William H. Willimon - "Only Human?" (July 24, 1988)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| (organ music) | 0:00 | |
| - | Grace and peace to you from God our Father | 2:58 |
| and the Lord Jesus Christ. | 3:01 | |
| Welcome to this service of worship on this, | 3:04 | |
| the ninth Sunday after Pentecost. | 3:06 | |
| Let me call your attention to several announcements | 3:09 | |
| that are contained in today's bulletin. | 3:12 | |
| Among these is the notation that following today's service, | 3:14 | |
| there will be an ecumenical service of the Lord's Supper | 3:18 | |
| in Memorial Chapel, directly to my right. | 3:22 | |
| Also following today's service, there will be a reception | 3:25 | |
| over in the Flowers Building, during which time, | 3:28 | |
| a chamber duet from the Mallarme Chamber Players | 3:32 | |
| will perform live music. | 3:35 | |
| Today's preacher is the minister to Duke University, | 3:39 | |
| the Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon, | 3:41 | |
| recently returned from a European tour, | 3:45 | |
| where he both taught and preached | 3:48 | |
| in East and West German communities. | 3:50 | |
| We give thanks for his ministering in this place, | 3:54 | |
| and look forward to the Word | 3:57 | |
| that he brings to us this morning. | 3:58 | |
| Let us now continue in our worship of almighty God. | 4:01 | |
| (choral music) | 4:11 | |
| (organ music) | 6:14 | |
| (congregation singing) | 6:46 | |
| Let us pray. | 10:19 | |
| Oh God, who has prepared for those who love You | 10:22 | |
| such good things as past human understanding. | 10:25 | |
| Pour into our hearts this morning | 10:29 | |
| such love toward You, | 10:31 | |
| that we loving You above all things | 10:33 | |
| may obtain Your promises, | 10:36 | |
| which exceed all that we can desire. | 10:38 | |
| To Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 10:42 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 10:58 |
| Open our hearts and minds, oh God. | 11:02 | |
| By the power of Your Holy Spirit, | 11:06 | |
| so that as the Word is read and proclaimed, | 11:09 | |
| we might hear with joy what You say to us this day, amen. | 11:13 | |
| The first lesson this morning is taken from Genesis. | 11:22 | |
| Then God said, let us make humanity in our image, | 11:33 | |
| after our likeness. | 11:38 | |
| And let it have dominion over the fish of the sea, | 11:41 | |
| and over the birds of the air, | 11:45 | |
| and over the cattle, and over all the earth, | 11:48 | |
| and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. | 11:52 | |
| So God created human beings in His own image. | 11:57 | |
| In the image of God, He created them. | 12:02 | |
| Male and female, He created them. | 12:05 | |
| God blessed them and said to them, | 12:10 | |
| be fruitful and multiply, | 12:13 | |
| and feel the earth, and subdue it, | 12:15 | |
| and have dominion over the fish of the sea, | 12:18 | |
| and over the birds of the air, | 12:21 | |
| and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. | 12:22 | |
| Please stand and join me in this altar, | 12:33 | |
| found in your handle number 555. | 12:36 | |
| O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name | 12:46 | |
| in all the earth. | 12:50 | |
| Congregation | Thou, His glory above the Heavens | 12:52 |
| has chanted by the mouth of the babies and infants. | 12:54 | |
| Margaret | Thou has founded a bulwark because of Thy foes. | 12:59 |
| Congregation | To still the enemy and the offender. | 13:03 |
| Margaret | When I look at Thy Heavens, | 13:06 |
| the work of Thy fingers. | 13:08 | |
| Congregation | The moon and the stars, | 13:10 |
| which Thou has established. | 13:12 | |
| - | What is man that Thou art mindful of him? | 13:15 |
| Congregation | And the son of man | 13:18 |
| that Thou does care for him. | 13:20 | |
| - | Yet, Thou has made him little less than God. | 13:22 |
| Congregation | And thus the glory and honor. | 13:27 |
