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Heat. Are you hell? Heat.

over. Heat. Hallelujah.

Heat. Glory. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. God.

Jesus Christ. God uses. Fathership.

Heat. Hallelujah. God Praise me.

My son in glory sing >> the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Glor. to earthjlor.

Glory river telling. be done. Glorj to your sister.

The Lord be with you. >> Let us pray together. Almighty and everliving God, you hold together all things in heaven and on earth.

in your great mercy, receive the prayers of all your children, and give to all the world spirit of your truth and peace through Jesus Christ, our savior and lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Please be seated.

I invite children who would to join me for a few minutes. Well, for a quick reflection to all God's children, I'm glad you're here. Are you glad you're here?

>> Amen. That's God's word to each and every one of us. When you hear the scriptures today, listen particularly carefully to Luke's report of a significant incident that happened in Athens.

with Paul. Remember Paul? He was the Pharisee of the Pharisees.

He spent his earlier days doing everything he could to exterminate this new sect called followers of the way. But by the power that changed his life, that turned his life around, Paul came to an understanding that even as the Pharisee of the Pharisees, the highest religious leaders of Judaism, he never realized we are God's offspring. So on Mother's Day, on any day, on every day, think about the fact, you know, my parents have long been dead, but I remember as a child, people would tell me, "Well, you look like your father.

You look like your mother." And each and every one of us have heard that and every one of us have said that. Well, what a powerful blessing that is. We look like the people who birthed us and not not physical resemblance.

God doesn't have brown hair. God is not short or tall, heavy or stout. But what God has given to us in the gift of holy baptism is what we've been celebrating throughout the Easter cycle.

Called by God, claimed by God, and by the gift of grace given to us in baptism, we are God's offspring. God's offspring. Do we live like it?

That's the point of holy scripture today. Welcome to worship. A reading from the book of Acts of the Apostles.

Paul stood in front of the Aropagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription to an unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you, the God world and everything in it.

He who is Lord of heaven and earth does not live in shrines made by human hands. Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything. Since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth. And he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him. Though indeed he is not far from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being as even some of your own poets have said, "For we too are his offspring. Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

The word of the Lord. >> Thanks be to God. >> We continue with the song.

bless our God. God Silverd refreshment. I will enter.

bless. I will Glorish heart. Blessing.

A reading from the first letter of Peter. No will harm you if you are eager to do what is good. But even if you do suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

Do not fear what they fear and do not be intimidated. But in your heart, sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you and accounting for the hope that is in you.

Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil.

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah during the building of the ark in which a few, that is eight lives, were saved through water, and baptism, which this prefigured now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Hallelu. The Holy Gospel according to St. John the 14th chapter.

>> Glory to you, Lord. >> Jesus said to the disciples. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever.

This is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned.

I'm coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.

On that day you will know that I am in my father and you in me and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me. And those who love me will be loved by my father and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

The gospel of the Lord. Praise >> to you Christ. >> Please be seated.

Diane Sawyer of ABC World News and Television fame recalled a time I was 17 years old. She said, a high school senior in Louisville, Kentucky, representing my state in the 1963 America's Junior Miss competition in Mobile, Alabama. In the midst of it all, it was one person who stood at the center, at least my psychological center, someone I viewed as an island in an ocean of anxiety.

She was one of the judges, a well-known writer, a woman whose sea gray eyes fixed on you with laser penetration. Her name was Katherine Marshall. Older ones among us may connect her name with that of her late first husband, the Reverend Peter Marshall, or with the publication guideposts.

During the rehearsal on the last day of the pageant, So Sawya recalled, "Several of us were waiting backstage when a pageant official said Katherine Marshall wanted to speak with us. We gathered around. Some of us were expecting a lastm minute pep talk, but we were all surprised.

She fixed her eyes upon us and said, "You have set goals for yourselves. I've heard some of them, but I don't think you've set them high enough. You have talent and intelligence and a chance.

I think you should take those goals and expand them. Think of the most you could do with your lives. Make what you do matter.

Listen again to our Lord Jesus Christ. That last might of his earthly life. His farewell discourses as they're called.

Continue where we left off last Sunday. Speaking to his followers gathered with him for that last supper and with us today, Jesus was talking about what was uppermost on his mind and deepest in his heart. He began with a bold command.

If you love me, you will obey. You will keep my commandments. But don't be confused.

Jesus is not talking about the ten commandments. The only commandment from our Lord is the one he gave us earlier in John 13 after the footwashing. A new commandment I give to you.

He told all of us that you love one another as I have loved you. If you love me, Jesus said, today you will obey everything that I taught you. Matthew will report Jesus great commission as the very last of his words on earth.

Go into all the world, he said, and baptize all nations, teaching them to observe everything that I commanded you. Jesus began with a command, not a suggestion. This is not optional.

Jesus declares that our obedience to all that he taught us is an indication that we truly love him and he really meant it. Make what you do matter. In essence, the teacher has told us and he empowers our obedience with several great promises in John 14.

I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever. I will not leave you orphaned. I'm coming to you.

