William H. Willimon - "Good-bye" (May 7, 1989)
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Transcript
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(gentle orchestral music) | 0:00 | |
(choir singing) | 0:08 | |
- | Good morning, and welcome to the service of worship, | 1:24 |
here at Duke University Chapel. | 1:27 | |
We're delighted to see each of you here | 1:29 | |
on this last Sunday of Easter. | 1:31 | |
We also extend greetings to those of you | 1:34 | |
in our radio and television audiences, | 1:35 | |
and especially to those patients | 1:38 | |
and families at Duke Hospitals. | 1:40 | |
Our preacher for this morning is | 1:42 | |
the Reverend Doctor William H. Willimon, | 1:44 | |
Minister to the University. | 1:46 | |
We extend a warm welcome to the members | 1:48 | |
of the Elon College Choir | 1:50 | |
and their director, Doctor Stephen Tanai. | 1:52 | |
We are indebted to Doctor Walter Westifer, | 1:54 | |
a member of the Duke Chapel Congregation, | 1:57 | |
and a retired faculty member at Elon College, | 1:59 | |
for helping us to establish a relationship | 2:02 | |
with the Elon College Choir several years ago | 2:04 | |
and so we are delighted to be able | 2:07 | |
to have them back each year, | 2:09 | |
as they assist and lead leadership of our worship. | 2:11 | |
We also extend a thank you and a fond farewell | 2:14 | |
to Bill Gates, who has been our sound technician, | 2:17 | |
here at the Chapel for the past five and a half years. | 2:21 | |
He has held our light in his hands, so to speak, | 2:24 | |
and he has served us very well. | 2:27 | |
We wish him well in his continued | 2:29 | |
graduate studies at University of Iowa. | 2:31 | |
Please note the remaining announcements, | 2:34 | |
as they are printed in your bulletins. | 2:36 | |
And now let us stand and sing together. | 2:38 | |
(strong organ music) | 2:41 | |
(congregation singing hymn) | 3:03 | |
- | O God, who makest us glad, with the weekly remembrance of | 6:23 |
the glorious resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord. | 6:26 | |
Vouch, save us this day, such blessing | 6:29 | |
through our worship of Thee, | 6:32 | |
that the days to come may be spent in Thy service, | 6:35 | |
through the same, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. | 6:39 | |
- | Let us pray. | 6:58 |
Open our hearts and minds, O God, | 7:02 | |
by the power of your Holy Spirit, | 7:04 | |
so that as the Word is read and proclaimed, | 7:07 | |
we might hear with joy the message | 7:10 | |
of the Risen Christ, Amen. | 7:13 | |
A reading from the Revelation to St. John the Divine. | 7:17 | |
Behold I am coming soon, bringing | 7:22 | |
my recompence to repay everyone what he has done. | 7:24 | |
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, | 7:28 | |
the Beginning and the End. | 7:33 | |
Blessed are those who wash their robes, | 7:35 | |
that they may have the right to the Tree of Life, | 7:38 | |
and that they may enter the city by the gates. | 7:41 | |
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to you | 7:44 | |
with this testimony for the churches. | 7:48 | |
I am the root and the offspring of David, | 7:50 | |
the bright morning star. | 7:52 | |
The Spirit and the Bride say, come, | 7:55 | |
and let him who hears say, come, | 7:58 | |
and let him who is thirsty, come, | 8:01 | |
let him who desires, take the water of life without price. | 8:03 | |
He who testifies to these things says, | 8:08 | |
surely I am coming soon, Amen. | 8:11 | |
Come, Lord Jesus. | 8:15 | |
This ends the reading of the first lesson. | 8:18 | |
(intense orchestral music) | 8:46 | |
(choir singing) | 8:53 | |
- | The Gospel lesson from this last Sunday of Easter, | 11:18 |
is from the Gospel of John. | 11:23 | |
I do not pray for these only, | 11:27 | |
but also for those who believe in Me through their word, | 11:29 | |
that they all may be one, even as Thou Father art in Me, | 11:34 | |
and I in Thee, that they also may be in us. | 11:39 | |
So that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me. | 11:43 | |
The glory which Thou has given me, I have given to them, | 11:47 | |
that they may be one, even as we are one. | 11:52 | |
