6th Sunday in Easter

Gathering Music  The Gratitude Jazz Band

Call to Worship  from  J. Phillip Newell (adapted) 

It is in the depths of life that we find God

At the heart of this moment

At the center of our souls

Deep in the earth and its eternal stirrings

God is the ground of all being

The well spring of time

Womb of the earth

And so

At the opening of this day

We wait 

Not for blessings from afar

But for God

The very soil of our soul

The early freshness of morning

The first breath of day

And we give thanks.

Hymn 611 Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

Welcome and Announcements  

Opening Prayer  from  J. Phillip Newell (adapted)       

At the beginning of time and at the end

You are God and we bless you

At our birth and in our dying,

In the opening of the day and at its close,

In our waking and our sleeping

You are God and we bless you.

You are the first and the last,

The giver of every gift,

The presence without whom there would be no present,

The life without whom there is no life.

Lead us to the heart of the present

That we may be sharers of your eternal, 

(Constant, permeating, inhabiting)  Presence. 

Amen

Anthem            Whither Shall I Go From Your Spirit       Judy Freedman

Scripture John 14:15-19  

5”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

18”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

Hymn 698 Take O Take Me  

Scripture  Acts 17:22-28

22Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Sermon  Three P’s for a Pandemic

Prayer  

(video below has scripture, sermon, and prayer)

Hymn 543  God Be the Love  

Benediction  

Postlude   

by Cliff Brock