Sundays at All Hallows (Sunday, October 22, 2023)
The days are growing colder and the nights longer. The leaves are beginning to change color. On the campus of the university the tower clock chimes the hours. The Disciples of Christ church a block from the courthouse square also has a clock in its steeple that chimes the hours. They are the only bells one hears on Sunday morning. No church bells ring out, calling people to prayer. At the parish church of my youth the church bell was rung twice, a few minutes before the service and then just as the service was about to begin.
Open this link in a new tab to hear the ringing of a church bell. It is a traditional way to begin a service.
PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING TO GOD
Make A joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name;
give to God glorious praise. Say, ’How awesome are your deeds!’
Gracious God, we humbly thank you
for life and health and safety,
for freedom to work and leisure to rest,
and for all that is beautiful in creation and in human life.
But, above all, we praise you for our Saviour,
Christ Jesus,
for his death and resurrection;
for the gift of the Holy Spirit ;
and for the hope of sharing in your glory.
Fill our hearts with all joy and peace in believing;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Herman F. Brokering’s “Earth and All Stars.”
1 Earth and all stars, loud rushing planets,
sing to the Lord a new song!
O victory, loud shouting army,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
2 Hail, wind, and rain, loud blowing snowstorms,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Flowers and trees, loud rustling dry leaves,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
3 Trumpet and pipes, loud clashing cymbals,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Harp, lute, and lyre, loud humming cellos,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
4 Engines and steel, loud pounding hammers,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Limestone and beams, loud building workers,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
5 Classrooms and labs, loud boiling test tubes,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Athlete and band, loud cheering people,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
6 Knowledge and truth, loud sounding wisdom,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Daughter and son, loud praying members,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song.
7 Children of God, dying and rising,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Heaven and earth, hosts everlasting,
sing to the Lord a new song!
He has done marvelous things.
I, too, will praise him with a new song!
THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD
Thank you, Father, for making yourself known to us
and showing us the way of salvation
through faith in your Son.
We ask you now to teach and encourage us
through your word,
so that we may be ready to serve you;
for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
A reading from the Old Testament (Isaiah 44: 6-20)
This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies:
“I am the First and the Last;
there is no other God.
Who is like me?
Let him step forward and prove to you his power.
Let him do as I have done since ancient times
when I established a people and explained its future.
Do not tremble; do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim my purposes for you long ago?
You are my witnesses—is there any other God?
No! There is no other Rock—not one!”
How foolish are those who manufacture idols.
These prized objects are really worthless.
The people who worship idols don’t know this,
so they are all put to shame.
Who but a fool would make his own god—
an idol that cannot help him one bit?
All who worship idols will be disgraced
along with all these craftsmen—mere humans—
who claim they can make a god.
They may all stand together,
but they will stand in terror and shame.
The blacksmith stands at his forge to make a sharp tool,
pounding and shaping it with all his might.
His work makes him hungry and weak.
It makes him thirsty and faint.
Then the wood-carver measures a block of wood
and draws a pattern on it.
He works with chisel and plane
and carves it into a human figure.
He gives it human beauty
and puts it in a little shrine.
He cuts down cedars;
he selects the cypress and the oak;
he plants the pine in the forest
to be nourished by the rain.
Then he uses part of the wood to make a fire.
With it he warms himself and bakes his bread.
Then—yes, it’s true—he takes the rest of it
and makes himself a god to worship!
He makes an idol
and bows down in front of it!
He burns part of the tree to roast his meat
and to keep himself warm.
He says, “Ah, that fire feels good.”
Then he takes what’s left
and makes his god: a carved idol!
He falls down in front of it,
worshiping and praying to it.
“Rescue me!” he says.
“You are my god!”
Such stupidity and ignorance!
Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see.
Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.
The person who made the idol never stops to reflect,
“Why, it’s just a block of wood!
I burned half of it for heat
and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat.
How can the rest of it be a god?
Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?”
The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.
He trusts something that can’t help him at all.
Yet he cannot bring himself to ask,
“Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”
Silence
Hear the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Natalie Sleeth's "God of Great and God of Small."
