A Time to Gather: Fifty-Six Devotionals for Private and Group Worship

By Robert A. Wallace

We gather together to ask the Lords blessing.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today.

The word gather is found more than 450 times in the Bible. There are some fifteen different Greek and Hebrew forms that translate into the English word gather. Little wonder, then, that it finds its way into so much of our liturgical language.

A Time to Gather seems an appropriate title and theme for this third book of brief worship services.

Gathering is a community word. It is my hope that when groups gather in a community of faith and worship, this resource will be of help. The notion of gathering as a worshipping community has been in the background of the writing throughout. It is written to follow the usual pastoral year, beginning with services that relate to September events. There is a service for each week of the year, followed by four special occasion services. Worship leaders will find that my suggestions serve best if read over beforehand. Then choices of hymns and scripture passages can be modified to meet local needs, and the meditation can be shortened to an allotted time or augmented by the thoughts of the celebrant. I also urge you to become familiar with the help that is available in the appendices.

I have been pleased by the number of people who have indicated that my previous two volumes, A Present Help and Fire in the Bones, have been helpful to them as a resource for private devotion. I have had this in mind in preparing the present work. I hope that it too will help in gathering the thoughts of those who use it in this way.

Once again, with leaders of group worship in mind, I have avoided making the references as personal as I might in a more autobiographical work or in my own preaching. The aim is to prevent any confusion about the voice behind the material.

Again, I wish to thank my editors, Peter Gordon White and Elizabeth Phinney, for their guidance, enthusiasm, and support in this project. Above all, I am pleased to acknowledge the invaluable aid of my wife Gwynneth, who has made valuable suggestions about the material from the start and has read over each page (Yeah, even until the fourth and fifth draft) and has been critic and proofreader. I dedicate this volume to her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503568280

Book preview

ADVENTUROUS RELIGION

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Call

The mighty God, even the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun till its going down. Our God shall come and shall not keep silence.

Prayer

God, our hearts are gladdened in your presence. Help us to discover truth and to speak it; to feel your glory and to show it; to hear your direction and to follow it, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Scripture

Proverbs 22:1,2,8,9

Mark 8:27-38

Suggested Hymns

Onward Christian soldiers

From the slave pens of the delta

T HERE IS A grand feeling inside us when we sing Onward Christian Soldiers. Despite valid objections to its warlike imagery, it remains one of the most popular of all hymns. For many, it evokes feelings of the adventurous faith we knew as young people, when all our lives lay ahead of us. The strong words and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s rousing melody still stir us.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, America’s strongest voice for faith in the 1940s, wrote a book entitled Adventurous Religion. Fosdick’s own ecumenical stance and social conscience made him an adventurous Christian. Religion as adventure would make an intriguing theme for the beginning of a new church year.

When Jesus says, Follow me, and we do so, we embark on life’s most challenging and demanding venture. To many, this may seem a foolish statement. Faith is often seen as a cut and dried formula to be passively received or as a set of restrictive and out-of-date moral maxims. When we look at the New Testament scene in today’s reading, we find it full of sharp challenges and short answers. Who do they say that I am? The Christ. Follow me.

Can you imagine a different scene, in which Peter says, You are the Christ, and Jesus responds, Ah, but do you believe that I am cosubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and cosubstantial with men according to my manhood? Do you understand, Peter? Hardly! Or imagine Peter responding to Christ’s Follow me with, Well, yes, but first we must settle the issues of Sunday shopping, our position on Native land claims, and how we feel about the ordination of homosexual persons. Or, worst of all, imagine Jesus adding, You do realize that this will mean you must give up dancing, swearing, lotteries, and chasing the opposite sex. All ridiculous scenarios, of course, but not so unreal.

When we look at the New Testament, all that is said, to begin, is Follow me. The countless issues the church deals with will appear on the agenda in due course. Nothing ends with those first following steps, but everything begins with them.

Adventure begins with the realization that Jesus is going somewhere. He is on the move. On the way we will learn to honour creeds and will create new ones. We will respect the ethical decisions of our forbearers and forge new ones in the heat of our own day. But we will be on the move! Jesus’ words both dislocate us and connect us. We dislocate from some of our past and present, but we connect with a leader who is going somewhere. The word follow in the New Testament is taken from the Greek for road. We hit the road with Jesus!

Jesus is more interested in the future than in the past. It is not where we have been that counts but where we are going. He is not concerned with whether we have stumbled but with whether we get up, not with whether we are comfortable, but with whether we can help. We are all dysfunctional in comparison with Jesus, but in his company, we can function effectively. In the familiar parable of the prodigal son, the erring son is not even able to say the whole of his carefully rehearsed speech of penitence, because the present overwhelms his past and impels him into the future.