In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In the days and the weeks following Easter, it seemed to those earliest disciples that Jesus had been talking about his death and resurrection, especially his promise that they would see him when the world would not.

Had not our Lord appeared to them that first Easter evening? Had not our followers seen the risen Lord for 40 days between Easter and his ascension to come this week? Only late in the first century did the church really understand Jesus final words.

More than eyesight, Jesus was talking about faith, about those who come to faith in the risen Lord Jesus Christ without ever having seen him in the flesh. He's talking about resurrection, his resurrection and our resurrection. Because I live, you also will live.

Resurrection begins now and is brought to completion in the age to come. By the time John's gospel appeared, this is a church in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a church that had come to believe that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the risen Christ and of God Almighty.

That's what Jesus meant when he talked about being in the father and the father in him and believers being in him and in the father. It's gospel truth, folks. By your baptism into Christ, you were given a new life.

Now make it matter. That's St. Paul's testimony to people in the marketplace in Athens about 20 years after Easter.

The one who had literally devoted his life to trying to destroy the church is now Christianity's leading missionary. Missionary Apostle Paul has taken the good news of God's saving love in Jesus Christ into Europe. And in today's first reading, we learn that Paul is in Athens, Greece, waiting for Silas and Timothy to catch up.

Harassment by a crowd of Jews from Thessaloniac has forced Paul to flee Berea. So Paul spent his time walking the city of Athens, observing the Athenian shrines to a multitude of gods. Athens then sounds like America today.

We have a multitude of shrines. Evidence that many today, like the people then, worship the stuff our hands make. Look at all that I've accomplished.

I live the good life. I deserve it. Rich in things, we truly are.

Poor in soul, we truly are. As Fostic's great hymn declares, many today, like Athenians then, are searching. Something's missing.

We don't know what it is. We don't know exactly what we're looking for. We don't know exactly what we're lacking, but evidenced by the emptiness in so many Americans today.

and the shrine to an unknown god in the city of Athens. Paul speaks to that hunger in so many. Many in Athens were listening.

May we know what this new teaching is that you're preaching? They ask the context for our first reading today. Paul proclaims from the Aropagicus, "The God who made the heavens and everything in it, he it is who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made with human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

Put away the false gods you serve. Paul said, "The idols of gold and silver will not save you." That's bold, faithful witness. Paul did as Jesus had commanded.

In so doing, he demonstrated before the world that he truly loved his Lord and Savior. He obeyed Jesus great commission. and taught these strangers in Athens everything that he had been taught.

By your baptism into Christ Jesus, you were given a new life. Now, make it matter. Late in the first century, Peter's letters appeared about the same time as Paul's gospel, both to a church that's persecuted both by Jews and by the Roman Empire.

Christians are orphans by this time. They're followers of the risen Lord. So they've been cast out of the synagogues.

Jewish Christians are expelled from their ancient roots in Judaism. They were persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ but not forsaken. In his death and resurrection, his ascension in glory, Jesus did not abandon the church.

It was just as he told them. The spirit of the risen Christ was present in the church. That's the suffering that Peter is talking about.

But even if you suffer for doing what is right, Peter wrote, "You are blessed. Do not fear what they fear. And do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting from you of the hope that is in you. By your baptism into Christ Jesus, you were given a new life. Now make it matter.

This isn't a biblical history lesson today, folks. Their stories are our stories. Jesus words to his followers and that last night of his earthly life were meant for us, too.

If you love me, you will obey everything I taught you. You live by my teachings, he's saying, you'll make my teachings central to your way of life, to your understanding of what it means to be my follower. In the loving way you treat your fellow believers in the community of faith, others will know that you truly love me.

Do they? Can others hear, tell by the way you act, by the way you speak, by the way you treat others in this congregation that you truly love Jesus? Is your life a living testimony to all that the teacher taught us?

In holy baptism, you were given a new life made possible in Jesus resurrection. Our resurrection began the day we were baptized. Resurrection is not just something that happens after death.

It's a reality that we entered through the sacrament of holy baptism. We were baptized into Christ Jesus into his death and into his resurrection. The world does not understand that truth.

Ours is a culture of death. Amass all you can. Enjoy it while you can because all good things will come to an end.

is a creed by which so much of the first world lives today. But not the baptized people of God. We were raised to a new life, commanded to live the life our resurrected Lord taught us and so proved to be his disciples.

We will all die. Death will bring an end to the life of this physical body in which we live and through which we serve God in this world. But the new life that is ours in Christ Jesus will be brought to completion in the age to come.

Looking back over nearly 50 years to that encounter with Katherine Marshall, Diane Sawyer shared, "It was not so much an instruction that she gave us as it was a dare. I felt stunned. This woman I admired so much was disappointed in us.

Not by what we were, but by what little we aspired to be. Today, Sawya wrote, "When I go out into the world, I can almost hear a wonderful woman proddding me with her fiery challenge to stretch farther." God, she seems to be saying, can forgive failure, but not failing to try. By your baptism into Christ Jesus, you were given a new life.

