SPEAKER_02: It's just a side.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_00: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty and ever living God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy for giving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Please join me in the prayer of Saint Francis.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
SPEAKER_00: Where there is hatred, let me so love.
SPEAKER_00: Where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness, joy.
SPEAKER_00: O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.
SPEAKER_00: For it is in giving that we receive, and it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages, who says, I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms, and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.
SPEAKER_03: Are you a king because you compete in cedar?
SPEAKER_03: Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness?
SPEAKER_03: Then it was well with him.
SPEAKER_03: He judged the cause of the poor and the needy, then it was well.
SPEAKER_03: Is not this to know me, says the Lord, the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Please join me as we read Psalm 148 responsibly by the half verse.
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord from the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Fire and hail, snow and fog.
SPEAKER_00: Mountains and all hills.
SPEAKER_00: Wild beasts and all cattle.
SPEAKER_00: Kings of the earth and all peoples.
SPEAKER_00: Young men and women.
SPEAKER_00: Let them praise the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has raised up strength for the chosen people and praise for all loyal servants.
SPEAKER_04: A reading from Galatians.
SPEAKER_04: May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
SPEAKER_04: For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything.
SPEAKER_04: As for those who will follow this rule, peace be upon them and mercy and upon the people of God.
SPEAKER_04: From now on, let no one make trouble for me, for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.
SPEAKER_04: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: At that time Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you've hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and have revealed them to infants.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
SPEAKER_00: All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
SPEAKER_00: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Reminder that in the church we don't celebrate saints on their birthday.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate them on the day in which they pass into larger life.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're wondering when is Martin Luther King's Day in the church, it's April the 4th.
SPEAKER_00: It's not in January, because on April the 4th is when he passed a larger life.
SPEAKER_00: And here we are now, October the 4th.
SPEAKER_00: We don't exactly know Francis' birthday anyway, but this is in fact his day.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to offer to you a little bit about Francis.
SPEAKER_00: Many people, historians, would tell you he is remarkable in the history of the known world as one of the most charismatic and compelling figures that there was.
SPEAKER_00: So just a brief biographical sketch and why I think that matters to today's gospel, if that's okay, especially because there's something really compelling about some of the Franciscan legends for living, frankly, a fuller way of life.
SPEAKER_00: Francis was born to a merchant who was arguably an upper middle class merchant, and uh he was an extremely uh happy, gregarious uh life of the party young man.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he had enormous economic resources behind him in a CC from his father's lucrative and successful merchant trade.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was known as a FOC and a dandy words that you learn from the SAT and from Yankee Doodle, which meant he wore the finest clothes that there were and threw the best parties that there were.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and all of that changed one day when Francis went off to war and received a wound, and he came back uh to heal and was completely changed.
SPEAKER_00: We would probably call it PTSD now, and so he spent months recovering, very sullen, absolutely not himself, and he took to wandering outside the walls of the C City.
SPEAKER_00: And many of you know the story that one day he found a church that was broken down, and he sat in the church to pray, and he heard a voice crystal clear, at least in his head, that said, Francis, rebuild my church.
SPEAKER_00: Initially, he took that voice extremely literally.
SPEAKER_00: So he rebuilt that church.
SPEAKER_00: He mixed cement and he mixed more and he minted the roof, and the church was done, and he felt some accomplishment, but uh not what he'd hoped.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't feel like his former self.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was after praying in the newly completed church one day on the way home, he met a uh required quarantined leper.
SPEAKER_00: Lepers were required to keep a perimeter to warn people to stay away, and something inside Francis twisted, and he not only looked at the leper, but he approached the leper and kissed the leper in his woundedness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is probably not Hansen's disease, but it is probably marked by, um, perhaps, sorry to be graphic bleeding sores.
SPEAKER_00: And so Francis went to the leper, kissed the man at the marks of his death, important to hear, and was absolutely converted.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he took the words of Jesus through St.
SPEAKER_00: Anthony, literally, um, to give away everything he had and come follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Except the problem was Francis didn't really have anything, he was all his dad's.
SPEAKER_00: So he gave away all the clothes, he started lowering the furniture out of the windows to give it away to people in town.
SPEAKER_00: Dad came back from a trip and was like, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: I want you to stop that.
SPEAKER_00: Dad took Francis to the judge in town who happened to be the bishop and said, Francis, uh, judge, Francis is giving all the stuff away, and I want you to stop.
