The apostle Paul asked how people are to hear God’s word without a preacher, and how can anyone preach unless that person is sent by God. Today we shall focus upon preaching and preachers and sermons, considering how it is that God speaks to us in our uncertainties and ambivalence by means of the speech of mere humans. In human words we can discern God’s Word. Therefore, hoping again to do so, let us with renewed confidence, worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
We gather in praise and thanksgiving before Thee, O loving God, for all Thy blessings to us, blessings which are both immediately apparent and forever hidden from our recognition. We are aware of physical blessings: family, food, friends, sunshine, rain, homes, community, country, the entire world, the ever-expanding universe. But we also are grateful for spiritual blessings: the inspiration and comfort we find in holy scripture, the wisdom which has entered our lives by means of the writings of thousands of people down through the centuries, the faith of others which has influenced and nourished our own faith.
On this day we especially thank Thee for the truths which have been granted to us through the many preachers we have heard throughout our lives. We recall giants of homiletics as well as ordinary men and women, who, though far less gifted as speakers, were nonetheless equally influential in our lives by their preaching. We thank Thee for the truth mediated through the personalities of many different kinds of people, whether quietly effective, gently meaningful, or memorable eruptions of bombast and theatrics. Thy spirit has been within the spirits of all kinds of preachers through all kinds of times and places, and for that we who have been beneficiaries of their gifts give Thee thanks.
We pray this day for the people we know and the many millions we don’t know who are fighting very hard battles --- with illness, with profound sorrow, with addictions and insoluble problems and other people and intractable and unrelenting pain. Lord God, our challenges are many, but Thy means of overcoming those challenges are more plentiful still. Help us to look to Thee with greater confidence, and thus to find in ourselves the abilities to overcome our challenges. We pray these things in the name of Jesus, who, having been sent among us by Thee, now lives perpetually with us by Thy power within us. Together we join in prayer as Jesus taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….