Gayle C. Felton - "Living Deep" (July 30, 1995)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(organ music) | 0:02 | |
- | Good morning, we'd like to welcome you to Duke Chapel. | 1:33 |
We've got a packed house today, | 1:36 | |
and I'd like to ask those of you sitting in the pews | 1:38 | |
if you could help by moving in just a little bit | 1:40 | |
toward the center aisle, | 1:43 | |
and that will assist the latecomers | 1:45 | |
to have space on the ends of the rows. | 1:47 | |
Thank you very much for your assistance. | 1:49 | |
We welcome to our pulpit this morning | 1:53 | |
the Reverend Doctor Gayle Carlton Felton, | 1:56 | |
assistant professor of Christian nurture | 1:59 | |
at Duke Divinity School. | 2:01 | |
We are glad to have Doctor Felton with us | 2:03 | |
as our preacher today. | 2:05 | |
We're also grateful to welcome | 2:07 | |
the Bright Leaf Music Workshop, | 2:09 | |
the singers, their families, | 2:11 | |
and their director, Doctor Dan Huff, | 2:13 | |
who are with us and will provide | 2:15 | |
special music in today's service of worship. | 2:17 | |
Now, let us continue our worship with the greeting, | 2:20 | |
please stand. | 2:22 | |
God is eager to restore us to right relationships. | 2:30 | |
The Creator is waiting to claim us now as God's own. | 2:35 | |
Listen, for God will speak to those who want to hear. | 2:47 | |
Turn your hearts toward the one who saves. | 2:52 | |
God will answer us and will give what is good. | 3:02 | |
God restores us to faithfulness and righteousness. | 3:06 | |
(organ music) | 3:20 | |
(choir singing) | 4:03 | |
(organ music) | 6:13 | |
(choir singing) | 6:36 | |
- | Let us pray. | 7:36 |
Into our hearts, gracious God, | 7:43 | |
to quiet the clamor of our busy days, | 7:46 | |
and fill the emptiness of aching hearts, | 7:49 | |
help us to put aside our work, | 7:53 | |
our worries, and all distractions to focus on you. | 7:56 | |
Bring eternal values to the center of our attention, | 8:02 | |
may this hour be filled with all that is true, | 8:06 | |
honorable, just, pure, | 8:09 | |
pleasing, commendable, and excellent. | 8:12 | |
We are ready to learn what you wish to teach us. | 8:16 | |
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 8:19 | |
You may be seated. | 8:24 | |
- | Let us pray together the prayer for illumination. | 8:38 |
Open our hearts and minds, O God, | 8:42 | |
by the power of your Holy Spirit | 8:45 | |
so that, as the word is read and proclaimed, | 8:48 | |
we may hear your message with joy this day, amen. | 8:52 | |
The first lesson this morning is from the book of Hosea, | 8:59 | |
the first chapter, beginning with the second verse. | 9:02 | |
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, | 9:06 | |
the Lord said to Hosea go, | 9:09 | |
take for your wife a wife of whoredom, | 9:12 | |
and have children of whoredom, | 9:15 | |
for the land commits great whoredom | 9:17 | |
by forsaking the Lord. | 9:19 | |
So he went and took Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, | 9:21 | |
and she conceived and bore him a son. | 9:25 | |
And the Lord said to him name him Jezreel, | 9:29 | |
for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu | 9:33 | |
for the blood of Jezreel, | 9:36 | |
and I will put an end to the kingdom | 9:38 | |
of the house of Israel. | 9:40 | |
On that day, I will break the bow of Israel | 9:42 | |
in the valley of Jezreel. | 9:46 | |
She conceived again and bore a daughter, | 9:49 | |
then the Lord said to him | 9:53 | |
name her Lo-ruhamah, | 9:55 | |
for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel, | 9:57 | |
or forgive them, | 10:00 | |
but I will have pity on the house of Judah, | 10:02 | |
and I will save them by the Lord their God. | 10:04 | |
I will not save them by bow or by sword | 10:08 | |
or by horses or by horsemen. | 10:12 | |
When she had weened Lo-ruhamah, | 10:15 | |
she conceived and bore a son. | 10:18 | |
Then the Lord said name him Lo-Ammi, | 10:21 | |
for you are not my people, | 10:24 | |
