10A Proper – Binary-Breaking Worship

Confession and Pardon: harming Creation, exploiting our siblings

God of justice, God of mercy, as one we confess our failings:

Though you conceived all the cosmos and called it Good,
We disregard the holiness of Creation, exploiting it for our own gain.

Though you gave birth to one human race
bestowing your image and your blessing on every human being,
We deny that image in those we mark as Other,
as if there were only enough blessing for some of us.

We rob our siblings of their autonomy and dignity;
we force them to live in fear and poverty,
and use their very bodies to fuel our own prosperity.

And when we are the ones oppressed, our exhaustion and fear poison us,
warping our ability to trust, causing us to lash out at those we love.

In this dog-eat-dog world, this zero-sum game of divide-and-conquer,
We become too wrapped up in our own survival
to lift up our siblings drowning alongside us.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

Friends, our remorse is a sign of God’s grace already at work within us. Assured of God’s mercy, we are free to seek new ways of being together.

God’s Word forgives and redeems us. God’s Breath revitalizes us for the journey. Emboldened by this good news, let us share God’s love with one another.

While the Genesis text was my sermon focus, I wanted to fit the lectionary’s Gospel reading into my liturgy. That reading was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, the Parable of the Sower.

Call to worship and opening prayer: God the sower who invites our partnership

Beloved community, we gather to worship the God who invites us to join Them in creating a new world.

When our souls are trampled on, made too hard to bear fruit,
Let us gather.

When our hearts exclaim over God’s word for a moment,
but never break open to let it sink in,
Let us gather.

When the cares of the world prick at and stifle our spirits like thorns,
leaving no room for joy or hope, no time for kindness or compassion,
Let us gather.

And when God comes, heals, cultivates in us hearts soft enough to receive, to nurture, to blossom,
Let us gather to worship our Creator, our Redeemer, the Breath within our lungs.

OPENING PRAYER

God of Life in all its seasons,
you are the Sower who softens us like soil,
slowly but surely, so that your Word may sprout in us.

You are the source of the water, the sun, the air
that sustain our being and unite us with all living things.

You are the Wind that stirs our stagnation,
who takes us by the hands and pulls us into action,
inviting us to be co-laborers in the hard harvest work
as your Kin(g)dom takes root, grows, and blossoms across the world.

We come to worship
you who guide all Creation into flourishing.

I wrote this for a service with a central theme of imagination, and how God’s gift of imagination can help us envision and enact a better world, a world liberated from oppressive binary and hierarchical structures like cishetero-patriarchy and white supremacy. My sermon’s text was Genesis 25:19-34 and explored the relationship between Jacob – with his marginalizing identities who assimilates into patriarchy – and Esau with his privilege who eventually seeks out reconciliation with his brother. You can read or watch the sermon here.

While the Genesis text was my sermon focus, I wanted to fit the lectionary’s Gospel reading into my liturgy. That reading was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, the Parable of the Sower – hence references to God as sower in the liturgy above.