April 25, 2021, Worship Bulletin and Prayer Concerns

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

Fourth Sunday of Easter April 25, 2021 10:30 am 

Meditation

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. – Wendell Berry

From There to Here: We Gather

Welcome

As the Berea community responds to the governor’s suggestion to avoid gathering in large groups, we worship online to limit the risk of exposure to Covid-19. We’re delighted to welcome you into this virtual circle of God’s healing love and light.

The Call 1 John 3:16-24 from “The Message” Rev. Theresa Scherf, Reader

This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality.  It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

Passing the Peace at Home

Building the Community: News that Connects Us

Today we light the justice candle for Susana Lein. Today we honor Union Church member Susana Lein and her farm, Salamander Springs.  It is a permaculture farm, rustic homestead and “food forest” where living, healthy soil is considered the most important resource.  Salamander Springs Farm is completely off-grid: with limited solar electricity where gravity-fed spring water, rain catchment systems, and ponds serve as the water resources.

After nearly a decade spent developing permaculture systems and appropriate technologies with small farmers in Latin America, Susana returned to the USA and in 2001 began homesteading a piece land near Berea, KY, with no road access, structures, utilities or topsoil. After putting in a road, clearing a gentle ridge, she established contour swales, ponds, permanent beds, no till staple crop fields, food forest, orchard and nut trees on the land which would become Salamander Springs Farm. . Over the next decade she built a solar house using locally harvested and milled wood. She dug clay from her farm and ponds to create a beautiful earthen floor and straw walls.

No-till cornfields use “3-Sisters” style polycultures of pole beans, pumpkins & squash, utilizing traditional Native American practices that Susana learned during 8 years working with Mayan farmers in Guatemala.  Much of what she learned about corn seed selection and breeding was during her years working with Mayan farmers (whose ancestors created corn from teocinte, a wild grain the size of wheat). She is especially grateful to the late Don Gavino Ca’al of Tampo, Tactic, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala In 2014 Salamander Springs Farm was awarded a Kentucky State University small farm grant to purchase local lumber and materials to build a small granary barn and purchase a light commercial grain mill. Susana later built a porch on the granary for a community gathering space. This is a place to learn about truly regenerative systems, cycling local resources & energy (“closing the loop”), homesteading from the ground up, living within the means of a local ecosystem, and using permaculture principles to develop sustainable housing, crop production and local economic systems.

Susana is a vital part of Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, USA, a non-profit organization dedicated to linking host farmers across the United States to those with an interest in organic farming and gardening, and she provides permaculture workshops locally and elsewhere.

Since 2002, Salamander Springs Farm has been a key producer for the Berea Farmers’ Market, Community Supported Agriculture shares, local stores and restaurants–with a wide variety of vegetables, staple grains & dry beans, fruits, nuts, berries, flowers, herbs, forest medicinals, ramps and mushrooms.  “I started farming in my late 30s. If young people are willing to put in the work it takes to build up a healthy soil life and farm the permaculture way, it is possible to obtain land that not many people want,” said Susana.”  Thank you Susana for your vision and presence.

The Living Word Among Us    

Hymn God Is My Shepherd

1. God is my shepherd, I’ll not want, I feed in pastures green. God grants me rest and bids me drink from waters calm and clean.  Through daily tasks, I’m blessed and led by one I have not one seen.

2. Restored to life each morning new, I rise up from the dust to follow God whose presence gives me confidence and trust. I praise the name of God today; in God I put my trust.

3. When I must pass through shadowed vale, where loss and death await, I will not fear for God is there, my shepherd strong and great, whose rod and staff will comfort me and all my fears abate.

4. No enemy can overcome, no power on earth defeat the ones anointed by God’s grace and fed with manna sweet. My cup is filled and overflows as I my Savior greet.

5. Goodness and mercy all my days will surely follow me; and where God reigns in heaven and earth, my dwelling place will be. My shepherd blesses, cares, and leads through all eternity.

Lesson from Acts of the Apostles Acts 4:5-12

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.”
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.’

 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 10:11-18

‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes^* it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Sermon      The Sheepish Shepherds   Rev. Kent Gilbert

Living Prayer

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”)

Your contribution is love made visible. Thank you!

Offering Music     My Shepherd, the King of Love           J. Evanovich Union Church Handbell Ensemble Pearl Marshall, Director

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.

Our Prayers for Others

You are very welcome to email or phone prayer requests to the office for the bulletin. Please do so by 10 am Thursdays, and be sure you have permission to share the information.

¨ 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 Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and our brothers and sisters at First Baptist Church of Berea 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.

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

¨ Tom Hubbard

¨ Teri VanPelt, with a difficult medical diagnosis.

¨ Robert Rorrer, undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

¨ Judith Singelton’s daughter, Stephanie, recovering well from surgery.

¨ Lois Morgan, recovering from a broken wrist.

¨ Our church family members in nursing homes or who are homebound: Alva Peloquin, Loyal Jones, Jennie Kiteck, Mary Miller, Lois Morgan, Barb Smith, Jan Hamilton

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

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

¨ 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  over 6300 Kentucky residents, and 108 Madison County residents, who have died to date from Covid-19.

Prayers of the People

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

Sending & Blessing

Postlude The Lord’s My Shepherd Larry Brandenburg, organist

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

· Sundays, 9:30 am! Book Study led by Steve Connelly Register here so we can send you a link 

· Tuesday, Thursday &  Saturday Meditations with Rev. Shannon Abbott  Here

· Wednesday, 10:00 am – Coffee Hour with Rev. Kent, Registration link will be sent in Monday Announcements.

· Thursdays, 10:30 am – Bible Study with Rev. Carla, 10:30 am. Register here

· Join the Union Church Facebook Group – it’s a bit less church business, a bit more fellowship and cat videos, administered by our Community Life & Growth Board – Union Church Facebook Group

Urban Garden Blessing Photos by Rachael White