For May 2, 2021 -- Easter 5B, Vine and Branches

 

PRAYER FOR AND ASSURANCE OF GRACE
Source of life, you offer us roots that will feed and sustain us.
Sometimes we cling to those roots.
Sometimes we insist on relying on our own roots, our own strength, our own sources of sustenance.
In Jesus, the True Vine you invite us to remain connected to You and to each other,
spreading as branches of the tree of Love, spreading Love and hope into the corners and crevices of life.
Sometimes we feel disconnected, cut off from the vine, isolated from those things that sustain us.
Sometimes we decide we don’t need the vine, and then wonder why our leaves droop and we start to wither.
God of life in abundance, God who calls us to be fruitful branches, when we cut ourselves away from the vine, when we insist on doing things on our own, when we resist your attempts to prune and guide us for better growth:
forgive our headstrong natures, show us how to reconnect, renew our lives to help us bloom.
...time of silent prayer...
Our faith story begins and ends in a garden. The God who creates and re-creates us is a gardener, watering and weeding and pruning to give growth. This same God calls us to be connected and rooted in the soil of love so that we can grow and be fruitful. In Christ God forgives us and helps our branches renew our connection to the vine. God helps us grow to full flower, rooted in God’s love. This is Good News!
Thanks be to God! Hallelujah!

For April 11 2021 -- Easter 2, service looking at John 21

CALL TO WORSHIP
May the Peace of Christ be with you!
And also with you!
As we still stay physically separated to keep each other safe,
God invites us to join together in this virtual space
Connected by the Holy Spirit, and by technology, we continue to celebrate the reality of Resurrection
Let us worship together as followers of the Risen Christ.

OPENING PRAYER
God, we gather here together in spirit, though separated in space,
in this time together speak to our hearts, bring us hope, energize our souls.
Remind us of the power of Easter to bring life that conquers death.
And push as to live as people of hope, help us live as those who have been transformed.
We pray in the name of the Risen Christ as we share together words he once taught his closest friends.

PRAYER FOR AND ASSURANCE OF GRACE
Death-defeating God, in the Resurrection you challenge us.
You reveal a new world, you call us to move beyond what we once called normal
To be honest, sometimes it is hard to be transformed.
Like Peter we want to go back to what we once knew, to the familiar and the comfortable.
Still you meet us where we are, with our grief and our guilt and our fear,
so that we can live into the new reality, so that we can take the risk of being changed.
God when we are hesitant to be transformed, when we want to remain where it is comfortable,
give us strength, forgive our reluctance, push us to be Easter people, we pray
...time of silent prayer...
In the Risen Christ we meet God’s power to transform death into life, defeat into victory, despair into hope. Through Christ God brings us forgiveness and grace, new life and new hope. We ARE Easter people.
Hallelujah! Amen.

COMMISSIONING:
God calls us to live as Easter people!
We go out to share the promise of new life.
God calls us to be transformed by our encounter with the Risen Christ!
We go out to live in a new world, changed by history and changed by faith.
Go now to share God’s love,
Go to share God’s promise of life,
Go to share God’s transforming word of hope.
And go knowing that God: Creating Parent, Risen Christ, and Empowering Spirit
Is with us through all life’s changes. Hallelujah!

Prayers at the Foot of the Cross (2021)

 

Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam,
Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe,
You have brought us through another year,
a year of challenges and struggles
nd yet you are there in all of it.

Creator of all that is, you share your vision of how the world could be.
Btu the world as it is falls short of that vision.
Every year, on this day we call Good, we pause to name the broken-ness of the world.

On this day we remember a story of execution,
a story of powerful striking out against a different vision for the world,
a story of passion and commitment,
and as we remember the story we wonder how it speaks to our current reality.

Today, God of Grace, we lift up those who have been broken by the world:
the ones who have been sacrificed in the name of bigger profits or lower taxes...
the ones who have been shut out of decision making and power...
the ones who have been targeted because of race, or gender identity, or sexuality...
the ones who live on the margins, or who have been labelled expendable...
the ones who are not treated equally or fairly by the systems of society...
the ones who know that they are not welcomed just as they are...
all those who have been made to feel as if their lives, their welfare, is less important.
God hear our prayer that they would be lifted up.
May this broken world be made whole, may healing flow.

Ever-present God, on this day when we mourn and grieve,
we join our hearts in prayer with all those whose hearts are heavy with grief:
for family members they can not visit in this time of pandemic precautions...
for those who have died of COVID-19...
for those who have been driven to despair and have given up on life...
for those who are lonely and isolated...
for those who share the Psalmist’s cry Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani.
My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me...
may all those who carry today a load of pain, of grief, of anxiety, of fear,
know that they are not alone, that they are held in a love that will never let them go.

God of Passion, the story we tell today reminds us of commitment,
of devotion to your vision for the world,
of Passion for the Kingdom.
Plant in us, we pray, that sort of passion and devotion.
Strengthen us to have to ability to offer of ourselves for a greater cause.
Give us the wisdom to know how best to advance your Kingdom
and help heal the broken-ness of the world

God of the Cross,
God who is with us in life and in death and in life beyond death,
we pray all these things in the name of Jesus, the crucified Messiah,
who challenges us to follow The Way that leads to Your Reign,
even though the path goes to a cross on a hill and a tomb in a garden
and a mystery that brings new hope.
Amen