prayer – Page 20 – katyandtheword

Body of Christ

Indeed the Body of Christ consists not of one member but of many members.

The doctors cannot say to the retail workers: You are not necessary. For one feeds the body and the other mends it.

Neither can the CEO’s say to the custodians and trash workers: I have no need of you. For one hand must wash the other.

And we are all the body of Christ.

We cannot say to one another: “it’s ok for this part of the body to become sick and die.”

We cannot chop off any part of our body, because every single part is important.

We cannot tell the teachers and childcare workers that we do not pay you well, because your work is not essential for they tend the seeds of life.

We cannot ignore the truck drivers & postal workers, for they are the circulatory system.

The government cannot say to the immigrants, you are not a part of us: for they stitch society together and gather the nourishment that we need and innovate life itself.

The protestors cannot say to the nurses, your work does not matter. And that your needs are less important than my needs.

The members that we pay the least and ignore the most, are the bones of the body.

Those who we honor and decorate the most, are the least use in a crises.

God has arranged the body, blessing it extravagantly. Inspiring us to work together. For if one part of the body suffers, we all suffer together with it.

If one member is healed and this free to live, then rest is healed: and then freed, with them.

We are of one body, my existence is wrapped up in yours. Let us continue to be the body of Christ, I pray.

Amen.

Pandemic Resources

Eastertide Resources

Lord, I am not the beggar with a disability waiting at the gate of the church. But I understand their plight better this year. As I stand in the breach of church–trying to hold open the bridge between the world and worship. As we collect money for food pantries, and try to find ways for communities to meet and pray. I feel like we too are stuck at the gate of the temple.

Sometimes we are outside the temple, begging to get in, yet unable to pray.

Sometimes we are at the gates of heaven, barely breathing in and out.

Sometimes we are waiting by the side of someone who is on the cusp of death.

Lord, the breaches are gaping right now: the gap between rich and poor, healthy and sick, abled and disabled, the privileged and the marginal, essential and nonessential, the black and the white and the rest of the people of color.

Help us to be the disciples at the breach, fixing our eyes upon them, seeing not just their stated wants but also their deeper needs. Help us to to touch those who are stuck, and to take their hand and walk with them in the community. Even if that touch and walk is only metaphorical today.

Lord we know what it’s like to be in the breach.

Show us how to be the helpers, the healers, we pray.

Remind us that no help is too little, that we are longing for one another’s company, touch and presence.

Help us to be present and stand in the breach, we pray.

Amen.

Eastertide Resources

Peter Heals in Jerusalem Seeds of Prayer

Acts 3:1-10

(Mark 6:53-56)

Psalm 6

Call to Worship

Be gracious to me God, for my bones are shaking in terror.

All that opposes me will depart, for God has heard my weeping.

I am weary Lord.

The Lord will deliver me through steadfast love.

Call to Worship

Lord we long for you.

Touch our eyes, our hearts, our bodies & our souls

Lord we long for your healing

Touch your blessings on our heads, we pray.

Prayer of Confession: Lord, I confess I am weary with my moaning. I flood my bed with tears. I feel surrounded by evil and adversity. Every day brings bad news. But I know the Lord hears my supplication. Wherever I invite God, God promises to hear and be there. When the world wastes away, I know that healing awaits. I will wait for the healing touch of the Lord.

Assurance of Pardon: Lord, we know your healing floods out, a droplet of grace will save us. Hear the Good News In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

Prayer of the Day/Dedication: Lord, we cast our imperfect bodies before you. We give them on to you. We await the healing of the entire world, we breathe for the moment that the world is made whole. Orient us towards you and your touch, we pray. Amen.

Eucharist Prayer; As we touch the bread and cup, the body and the blood of Christ to our lips. Let us remember that Jesus came as embodied love. Fully human, he bore the scars of his death upon the cross. When we consume Christ, when we practice communion with his body, we re-member you, we start the healing of coming together. No matter how we are practicing communion, we are practicing with you and therefore with one another. Strengthen us as the body Christ, heal us as the body of Christ and empower us to be the body of Christ we pray. Amen.

Hymn: Balm in Gilead, There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in this Place. O Christ, the Healer, We Walk By Faith and Not By Sight, Jesu, Jesu Fill Us With Your Love, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need, We Are Your People, They Will Know We Are Christian’s By Our Love

With Children: Talk about tools of Healing and How God continues to work with us as we try to heal (bandaids, medications, masks), Read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day, Where the Wild Things Are, Beauty & the Beast

Healing Touch

Lord,

We hunger for your healing touch. We want to rush out to you, heedless of noise & crowd to touch even the fringe of your cloak, so that we too might be healed. In a time when so many of us are begging at the gate. So many of us our dealing with illness. In a time where the disabilities that can follow coronavirus can be as frightening as the illness itself. Lord we hunger for healing.

