Bulletin – Sunday, September 28, 2025

Sunday, September 28, 2025
Fourth Sunday of Creation / Sunday for Truth and Reconciliation

We Gather as People of Faith

Welcome

 Land Acknowledgement

 Announcements

Lighting the Christ Candle

We light this candle today as a symbol of our commitment to be a light of humble love, To act as a caring community for all we encounter even those with different beliefs and appearances, and a respectful faithful people of God for the world today.

Call to Worship

Let us bring our hearts and minds together this morning to worship the God of all Creation with our whole being to honour the God, whose vastness is shown in the splendid diversity of all the makes up this glorious Mother earth. Let us honour and respect her as God’s caregivers on earth. For all these gifts we are grateful God and come to be with you and one another. We come to spend time together to be replenished in song, silence, word, and prayer, we come fully here fully now. Amen.

Hymn – “May and Great, O God, are Your Works” (Voices United #308)

Many and great, O God, are your works, Maker of earth and sky.
Your hands have set the heavens with stars,
Your fingers spread the mountains and plains.
Lo, at your word the waters were formed;
Deep seas obey your voice.

Grant unto us communion with you, O star-abiding one.
Come unto us and dwell with us,
With you are found the gifts of life.
Bless us with life that has no end,
Eternal life with you

Prayer of Approach and Confession

Praise to you Bearer of our home, Mother Earth, the Maker who loves the intense variety of all creation, the colours and shapes of all our features, the desires and ways of every nation all cultures and communities. Praise to you who weeps with us when we fear those that are different and wound and spill blood in your name and worse when we commit harms against others and claim your power as our own for our own ends. Oh Keeper and lover of all, send us mercy, grant us forgiveness and lead us in new paths that we might live as you want us too, as your prophets before and among us today live, and as Christ showed us and taught us to live. Amen.

(Adapted from the Celtic Wheel of the Year: Celtic and Christian Seasonal Prayers)

Words of Assurance

Blessed Inspiration the spark of your infinite joy lights up all living things. Come to us this day and help us join you in delighting with the gifts of all nations. Let your love stitch and strengthen our fragile co-existence together, that our children may honour the multi-coloured patches of land and people that live here, remembering especially the gifts and wisdom of the First peoples of this land. As guests and as First nations together tuck us all under the quilt of peacemaking for blest are those children of God that follow the way peace.

(Adapted from the Celtic Wheel of the Year: Celtic and Christian Seasonal Prayers, p. 173)

Sung Response – “Spirit of the Living God” (Voices United #376 verse 2)

Spirit of the living God, move among us all,
Make us one in heart and mind, make us one in love.
Humble, caring, selfless, sharing,
Spirit of the living God, fill our lives with love.

Time for All Ages

We Hear God’s Word

Gospel Reading:        John 13:34-35

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Scripture Reading:    Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28, 31:31-34

¹ In the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² “Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. ³ Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, they will each turn from their wicked ways; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.”

⁴ So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and while Jeremiah dictated all the words the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them on the scroll. ⁵ Then Jeremiah told Baruch, “I am restricted; I am not allowed to go to the Lord’s temple. ⁶ So you go to the house of the Lord on a day of fasting and read to the people from the scroll the words of the Lord that you wrote as I dictated. Read them to all the people of Judah who come in from their towns. ⁷ Perhaps they will bring their petition before the Lord and will each turn from their wicked ways, for the anger and wrath pronounced against this people by the Lord are great.”

⁸ Baruch son of Neriah did everything Jeremiah the prophet told him to do; at the Lord’s temple he read the words of the Lord from the scroll.

²¹ The king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and Jehudi brought it from the room of Elishama the secretary and read it to the king and all the officials standing beside him. ²² It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the firepot in front of him. ²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire.

²⁷ After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up.

³¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. ³³ “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ³⁴ No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

May God speak to us through these readings of scripture.
Thanks be to God!

Hymn “Deep in Our Hearts (More Voices #154)

Deep in our hearts there is a common vision;
Deep in our hearts there is a common song;
Deep in our hearts there is a common story,
Telling creation that we are one.

Deep in our hearts there is a common purpose;
Deep in our hearts there is a common goal;
Deep in our hearts there is a sacred message,
Justice and peace in harmony.