and I am not your God. | 10:26 | |
Yet the number of people in Israel | 10:29 | |
shall be like the sand of the sea, | 10:31 | |
which can be neither measured nor numbered, | 10:33 | |
and in the place where it was said to them, | 10:36 | |
you are not my people. | 10:38 | |
It shall be said to them | 10:40 | |
children of the living God. | 10:42 | |
This is the word of the Lord, | 10:45 | |
peace be to God. | 10:48 | |
This morning's Psalter is Psalm 85, | 10:52 | |
found on page 806 in your hymnals. | 10:55 | |
Please stand and read responsively. | 10:58 | |
Lord, you showed favor to your land, | 11:16 | |
you restored the fortunes of Jacob. | 11:20 | |
You withdrew all your wrath, | 11:29 | |
you turned from your hot anger. | 11:31 | |
Will you be angry with us forever? | 11:41 | |
Will you prolong your anger to all generations? | 11:44 | |
Will you not revive us again | 11:48 | |
that your people may rejoice in you? | 11:50 | |
Let me hear what God will speak, | 11:59 | |
for the Lord will speak to his people, | 12:02 | |
to his faithful, | 12:04 | |
to those who turn to the Lord in their hearts. | 12:06 | |
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, | 12:18 | |
righteousness and peace will kiss each other. | 12:21 | |
The Lord will give what is good, | 12:33 | |
and our land will yield its increase. | 12:35 | |
(organ music) | 12:45 | |
(choir singing) | 12:54 | |
You may be seated. | 13:43 | |
The second lesson this morning | 13:54 | |
is taken from the 11th chapter | 13:55 | |
of the gospel according to Luke, | 13:57 | |
beginning with the first verse. | 13:59 | |
He was praying in a certain place, | 14:03 | |
and after he had finished, | 14:06 | |
one of his disciples said to him Lord, | 14:07 | |
teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. | 14:10 | |
He said to them when you pray, | 14:15 | |
say Father, hallowed be your name, | 14:18 | |
your kingdom come, | 14:21 | |
give us each day our daily bread, | 14:23 | |
and forgive us our sins | 14:26 | |
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us, | 14:28 | |
and do not bring us to the time of trial. | 14:32 | |
And he said to them | 14:36 | |
suppose one of you has a friend | 14:37 | |
and you go to him and midnight and say friend, | 14:39 | |
lend me three loaves of bread, | 14:42 | |
for a friend of mine has arrived | 14:45 | |
and I have nothing to set before him. | 14:46 | |
And he answered from within | 14:49 | |
do not bother me, for the door has been locked, | 14:51 | |
and my children are with me in bed. | 14:54 | |
I cannot get up and give you anything, | 14:57 | |
I tell you, even though he will not get up | 15:00 | |
and give him anything because he is a friend, | 15:03 | |
at least because of his persistence, | 15:06 | |
he will get up and get him whatever he needs. | 15:08 | |
So I say to you, ask, | 15:12 | |
and it will be given to you. | 15:14 | |
Search and you will find, | 15:16 | |
knock, and the door will be open for you. | 15:20 | |
For everyone who receives, | 15:23 | |
and everyone who searches finds, | 15:26 | |
and for everyone who knocks, | 15:29 | |
the door will be opened. | 15:30 | |
Is there anyone among you who | 15:33 | |
if a child asks for a fish | 15:35 | |
will give him a snake instead of a fish? | 15:37 | |
Or if a child asks for an egg | 15:40 | |
will give a scorpion? | 15:42 | |
If you then, who are evil, | 15:44 | |
know how to give good gifts to your children, | 15:46 | |
how much more will the heavenly Father | 15:49 | |
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? | 15:51 | |
This is the word of the Lord, | 15:55 | |
thanks be to God. | 15:59 | |
(organ music) | 16:14 | |
(choir singing) | 16:25 | |
- | Hear the reading from the second chapter of Colossians. | 19:23 |
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, | 19:29 | |
continue to live your lives in him. | 19:34 | |
Rooted and built up in him | 19:38 | |
and established in the faith, | 19:40 | |
just as you were taught, | 19:43 | |
