Today is the third Sunday on our theme, Reconciliation is the Centre of our Work. Our focus today is on reconciliation with creation. We are blessed to live on a planet that is beautiful, wondrous, and mysterious. Yet creation groans for redemption and healing from the abuse that it endures as the result of human arrogance. As ambassadors of God’s reconciling work in the world, our role is to be caretakers of God’s good earth.
Sermons
This is the second Sunday on the theme, Reconciliation Is the Centre Of Our Work. Today our worship will centre on the gifts and challenges of reconciling with ourselves. We all are complex and contradictory beings, shaped by a mixture of experiences, forces, and possibilities beyond our control. Our outward appearances might cover the inner realities of sadness, shame, and pain. The focus of today’s reconciling work begins with seeing ourselves as God sees us: as beloved daughters and sons who are amazing and contradictory, who have gifts and graces, delusions, temptations, and sins. Reconciliation with ourselves requires us to know who we are, the inner motivations that shape our responses to the people and events around us.
To access today’s worship video please click the following link:https://youtu.be/qGZnolwfDc8
Starting today, and continuing for a total of four Sundays, we will explore the theme “Reconciliation is the centre of our work,” drawn from Palmer Becker’s book Anabaptist Essentials: Ten Signs of a Unique Christian Faith* This is the book members of the adult education class read and discussed back in 2018.
Each Sunday, we will explore a different sphere of reconciliation:
-reconciliation with God
-reconciliation with ourselves
-reconciliation with creation
-reconciliation with others
Today our theme is reconciliation with God. Sometimes people think the most important question is what we have to do in order to be reconciled to God. When the word is used in the Bible it refers to a dispute resolution such as seeking peace between warring nations, or seeking the reconciliation of an estranged husband and wife (as in 1 Corinthians 7.11). In the Bible God has launched a diplomatic initiative to overcome human alienation and to establish new and peaceful relationships between us and God, with one another, and between us and the rest of creation. An important question for us is not what we must do to be reconciled with God, but rather, do other people experience this reconciling love of God in us?
To access today’s worship video please click the following link: https://youtu.be/trAD64W37U8
* Anabaptist Essentials, ©2017 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22803