| - | Thou has given him dominion over the works of Thy hands. | 13:31 |
| Congregation | Thou has put all things under his feet. | 13:36 |
| - | All his sheep and oxen. | 13:39 |
| Congregation | And also beasts of the field. | 13:42 |
| - | The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea. | 13:45 |
| Congregation | Whatever passes along the paths of the sea. | 13:48 |
| - | O Lord, our Lord. | 13:52 |
| Congregation | How majestic is Thy name in all the earth. | 13:55 |
| (organ music) | 13:59 | |
| (congregation singing) | 14:07 | |
| (choral music) | 15:28 | |
| - | The epistle lesson for this Sunday | 19:28 |
| from the eighth chapter, Paul's Letter to the Romans. | 19:33 | |
| The creation waits with eager longing | 19:39 | |
| for the revealing of the sons of God. | 19:43 | |
| For the creation was objected to futility, | 19:46 | |
| not of its own will but by the will of Him, | 19:51 | |
| who subjected it in hope. | 19:54 | |
| Because the creation itself will be set free | 19:58 | |
| from its bondage to decay, | 20:00 | |
| and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. | 20:02 | |
| We know that the whole creation | 20:07 | |
| has been groaning in travail until now. | 20:09 | |
| And not only the creation but we, ourselves, | 20:13 | |
| who have the first fruits of the spirit, | 20:18 | |
| grown inwardly, as we await for adoption, | 20:21 | |
| as sons and the redemption of our bodies. | 20:25 | |
| We gather this day, this sunny summer Sunday | 20:32 | |
| in July to worship. | 20:37 | |
| Which means that more than likely, | 20:42 | |
| many of you are here as tourists, | 20:43 | |
| you're here on vacation. | 20:46 | |
| And we're glad to have you in the chapel. | 20:49 | |
| You should be glad that this place | 20:51 | |
| was air-conditioned a few years ago. | 20:53 | |
| The glorious summer. | 20:56 | |
| For those of us here around the university, | 20:59 | |
| summer is a time for a respite | 21:01 | |
| from the hectic activity of life on a university campus. | 21:03 | |
| The students are away, and so that means | 21:08 | |
| it's time to read or to write that book | 21:10 | |
| that one has been putting off. | 21:13 | |
| It's a time also for family, for our family. | 21:14 | |
| Summers invariably mean trips to the beach. | 21:20 | |
| It's glorious, lying on some stretch of North Carolina beach | 21:25 | |
| when the sun is arched high in the Heavens, | 21:30 | |
| and the temperature rises. | 21:33 | |
| Lying there, doing nothing of any socially | 21:35 | |
| redeeming value other than lying there, | 21:39 | |
| and glass of ice tea not too far away, | 21:42 | |
| accompanied by the cry of gulls, | 21:46 | |
| and the lapping of waves. | 21:48 | |
| But in North Carolina, one can also be in the mountains, | 21:52 | |
| and that's good too. | 21:55 | |
| Cool mountain evenings, | 21:58 | |
| and the chorus of crickets and frogs out on the lake. | 22:01 | |
| That is good also. | 22:06 | |
| Yet, of course, it's one thing that we modern | 22:12 | |
| air-conditioned people sometimes overlook | 22:17 | |
| in these vacation time, summer time assessments | 22:21 | |
| of the goodness of nature. | 22:24 | |
| One thing we often overlook is that | 22:27 | |
| beyond our screened-in porch, | 22:30 | |
| out beyond the neatly manicured front lawn, | 22:31 | |
| out in the woods, the little creatures | 22:37 | |
| are eating one another. | 22:40 | |
| That is nature too, you know. | 22:43 | |
| For on a cool North Carolina evening, | 22:48 | |
| with the beauty of nature around you, | 22:52 | |
| it's as if you do hear a voice, if you listen, | 22:54 | |
| pronounce over all this creation, | 22:59 | |
| the word good, very good. | 23:03 | |
| Just as it pronounced on that first evening of creation. | 23:06 | |
| But there is another voice at work, | 23:11 | |
| which also says that nature is a realm of a tooth, claw | 23:15 | |