SPEAKER_00: And Francis said, Um, look, I have no father but my heavenly father, have everything that's yours, took off his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, the bishop had a big tape and was able to cover Francis up in church.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine a scene like that today?
SPEAKER_00: Please don't.
SPEAKER_00: And um do that later in the privacy of your home.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the beginning of Francis becoming a mendicant.
SPEAKER_00: So not a priest, but somebody who went around relying on the hospitality of others and preaching the gospel as he understood it.
SPEAKER_00: Um so he literally wandered around and accepted the hospitality that people gave him.
SPEAKER_00: If they gave him food, he ate, and if they didn't, well, he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: We know Francis preached to the birds, and that's because initially nobody would listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: They thought he was nuts.
SPEAKER_00: So he talked to the animals because they were a captive audience, apparently.
SPEAKER_00: And uh what's really amazing about Francis that frankly we celebrate is that he uh grew not only in um people being curious to what he had to say, but apparently he had quite uh this aura of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in the Third Crusade, he traveled to the Holy Land hoping to be martyred for the sake of the gospel, but um the sultans liked him too much.
SPEAKER_00: They just thought he was a wonderful guy.
SPEAKER_00: So they thanked him for visiting him, sitting back home on his way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of the legends you may know, and this is why we get to hear Galatians today, Paul says, I bear on my body the brands or the marks of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In Greek, that's the word stigmata.
SPEAKER_00: And Francis, according to legend, had bleeding wounds in his wrists, ankles, and side for years because he was so caught up uh in Jesus that he bore on his body the marks of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think that's what the gospel, I mean, what Paul had in mind, but I want you to hear uh that got transferred uh to Francis.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that Francis, we remember him for, um, quite frankly, and if you know many Franciscans, I'm privileged to know one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Father Bob Flick over at Good Shepherd started us uh in the Order of Franciscans before he became an Episcopalian.
SPEAKER_00: Um, almost to that fail, Franciscans are able to see, in my experience, beauty in the most ordinary and offensive.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the legacy is even not only in the leper, but in the leper's wounds to see God's presence and the really compelling personalities.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the ministry of Francis, I think, that we celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Um, especially Francis was able to do this in the natural world and in the animals.
SPEAKER_00: And so you'll hear today in the prayers of the people that we've interwoven the canical of the sun, which identifies the sun as our brother, the moon as our sister, the wind as our brother, the earth as our mother, and even death as our sister.
SPEAKER_00: So if you know the hymn, All Creatures of Our God and King, Francis was boldly identifying the death was created by God and accomplishes God's purpose, not death with a capital D, but the bodily death that we can all expect to have.
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, again, radical theology of affirmation where God is to be found.
SPEAKER_00: A couple other things you may not realize Francis invented at Christmas time in Assisi, people felt extremely, I'm sorry, um, in Italy, people felt a little disconnected from the nativity story.
SPEAKER_00: And so Francis thought that he would make that story come alive by bringing a donkey and sheep and putting it in the public square.
SPEAKER_00: It was a living nativity, and it happened in the town of Greccio, which is why we call those little sets Cretches.
SPEAKER_00: That's the French version of the town Greccio.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my favorite story, though, is the one I want to tell you now, and then I'm going to tell you why I think it matters on St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis Day to think through.
SPEAKER_00: That's Francis and the Wolf, the wolf of Gubio.
SPEAKER_00: So once upon a time there was a really large wolf, and it had access to a spring.
SPEAKER_00: It lived in the wild, and then some people saw that this spring was a really desirable place to build a town.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so they did.
SPEAKER_00: The problem was you don't really want to have a town where there's a wolf, uh, so they built the wall to keep the wolf out.
SPEAKER_00: The wolf no longer had access to its natural resources.
SPEAKER_00: The people who had the town decided they were going to be herds people, so the enmity between the people and the wolf grew.
SPEAKER_00: Initially, the wolf took care of itself by preying on the weak, the weakest lambs, the weakest goats.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but as people grew frustrated with the wolf, uh they had they traded antagonisms, including throwing rocks and then trying to shoot the wolf with arrows.
SPEAKER_00: The wolf eventually ended up eating some people.
SPEAKER_00: It was a mess.
SPEAKER_00: The wolf was so big and so powerful the people of the town could not overpower it.
SPEAKER_00: Francis was in the region.
SPEAKER_00: People invited him to resolve their wolf problem.
SPEAKER_00: This was a guy who had the marks of Jesus on his body.
SPEAKER_00: Surely he could deal with a wolf.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, what they had in mind was he would strike it dead with lightning.
