William H. Willimon - "Jesus Is Not Our Therapist" (November 20, 1994)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Good morning. | 0:00 |
Welcome to the service of worship | 0:01 | |
on Christ the King Sunday and homecoming. | 0:02 | |
We are glad to have any alumni back, | 0:06 | |
particularly those here for our Medical Alumni Weekend. | 0:10 | |
We give you a warm welcome back to Duke Chapel. | 0:15 | |
We also remind you that tonight | 0:18 | |
at 7 o'clock here in the chapel | 0:20 | |
something that has become a tradition, | 0:23 | |
the annual Messiah sing along, | 0:26 | |
And, you're invited to come to that very special event. | 0:29 | |
Let us stand for the greeting. | 0:33 | |
Praise the Lord all nations. | 0:38 | |
(congregation responds) | 0:40 | |
- | The Lord's steadfast love toward us is great. | 0:44 |
(congregation responds) | 0:46 | |
(organ music) | 0:53 | |
(congregation singing) | 1:56 | |
- | Let us pray. | 6:26 |
Oh mighty God, | 6:31 | |
who gave your son Jesus Christ a realm where all peoples, | 6:33 | |
nations, and languages should serve him. | 6:38 | |
Make us loyal followers of our living Lord | 6:43 | |
that we may always hear his word, | 6:47 | |
follow his teachings and live in his spirit. | 6:51 | |
And hasten the day when every knee shall bow | 6:56 | |
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord | 7:00 | |
to your eternal glory, Amen. | 7:05 | |
You may be seated. | 7:09 | |
- | Let us pray together the prayer for illumination. | 7:16 |
All | Open our hearts and minds oh God | 7:21 |
by the power of your Holy Spirit | 7:24 | |
so that as the word is read and proclaimed | 7:27 | |
we might hear your words with joy this day, Amen. | 7:30 | |
- | The Old Testament reading is taken from | 7:36 |
2 Samuel chapter 23. | 7:39 | |
"Now these are the last words of David, | 7:42 | |
the oracle of David, son of Jesse, | 7:45 | |
the oracle of the man whom God exalted, the anointed | 7:49 | |
of the God of Jacob, the favorite of the strong | 7:52 | |
one of Israel. | 7:56 | |
The spirit of the Lord speaks through me, | 7:58 | |
His word is upon my tongue. | 8:01 | |
The God of Israel has spoken. | 8:03 | |
the Rock of Israel has said to me | 8:06 | |
one who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God | 8:09 | |
is like the light of morning, like the sun rising | 8:14 | |
on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain | 8:18 | |
on the grassy land. | 8:21 | |
Is not my house like this with God? | 8:24 | |
For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, | 8:27 | |
ordered in all things and secure. | 8:30 | |
Will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire. | 8:34 | |
But the Godless are like thorns that are thrown away | 8:39 | |
for they cannot be picked up with the hand, | 8:42 | |
to touch them one uses an iron bar or the shaft of a spear | 8:45 | |
and they are entirely consumed in fire on the spot. | 8:50 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 8:54 | |
Congregation | Thanks be to God. | 8:57 |
- | Today's Psalm is number 132 found on page on 849 and 50 | 9:07 |
in your hymnal. | 9:13 | |
Please stand and sing the Psalm and Gloria responsively. | 9:14 | |
(organ music) | 9:18 | |
♪ Oh Lord in David's favor ♪ | 9:26 | |
♪ Remember all the hardships he endured ♪ | 9:30 | |
♪ How he swore to the the Lord ♪ | 9:35 | |
♪ And vowed to the mighty one of Jacob ♪ | 9:39 | |
(congregation sings) | 9:45 | |
♪ I will not give sleep to my eyes ♪ | 9:54 | |
♪ Or slumber to my eyelids ♪ | 9:59 | |
(congregation sings) | 10:03 | |
♪ The Lord swore to David ♪ | 10:16 | |
♪ As your oath ♪ | 10:18 | |
♪ And from it will not turn back. ♪ | 10:21 | |
(congregation sings) | 10:25 | |
♪ If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies ♪ | 10:35 | |
♪ Which I shall teach them ♪ | 10:40 | |
♪ (congregation sings) ♪ | 10:43 | |
♪ For the Lord has chosen Zion ♪ | 10:52 | |
♪ And has desired it for God's habitation ♪ | 10:56 | |
(congregation sings) | 11:02 | |
♪ I will abundantly bless it's provisions ♪ | 11:14 | |
