Prayer for a friend and her sister….
In the in between, o God,
May our forever ties stay strong.
In the companioning, may we bathe in love.
Bless our moments and grant that sleep is calm and breaths are comforting.
Send your angels to tend to our spirits, pave the way for peace, and share our tears and laughter.
Grant moments of lightness and promise.
We pray in the name of the one who knew both tears and life beyond life.
Amen
Move our feet to join the path
Teach us steps to share the dance
Fear has partnered our past moves
Yet our lives are filled with loves
Love of partner and of friend
Sacred loves that never end
Love sustains and fills the heart
With courage so we play our part.
Move our voice to sing your song
Raise our arms to hold the throng
Guide our words in singing truth
May the depths of good take root
Respect first peoples and terrains
May grace fill our joint refrains
May Christ’s heart become our choice
As confession finds its voice.
Ideas emerge and some confuse
Preachers argue or amuse
Help us leave the powered place
Seek instead the need for grace
Find our home in cells and camps
Offer silence, light a lamp
Live with questions without answer
Witness lame become the dancer.
Faith in Christ opens the shutter
Shares resources, slows the clutter
Without God, nothing matters
For nothing is all that’s left
Without God, all hope shatters
Hearts are broken, souls bereft
Find belonging without merit
Measure instead Spirit-credit
Depart oppressive moralism
Find a spiritual optimism
Seek the God who recognizes
Receive the gifts that blessing prizes
Turn-resist perfectionism
Longing prompts aestheticism
Reject abusive spiritual grooming
Rather integrate life’s blooming
Challenge fixtures, find the place
For conversation - people space
Guiding lights illuminate
Pray and read of love and hate
Do not shy away from sorrow
Hope comes with dawning of the morrow
Service of all kinds has need
Action sits alongside creed.
The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ our God;
Become God’s new creation
By water and the Word.
God, give to us your vision
of healing from all strife
God, send us on your mission
To witness transformed life.
Now called from every nation,
As one throughout all the earth,
Our task is shared salvation,
One God, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name in blessing,
Share in one holy food,
And to one hope we’re pressing,
The mission of God’s good.
‘Mid scenes of war and dying
and climate’s groaning loud,
we pray to Spirit, crying
for life beyond the shroud;
As Church we rise to nourish,
communities to bless.
We long for heav’n to flourish.
We long for peace and rest.
Here, in this place, find union
With God, the Three-in-One,
Come, enter this communion
with those whose rest is won.
We seek the coming Kin-dom,
for justice to increase,
so all will live in freedom,
and all will know God’s peace.
EASTER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
Co-developed with Rev Ellie Elia
——-
Earth and stars, waters and breeze
In this place, the place of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples, we celebrate the connection between
embodied life and spiritual fulfilment.
As Easter people, we look upon the hills and valleys,
we see the love poured out upon this Land
by those who have cared for this place
since time beyond measure.
As Easter people we honour the story
of life, death and resurrection of the first peoples
who long to honour the stories of dreaming.
We bring ourselves respectfully to the traditional peoples of this land, praying in wonder and hope,
that restoration and resurrection
will become the reality of heaven in this place.
May Christ’s way of reconciliation and peace
show us how to walk gently upon this land
and with one another.
Go with fullness
Go with comfort
Live with richness in God’s land.
Go with justice
Go with mercy
See your God, so close at hand.
Child, with Christ,
go work for peace.
In the struggle,
do not cease.
Be blessed, made holy,
Sent by One –
Creator, Spirit
and the Son.
In you,
may God’s blessing come.
With you,
may God’s blessing come.
Through you,
may God’s blessing come.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
The above text is based on a reading of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5)
“Blessed are those who are poor in spirit:
the kin-dom of heaven is theirs. 4 Blessed are those who are mourning:
they will be consoled. 5 Blessed are those who are gentle:
they will inherit the land. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice:
they will have their fill. 7 Blessed are those who show mercy to others:
they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are those whose hearts are clean:
they will see God. 9 Blessed are those who work for peace:
they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted
because of their struggle for justice:
the kindom of heaven is theirs. 11
Whose war takes my children from me?
Whose profit is paid for by lost generations?
Whose brutality leaves only a decaying vigil?
The days and nights between death and burial are long.
Yet, grief knows no measure.
The cells that knitted together inside my womb
Now disintegrate on our shared cloth of tears.
But, do not cry, my sons,
For my tears must be enough for you
Although they will never satisfy me.
I will carry your memory until I am forgotten
Prayer –
We pray for those who grieve violence
For those who hold dead children in their arms
And for those who never receive remains
For those who search among the fallen
And those whose escape means never knowing
May those who grieve by comforted
We pray for those who perpetrate violence
For those who are are conscripted to wars
And for those who seek survival
For those who no longer remember tenderness of heart
And those who see monsters in the mirror
May those who wield swords choose plowshares
Truth-telling
formed of lies and deceptions:
Call us your children.
Cries for justice paint targets on our communities:
We pray:
For the persecutors, who reinforce privilege by dehumanizing those God loves
For the rich, who profit from labour practices that keep poor those God loves
For the powerful, whose identity is defined by superiority rather than humility
Have mercy, O God, restore dignity, worth, and humanity.
Amen
Schools in Myanmar are closed.
Faithful disciples tend to children, teaching language and numbers from life experience.
Peace be upon those who are carers in places and times of distress.
Mobs attack the vulnerable in Manipur.
The conscience of individuals falls to the press of the many.
Peace be upon those who suffer and those who accompany them.
Bitter cold companions the bitterness of broken communities in Ukraine and Russia.
People are forced from their homes, either as refugees or unwilling warriors.
Peace be upon those in the midst of warzones and those who have left them.
The birthplace of the Palestinian Messianic Jew is as unholy as ever.
The land and her people are daily crucified.
Peace be to those who birth HOPE in the midst of unwelcome rubble.
In these days of tears, we long for your coming - Bring peace, O God!
Come! Come! Emmanuel - be with us!