I in them, and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly | 11:56 | |
one so that the world may know that Thou hast sent me | 12:00 | |
and has loved them, even as Thou hast loved me. | 12:04 | |
Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou has given me, | 12:08 | |
may be with me, where I am. | 12:13 | |
To behold my glory, which Thou has given me, in Thy love. | 12:16 | |
For me, before the foundation of the world, | 12:20 | |
O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee, | 12:24 | |
but I have known Thee, | 12:28 | |
and these know that Thou hast sent me. | 12:31 | |
I made known to them Thy name and I will make it known | 12:34 | |
that the love with which Thou hast loved me, | 12:39 | |
may be in them, and I in them. | 12:42 | |
Here ends the Gospel. | 12:48 | |
My wife and I have this running argument, | 12:53 | |
discussion. | 12:59 | |
We differ on how to say goodbye, | 13:01 | |
say after visiting in someone's home for an evening. | 13:03 | |
Toward the end of the evening, | 13:09 | |
I decide that it's time to go. | 13:10 | |
I get up and I say something like, | 13:11 | |
well this has all been just wonderful, | 13:13 | |
but it's getting late and we really must go, | 13:15 | |
and I move toward the door. | 13:18 | |
And she just sits there. | 13:21 | |
Now in her heart of hearts, she also wants to go, | 13:23 | |
but she thinks it's rude to just get up and go, | 13:27 | |
so she continues talking | 13:31 | |
and there I am, standing in the middle of the floor, | 13:32 | |
with coat in hand, and the hosts always say something like, | 13:34 | |
well you're certainly in a rush, aren't you? | 13:38 | |
On the way home I ask, why can't we just leave? | 13:44 | |
But, no, she says, there's a way to leave. | 13:49 | |
She believes that one should leave a room | 13:52 | |
the way molasses leaves a bottle. | 13:54 | |
If we work this out in the next | 13:59 | |
20 years of our marriage, I will tell you. | 14:01 | |
Yet she has a point, parting, | 14:07 | |
departure is tough to do, | 14:11 | |
even when you agree on how to do it, | 14:16 | |
because there is something, something deep within us | 14:20 | |
that resists this potentially frightening move | 14:24 | |
from presence to absence. | 14:29 | |
In my last congregation, now sometimes on the weekend, | 14:34 | |
we would be visited by teenagers in the congregation | 14:37 | |
who would drop by to say hello. | 14:40 | |
And we learned there, that saying goodbye | 14:44 | |
is something you have to learn how to do | 14:47 | |
because they would stay for an hour or so, | 14:51 | |
and then you would know that they wanted to go, | 14:53 | |
that they had something better to do on a Friday night, | 14:57 | |
but having summoned up the courage | 15:00 | |
to visit with a couple of adults, | 15:02 | |
they hadn't the foggiest idea of how to get out of it. | 15:04 | |
And so they would rise and they would stand by the door, | 15:07 | |
on one foot and then the other, | 15:10 | |
and there would be this awkward sort of gaping silence | 15:11 | |
as they tried to figure out how you get out. | 15:14 | |
How you go. | 15:17 | |
There's a way to do it. | 15:19 | |
Saying goodbye does not come naturally. | 15:24 | |
The move from presence to absence is a frightening one. | 15:29 | |
When someone is present to us, | 15:35 | |
there is conversation and there is communion, | 15:37 | |
but when someone leaves us, a crisis is provoked. | 15:44 | |
Absence creates a void, and what will fill that void, | 15:48 | |
once presence has turned to absence? | 15:53 | |
So anything to avoid goodbye. | 15:59 | |
But of course, if you live very long in this life, | 16:04 | |
you have to become accustomed to saying farewell, | 16:06 | |
'cause when you think about it, | 16:10 | |
life is one long series of goodbyes. | 16:11 | |
Leave takings. | 16:16 | |
Movement from presence to absence. | 16:17 | |
Judith Viorst's book, "Necessary Losses," | 16:20 | |
chronicles the reality, the pain of saying goodbye, | 16:26 | |
which she believes, begins early as the child | 16:30 | |
bids farewell to the mother and goes off to school. | 16:34 | |
And that farewell is prelude to a whole string of farewells. | 16:38 | |