abounding in thanksgiving. | 19:46 | |
See to it that no one takes you captive | 19:49 | |
through his philosophy | 19:53 | |
and empty deceit. | 19:54 | |
According to human traditions, | 19:57 | |
according to elemental spirits of the universe, | 19:59 | |
and not according to Christ, | 20:03 | |
for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, | 20:06 | |
and you have come to fullness in him. | 20:12 | |
He is the head of every ruler and authority, | 20:18 | |
in him also you were circumcised | 20:23 | |
with a spiritual circumcision. | 20:26 | |
By putting off the body of flesh | 20:29 | |
in the circumcision of Christ, | 20:32 | |
when you are buried with him in baptism, | 20:34 | |
you are also raised with him | 20:38 | |
through faith and the power of God | 20:41 | |
who raised him from the dead. | 20:44 | |
And when you were dead in trespasses | 20:48 | |
in the uncircumcision of your flesh, | 20:50 | |
God made you alive together with him | 20:54 | |
when he forgave us all our trespasses, | 20:58 | |
erasing the record that stood against us | 21:04 | |
with its legal demands, | 21:07 | |
he set these aside, | 21:09 | |
nailing them to his cross. | 21:11 | |
He disarmed the rulers of authorities | 21:14 | |
and made a public example of them, | 21:18 | |
triumphing over them in it. | 21:21 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 21:25 | |
In the spring of 1845, | 21:36 | |
Henry David Thoreau built a shack | 21:42 | |
in the woods | 21:48 | |
on the shore of a small lake in Massachusetts | 21:50 | |
named Walden Pond. | 21:55 | |
There he lived for more than two years, | 22:00 | |
and subsequently wrote an account | 22:05 | |
of his experience, | 22:07 | |
which has become a classic of American literature. | 22:09 | |
In his explanation, | 22:16 | |
he expressed his motivation for this rather radical, | 22:21 | |
counter culture move in these words: | 22:27 | |
I went to the woods | 22:33 | |
because I wished to love deliberately, | 22:35 | |
to front only the essential facts of life, | 22:40 | |
and see if I could not learn | 22:45 | |
what it had to teach, and not, | 22:49 | |
when I came to die, | 22:54 | |
discover that I had not lived. | 22:57 | |
I did not wish to live what was not life. | 23:04 | |
Living is so dear. | 23:08 | |
Nor did I wish to practice resignation | 23:12 | |
unless it was quite necessary. | 23:16 | |
I wanted to live deep | 23:19 | |
and suck out all the marrow of life. | 23:23 | |
Thoreau feared that his life, | 23:32 | |
being lived in the routine of the small town of Concord, | 23:36 | |
was being wasted | 23:40 | |
on trivialities | 23:43 | |
and superficialities. | 23:46 | |
He comments later that his life | 23:49 | |
was being fretted away in details, | 23:53 | |
and he was determined to resist | 23:58 | |
the pull of the ordinary, | 24:02 | |
the temptation to settle for the routine | 24:05 | |
and the mundane and the meaningless. | 24:08 | |
He was determined to find within himself, | 24:12 | |
and within the very nature of the world | 24:16 | |
the true meaning of human existence. | 24:21 | |
In his letter to the Colossians | 24:29 | |
from which I just read, | 24:32 | |
Paul warned these Christians | 24:35 | |
about the dangers of false teachings | 24:38 | |
which threatened to ensnare them | 24:43 | |
in the trivialities and superficialities of life | 24:47 | |
so as to choke, to strangle, | 24:51 | |
to destroy the very life | 24:55 | |
that the had come to know in Christ Jesus. | 24:57 | |
We do not know all the details | 25:03 | |
of what was going on in the church of Colossians. | 25:06 | |
Biblical scholars are continuing to debate | 25:11 | |
exactly what kind of false teaching it was | 25:14 | |
that these Christians were being subjected to. | 25:20 | |
But while we do not have the whole story, | 25:24 | |
it is quite clear that these Christians | 25:28 | |
were being robbed | 25:31 | |
of their freedom. | 25:34 | |
They were being persuaded by a new group of teachers | 25:37 | |