| and nail fight for survival | 23:20 | |
| because just beneath the placid surface | 23:22 | |
| of that mountain lake, the big fishes are eating | 23:25 | |
| the smaller fishes, who are eating the smaller fishes, | 23:29 | |
| who are eating yet smaller fishes, | 23:32 | |
| who're eating protozoa, who're eating whatever protozoa eat. | 23:34 | |
| That is nature also. | 23:39 | |
| We human beings are but on the uppermost | 23:43 | |
| rung of a great ladder of survival, | 23:47 | |
| omnivores at the top of a food chain, | 23:51 | |
| where one organism lives only | 23:55 | |
| through the death of another. | 23:58 | |
| Something, plant or animal, suffered | 24:01 | |
| for you to have breakfast this morning. | 24:06 | |
| To say nothing of what you're planning on having for lunch. | 24:08 | |
| I think of this on many mornings | 24:13 | |
| when I drive to work up a portion of Highway 15-501. | 24:15 | |
| There, I often follow great truckloads of chickens. | 24:21 | |
| These chickens stacked in crates on top of trucks. | 24:27 | |
| Feathers flying in the wind as I follow them. | 24:31 | |
| These truckloads of chickens | 24:34 | |
| traveling to some dark, unknown destination. | 24:37 | |
| I do not know where they have come from, | 24:43 | |
| these truckloads of chickens. | 24:45 | |
| I'm not sure of where they're going | 24:47 | |
| but I know it is not on a vacation. | 24:48 | |
| Eventually, I suspect parts of their bodies | 24:54 | |
| will be sold by Diner Shore | 24:57 | |
| during halftimes of ACC Football games, these chickens. | 25:00 | |
| Some mornings, as I drive up, | 25:07 | |
| they seem to cry out to me from their crates, | 25:08 | |
| and I wonder, if I as a sensitive person, | 25:11 | |
| should do something for them. | 25:13 | |
| But then I usually forget about that | 25:20 | |
| by the time I'm having lunch with the Colonel | 25:22 | |
| because you see I'm not only a Methodist, | 25:25 | |
| I am a carnivore. | 25:27 | |
| This world, which at once appears so lovely | 25:31 | |
| from a screened-in porch, | 25:34 | |
| this creation of God in which you and I revel | 25:39 | |
| on July vacations, | 25:42 | |
| is also a realm of life and death, | 25:46 | |
| where everything is eaten or being eaten. | 25:49 | |
| So it's interesting when Saint Paul spoke of creation, | 25:54 | |
| he spoke not from the viewpoint | 25:59 | |
| of the porch of his mountain cottage, | 26:01 | |
| about how lovely it was but he spoke of how creation groans. | 26:02 | |
| "The whole creation has been groaning," Paul says. | 26:08 | |
| And not only the creation but we | 26:13 | |
| ourselves groan inwardly. | 26:15 | |
| The creation was subjected to futility, | 26:18 | |
| groaning, futility. | 26:22 | |
| Those chickens going up 15-501. | 26:25 | |
| Me, you, Paul says, "That's the world too." | 26:27 | |
| The philosophers place us on a great chain of being. | 26:35 | |
| But maybe the biologists know better, | 26:38 | |
| when they speak of us as being on a great chain of food. | 26:42 | |
| Biologist Stephen J. Gould, speaking this year | 26:48 | |
| to graduates at Yale, said that there is nothing | 26:51 | |
| to be learned from what nature is and does | 26:56 | |
| other than what we can create ourselves. | 27:01 | |
| Those chickens, headed up the highway | 27:06 | |
| to their destiny, die so that I might live. | 27:09 | |
| Some creature is always giving up its life for another. | 27:13 | |
| Perhaps some morning, I shall at least flag the truck down, | 27:19 | |
| and thank them for their sacrifice. | 27:21 | |
| I wonder if on an earlier day, | 27:26 | |
| when my great-grandmother prepared Sunday dinner | 27:28 | |
| by going out in the barnyard, | 27:30 | |
| grabbing some chicken, wringing its neck, | 27:32 | |
| plucking it, serving it up on the table. | 27:34 | |
| I wonder if there was not a greater sense | 27:37 | |
| of the interconnectedness of life. | 27:41 | |
