Prayer of Adoration

Watch or 6:44

Holy One, Mother and Father of us all,
We praise you for the Divine met in Jesus,
For his recognition of you in all people.
You are the One who sees beyond status and posturing,
Who notices the forgotten, the little ones, the people in peril.
You are the One who refuses punitive hierarchies.

We praise you for your call to lift our heads and open our eyes
To see beyond our own small certainties
To hear your speaking through all creation.

In you, Gracious One, we hear the call to be clothed in love,
compassion, kindness, humility and patience
From these fragile yet sturdy strands,
May your kingdom be manifest again and again.

Amen

Prayer of Confession

Watch or 33:18 

Holy One, hear our confession now, as we imagine ourselves in conversation with Jesus.

Jesus of Nazareth, we are here to talk about the trouble.
We are glad you invite us to wrestle with your words
We know that like the disciples, we can’t always get at what you are saying.
We have to ask after the event – did you really mean what we thought you meant?

And we are grateful, that you don’t always mean what we thought you meant.

You are never barracking for oppression, for judgements which damage people.
More often these arise from our need for certainty
Than from your embrace of vulnerable humanity

It turns out there are things we need to confess.
We ask for forgiveness for our desire to be right
For the moral high ground which is so often implied in the public speech of Christians
And for the silent resentment when we know we are not spoken for.

Help us to find the humility to speak our truth when we are trampled
And to hear the quiet or loud rebuke when we are the ones walking roughshod over others.

Jesus you are the one who said
‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them.’
We ask for the grace to recognise our own hardness of heart
Our desire to stage-manage the lives of others
Chasing false gods of compliance.

Always in our Australian story is the overlooking of First Peoples
the unseen privileges of whiteness, the long-held securities of settlers.
that fences people out, creates an us and them
Discomfort us in the flow on privileges of economic security
assumes worthiness and unworthiness.

Meld us in compassion
Melt our hardened opinions
To form joyous loyalties which arise in true seeing.
Amen

Know that you are seen and heard a by the God of Grace
and freed to live as a forgiven people.
Know that the One who sees, even our most shameful secrets
Is ready to meet us in the place of honesty and truth telling
Of new seeing in our clouded lives, and clear hearing for our crowded minds.
May we receive with gratitude these gifts of Christ’s freedom.
Thanks be to God.

Julie Perrin, offered for worship 03/10/2021, Pentecost 19B

Prayers of the people

Watch or 41:57

God who reimagines what a family is,
Jesus who models radical inclusion,
Spirit who embraces us all,

We pray for our family:
for our siblings who come to Australia to seek asylum,
for our sisters in Afghanistan who are hidden away and deprived of education and a voice,
for our cousins around the world who are persecuted because of their religion,
for our nieces who join with us in speaking for justice for Palestinians,
for our nephews who work in refugee camps,
for our brothers who struggle with isolation,
for our fathers who farm, drive our trucks and stock our supermarket shelves,
for our aunts who fight for freedom of information and accountability in government,
for our parents who work to respond to climate change
for our grandmothers who keep reimaging their work to teach on line,
for our children who work in aged care providing invaluable support to older people who are shut away by Covid restrictions
for our grandfathers who provide a listening ear, food and shelter for those of us in need,
for our in-laws who respond to emergencies of storm and flood,
for our grandparents who spend hours and hours in PPE,
for our grandchildren who work as scientists to discover new ways to improve our health,
for our great-nieces and nephews who use the arts to offer us beauty and make us smile,
for our great grandchildren who work to bring about change at the UN climate change conference in Glasgow.

May we celebrate the richness of our family,
And give them our support and love,
As we strive to live out your vision for an inclusive world.
Amen

Kirsty Bennett, offered for worship by Julie Perrin, 03/10/2021, Pentecost 19B