Everyone needs a champion,
someone who will be in your corner, always,
someone watching your back,
someone watching you, treasuring you,
keeping you in their heart.
Parents are nature’s champions,
biologically led to love and nurture,
feed and foster,
support and sustain.
They can’t keep their eyes off you….
God of grace, thank you for the gift of motherhood:
for the joy of giving birth, for the delight of loving a child,
for the unfolding of a relationship over time.
From mothers cradling babies, to adults caregiving for aging parents,
the relationship of mother and child is a gift from you!
Thank you for all who mother us,
biological or adoptive mothers, caregivers, relatives and friends;
women who have been there for us, who have made us who we are.
Thank you, God, that even though mothers may fail us, you never fail us
and that you mother us through your love….
We are the shadow people who dance with death,
that great shade, our whole life long.
We try to run from its darkness,
we avoid it, we try to elude it.
But in the end we are always the shadow people,
hopelessly connected to death.
The darkness of death eclipses us.
Death hems us in, stifles us, stunts our growth,
it wants to kill us.
Crippled and cramped by this grave story
we long for a saviour
who sees our crooked shadows, our bent-overness….
“Come to me, all you who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death!”
On you has the light shone!
For Jesus Christ is the light of the world
and this is the story;
the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness could not put it out!
Jesus said,
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
“I am the bright and morning star.”
This morning we join with the angels in their hymns of praise;
Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace, Alleluia!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
On this most solemn of days we gather for worship.
Jesus, lead us from the darkness of the garden,
to the bare courtyard and its soldiers.
Draw us from Pilate’s palace and its crowds,
through the streets of Jerusalem.
Shepherd us to a lonely hillside
where the lamb of God waits for us.
We would follow you, Jesus, on this,
your day of suffering.
We come to you, Jesus, burdened with our own sin.
Our own calls for revenge and violence,
which may or may not have included the words, “Crucify, crucify!”
Our own betrayals, with or without the thirty pieces of silver.
Our own denials, whether or not we have heard the cock crowing.
You know the sins we carry, secretly or openly,
the way they crush us, the weight of them.
We bring these to your cross…*
You carry our burdens, Lord.
These, the simplest and gravest of sins,
are magnified into organizations and systems,
amplified in the actions of corporations and governments.
Selfishness, revenge and violence unfold on the largest scale,
The effort to achieve goodness
stretches the most ambitious soul.
Faced with global warming,
the oil crisis and rampant materialism,
we can and do rise to the occasion.
We track our miles and kilometers
for every carbon footprint,
we pinch pennies,
we recycle and re-use,
we evaluate and re-evaluate
our time-saving, time-treasuring,
simple-life strategies….
Thank you God for the sound of geese high in the morning sky
being pulled northward by the call of spring.
Thank you for the way you are pulling life out of the ground.
You call and all life answers, up from the brown earth,
up through last year’s dead leftovers; new life greening all around us.
Thank you that you call us in the same way, pulling us towards life.
As sure as plants are pulled towards the sun, we yearn for you.
Forgive us for times we have leaned in other ways,
preferring to stay buried, preferring to do nothing,
preferring to lean towards evil thoughts and actions.
Your love calls us, yearns for us,
rejoices every time our thoughts lean towards you,
Here’s a prayer for the corners of our lives
messy with yesterday’s business.
There’s the guilt about what was thrown in the garbage,
the regret about spending too much on extra things,
the time that was frittered away agonizing about details,
the energy wasted on trying to meet someone else’s standards.
Our memories are cobwebbed over with regret
of how it could have been different:
it could have been more responsible, more selfless,
more organized, more healthy, more something.
Even now, looking forward, there’s the sinking feeling
I am a Mennonite pastor currently teaching theology at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario. I’ve served congregations in Ontario and most recently, Alberta.
I love to write and to lead worship! If you are finding my writing helpful, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to use or adapt the material here, it is all written by me. If printing material, please credit “Copyright Carol Penner www.leadinginworship.com” (and say whether you modified it). If publishing, please contact me for permission. Contact me at carol@leadinginworship.com
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