For the week of August 11 – 12th Sunday after Pentecost
Morning Prayer: Good and Gracious God, we gather today as Your church. There are people who feel alone and forgotten; people in this world, people in our community and people right here in this church who are experiencing grief and sorrow. We ask not to look away from these needs, but to witness the needs of our neighbors through the lens of Your love. Grant us grace to be a praying church who does the work of bringing peace, love and hope to all we encounter. Amen.
Opening Hymn: #92 For the Beauty of the Earth
- For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise. - For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise. - For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind's delight,
for the mystic harmony, linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise. - For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise. - For Thy church, that evermore lifteth holy hands above,
offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise. - For Thyself, best Gift Divine, to the world so freely given,
for that great, great love of Thine, peace on earth, and joy in heaven:
Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
Psalm 130
5 I hope, Lord. My whole being hopes, and I wait for God’s promise.
6 My whole being waits for my Lord—more than the night watch waits for morning;
yes, more than the night watch waits for morning!
7 Israel, wait for the Lord!
Because faithful love is with the Lord; because great redemption is with our God!
8 He is the one who will redeem Israel from all its sin.
Prayers of Intercession: Thank You, Lord, for hearing our prayers for those dear to our hearts. We now pray as You have taught us: 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 sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us, not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Offering spotlight: A portion of the Missions funding is set aside for emergent needs in our community. Anytime there is a fire, death in a young family, or significant tragedy Lightstreet UMC stands ready to be the love and comfort of Jesus to hurting neighbors.
Offering prayer: God of boundless love, in this sacred moment of giving, we come before You, recognizing Your unwavering compassion and tender mercy. As we offer our gifts, we also lift our hearts in prayer for all who are burdened with pain and uncertainty. May Your healing touch reach those in need and may Your love bring comfort and strength to troubled hearts. We entrust our prayers to You, knowing that You hear and respond with boundless grace. Amen. (Discipleship Ministries)
Hymn of preparation: #430 O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
- O Master, let me walk with Thee in lowly paths of service free;
Tell me Thy secret; help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care.
- Help me the slow of heart to move by some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay, and guide them in the homeward way.
- Teach me Thy patience, still with Thee in closer, dearer company,
In work that keeps faith sweet and strong, in trust that triumphs over wrong;
- In hope that sends a shining ray far down the future’s broadening way,
In peace that only Thou canst give, with Thee, O Master, let me live.
Message Scripture: John 6:35, 41-51 (CEB)
35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty.
41 The Jewish opposition grumbled about Him because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
42 They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know? How can He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
43 Jesus responded, “Don’t grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless they are drawn to Me by the Father who sent Me, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, And they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has listened to the Father and learned from Him comes to Me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. 47 I assure you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats from it will never die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
Message: We Know Where You Came From Pastor Ron
Have you ever noticed that it is exceedingly difficult to escape your reputation? One of America’s best loved comedians, Jack Benny, very carefully cultivated the image of being a tightwad. That image was so carefully cultivated that everyone assumed it was real. Benny did nothing to discourage it because it gave him a ready device for comedy. One day he was having lunch with ventriloquist Edgar Bergan of “Edger Bergan and Charlie McCarthy” fame at the Brown Derby. When lunch was over, Benny demanded the check.
The waiter feigned surprise and said, “Mr. Benny, I’m surprised to hear you ask for the check.” “So am I,” said Benny, “That’s the last time I ever eat with a ventriloquist.”
Once people think they have you figured out, it is difficult to change their perception. Jesus ran into this. He lived in a small town, in a small country.
People knew his mother and father. They may have even known Him in His role as a carpenter. Perhaps He had built a piece of furniture for them or replaced a handle on one of their favorite tools. After all, He did not begin His ministry until He was thirty. For most of his adult life He labored in a carpenter’s shop.