| Perhaps a greater sense of how dependent we are | 27:44 | |
| upon one another as creatures. | 27:48 | |
| Perhaps even a sense of regret | 27:52 | |
| that so many creatures have to die | 27:55 | |
| so that we can live. | 27:58 | |
| But now all of this, of course, we know. | 28:04 | |
| But here is a biblical word that you may not know. | 28:10 | |
| It's found in the Scripture today. | 28:16 | |
| That word is this: | 28:19 | |
| That God sent this whole teeming creation in motion | 28:22 | |
| for one reason above all others. | 28:27 | |
| To make human life possible. | 28:32 | |
| Did you hear that word in the Scripture today? | 28:37 | |
| Over time, over what we now know | 28:40 | |
| must have been billions of years, | 28:44 | |
| little by little, God coaxed from this teeming | 28:47 | |
| buzzing mass of creation, | 28:50 | |
| creatures so like God's own self | 28:54 | |
| that it was said that this human creature | 28:59 | |
| was in the very image of God. | 29:01 | |
| This creature, this Adam, male and female, | 29:06 | |
| is the crowning glory of God's whole creation. | 29:11 | |
| Unfortunately, that is something you cannot learn | 29:16 | |
| from a biologist. | 29:18 | |
| Or you cannot learn by merely observing nature, | 29:20 | |
| tooth, claw and nail from your front porch. | 29:24 | |
| Human life as the pinnacle of God's handiwork. | 29:28 | |
| See, I'm talking about you. | 29:33 | |
| Talking about you, Joan of Ark, | 29:34 | |
| or Napoleon, Attila the Hun, | 29:36 | |
| George and Martha Washington, Aunt Tilly. | 29:38 | |
| You, human beings are in the very image of God. | 29:40 | |
| Scripture like Genesis claims that the whole creation, | 29:46 | |
| the crickets, the gulls, the frogs, | 29:51 | |
| the chickens on 15-501, that they all live for us. | 29:54 | |
| We alone enjoy this direct relationship with God. | 30:01 | |
| Now, I supposed even as I hear myself say that, | 30:07 | |
| that sounds incredibly presumptuous, or even arrogant. | 30:09 | |
| But I think that is the strong word of Scripture. | 30:16 | |
| As the ancient Hebrew, | 30:22 | |
| who I think on some starlit night in July, | 30:24 | |
| gazed up into the Heavens, | 30:28 | |
| and spoke those words of Psalm 8 | 30:30 | |
| that we read responsively. | 30:35 | |
| O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name | 30:37 | |
| in all the earth. | 30:41 | |
| Thou, whose glory above the Heavens | 30:43 | |
| is chanted by the mouths of babes and infants. | 30:45 | |
| When I look at the Heavens, | 30:49 | |
| the work of Thy fingers, the moon, the stars, | 30:51 | |
| which Thou has established, | 30:56 | |
| I think what is humanity | 30:58 | |
| that Thou should think of us. | 31:01 | |
| Yet Thou has crowned us with glory and honor. | 31:06 | |
| Thou has given us dominion over the works of Thy hands, | 31:12 | |
| and Thou has put everything under our feet. | 31:16 | |
| All sheep and oxen, and beasts of the field, | 31:20 | |
| birds of the air, fish of the sea, | 31:23 | |
| whatever passes along the paths of the sea. | 31:25 | |
| O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name | 31:28 | |
| in all the earth. | 31:32 | |
| Little less than God. | 31:36 | |
| Oh sure, if you compare us to the great vast universe, | 31:40 | |
| we are just one little spec of cosmic matter. | 31:46 | |
| But it is the word of the Bible | 31:51 | |
| that we've got no equal in all creation. | 31:53 | |
| Of all the creatures Genesis says, | 31:57 | |
| we are the only ones invited to talk, | 31:59 | |
| and to walk with God. | 32:02 | |
| God has given us dominion over the earth, | 32:05 | |
| and told us to cultivate it, | 32:08 | |
| and to subdue it. | 32:10 | |
| God told us to be fruitful and multiply. | 32:11 | |
| One of the nicest of God's commands, | 32:14 | |
| of all the creatures, listen to Genesis. | 32:18 | |
| So God created man in His image, | 32:23 | |
| male and female, created them, | 32:25 | |