God of great and God of small,
God of one and God of all,
God of weak and God of strong,
God to whom all things belong,
Alleluia, alleluia, praise be to your name.
God of land and sky and sea,
God of life and destiny,
God of never ending power,
yet beside me every hour,
Alleluia, alleluia, praise be to your name.
God of silence, God of sound,
God in whom the lost are found,
God of day and darkest night,
God whose love turns wrong to right.
Alleluia, alleluia, praise be to your name.
God of heaven and God of earth,
God of death and God of birth,
God of now and days before,
God who reigns forevermore,
Alleluia, alleluia, praise be to your name.
Praise be to your name.
A reading from the New Testament (1 Thessalonians 1:2-10)
We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people. For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true. And you know of our concern for you from the way we lived when we were with you. So you received the message with joy from the Holy Spirit in spite of the severe suffering it brought you. In this way, you imitated both us and the Lord. As a result, you have become an example to all the believers in Greece—throughout both Macedonia and Achaia.
And now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it, for they keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the living and true God. And they speak of how you are looking forward to the coming of God’s Son from heaven—Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. He is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgment.
Silence
Hear the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Ruth Duck’s paraphrase of the Benedictus Dominus Deus, “Now Bless the God of Israel.”
1 Now bless the God of Israel who comes in love and power,
who raises from the royal house deliv’rance in this hour.
Through holy prophets God has sworn to free us from alarm,
to save us from the heavy hand of all who wish us harm.
2 Remembering the covenant, God rescues us from fear,
that we might serve in holiness and peace from year to year.
And you, my child, shall go before, to preach, to prophesy,
that all may know the tender love, the grace of God most high.
[Instrumental interlude]
3 In tender mercy, God will send the dayspring from on high,
our rising sun, the light of life for those who sit and sigh.
God comes to guide our way to peace, that death shall reign no more.
Sing praises to the Holy One, O worship and adore.
When my oldest grandnephew was a Boy Scout, I served on the troop committee as a committee member and as the troop chaplain. Two of the troop’s favorite activities were overnight campouts and camporees. Overnight campouts involved only our troop and on occasion the families of the Scouts. At camporees our troop would camp for a weekend or longer with other troops from our district or council. In the evening we would light a campfire and gather around the fire to tell stories and sing campfire songs. On chilly mornings we also would light a campfire to warm ourselves.
For the campfire we used dead wood, fallen limbs of trees which we checked first for the small living creatures that sometimes inhabit dead wood before burning the limbs. Or we used wood that we had brought with us or which the campground supplied. We did not cut down living trees for our campfire or cut off their branches. We also sometimes used our campfires for cooking, heaping the hot embers and then placing a Dutch oven on top of the embers and then piling embers on top of the oven’s lid. On other occasions we used charcoal briquettes that we had brought with us. Scouts in our troop’s patrols were experts at cooking stews and fruit cobblers in this way.
It is possible to bake biscuits in a reflector oven set on one side of a campfire. It is also possible to bake flat bread on an iron griddle placed on the fire’s hot embers. This second way of baking bread is the way that bread was baked in Biblical times, and it is also the way that bread is baked in some parts of the world to this day. In these parts of the world the need for firewood has resulted in deforestation in a number of places. This has in turn led to soil erosion which has had a negative impact upon agriculture and the food supply in these places. In Biblical times it was also not uncommon to cut down trees for firewood. The archeological record shows that this practice would also have a negative impact where it was a common practice.
Today’s Old Testament reading refers to this practice and the practice of carving into an idol, worshiping it, and praying to it the wood that had not been used for firewood. Carving idols from wood, chiseling them from stone, or making them from gold or silver was one of the ways that the pagan cultures in the midst of which the people of Israel lived and which at various times in their history had an unwholesome influence upon the people of Israel, worshiped their gods. They believed that the spirits of their gods would inhabit these idols and in worshiping them and praying to the idols, they were worshiping and praying to their gods. The pagan cultures of the ancient Mid-East also worshiped people as gods, assigning divine status to their rulers.
