Pentecost 2009

On this day of Pentecost I’ve enclosed a few reflections to go with today’s readings in the format of a Sunday service. You provide the hymns … :>

The following Litany is from a 1935 hymnal:

Oh God, our true life, in whom and by whom all things live, who by thy Spirit doest command us to see thee, and art ever ready to be found; to know thee is life, to serve thee is freedom, to praise thee is the joy and happiness of the soul.

We praise and bless thee, and give thanks for thy great glory.

For seasons of bounty and of beauty, for nights of quiet sleep, for days of health, for the glory of earth and its ministry to our need;

We bless thy name, O Lord.

For all the generations before us who through effort and pain have wrought so that we might be heirs of liberty and truth and peace;

We thank thee, and pray that we may enter into this heritage.

For new hopes of fairer life and nobler freedoms that stir the hearts of many peoples today;

We praise thee, O God.

For the discipline that enriches, for the burden that strengthens, for the failure that is true success, and for the sorry that enlarges the heart;

We give thee thanks, O Lord.

For the soul and its powers, for strong desires to fashion ourselves after the likeness of Christ, and all our world into new orders of beauty and right;

For these also we rejoice and give thee thanks.

Keep us, we pray thee, in thy love; and in and through the quickening of our spirits make us worthy of sonship [and daughtership] with thee.

And to thee by the honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

Offertory Prayer for May 31, 2009

Spirit of the Living God,

Embolden us to announce "Grace for all!" --

especially in those places that most hunger for Your gifts of life.

Through this offering time, we symbolically offer ourselves --

without reservation or fears of insufficiency --

to Your work of satisfying a hungry world.

In Your name we pray, Amen.

            ~ Tanya Barnett & Tom Wilson Radical Gratitude 5/25/09

 

Readings:

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:24- 34, 35; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

 Reflections & Writings:

            Today marks the closing of the Easter season (although each Sunday is always a mini-Easter a celebration of Resurrection) and marks the birthday of the church. Today celebrates when all the church becomes filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to boldly proclaim and share the great love and grace that God invites all creation to participate within. I am reminded of how with Jesus’ birth we have entered a new world – a new Kingdom/Kin-dom while still living in an old world order. We are living between the times. Perhaps that’s why Nouwen’s quote struck me this week.

“You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.”

~ Henri Nouwen - Circles of Love

Where are you continuing to find gifts of Resurrection? Where are you finding gifts of grace? How are you finding yourself following the Spirit?