COLOR: Green
SCRIPTURE READINGS: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Psalm 48; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

Call to Worship

L: We erect high altars and raise high steeples, but in no one place shall God be found.

P: We sing right hymns and preach right doctrines, but in no one word shall God be bound.

L: Our God is not bound, but our God shall build:

P: Not temples but truth, not shrines but shalom.

L: Our God is not bound, but our God shall build:

P: Not rituals but rights, not dogmas but dreams.

A: Not a space we call sacred, not a time we call holy, shall confine the works of the almighty Lord! Let us burst our bonds and break into praise, for our God is free: Our God is free!

Invocation

O Great Revealer, we come seeking visions. We come desiring dreams. Grant our wish: wave before us one branch of paradise lost, and we shall see in its leaf our life regained. Or conjure up a carpenter whose hands are as rough as the bark of a tree, and we shall behold in his face our salvation. Lift us, we plead, in a flight not of fancy, but of faith; not that we might boast of your presence, but that we might know your forgiveness.

Litany

L: I am the One who gives you life. Forever shall I be your God, and you shall be my people.

P: And if we have no royal blood, but sweat each day for bread?

L: I will be parent to your child; your child shall be my own.

P: And if our skin be a different shade, or our speech a stranger's tongue?

L: I will be parent to your child; your child shall be my own.

P: If our body be afflicted, or our spirit be distressed?

L: I will be parent to your child; your child shall be my own.

P: If we die while yet alive, or slip beyond the door of death?

L: I will be parent to your child; your child shall be my own.

P: You are the One who gives us life; you are the One who gives us hope.

A: Forever shall you be our God, and we shall be your people!

Prayer for One Voice

O God of all, we rest in the knowledge that wherever we are, there shall you be also. Whether we reside in the palace of a king or the house of a carpenter; the mansion of a president or the dwelling of a tenant: ours is your dwelling-place. Whether we labor in the seat of a government or the assembly line of a factory; in the classroom of a school or the ward of a hospital: ours is your workplace. And even if our home be the street, and the door of the workplace be barred, ours is your resting place.

You are with us always, for yours is a loyalty that surpasses the greatest love we have ever known. It is a loyalty that persists through all terrors; survives, despite all betrayals; and endures, for all generations. Greater love has no one than this: you have laid down your love for the life of the world.

Let this loyalty of yours — so unknown, so strange — arouse in us a commitment to envision more, to do more, to be more. And not "more" only, but more for you. Give us the courage to surrender to you our weakness, that you might make it our strength. Grant us the humility to yield to you our power, that you might fill it with grace. And endow us with the confidence to submit to you our will, that you might adapt it to your purpose.

Our commitment to you shall render us unknown, shall make us strangers among many who once knew us. They will remember us in old roles, with old habits and haunts. The more we envision the kingdom, the more they will call us back to the "real" world. The more we do the work of the kingdom, the more their eyebrows will wrinkle. The more we are the kingdom, the more they will long for the persons we once were.

O God of all, we rest in the knowledge that wherever we are, there shall you be also. But that place where we dwell together — the kingdom of heaven on earth — is not an easy place in which to dwell. Help us to understand that our identity and mission must not depend on the acceptance of those who do not understand; that its success or failure must never be measured in human terms.

Benediction

Paradise shimmers in our midst; the highest heaven lies hidden all around us. Go, and you will discover God; and where you discover God most utterly, you shall know yourself most fully, and love your neighbor most perfectly.

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Adapted from "Litanies and Other Prayers: Year B" Copyright © 1989, 1992 by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved.