Liturgies

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,  
Servant Leadership Press, 1994, p. 167-8

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

Loving is never just about opening our heart. It is about being willing to have our heart become larger as we make room for people and stories and experiences we never imagined holding. It is about being willing to have our heart become deeper as we move beyond the surface layers of our assumptions, prejudices, and habits in order to truly see and receive what—and who—is before us. It is about being willing to have our heart continually shattered and remade as we take in not only the brokenness of the world but also the beauty of it, the astounding wonder that will not allow us to remain the same.

Jan Richardson, “Blessing That Meets You in Love,” The Painted Prayerbook
https://paintedprayerbook.com/2016/01/25/blessing-that-meets-you-in-love/

Click here for a printable copy of the 2021 Trinity Liturgy

ENTRANCE

REFLECTION

A booklet that was circulated in 1965 by the Church of the Saviour … contained the following statement: “From the earliest days of the church a core assumption has been that the greatest impact on the world comes about by small, committed and disciplined communities of people focused on outward mission, inward transformation, and loving, accountable community.” When Seekers Church formed in 1976, it embraced the three “legs” of a Christian life: the inward journey, supported by daily spiritual practices; the outward journey of mission in the world; and a community of committed people who deepen their lives of faith together and hold each other accountable.

Kate Cudlipp, “The Legs of Faith,” a sermon from March 19, 2006 at https://www.seekerschurch.org/qthe-legs-of-faithq-by-kate-cudlipp/