Can you imagine how people responded when He suddenly proclaimed Himself to be the one prophesied by the prophets? In our lesson from John, we read that the residents of His community began to grumble about Him because He said that He was “the bread that came down from heaven.” (41)
“They asked, ‘Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know?’” (42) We can appreciate their disbelief for we have done the same thing to people. We put them in a box. We assign them a category. We know where they came from, we know who their parents are, we know where they went to school, we can tell by their accent or by their appearance about their background and we make certain assumptions. And because we make these assumptions, we treat them in a certain way. Maybe a teacher will overlook them in class. Maybe a police officer is a little more aggressive when they are pulled over. Maybe their supervisor slants the way they regard them when it comes time for a promotion.
Hopefully, none of this is intentional. We may not even be conscious of it.
It simply saves our brain the time and energy of sorting out people individually.
So, we sort them out by category. “I know who you are. You are Mary and Joseph’s son. You’re from Nazareth. That’s farming country, isn’t it? People are a little slow there. Well, maybe we can find a job for you that won’t be too taxing mentally for you.” If you think such things don’t happen, you are being naïve. This is the way our human brain operates.
Be careful when you judge another person’s potential. Anytime you write anyone off without giving them a fair shot, you may be mistaken. Robert Schuller once asked one of his colleagues, “What’s one of the most vivid memories you have of going to school as a child?” Here’s what his colleague told him: “In the third grade we were asked to stand up in front of the class and say what we wanted to be when we grew up. Now, I went to a fairly strict school, and every time you were asked to stand before the class, it was a pretty serious matter. I remember one girl who stood up and said, ‘I’m going to be a movie star.’ As I remember, there wasn’t anything special about this girl. She wasn’t very pretty, her grades were average, some of them were even below average. She didn’t come from a wealthy family. In fact, the only thing I remember about her was the class laughing at her. The whole class laughed at her. And she just stood there smiling, as if she knew something the rest of us didn’t. I don’t remember ever seeing that girl again in school. Now I see her all the time. She’s one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Every time I sit in the movie theater and watch her up there on the silver screen, I think she was always so proud of who she was. She had a dream she always held onto. Back then,” he concluded, “they laughed at her. Now they pay to see her. I’m glad I didn’t laugh.”
They laughed at Jesus. “Bread of heaven? We know where You came from. You’re Mary and Joseph’s son.” Be careful when you judge another person’s potential.
Be especially careful when you place people in a box because they belong to a particular group. Tattoos, grey-hairs, minorities, baby boomers, conservative, liberal. There are so many factors that determine a person's success in life. Intelligence, talent, determination, desire. External characteristics are but a tiny portion of the equation.
People put Elizabeth Blackwell in a box. That box was labeled “woman.” Elizabeth had a dream. Back when dreams for women were extremely limited. Society thought that dreams were fine things, except when held by women. But Elizabeth Blackwell had too much gumption to care what society thought. So, she set out to realize her dream of becoming a doctor. She applied to eight medical schools and was rejected by each of them. But one school, Geneva Medical School in New York, finally accepted her. Elizabeth didn’t know that the professors had admitted her because they thought it would be great fun to watch a woman struggle and fail at learning. After consulting with some of the students they agreed to admit her as a joke. But only Elizabeth was laughing when she graduated at the head of the class. She went on to travel to Europe and study at some of the finest medical schools there. But, on her return to the United States, she couldn’t get into a medical practice anywhere.
So, Elizabeth set up her own clinic in a slum neighborhood in New York City. In spite of frequent harassment, she kept the clinic going, caring for the poor, the immigrants, the people at the bottom of society. When the Civil War broke out, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell began training nurses for the battlefield. She trained scores of nurses and set them to the front lines to nurse the wounded, and to save lives. By the end of the war, women nurses were an institution in American society. No one even gave them a second thought. Dr. Blackwell’s legions of women nurses had gained the acceptance that she had worked so hard to earn. And in 1868, she was able to open a medical school for women.