♪ I will satisfy it's poor with bread ♪ | 11:18 | |
(congregation sings) | 11:23 | |
♪ There I will make honor sprout for David ♪ | 11:35 | |
♪ I have prepared a lamp for my anointed ♪ | 11:40 | |
(congregation sings) | 11:46 | |
♪ All glory be to you Creator ♪ | 11:57 | |
♪ And to Jesus Christ our Savior ♪ | 12:01 | |
(congregation sings) | 12:06 | |
♪ As it was ere time began ♪ | 12:13 | |
(congregation sings) | 12:18 | |
- | You may be seated. | 12:30 |
- | The Gospel reading is from the book of John, chapter 18. | 12:36 |
"Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, | 12:41 | |
summoned Jesus and asked him, are you the King of the Jews? | 12:44 | |
Jesus answered, my kingdom is not from this world. | 12:49 | |
If my kingdom were from this world my followers would be | 12:53 | |
fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews, | 12:57 | |
but as it is, my kingdom is not from here. | 13:01 | |
Pilate asked him, so, you are a king? | 13:04 | |
Jesus answered, you say that I am a king, | 13:08 | |
for this I was born, and for this I came into the world | 13:12 | |
to testify to the truth. | 13:17 | |
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." | 13:19 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 13:24 | |
Congregation | Thanks be to God. | 13:26 |
(choir sings) | 13:40 | |
- | The epistle from Revelation. | 18:33 |
"Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was, | 18:38 | |
and who is to come, and from Jesus Christ | 18:43 | |
the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead. | 18:47 | |
Ruler of the kings of the earth. | 18:51 | |
To him who loves us, | 18:55 | |
and has freed us from our sin by his blood, | 18:56 | |
and made us to be a kingdom of priests | 19:00 | |
serving his God and Father. | 19:02 | |
To him be glory and dominion forever and ever, Amen. | 19:05 | |
Look, he is coming with clouds, every eye will see him, | 19:10 | |
even those who pierced him, and on his account | 19:17 | |
all the tribes of the earth will wail. | 19:20 | |
So it is to be, Amen. | 19:23 | |
I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, | 19:26 | |
who is, and who was, and who is to come, | 19:31 | |
the Almighty. | 19:35 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 19:41 | |
Congregation | Thanks be to God. | 19:44 |
- | The reporter was interviewing the attorney | 19:50 |
who had just represented his client and had succeeded. | 19:55 | |
An award of over a million dollars | 20:00 | |
from the McDonald's restaurant. | 20:02 | |
His client had just received this award | 20:06 | |
after having been burned by a cup of coffee | 20:09 | |
she was holding in her knees | 20:12 | |
as she drove her car out of the restaurant. | 20:14 | |
The attorney was defending the judgment. | 20:18 | |
And at the end of the interview the reporter asked | 20:23 | |
the attorney, "Is this what you went to law school for?" | 20:28 | |
Ah yes, how the glorious ideal of jurisprudence | 20:37 | |
shrinks in our hands. | 20:44 | |
The idealistic young medical student | 20:49 | |
called into medicine to save lives, | 20:53 | |
to heal brokenness, becomes the expert | 20:55 | |
in the facelift and the tummy tuck. | 21:00 | |
How the grand nobility of the healing arts | 21:05 | |
shrinks in our hands. | 21:08 | |
Today's scripture, though this Christ the King, | 21:15 | |
is a weird unmanageable word | 21:19 | |
from a weird book of the Bible, Revelation. | 21:21 | |
Jesus Christ, ruler of kings of the earth, Alpha and Omega, | 21:25 | |
the beginning and the end, Almighty God. | 21:30 | |
How different that exclamation | 21:36 | |
from a recent Doonesbury cartoon, | 21:38 | |
which depicts a disappointed yuppie looking couple | 21:42 | |
leaving church, where they have been shocked to hear | 21:46 | |
an otherwise progressive preacher refer to sin. | 21:50 | |
And they say to one another, "We're just looking | 21:56 | |
for a church where we can feel good about ourselves." | 21:59 | |
And the grand scale of the Gospel shrinks. | 22:06 | |
