Tag: Psalm 103

Lent 4, Lord Teach Me to Pray, Give Yourself to God

Lent 4 Assurance of Pardon/Words of Grace

The grace of God is assured, and the healing of God is not just of the body, but instead a healing of forgiveness of sins and a restoration to one’s community. God’s grace is such that we are fully restored in all things. God takes care of our full being and self. 

Psalm 103 or Psalm 23 (this is an option for lament week, to be read uniquely a a lament)
Mark 2:7-12

Breath Prayer

Inhale: God full of grace
Exhale: Fill me with your Spirit

Inhale: God redeems us
Exhale: God fills us with Good things

Inhale: God sent us Jesus
Exhale: Jesus Loves me

Call to Worship:
Bless the Lord, O my Soul
Let all the is within me, Bless God’s Name
Bless the Lord, O my soul, do not forget God’s benefits
God forgives all of my iniquities and redeems me
Come let us praise God who redeems us from the Pit
Come let bless the Lord, our Redeemer whose grace lives in all forgiveness

Call to Confession: Jesus welcomes any in need to come and be comforted, come let us present ourselves to Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Confession: God we confess that it is hard to believe in any kind of healing or wholeness, whether it is physical or emotional. We find it hard to believe that you will forgive us and heal us. Remind us that we, like the paralytic man, do not have to do it alone we pray. (Silent Confession)

Prayer of Confession; Jesus Christ, you assure us that to confess our sins is enough, so here we are, confessing that we are imperfect, confessing that we need healing, confessing that we are too like the paralytic man than we like—in need of healing in more than one way. Forgive us our sins and teach us to accept our imperfections we pray. Remind us that forgiveness is more important than perfections we pray. (Silent Confession) Amen. 

Assurance of Pardon: Hear the Good News, Jesus Christ knows us, loves us and redeems us, He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Come let us proclaim the Good News to one another In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. 

Prayer of the Day/Dedication: God loves us and redeems us, crowning us with steadfast love and mercy—as huge are the heavens are—that is how much God’s love is for us. As far as the East is from the West, so far God removes our sins from us. God has love and compassion for us, loving us from everlasting to everlasting, may we carry that love and compassion into the world. Amen. 

Taize: Nada Te Turbe

Prayer Activity: Option 1: Create Cards of Love and Compassion for people—in congregation or not, present or not, friends, family, etc. Spreading the love and grace and compassion of God in the Spirit of the communal grace and support of who God is. Use Markers, Crayons, Stickers, Stamps to create these cards. Have pre-folded cards and envelopes ready to address—have your care ministry deacons, etc. ready to stamp the cards and send them early the next week. Bless the cards at the end of worship

Option 2: Sing a Hymn, Taize at the end of worship and remind everyone that they are sealed in the love and forgiveness of God: Give everyone a Sticker or Stamp in honor of that Seal. 

Taize Option: Bless the Lord My Soul

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Hearts zooming around on wind, and Holy Spirit over baptismal waters of grace

Rejected Sermon Titles: Jesus and disabilities

Mark 2:1-22

Psalm 103:6-14

There is a certain amount of mourning that goes on when you have a child with disabilities. Immediately you start to try to figure out “what went wrong” which is code for who to blame. Most people start with themselves. When I found out Westley had autism, I worried about my two week trip to Israel while I in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. My mom pointed out that genes are formulated way before that.

My husband talked about his own worries “You know I”m neurotic, and I have ADD” for that matter people in my family have ADD too, and I didn’t eat most foods for most of my life because the textures bothered me, but sure it’s solely your fault that our child has autism.

I think in all societies there is a tendency to try to blame someone for disabilities and the imperfections. We try to find the sin that caused  the sin. It is here that we can start to understand that it was more shocking  for Jesus to forgive the paraplegic man than it was to see a bodily healing.

Eventually I have come to conclude that no human body is perfect. Not one of us has a body that works perfectly. We all have things that are different. And we are all sinners, we all are imperfect in that way too.

What causes this forgiveness and healing is the communal faith. The parapalegic faith, and his four friends. His friends who haul him up onto the roof, dig a hole in the grass and thatch and lower him down through the roof. Perhaps the lowering through the roof was less amazing than the fact that probably the friends had to touch this crippled man in order to get him to Jesus.

I wonder what that moment was like. I wonder if Jesus saw them trying to get through out of the corner of his eye, or if suddenly a man just appeared out of the sky, like an angel.

Like Jesus lowering himself to human level.

Like a miracle of community.

Then Jesus says because of all of their faith, not one, not another but all including the paraplegic man, he is forgiven…and then healed. Per usual in the Bible faith is used to describe the beliefs and actions of faith (as opposed to belief which is used in ref. to the individual). Not all of them had the same faith or beliefs, all of them had different bodies and skills, but together they formulated the faith for forgiveness and healing.

That is what we practice here in church. We pray for one another when our bodies don’t work well, when we sin, we work on forgiveness together. This church is a communal thing, because that is how we see Jesus.