Soul Tending

Good Morning and Welcome to Worship! Worship is often the first place that new people come into contact with this growing community of faith. And so, if you are joining us for the first time, I say to you what is said every Sunday: You are welcome here. Here is a place where all are welcome. For such is the love of God for God’s Very Good Creation.

Holy God, we are gathered together in your love. We lift up our hands and call on your name. We are your people, thirsty for the living water you provide. When we consider how you provide for us, giving us the spring that gushes up to new life, we cling to you, singing praises with joyful lips; through Jesus the Christ. Amen.

God of generous provision, we are grateful for the many ways you care for us and provide for the needs of your people. In ward water, bread and fruit of the vine, you nourish and sustain us. When we listen to you, we encount- er delight, and when we turn to you we encounter life lived most fully. Sometimes though, we find ourselves in a dry and weary land … where we have misused and depleted creation, drought and famine leave people and animals facing hunger and starvation. Where we have polluted streams, rivers and oceans, fish and other water creatures suffer and die. People without access to clean water become sick. O God, help us to care for your creation in ways that make it possible for all to have enough food and water — life, verdant and abundant.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a dry and weary land … in places torn apart by war, where the earth itself has been ravaged; where hospitals and homes and corner stores have been reduced to rubble; where human lives have been destroyed and deformed; where peace lies in the ruins and hope has been buried. O God, raise peace among us again. Build hope up from the ground. Restore in us and in the world’s leaders the will and determination to make an end to war and a new beginning for justice.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a dry and weary land … Where we are lost, unable to find our way to a place that is home for us; when we are sad and weighed down with regret or grief; when we are tired or sick in body, mind, or spirit. O God, provide water in the desert and manna in the wilderness — enough to sustain us for one more day, even enough to revive us for the long haul.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the rich feast of your presence … we celebrate the new beginnings in our lives: a new job, a new relationship, a new life, a new day of sobriety, a second chance. O God, we give thanks to you for new blessings in our lives.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the rich feast of your presence … We give thanks for the gift of healing after injury or illness: for laughter that bubbles up to replace our tears: for hope that spills its soothing light over the darkness of our despair. O God, we thank you for the gift of wholeness and resurrection promised to us in Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the rich feast of your presence … we enjoy the relief of forgiveness given and received: we enjoy the breach in walls of division: our own hearts are enlarged, and our vision is broadened by new understanding: we welcome a prodigal home or are ourselves welcomed home again. O God, we thank you that you are reconciling all things in heaven and earth.

Be patient with us, we pray, in the varied landscapes of our lives. Make us patient with one another and even with ourselves. Do your good work within us, among us, and beyond us, until our lives and all of creation come fully into your preferred vision. You who so generously provide, deserve our praise, our grateful praise. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

We seek you in your word, O God, as though we are searching for water in a dry and weary land. By the power of your Holy Spirit, may this word be to us a rich feast, satisfying the soul. Then with our mouths, we will praise you; and with our lives we will bless you, our Host and our Hope. Amen.

¹At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ²He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? ³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” ⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Our passage this week tells the story of a fruitless tree that the owner is ready to cut down. The gardener, however, asks for more time. The gardener wants to tend and cultivate the soil in the hope that fruit may yet grow. The gardener is open to a different future for this tree, in spite of its present condition. Think about your own life in relationship to this story. Think about the lives of your loved ones in relationship to this story: what needs special tending? What will cultivate the “soil” of daily life so that new growth, new possibilities, might begin to bear fruit? What can we learn from this gardener about allowing for a different outcome, a new possibility?

Followers of Jesus, children of God, we often spend our money on that which is not true bread, and labor toward things that will never satisfy. In our offering, we give to things that are of God; bread for the hungry, good news for those who are oppressed, the ministries of the church that welcome strangers and siblings alike. We bring before God a portion of all that God has so freely given to us. Amen.

God of wilderness and Promised Land, in days of want and in days of plenty you have been with us. By these gifts we now share, may others know of your providence and care. Send us, not only our offerings, but our very selves — to console and comfort, to lift up and reach out, to listen and sit beside your children everywhere at the one table you have set; through Jesus the Christ. Amen.

On this third Sunday of Kindness, may the love of God ground us, the way of Jesus guide us, and the Holy Spirit flow through us, that we may bear fruit in our lives that contribute to the kin-dom. Amen.