We also long for touch. How long has it been, Lord, since I’ve hugged a friend or shared a handshake or passed out communion? I don’t think I’d know what hunger I have for human touch, until the restrictions to pause and stay safe came into play.

I suspect the next thing I will miss are the smiles that the masks hide.

Smiles, prayers, touch how little does it take to make church happen Lord? How much it takes to make church happen!

Thank God for the healers: the doctors, the nurses, the medical staff, and the researchers. Thank God for cleansers: the custodians and cleaning crews and trash collectors. Thank God for the providers: the retail & grocery workers, the restaurant workers & gas attendants. Thank God for the repairers: the mechanics, the plumbers, electricians, energy and water providers. We know that all of these people are part of the healing touch.

Help us to remember that we are not Jesus, healing is not instantaneous, that touching and prayer and smiles might appear in different ways but they are still essential to how we are going to survive and heal. Remind us today and every day we pray.

Eastertide Resources

Pandemic Resources

Easter Unfolding: Narrative Lectionary Seeds of Faith Resources

Remember: Easter didn’t happen in one day. It started at dawn with a few women and slowly unfolded. Next the disciples were stuck in a room for 50 days til Pentecost. Then Pentecost Easter started to be shared with the public. We have been unfurling Easter for the 2,000 years since. Every Sunday is a piece of Easter, Easter, the resurrection, the promise that Christ will return is still taking place today. Easter never was a one day event. That’s why Mark ends so abruptly, it was the beginning.

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April 19th: Acts 1 and Mark 6 You Shall Be My Witness/Acts(ion)

Bulletin & Sermonby Dr. Barb Hedges-Goettl

I Want Answers: Confession about the God I want & the Grace I Need

Grief: Missing the Big & Small Things

Looking to Heaven (for answers)

Apr. 26, 2020

Peter Heals in Jerusalem Prayers: Call to Confession, etc

Acts 3:1-10

(Mark 6:53-56)

Psalm 6

Bulletin & Sermon by Dr. Barb Hedges-Goettl

Prayer:Healing Touch

Prayer/Meditation: Standing in the Breach

Body of Christ

May 3, 2020

Church at Thessalonica

Acts 17:1-9

1 Thessolonians 1:1-10

Mark 13:9-11

With Ref to Amos 5:24

May 10th, 2020

May 17th, 2020

Faith, Hope, and Love: Resources, Commentaries and Prayers by Rev. Dr. Barbara Hedges-Goettl

1 Corinthians 13: Rewritten for the Pandemic

1 Cor. 13:1-3

(Mark 12:28-31)

Body of Christ Litany

Mother’s Day Confession Prayer

Mother’s Day Litany Prayer (in light of the pandemic)

May 24, 2020

Death Swallowed in Life

1 Cor 15:1-26, 51- 57

(Mark 12:26-27a)

May 31, 2020

Pentecost

Gifts of the Spirit

Acts 2:1-4; 1 Cor 12:1-13

(Mark 1:4-8)

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Virtual Communion Resources

Pandemic Resources

I want Answers: a prayer

Lord, I confess that it would be a heck of a lot easier to throw up my hands and say God will provide.

It’s easy to look to heaven for answers, instead of grace. I’m a practically minded person, somedays solutions are all I want. Not hints or insights or learning journeys, a neon sign pointing to what I should do and how I should fix it seems easier.

Though I know this is easier, I also know you are a God who loves me and teaches me exactly the way I am. You do not force my hand, nor my choices. And the truth is, sometimes even when the solution is made obvious, I have trouble recognizing it until afterwards.

You have foresight, I am only blessed with hindsight.

Like Thomas, we think the solution is seeing to believe, and instead he ignore’s the wounds and give Jesus a hug.

This is why Acts is so important, because it’s only after the fact of Jesus’s Resurrection that they start to understand what it’s all about.

This is why Easter is not one day, because we need time and hindsight to truly act upon the commandments that Christ has given us.

Remind me Lord that this Unfolding Easter, this grace in action, this time to practice the kingdom over and over is a gift. And that solutions wouldn’t have helped me understand anyway.

For God is about love and grace and forgiveness, not solutions.

Because we are not a problem, we are the part of the relationship.

Remind me of this I pray.

Amen.

