Liturgy: Worship Pieces from the Song of Faith (United Church of Canada, 2007)

(Please feel free to use these resources.  Credits:  "Song of Faith (2007)", adapted by Rev. Murray Speer.)

Call to Worship

We offer worship

as an outpouring of gratitude and awe

          as a practice of opening ourselves

          to God’s still, small voice of comfort

and to God’s rushing whirlwind of challenge.

Through word, music, art, and sacrament,

in community and in solitude,

          God changes our lives, our relationships, and our world.

          We gather with trust.

Opening and Unburdening Prayer

In and with God,

We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life.

          We can grow in wisdom and compassion.

Made in the image of God,

we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.

Yet we choose to turn away from God.

          We surrender ourselves to selfishness, cowardice, or apathy.

Becoming bound and complacent

in a web of false desires and wrong choices,

          we bring harm to ourselves and others.

We are all touched by this brokenness in human life:

the rise of selfishness that erodes solidarity;

          the concentration of wealth and power

          without regard for the needs of all;

the toxins of religious and ethnic bigotry;

          the degradation of blessed human bodies

          and human passions;

the delusion of unchecked progress and limitless growth

that threatens our home, the earth.

We lament our foolishness and weakness.

Yet evil does not—cannot—

undermine or overcome the love of God.

God forgives,

          and calls all of us to confess our fears and failings

          with honesty and humility.

God reconciles,

          and calls us to repent the part we have played

          in damaging our world, ourselves, and each other.

God transforms,

          and calls us to protect the vulnerable,

          to pray for deliverance from evil,

          to work with God for the healing of the world,

          that all might have abundant life.

We are reminded of grace.

          Amen.

Response to Scripture

Scripture is our song for the journey, the living word

passed on from generation to generation to guide and inspire.

God calls us to be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Prayer of Dedication

In grateful response to God’s abundant love,

  we bear in mind our integral connection

  to the earth and one another;

we participate in God’s work of healing and mending creation.

We send our love with these gifts,

and pray that they will be multiplied

until they become blessings upon blessings.

Amen.

Commissioning

We are God’s good news lived out,

a church with purpose:

          faith nurtured and hearts comforted,

gifts shared for the good of all,

          fierce love in the face of violence,

human dignity defended,

          members of a community held and inspired by God.

We are called together by Christ

          as a community of broken but hopeful believers,

loving what he loved and living what he taught,

          and striving to be faithful servants of God

          in our time and place.

Liturgy: Communion Prayer based on the Song of Faith (United Church of Canada, 2007)

(Please feel free to use this liturgy.  Credits:  Song of Faith (2007), adapted by Rev. Murray Speer.)

(Portions of the liturgy in square brackets are to be filled in from other resources.)

Introduction
In the sacrament of communion the ordinary things of life
—water, bread, wine—
point beyond themselves to God and God’s love,
teaching us to be alert
to the sacred in the midst of life.

[Sursum Corda]

Preface
Let us pray,
Blessed are you, gracious God,
Creative and self-giving,
generously moving
in all the near and distant corners of the universe.
Nothing exists that does not find its source in you.
From the beginning your Spirit has swept
over the face of creation,
animating all energy and matter
and moving in the human heart.

Creator, Christ, and Spirit,
we praise you for your love expressed to us through Jesus,
a Jew,
born to a woman in poverty
in a time of social upheaval
and political oppression.
He knew human joy and sorrow.
So filled with the Holy Spirit was he
that in him people experienced the presence of God among them.
Jesus announced the coming of God’s reign—
a commonwealth not of domination
but of peace, justice, and reconciliation.
He tended to the sick and fed the hungry.
He forgave sins and freed those held captive
by all manner of demonic powers.
He crossed barriers of race, class, culture, and gender.
He preached and practised unconditional love—
love of God, love of neighbour,
love of friend, love of enemy—
and he commanded his followers to love one another
as he had loved them.

[Sanctus-Benedictus]
[Words of Institution]
[Anamnesis-Oblation]
[Memorial Acclamation]
[Epiclesis]

Intercessions
We pray that we will know your purpose for us,
that faith will be nurtured,
suffering hearts will be comforted,
gifts will be shared for the good of all,
forces that exploit and marginalize will come to an end,
fierce love will be known even in the face of violence,
human dignity will be defended,
and that we will remember the price that Jesus paid
for who he was,
for what he did and said,
and for the brokenness of the world.
Make us, who through this wine and bread
are renewed in faith and hope,
witnesses to your divine mission,
feeding as we have been fed,
forgiving as we have been forgiven,
and loving as we have been loved.

Doxology
Divine creation does not cease
until all things have found wholeness, union, and integration
with the common ground of all being.
As children of the Timeless One,
our time-bound lives will find completion
in the all-embracing Creator.
In the meantime, we embrace the present,
embodying hope, loving our enemies,
caring for the earth,
choosing life.

[Prayer of Jesus]
[Amen]

Prayer after Communion
Eternal and gracious God, we place our hope in you.
     We look to a life beyond life
     and a future good beyond imagining:
a new heaven and a new earth,
     the end of sorrow, pain, and tears,
Christ’s return and life with you,
     the making new of all things.
We yearn for the coming of that future,
     even while participating in your eternal life now.
     Amen.