SPEAKER_00: So they brought Francis in to deal with the wolf.
SPEAKER_00: Francis said, sure, I'll come meet the wolf.
SPEAKER_00: They said, We don't want you to meet the wolf, we want you to kill the wolf.
SPEAKER_00: He came anyway.
SPEAKER_00: He walked outside of town.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody climbs up on top of the wall to see what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: The wolf comes running because the wolf smells meat.
SPEAKER_00: And according to the legend, Francis opens his hands to the wolf, calls the wolf his brother, and the wolf stops dead in his tracks and they have a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: And Francis says, Brother wolf, I know the people of the town have been cruel to you.
SPEAKER_00: They took what was rightfully yours, and they chased you.
SPEAKER_00: And they tried to kill you, and they tried to hurt you.
SPEAKER_00: And the wolf is a good conversation partner in the story.
SPEAKER_00: And then Francis says, But, Brother Wolf, you haven't treated the town like your brother either.
SPEAKER_00: You have wantonly attacked their animals, you've attacked their children, you've attacked their herdspeople.
SPEAKER_00: Brother Wolf, are you willing to be reconciled in the name of Jesus Christ with the town?
SPEAKER_00: The wolf shook on it.
SPEAKER_00: And Francis did the unforgivable.
SPEAKER_00: He opened the door and let the wolf ride into town.
SPEAKER_00: And the people on the walk sort of go ballistic, they get their pitchforks, and uh the only reason probably they don't kill the wolf is Francis is standing in their way.
SPEAKER_00: And Francis says, Look, I brought the wolf, your brother, to be reconciled to you.
SPEAKER_00: And the people in the town say, Great, we'll be reconciled, just move a little bit to the right.
SPEAKER_00: Depending on which version of the story you read, it's a little child who slips away from her mother or his mother, depending on which version, because mom's got her pitchfork, she's not holding on, and the little child takes Francis at his word and hugs the wolf, and there's this sort of gasp from the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: And amazingly, the wolf licks the child.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is that another child leads them and hugs the wolf.
SPEAKER_00: And this goes on and on until the town is forced to put their weapons down so that they don't hurt their children.
SPEAKER_00: And so they live out this slow reconciliation, and the conclusion is Francis leaves, the wolf takes turns sleeping with each child in the village each night.
SPEAKER_00: And the wolf, uh, in exchange, the village feeds the wolf, and the wolf is sort of the bouncer or the security system par excellence for a medieval village, because anyone who comes over the wall, the wolf is there to greet them.
SPEAKER_00: And it is with great sadness that the wolf buries the wolf some 20 years later, the village buries the wolf 20 years later.
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing legend about reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta tell you, I really wish Francis would show up today, because we could use a whole lot of reconciliation, forget about the world, we could just use it here locally.
SPEAKER_00: We know that that kind of reconciliation can sometimes be, well, dangerous, just like it was in the story.
SPEAKER_00: And who knows if it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you, though, that this year I've returned to this story that I think I told you two years ago, um, because my spiritual director uh referred me to a book that I recently have tried to plod through, and I just find very Franciscan, and I find it bears out in the story.
SPEAKER_00: The book is called Self-Therapy, an internal family systems approach.
SPEAKER_00: It's written by a therapist named Jay Early, and um many of you have possibly heard of family systems before, after all.
SPEAKER_00: We all belong to families, and in families members play parts.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's the star student, and there's the black sheep, and there's the jokester, right?
SPEAKER_00: We all have members in our family.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got an uncle Steve or Kevin or whoever your uncle is, uh, the one that you talk about on Thanksgiving but don't see, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the book says, yeah, we've got these family systems outside, but we also have them inside.
SPEAKER_00: The book says quite interestingly that we're made up of many, many little parts.
SPEAKER_00: And uh two particular parts the book identifies are exiles.
SPEAKER_00: Those are parts of us, frankly, that were hurt, most likely when we were children.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we were made fun of or we were rejected.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: The other kind of part that many of us have are called protectors.
SPEAKER_00: And the protectors are things like, well, the judge or the bridge burner or the achiever or the accomplisher.
SPEAKER_00: And the protector is there either to keep the exile safe or to keep the exile away from us so that we're not overwhelmed with the feelings from that event.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly enough, a lot of therapy tries, a lot of particularly the way we deal with things about ourselves we don't like, is to tell ourselves we don't like that part of ourselves and we wish it would just quit or go away.
