17th Sunday After Pentecost CALL TO WORSHIP P: Whether we embrace God’s call in our lives or try to avoid it, C: God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. P: Whether we are long-timers or latecomers in the life of faith, C: God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. P: Whether our lives in Christ are comfortable or bring hardship, C: God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We praise God’s name forever and ever! CONFESSION AND FORGIVENESS P: Because we do not always live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, we confess before God and one another our sins and shortcomings. In repentance, let us turn toward God’s grace and mercy. Silence is kept for reflection P: God of abundant goodness, C: we confess that we want your grace for ourselves but often wish punishment or exclusion on others. We judge the efforts and motives of others while ignoring the faults of our own. Forgive us, we pray, when we let jealousy overtake us. Forgive us, we pray, when we are petty even in the presence of your generosity. Forgive us, we pray, when we feel slighted by you. May we ask once again for your mercy? Will you help us to be more merciful toward one another? We pray in the name of Christ Jesus, by whose grace we are saved. Amen. P: People of God, hear the Good News: your sins are forgiven and you are reconciled to God. Let us therefore love one another with gratitude in our hearts and praise on our lips. C: Amen. HYMN “Take My Life, that I May Be” PRAYER OF THE DAY P: Generous God, you come to us again and again, no matter how late it is in the day or in our lives. Calling to us, gathering us in, you give us your good work to do, daily bread, and boundless grace. Increase in us a generous spirit so that we may do your work with joy alongside others whom you also love. We celebrate your salvation not only in our lives, but also in the lives of other people, even those we had not imagined would be included in the kingdom you are bringing. Align us with your ways and help us receive your gift of justice and mercy as good news. In Jesus Christ we pray. C: Amen. READING Hebrew Bible Reading: Jonah 3:10--4:11 10When God saw what [the people of Ninevah] did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. 4:1But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. 6The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” SERMON Rev. Lori E.L. Kitzing HYMN “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION P: God of unending mercy and steadfast love, we are grateful that you are slow to anger, for there is much in this world that is wrong and set against your purposes. P: Overcome our many injustices with your justice; overtake our lust for revenge with your great mercy. We pray for nations locked in hostility to be set free from old patterns and to embrace a new way of relating. We pray for people who wield economic power to take notice of those whom you notice and to have compassion for those who are vulnerable. We pray for day laborers and the unemployed and the homeless. P: Inspire us who have enough to share what we have, not in measured and resentful amounts, but gladly, abundantly, so basic needs do not go unattended. P: Gather up the first and the last, the least and the greatest, in the common work of your kingdom, until there is no more first or last at all, for all are one in your name. Help us all to see not only your grace at work in the world, but also your humor at work among us, the holy laughter that heals us and helps us see ourselves rightly. We thank you for the privilege of believing in Christ, of living in Christ, and of living for Christ. In all things, at all times, we give thanks to you, who never lets us go; through Jesus Christ our Savior. C: Amen. OFFERING PRAYER P: Whether we have much or only a little, we can share our daily bread so that all will be fed. As we have received, so now we give, in the vineyard of the Lord, our tithes and offerings. Financial gifts may be sent to the church. P: God of the harvest, we are privileged to be counted among those whom you have called, graced to have been given your work to do, blessed to receive use what already belongs to you to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. In Christ’s name we pray. C: Amen. LORD’S PRAYER Spoken in Scottish Gaelic BENEDICTION P: May the generous grace of + Christ attend you, the astounding love of God find you, and the surprising movement of the Holy Spirit guide you, everywhere and always. C: Amen. HYMN “Canticle of the Turning” CHARGE P: Go And...Serve With Neighbors! So that you can better love and serve God and others. C: Thanks be to God. Printed by permission oneliscense.net A-717495
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AuthorRev. Lori E.L. Kitzing Archives
April 2024
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