SPEAKER_01: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_01: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_01: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under His most gracious rule, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: And for this reason, I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
SPEAKER_04: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which He has called you.
SPEAKER_04: What are the riches of His glorious inheritance among the saints?
SPEAKER_04: And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us to believe, according to the working of His great power.
SPEAKER_04: God put this power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come.
SPEAKER_04: And He has put all things under His feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills in all in all.
SPEAKER_04: The word of the Lord Psalm 100, we will read responsibly at the half verse.
SPEAKER_04: Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands.
SPEAKER_04: Enter God's gates with thanksgiving, go into the holy courts with praise.
SPEAKER_04: For good is the Lord, whose mercy is everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep.
SPEAKER_00: I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
SPEAKER_00: I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the water courses, and in all the uninhabited parts of the land.
SPEAKER_00: I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture.
SPEAKER_00: They shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God.
SPEAKER_00: I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the stray, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.
SPEAKER_00: I will feed them with justice.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Because you pushed with flank and shoulder and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide.
SPEAKER_00: I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged, and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
SPEAKER_00: I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them.
SPEAKER_00: He shall feed them and be their shepherd, and I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them.
SPEAKER_00: I, the Lord, have spoken.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: Glory be to thee, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
SPEAKER_01: All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
SPEAKER_01: And he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
SPEAKER_01: And then the king will say to those at his right hand, Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: For I was hungry and you gave me food.
SPEAKER_01: I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.
SPEAKER_01: I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
SPEAKER_01: I was naked and you gave me clothing.
SPEAKER_01: I was sick and you took care of me.
SPEAKER_01: I was in prison and you visited me.
SPEAKER_01: And then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when was it we saw you hungry and gave you food?
SPEAKER_01: Or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
SPEAKER_01: And when was it we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
SPEAKER_01: And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?
SPEAKER_01: And the king will answer them, Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
SPEAKER_01: And then he will say to those at his left hand, You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
SPEAKER_01: For I was hungry and you gave me no food.
SPEAKER_01: I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.
SPEAKER_01: I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison, and you did not visit me.
SPEAKER_01: Then they also will answer, Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?
SPEAKER_01: And he will answer them, Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
SPEAKER_01: And these will go away into an age of rehabilitation, but the righteousness into eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_01: We dubbed Christ the King Sunday since 1976.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not been around forever, this theme.
SPEAKER_01: In 1976, we also, since then, we also call it not only Christ the King, but we call it Restorative Justice Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds a little bit funny, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to suggest to you that the two of these necessarily go hand in hand.
SPEAKER_01: And at the outset, I think before we talk about the rule of Christ, it's really helpful to think about how restorative justice is different than the justice that we settle for.
SPEAKER_01: And I hope it's helpful.
SPEAKER_01: You heard me intentionally change a phrase.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about that in a second.
SPEAKER_01: But maybe you also notice that this passage about sheep and goats, Jesus talks about people who are righteous.
SPEAKER_01: And even though both Greek and Hebrew have far fewer words in English, 10,000 words in the ancient Hebrew vocabulary, 110,000 words in the Greek vocabulary, 540,000 words in English.
SPEAKER_01: You would think that with far fewer words, they'd have to be much more careful about when they use words.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to give you a delightful surprise.
SPEAKER_01: The word righteous is a synonym for the word just.
SPEAKER_01: Those are biblical synonyms.
SPEAKER_01: Righteousness is not a category biblically about piety, it's a category of practice.
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about justice for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: The kind of justice I am very used to, both as a Libra and a J on the Myers Briggs, looks like a scale.
SPEAKER_01: And when somebody tips the scale, that means we have to re-tip the scale.
SPEAKER_01: And the way that I understand how to do that inherently in my being is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
SPEAKER_01: My understanding of justice is when you hurt somebody, you get to be hurt.
SPEAKER_01: When you steal money, you pay it back with interest.
SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, that is one way to level the scales.
SPEAKER_01: But I also want to suggest to you one way of justice that I've bought into that influences the way I hear the entire Bible, as revealed today, is an idea that the way to have justice is to punish.
SPEAKER_01: This is called retribution.
SPEAKER_01: A way to have justice is to wreck revenge.
SPEAKER_01: And so when I read the gospel, I hear that word, eternal punishment.
SPEAKER_01: When I hear Ezekiel, I naturally hear the fat and strong sheep themselves will be destroyed because that's how God will get even.
SPEAKER_01: That's retribution.