A group of students in the dormitory prayer group | 22:13 | |
sit around in a circle and they pray, and one prays, | 22:16 | |
"Lord, we know that you just want us to bring our needs | 22:20 | |
before you, Lord, keep me cool, during my orgo exam." | 22:23 | |
another prays, "Lord we know that you care about | 22:30 | |
what we care about, be with my family this weekend | 22:34 | |
while they're on vacation at the beach." | 22:37 | |
Now some of you alums can remember | 22:41 | |
the Doctor Norman Vincent Peele, | 22:44 | |
and his Power of Positive Thinking. | 22:48 | |
God rendered into the great shrink in the sky. | 22:52 | |
Twenty years ago Phillip Rife wrote | 22:59 | |
the Triumph of the Therapeutic. | 23:02 | |
Twenty years ago Rife predicted the day | 23:05 | |
when in our modern psychologically saturated | 23:08 | |
American hands, the Christian faith would be rendered | 23:11 | |
into something small, salvation will become therapy, | 23:17 | |
church will become theater, sermons as psychodrama, | 23:23 | |
and no prophet to denounce the idle rich, Rife said. | 23:27 | |
How in the world did Phillip Rife foresee the death grip | 23:35 | |
of the therapeutic embrace upon the Christian faith? | 23:40 | |
Last year Yale's Wendy Kaminer wrote a wickedly funny book | 23:45 | |
about the 12 step self help therapy craze, | 23:51 | |
Kaminer's book is entitled | 23:55 | |
"I'm dysfunctional, you're dysfunctional." | 23:56 | |
(congregation laughs) | 23:59 | |
and Kaminer presents Doctor Joyce Brothers, | 24:01 | |
as the guru of all self-helpers. | 24:04 | |
In Doctor Brother's best selling book, | 24:09 | |
entitled "How to get whatever you want out of life" | 24:11 | |
Doctor Brothers combines the power of positive thinking | 24:15 | |
with pop psychology in a best selling primer | 24:18 | |
on making dreams come true. | 24:23 | |
Doctor Brothers says "Only you can truly know | 24:25 | |
what you want to get out of life." | 24:29 | |
and presumably only Doctor Brothers can teach you | 24:31 | |
how to get it. | 24:34 | |
Quote, "A lover, power, riches, success, a good marriage, | 24:35 | |
exciting sex, fulfillment, these can all be yours, | 24:40 | |
if you buy this book." | 24:43 | |
A book can make all the difference Doctor Brothers says. | 24:47 | |
She dresses up her platitudes and pep talks | 24:52 | |
with case studies, with, quote, scientific insights. | 24:54 | |
One of her scientific insights is the quick list technique, | 25:00 | |
quote, "write down your three top wishes, | 25:06 | |
just fast as you can, without any reflection," | 25:10 | |
just like a fairy godmother. | 25:12 | |
But Doctor Brothers is a scientist, | 25:16 | |
and she says the quick list technique is a powerful, | 25:19 | |
scientifically proved tool, and as proof of the | 25:23 | |
quick list technique's potency, | 25:29 | |
Doctor Brothers reports the case of Norman. | 25:31 | |
Norman was a middle level manager, | 25:35 | |
but after using | 25:40 | |
the quick list technique he was transformed into, quote, | 25:41 | |
"the proud owner of a metallic silver sports car | 25:46 | |
with red leather upholstery." | 25:50 | |
Your wish list should be quite specific, she says. | 25:53 | |
(congregation snickers) | 25:58 | |
And Brothers' advice is quite specific too, | 25:59 | |
in her collection of psychological techniques | 26:02 | |
she devises a study schedule to improve yourself. | 26:04 | |
Listen up students, quote, "Eat a light supper, | 26:10 | |
start working at 6:15, | 26:15 | |
stop working at 8:30 for half an hour, | 26:18 | |
during this half an hour have a cup of decaffeinated coffee | 26:21 | |
or very weak tea, an apple, please, no alcohol." | 26:24 | |
another learning technique of Doctor Brothers is | 26:32 | |
always study in a cool room. | 26:35 | |
Quote, "science has shown that mental activity thrives | 26:38 | |
in a chilly atmosphere, keep the room on the cool side. | 26:42 | |
I have found it best between 60 and 65 degrees, | 26:46 | |
is most conducive for learning." | 26:51 | |
