Recommitment 1999: Hungering for God

SEEKERS CHURCH

A Christian Community

In the Tradition of the Church of the Saviour

RECOMMITMENT 1999

HUNGERING FOR GOD

SILENT REFLECTION

…The time has come for the Church to invite its people into a frightening journey into the mystery of God…The hunger for God is deep and pervasive in our society today. We need to recognize that this is not the same thing as hunger for the answers the church has traditionally given. Indeed, many seekers today do not act as if the Church will ever be a place where God can be fruitfully sought.

Why Christianity Must Change or Die, John Shelby Spong, pg 21.

PRELUDE

CALL TO WORSHIP

Leader: God is everywhere,

all in the Spirit and the Spirit in all.

People: Still, we seek the Holy One,

the One who calls to us and for whom we yearn.

Leader: God is in our midst;

where two or three are gathered there Christ is.

Community: God is Christ

and God is Spirit

and God beyond our knowing,

feeding the hungers we can not name.

INVOCATION

HYMN

WORD FOR THE CHILDREN

SILENCE

LITANY

Leader: For forty years they struggled

to find a place they could call home.

Voice 1: The sun and the stars have it easy.

Their path is marked in the heavens.

Wild geese know from birth the place

that will shelter them from the cold.

Voice 2: They are called by a voice no one can hear,

with a hunger no food can satisfy.

They rest on the wind,

wings spread in anticipation.

Leader: We are called by the same spirit.

The map of promise is written on our hearts.

Community: Feeling lost is often part of the process.

We will not get there by being good.

So tell me your despair and I’ll tell you mine

as we walk in love toward the pillar of fire.

And so we share the journey to find our home in God.

SILENCE

PRAYERS

COMMON CONFESSION

Leader: How can we believe —

Community: In a world where doubt, despair and longing

meet us every day,

where cruelty and abuse are inside us and around us?

Leader: How do we walk with God —

Community: When it is too easy to walk away, turn and run away;

to bathe ourselves in unconscious comfort?

Leader: How do we grow in Spirit —

Community: When we wake up to sadness;

when tears come like rain,

when the night beckons like a cloak to hide in?

INDIVIDUAL PRAYERS OF CONFESSION

ASSURANCE

Leader: Knock and the door will be open.

Ask and you will receive.

Love and you will be loved in return.

Believe and God will bring you to the place

where doubt and faith walk hand in hand,

a journey that brings pain and joy,

dark and light, anger and love.

Seek and you will find life.

PRAYERS OF THE COMMUNITY

HYMN

THE WORD

FIRST LESSON

SILENCE

GOSPEL LESSON

SERMON

SILENT REFLECTION

OFFERING

SHARED REFLECTIONS

ANNOUNCEMENTS

HYMN

BENEDICTION

Leader: Embrace doubt.

Be confident in your loving.

Seek God in all things.

Share your heart’s true journey.

Take your place in the community of faith.

Amen.

LITURGY RESOURCES

Litany: Based on “Wild Geese,” in New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, pg 110.

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For Erica

Child of the water world
you have swum out of sight
in the depths of the pond. Only a month ago
flowers floated from your ashes
trailing you home again.

Silently the geese watched with us
honoring what we knew of you
reverent before the greater part we did not know.

Now a single pair keeps watch
while your ashes mix with other deaths
to feed new life aborning here.

It’s Spring!
Sun-soaked, the bench is warm
to watch the first petals curl
from gnarled grey bark — the shield we need
to make it through the winter’s months.

Churning leaves against bare trunks
announce the passage of a ghost
aswirl, its cape must pass thru solid things
and then as quick it’s gone —
leaving just a tiny branch of bursting leaves —
thy rod to comfort me.

Marjory Zoet Bankson
April 1, 1995