SPEAKER_01: It took a social prophet, and maybe you've heard of him before, Gandhi, who reminded us that if all we did was retribution, an eye for an eye would make the world blind.
SPEAKER_01: I want to suggest to you that this kind of retributive justice is in fact not even just.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you've seen there are so many cases of this, les Miserab.
SPEAKER_01: Jean Valjean goes to prison twelve years for stealing bread when he's hungry.
SPEAKER_01: That's punishing him.
SPEAKER_01: It's getting even.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you know that in the Middle Ages in Europe, I'm not talking about anywhere else in the world, if you stole your thumb or your hand was cut off to punish you, to show you what happens when you steal, even if you're hungry.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, consider that when you cut somebody's hand off for stealing food, you eliminate a future in which they can grow, cultivate, or earn food.
SPEAKER_01: By punishing somebody with the loss of their hand, you consign them to a life of poverty.
SPEAKER_01: Is it just?
SPEAKER_01: Is it righteous?
SPEAKER_01: That's the same question.
SPEAKER_01: Is it just?
SPEAKER_01: Is it righteous?
SPEAKER_01: Same question.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what other kinds of justice are there?
SPEAKER_01: One kind of justice is called distributive justice.
SPEAKER_01: This is great that people think categorically.
SPEAKER_01: It takes brighter minds than my own to come up with these.
SPEAKER_01: Distributive justice is when all people have equal access to the rule of law and to the courts.
SPEAKER_01: We know, by the way, that humanity has suffered pandemically and endemically from lack of distributive justice.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible's very clear.
SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't have access to justice in the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Widows and orphans.
SPEAKER_01: Those categories exist today, although I think we could add other folk to those categories, whether they are immigrants or refugees, people who are incarcerated.
SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of categories in which people have, frankly, unequal access to justice.
SPEAKER_01: Even if we could make the move from pure retribution to making some room for distributed justice, I want to suggest the day would be well spent.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the last category.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the last category that I put before you, again, the theme of the day is restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: And restorative justice says when breaches happen in the communal fabric, that is, when there are tears in our community because somebody stole or somebody was injured, the question is not how can we punish or get even, how can we move forward and rehabilitate?
SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't tell you, I don't know how to do it, and most people don't either, and that's why we don't even try.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we just settle for what we know how to do.
SPEAKER_01: We give somebody a spanking and send them to the room, and we got even.
SPEAKER_01: Because restorative justice is hard.
SPEAKER_01: And it's risky, and it costs us something that far too often we just don't want to pay.
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, I wasn't raised in a household.
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't raised in a church, I wasn't raised in a school system that valued or even made room for restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: I was raised understanding that when you do something wrong, you get punished.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're like me, you can hear the punishment themes in our readings today.
SPEAKER_01: I want to tell you, if you do, I believe you're missing the readings.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to start with Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_01: The text says that people are not doing a very good job shepherding one another.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the lambs are really strong.
SPEAKER_01: They're getting fat.
SPEAKER_01: They're using their privilege to gobble up even more instead of leveraging their privilege to give access to the underprivileged members of the flock.
SPEAKER_01: There's this interesting line.
SPEAKER_01: I will destroy the fat.
SPEAKER_01: We could hear that in our brain, is if you abuse other people, God's going to kill you.
SPEAKER_01: But we could, I think, better hear that line as Ezekiel saying, God is going to destroy the inequity to justice that gives some people more at the expense of others.
SPEAKER_01: That is to say, Christ the Good Shepherd, or God the Good Shepherd, is really interested in privileged lambs, let's just call it what it is, using their privilege to raise up underprivileged lambs in the flock.
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, no shepherd goes around killing fat lambs.
SPEAKER_01: That would be economically runaceous.
SPEAKER_01: No, the shepherd values the life of every single viable sheep.
SPEAKER_01: And the shepherd invests.
SPEAKER_01: The shepherd makes sure that there is distributive access to resources and that temporarily hurt lambs, temporarily injured lambs, get access to food.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe this starts to question what Christ the King even means.
SPEAKER_01: Because maybe you're familiar with this passage in Genesis that says human beings are given dominion over the earth.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, that word dominion comes from the same word as domicile.
SPEAKER_01: That is, we are to make the world our home.
SPEAKER_01: In Hebrew, the word is not dominion.
SPEAKER_01: That word dominion is Latin.
SPEAKER_01: In Hebrew, the word is mashal.
SPEAKER_01: We are to shepherd the earth and to shepherd one another.
SPEAKER_01: Bad shepherds let lambs die.
SPEAKER_01: And it costs the whole flock.