In a class on marriage, one of my friends asks the students | 16:46 | |
to come up with a good reason | 16:52 | |
for having children in marriage. | 16:53 | |
One of the students responded, | 16:57 | |
"So you won't be lonely in your old age." | 16:59 | |
Get a dog, he advised. | 17:04 | |
Where are your parents this morning? | 17:07 | |
What have you done for them lately? | 17:09 | |
Well, they hadn't thought about that. | 17:11 | |
When a friend's mother died recently, | 17:15 | |
and I called to offer my condolences, my friend said, | 17:19 | |
well now I'm an orphan, just like you. | 17:25 | |
Nobody stays in one place anymore, | 17:31 | |
sings the popular song, | 17:35 | |
because every hello leads to the inevitable goodbye. | 17:38 | |
And we fear goodbye. | 17:45 | |
Oh, as we grow older, we learn not to cling | 17:48 | |
to mama's knees, when the babysitter comes. | 17:51 | |
We learn how to be big and bid farewell | 17:55 | |
by the October of the first grade. | 17:57 | |
But absence still hurts. | 18:01 | |
I told my friend, whose mother had died, | 18:05 | |
that I had found that one of the cruelest aspects | 18:08 | |
of grief is that you really can't remember. | 18:10 | |
He'll live on in our memories, friends sometimes say to us | 18:16 | |
at time of bereavement, but don't believe it. | 18:19 | |
Oh, there is that remembrance of some episode or story, | 18:24 | |
or that snippet of the voice, | 18:29 | |
but gradually every day memory grows more faint, | 18:31 | |
until memory becomes a kind of pitiful consolation, | 18:35 | |
once presence has turned to the ultimate absence. | 18:42 | |
And it makes us wonder if we really did make progress when | 18:47 | |
we learned to stop wailing in October of the first grade. | 18:51 | |
It's painful, frightening, | 18:58 | |
the void that comes called absence. | 19:01 | |
The words which we employ at leave taking, | 19:08 | |
though now secularized and long since emptied | 19:13 | |
of their religious significance, | 19:16 | |
still harken back to a time when leave taking | 19:18 | |
and farewell was so frightening, | 19:23 | |
that we had to reach out to God to do it. | 19:27 | |
The English goodbye. | 19:31 | |
The French adieu. | 19:33 | |
The Spanish adiós. | 19:35 | |
Are all linguistically derived | 19:38 | |
from that moment of giving somebody over to God, | 19:42 | |
when we can no longer cling to them ourselves. | 19:46 | |
Goodbye, God be with you. | 19:49 | |
Parting is such sorrow. | 19:55 | |
Now, although you probably didn't notice it, | 20:00 | |
all of the Gospel lessons for these Sundays after Easter, | 20:04 | |
come from the Gospel of John, from chapters 13 through 17. | 20:07 | |
For four long chapters, | 20:13 | |
Jesus bids farewell to his disciples. | 20:15 | |
This Gospel of John began with the words, | 20:20 | |
the Word became flesh and it dwelt among us. | 20:23 | |
And it ends with Jesus saying goodbye. | 20:28 | |
It takes only a few verses for Jesus to bid farewell | 20:33 | |
in Luke or Matthew, but in John's Gospel | 20:37 | |
farewell is dragged out so long, | 20:40 | |
that it can be said to be the point of this whole Gospel. | 20:42 | |
Jesus, the one who called us and taught us. | 20:49 | |
The one who turned water into wine and raised the dead, | 20:53 | |
is preparing to leave us. | 20:57 | |
All four chapters take place on a long, | 21:01 | |
sorrowful evening, in a garden in spring. | 21:04 | |
The same garden, where Jesus will shortly | 21:08 | |
be taken away to his death, | 21:11 | |
the ultimate goodbye. | 21:15 | |
And the questions of Jesus' disciples | 21:19 | |
are simple, childlike questions. | 21:22 | |
They're the questions of little children. | 21:25 | |
Mama and daddy gather coats and hats and prepare to go out | 21:28 | |
for an evening and what are the questions of children, | 21:32 | |
always the same. | 21:35 | |
Where are you going? | 21:38 | |
Can we go too? | 21:41 | |
What's going to become of us? | 21:43 | |
Jesus is about to go. | 21:47 | |
The disciples ask, what is to become of us? | 21:49 | |
Earlier, Jesus had promised, | 21:52 | |
I will not leave you as orphans. | 21:54 | |
But can we be sure? | 21:57 | |
