#Abundance of Invitation Seeds: #Lent #Liturgy & #Prayer Resource March 24

 

table

Scripture

Matthew 22:1-14 and Psalm 45:6-7 (or all of it, or Psalm 45:6-17)

Also Isaiah 61, particularly v. 10

Call to Worship:

Know this, God has anointed you, baptized you in the Holy Spirit.

We are called to love righteousness, and hate wickedness with God. 

Let us cause God’s name to be celebrated for generations

Let the peoples praise God, our mother and father, forever and ever. 

Call to Worship 

God, you call us, the good and the bad forever

Clothe us in your love, so we might be worthy of your banquet

Let us remember to invite one another to partake in the feast

Come, let us accept our invitation to spend time with God together. 

Call to Worship: 

The Lord says: I love justice

My whole being shall exult my God,

God promised to make a covenant with us, and the covenant will be fulfilled.

God has clothed me, like a mother clothes her children, in the garments of salvation, protecting us from the elements, dressing us in love. 

Remember that what is sown in the garden will spring up. The promise of resurrection comes with the winter of Lent.

God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations, come let us plant the seeds of praise today. 

Confession: Lord, we confess that sometimes we come into your presence, thinking we are dressed in love, but then realize that we are wearing judgement or shame instead. It is so easy to forget the worst of ourselves or other. It is so easy to disclude people from your invitation. We can feel unworthy, or be convinced of others’ unworthiness. Forgive our prejudice, and teach us to extend the invitation again and again, we pray. 

Confession: Lord, sometimes I love wickedness. Sometimes I like to gossip about or ignore those who are need . Sometimes I spend all my day complaining and forget to practice gratitude for the invitations you put forth. Forgive me, and teach me to pray and confess in such a way that my words are a love song, and my tongue becomes like the pen of a writer. Teach me I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen

Confession: Lord, we confess here together, because we are each and every one of us invited to your party. Though we are each uniquely made, and though our circumstances are different, you call us each here to experience your love, hope and grace. We are invited here to confess our true selves, and to honor one another’s stories, help us when we forget to do justice in either the confession or the honoring, we pray. 

Prayer of Dedication/of the Day: Lord we enter back into the world where people look and sound different from us. We enter a world where we are afraid to invite people, for whatever reason, to join us in your banquet. Encourage us to go into the world and to make that invitation we pray.

Prayer of Dedication/of the Day: Let us begin again to prepare for the feast together, with invitations and appropriate garments, with words of prayer and praise, we pray.

Prayer of Dedication/of the Day: Lord, remind me that I am here for you. You are the host of the feast, and you have anointed me as a beloved child of God. Please don’t let me forget that today or any day, I pray.

Hymns: I’ve Got Peace Like a River

God be the Glory

Christ is made the sure Foundation

Crown him with Many Crowns

Praise My Soul the King of Heaven

He is King of Kings

(Look in your Christ the King/Ascension hymns)

Food for Thought:

  1. Those who think they should be invited to God will take that gift for granted.

2. We think we need to clothe ourselves in the appropriate garments, but really we have to depend on God for the right clothing.

3. Justice is God’s and is not in being productive (or too busy or too important) for God.

4. Human’s often think looking right is more important than acting right, how might that play in here?

More Thoughts https://wp.me/p2rhxZ-2iI

Full List of Lenten Resources (Of course some prayers may be appropriate for other weeks)

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

3 thoughts on “#Abundance of Invitation Seeds: #Lent #Liturgy & #Prayer Resource March 24”

  1. Hi Katy! I am in a preaching mentorship called Backstorypreaching. Maybe you have heard of it. Am I able to use your call to worship-thinking one can fit for me? I always find writing those difficult. I appreciate your posts so much. Don’t have my sermon yet as part of our process is Lectio Divina.

    Blessings, Lynn Smith

    Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

    >

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