Mission: Critical

Good Morning and Welcome to Worship! Worship is often the first place that new people come into contact with this growing community of faith. And so, if you are joining us for the first time, I say to you what is said every Sunday: You are welcome here. Here is a place where all are welcome. For such is the love of God for God’s Very Good Creation.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise God, all creatures here below; praise God above, ye Heav'nly host: praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Author of Life, you cast your glory all around us; you reveal yourself in ancient stories and the give-and-take of everyday life. By the power of your Spirit call us together to be one body, one heart sharing your mind with an eye for how we might draw the world around us into your way of love. Amen.

Compassionate God, you reveal the way of love that binds us together into your body at work in this world. We come to you today from many places: some hearts overflow with joy and gratitude, others are barely hanging on to hope and faith. For some, this is an ordinary morning; for others, every step feels fragile. Holy One, meet us where we are and bind us to each other, that in the community of your love we might discover our wholeness.

God of life, we come to you from many places knowing you are the love that brings us and binds us.

Author of time, we ask your blessing on our work and our rest: in jobs that feed our souls and in jobs that do not satisfy, in volunteer service and routine daily tasks, in long hours of caregiving and in hours we do not know how to fill — Come to us and show us how to give ourselves to your way of love.

God of life, we come to you from many places knowing you are the love that brings us and binds us.

God of all creation, enlarge the circles of our concern. Teach us to care for siblings whose names we will never know: those whose challenges are daunting, though their needs are like our own. Teach us to care for the earth on whose gifts we depend.

God of life, we come to you from many places knowing you are the love that brings us and binds us. Amen.

Ever-present God, in this moment of stillness, wash us clean of our presumptions. Receive us as your weary children. Then, by the power of your Spirit, bless us with a word that revives. This we pray in the name of Jesus, your living Word. Amen.

Romans 7:15-25a ¹⁵ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 ¹⁶ “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ^{17 ‘}We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ ¹⁸ “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; ¹⁹ the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” ²⁵ At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶ yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷ All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

What are you holding that isn’t yours to carry? What work are you doing that isn’t yours to do? Where might God be calling you to a more well-fitted yoke?

Here at Community Church, we celebrate “Open Communion.” Anyone who wishes to commune may come to God’s Table. You do not have to be sinless; God forgives you. You do not have to be perfect; God encourages you to grow. You need not belong to any church; God invites all people to this meal. It is enough to love and follow God with all your heart. This is what God asks us to do. Come to God’s Table in faith this day. Go from this place to live and never be the same again. Let us commune as siblings in Christ.

God is in you. We are in God. Lift up your hearts. We lift up our hearts in love. Let us give thanks to the Source of all love. It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you. Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, you formed us in your image and breathed into us the breath of life. When we turned away, and our love failed, your love remained steadfast. You delivered us from captivity, made covenant to be our sovereign God, and spoke to us through your prophets, who looked for that day when justice shall roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. And so, with your people on earth and all the company of heaven we praise your name and join their unending hymn:

Holy are you and blessed is your Son Jesus Christ. Your Spirit anointed him to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to announce that the time had come when you would save your people.

He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and ate with sinners.

By the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection you gave birth to your Church, delivered us from slavery to sin and death, and made with us a new covenant by water and the Spirit.

At his ascension you exalted him to sit and reign with you at your right hand.

On the night in which he gave himself up for us, he took bread, gave thanks to you, broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: “Take, eat; we are one body as we share in the bread together. Do this in remembrance of me.” When the supper was over, he took the cup, gave thanks to you, gave it to his disciples, and said: “Drink from this, all of you; this is the cup of the new covenant, an ongoing sign of God’s love for you and all of God’s very good creation. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

On the day you raised him from the dead he was recognized by his disciples in the breaking of the bread, and in the power of your Holy Spirit your Church has continued in the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup.

And so, in remembrance of these your mighty acts in Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us, as we proclaim the mystery of faith:

Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and fruit of the vine. Make them be for us the symbols of your love and desire for us to be your body knit together to build the new creation, your preferred future for us.

By your Spirit help the body of Christ be one. Help the left hand and the right hand work as one in ministry to all the world. Help the eyes and the ears sense your present and coming kin-dom. Bring the blessing of the diversity of the body to bear fruit until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.

Through your Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in your holy church, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty God, now and forever. Amen.

Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

The bread which we have eaten is a sharing in the bread of Christ. The cup over which we give thanks is the sharing in the cup of Christ.

Eternal God, we give you thanks for this holy mystery in which you have given yourself to us. Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Siblings in Christ, let us show our thanksgiving for God’s way of love that knits us together in love by giving to support our shared ministry.

Gracious Creator, you have laced our lives with blessing. As we present these gifts may they be a sign that we are turning our lives over to your way of love. May your love gather and bind us into your bold and loving people, willing to go forward in love wherever your Spirit leads us to confront and comfort the world. Amen.

May the God who brings good from broken desires, the Christ who shares his yoke with us, the Spirit who breaths her wisdom in you our hearts sustain and guide us this day and every day. Amen.