May 7 2026 – The Seventh Sunday of Easter

CHIMING OF THE HOUR

WELCOME

PRAYER
God of seekers and dreamers,
speak to us now
as we wait for your promised word.
Protect your people, we pray.
The road ahead may be long,
but fill us with determination and courage.
Teach us to be your body with faith and love,
that we might serve one another
as companions on the way,
through Jesus the Christ. Amen.

PRELUDE

CALL TO WORSHIP
Let the righteous be joyful!
Sing to God; sing praises to God’s name;
lift up a song to the one who rides upon the clouds.

Listen, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice.
Ascribe power to God, whose power is in the skies.

*HYMN No. 772                “Live Into Hope”
1 Live into hope of captives freed,
of sight regained, the end of greed.
The oppressed shall be the first to see
the year of God’s own jubilee!

2 Live into hope! The blind shall see
with insight and with clarity,
removing shades of pride and fear,
a vision of our God brought near.

3 Live into hope of liberty,
the right to speak, the right to be,
the right to have one’s daily bread,
to hear God’s word and thus be fed.

4 Live into hope of captives freed
from chains of fear or want or greed.
God now proclaims our full release
to faith and hope and joy and peace.

CALL TO CONFESSION
Scripture tells us that our sufferings
are known to Christ,
that we can cast all our anxiety on Jesus,
who restores, supports, strengthens and establishes us.
Knowing this, let us come to God in a spirit of openness.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Christ our Savior,
as you ascended, you left the work to us.
You called us to keep the movement going,
to witness to the ends of the earth,
to pray, to heal,
to glorify you through our thoughts, words, and deeds,
to show the world a glimpse of the goodness you have given us.
We have fallen short of this call.
We have hidden ourselves in fear,
sought our own comfort,
and resigned ourselves to the status quo.
Forgive us,
and strengthen us to do your will,
that we may be signs of your coming reign.

Silence is observed

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON
Listen to this prayer:
“Protect them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one, as we are one.”
This is the prayer that Christ prayed on our behalf.
This tenderness and care for us shows us who Jesus is—
the one who hears our prayers,
responding to our longing for forgiveness with mercy.
Thanks be to God,
praise be to Christ,
glory be to the Holy Spirit.

*RESPONSE AFTER ASSURANCE NO. 581             “Glory Be to the Father”
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen, amen.

*PASSING OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST
Before the foundation of the world Christ forgave us, and forgives us still today.
Let us forgive as we have been forgiven and share the peace of Christ.

May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

And also with you.

Worshippers are invited to briefly “pass the peace” of Christ to those directly seated around them thus keeping our worship time “decent and in order” with a focus upon being part of God’s community.

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE

UNISON PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
God Most High, reigning in glory,
send down your Spirit of wisdom
to shine in your heavenly Word,
so that we may worship you with joy
continually blessing your name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

SCRIPTURE           John 17:1-11
17 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people,^[a] to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

Pause…

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!!

SERMON                “GLORY”
In early 1996 a cast of latter-day Bohemians took the theater world by storm with Jonathan Larson’s rock musical, “Rent.” Loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme, but set in the East Village rather than Paris, the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning show offered a glimpse into the lives of some struggling artists in the age of AIDS, and despite the complexity of its relationships and its often raucous, though tender music, its message was simple and clear: live each day as though it will be your last, because we are promised “no day but today.” As powerful as the musical was and still is in itself, it was perhaps made even more compelling by the sudden and untimely death of its 35-year old composer the night before “Rent’s” first preview at the New York Theatre Workshop. Most of you know the plot by heart, I suspect – how it chronicles a year in the life of a young songwriter named Roger and his filmmaker roommate Mark, along with several of their friends. Roger is dying of AIDS, and alone in his room one night, he dreams of writing one last song to redeem his increasingly empty life and leave his mark on the world. He sings:

One song… Glory
One song before I go.
One song to leave behind.
One song… Before the sun sets (Glory)
On another empty life.
Time flies. Time dies.
Glory – One blaze of Glory.
Find the one song
Before the virus takes hold.
Glory.
Like a sunset.
One song to redeem this empty life.

