each week we will explore a version of the prayer Jesus taught. This week we encounter a version of the Lord’s Prayer from the Maori and Polynesian people. Let us pray together:
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: The hallowing of your name echo through the universe; The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world; Your heavenly will be done by all created beings; Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth. With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us. In times of temptation and test, strengthen us. From trial too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. Amen.
Special Music Here I Am, Lord Schutte, Young Union Church Choir
I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard My people cry. All who dwell in dark and sin, My hand will save. I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright. Who will bear My light to them? Whom shall I send?
Here I am Lord, Is it I, Lord? I have heard You calling in the night. I will go Lord, if You lead me. I will hold Your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of snow and rain, I have borne my people’s pain. I have wept for love of them, They turn away. I will break their hearts of stone, Give them hearts for love alone. I will speak My word to them Whom shall I send?
I, the Lord of wind and flame I will tend the poor and lame. I will set a feast for them, My hand will save Finest bread I will provide, Till their hearts be satisfied. I will give My life to them, Whom shall I send?
The Third Path: Exclaiming the Divine Creative
This third path creates space to explore how God is working in and through us and all of the universe to renew each day every direction. Each moment offers opportunity to express our God-gifted creativity. We hear messages–ancient and new–that express and affirm the Divine at work and encourage us in our creative collaboration with the Divine.
Reading Peggy Patrick, Reader
“The real problem that we need to face in our lives and our world is not the struggle of what we do when we fall in love with another…the real problem that overwhelmingly confronts most of us in the world most of the time is that we are not falling in love with the heart of one another and the heart of other nations and species. We are blind to their secret beauty… As Thomas Merton wrote, when people are in love, ‘They are more than their everyday selves, more alive, more understanding, more enduring… They are made over into new beings.’ … Our true Center is at the heart of one another.” ~John Phillip Newell, The Rebirthing of God
Children’s Moment Please join in singing as we bless children everywhere:
May God’s blessing guard, protect and guide you. God bless you, God bless you. Our savior’s loving arms be ever ’round you. God bless you, God bless you.
Please note that Union Church services are livestreamed, including the Children’s Moment. A “no camera zone” is at the back of the balcony, behind the AV booth.
Reading Genesis 11: 1-9
One: All people on the earth had one language and the same words. When they traveled east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other,
All: “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” They used bricks for stones and asphalt for mortar. They said, “Come, let’s build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves so that we won’t be dispersed over all the earth.”
One: Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the humans built. And the Lord said, “There is now one people and they all have one language. This is what they have begun to do, and now all that they plan to do will be possible for them. Come, let’s go down and mix up their language there so they won’t understand each other’s language.”
Then the Lord dispersed them from there over all of the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore, it is named Babel…
All (randomly, repeated): “babble, babble, babble, babble”
One: …because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord dispersed them over all the earth. This is a Word of God.
All: Thanks be to God.
One: All creation is a word of God.
All: All creation speaks volumes of God.
Sermon Glorious Diversity and Remarkable Specificity Rev. Kent Gilbert
Reflecting Together
Call to Prayer and Offering
Ringing of the Peace Bell
Making Something New
As we meditate on the diversity of grace, you are invited to “co-create” with a profusion of color and shape. Start by twisting the center of the cut spiral around a pencil, a pen, or your finger. From the flat paper, petals and patterns emerge. They take on dimension and form. What kinds of parallels are there in your own relations? As you got “wrapped up” in something, what appeared that was not at first apparent? In your own “sacred work” what would help you give dimension to next steps. What creates beauty and strength? When you are done, you are welcome to keep your flower blossom as a reminder, and you are welcome to offer it on the sand table as a communal prayer celebrating all of the ways we each co-contribute to God’s beauty and power in creation.
A Chance for Generosity: www.easytithe.com/union
Our gifts help sustain this particular community of caring by sustaining the building, pastor and staff, and all the materials that make our ministry of healing, justice, and teaching available to all in need. In addition, a portion of our contributions flows out to aid those in need via many external ministries.
Many friends give online, and you can use your smart phone or computer and go to www.easytithe.com/union. You don’t have to register to make a contribution, but if you do, it can make future generosity that much easier. Baskets are placed at the head and foot of each aisle for those who wish to make an in-person donation. Electronic donations can be made very simply and easily at: https//: www.easy tithe.com/union
You can even give by text! Text to 859-448-3403 (Example: Text “$50.00 Offering”)
You can also use US mail! Mail to: 200 Prospect St., Berea, KY 40403
Your contribution is love made visible. Thank you!
Offering Music Valsa Só Ronaldo Miranda Antonella Franco, pianist
Sung Response Amen, Amen!
Fourth Path: Embodying Compassion and Power
The fourth path will lead us out. We pray for movement within our own hearts to embody peace and passion–compassion and power–on behalf of spreading goodness throughout the week. We not at the mercy of “the way it is,” but can claim our agency to be fully present and fully active in the world into which we now go.
