Outdoor Worship - August 2021

The beginning of in-person worship!

Next outdoor service:  September 5th.

You're Invited

Jesus invites us to a meal. It is an extraordinary invitation to do an ordinary thing: form bonds of love and community through shared food and drink. Like Wisdom inviting us to the feast of insight (Prov. 9:1-6), Jesus’ invitation to share in the meal of his body and blood teaches us about the breadth and depth of God’s love and about God’s desire for us to abide in that love (John 6:56).

 

Jesus’ audience asks a reasonable question: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). Jesus’ answer doesn’t really address the question; instead, he reiterates that he is the true bread from heaven, the true source of eternal life. This must have been off-putting to his listeners. Eat flesh? Drink blood?

And yet, here we find a profoundly grace-filled invitation—abide in me—and a promise: through this meal I abide in you. We are invited to not only join Jesus at the table, but to be at home in the love of God, knowing that Christ makes his home in our hearts and lives too. So come: eat, and get to know God.

From Sundays and Seasons

From Rumbling Tummies to Living Bread

In the Old Testament we hear the stories of "manna from heaven" to feed the hungry Israelites.  In the New Testament we hear of Jesus feeding thousands from 5 fish and 2 loaves of bread. After filling the immediate need for food, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life."  This move us from rumbling tummies to a refocusing on the blessings poured out and the primary benefactor. We see the gifts of God, which come in a variety of ways: physical nourishment, roles and talents lifted up in community, new life given now and into the ages of ages.

 

We find that the gifts are responses to various actions—complaining, building for the future, longing for signs of promise and hope. Yet each of these actions and the gifts mean little if we are not able to see the one who is the giver and to recognize that the gifts are not merely about what we can do to get them or what signs are needed to prove them; rather, it is about trust in God, who is the source of life and living—the one who provides the true bread from heaven.

 

Our role in this story is to tell the history of God’s giving, similar to the psalmist. It is to open our eyes to the way the bread of heaven is sustaining us today, physically and spiritually. And as a community living in God’s promise, we look to the one God sends to us as the bread of life. In many early Hebrew and Greek writings, the stomach was a driving force and a place where hope and faith were lodged. The readings point us to see how a longing for food opens a greater dwelling place for the gifts of faith and promise. From our physical depths we are called to experience a greater spiritual reality.

- adapted from Sundays and Seasons

Bless your eyes

May God who comes to us in the things of this world, bless your eyes and be in your seeing. 
May Christ who looks upon you with deepest love, bless your eyes and widen your gaze. 
May the Spirit who perceives what is and what yet may be, bless your eyes and sharpen your vision. 
May the sacred three bless your eyes and cause you to always see.  AMEN

Fill me Lord

I offer myself to you, loving God.
May your will be my guide. 
May your love be the pattern of my life. 
May your way be my hope. 
May your path be my help. 
I surrender to you my hopes, my dreams, my goals, my ambitions. 
I place them all into your loving care: including my family, my friends, my life and my future,
my fears, my sorrows, my sense of loss, my pain and numbness, my sadness and all my hurt. 
Fill me, God, here and now with the sense of your presence and a sense of your empowering spirit. 
Renew my faith and rebirth my spirit so that I may live with hope and confidence this day and every day. 
In Jesus' name, Amen