Nowhere in the Bible do we find a verse or passage which suggests that God inhabits inanimate objects, and the Ten Commandments prohibit making any representation of God and worshiping it. What we do find in the Bible are several verses and passages which teach that God indwells people in the person of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is also clear that we are not to worship or pray to the persons in which the Holy Spirit is dwelling, or which the Holy Spirit indwelt during their lifetime, but to love, reverence, and honor God and God alone.
In today’s New Testament reading the apostle Paul draws to attention of the church at Thessalonica, the premier city in northern Greece, and what would become the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire, that the news of their rejection of the worship of idols for the worship of God had spread beyond the northern and southern regions of Greece as had their welcome of Paul and his companions. Paul attributes their positive response to the Good News to the work of the Holy Spirit. He describes them as setting an example for all believers throughout Greece. He also points to their attention that their response show that God loves them and has chosen them to be his own people.
Their refusal to pay homage to the gods of the city in which they lived is one of the reasons that the pagan inhabitants of the city viewed the early Christians as a serious threat to their own well-being and explains their hostility to the early Christians. As a result, the early Christians were regarded as a dangerous anti-social element. It accounts for their ill-treatment at the hands of the authorities. The making of offerings and the performance of rituals associated with the worship of these gods was believed to be necessary to the health and prosperity of the city. Otherwise, the gods might withdraw their favor. The gods might punish the other inhabitants of the city for the intransigence of the Christians.
While we may not cut down a tree and carve an idol from its wood, we are prone to make idols and worship them. It is a very human tendency. We may not prostrate ourselves before them, offer libations to them, or burn incense or light candles in their honor, but nonetheless our attitude toward them is one of worship. Woe betides those who do not pay homage to our idols as we do. Our idols may be a belief, an idea, or a value. It may be a ideology or a political figure. In any case this idol takes God’s place in our hearts.
A common idol In western secular culture is self. It is not a new idol but a very old one. The story of Adam and Eve in the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, tells how the first human beings ignored God’s warning against eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, tempted by their own desire to be like God and egged on by a talking serpent. Adam blamed Eve, but Adam had also heard God’s warning, and he was present when she picked the fruit of the tree and did not attempt to stop her. While some interpreters of this story would like us to believe that Adam was so besotted by Eve that he ate the fruit that she gave him not entirely on his own volition. They place the blame for what happened on Eve. However, God, the story tells, did not see it that way and ejected both of them from the Garden of Eden. They would no longer enjoy the close relationship that they had with God in the garden.
Whatever we may think of this story, whether we regarded it as a literal account of what happened or as a parable, it has the elements of a cautionary tale. A cautionary tale is a tale typically found in oral literature, “a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written,” though a large amount of oral literature has been recorded by writing it down. It warns its listeners of a danger.
A cautionary tale has three essential parts. It warns that some act, some place, or some thing is dangerous. It may be forbidden or taboo. The narrative which follows this warning tells how someone disregarded the warning and did what they had been warned not to do. Finally, it tells what happened to that person as a consequence of what they did.
Cautionary tales are also told to draw attention to issues related to standards of good or bad behavior, fairness, honesty, and other similar things which people believe. Among the things that the story of Adam and Eve illustrates is our willingness to reject God’s words as truthful and trustworthy when they would interfere with us doing what we want to when we want to do it. It also illustrates our desire to be god-like.
The latter is very much the spirit of the age in western countries. The rise of the “me-culture” has placed self upon a pedestal and has given sovereignty to self in all matters. Those who do not pay homage to this new idol are viewed much in the same light as were the early Christians who did not pay homage to the pagan gods. They are seen as an undesirable element in contemporary society.
Now some individuals and groups who identify themselves as Christians have reinforced this negative view of Christians with their attitudes, ways of thinking, and behavior. People pay more attention to the bad things we say and do than they do to the good things we say and do. This is not a reason to stop doing good, but it is a reason to be more careful about what we say and do.
As Jesus instructed his follower before sending them out to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom, we need to be "wise as serpents and gentle as doves." Jesus was not telling them to water down the good news that he had given them to proclaim or the principles by which he had taught them to live. He was telling them to be tactful. He was also telling them to read the room and to exercise good judgement as far as what they said and did. He certainly was not encouraging them to be combative.
