Sermon 09.01.2024: Faith on Stage - An Amazing Technicolor Worship Service
Rev. Victor Floyd • September 1, 2024
This was a special end-of-the-summer service with extra musical selections. There was not a traditional sermon during this service. Rather, the following are reflections which were woven throughout the service. The three scripture lessons are followed by selections from musicals that function as commentary.
Please download the Bulletin and Sermon PDFs for this special service to follow along. Enjoy!
When bread is shared, this drab world regains its color. Little by little. This week we sit with the desert's own wisdom and ask what it means to rebuild steadily rather than wait to be rescued. And we will share Christ's bread and cup.
The hymn "How Great Thou Art" is well known and sung in many churches and in many languages. While the story of the hymn itself is interesting enough, how the hymn has helped faith get passed down from one generation to the next is also fascinating! Join us in worship as we sing this age-old song and as our youth share
It may be aged and worn, but the old hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" has a story to tell! More than a sweet Sunday School song, this chestnut is planted in biblical narratives and calls us into an intimate theology of abiding love.
Kathleen Norris writes, “There is a powerful moment in any religious conversion… in which a person realizes that… it is nothing you have done, but it is all of one event, God’s being there, and being of help.” The author of the hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” concludes that God’s grace calls for “songs of lou
The hymns we sing in church have a theological and often biblical basis. “Holy, Holy, Holy,” one of the most familiar hymns to Presbyterians, takes language from Revelation. Revelation can be a confusing, difficult book, but the writer was responding to the crisis faced by first century Christians: Do we worship God,
What if the glory we're waiting for is already shining through us? Presbyterian trailblazer, Janie Spahr, preaches on Job's cosmos and Mark's mountain — where Transfiguration means seeing what was always true: dazzling glory, holy mountains, and the light hidden in ordinary flesh. Holy Communion.
Why do so many of us feel so much pressure to compete, judge, produce, win? The Parable of the Prodigal Son is about two sons. One son learns the hard way that he doesn’t have to earn his father’s love. The other son doesn’t get it. With which son do you identify?
God does not create for the sake of creating. Rather, God creates in order to enjoy, relate, connect, and abide in love with all that is created. Sabbath allows us to enjoy and rest in that love.
“Observe the Sabbath day, and keep it holy,” says Deuteronomy's version of the Ten Commandments. Does that sound like one more religious rule that’s too hard, or at least, too inconvenient, to take seriously? Or might an intentional break from our hectic lives be a path to freedom?
The "morning after" our country’s 250th, we turn to a similar would-be dynasty with its own ancient treasury scandal, arbitrary system of discrimination, and freewheeling corruption. As in Queen Esther's time, we live somewhere between our nation's promises and betrayals. And yet miracles still find us!