SPEAKER_00: Or if we could really get our hands around that protector, we'd kill it so we could be free.
SPEAKER_00: What's really interesting is that this book, Internal Family Systems, says, you know, these parts of us that sometimes drive us crazy, like sometimes we just can't sit still.
SPEAKER_00: We've just got to be doing something.
SPEAKER_00: The reason is so that we don't get overwhelmed with certain feelings.
SPEAKER_00: And that those parts of us that drive us crazy actually started because they have our best interest in mind and they are working really hard to help us.
SPEAKER_00: And if we try to chase them down, if we try to build a wall around those parts, if we treat them like a ravenous wolf, well, not only is it not going to work, because ultimately those are parts of ourselves, right?
SPEAKER_00: But killing those parts would be losing parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, internal family systems is about recognizing with true curiosity what those parts do for us, what they're afraid will happen if they stop doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Getting to know those parts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this may sound really kooky, but you can listen to these transcripts where people start off imagining the critical part of themselves as like a sooty demon, and then they change the image when they realize what the sooty demon's been doing for them to like a Tasmanian devil, which is certainly a step up from a demon.
SPEAKER_00: And that these people who engage in internal family uh systems start to get to know fully the parts of themselves and what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: They start to earn their trust, and at the end of the day, it's not so that that part will just leave them, it's so that that part can do something different.
SPEAKER_00: They start to recognize that the parts of ourselves that we don't like are doing their best to help us out.
SPEAKER_00: And that internally and paternal family systems is about reconciling all the parts of ourselves, especially the ones that we're afraid of, so that we can be a whole family within ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that seems weird to you, but I gotta tell you, I have a pretty easy time finding parts of myself I don't like.
SPEAKER_00: And I have an easier time telling them to be quiet or to stand down.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I think the ministry of Francis is that reconciliation happens exactly in the parts that we don't like.
SPEAKER_00: And that God's presence is not just found in the lepers, it's found in the wounds.
SPEAKER_00: And the story about Francis and the wolf is about turning an enemy into a protector.
SPEAKER_00: It's about turning something you don't like and something you're afraid of into something that's mutually gratifying.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's all made up.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the best kind of legend because it offers us a way forward inside.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I think the reason we have such a hard time with other people is because we have such a hard time with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And if we were able to make peace with our inner critic, with our accomplisher, with our bouncer, with our whatever it is, with the part that you have, well then we just might be able to be actually curious about other folk.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe you've heard of Thomas Merton, and Thomas Merton continues the Franciscan tradition and says, you know, if the goal is to get to know your inner part so you can capture it, it will always run away from you.
SPEAKER_00: So what Francis invites us to do, I think, is to say, if I can't see God in another person, if I can't see God in this part of myself, if I can't see God in a mosquito, it's not because God's not there, it's because my imagination is deficient.
SPEAKER_00: Francis invites us not to write those parts off, but to open ourselves to the lepers within and without, and to be converted in God's presence in all things.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I think we hear in the gospel Come unto me, all you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: It's not exactly restful to cut off parts of yourself that you don't like, exactly schizophrenic.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the rest that Jesus offers is to be healed exactly as we are.
SPEAKER_00: That sure seems like a lighter burden to me than chopping off parts of my foot or toe or hand, to be reconciled with myself.
SPEAKER_00: To be reconciled with others.
SPEAKER_00: Franciscans offer this other skill that I think is so lacking in myself and others, and this tells you a little bit about my own parts, I suppose, which is the ability to have compassion for people, especially when they do the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to close with a poem that a previous parishioner and dear friend of mine sent me.
SPEAKER_00: This was from On Being this week with Christa Tippett.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Phase One, and it embodies, I think, the kind of forgiveness that Francis invites us to leave out.
SPEAKER_00: Phase one by Dilruba Ahmed.
SPEAKER_00: For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: For conjuring white curtains instead of living your life, for the seedlings that wilt now in tiny pots, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: For saying no first, but yes as an afterthought.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth brought on by loss of sleep.
SPEAKER_00: And when the baby woke repeatedly for your silent rebuke in the dark, what's your beef?
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for letting vines overtake the garden, for fearing your own propensity to love, for losing again your bag en route from San Francisco, for the equally heedless drive back on the caffeine-fueled return.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for leaving windows open in rain and soaking library books again, for putting forth only revisions of yourself with punctuation worked over instead of the disordered truth.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for singing mostly when the shower drowns your voice, for so admiring the drummer you failed to hear the drum.
