A Prayer as We Gather: Here we are, Lord, stumbling in for another shot at the mystery of worship. Like children playing on the kitchen floor with a stick of dynamite, looking for a way to kill another Sunday morning, we lack the urgent respect that should accompany speaking your holy name. All week we have put on our best faces, hoping to avoid being truly known by those around us who fear rejection as profoundly as we do. Yet here we are, drawn to you by prophet Jeremiah’s channeling of your unyielding vow: “Before I created you in the womb I knew you.” Truly, we long to be known by you, sent by you, led by you, freed from fear by the words you put in our mouth. We surrender, Lord. Have your own way with us. Amen.* (Inspired by Jeremiah 1 and the brave pen of Annie Dillard)
Call to Worship:
I’ve taken refuge in you, Lord.
Don’t let me ever be put to shame!
Deliver me, bend your ear toward me, save me!
Be my rock of refuge where I can always escape.
Rescue me from the grip of the wrongdoer and the oppressor,
Because you are the one I’ve trusted since childhood.
You cut the cord when I came from my mother’s womb.
My praise is always about you.*(from Psalm 71, The Common English Bible)
Morning Prayer: Thank you, loving God, for drawing near to us in untouchable ways: fire, darkness, shadow, and a sound that makes us beg for silence. Beyond achievement test scores and class rankings, beyond crippling family hierarchies and withering home-town jealousies, beyond mean religion shaped into a weapon to punish instead of a beacon to show the way, beyond all the rantings of weak bullies and tiny-brained demagogues, we take shelter now in the loving embrace of one whose gentle courage and wise compassion are always rejected by tyrants, our Galilean Lord who loves all the children of the world and who taught us to pray, saying …*(Inspired by Hebrews 12 and Episcopal priest Tom Ehrich)
Prayer of Confession: Forgive us, Lord, our grim determination to reduce Jesus to a one-trick pony, a merely magic man turning stones to food, water to wine, stormy lake surface into solid walkway, the mentally challenged into unwitting pawns of his healing super-powers. We cheer when his miraculous touch straightens the spine of a woman crippled for eighteen years, we gasp with delight when he pronounces her free from infirmity, yet we resist with every fiber of our being his attempts to set us free from our personal demons and beloved addictions. We, like the religious leader incensed that Jesus would dare heal on the Sabbath, have been poisoned by a toxic elixir of hypocrisy and bad religion. Have mercy, we pray. Amen.*(Inspired by Luke 13)
Assurance of Pardon: Take heart, for there is good news: You have a choice, unfettered and open to everyone confronted by Jesus’ boundless joy and uncompromising humor. You can grimace, Grinch-like, at the contagious hilarity that flows from his mirthful rejoinders and playful teasing of the oh-so-respectable orthodox, or you can rare back with a soul-cleansing belly laugh at yourself and your fear-tinged propriety. In every recorded encounter between the Galilean carpenter and the pinch-faced, perfect-attendance-badge-wielding believers of his day, “all his opponents were put to shame, but all those in the crowd rejoiced.” Choose the Jesus way, and get busy setting hurting people free from bondage!* (Inspired by Luke 15)
Thought for a Sabbath Day: “People are more than the worst thing they have ever done.” - Sister Helen Prejean, Roman Catholic activist, author of Dead Man Walking