October 11 – Nineteenth after Pentecost
(Thanksgiving)
Lectionary
Lectionary readings from Vanderbilt Divinity Library online
(http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/BPentecost/bProper23.htm)
Do
not fear, O soil, for God will provide.
Those
who sow in tears reap in joy.
Offer
prayers for everyone.
Do
not worry about what you will eat or drink.
Spark
Have
some place where the gathered prayers become a visible part of the service:
taped to the table, hanging from a line across the chancel, or a “prayer tree”
with prayers clipped to branches or leaves.
With Children
Ask
the children to help you pass out small sheets of coloured paper (harvest
colours if you have a Thanksgiving theme, or rainbow colours if you’re focusing
on M&S and stewardship during Thanksgiving), and pens, markers, or pencils.
Ask the congregation, including the children, to write their prayers on their
sheets of paper. The children can then help collect the prayers and hand them
to the minister(s) to add to the Prayers of the People, or the Great
Thanksgiving, or to be read as part of children’s time.
Sermon Starter
The
texts suggested for this Thanksgiving are challenging. We must remember that
there are those among us in our congregations who do worry about what to eat, who do
struggle to put food on the table and clothes on their family’s backs. It is
too simple to say that because Canada has a high standard of living generally,
we have much to be grateful for. There are people in our families, in our
churches, in our communities who feel lost, broken, alone, bankrupt, even if
they don’t worry about their physical needs.
The
words of 1 Timothy are comforting, then, because they remind us in a spirit of
true thanksgiving that all are equal
in God’s eyes, that our prayers of thanksgiving and intercession are said by
all on behalf of all. Our true gratitude comes from being able to gather
together through the joys and sorrows of life, in times of abundance and in
times of struggle, in worship and in praise of the God of creation who holds us
all in a divine embrace that will not let us go.
Hymns
VU 326 “O
for a thousand tongues to sing”
VU 166 “Joy
comes with the dawn”
MV 145 “Draw
the circle wide”
VU
329 “O Jesus Christ, may
grateful hymns be rising”
MV
122 “This is the day”
MV
176 “Three things I promise”