Bulletin

Welcome to United Christian Parish! Use the bulletin as guidance as you worship.
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JULY 20 ORDER OF WORSHIP

PRELUDE
“Passacaglia”
G. F. Handel, More… variations

WELCOME

CALL TO WORSHIP *                                                      
One: Creator God, this is the day that you have made!
All: This is the day you have called Holy:
One: Sabbath day, a rest day, a time-out, out of the world and into the presence of God: a day for rejoicing.
All: Make us glad this morning in the House of the Lord. Remove from us our distractions, our heart-worries, our to-dos and should-haves and all the constant stress and strain. And in its place, O God, give us more of you.
One: Here in your House, our hearts are filled with peace our mouths with laughter, our tongues with shouts of joy. Fill us to brimming and overflowing with the joy of the Lord: A good measure of God, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
All: We are glad, yes, we are glad indeed, to be together in the House of the Lord!

OPENING SONG *
“Let Us Hope when Hope Seems Hopeless” (#461)
Let us hope when hope seems hopeless,
when the dreams we dreamed have died.
When the morning breaks in brightness,
hunger shall be satisfied.
One who sows the fields with weeping
shall retrace the sorrowing way
and rejoice in harvest bounty
at the breaking of the day.

Faith and hope in love’s compassion
will survive though knowledge cease,
though the tongues of joy fall silent,
dull the words of prophecies.
Faith shall see and trust its object;
hope shall set its anchor sure;
love shall bloom in Love eternal.
Faith and hope and love endure.

Like a child outgrowing childhood,
setting childhood things away,
we will learn to live in freedom,
in the life of God’s new day.
Now we see as in a mirror.
Then we shall see face to face,
understand how love’s compassion
blossoms through amazing Grace.

CALL TO CONFESSION *
One: Confessing our sins to God is a lot like cleaning out our homes and taking out the garbage. 
All: We know that God can take out what is polluted in our lives and give us a clean heart and fill us with a new and right spirit. 
One: Let us come before God as one community confessing our sins, first together and then in a moment of silence.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION *
One: Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that the distractions and busyness of our lives make it difficult to listen deeply to your voice. 
All: Transform our priorities so that we make space in our lives to be quiet and listen to you. 
One: Jesus, seeker of the lost, we confess to becoming so shaped by the values of this age that your call on our lives is increasingly hard to hear.
All: Transform our values so that they are shaped by your concern for the unloved and unlovely, and for the weak and powerless in our society.
One: Jesus, friend of the poor, we confess that too often any mission and outreach planning is weighed against economic viability.
All: Transform our thinking so that we risk believing that all things are held together, not by the bottom financial line, but by you.
One: Jesus, bearer of reconciliation, we confess that all too often in our faith communities, we harbor thoughts which estrange and make us hostile towards one another.
All: Transform our hearts so that we are filled with the desire to forgive one another and to make peace.
One: Jesus, source of our faith, we confess that we forget all too quickly the words we say, and pray, and sing, in our time of worship.
All: Transform our lives so that they remain connected to you at all times and in all places.
One: Jesus, Savior and Lord, may the posture of our lives be shaped by listening to you; the goodness of our lives be shaped by love for you; and the service of our lives be shaped by a humility like yours. 

WORDS OF FORGIVENESS *
One: The Psalmist declares that those who speak the truth from their heart will abide in God’s sanctuary.  
All: God hears the difficult truths we have named aloud and in the silence of our hearts. 
One: Now let the wonderful gift of God’s forgiveness flow through you. May the abundance of God’s mercy and grace set you free to serve God with love.
All: Thanks be to God!  Amen.

GLORIA *
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
A-men, a-men.

PASSING THE PEACE

OFFERING

DOXOLOGY
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise Christ, all people here below;
praise Holy Spirit evermore;
praise Triune God, whom we adore.
Amen.

BAPTISM

BELLS
“It Is Well with My Soul”
Philip P. Bliss, arr. Linda R. Lamb

SCRIPTURE (Psalm 126; Luke 10:38-42)

SERMON

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
One: What are your dreams, people of God?
All: To be filled with laughter; to cry with joy, not with sorrow.
One: What are your hopes, people of God?
All: To be free of the chains that bind us; to shout with thanksgiving, not with anguish.
One: Rejoice, people of God; here and now, God makes our hopes and dreams come true.
All: Holy God, the world in which we live is as terrifying as it is wonderful. We need Jesus as much today as in times of old. Many sow in tears, and go out weeping. Replenish our lands, fill our hearts with gladness, restore our faith in you and each other, wipe away the tears of despair. 
One: Thank you for the Mary and Martha’s of our life and our church. For those who work so hard and continue to do so even when we take them for granted, when we betray them, when we neglect to treat them with justice or respect, when we assume and presume and then are shocked at their rebellion.
All: Our God, we give you thanks that it is not all about us, that you continue to care and to love and to create possibilities of redemption and new life not only here among us but throughout your world. 
One: Help us get over ourselves enough to be able to sit in your presence, like Mary. Help us to have the humility and the courage to wonder, if only for a moment, if you are about something game changing.
All: Help us to carry that same spirit or curiosity and discovery beyond these walls into the world in which we serve and which you love.
One: So let us, in your name, dare to hope.
All: Let us dare to hope for peace in the Middle East
One: that no child will go to sleep hungry and none will find shelter under a piece of cardboard
All: that violence will be absent from families.
One: Let us dare to hope that you have not forgotten even us, even at this place and time in our lives.
All: Make us a dangerous people – for once not to each other but to all those resentments, preconceptions and reasons why your future should not be the future, for your church AND for your creation.
One: Fill us with your joy and peace as we go imagining a world with more…more hope. We only dare such craziness because we sit in the presence of One whose prayer we echo. 

LORD’S PRAYER
All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

CLOSING SONG *
“Blessed Assurance” (#473)
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of the Spirit, washed in Christ's blood.

Refrain: This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight!
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending, bring from above
echoes of mercy, whispers of love. [Refrain]

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blessed;
Watching and waiting, looking above,
filled with God's goodness, lost in Christ's love. [Refrain]

CLOSING MESSAGE

POSTLUDE
“Litanies”
Jehan Alain

*Rise in body or spirit