Roger’s song kept bouncing around in my head as I was reading all the “glory” talk in the passage from John’s Gospel. It got me to wondering if anyone else has ever dreamed of glory? Clearly Roger did in “Rent,” though a different kind of glory. Not so much the glory of fame or fortune, of which some people dream, especially when they are young. That’s what comes to my mind in free association when someone says the word “glory.” But that’s not what Jonathan Larson’s protagonist was seeking; Roger wanted to write a song that would offer glory in the form of some lasting legacy to redeem the apparent emptiness and meaninglessness of his final days.

It is, of course, a very different glory of which Jesus speaks in his prayer for his disciples in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel this morning. That chapter forms the concluding prayer of a long conversation, extending over the four chapters that make up John’s account of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. In John’s Gospel, the Last Supper is an extended soliloquy spoken by Jesus. A pastor-friend observes that nowhere else are red-letter Bibles so red. It is a farewell speech – which is painfully obvious at one level, says Raymond Brown, but helpful if we read it alongside other farewell speeches in ancient literature. It was customary for teachers to end such orations with prayers for their children or for their students who would carry on after they had departed. Our reading for today is the first portion of Jesus’ prayer for his disciples.

Many of us silently voice such prayers as we end our farewell speeches to our children when they go off to college, or to kindergarten, or to the prom. The prayers are perhaps even more fervent and full of angst if our children happen to be African American, or Asian or Hispanic, or stand out in any way. We tell them what we want them to remember about who they are and to whom they belong, about being careful, and then we say prayers for their safety and well-being. Jesus’ prayer is something like that. He prays for unity, which seems in these days like something of a pipe dream.

But Jesus begins his prayer not with words on behalf of his “children” – his disciples. Rather, he begins with words about the hour and about his glory. All through the early chapters of the Fourth Gospel, John remembers Jesus saying, “The hour is coming,” but now, at the beginning of his last supper with his disciples, all that ambiguity is cast aside, and Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come.” The hour to which he refers, of course, is his hour of passion and crucifixion, and those events will reveal at last the glory to which all the many signs have pointed along the way.4 And there is that word, “glory,” yet again.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you…. [then] Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had in your presence before the world existed.” (Jn 17:1, 5)

Time and again in the early chapters of John, we caught a fleeting glimpse of God’s glory in the signs and wonders that Jesus performed. But now Jesus prays that the glory will be fully revealed in his enthronement. Of course, the reader knows that his throne will be the cross, which is the only way to the glory for which Jesus prays.

Michael Lindvall notes, “One can hardly overstate the irony implicit in connecting [glory] to the cross, indeed, the consummate irony in connecting [glory] to a little band of beleaguered followers.” But Jesus is prepared to lay down his life as a manifestation of God’s glory; and he invites his followers into a similar sacrifice for the glory of God. If they seek…if we seek… to follow Jesus in earnest, that is the only glory we will find… yet it will be sufficient. It will be more than sufficient.

Does that make sense to you? I think it’s hard in our day to hear Christ’s invitation, in large part because our culture has long promoted a wholly different message. Times columnist David Brooks took note of that counter-message – what he called “baby-boomer theology” – when he surveyed commencement addresses at our nation’s colleges some years back, but for a number of years here was what our graduates were being told: “Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This [Brooks said, was] the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.” We have seen outrageous perversion of such individualistic expression

But, of course, [as Brooks noted some years ago, the] mantra [of expressive individualism] misleads on nearly every front. [All the talk of personal] possibilities … is of no help to the central business of adulthood, [which is] finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments – to a spouse, a community and a calling – yet [the shrill voices speak mostly] about freedom and autonomy…. Today’s [young adults] enter a cultural climate that [names] the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. [Personal fulfillment] is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and … self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

In Christian parlance, it’s what we mean by “discipleship” – losing ourselves as a way of discovering our true identity and purpose in Christ… and committing ourselves to a greater good shaped by Christ’s teaching.

Earlier, I wondered aloud if any of you had ever dreamed of glory. Well, here is a true confession: when I was a child, I had a whole range of such dreams. Sometimes I was the one who made the winning basket in the last seconds of a big game, or who bowed to rousing applause on the concert hall stage, or who made the great discovery that cured a dreaded disease. Even then I realized that such dreams were sinful, tainted as they were by self-interest; I was raised in a Presbyterian Church, after all! But there was another type of glory dream I had in those childhood days, one which I have rarely confessed. It, too, was saturated in self-interest, but seemed less so at the time, because I felt it had the church’s blessing. My dream was that I would somehow lose myself, make a noble sacrifice, perhaps even the sacrifice of my life, for the sake of my faith… and that that moment would be remembered as a moment of exemplary faithfulness. Even then I thought it an odd dream… a quirky dream.

