I have been away for a couple of weeks, camping with my son in Illinois for a weekend on Father’s Day, then spending a week at my wife’s family’s camps in Vermont last weekend. This Sunday, I am back on the bench. As always, I am grateful to those who saw to it that the music of worship would continue in my absence, especially Sarah B, who played her flute and the piano, and led the singing.

Today’s readings provide us stories of restoration and healing, and exhort us to do our part in carrying the grace of God to all people. The readings begin with the familiar account of the healing of Naaman, who was cured of his leprosy not by a pompous display of some prophet’s magic, but by Naaman submitting himself to a humble, simple act of washing. (2 Kings 5:1-14) The psalmist sings of his own restoration, his weeping turned into joy. He acknowledges that in his strength he felt unmovable; but it was in his weakness that God restored him. (Psalm 30)

The New Testament readings shift their focus a bit, using the metaphor of the harvest field. The concluding reading from Galatians exhorts us both to tend to our own lives and to bear the burdens of others, being careful to sow seeds of the Spirit, so that we may also reap fruits of the Spirit. (Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16) Finally, the gospel reading is Jesus’ sending of his disciples as laborers in a harvest-field, taking a message of peace and acts of healing to the surrounding land. (Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)

The messages for us are the same. God is ready and able to restore and heal us, not in our proudness and grandiosity, but in our humility and need. Thus restored and healed, what better witnesses can there be? And what better laborers in the harvest field?

Choral Music:

• Introit: “I Will Praise You, Lord” – Paul Linwood — From his responsive setting of Psalm 30, we borrow Linwood’s refrain to open the service: “I will praise you, Lord; you have rescued me.”
• Anthem: “Lift Up Our Eyes” – Scott Wesley Brown — This contemporary folk hymn is really a prayer that God would make us aware of the opportunities and needs around us, and would lift up not only our eyes but our hands and hearts as well, in living the kingdom.
• Anthem: “Come, Let Us Eat” – Billema Kwillia — In preparation for Holy Communion, we use this song from a Liberian pastor and missionary. We are reminded that we eat and drink together so that we can rise up to spread God’s mighty Word.
  

Organ Music

• Prelude: “Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ” – Mark Sedio — The last stanza of Fred Kaan’s contemporary hymn (1975) contains the reminder that, although we gather together around God’s Word and the Sacraments, in the end — “Jesus calls us in, sends us out, bearing fruit in a world of doubt, gives us love to tell, bread to share: God (Immanuel) everywhere!” With this text in mind, these improvisations by Sedio on the jaunty tune Linstead set the context for our worship today.
• Offertory: “Sent Forth by God’s Blessing” – Charles Ore — Set to the tune The Ash Grove, the text is another reiteration of the themes of today’s gospel.
  
• Postlude: “Finale Minuet” – G. F. Handel — As the concluding movement of a Handel suite, the finale sends us on our way.

July 3rd, 2010 Subscribe to the RSS feed!