Here are worship materials for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost.
Call to Worship Psalm 67 Adapted
One: May God be gracious to us and bless us.
All: May God make God’s face to shine upon us.
One: your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations.
All: Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the people praise you.
One: Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the people with equity,
and guide the nations upon the earth.
All: Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the people praise you.
One: The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us.
All: May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere God.
One: Let us also we revere God in sharing God’s peace: May such peace be with you.
All: And also with you.
One: Please be seated. Let us pray.
Prayer of Invocation and Confession Gracious God, God of all people and all history, God who is original cause and ultimate concern and for whom no circumstance is beyond your power to redeem and reconcile: you tenderly hold the whole world in your hands, bringing light to our days and hope to our hearts; you have provided for us, preserved our lives, and brought us to this place of prayer and peace.
So, grant us eyes, to see your providential work in our midst; grant us hearts of faith to recognize you laboring in all things for good; and grant us words to bear witness to your reality and your faithfulness—to us, to your world, to all of time and all that is beyond time.
The world will deny your presence and your persistence; many will swear by your absence, your unreality; the silence you speak to the world that might be peace and solace is evidence of you as fiction; the freedom you grant us is evidence of you as phantasm.
Help us, then, to be evidence otherwise: that our gathering might be a revelation of your faithfulness, that our speaking your name might inspire others also to seek you, that the love we have on offer might be traced back to its source—You.
We pray this not that we might be proven right but that your beloved community might grow so to embrace all in the world, and that your reign of joy and peace might become the all in all. We pray this that we might participate in this building up, and we pray this in the faith that already it is so. In Christ, amen.
