These liturgical texts are appropriate for use throughout the Season of Advent and may be repeated from week to week.
Confession and Lament
1
A voice cries out in the wilderness:
Repent! God’s kin-dom1 is on its way.
But how do we repent?
Trusting in God’s grace,
we confess our fear and sin,
and we turn to God with imagination and hope.
God,
we confess that we struggle
to imagine the possibility of a better world.
We are too exhausted
to dream of a reality
where rest is a sacred right;
too alienated from each other
to come together in mutual care
or to enact justice.
Forgive us.
Teach us to hear your prophets crying out:
Prepare the way! Amen.
Friends,
God has forgiven us and freed us,
through the mercy of Jesus Christ
and the power of the Holy Spirit,
to imagine and enact the better world
that is breaking into this one, even now.
In the name of Christ, we are forgiven. Amen.
2
Let us humbly confess our sin together
with confidence in God’s grace.
Triune God,
we long for your new creation.
We do not know the hour,
and your people are suffering now.
Nation wars against nation
and the powerful preserve their privilege
at any cost, blaming the stranger.
Come quickly, Jesus!
How desperately we need your revolution,
and how often we fail to be that revolution.
Forgive us when we do not
answer lies and bigotry with truth,
when we fail to resist injustice
and do not insist on peace.
Come now, Holy Spirit!
Flood our hearts with love.
Forgive us when we choose violence over mercy,
and teach us to forge peace out of evil. Amen.
By God’s grace, in the name of Jesus Christ,
we are forgiven
and called to beat our swords into plowshares,
to change our words of harm against the stranger
into songs of love and welcome. Amen.
Note
1 The term “kin-dom of God” was first used by Latina theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz instead of “kingdom of God” to resist patriarchal, hierarchical power structures. Removing just one letter subverts human conceptions of sovereignty, just as Jesus did in his parables: In God’s realm, the last are first; we are not God’s servants, but friends; not subjects, but family. As a queer person, I also appreciate the visual gap that the hyphen in “kin-dom” creates; alongside society’s outcasts, God is found in the gaps and at the edges, blurring borders and exploding order till margins meet in the middle. (Avery Arden)
Invitations to Discipleship
1
In Advent, we practice hoping
against hope, hoping
in spite:
in spite of fear,
in spite of uncertainty,
in spite of ruthlessness.
In Advent, we practice waiting
without falling into passivity.
Let us wait alert as midwives,
making ready for the world
that God is birthing.
2
In Advent, God’s Spirit comes in dreams,
daring us to conceive of impossible things:
that wolf and lamb
might live in harmony;
that the world’s despised
might rise to greatest glory;
that war-torn wastes might bloom
and grow good fruit.
This Advent, let us live like we believe
we have the power, through God’s Spirit,
to dream this better world
into reality.
Prayer of Great Thanksgiving
The triune God be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift up all that we are
to the One who created all that we are.
Let us give thanks to our God.
It is right to give thanks and praise.
God our liberator,
we give you thanks for your abiding love and grace,
for creating the world good,
and for your faithfulness and promise.
Blessed is Jesus, God with us, and blessed are you
for giving us glimpses of liberation in his life.
We thank you for holy surprises
and subversions of the status quo
that remind us of the coming of your kin-dom.
We remember his death in this humble meal,
a sign and symbol of your salvation.
Send your Spirit upon this bread and cup
and on all of us gathered here
in anticipation of your coming.
With this bread, your body, we practice
the feast we will share in heaven
together with your saints of all races, ages,
genders, and dis/abilities.
With this drink, we practice
what it means to be kin,
what it means to partake
in the coming of your new creation,
already among us and not yet realized.
Energize us for the work ahead
as we seek to serve you,
triune God. Amen.
