Liturgies
Our inclusive language liturgies generally set the structure and theme of Sunday morning worship. Since announcements are an integral part of our life together, we offer some guidelines for those who make announcements towards the end of worship.
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ENTRANCE REFLECTION Jesus did not come to make God’s love possible, –Anonymous GATHERING ENTRANCE REFLECTION Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine; Christina Rosetti
ENTRANCE REFLECTION In our secret yearnings we wait for your coming, and in our grinding despair we doubt that you will. And in this privileged place we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we and by those who despair more deeply than do we. Look upon your church … in this season of hope which runs so quickly to fatigue and in this season of yearning which becomes so easily quarrelsome. Give us the grace and the impatience to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes, to the edges of our fingertips. We do not want our several worlds to end. Come in your power and come in your weakness in any case and make all things new. Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann
ENTRANCE REFLECTION See the home of God is among mortals. This morning your dog licked your face, you had a hot cup of coffee, and you drank it in a warm kitchen. …This month, you needed comfort and were comforted. …This month, this year, you celebrated however many years of sobriety, or cancer remission, or parenthood, or single parenthood: this month, this year, you celebrated the day your life began again. …This month you forgave—truly forgave—an enemy, and a weight was lifted off of your chest. …This week you were forgiven again when you didn’t deserve it. …This year you loved with wild abandon, not worrying about what that would mean for your future broken heart. …Yesterday you watched people who came to lift the rubble in Haiti, to care for the dead, to comfort the mourners. An ecosystem of love built among destruction. See the home of God is among mortals. — adapted from Robin Bartlett “The Home of God is Among Mortals” at The Message, October 9, 2016, Click here for a printable copy of the 2021 Recommitment liturgy ENTRANCE REFLECTION There are certain hours which give a new heart and a new spirit. They are hours when the veil between the spiritual and the material world seems to be rent and one knows that if all of life could be lived on the basis of what is seen in those moments, it would be closer to what God intended. … They are the moments when we see a picture of a starving child in a distant country and know that we cannot live our lives as we have lived them; or when we read a book and have the horizons of our little world pushed back. They are the times when we look into the heart of a friend and find that friend acceptable though unacceptable and God lets us see every person as a brother or sister. They are the times of reality in which to make commitment—a commitment which will be lived out in the valleys, over long stretches when the vision is gone, but the memory alive nonetheless. Elizabeth O’Connor, Call to Commitment: An Attempt to Embody the Essence of Church, 2022 Epiphany: Unveiling Love
but to make God’s love visibleChristmastide 2021-2022
Love was born at Christmas; star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead, love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus, but wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.2021 Advent: Restore Us, O God
2021 Jubilee: The Home of God Is Among Us
2021 Recommitment: Commitment in a Hard Time
Servant Leadership Press, 1994, p. 167-8