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4/27/2018 0 Comments Prayers of the People, E5B At the Spirit's urging,
all along our journeys of faith, we have been greeted by teachers who took the time time to explain what we read, what we heard, what we wondered. Today, we give thanks for those faithful disciples who have come alongside us with kindness and courage, patience and grace, and led the way to understanding and to inclusion in the community. Hear our prayers for those who have not been so fortunate, Lord; who have been excluded from your house by those who cannot wrap their heads around the radical hospitality practiced by Jesus who welcomed ALL. Hear our prayers for those who read but do not comprehend, who have no one to help them understand, who travel bewildered by a desert road looking for hope in a barren land. Hear our prayers for the church, which in all its good intentions, often fails to live out its purpose because of rules that stand in the way, Send your Spirit now, O God, and open the hearts of your people everywhere, that the Word may be heard and understood through the continuing faithfulness of those committed to discipleship.
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4/25/2018 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, E5B Call to Confession
Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. (Psalm 25:8-9) Let us confess our sin before God and seek God's mercy and instruction. Prayer of Confession Each day, we make momentary decisions to act from love or fear. Answering the call to new places, we find ourselves confronted with situations that challenge our sensibilities. Fear inhibits us -- fear of the new, the different, the uncomfortable. Too often, we submit to fear, failing to love, to serve. Forgive our hesitancy to go, to seek, to listen, to respond. Teach us to love boldly and in action and in truth. Assurance of God's Grace Through Christ we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2) In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day ... 4/24/2018 0 Comments Call to Worship, E5B Welcome,
you who are on the road. Do you know where you are going? Welcome, you who have been relegated to servanthood. Do you wonder how you can serve the Lord? Welcome, you who are seeking to learn. Do you understand what you are reading? Welcome, you who long to be adopted into the family of God. What is preventing you from being baptized? Come, and worship, rejoicing on your way! 4/20/2018 0 Comments Prayers of the People, E4B God of Mercy and Compassion,
your people are called before councils and demanded to name the authority by which they minister, by which they serve, by which they heal. Your people are given hoops to jump and obstacles to overcome that are put in place by people in power who want rules followed when it suits them and not followed when the rules inhibit their own purposes. Your people, inspired by Jesus' example and moved by the Spirit, are breaking down barriers and building relationship in the name of LOVE, but FEAR stands in the way ... accusing, abusing, convicting, and crippling. Hear the prayers of your people, O God! Tear down the structures that threaten to destroy what is possible, and rebuild the community in good deeds done that all who cower hopelessly may stand in the streets and shout GLORY to your name. 4/18/2018 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, E4B Call to Confession
Power and authority can be used to help and it can be used to hurt. It can be wielded as a weapon or submitted to service. Humans often view it as a right instead of a privilege and use it inappropriately. Let us confess our passion for power and seek God's mercy. Prayer of Confession Like the high priests and the temple authorities we are consumed with power. By what authority do others do what they do, we want to know. We place significant importance on structure and chain of command instead of relationship. It is this rigid adherence to rules that undermines the privilege of leadership. We have created the vaccuum in which we now live by our greed. Forgive our passion for power, we pray, and make us servants of God in the name of love. Assurance of God's Grace The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. In the name of the risen Lord, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day. 4/17/2018 0 Comments Call to Worship, E4B Into the circle of gracious community,
the rulers, elders, and scribes are called. Into the circle of loving welcome, the prisoner is called. Into the circle of healing prayer, the lame, the ill, the sinful, and the forgiven are called. Let it be known that in center of this circle is the risen Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, whom alone we worship and praise. 4/13/2018 0 Comments Prayers of the People, E3B Like beggars at the gate
called Beautiful we are lame. Unable to stand under the weight of our sin, unable to walk bearing the burden of our grief, unable to move forward to confront our fear ... to overcome our anxieties. Each day we depend on the love of our family, on the commitment of the community, on the kindness of strangers, to lift us from our places of crippling inability to function, and carry us to the Healer. Hear our prayers for mercy. Be present, we pray, in the wisdom and knowledge and technology and touch of every kind of healer whom you have endowed with gifts toward that end, that the world might be restored to wholeness in the name of Jesus the risen Christ. Amen. 4/11/2018 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, E3B Call to Confession
This people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’ (Mt. 13:15) Let us repent from our sin before God and seek God's healing together. Prayer of Confession Humans like to judge, and with that judgment comes the power to reject: rejecting ideas and rejecting attitudes that are not consistent with who we have been called to be, but sadly, also rejecting other humans for the color of their skin or their country of origin or their gender or sexual orientation; for the people they choose to love and the ways in which we imagine that impacts our visions of the present and the future, for their core beliefs, and the ways they live those in the world. We have failed to remember that our knowledge and understanding are finite, that rejection does great damage to the collective soul, therefore, we are not called to judge, but to love, and to love unconditionally, for the power to love is greater than any power known to humankind. Assurance of God's Grace God said to God's people throught he prophet, Isaiah, "I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you." (Is. 44:22) In the name of the risen Christ, our Redeemer and Savior, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day. 4/10/2018 0 Comments Call to Worship, E3B Are you standing, staring?
Are you wondering -- confused about what you see and terrified or just bewildered by its meaning? Are you hopeful or hopeless? Are you healed or in need of healing? Are you the healuer? Are you the persecuted? Are you ready to bring your uncertainties, gathered into loose bundles like soiled clothing and lay them before the Lord? Are you ready to worship the One who makes all things new? 4/6/2018 0 Comments Prayers of the People, E2B When the young mother cries out
desperately for her children and for the life she longs to have and rails against God in her grief, because of the tumor on her brain that threatens her future, where are you, God? When the child is gunned down without reason and a place of security becomes a place of fear, where are you, God? When the father who has lived here as long as he can remember is sent to his ancestors' country of origin that is foreign to him, and his business is left without a leader and his family without a protector, where are you, God? When the poor and the hungry and the homeless and the lost and the grieving and the depressed and the hopeless are in need, where ARE you, God? When the tomb is empty of the Savior and your people cannot find you and do not know where to look, where are you, God? Make your presence known, we pray, in the sharing of resources among the community ... of time and money and faith and prayer. Make your presence known in the lives of your people, so that you may be found among those in need. |
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