| and God blessed them, | 32:27 | |
| and God said to them, be fruitful, multiply, | 32:28 | |
| fill the earth, subdue it, | 32:31 | |
| have dominion over the fish of the sea, | 32:33 | |
| the birds of the air, | 32:34 | |
| and over every living thing that moves over the earth. | 32:35 | |
| You're in charge. | 32:38 | |
| No creature is so like God. | 32:42 | |
| Now, while we don't really know what being created | 32:45 | |
| in the image of God precisely means. | 32:50 | |
| It's fair to assume it has something to do | 32:55 | |
| with being with having dominion, | 32:57 | |
| with being partners with God, | 33:02 | |
| and caring for this good garden that God has planted. | 33:05 | |
| Genesis says that God | 33:11 | |
| chose not to rule the world directly. | 33:15 | |
| But rather that God shows not to oversee | 33:18 | |
| every little minute detail like some insecure boss, | 33:22 | |
| you know, that can never leave the office or take a vacation | 33:26 | |
| 'cause he doesn't trust anybody in the office | 33:28 | |
| to do the work like he does it. | 33:30 | |
| No, God gave us dominion, us. | 33:31 | |
| Which of course implies that we do need | 33:39 | |
| to be faithful stewards, not wasting any of God's garden, | 33:41 | |
| caring for all God's creatures. | 33:48 | |
| Since Genesis said God spent so much time and effort | 33:51 | |
| creating every single one of them. | 33:54 | |
| Far from destroying God's garden with our waste | 33:57 | |
| and our pollution, a good steward is always | 34:01 | |
| looking for ways to enhance life, | 34:04 | |
| to increase what God gives. | 34:07 | |
| Realizing that God made it all for us with loving care. | 34:13 | |
| Believing that God has entrusted to us | 34:19 | |
| the maintenance of a beautifully varied, | 34:22 | |
| wonderfully rich creation. | 34:25 | |
| Then it does make a difference, | 34:30 | |
| what happens to the whooping crane. | 34:33 | |
| Or the snail darter or any other human being. | 34:35 | |
| Because someday we believe we shall have to render | 34:41 | |
| account to God for how we've cared for the garden. | 34:43 | |
| Our stewardship is going to be judged | 34:48 | |
| on the basis of the one, who once bragged to Job, | 34:52 | |
| Job 40, "Oh Job, would you look at that hippopotamus | 34:55 | |
| "that I created. | 34:59 | |
| "Have you ever seen anything like that giraffe I've built? | 35:00 | |
| "What do you think of my donkey?" | 35:03 | |
| Life can only be taken by human beings, | 35:07 | |
| no matter how simple or primitive an organism is, | 35:12 | |
| with great gratitude to God | 35:18 | |
| for giving us such life with reverence | 35:22 | |
| for the preciousness of every single one of God's creatures, | 35:26 | |
| no matter how small to this loving Creator. | 35:31 | |
| So I supposed we should say thank you, | 35:37 | |
| chirping crickets and soaring gulls, | 35:40 | |
| and croaking frogs, and chickens headed up 15-501, | 35:42 | |
| thank you for making human life possible. | 35:46 | |
| Not only through the evolution of the species | 35:51 | |
| but also through your contributions to the sustenance | 35:54 | |
| and the sheer diversity of life in this world. | 35:58 | |
| Scripture reminds us that we wouldn't be here without you. | 36:02 | |
| None of us would be here without, | 36:08 | |
| were it not that each of us, | 36:11 | |
| frogs, crickets, mosquitoes, gnats, hippopotami, | 36:15 | |
| wildebeest, bald eagles, every single human being, | 36:19 | |
| very important to God, the master Creator. | 36:22 | |
| Which talk may make you want to get out of the chapel, | 36:29 | |
| and get on with the business of doing | 36:32 | |
| what you were doing in July. | 36:34 | |
| Following a white ball down some carpet of green | 36:38 | |
| or bobbing in an inner tube down some cool mountain stream | 36:40 | |
| or just sitting on your veranda, doing nothing. | 36:44 | |
