Proper 27, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Call to Worship (Based on Ps 145)

Leader: Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!
People: God's greatness is unsearchable.
Leader: Let us celebrate the fame of God's abundant goodness.
People: We shall sing aloud of God's abundant goodness.
Leader: The Lord is near to all who call on God,
People: To all who who call on God in truth.

Prayer of Confession

Gracious and living God, we live too often as if You and the resurrection in Christ did not exist. We make wrong choices, based on self-interest or lust and greed. When faced with making the right choices that will bring pain and discomfort to ourselves, we shrink back and take what seems to be the easy road. Yet, we have accepted Your call to be Christ's disciples. Thus we come back to You once more, seeking Your forgiveness, and asking for strength to follow You more faithfully tomorrow. In Christ, for Christ, and because of Christ, we ask to be freed from our sin of the past. Amen

Prayer of Dedication

Living God, may our lives reflect the resurrection life of Christ Your Son, and may these gifts which we bring, in response to His call, be acceptable and pleasing in Your sight. Use them, as You use us, for the furtherance of Your kingdom. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Gracious and living God, You are the source of all life and hope. We thank You for the assurance of our resurrection in Jesus Christ Your Son. We see in His life, the compassionate way to deal with the lost and the rejected., and the firm way in which he stood against those who opposed Your truth.

We live in a world that seems obsessed with death in all its forms. Many deny that there is a life after death, and thus attempt to grab all the pleasure they can from what they regard as a short time of existence. Some use any means to gather in material goods and pleasures to feed their desires. The strong grow richer at the expense of the weak and the poor. Save us from giving in to their ways, and prevent us also from becoming self-righteous, for we know that the faith and the courage to live the resurrection life of Christ is not in ourselves, but comes from You.

We thank You for the lasting joy that flows from Christ, and we ask that we might be able to share it with others. Sustain us all by our faith in Your life-giving Son, whom You sent to call us all into a life of resurrection joy and love. We ask this in his name, Amen.