Music as the Community Gathers – Sam Hirst
Words of Welcome & Announcements
Lighting of the Candles
Invitation to Worship
We gather here this morning to encounter the Living God – Holy Mystery who is Wholly Love.
We gather to encounter One known to us as Kind Creator, Compassionate Friend, Ever-Present Spirit.
We gather to have our hope renewed that when our Worship Service draws to a close, we might go out empowered and enabled by the Spirit, to love the world in Jesus’ name.
Let us worship God!
Opening Prayer (Author – Ruth Duck 1992)
Gracious and Loving God, like a baker-woman, you bring the leaven which causes our hopes to rise. With your strong and gentle hands, shape our lives. Warm us with your love. Take our common lives and touch them with your grace, that we may nourish hope among humanity. We pray, trusting in your name, through Jesus our Christ. Amen.
Opening Hymn VU#374 “Come & Find the Quite Centre”
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Come and find the quiet centre in the crowded life we lead, find the room for hope to enter, find the frame where we are freed: clear the chaos and the clutter, clear our eyes, that we can see all the things that really matter, be at peace, and simply be.
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Silence is a friend who claims us, cools the heat and slows the pace, God it is who speaks and names us, knows our being, face to face, making space within our thinking, lifting shades to show the sun, raising courage when we’re shrinking, finding scope for faith begun.
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In the Spirit let us travel, open to each other’s pain, let our loves and fears unravel, celebrate the space we gain: there’s a place for deepest dreaming, there’s a time for heart to care, in the Spirit’s lively scheming there is always room to spare!
Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 34.1-12 (Paraphrase)
Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to a very high mountain, opposite the city of Jericho. He was shown the whole of the Promised Land – the land that the Holy One had promised to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, and Jacob, Leah and Rachael. Moses heard the Word that reminded him that this land was to be a gift to the children of the patriarchs and matriarchs.
Holy Mystery who is Wholly Love proclaimed to Moses that although he had seen all this in a vision of hope – he would not be going over there.
Then Moses, the one called to bring the people out of slavery in Egypt, the one who had led the people through the sea and the wilderness and to the holy mountain, the one who brought them to the border of the Promised Land, died there in the land of Moab, at the will of the Holy One.
Moses was buried there in a valley in the land of Moab – and no one knows the place to this day.
Moses was well beyond 100 years when he died – and was still in very vigorous good health.
The people grieved over his death for a month – then the period of mourning ended.
Joshua, son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom because Moses had chosen and ordained him to leadership – the Israelites obeyed Joshua as Moses had commanded them.
The people remembered Moses and honoured him as a prophet whom the Holy One knew face to face.
“Our Vision, Our Hope”
“Hope is a thing with feathers, that perches in the soul; and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; and sore must be the storm, that could abash the little bird, that kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land, and on the strangest sea; yet never in extremity, it asked a crumb of me.”
(Emily Dickinson 1891)
“Hope spring eternal in the human breast. Never man Is, but always to be blessed. The soul, uneasy, and confin’d from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
(Alexander Pope 1734)
Do you subscribe to McLean’s Magazine? Or, perhaps you are like me, and pick it up occasionally while standing, at a safe social distance, in the line-up at Metro or Sobey’s? There was a time when it was a weekly news magazine. Now it is published monthly. The October issue is worth getting just for the cover story. The cover is a picture of the word “Hope” written in sidewalk chalk. (You may know that sidewalk chalk is washed away on the next rainy day.) Clearly, the implication is that Hope, in our present context is a very fragile commodity.
Perhaps that has always been the case? Hope, as delicate as “a thing with feathers” perched in the soul. Whether or not Hope has always been fragile – it certainly is so today.
In the midst of a planetary climate emergency and a world-wide pandemic, many are despairing.
In reading the story of Moses’ last day – journeying to the mountaintop in Moab – and being shown the promised land spread out before him – I was reminded of the last sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, on April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee – the night before an assassin’s bullet ended his life.
King preached on this same passage from The Book of Deuteronomy 34.1-12. He delivered
to his audience that evening a message of hope. He proclaimed that he had been to the mountain top and he had seen the promised land. In the face of police dogs and water cannons, in the face of the powers of the state aligned against his cause – in the face of a century of lynchings and marches by the Ku Klux Klan – in the face of personal death threats – in the face of all of this, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed a message of hope.
His message was not “pie in the sky”. He didn’t tell folk to put up with the injustice that kept schools segregated and kept privilege and opportunity for those with white skin. He didn’t urge people to accept their terrible conditions of poverty and racial hatred – so that they could be rewarded in the life to come. None of that.
Martin Luther King Junior’s prophetic message was given to encourage his people to keep on with the fight for racial and social justice. His final words that night:
“I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. . .but it really doesn’t matter to me now because I have been to the mountain top and I have seen the promised land. . .I may not get there with you, but I know that we as a people will get to that promised land. . . So, tonight I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Near the end of that sermon, King stated that he was only concerned to do the will of God.
For us in our circumstances in this year of climate emergency – in this year when forests are burning – in this year when the precious farmland of our County is disappearing – in this year when a million species are at risk of extinction – in this year of global pandemic – God’s call to us is a call to a vision of hope. God’s call to us is a call to a vocation of hope.
In a world where many are despairing – we are called to sustain hope.
Like Moses and like Martin Luther King Jr. – we are taken to the mountain top. We can look over into a future where our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to breath clean air, and drink fresh water – where the temperature of the planet will be kept to less than a two-degree increase – where the habitat of all creatures will be protected – where there will be affordable housing – where there will be land upon which to grow nutritious food – where the most vulnerable of our sisters and brothers in the global south will not be drowned as sea-levels are stabilized.
We dare not despair.
We are called to see a new heaven and a new earth. We are called to a vision of restoration and renewal – a vision of the redemption of the whole creation. This is God’s work.
Our Creed proclaims that God is at work in us and others by the Spirit.
We know that our world is broken. We see and read and hear evidence of that brokenness all around us. But I conclude this morning with the words of our Song of Faith:
“Yet evil does not – cannot – undermine or overcome the love of God. God forgives, and calls all of us to confess our fears and failing with honesty and humility. God reconciles, and calls us to repent the part we have played in damaging our world, ourselves and each other. God transforms, and calls us to protect the vulnerable, to pray for deliverance from evil, to work with God for the healing of the world, that all might have abundant life.
We sing of grace.”
God knows the world needs our vision of hope. God calls us to a vocation of hopeful action. God’s call to us is a call to daily action that will make a hope filled future possible.
For the sake of all our children and grandchildren; for the sake of all creatures great and small; for the sake of all our relations:
A vision of hope – a vocation of hope – Let’s get on with it!
Amen.
Acknowledgement of Gifts, Tithes & Offerings
Prayer of Gratitude & Concern
The Lord’s Prayer
Parting Hymn VU#424 “May the God of Hope Go with Us”
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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.
Refrain: 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.
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May the God of healing free the earth from fear, freeing us for peace, both treasured and pursued. May the God of love keep our commitment clear to a world restored, to human life renewed.
Refrain: 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.
Commissioning
The Prophet Jeremiah wrote:
“For I know the plans I have for you declares the Holy One, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
The author of the Letter to the Ephesians wrote:
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which God has called you.”
And St. Paul wrote to the Church at Rome:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in God, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Blessing
May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Extinguishing the Candles
Music as We Move Into the World – Sam Hirst
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