May 10 – Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 10 – Fifth Sunday of Easter

 

Lectionary

Lectionary readings from Vanderbilt Divinity Library online

(http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/BEaster/bEaster5.htm)

 

Acts 8:26–40

Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.

Psalm 22:25–31 (VU pg. 746 parts 3 and 4)

Praise God who has heard our call.

1 John 4:7–21

Everyone who loves is born of God.

John 15:1–8

Jesus is the true vine.

 

Spark

Church buildings seem to accumulate all sorts of stuff in corners and cupboards, left just in case we need it, or just because no one knew what to do with it. Have a garage sale and clean out those cupboards and corners with the money going to the M&S Fund.

 

With Children

Bring an example of a house plant that has not been well cared for, one that is straggly and not likely to flower. Compare it to a plant you pick up fresh from the nursery, one that is full of blooms. Link the image of the contrasting plants with
John 15:1–8; Jesus is the vinegrower!

 

Sermon Starter

A few years ago, I helped my mother move from her three-bedroom house into a senior’s apartment. While she’s never been a packrat, she’d accumulated lots of stuff in the 18 years she’d lived in that house and couldn’t keep it all. So, deciding what she would and would not keep was hard but necessary work.

 

Difficult as the process of pruning can be, sometimes it is essential. Indeed, today’s reading from John’s gospel reminds us that even God is in the pruning business and that God cuts away what’s lifeless in us to allow new life to bloom. God wills “that you bear much fruit and become my disciples,” Jesus says. But for that to happen, God removes “every branch that bears no fruit” and “every branch that bears fruit [God] prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

 

These words proclaim that God loves us to such an extent that God isn’t content to leave us as we are. Instead, God wants us to grow and develop into the persons God wants us to be. How? As the writer of 1 John later explains, we do this by focusing on loving God and our neighbours, and on allowing God to prune what’s dead and unnecessary in our lives so that new life can emerge.

 

Hymns

Acts

VU 509            “I, the Lord of sea and sky”

VU 644            “I was there to hear your borning cry”

 

Psalm

VU 400            “Lord, listen to your children praying”

 

Epistle

VU 594            “O Christian, love”

VU 599            “Living Christ, bring us love”

MV 79             “Spirit, open my heart”

MV 89             “Love is the touch”

 

Gospel

VU 205            “Like the murmur of the dove’s song” (invocation or introit)

VU 588            “Many are the lightbeams”

VU 632            “O blessed spring” (possible anthem)