SPEAKER_01: What about this story about Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says at the end, look, it's going to be really easy to separate lambs and goats.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we've made up this whole mythology, I'm afraid, that goats are bad and lambs aren't.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to explain to you that if you're a nomadic razor of animals, the goat is actually superior in every way to the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: The goat can kid twice a year, the lamb, the ewe can only lamb one time a year.
SPEAKER_01: Lambs can only eat grass.
SPEAKER_01: Goats can eat both grass and they can eat woody ornamental shrubs.
SPEAKER_01: Goat meat is much leaner than lamb meat.
SPEAKER_01: Goat hair, surprisingly, is much more suited to the Mediterranean climate than wool.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't saying goats are bad.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is something that we often miss here: goats and sheep look nothing alike, especially if you raise them, it will be that easy to separate folks out.
SPEAKER_01: There is in this story this really interesting thing here: surprise.
SPEAKER_01: The people who were caring for the vulnerable, whether they were naked or incarcerated or sick, had no idea they were caring for God.
SPEAKER_01: Please notice that.
SPEAKER_01: This is all the nations of the world.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say anything about their faith, it doesn't say anything about their piety, it only talks about their practice.
SPEAKER_01: Now, thank God we have saints, like Saint Francis, who knew when he kissed that leper he was kissing Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But most of these people don't know that they're taking care of God.
SPEAKER_01: They just think they're helping vulnerable people.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the people who think they know God very well.
SPEAKER_01: And they're really surprised that they missed God.
SPEAKER_01: They missed God and the vulnerable because they didn't even dare to look there.
SPEAKER_01: Both groups are surprised.
SPEAKER_01: And please hear at the end, I did intentionally change the translation because I want to tell you it's a better translation.
SPEAKER_01: Greek has a word for vengeance.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the one used here.
SPEAKER_01: The word used here is about remediation.
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of what happens when you go to a tree that has dead limbs and you trim the limbs off for the good of the tree.
SPEAKER_01: You don't trim dead leaves to punish the tree.
SPEAKER_01: You trim the dead limbs to rehabilitate it.
SPEAKER_01: The word is not eternity, the word is eon, which sort of means however long it takes.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we believe only in retributive justice, you better get it right or you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: The hard thing about that is that the church that raised me only believed in retributive justice, and we didn't do anything for people who were in prison or sick.
SPEAKER_01: And we came every single week to church and we talked about how we had the right faith and the right belief, and we didn't do anything for people who were in prison.
SPEAKER_01: And I can't even tell you how emotionally overwhelmed I've been with the weakness of my faith because I bought into that lie most of my life.
SPEAKER_01: And this week, I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_01: I'm probably being incoherent.
SPEAKER_01: I read this thinking I was one of the good people, and then I look at what I do, and I don't do what the sheep do.
SPEAKER_01: Or here's even worse.
SPEAKER_01: I hear this story, and I think that God is only going to be retributive.
SPEAKER_01: If I don't get it right, there's hell to pay.
SPEAKER_01: And I start thinking, did I help enough poor people?
SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell you, that's spiritual poverty because it's being afraid of God.
SPEAKER_01: This word punishment, the one I told you is really about rehabilitation, shows up one other time in the New Testament, shows up in 1 John 4, in which John says, true love drives out all fear, because fear is related to rehabilitation.
SPEAKER_01: We're afraid of being rehabilitated because we don't trust that God has the good intention of the whole flock in mind.
SPEAKER_01: We're afraid of being rehabilitated because we think God's going to send us to hell when we die instead of raise up in us what is deficient.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's helpful for you to hear this bit about naked.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's not a lot of naked people walking around because clothes are pretty cheap since the Industrial Revolution.
SPEAKER_01: A garment took a year to make.
SPEAKER_01: And back then, if you had money, people could sue you for your garment because it was worth something.
SPEAKER_01: Your clothes are worth nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just be honest about it.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot settle your debts with your garments, but a year's labor.
SPEAKER_01: See, now Jesus is talking about church vestments.
SPEAKER_01: These cost real money.
SPEAKER_01: These pants cost$40.
SPEAKER_01: It's not worth anything.
SPEAKER_01: People could be sold into nakedness because their clothes were worth something.
SPEAKER_01: This is like repoing your car or taking away your cell phone or anything of value.
SPEAKER_01: And what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: Well, people need basic things in order to survive.
SPEAKER_01: So if you take away people's basic needs, what's the justice in that?
SPEAKER_01: What are they going to do next?
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a house, you don't have basic food, what are your options?
