- Flowers: Art & Helen Binford
- Music: Rosemary Nettrouer
- Technology: Michael Barrett & Michelle Barrett
- Message: Catherine Griffith
Prelude
Good morning! Welcome!
Thank you to Art and Helen Binford for the flowers and to Rosemary for the music. Thank you to Michael and Michelle for facilitating the technology.
- If you have announcements or prayer requests, please feel free to add them as comments on the Facebook page.
Announcements
- We are live streaming on Facebook and the church website (wichitaquakers.org). Please feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link.
- Among church activities this week
- Today
- The Christian Education Committee meets at 1:00.
- The 205 Sunday School class meets at 3:00 via Zoom.
- The Community Talent Performance will be at 4:30 on the east lawn. Bring your lawn chairs. We’ll have straw bales to sit on too.
- Monday, October 5, 6:00 pm, Nominating Committee
- Wednesday, October 7, 6:30 pm, Bell Choir Rehearsal
- Saturday, October 10, Doug & Pam’s Listening Group will meet at 1:30 p.m.
- Next Sunday, October 11, we plan to live stream worship from the east lawn. Dress casually, and bring your lawn chair and your coffee if you’d like to join in person.
- Sunday, October 18, we plan to gather for worship inside, with guidelines for virus safety. Live streaming will continue. Details coming soon.
- Today
Hymn: “Farther Along”
Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long
While there are others living about us
Never molested though in the wrong
When death has come and taken our loved ones
It leaves our home so lonely and drear
And then do we wonder why others prosper
Living so wicked year after year
When we see Jesus coming in glory
When he comes down from his home in the sky
Then we shall meet him in that bright mansion
We’ll understand it all by and by
[Chorus]
Farther along we’ll know all about it
Farther along we’ll understand why
Cheer up my brother live in the sunshine
We’ll understand it all by and by
Prayer Concerns
- Greg Newby, Joan Smith, Steve Grether, Linda Mallonee and others who have had a rough time the past few months or so
- Our nation, with the election approaching
- Our church during this time of transition – May we find clarity and energy for the tasks at hand and the decisions we will need to make as we find our way forward. May we find ways to use our assets wisely and well. May we discover ways we are to be a beacon of love in our world. May we be looking for the doors God is opening, and may we have the courage to walk through them.
Pastoral Prayer
God of Light and Love, we open ourselves to you.
Message: Thoughts on World Quaker Day
Scripture: John 15:12-17
When I was in Boulder, Colorado, last week, my friend Margaret and I went to the Museum of Boulder, which included an exhibit about Arapahoe Native Americans. That exhibit included a section on Arapahoe virtues, and these are the virtues it highlighted:
- Humility
- Education
- A deep love for one another
- Resilience
I wrote them down and wondered which virtues University Friends might want to mention as our chief positive characteristics. As some of the Listening Groups have looked at the results of our survey, one thing stood out: we value diversity.
Some of us are pretty darn conservative, both politically and theologically. Others of us are pretty darn liberal both politically and theologically. We differ across a wide spectrum of things like who we plan to vote for and what we believe about God and how we live out our faith.
That’s part of an answer to the question of who we are: we are a people who value diversity.
We’ve come to some clarity about a couple of other pieces to that answer. For one thing, we are Christians. For some of us, our Christianity leans toward evangelical. For some of us, our Christianity leans toward liberal. Some of us are in between. But we do see ourselves as firmly within the Christian tradition.
For another thing, we are Quakers. For some of us, our Quakerism leans toward evangelical Friends. For some of us, our Quakerism leans toward liberal Friends. Some of us are in between. But, as a congregation, we see ourselves as firmly within the Quaker tradition.
And you know what? Today is World Quaker Day! World Quaker Day is an annual celebration sponsored by Friends World Committee for Consultation.
Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is an organization whose stated aim is
to encourage fellowship among all the branches of the Religious Society of Friends. The Quaker community circles the globe, spanning a rich diversity of regional cultures, beliefs and styles of worship.
FWCC, through its four section offices, runs programmes in different regions, uniting Friends around the world through Spirit-led fellowship.
Our association with the Quaker United Nations Offices offers a means to monitor and present Quaker contributions to world affairs. Our consultation extends to those of other faiths through work with the World Council of Churches.
Answering God’s call to universal love, FWCC brings Friends of varying traditions and cultural experiences together in worship, communications, and consultation, to express our common heritage and our Quaker message to the world (https://www.facebook.com/pg/fwccworldoffice/about/?ref=page_internal
For World Quaker Day 2020, FWCC calls all Friends everywhere to celebrate what being Quaker means today. This year’s theme asks, what does it mean to live a faithful life in our changing world?
What does being Quaker today mean to you? What does being Quaker today mean to us as a congregation?
Among the Facebook posts made by staff of the FWCC World Office, I found these thoughts:
- Job, the Section Secretary of FWCC – Africa Section, says, “Being Quaker today to me means being a peacemaker.”