And through this long farewell speech, of Jesus, | 22:00 | |
which occurs, just before his death, Jesus bids farewell. | 22:06 | |
And though in the Gospel of John, | 22:12 | |
this speech occurs before Jesus' death. | 22:13 | |
It is appropriate that we treat this speech here, | 22:15 | |
in the Sundays after Easter, because I think it may be in | 22:21 | |
the time after Easter that we are apt to feel | 22:26 | |
the absence of Christ the most vividly. | 22:31 | |
For it is after Easter when we are apt to feel the tension | 22:38 | |
between presence and absence, | 22:40 | |
between having and not having Jesus, | 22:43 | |
more than at any time in the year. | 22:48 | |
We're after Easter. | 22:52 | |
Now my job on Easter was to make you feel | 22:54 | |
so vividly the presence of the risen Christ. | 23:00 | |
To make Jesus feel real and available, standing among us. | 23:05 | |
And for some of you on Easter Sunday, it worked. | 23:10 | |
You soared forth from the service, out in the bright, | 23:13 | |
Easter sunlight, convinced that you journeyed not alone. | 23:16 | |
He is risen, He is back, He is with us. | 23:20 | |
But the trouble is, always there comes | 23:24 | |
the Sundays after Easter. | 23:26 | |
The crowd dwindles. | 23:29 | |
The music does not seem to fill every corner of the chapel, | 23:31 | |
and sometimes when you sing a post-Easter hymn, | 23:33 | |
yours is the only voice you hear. | 23:36 | |
It woulda been different if the church's claim | 23:40 | |
were that Jesus was resurrected and brought back to life, | 23:43 | |
among us, period. | 23:48 | |
But that isn't the story. | 23:51 | |
In a little while you will see me no more, | 23:54 | |
says the risen Christ. | 23:57 | |
The one who says hello on Easter, | 24:00 | |
soon says goodbye. | 24:04 | |
Emmanuel, God with us. | 24:07 | |
The risen Christ, God absent from us. | 24:10 | |
If Jesus' resurrection meant that we had this | 24:17 | |
resuscitated 2000 year old, perpetual 33 year old, | 24:20 | |
standing among us, we wouldn't have a problem, | 24:25 | |
but that's not what happened. | 24:28 | |
Of course, that's never what happens with Christ. | 24:31 | |
He's always coming and then going, arriving and departing, | 24:34 | |
and I don't care how deeply you feel the presence on Easter, | 24:41 | |
there's always that absence after Easter, | 24:46 | |
and we always live after Easter. | 24:49 | |
He isn't here, said the Angel to the women | 24:54 | |
who came out to the cemetery on Easter morning. | 24:57 | |
He's gone, he's gone on before you. | 25:00 | |
Easter morning, Mary Magdalene, went out to the cemetery | 25:04 | |
to dress a decaying body with spices, | 25:07 | |
but the body wasn't there. | 25:10 | |
She ran into what she thought was a gardener. | 25:13 | |
Where have they taken my Lord, she asks. | 25:16 | |
But it was no gardener, it was the risen Christ. | 25:21 | |
Then Mary realized nobody keeps Jesus tied down, | 25:27 | |
fixed in one place. | 25:31 | |
Mary tried to cling to Jesus. | 25:35 | |
Hold me not, says the risen Christ. | 25:38 | |
To hold Jesus is to limit him, and define him, | 25:42 | |
and try to grasp him, but you can't hold Jesus, | 25:45 | |
because now he's risen and he's always going on before us, | 25:51 | |
he's always moving out, beyond the confines | 25:55 | |
of our expectations and categories. | 25:59 | |
He's gone on, he's gone out to lay hold of life for us. | 26:03 | |
And so we cannot control his comings and his goings. | 26:08 | |
And again and again, in John's Gospel, | 26:15 | |
that's the way the story is told. | 26:17 | |
The disciples, like Mary, try to get hold of Jesus. | 26:21 | |
They try to grasp him and try to define him. | 26:24 | |
But he always keeps vanishing. | 26:28 | |
As quickly and mysteriously as he came, | 26:31 | |
they open their eyes again and he's gone. | 26:33 | |
I am going to prepare a place for you, he tells them. | 26:38 | |
And of course, he cannot go | 26:45 | |
and prepare a place for us, if he stays. | 26:46 | |
We cannot hold Jesus. | 26:51 | |
So we find that the Jesus after Easter, is the Christ, | 26:55 | |
the living God, | 26:59 | |
not some containable, small, | 27:02 | |
