Please join us in the virtual world of Second Life each Sunday at 2pm Pacific/ 5pm Eastern time. Download the interface at Secondlife.com, create your avatar, and join us at Sunshine Cathedral.
Call to Worship
To know the warmth of love,
To have the assurance that someone cares,
To be confident of our worth,
To be bold to love in return,
To be washed over with grace,
To be accepted as we are:
This is to know a bit of God.
https://holdfasttowhatisgood.com/liturgy/call-to-worship/
Opening Prayer
Eternal Spirit ...
We come before you today in need of hope.
We need hope for a calm and joyful future.
We need hope for love and kindness.
We pray for peace and safety.
Some say that the sky is at its
darkest just before the light.
We pray that this is true, for today seems stormy and dim.
We need your light... in every way.
We pray to be filled with your light.
Help us to walk in your light, and live
our lives in faith and service to others. Amen
Paraphrase of a prayer at https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/prayer/contemporary-prayers/a-prayer-for-hope-and-peace/
The Lessons
A Reflection by Ernest Holmes
My word comes back to me laden with the fruits of its own speech.
My word is the Law unto my Life, and the Law unto everything I speak.
O Word, go forth and heal and bless all humanity.
Tell them of their divine birthright.
Tell strangers that they are not alone, but that One goes with them Who knows and cares.
Tell the sick that they are healed and the poor that they cannot want; tell the unhappy of the joy of the Soul, and break the bonds of those who are in prison.
My word shall come back to me blessed…
A reading from the prophet Isaiah (55.6-13)
Seek the LORD while you are able, call upon God while you feel God’s nearness; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that they may experience mercy, for God will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Reflection by Rev. Dr. BK Hipsher
Our readings today are centered on Isaiah 55, the end of the portion of Isaiah we know as “deutero-Isaiah.” This portion of the book is focused on preparing the Israelites who have been exiled in Babylon for returning to Jerusalem. The Babylonian exile lasted 70 years, multiple generations. These generations of people, many born in Babylon, they had never known Jerusalem as their home.
So preparing these people for this tectonic change required some creative thinking and some creative examples. The writer in Isaiah had to think out of the box and use big global examples to make the points because the reality that the people had previously known was in the process of enormous change. Sound familiar?
The global pandemic that his the world in March 2020 began a process of change in human society that is not dissimilar to the situation the writer of Isaiah 55 found himself. When we think about the changes we have seen in our country in the past 6 months are HUGE. But certainly some of the issues that we have been forced to confront would not have been so alien to our grandparents and great grandparents.
In early March my life was focused on travel, arranging face to face in person meetings, growing business, and finding the right combination of online and traditional marketing doing shows and dealer events. The books I was reading were filled with studies on marketing trends and the latest business context and how is was changing in a way that we then considered very rapidly.
On March 13, 2020 my face to face reform temple family, Central Reform Temple of Boston, had its first Shabbat service on Zoom. We had about 36 hours to put it together. It was not nearly as smooth as our services have become in the weeks that followed. But we put together a service based in the ancient words and liturgy of Shabbat services and made it happen online. We could all see each other, we prayed and sang together. We had to start thinking out of the box.
On March 27, 2020 the governor of New York declared that all businesses in New York state were closed. My company began meeting daily on Zoom to try to figure out how to save the company from quick demise. We all had to throw out everything we thought we knew about marketing and the context of doing business in the US market. To survive, we had to start thinking out of the box.
So how were we able to do this? What strategies did we use that allowed us to “translate” our old reality to a NEW reality that bore little resemblance to the context we had some to know for our whole lives? We had to start thinking out of the box and that means that we had to find creative ways to decide what was really important and what examples we could use to communicate our ideas to others.
That is what the writer of the passage we read today was trying to communicate. As we come to terms with the fact that we will never go back to “the way it was” before the pandemic, I think it’s useful to look at the examples we see in Isaiah 55.
- When times are tough we remember how close God is to us all the time.
Before the onslaught of the novel corona virus that causes CoVid-19 we were so busy that it was hard to “hear” God’s voice through the noise. When the world shut down, the one memory I will always have is the stillness, the quiet, and how present I felt God to me and to the world in that silence. I know in my heart that God is always with us but it is very difficult to believe that God is close when the “noise” of life blocks us from the sunlight of the spirit.
- What we interpret as “bad” may actually turn out to be good!
My friend and wise mentor Joan Caira used to tell me that everything I interpret in my life to be “bad” was designed to prepare me for something better or save me from something worse. I have a very hard time trying to imagine anything worse than 150,000+ Americans dead and nearly 700,000 others dead around the world. What we learn from this horrible situation may save the human race from even worse viruses. And the personal hygiene that will forever change the way we move around in the world will undoubtedly save lives in the future. We have no way to know how what we are learning today and the changes we are making will benefit humanity in the future.
- The world needs our help to be a place that is filled with beauty and love.
A garden that is not maintained with loving care grows thorns and briers. But the work of our hands combined with the rain and sun can create a place of beauty and healing. Isaiah uses imagery of the mountains and hills bursting out in song and trees clapping their hands. It makes me think of the symphony of sound in a thunderstorm and the way the trees look like they’re laughing and waving their hands in the wind. Beauty is around us all the time, the only question is do we recognize it and appreciate it.
As we all reevaluate our goals and aspirations, as we change our daily patterns, as we look at the beauty of the natural world with new eyes, may we experience a renewed sense of purpose and a revives sense of hope. For God is always with us and we will learn that we will not always have to live in fear when we leave our home and return full of anxiety. But soon and very soon we will be able to go out in joy and return in peace. Because that is God’s promise to us as the children of the most high who are loved and cared for no matter what comes our way and whether we are aware of it or not.
The hope we share with our friends, our family, our faith community is the hope that can change the world. That word of hope will be multiplied and return to us blessed.
Let us pray ... Holy One, let us go out today in joy and return in peace. Let us share hope, joy and peace with the world in the example of how we live each day. Amen.
For a list of music suggested to meditate on for this service click the link below.