SPEAKER_00: In forgotten tin cans, may forgiveness gather.
SPEAKER_00: Pooling in gutters, gushing from pipes, a great steady rain of olives from branches, relieved of cruelty and petty meanness.
SPEAKER_00: With it a flurry of wings, thirteen gray pigeons, ointment reserved for healers and prophets.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for feeling awkward and nervous without reason.
SPEAKER_00: For bearing Keith's empty vessel with such calm you worried you had perhaps no moral center at all.
SPEAKER_00: For treating your mother with contempt when she deserved compassion, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you for growing up a capacity for love that is great, but matched only perhaps by your loneliness.
SPEAKER_00: For being unable to forgive yourself first, so you could then forgive others and at last find a way to become the love that you want in this world.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would feast with Francis today at the table of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: A feast of forgiveness, a feast of reconciliation, a feast of God's presence in all of our parts.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, and Maker of the Earth.
unknown: All that is seen and unseen.
unknown: We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The only eternal God.
SPEAKER_00: In peace we pray to you, Lord God.
SPEAKER_00: Most High, all-powerful, good Lord, all praise, glory, honor, and blessings are yours.
SPEAKER_00: They belong to you alone, most high, for no one is worthy to mention your name.
SPEAKER_00: For all people in their daily life and work.
SPEAKER_00: Our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are alone.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother, Son.
SPEAKER_00: He is the day, and through him you give us light.
SPEAKER_00: He is beautiful and radiant with great splendor and bears your likeness, Most High One.
SPEAKER_00: For this community, the nation and the world, for all who work for justice, freedom, and peace.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars.
SPEAKER_00: You form them in heaven, clear and beautiful, for the peace and unity of the Church of God, for all who proclaim the gospel and all who seek the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, through Brother Wind, through the heavens, cloudy and serene, and through every kind of weather.
SPEAKER_00: Through them you give sustenance to your creatures, for all bishops, priests, and deacons, for the priests in our community, Mike, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops, and for Michael, our presiding bishop.
SPEAKER_00: For all who serve God and the church.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, through Sister Water.
SPEAKER_00: She is very useful, humble, precious, and chaste.
SPEAKER_00: For St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas the Apostle School.
SPEAKER_00: Well, those who teach and those who learn, that they may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, to Brother Fire.
SPEAKER_00: Through him you light up the night.
SPEAKER_00: He is beautiful, cheerful, robust, and strong.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, to our sister Mother Earth.
SPEAKER_00: She sustains and governs us and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs, for the just and proper use of your creation, for the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be you, my Lord, through those who forgive out of love for you, and through those who bear infirmity and tribulation.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who endure in peace.
SPEAKER_00: You, Most High, will crown them.
SPEAKER_00: For all who are in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble, for those who minister to the sick, the friendless, and the needy.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to you, my Lord, through our sister bodily death.
SPEAKER_00: No living person can escape her.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who die in your most holy will, remembering especially today Mel, for the second death shall not harm them.
SPEAKER_00: For the special needs and concerns of this congregation, especially Chris, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, Andrea, Kevin, Ron, Joe, and Nancy from Nelva.
SPEAKER_00: And those the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.
SPEAKER_00: Hear us, Lord, for your mercy is great.
SPEAKER_00: Praise and bless my Lord, give God thanks and serve God with great humility.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Lord, for all the blessings of this life.
SPEAKER_00: We will exalt you, O God, our King, and praise your name forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you also for the forgiveness of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: 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_00: 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_00: Help us to change our way of life so that we may desire what is good.
SPEAKER_00: Love what you love, and do what you command through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: It's very Franciscan that we stand, because that worked.
SPEAKER_00: So we stand before God now as worthy and with one another as worthy.
SPEAKER_00: The socially distanced of the peace, the socially distanced peace of the Lord be always with you.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, and thank you for worshiping with us at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas today.
SPEAKER_00: Just a few announcements I want to call to your attention.
SPEAKER_00: One is that yesterday we had our monthly food distribution and we were able to serve 92 cars representing 385 persons.
SPEAKER_00: This is a great partnership we have with the Galveston County Food Bank for$200.
SPEAKER_00: We get$17,000 worth of food to distribute.
SPEAKER_00: And so in general, we feed 400 people a month here at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: Fresh groceries, and people who were there will tell you it's like 50, 60 pounds worth of groceries that we're sending people away with.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for offering this ministry.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great things about it is yesterday four people showed up who have never been to our church.