Deep in our hearts there is a common longing;
Deep in our hearts there is a common theme;
Deep in our hearts there is a common current,
Flowing to freedom like a stream.

Deep in our hearts there is a common vision;
Deep in our hearts there is a common song;
Deep in our hearts there is a common story,
Telling Creation that we are one.

Sermon: “God’s Love is Written on Our Hearts”

Anthem “All My Relatives”

Listen my sister, listen my brother,
So many features, so many colours;
I have not loved you like I should love you if I believe that God is love.

Every face, all my relatives.
Every race, all my relatives.
Every place, all my relatives
Hear creation sing,
One with everything.

Where there is hurting, We share the hurting,
Where there is justice, We share the justice.
We share the mercy if we believe that God is love…

Every face, all my relatives.
Every race, all my relatives.
Every place, all my relatives
Hear creation sing,
One with everything.

Where there is suffering, we share the suffering
Where there is praising, we share the praising
Where there is freedom, we share the freedom if we believe that God is love…

Every face, all my relatives.
Every race, all my relatives.
Every place, all my relatives
Hear creation sing,
One with everything.

We Respond to God’s Word

Song of Faith

One:   In and with God, we can direct our lives toward right relationship with each other and with God.
All:      We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life. We can grow in wisdom and compassion. We can recognize all people as kin. We can accept our mortality and finitude, not as a curse, but as a challenge to make our lives and choices matter.

One:   Yet evil does not – cannot – undermine or over come the love of God.
All:      God forgives, and calls all of us to confess our fears and failings with honesty and humility. God reconciles, and calls us to repent the part we have played in damaging our world, ourselves, and each other. God transforms, and calls us to protect the vulnerable, to pray for deliverance from evil, to pray for deliverance from evil, to work with God for the healing of the world, that all might have abundant live. We sing of grace.

One:   The church has not always lived up to its vision. It requires the Spirit to reorient it, helping it to live an emerging faith while honouring tradition, challenging it to live by grace rather than entitlement, for we are called to be a blessing to the earth.

Sung Response (Voices United #969)

Amen, Amen, Amen.

Invitation to Share

Offering Sung Response – “For the Gift of Creation” (Voices United #538)”

For the gift of creation, the gift of your love,
And the gift of the Spirit by which we live,
We thank you and give you the fruit of our hands.
May your grace be proclaimed by the gifts that we give.

Offering Prayer

God calls us to live a new day in a new way may these gifts be used to build right relations among all God’s people that we may together build the kingdom of God on earth with respect, care and dignity for all.

Prayers of the People

After each set of Prayers, Diane will say “we seek your grace we listen for your call” between each set of prayers we will have a moment of silence.

Passing of the Peace

The Prayer Jesus Taught Us:

One:   Please join me in praying as Jesus taught us: Our Creator who is like
All:      Our Mother and our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, now ever and forever. Amen.

We Go Into God’s World

Please join in the singing of the hymn – “Grace Alone”

Every promise we can make,
Every prayer and step of faith,
Every difference we will make
Is only by His grace.
Every mountain we will climb,
Every ray of hope we shine,
Every blessing left behind
Is only by His grace.

Grace alone with God supplies,
Strength unknown He will provide.
Christ in us, our Cornerstone,
We will go forth in grace alone.

Every soul we long to reach,
Every heart we hope to teach,
Everywhere we share His peace
Is only by His grace.
Every loving word we say,
Every tear we wipe away,
Every sorrow turned to praise
Is only by His grace.

Grace alone with God supplies,
Strength unknown He will provide.
Christ in us, our Cornerstone,
We will go forth in grace alone.

Commissioning

Go forth this day confident of God’s love written on our hearts that we may be guided by the spirit within and all around us to be a loving presence with all we meet and a reconciling respectful people in a world crying out for care and mending.

Benediction

As we go forth, may the Creator guide us on the right path to walk with dignity and humility, courage and faith through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit within us, may we choose to live in a good way, loving and serving others and living with respect in creation and may we embrace the spirit of the risen Christ who taught us now to love God and our neighbours as ourselves.

Sung Response – “Send Us Out”

Send us out in the power of Your Spirit, Lord,
May our lives bring Jesus to the world.
May each thought and word bring glory to Your name,
Send us out in Your Spirit, Lord, we pray.