SPEAKER_01: But sadly, when we really buy hook, line, and sinker, I mean when we bite not just the hook, but the lure too, as I love to do, of retributive justice, we say, you earned that, you should have known better.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm afraid, friends, when we do that, we end up on the left.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be afraid if you end up on the left.
SPEAKER_01: Because the promise is God's going to rehabilitate us for our own good.
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, having either sheep or goats, you know, there's something really nice about diversifying your flock.
SPEAKER_01: There's something nice about having both.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we like to diversify our investment portfolio.
SPEAKER_01: It's good to have things, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Again, one's not superior to the other.
SPEAKER_01: They just act differently.
SPEAKER_01: And we don't need to be afraid of God's rehabilitation because it's not like ours.
SPEAKER_01: I want to tell you, I have this core belief that if we can't do it while we're alive, God is going to help us do it when we die.
SPEAKER_01: God's going to help us do it for us.
SPEAKER_01: But this is not about heaven and hell for me.
SPEAKER_01: This is about the opportunity to interact with God's family now or miss out.
SPEAKER_01: You may be saying, I can miss out.
SPEAKER_01: Life is too short to miss out.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ the King Sunday is really not just about what might be nice as a bonus, it's about what's actually valuable in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And what's valuable is the entire flock.
SPEAKER_01: The notice it's made of all the nations, all of them.
SPEAKER_01: And there's another, I think, spiritual maturity piece here.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus calls the lambs and the goats, he doesn't say, Depart from me, you didn't know me.
SPEAKER_01: He says this really curious turn of phrase.
SPEAKER_01: Depart from me, I didn't know you.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think this is only about how we treat other people, although I think it has a lot to do with we treat other people.
SPEAKER_01: I think Jesus might be offering us that a lot of our own spiritual formation is frankly lacking.
SPEAKER_01: I think what Jesus might be asking us to consider is that there are prisoners, foreigners, hungry and naked parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And if we won't risk the vulnerability to show up in those places that we're afraid of, that are sick.
SPEAKER_01: How can Jesus get to know us?
SPEAKER_01: We weren't willing for him to come in.
SPEAKER_01: I am positive personally that if I don't visit the sick and naked parts of myself, there's no way I can visit the sick and naked people in the world.
SPEAKER_01: Because as the African proverb says, and I think this is just right this week, never accept the shirt from a naked man.
SPEAKER_01: We can never give something we don't have.
SPEAKER_01: But this is not just about our doubling down on self-improvement for luxury.
SPEAKER_01: This is about moving inward and outward to recognize all the parts that are God's flock.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe I just wonder if we couldn't move a little bit of that retribution off of the table that we so often fill it with to make room for a little bit of distributive justice and a helping of restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: If God couldn't be the shepherd of the world, Ezekiel talks about with us and through us and in us.
SPEAKER_01: This is not about practice restorative justice or else.
SPEAKER_01: And it is.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not active in restorative justice, we're not active in God.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not active in restorative justice, we're missing out on the opportunity to enjoy what God enjoys.
SPEAKER_01: And I just think life is too short for that.
SPEAKER_01: And what I wish we could get our heads around, even if we're stuck on retributive justice, even if we're stuck there, is that we've got a whole lot more we can do for people who are imprisoned and frankly being punished instead of restored.
SPEAKER_01: We've got a whole lot more we can do for people who are seeking asylum.
SPEAKER_01: We've got a whole lot more we can do for people who may have water, but it's toxic.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's in our own country.
SPEAKER_01: We've got a whole lot more we can do for people who don't have access to basic nutrition.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the really crazy thing.
SPEAKER_01: If we really are afraid of God, why aren't we doing that?
SPEAKER_01: I think because retributive justice spiritually is paralyzing.
SPEAKER_01: And I think retributive justice socially is paralyzing.
SPEAKER_01: And I think God would like to get us unparalyzed.
SPEAKER_01: And the way we do that is not by doubling down on punishment.
SPEAKER_01: The way we do that, I think, is shooting for the moon on restoration in ourselves with one another.
SPEAKER_01: I've said this before.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say it again.
SPEAKER_01: There are people in this church that sent human beings to the moon in a thing over there that frankly doesn't look that futuristic.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure I would get in that.
SPEAKER_01: We did that.
SPEAKER_01: And it's wonderful and it's awe-inspiring, and if we just said we're gonna take that brain power and that commitment to living, to getting a view outside of our earth, and we're gonna do that restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: How much more could Christ, the good shepherd, be born out in our lives?
