Third Sunday of
Pentecost
Introduction to the day
God does not promise that the path of the disciple will be easy.
Jeremiah feels the pain of rejection from those who do not want to hear what he
has to say. Jesus declares that his words may bring stark division. Even so, we
need not be afraid for God accounts for each hair on our heads. Though we may
experience rejection, frustration, division, and death, God’s grace and love
make us a new creation each day. Marked with the cross and filled with holy
food, we are sent from worship to witness to Christ in the world.
Confession and Forgiveness
You are the God who hears:hear our prayer today for all who lament or repent.
For those among us who face discrimination every day
because of their skin colour, we lament.
For those among us with white skin who benefit
from racist systems sometimes even without realizing it, we repent.
For those among us who have struggled and waited so long
for the Promised Land of freedom and equality, we lament.
For those among us who have acted in racist ways
and have hurt people of colour, we repent.
For those protesting injustice who face police brutality
and a justice system rigged against them, we lament.
For those who think racism is someone else’s problem,
and not a problem for humanity, we repent.
God of hope, show us how to work for justice together,
standing up for what is right,
stepping in when something's wrong,
shouldering each other’s burdens,
holding each other accountable,
righting the wrongs we’ve done,
speaking truth to power.
We pray for change, lasting change,
for protection for protesters,
for a de-escalation of violence
and for government leaders who listen.
Deliver us from evil, within and without,
in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
(written by Carol Penner and posted on Leading in Worship.
https://carolpenner.typepad.com/leadinginworship/)
Thanksgiving for Baptism
Blessed be the holy Trinity, one God, the fountain of living water, the rock who gave us birth, our light and our salvation. Amen.
Joined to Christ in the waters of baptism,
we are clothed with God's mercy and forgiveness.
Let us give thanks for the gift of baptism.
We give you thanks, O God,
for in the beginning your Spirit moved over the waters
and by your Word you created the world,
calling forth life in which you took delight.
Through the waters of the flood you delivered Noah and his family.
Through the sea you led your people Israel from slavery into freedom.
At the river your Son was baptized by John and anointed with the Holy
Spirit.
By water and your Word you claim us as daughters and sons,
making us heirs of your promise and servants of all.
We praise you for the gift of water that sustains life,
and above all we praise you for the gift of new life in Jesus Christ.
Shower us with your Spirit,
and renew our lives with your forgiveness, grace, and love.
To you be given honor and praise
through Jesus Christ our Lord
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever.
Amen.
Gathering Song – Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life (ELW #719)
Greeting
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
And also with you.
Kyrie
Kyrie eleison: Lord, have mercy.Christe eleison: Christ, have mercy.
Kyrie eleison: Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy: Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy: Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy: Lord, have mercy.
Prayer of the Day
Let us pray.
Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to
count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek
for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do
your will, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.
A reading from the Book of Jeremiah 20:7-13
Jeremiah accuses God of forcing him
into a ministry that brings him only contempt and persecution. Yet Jeremiah is
confident that God will be a strong protector against his enemies and commits
his life into God’s hands.
O Lord, you have enticed me,
and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day long;
everyone mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
I must shout, “Violence and
destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
a reproach and derision all
day long.
If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his
name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.
For I hear many whispering:
“Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”
All my close friends
are watching for me to
stumble.
“Perhaps he can be enticed,
and we can prevail against
him,
and take our revenge on him.”
But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior;
therefore my persecutors will
stumble,
and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed,
for they will not succeed.
Their eternal dishonor
will never be forgotten.
O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous,
you see the heart and the
mind;
let me see your retribution upon them,
for to you I have committed my
cause.
Sing to the Lord;
praise the Lord!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Psalm 69:7-18
It is for your sake that I have borne reproach,
that shame has covered my
face.
I have become a stranger to my kindred,
an alien to my mother’s
children.
It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
the insults of those who
insult you have fallen on me.
When I humbled my soul with fasting,
they insulted me for doing so.
When I made sackcloth my clothing,
I became a byword to them.
I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate,
and the drunkards make songs
about me.
But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
At an acceptable time, O God,
in the abundance of your
steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help rescue me
from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
Do not let the flood sweep over me,
or the deep swallow me up,
or the Pit close its mouth
over me.
Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
according to your abundant
mercy, turn to me.
Do not hide your face from your servant,
for I am in distress—make
haste to answer me.
Draw near to me, redeem me,
set me free because of my
enemies.
A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 6:1-11
In baptism we were incorporated into
the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. We have been made new in Christ
through his death and resurrection to live freed from sin.
What then are we to say? Should we
continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who
died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried
with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in
a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like
his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin
might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died
is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will
also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never
die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to
sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must
consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Gospel Acclamation
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
The holy gospel according to Matthew 10:24-39
Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus warns his
disciples that their ministry in his name will meet with opposition. However,
he assures them that they need not fear for the truth will come to light. Life
is found in Christ.
A disciple is not above the teacher,
nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the
teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the
house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!
So have no fear of
them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret
that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light;
and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who
kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both
soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of
them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your
head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many
sparrows.
Everyone therefore who acknowledges me
before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever
denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
Do not think that I
have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword.
For I have come to set a man against
his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O
Christ.
Sermon
Guest preacher: Rev. Doug Reble
I suspect most of you who are listening to or reading this sermon have never heard the name Kenneth Feinberg. He is the lawyer who chaired the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, which gave money to the family of each person who died in the 2001 terror attacks in the United States. Starting with a formula and then using his discretion, Feinberg considered the victims’ age, their dependents, whether they had life insurance and their income and earning potential. The value assigned to those lost lives varied dramatically. As little as $250,000 for blue collar workers and as much as $7.1 million for executives.
Feinberg, in an article I read in The New Yorker magazine, reflected on his experience. “As I met with the 9/11 families and wrestled with issues surrounding the valuation of lives lost I began to question this basic premise of our legal system. Trained in the law, I had always accepted that no two lives were worth the same in financial terms. But now I found the law in conflict with my growing belief in the equality of all life.”
In today’s gospel reading from Matthew, Chapter 10, we read of Jesus sending his disciples into a perilous world. There will be divisions in their families. There will be “those who kill the body.” The disciples must be prepared to take up the cross.
And yet in the middle of this recitation of conflict and danger, Jesus suddenly speaks of the smallest, most insignificant creatures. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet none one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.“ In the marketplace, sparrows were the meat of the poor, the ground chuck of the first century. Yet their lives –their deaths –are not beneath God’s attention and care.
“Do not be afraid,“ Jesus says, “you are of more value than many sparrows.“
When I told Bishop Michael Pryse, my colleague in our Eastern Synod office, that I was writing a sermon based on Jesus’ word about sparrows, he started to sing “God Sees The Little Sparrows Fall.” At first I started to laugh and then I realized how come I didn’t know it so I did what we often do and I Googled it. That got me on to another hymn about sparrows as these Google searches often do, entitled “His Eye On The Sparrow.” I listened to a clip of Mahalia Jackson singing it in 1958 and Whitney Houston 30 years later. Never heard of the hymn so I did some research.
I learned that Jesus’ words “Do not be afraid, you are of more value than many sparrows,“ inspired Canadian schoolteacher Civilla Martin, in 1905, to write the words to that hymn, “His Eye On The Sparrow”, a gospel hymn that declares with assurance, “I know God watches me.“
I also learned that this hymn became very popular in African–American churches. In a world that insists that black lives do not matter, Jesus declares that overlooked, exploited, brutalized lives are, in fact, of the greatest importance to God. In a world that says the life of a rich person is worth 28 times as much as the life of a working person, Jesus says that God pays special attention to those who are poor, struggling, and suffering. God cares. We are not alone. In these days of pandemic and COVID-19, how we all need to hear those words. God cares. We are not alone.
Jesus’ calculus for the value of a life has little to do with a person’s income or earning potential. To Jesus, our lives have innate value, in and of themselves. We have value because we are creatures, like sparrows, made in God’s image. As mystic Julian of Norwich wrote in the 15th century of her vision of the hazelnut: “I marveled how it might suddenly have sank into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it."
Friends, to Jesus, our value does not lead to compensation or a guarantee of safety. It means that we receive attention. The God who cares for the welfare of sparrows also keeps track of every aspect of our lives, even tallying up the hairs of our heads. When St. Paul’s description of divine love comes to a crescendo in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, he promises that one day we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. I would say that we already are fully known, known more deeply than we even know ourselves.
