Lutheran Church of Our Savior

Good Morning, Church!

Welcome on this first Sunday in Fall 2020, 6 months of pandemic “My home is Sacred Space” of at-home worship and, since July, limited in-person worship in the Sanctuary at 12 Franklin Avenue.  One guesses this shall be our practice for some time, although we hope to substitute live-stream for the recorded message services by December.

Today’s Second Lesson includes an early Church hymn Saint Paul incorporated in his letter to the Philippians!  Do you remember when the assembly of the baptized could sing hymns?  I sing in the shower, the car, and when no one’s around at church.  But I miss terribly our corporate singing. “This too shall pass,” as my Grandma Fleck used to say.

Video Message Link

“Mr. Massoud and His Boys!”

https://vimeo.com/462213870  

Pastoral Prayer

Gracious Father, You open Your arms to welcome us and open Your hands to satisfy the desire of every living creature.

In LI’s autumn season, we thank You for blessing fields and orchards with an abundance of tomatoes, corn, grapes, apples, pumpkins, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, sunflowers and chrysanthemums. May Your Spirit renew the face of the earth.  As You show Your love and kindness in the land’s bounty, save us from the selfish use of Your gifts.  Help us to share and to wisely use the resources of nature so that generations yet to come may praise You for Your bounteous creation! 

Like the sons in today’s parable, we are Your children.  We’re called to be sent.  We hunger for Your vineyard, for Your kingdom, and confess we are easily distracted by our self-centeredness.  Forgive us, Lord, and by the power of Your Spirit, renew and restore us.   Help us with Your Spirit’s power when we’re torn between Your will and our own.   Direct us in all our doings that with Your favor and Spirit, we may give You the glory in all things and, by Your mercy, enter the kingdom of heaven along with the tax collectors and prostitutes.

Fulfill, Lord, the desires and petitions that are best for us according to Your will as we bring to You our personal concerns. Grant us wisdom and truth and, in the age to come, life everlasting. We pray for all on the daily prayer list and for these we bring You silently in this moment.  Help them, Lord, help them.

Sanctify our homes with Your presence and joy during this on-going pandemic.  Keep our children in the covenant of their baptism and enable their parents and grandparents to rear them in a life of faith and devotion in a time when there are so many obstacles. Protect college students from the infectious spread.  Increase awareness among all of infectious dangers brought on by massed gatherings that do not practice the protocols of health and well-being.

Flood Your Spirit to help us be doers and hearers of Your Word.  Take from us all hatred and prejudice, give us the spirit of love, and dispose our days in Your peace.  Prosper the labors of those taking counsel for the nations of the world, that mutual understand and common endeavor may increase. We pray for our nation that amid diversity we may experience unity. 

All these things, and anything else You see that we need, grant us, O Lord, according to Your never-ending mercies.  Amen.