coming along behind Paul, | 25:42 | |
or coming along behind other Christians | 25:44 | |
who had started that church. | 25:47 | |
They were being persuaded that they needed to observe | 25:49 | |
more rituals and ceremonies, festivals, | 25:52 | |
occasions with a kind of perhaps occult meaning. | 25:58 | |
They were being persuaded | 26:03 | |
that they needed to deny themselves | 26:05 | |
more of the satisfactions of life, | 26:08 | |
to turn their back upon the body indeed, | 26:11 | |
and to punish their own lives | 26:15 | |
with a kind of aesthetic denial. | 26:18 | |
They were being told | 26:23 | |
to obey more rules, | 26:27 | |
more regulations, | 26:30 | |
do more dos, | 26:33 | |
don't more don'ts. | 26:36 | |
And Paul is incensed, | 26:40 | |
he is absolutely furious, | 26:44 | |
and in this letter, as in his letter to the Galatians | 26:48 | |
and other places in Paul's writing, | 26:52 | |
we find him furious with frustration | 26:55 | |
that the very people who had come to know | 27:00 | |
the richness and the sweetness and the joy and the freedom | 27:03 | |
of life in Jesus Christ | 27:08 | |
were now beginning to timidly doubt | 27:10 | |
and fearful place themselves back under the bondage | 27:14 | |
of human rules and requirements. | 27:17 | |
Paul urges the Colossian Christians, | 27:24 | |
and he urges us to be thankful | 27:28 | |
for the free gift of God's love, | 27:32 | |
and to live deeply with our lives | 27:35 | |
grounded in that ultimate reality. | 27:39 | |
All of our scriptures for today, | 27:44 | |
some of them rather strange and difficult selections, | 27:49 | |
but all share the theme of the outpouring of the mercy | 27:53 | |
and the love and the generosity of Almighty God who, | 28:00 | |
like Paul, gets frustrated with us, | 28:05 | |
but always provides the gift of love | 28:09 | |
and forgiveness. | 28:14 | |
As this scripture indicates, | 28:18 | |
it is in the sacrament of baptism | 28:21 | |
that Christians claim and celebrate | 28:25 | |
the kind of life that Christ offers. | 28:28 | |
If we were to look within the hymnals at your seats, | 28:34 | |
at the services of the baptismal covenant | 28:38 | |
in this united Methodist hymnal, | 28:42 | |
we would see that in the introduction | 28:45 | |
to that service, we are told | 28:47 | |
that in baptism we are incorporated | 28:50 | |
into God's mighty acts of salvation | 28:54 | |
and given new birth through water and the spirit. | 28:58 | |
All this is God's gift offered to us | 29:02 | |
without price. | 29:08 | |
In Colossians, the writer portrays Christ | 29:15 | |
as a triumphant conqueror, | 29:19 | |
returning as the Roman generals returned | 29:23 | |
from their victorious conquest, | 29:27 | |
and leading a victory parade | 29:30 | |
as these generals led victory processions | 29:34 | |
down the streets of Rome, | 29:37 | |
parading behind them the captive kings | 29:39 | |
that they had taken, | 29:43 | |
and masses of loot that they had been able to capture. | 29:46 | |
Paul uses this figure for the triumph of Jesus Christ | 29:52 | |
over the forces of wickedness and evil and sin. | 29:58 | |
In the first baptismal question, | 30:04 | |
we affirm the divine victory | 30:08 | |
over sin and evil. | 30:12 | |
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness? | 30:15 | |
Reject the evil powers of this world? | 30:20 | |
And repent of your sin? | 30:25 | |
Christ's victory on the cross and from the tomb, | 30:31 | |
Christ's victory makes it possible for us | 30:38 | |
to live triumphantly. | 30:42 | |
The second question makes this clear. | 30:46 | |
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you | 30:50 | |
to resist evil and justice and oppression | 30:55 | |
in whatever forms they present themselves? | 30:59 | |
Such a gift, a power, | 31:05 | |
power to live a new life | 31:11 | |
requires our response | 31:14 | |
of fateful acceptance | 31:18 | |
and willingness to participate | 31:21 | |
in the ongoing struggle against evil within ourselves, | 31:24 | |
