A New Liturgical Year

In our tradition, the first Sunday of Advent always includes Holy Communion as part of our time of gathered worship.

Holy One,

Thank you for this past week for the opportunity to gather with friends and family. It is healthy for us to be brought together and to lean into communal gratitude, breaking bread, and making new memories. Much like our weekly worship forms us, so too do these annual rhythms of celebration.

We also know that these gatherings highlight the absence of loved ones who are no longer with us, relationships that remain broken and unmended, and those who cannot be present as they usually are. These experiences evoke a distinct array of emotions in all of us: joy and longing, thankfulness and sorrow, peace and brokenness. This morning, together, we name these things as you prepare our hearts for your feast.

Jesus, thank you for an annual liturgical rhythm that helps us hold the tension between gratitude and the pain of the not yet. Thank you that we have a new church year before us, beginning today. A beginning that teaches us how to enter into the sacred act of trusting you, anticipating your promised return, as you make all things new. Thank you that we begin Advent, led to and from the table you have set before us — a table that reminds us of your arrival once before, as we linger with hopeful expectation that you will arrive again.

We ask, as we offer our worship and praise to you, that you shape our hearts and minds. Draw us into repentance, turning us once again to you as we lay aside the sins that weigh us down into the ruins of death. Fix our eyes upon you, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Prune away the shame we may feel. Meet us in our weariness and worry. Strengthen our faint hearts, which may be like dwindling embers. 

Please teach us, Lord, what it means to be loved and to love others. Cultivate us into living reflections of You as a community, daily endeavoring along the path of righteousness You have set before us. Stir up the endless living waters of love that You pour out in us. Let them overflow into every area of our lives. Every relationship. Every moment given to us. We need You and depend upon You.

It is from that shared dependence, in our interdependence, that, as your Church, we become mindful of the challenges and troubles many of us are currently encountering. We ask that your presence be made known this morning, that your Spirit would move among us, and that our earnest prayer draw us close to one another and to you. As we enter into the quiet, we do so with gratitude, for we know that you hear our prayers because you care.

In your precious name, Jesus,

Amen.