Until, that is, I heard the celebrated preacher Fred Craddock share a similar experience from his childhood. Here is how he told it: Have you ever listened to a sermon in which the line-up of illustrations was Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, and missionaries who had their feet frozen off in the tundra of the north? As a young person sitting in church listening to those stories… I just sat there swinging my legs over the pew… and said to myself, it’s a shame you can’t be a Christian in this little town. Nobody is chasing or imprisoning or killing Christians here.

Then I went away to summer [church] camp – … an inspiring time, a night of consecration around the campfire, and just everything about it so moving. We sang, “Are Ye Able?” [Are ye able, said the Master, to be crucified with me?] I went back to the cabin and lay on my bunk and said to God, “I’m able.” “Are you able to give your life?” “I’ll give my life,” I said, and I pictured myself running in front of a train and rescuing a child, swimming out and getting someone who was drowning.

I pictured myself against a gray wall and some soldier saying, “One last chance to deny Christ and live.” I confessed my faith, and they said, “Ready, aim, fire.” My body slumped, the flag was at half mast, and widows were weeping in the afternoon. Later a monument is built, and people come with their cameras. “Johnny, you stand over there where Fred gave his life. Let’s get your picture.” I was sincere then, as I have been [all] these … years since. “I give my life,” I said, but nobody warned me that I could not write one big check… go out in one great blaze of glory. I thought I could write one big check and say, “Here’s my life, Lord, I’m giving it all.”

And that may work for some. But for most of us, God wants the everyday little checks. The little, unselfish acts of sacrifice that don’t cost much, but which seem so hard to give away. I’ve had to write [fifty- plus] years of little checks: [a dollar here…two dollars there… giving my life away, one dollar at a time.]

We have all written such checks, friends. Checks paid with simple, unremembered acts of compassion and kindness. Checks paid with little acts of resistance to prejudice or injustice. Checks paid with the sacrifice of time for the sake of someone who needed us. Checks paid with a meal provided, or a gentle touch on the arm, or a phone call to a neighbor in need, or simply putting on a mask to protect others in a pandemic. Little checks. Countless little checks that have cost us so little. They may have seemed almost worthless to us at the time, but I tell you friends, through them sometimes the glory and the grace of God has been revealed. It may not be the kind of “glory” Roger longingly sang about in “Rent,” nor the glory of my childhood dreams, but it is the kind of glory that will redeem each and every day we have left. I’ve heard people say, “Through the people who have prayed for me, cared for me, I have seen the hand of God at work.” I’ve heard people say that about you. And I believe it is true. It was ironic that a cross would become the throne of God’s glory… ironic, too, that the only road to glory for Christian people is the way of the cross, the way of sacrifice … and perhaps most ironic of all that such sacrifice, though sometimes demanding our all in some blaze of glory, more often asks of us simpler giving… and relative pocket change. A way to glory… just a dollar at a time.

*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH              Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 27-28:
What do you believe about the Church of Christ?
We believe and confess one single catholic or universal church- a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers.
And what binds them all together?
They await their entire salvation in Jesus Christ, are washed by his blood, and sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
When did this church begin?
This church has existed from the beginning of the world and will last until the end, as appears from the fact that Christ is eternal King who cannot be without subjects.
Will God protect his Church from its enemies?
This holy church is preserved by God against the rage of the whole world, even though for a time it may appear very small as though it were snuffed out.
How big is this Church?
This holy church is not confined, bound, or limited to a certain place or certain persons.  But it is spread and dispersed throughout the entire world, though still joined and united in heart and will, in one and the same Spirit, by the power of faith.
How important is church membership?
We believe that since this holy assembly and congregation is the gathering of those who are saved and there is no salvation apart from it, no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself, regardless of his status or condition.
What is our obligation and duty toward the church of Christ?
All people are obliged to join and unite with it, keeping the unity of the church by submitting to its instruction and discipline, by bending their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ, and by serving to build up one another, according to the gifts God has given them as members of each other in the same body.

