Here is a liturgy to use for worship on the 3rd Sunday of Easter. If you'd like to listen along with it, you can find audio of this here.
Call to Worship Psalm 116 Excerpted & Adapted
One: I love the Lord, because he has heard my supplications.
All: He has inclined his ear to us, so we will call on him as long as we live.
One: The snares of death encompass us;
All: the pangs of Sheol lay hold on us;
One: we suffer distress and anguish.
All: But when we call on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, save my life!"
One: What shall we return to the Lord for all his bounty?
All: We will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
One: We will pay our vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
All: O Lord, grant that we may follow the way of your servant,
for you have loosed all bonds.
One: Therefore, in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem, we praise the Lord!
All: We do this in truth by our encounter with one another, declaring even from a distance, “The peace of the Lord be with you.”
One: And also with you.
Prayer of Invocation (in unison)
Lord God, in whom we live and move and have our being, bless that we might venture forth also in becoming. Though we are yet sheltering in place and our movements are limited, we may yet move deeply and broadly with you.
Yet we have been slow to trust you, slow to love you. We have been blind to your beauty, dismissive of your wonder. Our eyes have been kept from recognizing in you true life and pacifying presence.
We think on the many things of our lives that keep us from seeing—the busyness, the ambition, the acquisition, the clutter. We recount these things to you in silence; and we hope that, in our confession, comes your forgiveness; we hope that, in our holding all things in your light, true value is truly measured.
Silence.
Gracious God, renewed now in your amazing grace, grant that this time out of time might be for us a vessel for your coming—an opening to us that we might shed all things that keep us from you, contemplate all things that urge us closer to you, and participate in your life-giving life that we might become you, becoming as you are ever coming to us.
For so it is that your Son became man that we might become You—a bold hope that is also the best hope of the world.
Bless us, then, in our journey to you, following Christ who is the Way and in whom we pray,
who is as well the host at your table in glory, whom we recognize in the breaking of the bread and by whom we are filled with your substance, your divine energy, your glory. Amen.
