For ordinary time. A liturgy for divers situations in which the people of God may find themselves perplexed and hemmed about with care and foolishness and tempted to forsake the way of Jesus in the name of an easy dollar.
Leader: O Lord, who art enthroned above the skies and reign over all the earth, remember now the weakness and frailty of Your people. Our hearts are easily swayed by comfort, forgetting our neighbors. Our hands are swift to shed responsibility, shrugging at the pain of others. Our feet are slow to rush toward those in need, fixing our position in the social strata. Our minds are turned after conspiracies and simplistic explanations, ignoring the complexity of the world and the wisdom of those who have gone before us.
People: Indeed, we have refused to hear Your Word, and heed the ways You have ordained for us to live in Your world.
Leader: Lord You have created the heavens and the earth and filled the earth with good things, yet we have not received our place in this world as a gift. You have blessed Your people with great wisdom to fill the earth and subdue it through many technological marvels, yet we have used them in ways that make them our masters rather than servants.
People: We have taken your blessings and made of them idols, and so have become like them. We have exalted men as powerful creators, and forgotten that they work with Your materials and the great help of many unsung laborers.
Leader: Lord, You have deigned to grant us prosperity, but we have not thanked you often. Moreover, we have often mislabeled the ill-gotten fruit of our participation in exploitative economies for your favor upon us, and seen unequal wealth as our birthright rather than an outcome of collective greed.
People: We have loved Your gifts more than we have loved You. We have used our fellow humans as instruments of our own desires, and we have striven to find loopholes in Your words of warning about wealth.
Leader: Lord You have called us to radical generosity in Your name, yet we have seldom given more to others than we have reserved for our own enjoyments. We have often crossed to the other side of the road in the face of the suffering of our neighbors rather than to enter into their need. We have refused to labor with them in the edges of our fields or to feast with them before You in thanks for the blessings You pour on the world at large.
People: We have desired more greatly that those made poor would leave us alone than that they would be made whole. We have withheld cups of cold water and other means of survival in Your name, blaming them for their own poverty, and citing Proverbs and verses out of context rather than your commands to us to sustain them and include them in our lives. We have squandered our piled wealth not on creating good work or giving good gifts, but on experiences and appearances and insurance against discomfort. We have filled the rich with good things and sent the hungry away empty.
Leader: Lord, You have told us the character of a king, that he should humble himself before Your law, that he should be a faithful husband, reject the trappings of wealth, and not puff himself up more than his brothers, but to move among them as a humble servant. You have told us that a true leader will not defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked, but will defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed, rescue the weak and the needy and deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Above all, You have shown us that those who lead should model the character of Jesus, the perfect king.
People: Though You have shown us that leadership is not a position of power or hierarchy, we have confused cruelty for strength, greed for efficiency, wealth for disinterest, crushing dissent for protection of rights, a culture of death for the protection of life, and endless war for preservation of peace. We have so often abandoned the vulnerable in pursuit of maximizing our profits and minimizing our taxes. We have justified investing power in the worst among us by unholy appeals to Your name, and squandered authority on tearing down rather than building up.
Leader: Lord, You have said that we should not hinder the children from coming unto Thee, yet we have sacrificed our children on at the altars of our idols. We have decried abortion while refusing to promote paid maternity leave and affordable medical care. We have offered thoughts and prayers when they are gunned down at school while refusing to entertain ways to prevent such attacks. We have wrung our hands as they are abused while refusing to hold abusers to account. We have treated developing brains as if they are fully grown, meting out harsh punishments for their actions instead of tender curiosity toward their flourishing. We have mortgaged their future by looking for our own comfort rather than building for an inhabitable world and more just society.
People: We hang our heads in shame for the theological malpractice that compels us to performative morality without action we have the power to take. There is little we can say but that we should know better, and yet we refuse to. Grant us mercy for our great unkindness, Lord.
Leader: Lord, You have called us to worship You with many means, according to our cultures and languages, yet we have often made our cultural expressions of worship an idol. You have invited us to praise you with joy and gratitude, yet we would seek to compel those who are not of our faith to worship with us before You have called them and given them new hearts. You have invited us to gather with those who love you, yet we shame those who may not feel loved by us or have the health to travel for their staying away.
People: We confess our love for noisy hymns of praise offered with hearts turned away from Your precepts and ears closed to Your word. We confess that we have used Your worship as a means to exalt ourselves. We confess that we have often made both rock and roll worse and Your church no better.
Leader: Lord, You have offered us Sabbath rest and given us assurance of Your provision independent of our striving, yet we have refused to slow down. You have given us instruction to give rest to those who work for us, yet we press them greatly to increase our profits. You have shown us that the exploitation of workers is a great evil repaid by Your just plagues or exile from good land, yet we persist against the cries of those who suffer.
People: We have passed on the right and violated the limits of Your Law and Your creation. We have extracted what you would have us protect, and we suffer restlessness as the natural consequence of choosing wealth over wonder and power over people.
Leader: Lord, You have created man and woman in your image, and allowed us to fill the earth with many tribes and tongues and people and nations. By reason of the evils introduced to Your good world, warfare and famine and empire, many people have moved far from their homelands—by choice or by force—and share residence among those they do not know. You have instructed us to welcome them and provide for their subsistence among us, yet we have time and again chosen violence in word and deed rather than hospitality.
People: We have closed our doors to those in need. We have seen those fleeing for their lives as laborers to underpay and overwork. We have turned blind eyes to genocide and mass deportation where they are perpetrated by those we love. O, Lord, we have silenced our consciences for the lining of our wallets.
Leader: O Lord, as we enumerate these wickednesses, we are ever more aware of our weakness, fear, and cruelty as of cornered animals. You have sent us your pastors, and we have demanded they preach comfort and peace where there is no peace rather than call us to repent for our sins. You have sent us prophetic voices and we have ignored them, and often imprisoned and assassinated them when we could ignore them no longer. You have sent us the witness of the fatherless, the widow, the sojourner, and the poor, and we have failed the test of our faith. Before these indictments, who can stand. Only God can save us now. And You have entered into the suffering we inflict, and suffered in Your son. Only through such willing sacrifice can we be freed from our self-imposed hells.
People: We confess that we have sinned against You, in thought, word, and deed, both by what we have done, and what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry, and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your name. Amen.
Wow - sermon-poem-liturgy to the max. This should be read at church and then everyone just leaves in contemplative silence.