Call to Worship
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!
Opening Prayer
God in whose image we all are made,
God who pervades all time and space,
when you died and rose again
you drew all people to yourself.
We in this congregation,
we in this denomination,
we who live in this small point in time
are not the only ones whom you have gathered
to sing your praise and delve into deeper relationship
with neighbor, with stranger, and with you.
As we join as one to worship you today,
open our minds to experience the cloud of witnesses —
the timeless community of all those who dwell in your love,
past, present, and future,
whose many voices intertwine with our own
to weave one song of praise
made richer by every added harmony and chord.
And as we worship as one from under many roofs,
in many different lands and languages and ways of life,
send your Spirit to fill us to bursting
both with joyful anticipation of Christ’s return
and an irresistible urge to seek God’s kin(g)dom here and now.
Amen.
Reading and Praying with the Psalms
Psalm 47:1-2, 5-7 (my translation)
For the choirmaster of the Korahites, a psalm.
All you peoples, clap your hands!
Shout to God with ringing voice.
For LIVING GOD Most High inspires awe, great sovereign over all the earth.
…
God has ascended with a rallying cry,
LIVING GOD with a trumpet blast.
Sing to God, sing!
Sing to our sovereign, sing! —
for God is sovereign over all the earth.
Sing a wise song!
Silence
Prayer
God of all the cosmos,
whose sovereignty brings
not subjugation, but liberation,
There are as many ways to praise you
as there are creatures on the earth —
ways familiar and dear to us,
and ways that we think strange.
Some praise you by the name Allah,
faithfully prostrating themselves
when the call to pray sounds five times each day;
Others call you Hashem, and worship you
through torah and ritual passed down over generations
that many have tried but all have failed to stamp out.
Your children worship you
with prayer wheels and prayer beads, scriptures and songs,
in fasting and feasting, meditation and dancing
and in the worship of simply being —
the bursting of the bud,
the burrowing of the worm,
the flashing of feathers in flight.
Let us praise you with all that we are,
O God of many names, God both dear and strange.
For wherever we go, whatever we do,
in life and in death we all belong to you.
Amen.
Confession and Pardon
Call to Confession
Our sin, individual and collective, is almost too much to bear.
It would be easier not to face it —
but to pretend it is not there is to let it fester.
So let us face it together —
first with a moment of silent reflection,
and then with voices uplifted as one to God.
Silence
Prayer of Confession
Risen God,
You call us not to look toward the sky,
but into the faces of those who surround us —
to celebrate their many shapes and shades, wrinkles and scars,
the unique insights only they can share;
and to care for their needs as desperately as we care for our own,
according to the example you left us in your own ministry.
Yet we live as though you abandoned us
when you ascended into heaven –
as though we should wait, dormant, for your return,
gazing longingly to the sky
as we dwell on bygone days
and wish for an uncomplicated future.
When our siblings cry out to us
from where they’ve been trampled into the mud
by systems like white supremacy, capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy
we with eyes glued heavenward shrug off their suffering
with assurances that it is fleeting –
anything to avoid acknowledging our own culpability;
anything to avoid the endless work of active solidarity.
When we fail to balance our hope in your return
with living out your already-present Spirit: forgive us.
When anxiety or regret holds us back: encourage us.
When apathy or resignation leaves us feeling powerless: empower us.
Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
My friends in the cloud of witnesses,
God has called us into a transformation
of our minds, our hearts, our very lives,
and – miracle of miracles! –
Xe has made that transformation possible!
Through our Creator, Redeemer, Comforter,
we are forgiven and set free
to be God’s people made whole.
Thanks be to the One Who Gives New Life.
Amen.
Responding to God’s Word
While making room for questions and fresh insight,
and celebrating the diversity of thought
that sets the cloud of witnesses aglow,
there are some beliefs that we in the church
commit ourselves to holding in common.
As one, let us affirm some of that shared faith
while lifting up the wisdom of some of our fellow witnesses.
We believe in one Triune God, Creator of all things.
In that Beginning told in Genesis,
She brooded over watery darkness
and gave birth to Creation in all its remarkable diversity —
the day and night, and the varied shades
of dawn and dusk between;
the sea and dry land, and the shifting shores
that blur them together;
the plants and all kinds of animals, and life beyond them
— coral and seaweed and fungi, unicellular organisms…
Each one created by God, who declared all Good.
Finally, God fashioned human beings
— male and female, and intersex –
in Their own divine image,
intending and blessing
our vast diversity of body and mind.
Transgender theologian Dr. Justin Tanis writes,
“In the story of Genesis, even while God was creating apparent opposites, God also created liminal spaces in which the elements of creation overlap and merge. Surely the same could be said about the creation of humanity with people occupying many places between [and beyond] the poles of female and male in a way similar to the rest of creation.”
We believe that in the Person of Jesus
this same God put on flesh
and dwelt among us,
drawing all of us into abundant life –
not only in some far-off time,
but for right here and now.
Rev. Dr. Noel Leo Erskine writes,
“We are admonished to bear the cross now so that we may wear the crown later. We are instructed to sacrifice and do without shoes now so that we may wear shoes when we get to heaven. But Black religion helps us understand that all of God’s children need some shoes now, right here on earth.
Black religion exposed the false eschatology that taught us to postpone liberation for the ‘sweet bye and bye.’ It exposed the fallacy that we have to wait until we get to heaven to have basic human rights such as access to shelter, food, health care, education, and the other essentials of life.
…Eternal life was not relegated to the after-life but was understood as a new quality of life beginning in the here-and-now.”
We believe that Jesus ascended into heaven
But did not leave us alone:
We believe in his Holy, healing, mischief-making Spirit
who sweeps us up into the work of God’s Kin-dom
that is already transforming the world
even while not yet fully ushered in.
In the body and divinity of Jesus,
heaven meets earth –
thanks be to God!
Amen.
I wrote this liturgy for an Ascension Sunday service for May 2021.
Binary-Breaking Worship 