Occasionally, well meaning Christians declare that “God doesn’t care if you get a tattoo “or “God doesn’t care if you have a glass of wine,” or as I used to say to my mother as a young teenager, “God doesn’t care if I wear jeans to church.” While it is true that none of these choices is, for most of us, a matter of eternal consequences, the idea that God doesn’t care is entirely untrue. There is nothing, not even the smallest thing, that is outside the circle of God’s care. And if God cares about these little details, the sparrows of our lives, then how much more God cares about the shape of each life and of all our lives. Just remember. God’s care is not for me alone, nor only for people like me, but for all of us.
After the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund completed its work, Kenneth Feinberg received a call from the president of Virginia Tech University, asking him to manage the fund that would distribute compensation to the families of the students and faculty killedin the 2007 mass shooting. “I realized that Feinberg the citizen trumped Feinberg the lawyer. My legal training would no longer stand in the way. This time all victims - students and faculty alike - would receive the same compensation.“
Dear friends in Christ. Sparrows and disciples alike, we know God watches us. To God, we matter. Hear that again. To God, we matter. In God’s sight, there are no unimportant lives.
In the name of the God who loves us all. Amen.
Hymn of the Day – Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said (ELW #667)
Creed
Prayers of Intercession
Called into unity with one another and the whole creation, let us pray
for our shared world.
Expansive God, you bring diverse voices together to form your church. Open our hearts and unstop our ears to learn from one another, that differences might not overshadow our baptismal unity. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
Providing God, your creation shows us that life comes from death. Renew
the places where our land, air, and waterways have been ill for too long. Direct
the work of all who care for birds and their habitats. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
Protecting God, sustain and keep safe all who work to defend others
across the world. Revive and strengthen organizations dedicated to caring for
refugees and migrants while their homelands struggle for peace. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
Loving God, you promise to be with all who are persecuted for your sake.
Guide all who speak your word of justice and console any who are tormented or
targeted for being who they are. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
Compassionate God, you are with us and we are never alone. Bless all
fathers and father figures who strive to love and nurture as you do. Comfort
all who long to be fathers and all for whom this day is difficult. Hear us, O
God.
Your mercy is great.
Reigning God, you bless us with guides and caretakers in the faith. As
we give thanks for those who have died, especially Onesimos Nesib, translator
and evangelist, and all murdered Indigenous women and girls, increase our care
for one another until we walk with them in newness of life. Hear us, O God.
Your mercy is great.
Receive these prayers, O God, and those too deep for words; through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Peace
The peace of Christ be with you always.
And also with you.
Offering
**Although
not physically at our church buildings to share our offering together I would
encourage you to set your offering of money aside so that it can be dropped off
or placed in the church once services resume, to mail your offering to the
church, or to make donations online. Please remember ministry is still taking
place.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, who made us who we are, we offer all of ourselves to you.
Take our talents, our energy and our joy, and use us to share your love.
Take our mistakes, our regrets and our pain, and use us to bring your healing. Magnify the gifts we offer before you today, to spread Your peace in the world.
Amen.
(submitted by Gill Le
Fevre)
Thanksgiving for the Word
Let us pray.
O God of justice and love, we give thanks to you that you illumine our way through life with the words of your Son. Give us the light we need, awaken us to the needs of others, and at the end bring all the world to your feast; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory forever.
Amen.
Lord’s Prayer
Gathered into one by the Holy Spirit, let us pray as Jesus taught us.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours,
now and forever. Amen.
Blessing
O Lord Jesus,
gentle and humble of heart,
full of compassion and maker of peace,
you lived in poverty and suffered persecution for the cause of justice.
You chose the Cross as the path to glory to show us the way of
salvation.
May we receive the word of the Gospel joyfully
and live by your example as heirs and citizens of your kingdom.
Amen.
(posted on the
Catholic Forum website. http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/pray0483.htm)
Sending Song – We Are Called (ELW #720)
Dismissal
Go forth into the world to serve God with gladness; be of good courage;
hold fast to that which is good; render to no one evil for evil; strengthen the
fainthearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; honor all people; love and
serve God, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks be to God.
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