| And that's fine. | 36:48 | |
| But before you go, one more word | 36:51 | |
| that you might not have heard | 36:54 | |
| if you hadn't come to church this morning. | 36:57 | |
| You, as human animal are the very pinnacle | 37:02 | |
| of God's creativity. | 37:07 | |
| Of all creatures, you're the only one, | 37:10 | |
| who in the words of the psalmist | 37:13 | |
| is created little less than God. | 37:15 | |
| God has put you in charge. | 37:19 | |
| You may not have figured that out | 37:23 | |
| just sitting on your veranda. | 37:25 | |
| So rejoice, thank God you are human. | 37:28 | |
| You're human. | 37:33 | |
| Isn't it interesting how we use that phrase sometimes. | 37:35 | |
| Isn't it interesting how whenever somebody is caught | 37:41 | |
| in some act of violence or some moral failure, | 37:44 | |
| particularly some sexual indiscretion, | 37:48 | |
| isn't it interesting that someone invariably says, | 37:51 | |
| "Well it goes to show we're only human." | 37:53 | |
| We've had the opportunity to use that expression | 37:58 | |
| a good deal this year in describing | 38:00 | |
| the behavior of preachers. | 38:01 | |
| Well, it goes to show, you know, clergy only human. | 38:03 | |
| It's meant to describe humanity at our bumbling, | 38:11 | |
| immoral, incompetent worst. | 38:14 | |
| I tell you, it's just that attitude | 38:18 | |
| that today's Scripture is meant to combat. | 38:21 | |
| We are human! | 38:25 | |
| God has put us in charge. | 38:29 | |
| We are nothing less than co-creators | 38:31 | |
| and co-workers with God. | 38:33 | |
| God has been fruitful and multiplied, | 38:35 | |
| and told us to do the same. | 38:37 | |
| God's garden is ours. | 38:40 | |
| The whole wonderful creation exists for our livelihood | 38:42 | |
| and enjoyment and cultivation, and delight. | 38:46 | |
| We are human! | 38:50 | |
| I think here is a great antidote | 38:55 | |
| against the despair, the hopelessness, | 38:59 | |
| and the self-hatred that so many people | 39:04 | |
| in our world feel today, | 39:06 | |
| the biblical proclamation that God has created us, | 39:10 | |
| little less than God, | 39:15 | |
| and given us dominion, the very pinnacle of creation. | 39:16 | |
| Rejoice, you are human. | 39:23 | |
| (organ music) | 39:33 | |
| (congregation singing) | 40:05 | |
| - | The Lord be with you. | 43:24 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 43:26 | |
| - | Let us glorify the name and the works of our Creator. | 43:28 |
| Glorify the Lord, all the works of the Lord. | 43:41 | |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 43:45 | |
| - | The firmament of his power, glorify the Lord. | 43:48 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 43:53 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, the angels, | 43:57 |
| and all powers of the Lord. | 43:59 | |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:03 | |
| - | Sun and moon, and stars of the sky, glorify the Lord. | 44:06 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:12 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain, | 44:16 |
| and fall of dew. | 44:19 | |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:21 | |
| - | Winter and summer, glorify the Lord. | 44:24 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:28 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, O nights and days. | 44:31 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:36 | |
| - | Storm clouds and thunderbolts, glorify the Lord. | 44:39 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:43 | |
| - | Let the earth glorify the Lord. | 44:47 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 44:50 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, O mountains and hills, | 44:54 |
| and all that grows upon the earth. | 44:57 | |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 45:00 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, O springs of water, | 45:04 |