Finally, Jesus makes himself a model. It is not a matter of slavish imitation. Each, in his or her own time and place, will find what it means to follow. For some, it has meant violent death, like the seven Jesuit priests in San Salvador who were assassinated a few years ago, their brains carved out by government hirelings. For others, following Jesus will cost far less, but it could mean refusing a bribe that competitors are willing to take, thereby losing a profitable tender. It can mean so minor a matter as taking time to visit a lonely person confined to home. We are not expected to know what may be asked of us before we begin the journey, nor where it will take us. We are expected to understand only that we follow one who will lead us into adventurous living.

Prayer

Our God, too often we follow at a distance or not at all. When we falter and are uncertain, speak to us with commanding love and help us to become what we were meant to be. Lead our steps into the way of service, that lives lived in the shadow of doubt or pain or need may find new hope. We bring our prayers for a world in need and pray that some who follow in the footsteps of Jesus may be led to positions of power and influence, to bring to those offices the strength of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Notes on use of this service, including dates, occasions, and possible variations.

MEDIOCRITY

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Call

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Prayer

Creator God, your mind still makes all things new. Eternal Son, your earthly life still blesses our dailyness. Holy Spirit, your presence lifts our spirits in joy and courage. Holy Trinity, bless this time together, that we may become the persons you intended in our creation. Amen.

Scripture

Acts 16:16-34

John 17:20-26

Suggested Hymns

O Thou who camest from above

Ye servants of God, your master proclaim

J ESUS GIVES US a lot to live up to. It is, however, no more than most of us asked of ourselves when young. The late adolescent protagonist in Reynolds Price’s novel Tongues of Angels catches the tone of youth’s earnest ambition. He is an aspiring artist and a camp counsellor in the summer before his commencement at university. He speaks of his dead father’s hopes for him that he not be common , that is, one of those people who settle for being themselves, with their shirttails out. He also tells of the books by great artists he has read and goes on, I combined their exalted visions of human potential with my own boyhood fantasies about Young Jesus, the one who astounded the scholars in the Temple. And I came up with high ambitions…. I wanted to earn, I wanted truly to deserve, the permanent thanks of mankind. I wanted my good sounding name to last. One suspects that most of us have had that kind of dream in our early years.

Many of us were taught to reach for the stars, to dream the impossible dream. Then came reality, the gnawing ache that comes with seeing the gap between our ambitions and our talents. This grim reality is portrayed in wrenching drama in Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, the play and the film. Antonio Salieri is a deeply religious composer who, throughout the play, prays to God, Use me, use me to your glory, and means it. In the midst of his minor success in the court of Vienna, a young upstart musician appears, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri recognizes Mozart’s genius and is overcome with envy and with hostility towards the God who has upstaged him by giving such talent to the cocky young Amadeus, friend of God. There is a lengthy, ironical prayer in which Salieri concludes, You put within me the perception of the Incomparable, which most men never know, then ensured that I would know myself forever mediocre. Grazia! A bitter Thank you! God becomes the enemy, instead of the friend. At the end of the play, Mozart is dead, and Salieri, an old man, is in a nursing home. He rolls his wheelchair to the front of the stage and slowly pushes himself up. He is a lone figure in the darkness. He extends his arms and cries, Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you. You are forgiven! It is a moving moment, and somehow, for many, a moment of true blessing.

Most of us are mediocre; that is, we are in the middle. As Somerset Maugham said, Only the mediocre person is always at his best. Each of us works to overcome that sense of insignificance. Three insights help. First, we keep striving for excellence even when we know that our goals are ultimately unattainable.

That done, we learn to appreciate and enjoy excellence in others. Perhaps, in doing so, we escape mediocrity. Arthur Conan Doyle asserted that, Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. Talent instantly recognizes genius. As we are able to enjoy the talents of others, to a degree we escape mediocrity.

The third insight is to settle for mediocrity. In 1970, Richard Nixon nominated a judge for the Supreme Court who was rejected by the House of Representatives. One Senator spoke in his defense: Roman Lee Hruska of Nebraska. There is encouragement in his statement that there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We are not all stars. The Victoria Symphony orchestra was playing in beautiful Butchart Gardens, beside the sea, on a summer evening. The time for the concert to start came and went. The orchestra was still tuning up. Soon the crowd became restless. Obviously, there was a problem. Time passed. Then a small float plane dropped into the inlet near the gardens. As it pulled up to the mooring, the spectators could see a young man in evening clothes hop out, rush up the wharf into the concert bowl, and then pull from his small black bag a piccolo! The smallest of instruments, but the concert piece could not be played without it. We find what talent we have been given, and we exercise it with joy while enjoying the greater talents of others. Often the feeling that we have missed the brass ring is a result of poor priorities, rather than poor aim.

