Sometimes the lectionary and the traditions of the church don’t exactly combine to make worship planning seamless and easy. Words of Jesus about divorce as the Gospel reading on World Communion Sunday? How’s that supposed to work?
I offer no solutions other than being glad there are a plethora of wonderful World Communion Sunday resources across the web.
We received no submissions for today’s Worship Words from our community, but I offer here two prayers of confession and absolution based on texts from the RCL. I’ve also written a poem, thinking about World Communion Sunday. I don’t know how you might incorporate it into worship, but I share it as an offering. May the words I’ve written in some way serve as a prompt for you in your worship preparations.
If you have worship words you’ve written and are willing to share for this week, please do so in the comments. Every week we welcome submissions of Worship Words for the following Sunday by the Monday before.
After Mark 10:2-16
Prayer of Confession:
“What can I get away with?”
“Will anybody notice if I do this just this once?”
“Nobody specifically said, ‘no’.”
“Jesus, is it legal to get a divorce?”
They missed the point as we so often do, too.
Broken-hearted by their hardened hearts Jesus held a little one close and said, “whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
Forgive us for missing your point.
Amen.
Words of Absolution:
As he did with the little children, so Christ does for us. Taking us up in his arms and blessing us we are sent on our way to live not in narrow definitions of the law, but in expansive, gracious love.
After Psalm 8 and Hebrews 1:1-4
Prayer of Confession:
We’ve grown too big for our britches, Oh God. Way too big.
We need WW and Noom and Keto and whatever else to trim our outsized egos
To tame our ravenous hunger for more, bigger, better at the expense of the health of all creation.
We’ve lost sight of the vastness of the heavens.
We’ve lost sight of how small we are in comparison.
We’ve pillaged your good creation and are bringing it to the brink.
Who are we that you care about us?
After all the ways we’ve failed as stewards of the earth and of each other,
Who are we that you continue to care?
Words of Absolution:
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets. God has spoken to us through Jesus, God’s heir, God’s co-creator, the reflection of God’s glory, the fingerprint of God, God’s very Word. And despite it all, the Word of God in Jesus is unending, unrelenting, LOVE.
For World Communion Sunday; A poem
Not the Same
“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
-Maryanne Radmacher
Moonrise in Bolenge,
Sunrise on the Baltic Sea,
The equinox in Hell, Norway,
Christmas Eve on the Massif Central,
Good Friday next to the Berlin Wall,
I am not the same having been where I have been, having seen what I have seen.
Bontongue needed $10.00 to save his baby’s vision,
Bokeke shared four perfect eggs,
Michola wept in gratitude for a used mattress,
Musa could not believe a school exists for doctors only for teeth,
Alla missed her mother while giving birth,
I am not the same having seen through the eyes of friends who have seen the moon differently than me.
Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden,
For God so loved the world,
In Christ there is no east or west, In Christ no north or south,
Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true,
One Bread, One Cup, One Table, One Body,
We are not the same having seen Jesus
on the other side of the world
on the other side of the table
in the eyes of all the others.
We are not the same, and the change in us is good.
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Zahller McNeil retired June 1, 2021 after serving ministries in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Zaire, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Nebraska in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. She and her husband Mike just moved to Trinidad, Colorado where they enjoy worshipping with Zion’s Lutheran Church. They’ve started hiking and are thankful to begin to be able to breathe at higher altitudes. Becky blogs at http://everydaystories.blog
RevGalBlogPals encourages you to share our blog posts via email or social media. (We do not grant permission to cut-and-paste prayers and articles without a link back to the specific post. For permission to use material in paper publications, please email revgalblogpals at gmail dot com.) For Worship Words, you may use or adapt what you find here, but please credit the author in printed orders of service/web publications and in public video descriptions if possible. If you have written words for worship in this strange new world that you are willing to share, please send us an email: revgalblogpals at gmail dot com. Material is due by Monday for the upcoming Sunday
RevGalBlogPals 
One thought on “Worship Words October 3, 2021”