SPEAKER_01: This comes to us at the end of the church year because you know next Sunday is Advent.
SPEAKER_01: Advent is all about coming.
SPEAKER_01: I'm listening to what I'm saying, and I've got to tell you, Jesus, I need Jesus this year.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a grip on him because there's deficiencies in what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we hear what Christ shepherding can look like if we could make the room.
SPEAKER_01: We need him to come again this year and grow our hope, our peace, our joy, and our love.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we do this, so we can recognize the room we need to make for those critical compounds of restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a good ender to this.
SPEAKER_01: I just pray we'll continue to do more together.
SPEAKER_01: We'll continue to make more room for Christ to do what he does instead of Christ doing what we often settle for.
SPEAKER_01: Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_02: We believe in one God, Father of the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, all that is seen and unseen.
SPEAKER_02: We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only child of God, eternally God and the Father.
SPEAKER_02: God and God, life and earth, true God and true God, God and not made, of one being and God.
SPEAKER_02: Through them all things, for us and for our salvation, became God and heaven.
SPEAKER_02: By the power of the Holy Spirit, we came in with the Virgin Mary.
SPEAKER_02: And one second for our saints Christian.
SPEAKER_05: Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_05: Grant that every member of the Church may truly and humbly serve you.
SPEAKER_05: We pray for Michael, our presiding bishop, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops, in a diocese in the cycle of prayer, Epiphany Houston, Holy Apostles, Katie, and Holy Spirit Houston, for Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the priests in our community, Mike, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, and for all bishops, priests and deacons.
SPEAKER_05: We pray for all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world, for all the members of the armed forces, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plant the seeds of your kingdom everywhere.
SPEAKER_05: We pray for our parish and our vestry.
SPEAKER_05: We pray for St.
SPEAKER_05: Thomas the Apostle School, for those who teach and those who learn.
SPEAKER_05: Give us grace to do your will in all that we undertake.
SPEAKER_02: That our words may find favor in your sight.
SPEAKER_05: Have compassion on those who suffer from any grief or trouble.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: Give to the departed eternal rest.
SPEAKER_05: We praise you for St.
SPEAKER_05: Thomas the Apostle and your saints who have entered into joy.
unknown: May we also come to share your Lord.
SPEAKER_05: Let us give thanks for our blessings and pray for our own needs and those of others, especially Chris, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Joe, Larry, and Nancy, and those the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.
SPEAKER_05: Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit, you have made us with one with your saints in heaven and on earth.
SPEAKER_05: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy.
SPEAKER_05: We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit, who lives and reigns forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty and most merciful God, we are thankful that your compassion is higher than the heavens, wider than our wanderings, deeper than all our sin.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive our careless attitudes toward your purposes, our refusal to relieve the suffering of others, our envy of those who have more than we have, our obsession with creating a life of constant entertainment, our indifference to the treasures of heaven, our neglect of your wise and gracious law.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to change our way of life, so that we may desire what is good, love what you love, and do what you command through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: The Almighty and compassionate Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We stand because we believe in God's restorative justice.
SPEAKER_01: The peace of the Lord, socially distant, to be always with you.
SPEAKER_01: There are a few uh announcements I want to call to your attention.
SPEAKER_01: One is that this Wednesday at 7 p.m., we'll have an opportunity to go into Thanksgiving, since many of us aren't going anywhere else, at 7 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: with the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_01: And so uh it'll be short.
SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll have a really wonderful time to do this litany of Thanksgiving together that comes out of our program and um opportunity to have some socially distanced warm punch afterward as well.
SPEAKER_01: Um we'll see if it's cool or not, but um that'll be this Wednesday at 7, and we will also stream that.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it really is a wonderful way to get into the spirit of Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Um, next week begins, of course, uh the church year with Advent 1.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I want to raise it to you uh uh an adult formation study.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we'll be studying a book called 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know, and it really is a great way to get some insight into what uh biblical translation looks like, uh especially obviously from Hebrew into English, and um ways that it matters, ways in which uh one-to-word one-to-one translations actually can become encyclopedic and um can give us a fuller, deeper understanding of the scriptures so that we can follow them and live into them.
SPEAKER_01: So I commend the book to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's really fabulous, um, particularly as a Hebrew student, it's great.
SPEAKER_01: And uh we'll start next week, West Chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: And um, you can get the book on Amazon and we'll just uh do that from 9 to about 9.45.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody asked me today, what happens if I come to the eight o'clock service and I don't have time to get home?
SPEAKER_01: Can I log on here at St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can.
