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!
On the night we expect bread and cup, John’s gospel gives us a towel and a basin. Jesus kneels, turning ritual into relationship and power into vulnerable love. Communion is not words at a table, but embodied connection that changes and binds us together—when we dare to be present.
The rhythm of living, dying, and rising is the story of our faith, and the rhythm of our lives. We worship a man who rose from the dead. After he had lived. And after he died. As we enter the season of Lent, we'll focus on the story of Lazarus, and see how living, dying, and rising affected him and his community.
In John's Gospel, the signs Jesus performs are supposed to point people to see who Jesus is, to connect them to God. But in the sign of the blind man receiving his sight, it doesn't seem to work. When Jesus' signs don't match what we know to be true in the world, do we dismiss them, explain them away?
Many of us feel things are falling apart-either in our personal, professional, or public life. How can suffering invite us toward deeper freedom, integrity, and trust in God? How can our helplessness transform us into the people God has created us to be?
We live in a world full of shallow wells, creating a thirsty, isolated world. There’s a lot of anxiety in the world, in the church, because we turn to those shallow wells and are never satisfied. Jesus offers the Woman at the Well living water. What would it take for us to leave our water jars by our wells so we can ha
Salvation is not an exit plan! It's God’s deep commitment to redeeming what the world has learned to call normal. God does not abandon the world’s brokenness but enters it to make it whole.
What makes Jesus angry? Injustice, exploitation, and religious complicity with corruption and power, among other things. Tom Morello said in the 80s, "If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention." Perhaps it is time to join Jesus in overturning some tables.
Jesus' baptism is where Christian community begins. The community Jesus creates comes about because of non-anxious invitation. Inviting people to see Jesus is not a popularity contest or a numbers game where we measure victory by budgets, attendance, or other measures.
As we claim and remember our baptismal promises,
Join us as we celebrate Epiphany, when the magi journeyed to see Jesus, and receive our Star Words. The prophet Isaiah preaches to people in exile a word of hope. Even as they walk in thick darkness, he tells them that nations will come to their light. How did Isaiah's prophecy come true in the story of the magi?