May 30, 2021, Worship Bulletin and Prayer Concerns

A Gathering in Worship Offered by the People of the Church of Christ, Union

Trinity Sunday

10:30 am 

Meditation

“Liminal space is a unique spiritual position where humans hate to be, but where the Biblical God is always leading them.”     

– Richard Rohr   

From There to Here: We Gather

Gathering Music Jesus Lives and so Shall I Michael Cox

Welcome

The Call Richard Rohr

The Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into full participation with God —a flow, a relationship, a waterwheel of always outpouring love.  God is a verb much more than a noun. Contemplation of God as Trinity was made-to-order to undercut the dualistic mind.  True Trinitarian theology offers the soul endless creativity —an open horizon. Trinitarian thinkers are overwhelmed by infinite abundance and flow. In the end, only lovers seem to know what is going on inside of God. To all others, God remains an impossible and distant secret, just like the galaxies.

Passing of the Peace Please remain seated.

Building the Community: News that Connects Us

Today we light the Justice Candle for Rev. Will D. Campbell, a civil rights activist who talked with members of the Ku Klux Klan. He was a preacher who does not attend church or belong to any denomination. He was a writer who explores the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. The contradictory threads that run through his life are explained by one of his guiding principles: understanding the difference between belief and faith. “Belief is passive,” he says. “Faith is active.”

Campbell grew up in rural Mississippi. He was ordained in the Baptist church at the age of seventeen and went on to Yale Divinity School. He spent two years as minister to a congregation–long enough to convince him that his place was not in the institutionalized church. “Either the steeples weren’t ready for me or I wasn’t ready for the steeples,” he says. At the University of Mississippi he was appointed the director of religious life, but he resigned in 1956 rather than disavow his support for the budding Civil Rights Movement.

Rev. Campbell was the only white minister asked by Martin Luther King Jr. to attend the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He bailed demonstrators out of jail during sit-ins and participated in the Birmingham campaign.

“If it hits you right, the pressure from a fire hose can break your back,” Campbell recalls of the violent response protesters met with in Birmingham. “I remember seeing adults and children hit and rolling along the sidewalk like pebbles at high tide. The decision was made to permit young children to demonstrate, and it was very controversial. Seeing those children alerted the nation and the world to what was happening, that this was a real threat to any claim of our being a democratic country.”

A voice of conscience that challenged church leaders to join the fight against racism in the early sixties, Campbell has been described by Jimmy Carter as “a deeply religious man.” In his writing and his preaching, he continued to push for the breaking down of barriers in American society.

The Living Word Among Us    

Hymn  #273 Black Praise with Joy the World’s Creator Lauda Anima

Hebrew Scripture Lesson Isaiah 6:1-8 Paul Jacobs, Reader

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’

Children’s Moment                                   

       Please join in singing as we bless children everywhere:

May God’s blessing guard, protect and guide you.  God bless you, God bless you. Our savior’s loving arms be ever ’round you. God bless you, God bless you. 

Gospel Lesson                    John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Sermon ^ <3 (Raised to the Power of Love) Rev. Kent Gilbert

Living Prayer

Call to Prayer and Offering

A Chance for Generosity: www.easytithe.com/unionOur gifts help sustain this particular community of caring by sustaining the building, pastors and staff, and all the materials that make our ministry of healing, justice, and teaching available to all in need. In addition, a portion of our contributions flows out to aid those in need via many external agencies.

Many friends give online, and you can use your smart phone or computer and go to www.easytithe.com/union. You don’t have to register to make a contribution, but if you do, it can make future generosity that much easier.

You can even give by text! Text to 859-448-3403 (Example: Text “$50.00 Offering”)

You can also use US mail!  Mail to: CPO 2105, Berea, KY 40404

Your contribution is love made visible. Thank you!

Offering Music Come, O Spirit, Dwell Among Us Union Church Orchestra

Ringing of the Peace Bell

The Union Church Peace Bell was created by Jeff Enge in honor of Union Church member Carl Eschbach (1904-1998).  A twin bell hangs in Berea’s sister province in Japan and is also rung in the hope of peace for all nations.

Prayers of the Community Betty Hibler, Reader

God of exponential powers, you magnify our blessings and raise our power to love. Your mystery, interwoven facets of grace and challenge, calls to us across language, across time, across the span of our griefs and joys; Your Redemption, restless, crossing boundaries, making ways, seeking to make all whole, carries us on a ceaseless tide of love; And your resistless Holy Spirit, eagerly guiding, blowing where it will, raising our capacity to the height of your expectation, multiplies our courage, our hope, and our resolve. Holy three in one and one in three, help us magnify your vision with our own. Open our eyes, and burn away our sin and fear; call our name and send us before you, scattered like leaves of blessing before the wind of your will. In you is our healing. To your Christ we entrust our ills and those in need. To you we call in distress, and in you we find relief and release. Creator, Redeemer, and Guide, to the power of three times three times three we lift our thanks and praise.  

Our Lord’s Prayer

Our Maker, our Mother, and 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; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

From Here to There

Benediction           God Has Made of One Blood  All People of the Earth

Leader will sing a line, then the congregation repeats when invited:

God Has Made (God has made) Of One Blood (of one blood) All People (all people) of the Earth (of the earth).

Blessed be (Blessed be), And Amen (and amen); Amen and blessed be, Amen and Blessed be.

Postlude Joyful Day Mark Hayes