Call to Worship (Based on Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17)

Leader: The Lord is good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on God.

People: Teach us your way, O Lord that we may walk in your truth; unite our hearts in holding your name in awe.

Leader: We give thanks to you, O God, with our whole hearts,

People: and we will glorify your name forever.

Prayer of Confession

Gracious, inclusive God, when we read stories of how you cared for the excluded, we confess that too often we are with the Sarahs thrusting the Hagars out into the desert. Forgive us for those times when we have excluded or neglected those whom you favor because of their race, gender, or other human criteria we use for deciding who are in and who are out. Especially forgive us when we do this in our church, which is supposed to be a model of your coming kingdom. Indeed, for anything that we have thought, said, or done which witnesses more to the darkness, rather than your implanted light, within us, please forgive us that our spirits might be renewed and we become more faithful in our call to serve you. In the name of the one who welcomed and identified with the neglected and rejected, even Jesus Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication

Gracious God, along with these our gifts, we dedicate ourselves, asking that you use all that we are—our time, our talents, and our treasure—to witness to the good news of what you have done, and are doing, for us in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Gracious God, we come to you with our concerns, our wish lists of wants and desires—and we are met by yours. We often forget that it is you who have a claim on us, and not we on you, because you created and redeemed us, and called us to a mission of loving you and our neighbor. Open our eyes so that we can see through the eyes of your Son the wonderful potential in the lives of the neglected and the rejected. Save us from the prevalent desire to punish wrongdoers, rather than to try to understand and change them through tough love. Help us to regard those who disagree with us, or even wrong us, not as enemies, but as potential friends. Join us to Christ’s cross in mind and spirit, that we too might be able to pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We give you thanks that even in our worst moments you have not rejected us, but continue to reach out to and forgive us. We praise you for those who are obedient to your call as they serve as doctors and teachers, nurses and lawyers, artists and scientists, missionaries and clergy, and a thousand and other ways. We pray for those who stand by in fire and police stations, and in the military, ready to protect us with their very lives. And we pray for those who are ill or dying; those who are the rejected because of age, race, class, or for other reasons. Give them hope, and strengthen all those who seek to serve them. Watch over this great nation of ours, and help it to relate peaceably with the world community, not for its own gain, but for the greater good, that your day of peace and justice might be partially fulfilled. This we pray in the name of Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth. Amen.