SPECIAL DAYS: Outdoor Worship - Church Picnic

LESSON: Romans 8.18-25

Sermon Title: Waiting

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INTRODUCTION:

The opening sequence of The Sound of Music is a much-heralded, breath-taking piece of film-making. With a sweeping aerial view, the film opens with a left-to-right camera pan through the clouds and across rocky, snow-covered mountains.

The camera dips into a green, wooded valley with steep cliffs that descend into a snow-fed lake. Reflections of the hills are viewed in the mirror-like images on the water's surface.

As the camera moves over the European landscape and village, it discovers an open, green area nestled between the peaks.

It moves closer and zooms into the green field, where it suddenly finds a happy and joyous Maria (Julie Andrews), a novice Salzburg Austrian nun, walking across the wide expanse of land.

With open-armed appreciation of the beauty of the surrounding majestic peaks and vistas of the Austrian Alps, she twirls and sings the title song. For her: "The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music."

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears.
My heart wants to beat like the wings
Of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees,
My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze,
To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls
Over stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray.
I go to the hills when my heart is lonely,
I know I will hear what I've heard before.
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more.

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MAIN BODY:

  1. The hills are alive with the sound of music.

    1. Even though the movie was released in 1965, I realized the aliveness and the sounds more clearly when in 1969, I was pastoring three churches in southeastern Vermont.

    2. I would travel over the mountains.

    3. I would drive alongside the mountains.

    4. I could hear them speaking and the songs that they sang were comforting.

  2. The hills are alive with the sound of music.

    1. What do you hear?

      1. Native Americans

      2. Pioneers

      3. Settlers

      4. Villagers

      5. The sound of shot at Tower hill.

      6. The sounds of muskets and rifles.

    2. What do you hear?

  3. I hear the sounds of creation.

    1. The voice of God calling into existence the days and the substance of all of life.

      1. The sounds are happy sounds.

      2. There is peace and harmony.

    2. I hear the sounds of creation

      1. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;

      2. 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope

      3. 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

      4. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;

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  1. The day will come when the groaning of creation will be relieved.

    1. Labor pains will give forth to birth.

    2. And all will be well and peaceful again.

      1. Isaiah 11:1-9 (NRSVA)

1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
        and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
        the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
         the spirit of counsel and might,
         the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
         or decide by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
        and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
 he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
        and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
        and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

6 The wolf shall live with the lamb,
        the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
 the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
        and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze,
        their young shall lie down together;
         and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
        and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
        on all my holy mountain;
 for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
        as the waters cover the sea.

  1. I can hardly wait until all is restored and peace will reign again on earth in all of God's creation.

CONCLUSION

  1. Creation is still beautiful.

    1. The creativity of God may still be seen.

    2. The hills are alive with the sounds of music.

    3. The hills and nature are still waiting.

    4. May they not have to wait much longer.

  2. The hills are alive with the sound of music;

    1. What do you hear?

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