Prayer of Confession, Epiphany 3B

Call to Confession

God has promised that if at any time God declares concerning a nation or a kingdom, that God will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which God has spoken, turns from its evil, God will relent of the disaster that God intended to do to it. Let us confess our sin, and turn from our evil ways.

Prayer of Confession

The words we speak
hurt our sisters and brothers, but we speak
them anyway and then deny it,
our miserable souls self-focused.
We refuse to acknowledge
our own implicitness
in the gathering gloom
that settles in the souls
of the marginalized
and misaligned.
We make assumptions
about guilt and innocence,
about motivation and intent,
without facts in evidence
and fan our anger into flame
without taking time to learn the truth,
to listen and to seek to understand.
Forgive us, we pray.
Pull us out of our egocentricity
and lead us to repentance
that we may be learn the language
of love and grace
and speak it
fluently
from the heart.

Assurance of God's Grace

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” We return to the Lord our God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and God relents over disaster. 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.