SPEAKER_01: So if you end up coming here and you want a room to sit in and join us with your iPad, we do have Wi-Fi here and we can do that.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the other thing I want to um put before you, uh, we're gonna do two things after the um after we set up the Eucharist, we're going to ask God's blessing upon our pledges for the year because um one thing we know about God is that God can do more than we can ask or imagine.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna ask that blessing and consecrate our pledges.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the other thing, though, is really great news, which I think many of us could use here at the end of the church's version of 2020.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I would like for you please to um mark in your head December the 20th.
SPEAKER_01: That is our festival day.
SPEAKER_01: It's the um anniversary of St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas transferred.
SPEAKER_01: So 56 years ago, on December 21st, a group of Clear Lake folks decided we needed an Episcopal church here.
SPEAKER_01: There was literally nothing, and NASA was moving here, and they met in a hotel and they made an Episcopal church.
SPEAKER_01: So it is our 56th anniversary on the 21st.
SPEAKER_01: The 20th, uh, we are going to celebrate 56 years of history.
SPEAKER_01: We've put together a history magazine that will tell you about 56 years in ministry, and um even better, two years ago we owed$540,000 on that hallway, and this December the 20th, that mortgage will be zeroed out.
SPEAKER_01: And um, that is a really wonderful thing that we're going to celebrate on our festival day.
SPEAKER_01: We are going to try really hard, weather permitting, to get outside and have some food and to get a bishop here so that we can do some wonderful things.
SPEAKER_01: So just check that day, but that day, instead of Advent 4, we are celebrating our paternal feast, St.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas, and our 56 years in ministry and your tremendous generosity in going from something we had no idea what we were going to do with three years ago, to all of a sudden really being free.
SPEAKER_01: Continue to walk in love as Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_03: And striving my love profit The Prophet and strange things.
SPEAKER_01: Gracious and loving God, giver of all that is good and true and beautiful and life-giving, these pledge cards represent our sweat.
SPEAKER_01: They represent our lives, they represent our dreams, they represent the fixing of our hearts on true joys amidst the swift and varied changes of the world.
SPEAKER_01: The pledges which we make on them are but tokens of the awesome gifts that have been given to us, and their pledge and thanksgiving for all we have received, for all we've been inspired to be, for all we are challenged to become in this place.
SPEAKER_01: May they be the first fruits of all we have and not what we have left over, so that we may live out as closely as possible how you give to us.
SPEAKER_01: May we see them as our offering to you, sacred, holy, yet earthly, filled with possibilities.
SPEAKER_01: May we hold this image in our hearts and minds as we watch our offerings each week come to your table.
SPEAKER_01: May we see our very selves being part of this offering.
SPEAKER_01: It is on this table, living sacrifices to you.
SPEAKER_01: You have given us the courage to pursue these pledges.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for the grace to accomplish them, knowing you can do more than we ask or imagine.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.
SPEAKER_01: You who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.
SPEAKER_01: You who have tried to follow, and you who have failed, come.
SPEAKER_01: Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Lift up your hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.
SPEAKER_01: It is very meet right in our bound in duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God, and therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
SPEAKER_01: Glory be to thee, O Lord, most high.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.
SPEAKER_01: All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth, and didst make us in thine own image.
SPEAKER_01: And of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.
SPEAKER_01: He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that, his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.
SPEAKER_01: For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.
SPEAKER_01: And when he had given thanks to thee, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat.
SPEAKER_01: This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_01: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_01: Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.
SPEAKER_01: And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink this, all of you.
SPEAKER_01: This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all, for the remission of sins.
SPEAKER_01: Do this as oft as you shall drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_01: Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people do celebrate and make with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.
SPEAKER_01: And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of our dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.
SPEAKER_01: Grant we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.
SPEAKER_01: And also that we and all thy whole church may be made one body with Him, that He may dwell in us and we in Him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom and with whom and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now, as our Savio Christ hath taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass 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 and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let us keep the feast.
SPEAKER_01: Alleluia.
SPEAKER_01: These are the gifts of God for you, the family of God.
SPEAKER_01: Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: And I invite you to receive either bread or blessing by coming to the aisle immediately to your right.
SPEAKER_01: We'll come down socially distanced around our seats, uh, back to our seats.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty and ever-living God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us in these holy mysteries with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of thy Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us, and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people, and are also heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And we humbly beseech thee, O Heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honor and glory, world without end.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: May God, who by the Holy Spirit caused those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, to strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.
SPEAKER_01: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and remain with you forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.