Ahead of their recent joint meeting, members of the Presbyterian Church, A Corporation Board and the Unification Commission joined for a moving worship service in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. The Rev. Stephanie Anthony of the A Corp Board and the Rev. Dr. Dave Davis of the UC led worship, with Phillip Morgan providing piano accompaniment.
For his meditation, Davis relied on Ephesians 3:14–21, Paul’s prayer for readers across the generations.
“This prayer ought to be a prayer for every family, every day,” Davis said, “as memorized, as deep within, as the Lord’s Prayer, as routine as the nighttime prayers offered at a child’s bedside, as common as the table grace passed on from generation to generation.”
“It really should be … a prayer we offer for one another, for ourselves, for our congregations, for the church, for the staff of our General Assembly, and yes, for all God’s people, that we might have the power, the means, the bandwidth to comprehend with all the children of God what is the breadth and length and height and depth, that we might have some inkling of what reaches from east to west, from the north to the south, that we might have some glimpse of that which is invisible, that we might have some sense of the weight that is beyond measure, that somehow we might see that the Lord is good every day, and to know the love of Christ.”
We can’t just know that love, Davis said. We have to feel it and live it.
“The love of Christ surpasses all knowledge, but for good’s sake — for God’s sake,” Davis said. “The love of Christ has everything to do with what we think, what we conclude, what we decide, what we teach our children, how we live, how we act and how we vote.”
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind’ — there’s no either/or here,” Davis said, including the thinking of the Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes in his sermon “Loving Minds and Thinking Hearts.” Gomes preached that to know love “is not an oxymoron,” Davis said. “It’s a prayer, actually, to know the love of Christ so that you and all might be filled with the fullness of God, which is to be filled with the love of Christ himself, which is to know the love of God, which surpasses all knowledge every day.”
“God can do more in us than we can ever dream about,” Davis said. “The fullness of God so fills us, the love of Christ so overwhelms us, the piercing light of Christ so shines on us, the matchless grace of God so washes over us, that God can use us, work with us, transform us in ways beyond what we can see. It’s not just a prayer. It’s not just praise — it’s a promise.”
Nine years ago, Davis used a sabbatical to minister to four tiny congregations on the Scottish island of Islay, home to 2,000 people, 20,000 sheep and 12 distilleries, he noted.
During worship, Davis found himself stumbling while leading the Lord’s Prayer, saying his cadence was out of sync. It came down to the petition, “thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven,” as Davis and most U.S. Presbyterians render it. The folks in the Church of Scotland put the pause elsewhere — “thy will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven.”
“One Sunday I just stayed silent,” Davis said. “That’s when I heard the difference.”
That change in cadence “brings some urgency, some expectation, some immediacy, a sense of right now, a timeliness that God has the power to work with us, through us, beyond us, despite us, to accomplish far more than we could ever ask for or imagine — now, every day, right now,” he said. “The love Christ offers comes with such fullness that hearts and souls and minds can be inspired and spark and change and guide and protect and calm now, all in service to making the world more like what God intends, now — even as the mind-numbing, soul-sucking powers and principalities of this present darkness rage.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Maura Weil, Archive Technician, Presbyterian Historical Society
Gina Yeager-Buckley, Manager, Youth & Triennium, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Interim Unified Agency
Let us pray:
Loving Jesus, lead us to the goodness of ourselves and others that is deeper than any gifts or challenges we embody. Open us to discover our full humanity through mutual depending and belonging. Amen.
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