Prayer

Not all of us arrive at worship with our hearts aglow, O God. Before you now, we remember those in our own midst who come with hearts shadowed by anxiety; those who worry about family members; those whose livelihood is threatened by a changing economy; grandparents who long to see children and grandchildren but cannot; couples whose marriages are negotiating a rough passage; be present with each to encourage and direct, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

JUNKYARD JESUS

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Call

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.

Prayer

O God of the unexpected and the undreamed, speak to us in the words of Jesus as you spoke to the young fishermen of Galilee, to the businessmen of Jerusalem, to the householders of Jericho, to the revellers in Cana. Speak now as we worship, we pray. Amen.

Scripture

Isaiah 53:1-9

Mark 4:12-23

Suggested Hymns

O Jesus I have promised

Mine eyes have seen the glory

T HE CAR FLOATED easily with the stream of traffic that flowed through the Laurentians. Small picture-postcard villages, dignified by steeples and warmed by geraniums, lay at ease in the Sunday sun.

A bend in the road swept us by a junkyard with its stacks of rusted-out auto bodies. We saw there, jammed against the wire fence, a monstrous metallic statue of Jesus Christ. Built to dominate the countryside from the rooftop of a monastery now demolished, the figure had been cut in two, and the segments stood side by side. His waist, shoulders, and head towered twenty feet above the highway. The arms stretched out in mute benediction over the Sunday traffic. His stance said, Come unto me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, but the cars zipped by. We just had time to see the sign that hung over the chest: A Vendre - For Sale!

For sale? What price? Thirty pieces of silver?

The next week a city newspaper ran a photo of the scene, slickly captioned, No takers! In the days that followed, the bizarre image refused to fade. What does one do with so gross a memory? Surely in Quebec, where old patterns have collapsed so quickly, we should be accustomed to finding religious objects in strange places; crucifixes in yard sales, a dismantled altar rail in a rural garage, a lovely madonna in the weed-strewn back lot of a service station, and once, in the cluttered catacombs of a used furniture shop, an ancient family Bible with births and deaths and, ironically, a pressed forget-me-not! So why am I haunted by that abandoned figure?

Strange that my Roman Catholic friends are less scandalized than I. Like the svelte young nun in her chic street clothes, who, as we talked of this, gestured towards two young women braced against a summer rain on the McGill campus. Their long black rain coats, pale make-up, and rimless glasses had her laughing as she said, See how we have switched roles? Her philosophy seemed more flexible than mine, forged in a church that has witnessed and weathered the modifications of centuries. She was more prepared to sacrifice investments of past practice for new faithfulness. She was quicker than I to fashion new wineskins.

Perhaps this is the basis of my dismay. My church has no statues to trouble its transitions, but it appears to have difficulty in scrapping what seem to be treasures for some. There are buildings, expensive to maintain, unsuited to what we now know about communication. There are patches of liturgy that to any outsider sound like echoes of past centuries. There are hymns in which the words and music seem to be in another tongue. There are lengthy, wordy classes for communicants, who find words a drag. Tired reformers push a church overloaded with excess baggage and wonder why they are weary.

Is it that this rejected remnant of a lost devotional practice spells out an end to all reverence? When an article once esteemed can be so lightly disdained, shall all respect die? Life without reverence would be flat and insipid. When nothing lifts our eyes, nothing lifts our spirits. Life devoid of reverence would be earthbound, stuck fast in the commonplace.

Yet it was in the commonplace that Jesus lived out his days. Born in a stable, baptized in a muddy creek, he taught from the deck of a smelly fishing ketch and walked to his death on a garbage dump. The auto-wrecker’s yard may not be so inappropriate a place for that statue after all. Reverence may not be lost so much as scattered, sown to grow in new commonplaces. Is that what Albert Sweitzer meant by reverence for life? There is evidently no sale for symbols that have lost the power to generate hope. Still, a nostalgic sense of loss hangs over that Laurentian scene.

The Christ of the Scrapheap, the Junkyard Jesus, was an offence to my memories. He may yet be a stimulus to my dreams for a better future.

Prayer

God of promise, our inner darkness yearns for light; our failures yearn for healing; our unknowing yearns for new truth and understanding.