Saturday Morning Liturgy

What you find below is from Saturday morning's worship. This led us into our Communion Service. I had nothing written down for that liturgy, so this is all we have to remember that time!

"Call to Worship"
Based on Genesis 2

Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Humanity
Into A deep sleep Humanity Fell
Humanity Fell into a Deep sleep
A deep sleep
Sleeping deep
Deeply asleep
Unawake

Where Humans
Dreamt
Of walks untaken
Walks not yet imagined
Walks of paradise
Of gardens without walls
Without gates
Without vines intertwined
Blocking view

And then the Lord God took what was
Asleep
And created
Anew
Woken
Up

We wake from sleep
With dreams
Of fear
Of insanity
Of hope
Of sex
Of anxiety
Of being at peace
Of vulnerability

We wake from sleep
With dreams
Creative acts
Planted by God
In states
Most vulnerable

What was unconscious
becomes conscious


"Call to Confession"
Listen to the words Jesus could have spoken
Or speaks now
Or will speak
But written by modern-day prophet Emily Saliers:

Remember everything I told you
Keep it in your heart like a stone
When the winds have blown things round and back again
What was once your pain will be your hope
All around the table white haired men have gathered
Spilling their son’s blood like table wine
Remember everything I told you
Everything in its own time

Boys around the table
Mapping out their strategies
Kings all of mountains one day dust
Listen
learn a loving God and things in their own time
And nothing more do I trust.
This poverty is our greatest gift
The weightlessness of us as things around begin to shift
Remember everything I told you
Keep it in your heart like a stone
When the winds have blown things round and back again
What was once your pain will be your hope
Everything in its own time
Everything in its own time


"Prayer of Confession"
We come to confess, or simply to acknowledge those people who are not around the circle. We confess the names we know and we pray for the names we do not know, as they have all been promised the Good News of Love and Calling and Forgiveness through Jesus Christ. We confess their stories as they have all been blown round and back again, as they all are stories of pain transformed into hope.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess the names of those ordained before us, those who have paved the way and whose gifts have been acknowledged by the institutional church and those who continue to struggle with their privilege and marginal positions.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess the names of those who have left the Presbyterian Church for other pastures, for those who have suffered too significantly from the boys around the table, mapping out their strategies. We confess the names of those who have moved to new denominations or no denominations at all, with the desire to serve.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess the names of those in our community, called by God, who are not with us this weekend. Those who have been here before and cannot now because of conflicts, because of celebrations, because of confusions.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess the names of those who are too afraid to join us or do not yet know they are a part of our community.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess our own names of privilege that profit from this space, we confess our very own names as those called to service in a place that too often does not celebrate us.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

In our unity and desire for connection, we never address the causes of our isolation in the first place. And so we confess the names of racism, and classism and sexism and ableism that keep this space from being a wholely celebratory and radical embodiment of the body of Christ.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer

We confess that today we do not even love ourselves as much as You love us. We come believing the voices and actions of this church and this society that says that we are not equal, that our love is not valid, that our desires are not from you, that our identities are wrong. We come as broken people, and products of the broken people who baptized us. We divide each other into useless groups, categories to exclude rather than to celebrate. We come confessing the sin of internalized homophobia, the sin of transphobia, the sin of biphobia, the sin of thinking we know more than we do.

God in your mercy, Hear Our Prayer