Brothers also shares one of her own study secrets, | 26:55 | |
she says "I have written most of this book | 26:58 | |
while flying on airplanes." | 27:00 | |
If you read it, you will believe that. | 27:04 | |
(congregation laughs) | 27:06 | |
Now, if such silliness were limited to folk | 27:07 | |
who watch the Phil Donahue show, or read Psychology today, | 27:12 | |
it would be harmless, but it's in the church. | 27:16 | |
A recent study by Gallup shows | 27:23 | |
that the majority of us Americans, when we think about God, | 27:25 | |
we tend to think of God as being intensely pleased with us. | 27:29 | |
God affirms us, enjoys being with us, | 27:34 | |
and God is never displeased by us or our actions. | 27:37 | |
University of Virginia sociologist James Hunter | 27:44 | |
went back and reviewed 30 years of novels | 27:47 | |
by Evangelical Christian authors, and noted a change. | 27:52 | |
Over the past thirty years, Evangelical Christian novels, | 27:58 | |
Hunter shows, forsook the traditional Christian | 28:03 | |
Evangelical themes of sin, and redemption from sin | 28:08 | |
and salvation, and instead dealt with therapy | 28:12 | |
for personal problems. | 28:16 | |
This summer there was a book by Princeton's Marcia Whitten, | 28:21 | |
entitled, All Is Forgiven. | 28:26 | |
Whitten took 30 recent sermons | 28:29 | |
by Baptist and Presbyterian pastors, on the Prodigal Son. | 28:31 | |
She found that the language of secular psychological therapy | 28:37 | |
is much more influential in these sermons, | 28:43 | |
than Biblical language. | 28:46 | |
Both liberal and conservative Christians, | 28:49 | |
demonstrates Whitten, have jettisoned | 28:52 | |
biblical language for psychotherapeutic babble. | 28:55 | |
We come to church as consumers, picking and choosing | 29:01 | |
the most helpful spirituality. | 29:06 | |
Church as another supermarket of desire | 29:09 | |
with no external source of authority, | 29:15 | |
with nothing to help us stand against the omnivorous ego. | 29:18 | |
There is no check against our human tendencies | 29:24 | |
toward self-deceit and self deception. | 29:27 | |
The church, which used psychology as a tool | 29:31 | |
to communicate the Gospel, lost the Gospel. | 29:35 | |
We are finding that counseling and psychotherapy | 29:40 | |
are not neutral techniques. | 29:44 | |
Inseparable from their ends. | 29:47 | |
The Gospel has different ends, | 29:51 | |
it moves towards different goals than therapy. | 29:54 | |
Having lost the language of the Gospel, we lose the Gospel. | 29:59 | |
This first was demonstrated to me in reading | 30:06 | |
Robert Bellah's popular Habits of the Heart. | 30:08 | |
Bellah says that we Americans used to have three languages | 30:13 | |
through which we grasp the world. | 30:19 | |
The Biblical, the republican, and the individual. | 30:22 | |
We once had three ways of describing what was going on. | 30:29 | |
We had the individual, this is the Emersonian language | 30:34 | |
of self reliance and self focus. | 30:38 | |
We had the republican, by which Bellah means | 30:41 | |
the language of civic virtue, the language of politics | 30:43 | |
and public morality. | 30:47 | |
And we had Biblical language, meaning the language | 30:49 | |
of Biblical symbol and Christian metaphor. | 30:53 | |
In Habits of the Heart, Bellah says, we have lost | 30:58 | |
all languages now, save the individual. | 31:00 | |
When we now speak about our problems, | 31:06 | |
we speak only in the dialect of self help | 31:08 | |
and human potential. | 31:12 | |
And therapeutic language has proved to be too weak | 31:15 | |
to carry the freight, if you want to see the weakness, | 31:19 | |
of therapeutic language hitched to the burden of the Gospel, | 31:23 | |
tune in on Sunday morning with Robert Chuler, | 31:28 | |
and I think you will find the frail , failing attempt | 31:30 | |
of purely psychological individualistic language | 31:35 | |
to carry the magnificence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. | 31:38 | |
The Be Happy attitudes. | 31:44 | |