Getting Strong
We are strengthened and renewed by so much of what we hear, see, experience. With that blessing we prepare for the service about to begin in our daily lives after worship. What will you take with you for your sacred work?
Community Prayer Peggy Patrick, Reader
In every hollow, in every city, on every mountain, on every beach, under every sea, in the farthest reach of the oldest light from the most distant star: there is one love, there is one heart. So we give thanks and praise to you, Lord of creation. When aligned with you, we find our place in wave after wave of your continuous creation: called and changed by all you set around us; fed and strengthened by gifts differing, and co-creating with you, a kin-dom of intricate relation and common blessing. Neither victims of circumstance, nor masters of your world, help us find the harmony of heart. Raise within our diversity a singular clamor for good, for hope, for common cause with your grace. Help us heal and be healers in all we do, each an “ace in our place,” and caring for the graces found in every corner of your making. May all of creation—from quagmire to quasar— grow lovely and be cared for in our sacred work… as love demands. Amen.
Holding Connection
Announcements
We share opportunities for Beloved Community and ways to serve.
Lighting the Justice Candle to Lead us Forth
We light the Justice Candle today for Union Church member Chris McKenzie, Youth Director at Union Church for more than ten years. Chris works with Grow Appalachia. His work is focused mostly on supporting small scale farmers in KY Appalachia by meeting with them and discussing their hopes and dreams and developing a production plan to reduce input cost and increase production. Since the flooding happened in late July, he has also been a part of a committee to provide grants to flood-impacted farmers, has helped arrange for produce to get to flood impacted counties, as the produce that was grown there was contaminated, and he’s helped farmers start to consider how to make their farms useable again, including arranging for soil to be brought in.
Chris’ maternal parents are from the Appalachian mountains, so he has deep ties to the region. He values the process and miracle of food grown from seed and transformed into the bounty of a meal to be shared. His love for growing was likely a seed that started with his family, but it blossomed during his time as an ag major at Berea College, where he worked on the farm and greenhouse, including as the sheep and goat core team manager his senior year.
Benediction
Hymn You Shall Go Out with Joy
Postlude Odeon Ernesto Nazareth Antonella Franco, pianist
You are welcome to be seated to appreciate the music following service, and to show appreciation at the end with applause. Please come down to the Community Room after worship for Coffee Hour and conversation
Cover art and needlepoint altar decoration by Reda Hutton
Especially in Our Prayers
¨ Each week we join millions of Christians who pray for one another through the ecumenical prayer cycle and, locally, the Berea Ministerial Association’s prayer cycle (Link to World Council of Churches Ecumenical Prayer cycle. (union-church.org/ministries/prayer/). Let us hold the people of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand; and our brothers & sisters at Ransom Baptist Church in our hearts, and pray for them. Please hold these concerns in your prayers, today and throughout the week.
¨ Those affected by the Covid-19 virus, their families and friends living with fear, anxiety, and feelings of isolation, may God bring peace to all who love them; and our wider community as we cope with the new realities of living, including the now over 17,300 Kentucky residents, and 303 Madison County residents, who have died to date from Covid-19.
¨ The families and friends and for all the emergency responders to the floods in our Eastern counties: that safety return, that homes be rebuilt, that all needed help will come.
¨ Prayers for all the people of Ukraine for their safety and sovereignty. Prayers also that the government of Russia will turn to reason & respect for their own peoples’ lives as well as for Ukrainian families.
¨ All those seeking a new and just society and those fearful that they will be supplanted, may God open their hearts and include them in grace.
¨ Our church family members in nursing homes or who are homebound: Jan Hamilton, Betsy Hoefer, Dorie Hubbard, Loyal Jones, Lois Morgan, Cheryl Payne, Alva Peloquin, Laura Robie, Betty Wray, Sally Zimmerman
¨ Families and Friends in Crises…may God be present to every need and heal every rift and wound and those who care for them.
¨ Donna Abner and Curt Rath, married here in Cowan Chapel last Sunday!
¨ Doris Mosely, sister of Deb Beishline, with Covid and heart issues.
¨ Doug Hindman now at The Terrace in Berea.
¨ Maurice Hibbard, recovering at home from a heart attack.
¨ Patsy Boyce, sister-in-law of Bob and Jean Boyce, undergoing chemotherapy.
¨ JoAnn Russell, Reda Hutton’s aunt, facing several medical challenges.
¨ Michelle, beloved nurse at Morning Pointe, undergoing treatment for cancer.
¨ Eric Dodson and family, at the death of his father, Gene Dodson.
¨ Jess Burton & Jake Graber and their little girl, Lila, who has serious gastric issues; and Jake, hospitalized with respiratory and other health issues.
¨ Important dates—if we haven’t got yours, let us know. We’ll help you get connected in FellowshipOne Go!
Birthdays: Nov. 14 – Wyndee Holbrook; 15 – Paul Jacobs; 22 – Scottie Frederiksen; 18 – John Wylie; 19 – Dale Brown
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