Now make it matter. Amen. Heat.

I sing. I see. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

I know. I say I Heat. Christmas.

with the whole church. Let us confess our faith using the words of the apostles creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontious Pilot, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again.

He ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the father. And he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the holy spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of s, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Trusting in the power of Christ's resurrection to heal and redeem our broken world, let us pray for the needs of all creation.

God of new life, you call us through the waters of baptism to be in relationship with you and one another. Guide the church and its leaders to proclaim Christ's righteousness throughout the world. Merciful God, receive our prayer.

You create the world and all that is in it. Shelter budding plants and young animals. Provide unpolluted habitats and clean water.

And raise up stewards for the environment. Merciful God, receive our pray. You set civil servants in the places where we live.

Instill truth and equity among judges and lawyers, gentleness and courage among first responders, and peace among leaders of towns and nations. Merciful God, our pray. You provide comfort in times of trouble, heal those who are sick, shelter any who are unhoused, feed those undernourished, and accompany and console all who are lonely, berieved, anxious, or ill, especially those we now, whether silently or aloud.

Merciful God, receive our prayer. You are love and you desire that we love one another. As a mother hen cares for her chicks.

Bless all who provide motherly care in our lives and inspire us to care for one another. Merciful God, God of new life, your steadfast love endures forever. Inspire us by the example of the faithful departed who clung to your promises of life, forgiveness of sins, and salvation.

Merciful God, our pray. God of resurrection power, use us and these prayers to proclaim the good news of new life to all of the world through Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Right there.

Shall you We will Glor. Earth We are praise and >> let us pray together. Merciful God, accept the fruits of our labor, gathered to give you glory.

You have set a table before us, a glimpse of that great day, when we will hunger and thirst no more. Nourish us with the body and blood of Jesus, that goodness and mercy may follow us and bless the world you love in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Lord be with you. >> And also with you. >> Lift up your hearts.

>> We lift them to the Lord. >> Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. >> It is right to give our thanks and praise.

>> It is indeed right, our duty and our joy that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, Almighty and merciful God, through our savior Jesus Christ. You called your people to cleanse their hearts and prepare with joy for the pascal feast that renewed in the gift of baptism we may come to the fullness of your grace. And so with all the choirs of angels, with the church on earth and the host of heaven, we praise your name and join their unending hymn.

Holy Lord, God in the highest Blessana in the highest. >> Blessed are you, oh God of the universe. Your mercy is everlasting and your faithfulness endures from age to age.

Praise to you for creating the heavens and the earth. Praise to you for saving the earth from the waters of the flood. Praise to you for bringing the Israelites safely through the sea.

Praise to you for leading your people through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey. Praise to you for the words and deeds of Jesus, your anointed one. Praise to you for the death and resurrection of Christ.

Praise to you for your spirit poured out on all nations. In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat. This is my body given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me. Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it for all to drink, saying, "This cup, the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people, for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me.

With this bread and cup, we remember our Lord's Passover from death to life as we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died. Christ is risen.

Christ will come again. Oh God of resurrection and new life, pour out your Holy Spirit on us and on these gifts of bread and wine. Bless this feast.

Grace our table with your presence. >> Reveal yourself to us in the breaking of the bread. Raise us up as the body of Christ for the world.

Breathe new life into us. Send us forth burning with justice, peace, and love. >> Holy Spirit, >> with your holy ones of all times and places, with the earth and all its creatures, with sun and moon and stars, we praise you, oh God, blessed and holy trinity, now and forever.

>> Lord, remember us in your kingdom and teach us to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen. Come to the table of new life. Receive the risen Lord.

Merc. Hallelujah. We are Christ will might be.

The dream. Amen. of us.

Praise God. The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you and keep you in his grace. >> Let us pray together.

Holy one, through this meal you have made your home among us and are making all things new. Send us now to speak peace to anxious hearts to love our enemies and to bring your healing to the nations in the name of Jesus. Amen.

God Almighty who is the beginning and the end. Jesus Christ the firstborn of the dead and the spirit our advocate and peace bless you now and forever. Amen.

Glory. Glory. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Few quick announcements for today. Today we are thankful for all who have worshiped together here in person and online.

Next Sunday, May 17th, the mission site profile task force request your presence in the fellowship hall directly after the 8:30 a.m. service to share your feedback about your experiences, thoughts, and hopes for grace. That will be important to creating the document that will provide prospective pastors their first look at Grace Lutheran Church during the search process.

This will be the last meeting opportunity, but the questionnaires we ask you to fill out anonymously with your input can be dropped off in the fellowship hall box or the office until May 24th. Please see either Teresa Miller or Mary Verel in the fellowship hall after the service. If you have any changes changes for the grace directory, changes are due today.

We are still in need of volunteers for hosting family promise this week, May 10th through 17th. Please consult this past week's grace notes for more details about the service opportunity and other important events, opportunities, and information. Now, let us read our mission statement together.

We share God's grace by welcoming all people, growing together in faith, and joining God's work in our community. to God. Hallelujah.