Christians are not unaffected by the influence of the “me-culture.” They are not immune to making self an idol. What is known as consumer Christianity, in which churchgoers see themselves as consumers of services rather than as servants to Christ in their fellow human beings has made significant inroads into the North American Church. So has the Prosperity Gospel, “the teaching that faith—expressed through positive thoughts, positive declarations, and donations to the church—draws health, wealth, and happiness into believers' lives.”
This teaching contrasts sharply with what Jesus told the crowd: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23 NLT).
Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to live as someone who is dead to the allures of this world, and to walk humbly with God. Like the Christians at Thessalonica, we must turn away from the idols in our lives, whatever they may be, to serve the true and living God. As a disciple of Jesus, we will find true fulfillment and we will be transformed into our better self, the person whom God means us to be. We will not find that self by looking inward. We will become that self by looking to Jesus.
Silence
We believe in one God,
who made us and loves all that is.
We believe in Jesus Christ,
God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was born, lived, died and rose again,
and is coming to call all to account.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
who calls, equips and sends out God’s people,
and brings all things to their true end.
This is our faith, the faith of the Church:
We believe in one God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Joesph Condor and Charles Price’s “In Your Mercy, Lord, You Called Me.”
1 In your mercy, Lord, you called me,
taught my sin-filled heart and mind,
else this world had still enthralled me,
and to glory kept me blind.
2 Lord, I did not freely choose you
till by grace you set me free;
for my heart would still refuse you
had your love not chosen me.
3 Now my heart sets none above you,
for your grace alone I thirst,
knowing well, that if I love you,
you, O Lord, have loved me first.
CONFESSION OF SIN
Let us now confess our sins to almighty God.
Heavenly Father,
you have loved us with an everlasting love,
but we have broken your holy laws
and have left undone what we ought to have done.
We are sorry for our sins
and turn away from them.
For the sake of your Son who died for us,
forgive us, cleanse us, and change us.
By your Holy Spirit,
enable us to live for you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Lord of mercy, grant us your pardon and peace; that
cleansed from our sins and with peace in our hearts, we
may be free to serve you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
THE MINISTRY OF PRAYER
Let us pray for all people and for the Church throughout the world.
Father, we pray for your holy catholic Church;
that we all may be one in Christ.
Grant that every member of the Church may truly and humbly serve you;
that your Name may be glorified by everyone.
We pray for our pastor......and all who serve in your Church;
that they may be faithful ministers of your word and sacraments.
We pray for all who govern and exercise authority in the nations of the world;
that there may be peace and justice among all.
Give us strength to do your will in all that we undertake;
that we may be blessed in all our works.
Have compassion on those who suffer or are in grief or trouble;
that they may he delivered from their distress.
We praise you for all your saints who have entered into joy
may we also share in your heavenly kingdom.
Let us pray for our own needs and those of others.
Accept our prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who taught us to pray,
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
THE SENDING OUT OF GOD’S PEOPLE
Loving God, we thank you for hearing our prayers,
feeding us with your word,
and encouraging us in meeting together.
Take us and use us
to love and serve you
and all people,
in the power of your Spirit
and in the name of your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Alvin Schumaat’s “May the God of Hope Go with Us.”
May the God of hope go with us every day,
filling all our lives with love and joy and peace.
May the God of justice speed us on our way,
bringing light and hope to every land and race.
Praying, let us work for peace,
singing, share our joy with all.
working for a world that's new,
faithful when we hear Christ's call.
Dios de la esperanza, danos gozo y paz!
al mundo en crisis, habla tu verdad,
Dios de la justicia, mándanos tu luz,
luz y esperanza en la oscuridad.
O remos por la paz.
Cantemos de mor.
luchemos por la paz,
fieles a Ti, Señor.
La, la, la, la, la, la….
Praying, let us work for peace,
singing, share our joy with all.
working for a world that's new,
faithful when we hear Christ's call.
May the God peace equip you with everything good for
doing his will, working in you what is pleasing to him,
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.
Amen.
Those present may exchange the peace.
The peace of the Lord be always with you.
And also with you.
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