Leader:
We gather here and now,
All:
separated in space
and joined in one Body,
fractured by discord
and united by love,
to worship God,
to open ourselves to God’s voice,
to grow towards God’s will
together.
Come, let us worship God!
Opening Prayer
O high eternal Divinity,
You who are both
Unknowable, Other, utterly Beyond all sense and space —
and Presence itself,
pervader of all things,
glimpsable
in every human face,
in the wheeling of the stars
and the miniscule machinations of ants —
Remind us of your vastness.
Make room for our littleness.
Through this time of worship,
stoke in us a burning desire
not for easy answers
but for grace to guide our questioning;
not for light that forces out all shadow
but for the wisdom encountered only
by those who brave the stormy night.
Amen.
Another prayer (read after reading Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32)
God whom even the seas obey,
All praise belongs to you,
for you journey with us
into troubled waters
and guide us out again.
As we ride the perilous waves together,
Surround us in your Spirit of wisdom and courage —
a whirlwind stronger than the gusts of any storm,
a breath that stills the most agitated soul —
to carry us through.
Amen.
Call to Confession
We have come to worship the Creator
not only of ourselves, but of all peoples,
all creatures, all the cosmos;
Yet we fall into self-centeredness,
becoming so lost in our own hurts, our own desires, our own needs,
that we fail to look around to see how we might attend
to the hurts and needs of others.
Only in acknowledging our complicity
in the continued wounding of the world
can we join in God’s restoration.
So let us confess our failings,
first in silent reflection,
and then as one.
Silence
Prayer of Confession
Borrowing from the words of Thomas Merton, we confess together,
Lord God,
We have no idea where we are going.
We do not see the road ahead of us.
We cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do we really know ourselves,
and the fact that we think we are following your will
does not mean that we are actually doing so.
When we fool ourselves into certainty
in our own rightness,
Remind us of how limited we are, Infinite God,
how prone to calling evil “good” and good “evil.”
When we favor being right over accepting truth,
cheap grace over the long hard road to justice and reconciliation,
Jolt us from our egotism, self-giving God.
Help us let go of our defensiveness.
When the way seems too hard
and we nearly succumb to despair,
Surround us with support, sweet Trinity;
suffuse us with wisdom and courage.
Returning to the words of Thomas Merton, we rejoice because…
We believe that the desire to please you, o God,
does in fact please you.
And we hope we have that desire in all that we are doing.
We hope that we will never do anything apart from that desire.
And we know that if we do this, you will lead us by the right road,
though we may know nothing about it.
Therefore will we trust you always,
though we may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
We will not fear, for you are ever with us,
and you will never leave us to face our perils alone.
Assurance of Pardon
In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven!
By the Holy Spirit, we are empowered
to strive ever deeper into God’s will!
Thanks be to God!
Passing the Peace of Christ
In Jesus Christ, we know God’s forgiveness and peace —
not an easy peace, nor a halfhearted peace,
but a peace entwined with justice,
a peace that empowers us to survive all discord.
Affirmation of Faith / Responding to God’s Word
Ours is a God who makes room for our demand for answers,
hears us out and guides us into wisdom
as far as our finite forms can go.
Our God affirms our cries for justice,
for in the cries of the oppressed and despairing
Holy Wisdom cries for justice too.
Rejoicing in God’s welcoming of questions,
let us use poetry as a medium for framing some of our deepest doubts,
with all the messy human emotions that come with them:
my God, you better be ready when i come
and stand before you face to face at last
because you know how many questions i have for you
and you know the very first that will
burst from my lips will be
why?
why did you conceive and birth a world
roiling with so much pain?
why did you make human beings
capable of such atrocities?
why did you make our skin so frail, our stomachs
so prone to hunger and thirst, our minds
so quick to judge and scheme and place ourselves first?
and why, why do you seem to watch passively
as we raze forests into barren dust
as we pour poison into rivers
as we tear flesh from each other’s bodies with our teeth?
…i don’t know, yet.
but when i think of you
cradled in the arms of a single mother
with calloused brown hands
and of you
walking miles between towns to bring
healing on tired feet,
your stomach eating itself with hunger,
your tongue parched
and of you
being nailed to a cross
by hands that have shed their compassion for gain
as you cry out “my God, why! why have you forsaken me!”
…then, i feel a little better.
i still do not understand
but i trust.
we trust because you do not watch us suffer from
some lofty throne high above,
but rather
wherever a child sobs with hunger
a woman aches with grief
a whole community is being trampled into the mud
you are there.
your face is tear-tracked too. your wrists
and feet and torso bear wounds, too.
so i question, constantly.
and i will demand answers.
but also, i trust you.
truly, truly
our hope is in you.
These pieces were written for a service centered around Job 38 and Mark 4:35-41, with themes of God’s bigness and God’s co-suffering with us.
Binary-Breaking Worship 