and that all of the places and ways | 31:29 | |
that sin presents itself. | 31:33 | |
Such living is not a matter of knowing | 31:37 | |
and keeping the rules, | 31:42 | |
such living is a continued surrender | 31:45 | |
to the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ | 31:50 | |
in whom Paul reminds us we have already come | 31:54 | |
to fullness of life. | 32:00 | |
Living deep | 32:04 | |
is living with our strong and sure foundation | 32:06 | |
built upon Christ, | 32:11 | |
not upon our own abilities | 32:13 | |
or our own efforts. | 32:17 | |
I am both fascinated | 32:23 | |
and haunted | 32:27 | |
by the life story of the famed Russian novelist | 32:29 | |
Leo Tolstoy. | 32:35 | |
Known best to most of us for writing exceedingly long books, | 32:40 | |
Tolstoy was a man whose life was obsessed | 32:47 | |
with a burning desire to live as Christ | 32:54 | |
would have him live. | 32:59 | |
As he read and studied the New Testament scriptures, | 33:02 | |
Tolstoy became convinced that | 33:07 | |
living a Christian life meant taking very literally | 33:10 | |
the commandments of the sermon on the mount and elsewhere, | 33:15 | |
and renouncing all for Jesus. | 33:20 | |
In his attempt to do this, | 33:26 | |
he decided to free the serfs | 33:30 | |
living on his manor. | 33:33 | |
He gave away the copyrights | 33:36 | |
to his books, | 33:40 | |
and began to dispose, piece by piece, | 33:43 | |
of the vast estate upon which his family lived. | 33:47 | |
His wife, Sonya, | 33:53 | |
seeing the very life of the family threatened, | 33:56 | |
struggled with him | 34:00 | |
and tried to inject a note of reality. | 34:03 | |
But Tolstoy was consumed | 34:07 | |
by the desire to be perfect | 34:10 | |
as Christ was perfect, | 34:13 | |
and as Christ had commanded Christians to be. | 34:15 | |
To do this, he devised ever new and longer and more complex | 34:19 | |
list of rules. | 34:24 | |
He gave up hunting, | 34:27 | |
smoking, drinking, | 34:29 | |
and eating meat. | 34:33 | |
He drafted a list of rules | 34:35 | |
for developing the emotional will. | 34:38 | |
Another list for developing lofty feelings, | 34:42 | |
and eliminating base ones. | 34:47 | |
But not surprisingly, | 34:50 | |
he was unable to achieve the perfection of life | 34:54 | |
that his rules drove him to strive for. | 34:59 | |
Perhaps most embarrassingly, | 35:03 | |
he several times took public vows | 35:07 | |
that he would live in a celibate marriage with his wife. | 35:10 | |
Her 16 pregnancies broadcast to the world | 35:16 | |
his failure to achieve this particular goal. | 35:20 | |
There is a link between Tolstoy and Thoreau, | 35:27 | |
for both were consumed by the idea of non violent resistance | 35:32 | |
to the evils of the world, | 35:37 | |
and the ideas of both influenced Mahatma Gandhi | 35:40 | |
and Martin Luther King Jr. | 35:45 | |
And yet, for all the nobility, | 35:49 | |
for all of the admirability of Tolstoy's quest | 35:52 | |
for Christian perfection, | 35:57 | |
I am caught up short when I read | 36:00 | |
a brief section of what his wife said about him | 36:02 | |
after decades of sharing his life. | 36:07 | |
Sonya wrote | 36:12 | |
there is so little genuine warmth about him. | 36:14 | |
His kindness does not come from the heart, | 36:21 | |
but from his principles. | 36:26 | |
His biographies will tell of how he helped the laborers | 36:30 | |
to carry buckets of water, | 36:35 | |
but no one will ever know | 36:39 | |
that he never gave his wife a rest. | 36:42 | |
And never, in all these 32 years, | 36:46 | |
gave a child a drink of water, | 36:51 | |
or spent five minutes by a child's sickbed | 36:54 | |
in order to give me a chance to rest a little | 36:58 | |
from all my labors. | 37:02 | |
Where does the holiness and the quest for perfection | 37:07 | |
and the keeping of rules bear fruit in our lives? | 37:12 | |
Up to the very moment of Tolstoy's death, | 37:19 | |
his journals and diaries and letters | 37:23 | |