SPEAKER_00: They saw the ad in the newspaper and they wanted to do more together, and that's what we do at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: We do more together.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_00: Today is the Feast of St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis, which means pet blessing.
SPEAKER_00: And the way you can do that if you'd like is we're having a pet drive-thru, not a drive-by.
SPEAKER_00: A drive-by would need driving by your home.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, you drive here with your pet or stuffed animal or a facsimile of your pet.
SPEAKER_00: It actually doesn't have to be very well behaved as long as it's in your car.
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll do the drive-thru right on here from four to five.
SPEAKER_00: And your friends and neighbors and even people you don't like are also very welcome to bring their pets by for a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's from four to five today.
SPEAKER_00: What's really amazing about our guys up there, Bob Ketchum and Todd Parker, of course, is that they've enabled us to stream our services on YouTube.
SPEAKER_00: But that's all the more valuable as we think about burial and mourning people who have lost, not only because of COVID, but because of difficulty of travel plans.
SPEAKER_00: And so your support of that ministry and Bob and Todd are really the torchbearers that have gotten us online.
SPEAKER_00: It means a great deal.
SPEAKER_00: One other word I want to give you is that pledge packets went out this week.
SPEAKER_00: Normally we have a little more to do about that here in person, but it's a little harder to do that.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to share with you briefly why it is that pledging matters to me.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't grow up in a church that pledged.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a household in which the first check each month was 10% of gross pay, and that was the minimum.
SPEAKER_00: So I had a really good mom who showed me that generosity.
SPEAKER_00: But as I've gotten older, pledging frankly helps me live into my value.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a generous person, and honestly, having a pledge allows me to figure out what I'm able to do, what I'm able to live into, and have that as a goal and a commitment that allows me to express my generosity as a first thought, not as an afterthought, as a way of committing and living into instead of maybe there's something left.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm grateful to be able to pledge because it helps me live into my values.
SPEAKER_00: I I put in as well this letter.
SPEAKER_00: I had a conversation to me that was really eye-opening this summer.
SPEAKER_00: COVID really allowed a lot of phone calls and a lot of reconnections with people.
SPEAKER_00: And my mentoring rector, who was a career priest, whose father was a career priest, whose grandfather was a career priest, I don't know how we got on stewardship, but he said, you know, I've just got to tell you, it's not a bad amount, but the most joyful people I've met are the ones who make commitments to generosity.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, because having a generous heart transforms you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I have to admit, selfishly, I'd like to be more transformed.
SPEAKER_00: And pledging is an opportunity for me to say, I'm going to step into generosity because life is bigger than when we do.
SPEAKER_00: So I invite you to celebrate what St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas has done in our community and in your own life and in the lives of people that you're meeting and haven't met and are loving.
SPEAKER_00: And take your time with your pledge card.
SPEAKER_00: One thing I know about this community, because this is not my first church that I've been a part of, is that people here are loving and kind, and they're trying to live not only in the way of St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis, but in the way of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful for you, and I'm grateful for this opportunity for us to live that out with our stewardship year after year of time and service.
SPEAKER_00: So continue to walk in love.
SPEAKER_00: As Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the table, not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.
SPEAKER_00: 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_00: You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.
SPEAKER_00: Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Lift up your hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
SPEAKER_02: It is right to give you that things like this.
SPEAKER_00: It is right and a good and a joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the obedience of your saints, you've given us an example of righteousness, and in their eternal joy a glorious pledge of the hope of our calling.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and with archangels, and with all the company of heaven, who forever say this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.
SPEAKER_00: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna and the highest.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna and the highest.
SPEAKER_00: Holy and gracious Father, in your infinite love, you made us for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And when we've fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.
SPEAKER_00: He stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.
SPEAKER_00: And when he given thanks to you, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, Take, eat.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this for the remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink this, all of you.
SPEAKER_00: This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we proclaim the mystery of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer to you these gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people, the body and blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in Him.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy sacrament and serve you in unity and constancy and peace.
SPEAKER_00: And at the last day, bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ, by him and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.
SPEAKER_00: 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_00: 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_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah, Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us.
unknown: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: These are the gifts of God for you, the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: People of God, behold who you are and become what you receive.
SPEAKER_00: And I invite you, if you'd like to receive bread or a blessing, to simply come to the aisle that is to your right.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you bread or a blessing and send you back around to your seat.
SPEAKER_00: Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood.
SPEAKER_00: Now send us forth a people, forgiven, healed, renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
SPEAKER_00: May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
SPEAKER_00: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you always.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.