We've lost our language, and we're impoverished. | 31:48 | |
Why are you here this morning? | 31:57 | |
Of course if Bellah is right, you may be unable | 32:01 | |
adequately theologically to describe why you're here. | 32:05 | |
You may say the only thing the culture teaches you to say, | 32:10 | |
you're here for a little help to make it through the week. | 32:15 | |
You're here looking for some personal affirmation | 32:18 | |
to pump up your self esteem. | 32:21 | |
Because that's the only language we've given you | 32:24 | |
to name that for which you yearn. | 32:27 | |
But maybe you're here for more. | 32:32 | |
Maybe you're here to grapple intellectually with | 32:39 | |
larger matters, maybe. | 32:44 | |
Tom Long of Princeton, who preaches frequently | 32:52 | |
from this pulpit, recalled an experience | 32:54 | |
when he was a young pastor, | 32:58 | |
he was just fresh out of seminary, | 32:59 | |
he had a family in his church | 33:01 | |
that had a son who had cerebral palsy. | 33:03 | |
And Tom says that when he visited that family, | 33:10 | |
it was as if the whole family moved about it's day | 33:13 | |
without ever noticing that son. | 33:17 | |
Whenever the family moved and talked, | 33:21 | |
that young man stood in the shadows and watched. | 33:23 | |
One day the mother called him, to come over to the house | 33:29 | |
and he went, and there she told him | 33:33 | |
about what had happened to her the day before. | 33:36 | |
She said that she was knitting, in the late afternoon, | 33:40 | |
just as the shadows were lengthening, | 33:43 | |
her son was standing, as he often did, | 33:46 | |
in the shadows down at the end of the hall. | 33:49 | |
She said there was some sort of stir in the room, | 33:53 | |
and she looked up, she looked down the hall, | 33:56 | |
and there was her son, in the late afternoon sunlight | 33:58 | |
and Jesus was standing beside him. | 34:05 | |
With his arm embracing the boy. | 34:08 | |
She said "I looked away, and I looked again, | 34:14 | |
and there was only John standing there. | 34:16 | |
And for the first time in my life, I know | 34:20 | |
that my son John is already healed in the power of God." | 34:24 | |
Now Long says, "I don't know what happened there | 34:33 | |
that afternoon, but I do know what | 34:35 | |
the two of us did with it." | 34:37 | |
I'll tell you what she did with it, | 34:40 | |
she turned that personal spiritual experience | 34:42 | |
into something large, something ethical, | 34:45 | |
something almost cosmic. | 34:48 | |
If you go to that town in New Jersey today, | 34:51 | |
you will find programs in place for disabled kids, | 34:54 | |
which that woman has begun on the energy, the insight | 35:00 | |
created out of that vision. | 35:04 | |
She turned that personal experience into a changed world. | 35:07 | |
But Tom said, "What I did as her pastor, | 35:13 | |
fortunately, I only did internally. | 35:17 | |
I had just gotten out of a pastoral psychology course | 35:21 | |
in seminary, so I started psychologising her. | 35:24 | |
I said to myself, she's probably dealing | 35:30 | |
with her grief over her disabled child, | 35:33 | |
she's turning her anger away from the situation, | 35:36 | |
she's projecting her psychic needs | 35:39 | |
onto these religious images." | 35:42 | |
Tom says, "Notice what I did. | 35:47 | |
I reduced an experience in which she used | 35:51 | |
theological language to describe, | 35:54 | |
into the more socially acceptable language of psychology, | 35:57 | |
because it made it easier for me to manage." | 36:02 | |
As sociologist Peter Berger has put it, | 36:09 | |
"the delegitimizing forces of this culture | 36:12 | |
make people doubt their own experience. | 36:15 | |
They begin to hide religious experience | 36:19 | |
even from themselves. | 36:22 | |
They are hungry for a theological vocabulary. | 36:25 | |
We want a larger way to make sense." | 36:31 | |
Today in the Church, it's Christ the King. | 36:39 | |
And you have noted that all of today's scriptures | 36:44 | |
speaks in some fashion, and the hymns, of Christ as king. | 36:46 | |
As Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. | 36:53 | |
The one who is, and who was and is yet to come. | 36:56 | |
The one who sits upon the throne of Heaven, | 37:00 | |
ruler of the kings of the earth. | 37:02 | |
The language is bold and it's weird and it's pushy | 37:05 | |
and it's unmanageable. | 37:09 | |
Large, to signal us that what we're about here, | 37:11 | |
is larger than the purely personal, it's cosmic! | 37:15 | |
Because you see what ails us, that for which we yearn | 37:23 | |
is not just personal, it's political, it's systemic. | 37:27 | |
It's cosmic. | 37:34 | |
I know a student, when she came here | 37:39 | |
she was very unhappy her first year, | 37:43 | |
she suffered from an eating disorder, | 37:46 | |
she had numerous social problems, she was miserable. | 37:49 | |
Her sophomore year she took a course | 37:55 | |
in our women's studies department, | 37:57 | |
and at the end of that course she said to me, | 38:01 | |
"In that course I've learned skills of analysis, | 38:06 | |
I've learned history, | 38:09 | |
I've learned a critical view of the world. | 38:10 | |
All my life people have been telling me, | 38:14 | |
"you're unhappy, it must be some kind of personal problem, | 38:17 | |
there must be something wrong with you." | 38:21 | |
But maybe this thing is systemic, | 38:24 | |
maybe it's large, it's economic, it's historical, | 38:26 | |
it's gender related, my problem isn't just me, | 38:30 | |
it's bigger than that." | 38:38 | |
I think that was a kind of profoundly | 38:41 | |
politically Christian point of view. | 38:44 | |
Your need is greater than for a better positive self image. | 38:50 | |
Narcissism rationalized with a religious tint. | 38:54 | |
You need a new heaven and a new earth. | 39:00 | |
I think you're here for that. | 39:05 | |
We need to know that there's a force | 39:09 | |
for good loose in the world. | 39:11 | |
The same force that flung the planets in their courses | 39:14 | |
and moves the earth. | 39:18 | |
Jesus isn't our therapist. | 39:22 | |
He is Alpha and Omega, | 39:26 | |
ruler of kings of the earth. | 39:28 | |
Christ the king reminds us, Jesus doesn't | 39:32 | |
just promise us a better me, a slightly improved you. | 39:37 | |
We shall have a new world, Jesus shall reign! | 39:45 | |
(organ music) | 39:58 | |
(congregation sings) | 40:35 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 43:54 |
Congregation | And also with you | 43:55 |
- | Let us pray, you may be seated. | 43:57 |
Oh mighty Lord, King of kings, ruler of creation, | 44:09 | |
who reigns over all things, | 44:15 | |
we bow before you in glad adoration. | 44:18 | |
For you are Lord of lords, God of gods, | 44:22 | |
the Alpha and the Omega. | 44:26 | |
The beginning and the end. | 44:28 | |
Who are we that you are mindful of us. | 44:31 | |
Sheltering us, yea gently sustaining. | 44:36 | |
Your goodness and mercy daily attend us, | 44:41 | |
you are the hope of our salvation. | 44:45 | |
Let all that is within us praise the Lord. | 44:48 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 44:52 | |
All | hear our prayer. | 44:55 |
- | Forgive us for belittling you by treating you | 44:57 |
as the great therapist in the sky, | 45:01 | |
rather than the Lord of life and death. | 45:04 | |
Remind us that you want to do more | 45:07 | |
than build our self esteem, | 45:10 | |
you want to give us new life. | 45:13 | |
Open our hearts not simply to be touched, | 45:17 | |
but transformed by your purifying grace. | 45:21 | |
Lord, in your mercy, | 45:25 | |
All | Hear our prayer. | 45:27 |
- | Save us from our self centered tendencies. | 45:30 |
Remind us that Jesus came, not just to save me and you, | 45:33 | |
but the whole world. | 45:38 | |
Open our eyes to see the signs of the new heaven | 45:41 | |
and the new earth that are being born in our midst. | 45:44 | |
Help us become agents of your new creation. | 45:48 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 45:53 | |
All | Hear our prayer. | 45:55 |