definable pet of a God, for whom we can just whistle | 27:05 | |
or snap our fingers or get in the right mood and he's there. | 27:10 | |
He comes and he goes. | 27:14 | |
He's present, then he's absent. | 27:16 | |
Hello. | 27:18 | |
Goodbye. | ||
We have no way, like Peter Pan, | 27:20 | |
of closing our eyes and believing very, | 27:22 | |
very hard in fairies and bringing Tinkerbell back to life. | 27:25 | |
The risen Christ isn't Tinkerbell. | 27:30 | |
His comings and goings are at His determination, not ours. | 27:33 | |
So that means if you happen to meet him in the chapel today, | 27:38 | |
he comes as a gift, not as a result of our efforts. | 27:43 | |
The living Christ of Easter is free and alive | 27:50 | |
and he explodes some of our semi-blasphemous pieties, | 27:56 | |
like since I took Jesus into my heart. | 28:00 | |
No, you can't take this Christ anywhere. | 28:05 | |
He takes you places. | 28:09 | |
He comes and He goes. | 28:15 | |
Not because He's mercurial or undependable, | 28:19 | |
but He comes and He goes because He's got work still to do. | 28:23 | |
That's why he goes. | 28:29 | |
As he says in the Gospel of John, I've got other sheep | 28:31 | |
I've got to look for and bring into this fold. | 28:33 | |
I've got a place I've got to prepare for you. | 28:36 | |
So we're at the end of Easter. | 28:42 | |
Jesus came back to us and surprised us, | 28:46 | |
but even as Jesus could not be held by death, | 28:51 | |
he cannot be held even by the love of his disciples. | 28:56 | |
Even a place as big and thick walled | 29:02 | |
as Duke Chapel cannot contain him or capture him. | 29:04 | |
It's at the end of Easter. | 29:10 | |
Jesus, the one who came back to us, is getting ready to go, | 29:13 | |
to ascend to His Father, and our God. | 29:17 | |
Where are you going? | 29:23 | |
Can we go too? | 29:26 | |
What's going to become of us? | 29:30 | |
These are the good, normal post-Easter | 29:34 | |
questions of disciples. | 29:38 | |
Now in response, Jesus does not promise | 29:45 | |
that we will never feel alone. | 29:47 | |
He doesn't say that there will not be times of absence, | 29:50 | |
the dry valley of loneliness. | 29:53 | |
He doesn't assuage our feelings of grief | 29:58 | |
with cheap consolations. | 30:01 | |
I'll live on in your memories. | 30:03 | |
No. | 30:05 | |
What he does for us in the end | 30:10 | |
of the Gospel of John is, he prays for us. | 30:12 | |
That's what he does when he goes. | 30:20 | |
He prays for us. | 30:21 | |
You know you can tell a lot about | 30:24 | |
someone by the way they leave. | 30:26 | |
I think of Moses' farewell speech | 30:29 | |
when Israel stood on the promised land | 30:31 | |
and Moses stood on the threshold of death. | 30:33 | |
The ultimate goodbye. | 30:38 | |
I think of General MacArthur's farewell | 30:41 | |
speech before Congress, in which he managed to say goodbye | 30:43 | |
and get back Harry Truman at the same time. | 30:47 | |
Old soldiers never die, they just fade away. | 30:50 | |
You can tell a lot about someone | 30:53 | |
by the way they say goodbye. | 30:55 | |
Jesus has spoken farewell words to His disciples, | 30:59 | |
but at the end, at the very pinnacle of His farewell, | 31:04 | |
what does he do? | 31:08 | |
He prays for us. | 31:10 | |
That's what today's Scripture from John is, | 31:14 | |
Jesus' prayer for us. | 31:16 | |
Now, I don't know why you've come here today. | 31:22 | |
Maybe in your heart of hearts you don't know why you're here | 31:25 | |
and I don't know what burdens you have brought | 31:31 | |
in those big oak doors back there, | 31:35 | |
but I know enough about our typical Sunday morning | 31:39 | |
congregation to know that there are some Sundays | 31:42 | |
when you can hardly find a seat here, | 31:46 | |
for all of the baggage and the burdens, | 31:50 | |
the unresolved grief and the pain and the rage | 31:52 | |
and the hurt that people bring in those doors with them, | 31:55 | |
seated beside them on the pew, on even an average Sunday. | 32:01 | |
And you know, if you've been here before, | 32:10 | |
that no matter how good the music, or the Scripture, | 32:14 | |
or the preaching, or the prayers or the presence, | 32:17 | |