continue with the theme of his frustrated failure | 37:27 | |
to be a perfect Christian. | 37:32 | |
In the end, he flees from his estate, | 37:34 | |
from his fame and from his family, | 37:37 | |
and sadly dies a vagrant in a rural railroad station. | 37:40 | |
A man who tried to do it without the foundation | 37:47 | |
of the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. | 37:53 | |
Commendable as is his effort, | 37:58 | |
he lacked apparently the one essential thing | 38:01 | |
to Christ-like living, | 38:05 | |
the one essential thing | 38:08 | |
of being rooted deeply in Christ. | 38:10 | |
The southern poet Sidney Lanier, | 38:20 | |
who is memorialized in a statue | 38:24 | |
on the entrance to this chapel, | 38:28 | |
wrote a lovely poem in which he celebrated | 38:33 | |
the inspiring spectacle | 38:37 | |
of the Marshes of Glynn, | 38:40 | |
the vast marshlands located near Brunswick, Georgia, | 38:44 | |
and cross today as one approaches | 38:49 | |
the beautiful coastal islands there. | 38:53 | |
Lanier understood | 38:58 | |
the necessity of being grounded in Christ, | 39:01 | |
living deeply out of that foundation. | 39:06 | |
One of his stanzas reads like this: | 39:12 | |
as the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod, | 39:17 | |
behold, I will build me a nest | 39:21 | |
on the greatness of God. | 39:24 | |
I will fly in the greatness of God | 39:27 | |
as the marsh hen flies | 39:30 | |
in the freedom that fills all the space | 39:33 | |
twixt the marsh and the skies. | 39:37 | |
By so many roots as the marsh grass | 39:41 | |
sends in the sod, | 39:45 | |
I will heartily lay me a hold on the greatness of God. | 39:47 | |
Oh, like the greatness of God | 39:54 | |
is the greatness within the range of the marshes, | 39:57 | |
the liberal Marshes of Glynn. | 40:00 | |
Life flourishes in the Marshes of Glynn | 40:04 | |
because the grass sends many roots into the ground. | 40:09 | |
Life, for Christians, flourishes | 40:15 | |
when it is similarly grounded | 40:19 | |
and rooted in Christ. | 40:21 | |
Living deep | 40:25 | |
is the gift | 40:27 | |
that God bestows upon us | 40:29 | |
when we surrender to Jesus Christ | 40:33 | |
and allow him to become the foundation | 40:38 | |
of our lives, amen. | 40:41 | |
(organ music) | 40:51 | |
(choir singing) | 41:42 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 44:36 |
Let us pray, you may be seated. | 44:39 | |
O God, in mystery and silence | 44:54 | |
you are present in our lives, | 44:58 | |
bringing meaning and hope. | 45:01 | |
Help us perceive your unseen hand | 45:04 | |
in the unfolding of our lives, | 45:07 | |
and attend to the gentle guidance of your spirit | 45:10 | |
that we may know the joy and fullness of life | 45:13 | |
you give your people. | 45:17 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 45:19 | |
We give thanks for your bountiful blessings, | 45:23 | |
for the beauty of creation, | 45:27 | |
and the intricate ways you have provided | 45:29 | |
for every human and non human creature. | 45:32 | |
For your boundless mercy and love, | 45:36 | |
which are given freely to us. | 45:38 | |
For the power to break the bonds of sin | 45:41 | |
which trap us, | 45:44 | |
for minds, hearts, bodies and souls | 45:46 | |
to love you, | 45:49 | |
and for voices to sing your praise, | 45:51 | |
we give you thanks. | 45:54 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 45:57 | |
Though we have so many reasons to be grateful, | 46:02 | |
we often get bogged down by the day to day concerns of life. | 46:05 | |
Free us from the anxieties that grip us | 46:11 | |
and sap our energies, | 46:14 | |
save us from shallow living | 46:17 | |
and seeking frantically after superficialities. | 46:20 | |
Give us a vision of the eternal | 46:24 | |
that we might rightly orient our lives | 46:27 | |
to what is essential. | 46:30 | |
Inspire us to greater heights and depths of living | 46:33 | |
as we find substance and meaning | 46:38 | |
in Christ our Lord. | 46:40 | |
