Yo! Still Speaking God, forgive how much we talk. It may be we fear the silence because you might speak what we do not want to hear. Forgive us when we use a lot of words because we do not know what to say or because we have do not have anything to say. Teach us how to pray.
Sometimes life seems difficult. Parents become sick and old, our kids do not always do as we would, cancer strikes, employment falters, and we just plain loose sight about why we pray. By habit we pray for healing and wholeness, stability and security, hope and faith. We pray, but we kinda assume that there will be no answer or the answer will be no. Generally we don’t hold that against you – but sometimes – sometimes we wonder if prayer matters, if you are there, if we are anything to you.
So remind us that sometimes the answer is yes and the cancer goes away or was never there – that chaos settles into order – that fears are unfounded and everything will be all right. Remind us that when we doubt, question, and need the extra effort that you will say yes – you will show your wounds and let us touch your pain.
Ah Lord.
Lord, how tenderly you are with us when we find our own way of praying the ancient prayer, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Grant that when you answer our plea that, with Thomas, we will proclaim you are our Lord and God. With Thomas, may we proclaim your gospel Good News of love unending. We praise you, because in the silence of our doubt we sense your pain and we fear it was our pain.
Lord, the tomb is an odd place for us to find you: your hope, comfort, love, joy. It is a mysterious meeting place. As a portal between life and death, perhaps it is a perfect door for us to use to exit one life and enter a new life. But we will need you to go through. At any tomb we have traveled a sorrowful road and encountering death. We have trouble trusting we will find life and joy on that road. You bid us to go, but we expect only endings. Surprise us by showing that joy and sorrow, life and death are all bound up together: that for everything there is a season. Maybe this is Easter. Knowing that life knows death, but will not fear it. Maybe it is Easter knowing that joy holds hands with sorrow.
We hear this message and there is still fear in us. Lord, is this Easter too? Life triumphs, love conquers fear?
We are yours. We will allow mystery to be a part of it all as well. But for the hearts that mourn, sorrow, despair, are lonely and exhausted – let them find Easter. Grant they see Jesus risen and loving them. Grant the empty space in their life is filled with you. Help us to move into Easter.
Amen
You, O Lord, give us birds singing in the morning and the slow rising sun seen through icicles. There is a festival of blues in the sky and on the snow as the earth rotates to face the sun. It is all a wonder that makes it clear that the artist loves beauty. We praise your name, O beautiful God.
When next we wake and find a dank drizzle falling through dark cold morning, we will not cease our praise of you. We will find wonder in the small drops of water that descend and find comfort in the embrace of a hiding darkness. We will look out for a sun rising in someone’s soul or for a song of the dawn in our hearts. You name we will still praise for the earth is filled with your glory.
After the day progresses and bird songs give way to car sounds, after the snow is no longer a blank canvas for color but a danger to hip and pride – We will still sing your praise. Your gift and giving create constant changes, ever new opportunities to see creativity living and evolving. All praise to your Holy Name.
We look forward to praising your name for bringing the beauty of healing and wholeness to those that grieve, heal, recuperate or prepare for procedures.
Surely all the earth is filled with you glory. For the beautiful sights, we give our thanks. Create on O Lord. Let your works of beauty speak of your spirit when all mouths are opened in awe.
We make mistakes Lord. We are wrong and in the wrong. We are sorry for such times. But remember, O Lord, when we are not wrong – when we speak for justice, do the best thing, speak truth instead of the easy lie. Remember, and do not hold our errors and sin against us.
And Lord, when we are not in the right, remind us of your steadfast loving kindness, your desire to forgive and redeem. Remind us, because it is hard to admit such things – we want to be strong and righteous. This desire gets in the way of being honest. Help us to practice admitting our errors by speaking to you about them. You are patient – more patient and forgiving than we are with ourselves. You hold us in your warm embrace and make it all right – make us all right.
We do not like to admit we are wrong or in the wrong to strangers, friends, family. We defend, deflect, deny, and denigrate those in opposition. We act as if we can always be right, even though we know this is an act. It is so hard for us to say: “we are sorry”, “I was wrong”, or “I apologize”. Our need to be right and strong creates hurt in our relationships. And then we do not know how to heal that hurt.
Lord, make it as easy as possible to confess to you – trusting in your love and forgiveness. Let our confession remove our guilt; make us right enough that we can admit our wrong to those around us. Ease our fear of being honest and so heal our relationships.
When listening to the sermon it might help to know that it was Scout Sunday and we had our troop of Boy Scouts in worship. Our minister would like you to believe that they were a bad influence on him. Those who were there know full well Mark egged them on to make faces for the camera.
John 4:1-30, 39-42 In Three Voices
Reader 1: Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”
Reader 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—
Reader 1: he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through
Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
Reader 1: A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her,
Reader 3: “Give me a drink.”
Reader 2 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
Reader 1: The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Reader 2 (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Reader 3: Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
Reader 1: “Sir, …you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Reader 3: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Reader 1: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Reader 3: “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
Reader 1: “I have no husband.”
Reader 3: “You are right in saying, “I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”
Reader 1: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. …Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but Jews say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Reader 3: “Woman,
Reader 2 You might remember that Jesus called his mother this at the wedding in Cana.
Reader 3: Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Reader 1: “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Reader 3: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Reader 2 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,
Reader 1: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
Reader 2 They left the city and were on their way to him. Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony,
Reader 1: “He told me everything I have ever done.”
Reader 2: So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.
Reader 3: And many more believed because of his word.
Reader 2 The other Samaritans said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
ometimes life seems difficult. Parents become sick and old, our kids do not always do as we would, cancer strikes, employment falters, and we just plain loose sight about why we pray. By habit we pray for healing and wholeness, stability and security, hope and faith. We pray, but we kinda assume that there will be no answer or the answer will be no. Generally we don’t hold that against you – but sometimes – sometimes we wonder if prayer matters, if you are there, if we are anything to you.