you're apt to drag a lot of that baggage back out | 32:21 | |
with you when you go, when Jesus goes, | 32:25 | |
in the absence. | 32:31 | |
So what's to become of you? | 32:36 | |
I'll tell you. | 32:40 | |
Jesus prays for you. | 32:43 | |
As Hebrews says, we've got a great High Priest, | 32:47 | |
seated high in the Heavens, | 32:51 | |
a great High Priest who is real good at pastoral prayers, | 32:55 | |
real good at speaking to God | 33:01 | |
because he's seated right next to God. | 33:03 | |
And here's a Priest who's real good about interceding | 33:08 | |
for you because he is not only seated next to God, | 33:11 | |
but he also came and stood next to you, | 33:15 | |
so he knows what you go through, | 33:20 | |
and he's apt to articulate so well the prayer that you wish | 33:24 | |
you were good enough to pray. | 33:29 | |
And so he's going. | 33:33 | |
And when he's going, he does not say farewell | 33:37 | |
in order to forget about us, but rather he prays for us. | 33:39 | |
He never stops talking to God about us. | 33:46 | |
He's gone away from us, not to leave us, | 33:50 | |
but so He can sit so close to God, | 33:53 | |
that he can get God's ear, any time he needs it, for us. | 33:56 | |
So today, when you say goodbye, | 34:03 | |
I don't know where you're going, | 34:05 | |
what tough paths you'll be walking, | 34:09 | |
what burdens you'll be carrying. | 34:12 | |
I know this. | 34:16 | |
Jesus prays for you. | 34:18 | |
Jesus comes to us, and then He goes, | 34:22 | |
and then He comes back again and then He goes again. | 34:26 | |
Not to abandon us, | 34:32 | |
but rather that he might get so close | 34:35 | |
to God that He can pray for us. | 34:38 | |
Have you noticed, here in Duke Chapel, | 34:45 | |
we always put the prayers after the Scripture's read, | 34:47 | |
after the sermons, after the music, | 34:51 | |
and we do this to make a point to you that the prayer | 34:54 | |
is the very pinnacle of the service. | 34:58 | |
Everything else is preliminary | 35:00 | |
to get us ready to speak to God. | 35:02 | |
And it's a tough thing to be a pastor | 35:06 | |
and to pray to God for the people. | 35:08 | |
Oh, we clergy try to gather up as many of your concerns | 35:13 | |
as we can and to lay them before God, | 35:16 | |
but it's an impossible task. | 35:21 | |
To pray for you, as you really deserve to be prayed for, | 35:24 | |
there's just too many of you, and there's too many needs, | 35:29 | |
too many unspoken desires and silent hurts. | 35:36 | |
How can we pray for you as we ought to pray? | 35:41 | |
Fortunately, you have a better Priest, | 35:48 | |
even than Nancy, or me. | 35:53 | |
Amen. | 35:58 | |
(gentle orchestral music) | 36:02 | |
(congregation singing) | 37:08 | |
- | Let us unite in this historic | 40:41 |
confession of the Christian faith. | 40:43 | |
All | I believe in God the Father, Almighty, | 40:46 |
Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, | 40:49 | |
His only Son, our Lord; | 40:52 | |
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, | 40:55 | |
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, | 40:57 | |
was crucified, died, and was buried. | 41:01 | |
The third day he rose from the dead. | 41:05 | |
He ascended into Heaven and siteth at the right hand | 41:07 | |
of God the Father, Almighty. | 41:11 | |
From thence, he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. | 41:14 | |
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, | 41:17 | |
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, | 41:21 | |
the resurrection of the body, | 41:25 | |
and the life everlasting. Amen. | 41:27 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 41:33 |
All | And also with you. | 41:35 |
- | Let us pray. | 41:36 |
O, Eternal Spirit, from whom we come, | 41:50 | |
to whom we belong, and in whose service is our peace, | 41:53 | |
we worship Thee. | 41:59 | |
Mysterious, indeed, is this vast universe, into which, | 42:03 | |
without our asking it, Thou hast ushered us. | 42:07 | |
We stand in awe before Thy power, | 42:11 | |
which is beyond our ability to measure, | 42:14 | |
yet, even as we fail to comprehend the magnitude | 42:18 | |
of Thy greatness, Thou hast known us and loved us, | 42:21 | |
