Prayer as We Gather: Thank you, Lord, for your rallying cry ringing across the generations from prophet Haggai: “Be strong, work, don’t fear, for my spirit stands in your midst.” We, like the people of his day, often succumb to nostalgia’s distorted image of an earlier time “in its former glory.” Help us regain perspective and hope, comforted by your promise to fill our spiritual house with a joy “more glorious than its predecessor.” Amen.*(Inspired by Haggai 1)
Call to Worship:
God, my true king, I will lift you up high.
I will bless your name every day, forever and always.
The Lord is great and worthy of praise!
God’s greatness can’t be grasped.
The Lord is righteous and faithful in all ways,
Close to everyone who calls out sincerely.
My mouth will proclaim the Lord’s praise,
Every living thing will bless God’s holy name forever and always. (from Psalm 145, The Common English Bible)
Morning Prayer: Lord, as our nation groans with uncertainty and mistrust of those in high places, we take comfort in Paul’s assurance to the first Christians, hemmed in like us by Caesar’s lunacy: “The lawless person, opponent of every object of worship and promoting himself over them, displaying himself to show that he is God, is headed for destruction. So then, stand firm, and hold on to the traditions of the faith.” Help us stand strong, Lord, trusting Paul’s promise that you will encourage our hearts and give us strength in every good thing we do or say, for we pray as Jesus taught us, saying …*(Inspired by 2 Thessalonians 2)
Prayer of Confession: Have mercy, Lord, when we major on the minor, indulging ourselves in theological minutiae’s flights of fancy like the religious zealots of Jesus’ day. In their laborious description of a woman widowed seven times who married seven brothers in succession, they cynically attempt to trap Jesus by demanding to know “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” We still waste your time with the very sort of inquisitions Jesus refused to answer, trivializing scripture and making the church look petty in the process, as we squabble like children over things Jesus never mentioned. Forgive us, we pray. Amen.*(Inspired by Luke 20)
Assurance of Pardon: I have good news! Jesus has a great sense of humor, even if many who claim to follow him obviously do not. Unwilling to be compromised by small-minded twits upon whom his subtle nuance was lost, Jesus moved beyond their arbitrary categories of life and death by declaring that “God is not the God of the dead but of the living, because to God they are all alive.” Thanks be to God for coming to us through a Palestinian Jew whose dark, laughing eyes sparkled with heavenly mirth, even (and especially) when surrounded by fundamentalism’s mundane dullness and the humorless restrictions of joy-challenged true believers, aggressively ignorant and proud of it.*(Inspired by Luke 20)
Thought for a Sabbath Day: “What resurrection symbolizes is that only a God who raises life from death stands outside the expectation, prediction and horizon of human control.” - Kenyatta R. Gilbert, professor of homiletics, Howard University, Washington, D.C.