- For Lindsey Fielder-Cook, who works on exploring the ‘Human Impacts of Climate Change’ at the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, being Quaker today means “Love and Light.”
Here’s what others have said about what being Quaker today means to them:
- Working to uplift peace and equality in my community
- Reaching out across divides
- To inspire change
- Always seeking the Light and engaging with the world
- Becoming a better friend of the inner Christ
- Seeing that of God in everyone
- Listening to the Spirit for promptings of Love and Truth
- Standing with all folks whose lives are seen as disposable
- Being challenged to consider what love asks of me
As we think about what being Quaker means today, and as we think about who we are as a congregation, I thought it would be a good opportunity to review the Quaker testimonies. As I do so, I ask you to think about which of these resonate most with you as an individual. And also, how might these say something true about who we are as a congregation?
The testimony of simplicity calls us to recognize that the things we own can get in the way of doing what God is calling us to do. Simplicity also calls us to recognize that the things we buy, the things we own, can be channels of love or seeds of war.
How does the testimony of simplicity speak to you today? [Pause.]
The testimony of peace calls us to acknowledge that war is wasteful and ineffective as well as contrary to Jesus’s teaching to love our enemies. The peace testimony also calls us, as James 3:18 puts it, “to do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor” (The Message).
How does the testimony of peace speak to you today? [Pause.]
The testimony of integrity, calls for
- Consistency between what we say we believe and the way we act
- Authenticity, genuineness, and truthfulness in ourselves – clearheaded self-awareness
- Authenticity, genuineness, and truthfulness in our relationships
How does the testimony of integrity speak to you today? [Pause.]
The testimony of community reminds us to take responsibility for living our own lives in faithfulness to God, to be open-minded and thoughtful, to hold firmly to the truth while honoring others, to submit to one another in love. Community in faithfulness to God involves both individual growth and corporate growth, inner wholeness and authentic relationships and healthy systems.
How does the testimony of community speak to you today? [Pause.]
The testimony of equality calls us to treat each person we encounter with love and concern regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or social standing.
How does the testimony of equality speak to you today? [Pause.]
The testimony of stewardship relates to how we treat the earth. Here is Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Faith and Practice, Advices and Queries number 42:
We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life. Rejoice in the splendour of God’s continuing creation. (https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/1/)
The testimony of stewardship relates to how we spend our time. In that regard, this testimony calls us to recognize that how we spend our time can get in the way of following Jesus.
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.
Proclaim good news, healing, and the end of oppression.
Those are the things that characterize spending time wisely and well.
The testimony of stewardship has to do with our relationship with money, to use money wisely and well.
- As families what does wise use of money mean? It probably means not getting into too much dept, preparing for retirement, living simply, paying attention to the needs around us….
- As a church what is wise use of money? It might not mean using tens of thousands of dollars a year to maintain a building that doesn’t suit our needs.
- How can we improve in our use of money as a congregation?
- How can we nurture wise use of money among our families?
How does the testimony of stewardship of the earth, of time, and of money speak to you today? [Pause.]
Which of the testimonies resonates most clearly with where you are in your walk of faith? Which of the testimonies seems most central to who we are as University Friends?
As we think about what being Quaker means today, and as we think about who we are as a congregation, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to look once again at the scripture from which our tradition, the Religious Society of Friends, gets its name.
Here is John 15: 12-17. In the context of Jesus’s remarks following what we call the Last Supper, he says this (NRSV):
12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants[d] any longer, because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
From this passage I want to pull out a few things.
First, note: Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” And what does Jesus command? Love one another. We are friends of Jesus, we are truly living according to our Quaker tradition, inasmuch as we love one other.
Second, I want to point out that Jesus said, “… I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” What Jesus knew from God, he passed on to his followers, his friends, and to us.
More completely, Jesus said, “I do not call you servants[d] any longer, because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” As friends of Jesus, we are called not to mindless obedience. Rather, we are called to be partners in what God is doing in our world.
Third, Jesus said, “… I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….” What kind of fruit are you bearing? What kind of fruit is our church bearing? What evidence shows that God’s life flows in and among us?
How can we increase in our love for one another? What would it look like to join God’s work in our world? What kind of fruit are we bearing?
The questions for today, for World Quaker Day 2020 are these:
- What does being Quaker today mean to you?
- What does being Quaker today mean to us as a congregation?
FWCC has provided downloadable signs. I printed one out. You can do so too, with the link provided.
Being Quaker today to me means living a life of integrity. What about you?
Open Worship
Please join together in a time of open worship, communion after the manner of Friends.
Benediction
May we each increase in love, join wholeheartedly in God’s work, and bear good fruit.
If you’d like to download a World Quaker Day sign, here’s the link: http://www.worldquakerday.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/WQD-Sign-2.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2QVKHQdJcA1GSm2ipNBEYiDA-P2f4TNf88TqvcqWUBPUXDJUpIYeadV7Y
We are meeting in person and also streaming our sermons on Facebook at 10:00 AM CST. Watch live:
https://www.facebook.com/universityfriendschurch/
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