Here are materials for worship as the church embarks on the long season of Pentecost. Ordinary Time might be just what we're hoping for--or maybe the new world in the making amidst pandemic and protest is something to inspire hope. If you'd like to recite the liturgy along with the podcast, click here.
Call to Worship Psalm 100 Adapted
One: Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
All: Worship the Lord with gladness.
One: Come into his presence with singing.
All: Know that the Lord is God.
One: It is he that made us, and we are his.
All: We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
One: Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.
All: Give thanks to him, bless his name.
One: For the Lord is good.
All: His steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
One: So it is as we now proclaim, “The peace of God be with you.”
All: And also with you.
One: Let us pray.
Prayer of Invocation (in unison)
Lord God, in joy we pray that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture; in gladness we pray that you have made us, and we are yours. But lately joy feels hard to come by, gladness a distant dream. We have lost so much of our lives amidst this pandemic. We have been cut off from so much that we love, bereft of so much that surprises and delights. While we reel amidst events of world-historic proportion, we feel disoriented, even lost—though we hope.
We hope that you are yet with us, though we spend much of our time in isolation.
We hope that you yet hold us, though we feel ourselves to be in freefall; and that in you all coheres, though time feels out of joint.
We hope that the world which is falling away might return to us such that we’re moved to build anew, in concord with your will, in aim of your good which is for all.
Grant that justice might roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Grant that, by your creative spirit moving in and through us, we might be inspired to imagine, and empowered to make, a world of racial justice, equality under the law, a spending of our treasure on that which has true value, a going after that which truly satisfies. Reform our desire that it might be for you. Reform our living that it might allow for all to have life and have it in abundance. Reform your church that it might rise to the moment, and that we who gather as your church might do so as disciples disciplined in your wisdom and as apostles sent out on a mission of love.
In Christ, with whom we will walk this long season ahead, we pray. Amen.
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