You are a joyful God, and you invite us to share in your joy.
Forgive us, Jesus, for we have preferred sorrow to joy. Forgive us for focusing on our failures, on the things we don’t have, on the things that have not gone as we wanted or expected – and so failing to recognize your blessing. Forgive us for seeking individual happiness over and above the joy we find only in you, and in the community you have formed for us. Thank you for the great gift of your Son, for his life, for his offer to share in his joy through the power of the Spirit and in concert with his church. Spirit, teach us how to live fully within the joy of Christ. Help us to enjoy each other, and your good creation, as you intended us to. Thank you, once again, for your wonderful, sacrificial gift that fuels our everlasting joy.
Sung Response: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us. (x2)
Your sin has been crucified with Christ Jesus, and you are forgiven. You are free to walk in the fullness of the life offered to you by the Spirit of God. You are raised, with Christ, to eternal life!
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
You are a loving God, and you ask us to love one another.
Forgive us, Jesus, for we have forgotten what it means to love. We so often forget your great gift of love to us. We so often forget that love gives without asking anything in return; so often we pursue the return rather than love itself. Forgive us for failing to love you with our whole hearts. Forgive us for turning our backs upon those we have deemed unworthy of our love. Forgive us for the many times we fail to pursue your example of sacrificial love, choosing the easy road instead. Spirit, teach us how to chase after this difficult love. Help us to understand the fullness of Christ’s gift to us, and thereby gain the strength to extend that gift to each other, to our family, our friends, and especially to those who seem unlovable, who give us nothing in return.
Sung Response: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us. (x2)
Your sin has been crucified with Christ Jesus, and you are forgiven. You are free to walk in the fullness of the life offered to you by the Spirit of God.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
You are a righteous God, and you ask us to live according to your word and character.
Forgive us, Jesus, for we struggle to control ourselves in the midst of a world filled with temptation. Forgive us for giving into our impulses without considering the consequences, without considering the order you have established in this world. Forgive us for bowing down to our own desires. Spirit, teach us to resist that which will harm us. Help us to understand our bodies and our own desires so that we can make good decisions.
Sung Response: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us. (x2)
Your sin has been crucified with Christ Jesus, and you are forgiven. You are free to walk in the fullness of the life offered to you by the Spirit of God.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
You are a gentle God, and you ask us to be gentle with each other.
Forgive us, Jesus, for we have forgotten who we are in light of you. Forgive us for treating the sins of others without compassion. Forgive us for endlessly putting ourselves forward, and setting others behind us. Spirit, teach us how to treat one another with gentleness. Help us to understand our equality before you, and therefore extend our hand to those who have fallen, helping them up rather than sitting in judgement over them.Sung Response: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us. (x2)Your sin has been crucified with Christ Jesus, and you are forgiven. You are free to walk in the fullness of the life offered to you by the Spirit of God.Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Today is Ash Wednesday. Christians all over the world will bow their heads today, and receive a smudged sign of the cross on their foreheads – will be reminded of their own mortality. That death comes to all. That death dwells in all of us. That this world is still, in many ways, captive to sin and darkness. And they will each decide to forgo some pleasure during this time: limiting consumption of meat or sweets; forgoing screen time; eschewing social media. Other Christians, all over the world, find these practices strange and stiff. They wonder what it’s all about. But they, too, although they will not walk through their day with ash marking their foreheads, will feel the pull, the heaviness of Lent in their limbs, in their days, as we begin the long march with Christ toward the cross.
Lent is a time of confession and fasting and waiting in darkness. But this year I want to acknowledge something else – it is also a time of fruiting. Even as we recognize our mortality, as we confess our sin, as we realize anew how difficult it is to control our desires, hope is born afresh in each of us. Because we know how this story ends. We know that our recognition of our mortality will become a celebration of our resurrection. We know that we have received help for our difficult desires, and that one day they will be conquered in full. We know that even as we confess our sin, we are forgiven.
So this year, our church is walking through the fruit of the Spirit during Lent (Galatians 5). We will confess our failure. But we will also embrace forgiveness, and recognize the fruit that Lent is bearing in each of us, and in us as a community.
I invite you to join us. Below is the reading for our first Sunday of Lent – I will post a new prayer every Wednesday. The sung portion is the chorus of Steve Merkel’s “Lord Have Mercy” – a version of which I have posted below. The bold print is to be read/sung by the congregation, and we will also be lighting a Lent candle each week (with the candles lined up in cruciform) as we receive forgiveness. I was helped, in writing these liturgies, by Gordon D. Fee’s excellent work Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God. Feel free to use these prayers in your your own congregation or in your personal devotions – if you do the latter, simply change the language to first person singular, and I would suggest praying the prayer morning and evening as a kind of bookend to each day.
What will you give up this Lent? And what will you harvest?
Fruit of the Spirit
The Fruit of Lent, Week 1: PEACE
You are the God of Peace, and you desire your people to dwell in that peace.
Forgive us, Jesus, for we have caused divisions, knowingly and unknowingly, seeking our own good rather than the good of our community. Forgive us for any hurtful words we have spoken. Forgive us for our thoughtless gossip, and for the grudges we have held on to. Spirit, teach us to willingly forgive, to value relationship over being right, and to actively seek your peace with each other, and in all of our relationships.
Sung Response: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on us. (x2)
Your sin has been crucified with Christ Jesus, and you are forgiven. You are free to walk in the fullness of the life offered to you by the Spirit of God.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
thinking worship 