- | Bestow upon the whole Church that passionate desire | 45:58 |
for the coming of your kingdom | 46:02 | |
which will unite all Christians in one mission to the world. | 46:04 | |
Sanctify it's life, renew it's worship, | 46:09 | |
empower it's witness, restore it's unity. | 46:12 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 46:17 | |
All | hear our prayer. | 46:19 |
- | Grant that all the people of the earth | 46:22 |
now divided by the power of sin, | 46:24 | |
may be united under the glorious and gentle rule | 46:27 | |
of Jesus Christ, free us from war, hatred and violence. | 46:31 | |
And show us the way of peace and love. | 46:37 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 46:41 | |
All | Hear our prayer. | 46:43 |
- | Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil, | 46:45 |
and to make no peace with oppression, | 46:49 | |
that we may reverently use our freedom | 46:52 | |
and employ it in the maintenance of justice | 46:55 | |
to the glory of your holy name. | 46:58 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 47:01 | |
All | Hear our prayer. | 47:03 |
- | Send your healing spirit on the created order | 47:06 |
that it might be restored to the beauty | 47:09 | |
and intricate wholeness that you intended. | 47:12 | |
Teach us to honor and respect what you have made, | 47:16 | |
and to tread lightly upon this earth. | 47:19 | |
Lord in your mercy, | 47:23 | |
All | Hear our prayer. | 47:25 |
- | Fill us with compassion for others' troubles | 47:28 |
even as we have received abundant compassion | 47:31 | |
and mercy from you, remind us that our hope and their hope | 47:34 | |
reside in the power and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 47:40 | |
who rules the heavens and the earth, and in whom | 47:44 | |
all things are possible. | 47:47 | |
For it is in his name that we pray, Amen. | 47:51 | |
We dare to give because we know that all we have | 47:59 | |
has been given to us by the Lord of creation. | 48:02 | |
Our gifts are signs of our gratitude, | 48:06 | |
but God wants more than that. | 48:09 | |
God wants everything we have and everything we are. | 48:11 | |
As we bring our gifts to the altar, | 48:15 | |
may they also serve as the sign of our total commitment | 48:17 | |
to the new life that God offers us through Jesus Christ. | 48:21 | |
(organ music) | 48:28 | |
(choir sings) | 49:45 | |
(organ music) | 53:09 | |
♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 53:37 | |
♪ Praise God all creatures here below ♪ | 53:44 | |
♪ Alleluia, alleluia, ♪ | 53:50 | |
♪ Praise God among ye heavenly hosts ♪ | 53:58 | |
♪ Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost ♪ | 54:05 | |
♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ | 54:11 | |
♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ | 54:18 | |
♪ Alleluia ♪ | 54:25 | |
- | Let us pray, almighty God, giver of every good | 54:38 |
and perfect gift, teach us to render to you | 54:43 | |
all that we have and all that we are. | 54:46 | |
That we may praise you, not with our lips only, | 54:49 | |
but with our whole lives. | 54:53 | |
Turning the duties, the sorrows and the joys of | 54:55 | |
all our days into a living sacrifice to you. | 54:59 | |
Through our Savior and King, Jesus Christ, | 55:03 | |
who taught us to pray together saying, | 55:07 | |
All | Our Father who art in heaven, | 55:09 |
hallowed be thy name, | 55:12 | |
thy kingdom come, thy will be done | 55:14 | |
on earth as it is in heaven. | 55:17 | |
Give us this day our daily bread, | 55:20 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 55:22 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 55:25 | |
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, | 55:28 | |
for thine is the kingdom | 55:33 | |
and the power and the glory forever, Amen. | 55:34 | |
(organ music) | 55:39 | |
(congregation sings) | 56:21 | |
- | The grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ | 59:20 |
the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit | 59:23 | |
be with you all. | 59:25 | |
(choir sings) | 59:30 |