Re-Viewing the Covenant

 

Seekers Church

 

A Christian Community

In the Tradition of the Church of the Saviour

 

Lent 2006

Re-Viewing the Covenant

 

CIRCLE TIME

 

ENTRANCE

 

REFLECTION

“… people in their actual material reality make things a lot more difficult when what we think we want is spirituality – the cultivation of a sensitive and rewarding relationship with eternal truth and love.  [But] the desert monastics have an uncompromising message for us: relation with eternal truth and love simply doesn’t happen without mending our relations with Tom, Dick and Harriet.  The actual substance of our relation with eternal truth and love is bound up with how we manage the proximity of these human neighbors.”

 

Rowan Williams, “Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another.”

Quoted in Trinity News, vol. 52, no. 3, pg 8.

                 

CALL TO WORSHIP

Leader:      In the days of Noah,

                  God placed a rainbow in the sky

                  as the sign of a covenant of God’s love for all the earth.

 

People:      In the colors of the rainbow,

                  we see the sign of God’s grace for all creation.

 

Leader:      In the days of Moses,

                  the words of God were written on tablets of stone,

                  as the sign of a covenant

                  between God and all of God’s people.

 

People:      In the tablets of stone,

                  we see the sign of God’s hope

                  for each to live in peace with God and neighbor.

 

Leader:      In the days of the prophet,

                  God promised to place a new covenant in our hearts.

 

All:             As members of the living Body of Christ,

                  we see the sign of God’s promise among us.

 

INVOCATION

 

HYMN

 

WORD FOR THE CHILDREN

 

SILENCE

 

CHANT     Kyrie Eleison

 

SILENCE

 

PRAYERS

CONFESSION

Leader:      O Holy One, we turn to you in our distress,

                  our eyes watering away from grief,

                  our souls and bodies too.

 

Voice 1:     I look back at your covenant,

                  and feel the sorrow welling up within.

 

Voice 2:     I hear you call, and in my misery

                  I do not find the strength to answer “Yes.”

 

Voice 1:     My adversaries laugh:

                  my neighbors turn away in ill-disguised disgust.

 

Voice 2:     My friends pull back

                  and others treat me like an outcast.

 

 

Leader:      O God of everlasting love,

                  we know your promises are true,

 

All:             but we feel separated from your holy covenant with us.

 

ASSURANCE

Leader:      We feel separated, but there is cause for hope.

                  We are in God’s hand.

                  With a love that does not let us go

                  God delivers us from our adversaries,

                  and from our own humanity.

 

All:             Amen.

 

PRAYERS OF THE COMMUNITY

 

JESUS PRAYER

All:             Eternal One, Father and Mother of us all,

Holy is your name.

                 

Let justice and mercy fill all Creation

and let us recognize

that every thought and thing belongs to you.

 

Feed us with the bread we need for today.

Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Stand with us in trial and temptation.

Free us from the grip of all that is evil.

     

For you invite us into creation with you,

now and forever.  Amen.

 

HYMN

 

THE WORD

SCRIPTURE

SERMON

SILENT REFLECTION

 

OFFERING 

 

The first Sunday of each month we switch to a Communion Liturgy here.

 

 

SHARED REFLECTIONS

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

HYMN

 

BENEDICTION

Leader:      Out of great love, God, who is rich in mercy,

                  has made us alive together with Christ. 

                  Through Christ, God has shown us

                  the immeasurable riches of grace.

 

                  Let us go into the world to be open channels of that love

                  and vessels overflowing with that grace.   

 

All:              Amen. 

 

WORSHIP RESOURCES

Benediction: Based on Ephesians 2: 4, 5, and 7.