Remind us that true life and freedom | 46:43 | |
are found in you. | 46:47 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 46:50 | |
As a people who belong to Christ, | 46:55 | |
you have encouraged us to pray for one another, | 46:57 | |
even as you pray with us. | 47:00 | |
Therefore, it is with confidence | 47:03 | |
that we offer our prayers for the world. | 47:04 | |
Let us pray for the church. | 47:08 | |
Lord, we pray for the church of Jesus Christ | 47:13 | |
around the world | 47:15 | |
as the scattered seed brings forth grain 100 fold, | 47:17 | |
may your church, which is scattered as seed on the wind, | 47:21 | |
also bring forth bounteous fruits | 47:24 | |
that all may know of your saving Lord through Jesus Christ. | 47:27 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 47:32 | |
Let us pray for the homeless, the hungry, | 47:37 | |
and victims of disaster. | 47:40 | |
God, you suffer with those who suffer. | 47:47 | |
We pray to you for those who are denied | 47:50 | |
what they need to live, | 47:52 | |
and those whose dreams have been shattered | 47:54 | |
by war and disaster. | 47:56 | |
Reach out and bring healing | 47:59 | |
through the hands of your faithful people. | 48:01 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 48:05 | |
Let us pray for the sick and the grieving. | 48:10 | |
Holy comforter, healing spirit, | 48:18 | |
grant your peace to those who are sick | 48:22 | |
and those who grieve, | 48:24 | |
and especially those listening | 48:26 | |
in Duke Hospital this morning. | 48:28 | |
Radiate through their lives | 48:31 | |
with the light of your presence, | 48:33 | |
that renewed health and strength may be theirs. | 48:35 | |
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. | 48:39 | |
Let us pray for ourselves. | 48:44 | |
God of hope and new life, | 48:52 | |
help us to see the joy and deep abundant life | 48:54 | |
you intend for us, | 48:58 | |
grant us your peace, | 49:00 | |
peace which is not the absence of trouble, | 49:02 | |
but the awareness of your guiding presence | 49:05 | |
that grounds us in you | 49:08 | |
and gives us the life that is true life. | 49:10 | |
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. | 49:14 | |
We have been blessed with resources | 49:20 | |
we are privileged to share, | 49:23 | |
let us give with joy. | 49:24 | |
(organ music) | 49:27 | |
(choir singing) | 52:23 | |
(organ music) | 57:33 | |
(choir singing) | 58:18 | |
- | Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise | 59:17 |
for all that you have done for us. | 59:20 | |
We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, | 59:23 | |
the beauty of this world, | 59:26 | |
for the wonder of life, | 59:28 | |
and mystery of love. | 59:29 | |
May these gifts that we offer in gratitude to you | 59:32 | |
bring light to those who walk in darkness, | 59:36 | |
and hope to those who live in despair. | 59:39 | |
Accomplish your purposes, we pray, | 59:42 | |
through these gifts and in our lives | 59:44 | |
that all the world may know of your great love | 59:47 | |
through Jesus Christ our Lord, | 59:50 | |
who taught us to pray together, | 59:52 | |
saying our Father who art in heaven, | 59:54 | |
hallowed be thy name, | 59:58 | |
thy kingdom come, | 1:00:01 | |
thy will be done | 1:00:03 | |
on Earth as it is in heaven. | 1:00:04 | |
Give us this day our daily bread, | 1:00:07 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 1:00:10 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 1:00:12 | |
Lead us not into temptation, | 1:00:16 | |
but deliver us from evil, | 1:00:19 | |
for thine is the kingdom and the power | 1:00:21 | |
and the glory forever, amen. | 1:00:25 | |
(organ music) | 1:00:29 | |
(choir singing) | 1:00:49 | |
- | Go forth in peace, | 1:03:35 |
may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, | 1:03:36 | |
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit | 1:03:39 | |
be with you and keep you, amen. | 1:03:42 | |
(organ music) | 1:03:47 |