Here are worship materials for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, which was the Sunday after the president was known to have contracted COVID19--Call to Worship, Prayer of Invocation, and audio and text versions of the sciprture readings and preaching. If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast of the preaching from our pulpit, you can find it thus or on whatever podcast platform you use.
Call to Worship Psalm 13 Adapted
One: How long, O Lord?
All: Will you forget us forever? One: How long will you hide your face from us? All: How long must we bear pain in our souls, and have sorrow in our hearts all day long? One: How long shall enmity exalt over us, hostility and abuse pervade?
All: Consider and answer us, O Lord our God! One: Give light to our eyes that the enemy might not say, ‘I have prevailed.’ All: The foe will rejoice because we are shaken.
One: But we’ve trusted in your steadfast love, O God; All: So, our hearts shall rejoice in your salvation. One: We will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with us.
All: We will sing, and will not be silent,
that in our song to the Lord it might be so that we are in the Lord.
One: In this same way, it is as we now proclaim in greeting one another,
“The peace of the Lord be with you.”
All: And also with you.
Prayer of Invocation (in unison)
Gracious God: bless our worship with your presence, our contemplation with your wisdom. For the living of this hour and of these days, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, may we bring love. Where there is offence, may we offer pardon. Where there is discord, let us bring forth harmony. Where there is error or deception, let us insist upon truth. Where there is doubt, let us manifest faith. Where there is despair, let us show forth hope. Where there is darkness, let us be your light. Where there is sadness, may we realize joy.
O Lord, let us not seek as much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that we receive, it is in self-forgetting that we find, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we are raised to eternal life.
We pray this for the sake of ourselves, one another, our church, and our society, that peace with justice might reign. In Christ, amen.