November 21, 2021, Worship Bulletin, Prayer Concerns, Zoom Coffee Hour Link

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

 Christ the King Sunday 10:30 am

Meditation

“You can’t force joy, you can only create the conditions to let it come and take you.” -Valarie Kaur

From There to Here: We Gather

Gathering Music

Welcome

The Call   Grace McKenzie and Chris McKenzie, Readers

One: Joy returns us to everything good and beautiful and worth fighting for. It gives us energy for the long labor. Letting in joy, therefore, is the tenth practice of revolutionary love, the core practice that sustains all others.

One: Joy is the gift of love: It makes the labor an end in itself. I believe laboring in joy is the meaning of life. May we look up at that night sky. May we let joy in. For we will be someone’s ancestors one day. If we do this right, they will inherit not our fear but bravery born of joy.

—Valarie Kaur

Passing of the Peace at Home

Building the Community: News that Connects Us

Lighting the Justice Candle

Today we light the Justice Candle in honor of Dietrich Bonhoefer, a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity’s role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship is described as a modern classic.

Born in Breslau on February 4, 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the sixth child of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer. After completing his theological studies, he served a German-speaking congregation in Barcelona, Spain, from 1928–1930. He studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1930–1931. During that time he attended Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and became deeply interested in the issue of racial injustice. He also became active in the Protestant ecumenical movement, making international contacts that – after 1933 – would prove crucial for the Confessing Church and for his time in the German resistance. One of Bonhoeffer’s most famous texts was his April 1933 essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question.” Addressing the challenges facing his church under Nazism, Bonhoeffer in this essay argued that National Socialism was an illegitimate form of government and hence had to be opposed on Christian grounds. He outlined three stages of this opposition. First, the church was called to question state injustice. Secondly, it had an obligation to help all victims of injustice, whether they were Christian or not. Finally, church might be called to “put a spoke in the wheel” to bring the machinery of injustice to a halt.

The Living Word Among Us

Hymn We Gather Together Kremser

1. We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing; to live in community, seeking God’s will. We come now, as sisters and brothers, confessing the sins that divide and the wrong in us still.

2. Beside us forgiving, enabling, sustaining, you call us, O Savior, to life that is new. You draw us away from self-centered complaining. You lead us and guide us in ways that are true.

3. All praise to the spirit, provider, defender, You offer us freedom to follow or stray, empowering all by the hope you engender. Grant wisdom and courage to follow your way.

Hebrew Scripture Lesson Joel 2:21-27 Grace McKenzie, Reader

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing-floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

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        Luke 12:22-32

He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life, or a cubit to your height. If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Sermon The Harvest of Joy Rev. Kent Gilbert

Living Prayer

Call to Prayer and Offering

A Chance for Generosity: www.easytithe.com/union Our 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: 200 Prospect St., Berea, KY 40403

Your contribution is love made visible. Thank you!

Offering Music  

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.

Offering Prayer

Prayers of the Community Chris McKenzie, Reader

For lilies that you care for, and leaves that you color; for strength when we are unsure, and joy that follows justice; For love that renews itself, and for the solace of amazing grace even in loss: All these things we consider when we lift our hearts to you. Healed or broken your holy spirit is always seeking us. First in the morning until the last minute of the day, mercies abound. Part the clouds when we cannot remember the sun, Lord, and lift the veil when we forget to look for your countenance in the face of strangers. We crown the year with the harvest of your impartial love. Receive our thanks and hear our prayers, as we reach to you…

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

Hymn For the Fruit of All Creation Ar Hyd Y Nos

1. For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God; for the gifts of every nation, thanks be to God; for the ploughing, sowing, reaping, silent growth while we are sleeping, future needs in earth’s safe-keeping, thanks be to God.

2. In the just reward of labor, God’s will is done; in the help we give our neighbor, God’s will is done; in our world-wide task of caring for the hungry and despairing, in the harvests we are sharing, God’s will is done.

3.For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God; for the good we all inherit, thanks be to God; for the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us, most of all that love has found us, thanks be to God.

Benediction 

Postlude                   

OUR FELLOWSHIP PRINCIPLES:

“Union Church welcomes all followers of Christ and works with all who work with Him; respecting each person’s conscience; working by love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”

Come to Coffee Hour after worship! https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87387600761

Congregational Budget Meeting will be December 12. Save the Date!

The 2022 Budget, as presented by Finance Board, and approved by Church Council on November 15, will be voted upon by the congregation. The Budget will be available for review on December 5. We’ll email it and have paper copies available for pickup, and we’d be glad to mail you a paper copy.

The following revisions to Bylaw 6 will also be voted upon, to acknowledge and include those who are participating remotely:

BL 6  Voting and Balloting: (rev. 12-14-03) Congregational action shall be taken by a majority vote of members in attendance, assuming a quorum, unless a higher number (e.g., two-thirds) is previously agreed upon. Voting shall be by secret ballot whenever the Moderator thinks it appropriate, or upon the request of any member in attendance at the meeting. Secret ballots are only accepted remotely if technology is available at the time of the vote to facilitate a secret vote. Members who cannot be  present are encouraged to submit statements articulating their views on motions to the Clerk, Moderator, or other member of the congregation. These statements will be read at the meeting. Neither absentee nor proxy ballots will be used.

Changes are noted by bold italics.

Especially in our prayers….

¨ Each week we join millions of Christians who pray for one another through the ecumenical prayer cycle and, locally, the Berea Ministerial Association’s prayer cycle. Let us hold the people of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia; and our brothers and sisters at Bethlehem Baptist Church in our hearts, and pray for them. Please hold these concerns in your prayers, today and throughout the week.

¨ All those seeking a new and just society and those fearful that they will be supplanted, may God open their hearts and include them in grace.

¨ Our church family members in nursing homes or who are homebound: Alva Peloquin, Loyal Jones, Jennie Kiteck, Mary Miller, Lois Morgan, Jan Hamilton, Laura Robie, Tom & Dorie Hubbard

¨ Families and Friends in Crises…may God be present to every need and heal every rift and wound and those who care for them.

¨ JoAnn Russell, Reda Hutton’s aunt, facing several medical challenges.

¨ Children in detention centers, that they may be reunited with their families soon.

¨ Dear friends of Union Church,  Michael Harrington and his husband, Matthew “Freddie” Frederickson, who is very ill at UK Hospital.

¨ The Rohrer family in the death of Sarah’s beloved sister-in-law, Allison, who passed away after a long struggle with breast cancer. She leaves her husband and 3 children and a host of caring family and friends. We hold them in God’s light for comfort and strength.

¨ Those affected by the Covid-19 virus, their families and friends living with fear, anxiety, and feelings of isolation, may God bring peace to all who love them; and our wider community as we cope with the new realities of living, including the now over 10,500 Kentucky residents, and 189 Madison County residents, who have died to date from Covid-19.

¨ Important dates—if we haven’t got yours, let us know. We’ll help you get connected in FellowshipOne Go!

Birthdays coming up: today, Nov. 21 – George Mountjoy, Tina Hemphill; Nov. 25 – Ally Nurre, Rina Tanaka, Cadence Perman; Nov. 26 – Diana Hultgren, Amy Schill