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Year B

Sunday’s coming: working towards May 20th

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Drawing straws to see who will replace the empty spot Judas left among the Apostles (Acts 1:15-17,21-26)? Poetically contemplating the contrast between righteousness and wickedness (Psalm 1)? Reflecting upon what it means to embrace life as God intends it by embracing the lifestyle to which Jesus calls us (1 John 5:9-13)? Digging deep into Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, that they would be an inspiration to a world that is dramatically different from the world God intends (John 17:6-19)?

What are you doing this Sunday? Does your celebration of graduates play a part in your community as you worship together? What liturgy has your reflection on this week’s texts inspired? Share your thoughts and your liturgy here!

The unprinted parts

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Many of us probably have the bulletin done already…but there are always those things that don’t need to go in the bulletin that we wait to do until later. What words will we use to introduce the scripture reading? What words will we use to call people to confession? How will we introduce the offering? What prayer of dedication will we come up with this week? What children’s sermon ideas are floating around out there? Will the charge before the benediction be different this week?

I confess that the prayer of dedication I almost always use is this: “God, you have been so generous to us. You have filled us to overflowing with every good gift. We return these gifts to you and ask for your blessing–use these gifts, and use us, to do your work in this place and around the world. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.”

Yeah, I could use a new one. What’re you thinking this week for those unprinted parts?

commissioning and benediction – back out into the world

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Our time of worship concludes, we go back out into the world.

Here we have met the God who chooses to make us clean.
And, having been healed, what is our response?
We share the love of God with all we meet, for they too have been made clean.
As you go to live and serve, go with the sure knowledge that the God who washes and heals us all will go with you.
Always and all ways.
May God bless and keep you this day and forevermore.
Amen.

 

submitted by Gord Waldie, St. Paul’s United Church, Grande Prairie, Alberta

confession: walls of all about me

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Holy God, we sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, but we act out “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Life.” We make traps around us for others to fall into. We build walls so that we cannot be touched. We put so much in our days that we can only focus on what is next, and never on who is around us. And then we meet Jesus, who chooses to be open and vulnerable to the needs of the world. Forgive us, for our walls, our busy-ness and our fears. Help us, O Lord, to be instruments of the one who calls us out into new life, who makes space for the Other, Jesus our Lord and Savior Amen.

Submitted by The Rev. Jason Carle, Overland Park Presbyterian Church, Overland Park KS.

confession: no sense of direction

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Healing God,
sometimes we have no sense of direction.
You point us one way…we stumble the other way;
You tell us to do one thing…we alter your plans;
You give us a clear vision…it often doesn’t suit our notions.
We create our own rules…our own criteria…
and our lives become complicated…
the church becomes smug and exclusive…
and the needs of the world are not served,
because we’re too busy serving ourselves.
So draw us from the limitations of our own minds,
and help us to see the landscape of possibility through your eyes…
so that we might be a healed and healing presence in the world…
even now…as we offer our silent confessions…

Submitted by Rev. Scott Cervas, Meadowthorpe Presbyterian Church (Lexington, KY)