The Sixth Sunday of Easter May 17, 2020
WELCOME/ANNOUNCEMENTS
• Covid Update: Phase 3 begins May 31. With this new phase there will still be a 10 person limitation in effect. You will receive an email this week with a plan approved by the Elders to distribute Holy Communion.
• The Rite of Holy Baptism for Finley Brooks Grant was performed and recorded yesterday at church with Finn’s parents: Nathan and Hannah Grant and his God parents, Matt & Gayle Woodall. We have inserted that recording in today’s service.
• We will be adding a prayer of thanksgiving today for Paul Klaus, brother of Kris Mc Manus who was in a serious car accident on May 8th causing a serious leg injury and a brain bleed. He was put into the ICU in Cape Girardeau, MO. Amazingly, Paul was released from the hospital 5 days after his accident with the expectation of regaining 100% use of his injured leg and the bleeding in is brain under control.
• Just one more thing. There was a clip we received too late last week to be included in our Mother’s Day video. So forgive us for adding just one more a week late. Let’s just say it came from a far! China?
INVOCATION
P: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
C: Amen.
OPENING SENTENCES
Psalm 66:8–12, 16-20
P: Bless our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise be heard,
C: who has kept our soul among the living
and has not let our feet slip.
P: For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
C: You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
P: you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
C: yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.
P: Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
C I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
P: If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
C: But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
P: Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer
C: or removed his steadfast love from me!
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
P: Eternal God,
C: in whom we live and move and have our being, whose face is hidden from us by our sins, and whose mercy we forget in the blindness of our hearts: cleanse us from all our offenses, and deliver us from proud thoughts and vain desires, that with reverent and humble hearts we may draw near to you, confessing our faults, confiding in your grace, and finding in you our refuge and strength; through Jesus Christ your Son.
P: The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. May the God of mercy, who forgives us all our sins, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life; in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
C: Amen.
SHARING THE PEACE
SONG OF PRAISE
“Sing His Love”
RITE OF HOLY BAPTISM
Finley Brooks Grant
Finley is the son of Nathan and Hannah Grant. His God-parents are Matt and Gayle Woodall. This rite was performed and recorded on Saturday morning at 11 am. We praise God for the work He has begun to do in Finn’s new life and for the love of his parents and family who have received with joy their responsibility to nurture this child of God according to the Lord’s command.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
P: Let us pray.
God our Father, You protect Your children from all that would harm our salvation. Give us the courage of faith and love toward You, that we have boldness to live for You and confess Your holy name before all; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
C: Amen.
FIRST READING
Acts 17:16–31
Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
L: This is the Word of the Lord.
C: Thanks be to God.
The EPISTLE
1 Peter 3:13–22
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
L: This is the Word of the Lord.
C: Thanks be to God.
HOLY GOSPEL
John 14:15–21 (The promise of the Holy Spirit)
P: The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the fourteenth chapter.
C: Glory to You, O Lord.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
P: This is the Gospel of the Lord.
C: Praise to You, O Christ.
HYMN
He Comes To Us As One Unknown
St. Olaf Choir (video)
He comes to us as one unknown
A breath unseen unheard
As though within a heart of stone
Or shriveled seed in darkness sown
A pulse of being stirred
He comes when souls in silence lie
And thoughts of day depart
Half-seen upon the inward eye
A falling star across the sky
Of night within the heart
He comes to us in sound of seas
The ocean’s fume and foam
Yet small and still upon the breeze
A wind that stirs the tops of trees
A voice to call us home
He comes in love as once He came
By flesh and blood and birth
To bear within our mortal frame
A life a death a saving name
For every child of earth
He comes in truth when faith is grown
Believed obeyed adored
The Christ in all the scriptures shown
As yet unseen but not unknown
Our Savior and our Lord
CCLI Song # 4507855 Charles Hubert Hastings Parry | Timothy Dudley-Smith
© 1973 Hope Publishing Company Music: Public Domain CCLI License # 691913
SERMON
“Is That All There Is?”
John 14:15-21
Pastor Vern
CONFESSION OF FAITH – THE APOSTLES’ CREED
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
OFFERING
PRAYER OF THE CHURCH
LORD’S PRAYER
(Matthew 6:9-13)
P: Remember us in Your kingdom, Lord, and teach us to pray:
All: 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
forever and ever. Amen.
BLESSING OF THE LORD
Numbers 6:24–26
P The LORD bless you and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine on you and be gracious to you.
The LORD look upon you with favor and + give you peace.
C: Amen.
SENDING
P: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
C: Thanks be to God!
CLOSING SONG
“Ain’t No Grave”
David Crowder