since we were knit together in our mother's wombs. | 42:26 | |
Therefore, we lift these prayers unto Thee, | 42:30 | |
beseeching Thee to hear us and to answer. | 42:33 | |
Almighty God, hear us as we pray for all who are hindered | 42:37 | |
in the race of life, through no fault of their own. | 42:43 | |
For the disabled, the defective, and the weak. | 42:47 | |
Let us pray for all whose livelihood is insecure, | 42:52 | |
for the hungry, the homeless and the destitute. | 42:55 | |
For those who are overworked, downtrodden, and in despair. | 43:00 | |
For little children, whose surroundings hide | 43:06 | |
from them your love and beauty. | 43:10 | |
For the fatherless, and the motherless, and the unwanted. | 43:12 | |
Let us pray for prisoners and captives | 43:17 | |
and for all who live within war torn countries. | 43:21 | |
For all who are suffering because of their faithfulness | 43:26 | |
to truth and for those who have to bear their burdens alone. | 43:29 | |
Let us pray for those who are in doubt | 43:35 | |
and must endure the dark night of the soul. | 43:39 | |
For those who are mistrustful, and let us pray for those | 43:42 | |
who suffer through their own wrongdoing or self-pity. | 43:47 | |
Let us pray for all who do not pray for themselves, | 43:51 | |
for all who have not the consolation of the prayers | 43:56 | |
of others, and for all whose anguish | 44:00 | |
is unrelieved by the knowledge of Thy love. | 44:03 | |
Let us pray for the infirm and the aged, | 44:07 | |
for all who are growing weary with the journey of life, | 44:11 | |
for all who are passing through the valley of death, | 44:16 | |
and for those who walk with them. | 44:20 | |
Let us pray for those burdened with the weight of malice | 44:23 | |
and ill will, for those harboring deep resentments, | 44:27 | |
who know not the grace of forgiveness. | 44:31 | |
Let us pray for all who suffer because of natural disasters, | 44:35 | |
and especially for those congregations | 44:40 | |
who have no place to worship today because of recent storms. | 44:43 | |
Let us pray for the unspoken needs of this congregation, | 44:47 | |
and for all who are forgotten to us, but are dear to Thee. | 44:52 | |
O, kind and gracious God, Thou hast revealed | 44:58 | |
Thy compassion for us through Thy coming and in Thy going. | 45:03 | |
Trusting in the constancy of Thy love for us, | 45:08 | |
we beseech Thee to pray for us, | 45:12 | |
when we cannot pray for ourselves. | 45:16 | |
In the Holy name of Christ, we pray, Amen. | 45:19 | |
And now in the spirit of thanksgiving, | 45:27 | |
let us offer our gifts and ourselves unto God. | 45:29 | |
(gentle music) | 45:35 | |
(choir singing) | 46:47 | |
(intense orchestral music) | 50:49 | |
(congregation singing hymn) | 51:26 | |
- | Almighty God, lift us up, we beseech Thee | 52:32 |
from ingratitude to thankfulness. | 52:35 | |
We thank Thee for the reign that sustains us, | 52:38 | |
for children that delight us, for friendships that bless us, | 52:41 | |
and for families that nurture us. | 52:45 | |
Most of all, we bless Thee for Thy Son, Jesus Christ, | 52:48 | |
our Lord, who intercedes for us at Thy right hand, | 52:51 | |
and who never gives up on us. | 52:55 | |
All | Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name, | 52:58 |
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, | 53:02 | |
on Earth as it is in Heaven. | 53:05 | |
Give us this day, our daily bread, | 53:08 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 53:10 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 53:12 | |
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, | 53:16 | |
for Thine is the kingdom, the power, | 53:20 | |
and the glory forever, Amen. | 53:24 | |
(intense orchestral music) | 53:28 | |
(congregation singing hymn) | 53:57 | |
- | And now go forth in peace, and be of good courage. | 56:13 |
Hold fast, that which is good, | 56:17 | |
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. | 56:19 | |
And may the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, | 56:23 | |
be with you all, now and forevermore, Amen. | 56:27 | |
(gentle orchestral music) | 56:33 |
Item Info
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