Acts(ion): April 19th Narrative Lectionary Seeds of Faith Prayers

Mark 6:7-13

Acts 1:1-14

Call to Worship
This is the day that the Lord has made

Let us Rejoice and Be glad in it

The Lord calls us together from all the ends of the earth

Come let us pray together in whatever way we can

Call to Worship

There is a time for everything?

A time to dance and a time to sing, a time to mourn and a time to rejoice

There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. There is a time to look to the heavens and time to look to earth.

Let us pray and act together on earth! Alleluia, Amen

Prayer of Confession: Lord we confess that this baptism by fire is not the one we envisioned. Never did we imagine we would stand so close to poverty and death. We confess that we did not understand how fragile our human structures are. We did not imagine how dependent we are for one another in prayer and support. You would think after reading Acts every year, we would have had a better inkling of what it means to enact community on earth. But we have forgotten or lost sight of it. Help us to reclaim community of work and prayer that helps us to love and serve one another as Christ commanded on Maundy Thursday, we pray. Amen.

Prayer of Confession: Lord we confess, we would rather look towards heaven, than earth. How easy it is as humans to skip to the end. We want the kingdom to come right now, and have trouble learning that there is work to be done in the in-between. We confess that we though humans would stop being human and suddenly just all be the same, or get along, or all believe the same things. You know better Lord. Remind us how to eat, pray and live in harmony, even when we cannot see and touch one another. We pray in Christ’s name Amen.

Assurance of Pardon: Christ sends no one out alone! He sends the Holy Spirit before us, companions along the way, and Christ promises to return once again. Be comforted by the ever present grace & forgiveness of God. Tell one another the truth: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

Assurance of Pardon: God sends us nowhere where we cannot be touched by grace. Know the truth In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

Prayer of the Day/Dedication: Lord please send everything we have out in the world. Remind us to pray, encourage us to be in relationship with one another, and focus us upon the needs of the here and now, and help us to address the realities here on earth we pray. Amen.

I Want Answers: A Confession/Prayer about God of Grace

I hate waiting (Saturday)

Lord,

I’ve never been good at waiting. I am impatient and like to keep my hands busy.

Were the women keeping their hands busy when they mixed the spices on Holy Saturday for God? Didn’t they know that Joseph of Arimathea, along with Zaccheus? The high falutin politicians had already moved and covered Jesus with spices?

Was it common to do it more than once? Did the women decide to do it anyway to make sure it was done right?

Did they just need to see & touch dead Jesus with their own hands?

Or were they just keeping their hands busy, choosing and blending the spices, grinding them up with olive oil. Putting them into vessels suitable to journey to Jesus.

Or were they plotting to steal the body of Jesus? Ready to run the risk of the wrath of Herod to make Jesus’ resurrection real in their own way?

If I were them I would not have slept much, I would go at dawn because once I figured out what I was going to do I’d work all night doing it, planning to leave at first light.

I’ve never been good at waiting Lord, and my bet is neither were Mary and Mary Magdalene.

How am I going to keep busy this Saturday?

Help God, help me to do what needs to be done, so that I can do the waiting that needs to be waited, I pray. Amen.

More Pandemic Prayers

Can You Hear Easter (the good news)

Can you hear Easter?

It’s ringing in the stilled bells, the empty chapels, creeping up with the quiet growth of spring

It’s on the lips of exhausted doctors and nurses—too tired to murmur

It’s in the silent wave between neighbors, keeping too far away to talk, but close enough for company

It’s in the silent hug between family members stuck together; where entire conversations flow through the body

It’s on the breath of the sick, in that place between waking and sleeping

It’s in the angel’s nod of greeting to the women, the absence of guards and the rolling away of the stone

If s a stone rolls away and nobody hears it; does it make a sound?

It booms like the rise thunderous sun, bedecked in glory, shining out the news wordless in its proclamation

Can you hear Easter?

Say Nothing Easter

Here we are Jesus, at our say nothing Easter.

And the truth is, I really don’t know what to say. An angel told us you’re alive, but what does that really mean?

Your angels are frightening God, full of life & death; we cannot fully understand who or what they are. We are blinded by the angels eyes, and need some holy shade to think. And we are not exactly filled with hope.

Where is Jesus? He promised to return, but here we are and Mark leaves us with a rolled back stone, one angel and bunch of women. Who would believe what they had to say anyway?

Would Peter and the disciples really hear what needed to be done?

This is a say nothing Easter, where we are alone with ourselves and think, what can we say.

What will you say?

More Pandemic Prayers & Resources