She spent her last years in London, training both women nurses and doctors. Thanks to her efforts, barriers of prejudice came down and women became accepted members in the field of medicine.
That, sisters, and brothers, is a story that can be told over and over again. We do people a great disservice and we limit what they might offer to society when we prejudge them. This is true when we prejudge them by their gender or their color or their accent or any other surface characteristic. What counts, and you know this as well as I do, is a person’s heart.
And here is where Jesus can help us all. With His help we can all be more than we can ever dream. It makes no difference where we come from, or how we look, or how we talk, or who our parents are. Brothers and sisters, we are all children of God. We all have more potential than we can ever exhaust. And there is one who can help us so orient our lives that we can overcome every obstacle. Christ is the bread of the world and when we feed on Him, we find we are able to accomplish more than we ever dreamed possible.
Tracey Bailey stood before the judge with his head held high, his jaw set defiantly against the sentence the judge was about to pronounce. The words of his high school wrestling coach echoed in his mind: “Don’t you ever hang your head. Don’t admit defeat.” And Tracey wouldn’t hang his head, not before his ashamed and heart-broken parents, not before his shocked community, not before this judge, and certainly not before God. No one would be allowed to see his pain. The citizens of Goshen, Indiana had been stunned to learn that Tracey Bailey, captain of the wrestling team, member of the student council, good student, from the church-going Bailey family, had been one of the teens involved in the devastating vandalism attack on the local high school.
Tracey had fallen in with an unruly group of boys who used alcohol to fuel their frequent petty vandalisms and thefts. But one night, the boys, in a drunken frenzy, had broken into the high school and torn apart whole classrooms. Now the judge wanted to hold them up as an example to others with similar mayhem in their blood. Tracey was sentenced to a five-year term in the juvenile offender’s facility. Originally conceived as a lesser form of penitentiary, this facility now held hardened criminals, even murderers and rapists. This penalty would not be a slap on the wrist.
In prison, Tracey was determined not to bend an inch. He would be tough. He would never admit defeat, no matter how much he was hurting. But during a stint in solitary confinement, Tracey happened to catch sight of himself in a mirror, and the sight shocked him. He didn’t just look hardened, deadened was more like it. And he knew that the deadness would keep reaching down into his very soul. All his toughness melted away, and tears began to flow as he prayed to God and admitted his defeat. There was no one else to turn to, and he couldn’t rely on his own reserves anymore. Tracey doesn’t know how long he prayed, but he does know that God heard him. One of the guards approached him and offered him prayer. Someone else gave him a Bible and soon he joined the prison Bible study group.
When he was released early from the center, Tracey worked for a few months to pay off his debts and make restitution to the school he vandalized.
Then he entered college, studying for an education degree in science and math. He decided that he would pay back society by becoming a good role model for other confused young people. I guess you could say he reached his goal; he became a teacher. Then in April of 1993, Tracey Bailey attended a special ceremony at the White House where President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Teacher of the Year honors.
What is your dream? Don’t tell me the strikes you have against you: Too short, too tall, too heavy, a woman, a minority, didn’t go to a very good school, my parents didn’t have the money to give me all the advantages. Don’t tell me about the obstacles you have to overcome. Our God is able to overcome any obstacles. Don’t tell me where you came from. All that matters is where you are going, and who is going with you. If that man from that tiny town of Nazareth is with you, the man who spent most of His adult life in a carpenter’s shop, the man who was looked down upon because they knew His mother and father, the man who now reigns with the Father in glory. If that man is going with you then hold on for you are about to go on a great adventure. But on the way, make certain that you do not make the same mistake that others make, that of judging others on the basis of outward characteristics. Judge them only by what is in their heart.
Closing Hymn: #474 Precious Lord Take My Hand
- Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
- When my way grows drear, precious Lord, linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
Hear my cry, hear my call, hold my hand, lest I fall:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
- When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
Go into your week with the blessings of The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit.