*HYMN No. 691                “Lord When I Came into This Life”
1 Lord, when I came into this life
you called me by my name;
today I come, commit myself,
responding to your claim.

2 Within the circle of the faith,
as member of your cast,
I take my place with all the saints
of future, present, past.

3 In all the tensions of my life,
between my faith and doubt,
let your great Spirit give me hope,
sustain me, lead me out.

4 So help me in my unbelief
and let my life be true:
feet firmly planted on the earth,
my sights set high on you.

THE PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER
Holy God, you have blessed us in order that we might share those blessings in turn, and so it is from the vantage point of knowing that we are your beloved children that we continue in prayer, knowing that you want to hear us, and should our words fail, that you will pray for us with sighs too deep for words.

We pray for the world and all that are in it. You made universe and all that is in it from the overflowing of your love. And so, we know that there is not a blade of grass of it, not a bird or animal that is not precious to you. Teach us to remember that all of it is precious in your eyes. Make us mindful of what it means to be stewards of the earth, not merely to see it as our dominion.

We pray for the people of the world, particularly for those who live under threat of violence and war. You call us to lives of wholeness. And so, as we pray, we ask you to make us mindful of the ways that our decisions ripple out across the globe to other people.

We pray for this nation, for our government, the congress, the courts, and the president. Whatever our differences, we know that we need leaders of integrity, and so we pray that character would be manifest in those who govern.

We pray for this city, for its poor and hungry as well as for those who live without shelter. Make us mindful of what it is to be a good city. Show us the ways that make for harmony and wellbeing. Open our eyes to the ways that we might serve our community. Hear our prayers for the poor, the unhoused, the lonely. Hear us as we pray for those who suffer from addiction and mental and emotional illness. Be with those who suffer violence in our communities, particularly the victims of gun violence. Teach us to be a voice of peace, always.

We pray for our neighborhoods and schools and homes. May the count-less gifts of love that you have showered upon us enable us to manifest your grace in untold ways.

Finally, we pray for the church. May we be fed, and in thus being fed, may we feed others. For it is for these reasons that you have called us into being and call us even still to lives of goodness and wholeness, for the life of the world you came to save. And now, with the confidence of children of God, we conclude with the words our savior taught us: “Our Father…”

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

PASSING OF FELLOWSHIP PADS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

TITHES & OFFERINGS

In a time when affordability is top of mind for many people, it is often tempting to dwell on scarcity and to believe that there simply is not enough to go around, Christian faith offers a contrary word, an attestation that God has given us more than we can ever need, from the overflowing of God’s love. Consequently, the people of God are invited to affirm that love with our own offerings, which will manifest the love of Christ to the world he died to save. The morning offering will now be received.

OFFERTORY

*RESPONSE N0. 606                  “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Come”

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise him, all creatures here below;
praise him above, ye heavenly host;
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

*PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

With abundance upon abundance, Almighty God, you have seen to our needs. We return this portion of our wealth, we offer these prayers, and we remember the gift of time you have given us as tokens of our commitment to know you, to love you, and to serve you. Bless these gifts, multiply and use them, and may we blessed ourselves as we see your work in our midst, Amen.

*HYMN No. 22                  “God of the Sparrow”

1 God of the sparrow
God of the whale
God of the swirling stars
How does the creature say Awe
How does the creature say Praise

2 God of the earthquake
God of the storm
God of the trumpet blast
How does the creature cry Woe
How does the creature cry Save

3 God of the rainbow
God of the cross
God of the empty grave
How does the creature say Grace
How does the creature say Thanks

4 God of the hungry
God of the sick
God of the prodigal
How does the creature say Care
How does the creature say Life

5 God of the neighbor
God of the foe
God of the pruning hook
How does the creature say Love
How does the creature say Peace

6 God of the ages
God near at hand
God of the loving heart
How do your children say Joy
How do your children say Home

*BENEDICTION

The hour has come to go into the world,
where our worship of God will continue
in every moment of our lives.
The hour has come to serve those around us,
to shoulder the burdens of our sisters,
to ease the pain of our brothers.
The hour has come to glorify God,
with our prayers as well as our praise,
with songs as well as acts of service.

*POSTLUDE