| seas and streams. | 45:07 | |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 45:10 | |
| - | All the birds of the air, glorify the Lord. | 45:13 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 45:17 | |
| - | Glorify the Lord, O beasts of the wild. | 45:21 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 45:25 | |
| - | O men and women everywhere, glorify the Lord. | 45:27 |
| (echo drowning congregation chant) | 45:32 | |
| - | Amen. | 45:36 |
| Let us now give thanks to God | 45:38 | |
| by the offering of our gifts and of ourselves. | 45:40 | |
| (organ music) | 45:47 | |
| (choral music) | 47:31 | |
| (organ music) | 50:34 | |
| (congregation singing) | 51:29 | |
| Let us pray. | 52:28 | |
| O mighty God, for Jesus Christ, | 52:31 | |
| and in the power of Your Holy Spirit, | 52:34 | |
| receive our thanksgiving. | 52:36 | |
| For the creation of the universe through Your Word. | 52:39 | |
| For making every human being in Your image and likeness. | 52:43 | |
| For the revelation of Your purposes | 52:47 | |
| through the law and the prophets. | 52:49 | |
| We give you thanks and praise. | 52:51 | |
| For the gift of your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 52:54 | |
| For His lowly birth of Mary, | 52:57 | |
| and for His baptism in the Jordan. | 52:59 | |
| For His ministry of preaching, teaching and healing. | 53:02 | |
| We give You thanks and praise. | 53:06 | |
| For Christ's steadfast love, and going to Jerusalem. | 53:09 | |
| For His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. | 53:13 | |
| For His suffering and death from the cross. | 53:16 | |
| We give You thanks and praise. | 53:19 | |
| For Christ's resurrection from the dead, | 53:22 | |
| and His ascension to Your right hand in glory. | 53:24 | |
| For Christ eternal intercession for us, | 53:27 | |
| and for His promise of His coming again, | 53:30 | |
| we give you thanks and praise. | 53:33 | |
| For the outpouring of Your Spirit on the Church. | 53:36 | |
| For the commissioning of Your Church to make disciples, | 53:39 | |
| and for the spreading of Your kingdom throughout the world, | 53:42 | |
| we give you thanks and praise. | 53:45 | |
| For the ministry of this chapel, | 53:49 | |
| for the rain that falls, and the sun that shines, | 53:51 | |
| for the gifts of work and leisure | 53:55 | |
| of family and friends, | 53:57 | |
| we give You thanks and praise. | 53:59 | |
| So Father, we give You grateful thanks | 54:02 | |
| for all Your blessings. | 54:04 | |
| We offer You our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. | 54:06 | |
| Send us out in the power of Your Spirit | 54:11 | |
| to live and work to Your praise and glory. | 54:14 | |
| We raise this prayer in the name of the one | 54:18 | |
| who taught us to pray, saying our Father, | 54:21 | |
| who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, | 54:25 | |
| Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, | 54:29 | |
| on earth, as it is in Heaven. | 54:32 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread, | 54:35 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses, | 54:38 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 54:40 | |
| Lead us not into temptation | 54:44 | |
| but deliver us from evil. | 54:47 | |
| For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, | 54:49 | |
| and the glory forever, amen. | 54:52 | |
| (organ music) | 54:58 | |
| (choral music) | 55:30 | |
| Rejoicing that you are human, | 58:15 | |
| and made in the image of God, | 58:18 | |
| go forth from this place, | 58:20 | |
| and may the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, | 58:22 | |
| the love of God, and the encouragement | 58:24 | |
| and power of the Holy Spirit | 58:27 | |
| be with you now and always, amen. | 58:29 | |
| (choral music) | 58:36 | |
| (organ music) | 1:00:01 | |
| (congregation applauding) | 1:02:53 |
Item Info
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