As we gather for worship, we recognize the deep pain of our world- Haiti, Cuba, the fires out west, Louisiana, Afghanistan, and so many other places.
We join those who mourn the tremendous loss of life and home
ALL: Holy One, we trust you weep with us. Your healing, saving work continues.
Hear our cry for those who continue to live in destruction, violence, and oppression. Those running to a new home in a new place. And all who are welcoming the refugees
ALL: Holy One, we trust you welcome them. Your healing, saving work continues.
Hear our cry for American and Afghan families as they cry for their loved ones who died in the terror attack on the Kabul airport, as they pray those who remain are safe, as they wonder about 20 years of war and the future of that land.
Hear our cry for those in the path of Hurricane Ida as they cry for the powerful storm to lessen, as they pray those who remain are safe, as they wonder about the destruction to come on the anniversary of Katrina.
ALL: Holy One, we trust you never abandon. Your healing, saving work continues.
Hear our cry for your work of peace to be fulfilled. No more war No more storms No more tears No more separation No more evil No more devastation No more death
Jesus, save us from helplessness
Strengthen our minds, our bodies, our resolve.
We trust we are part of your healing, saving work.
Jesus, save us from overwhelm
Strengthen our faith, our hope, our calling.
We trust the triumph of your goodness and grace.
For you are the Resurrection and the Life.
Amen.
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You are welcome to use this work in a worship setting with proper attribution.
Please leave a comment for information and permission to publish this work in any form.
We come together with persons all over the world to remember the day our world changed. We come together in faith, in hope, in God’s infinite love.
Heavenly Father, we commend to your mercy and grace all who died in the September eleventh attacks and all who have died in the past twenty years while laboring to end terrorism.
In New York City: 2,342 persons
In Arlington, Virginia: 184 persons
In Shanksville, Pennsylvania: 40 persons
411 New York City rescue workers that day plus so many more from the aftereffects
Thousands of military personnel and civilians in the following years of war
Over 70 countries lost loved ones that day: family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, heroes. In the face of all this loss we claim your grace, your faithfulness, and your power to bring good out of evil.
Compassionate One, it’s been twenty years, yet the pain is fresh and the need is great. Comfort all who continue to mourn the loss of loved ones. Come with assurance and peace for all who remain traumatized, anxious, or fearful for the future. Come with protection and freedom for all who continue to live in the midst of hostility and oppression.
Bring wholeness and hope to every broken place- to broken bodies, broken hearts, and broken spirits. To broken relationships, broken systems, and broken faith.
Draw together leaders of every nation. Give them ears to hear your wisdom and the courage to respond. Inspire them to work together for peace, justice, and freedom. Inspire us, too.
Strengthen all who risk their lives to protect others. Guard and favor all who work to make your world a place of peace. Guard and guide us, too.
God of the Nations, hear our prayer for our enemies and for ourselves. Help us love and pray for those who hate us. We claim your abiding, your humility, and your strength as we strive to fulfill this call.
Save us from revenge, false teaching, and blind suspicion. Help us recognize our contributions to conflict. Help us understand the hurt that feeds the hate.
Change the hearts of all who seek their way by evil and violent means, by coercion and corruption and privilege, including our own. Create in us clean hearts that beat with your unconditional compassion.
Leave no one in the shadows of evil and death, O God.
Fill us all with your light and make us all instruments of your peace.
Our world remains a dangerous place, O God, but with you there is shalom and hope. With you there is persevering and purpose. You are our Rock, our Shield, our Defender forever.
Amen.
______________
You are welcome to use this work in a worship setting with proper attribution.
Please leave a comment for information and permission to publish this work in any form.
Worship display for 9-11 Remembrance by Kim Evans. Includes candles for various portions of the prayer, two larger candles for the twin towers, two smaller candles for the Pentegon and Pennsylvania, red flowers in memory of the blood that was shed, rocks representing the rubble left behind, and yellow ribbons of hope.
Prayer for the 15th Anniversary of 9/11 One (or several) lead the prayer while another person lights the candles.
ONE VOICE
We gather today with persons all over the world to remember and to pray. We light 15 candles, one for each year since our world changed. We gather together in faith, in hope, in God’s infinite love.
Heavenly Father, we commend to your mercy and grace all who died in the September eleventh attacks and all who have died in the past fifteen years while laboring to end terrorism.
Light candles 1-4 as each of the following is read
In New York City: 2,342 persons
In Arlington, Virginia: 184 persons
In Shanksville, Pennsylvania: 40 persons
411 New York City rescue workers
Light candles 5-10 candles as the following is read
Thousands of military personnel
Over 70 countries lost loved ones that day: family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, heroes. In the face of their loss we claim your goodness, your faithfulness, and your power to bring good out of evil.
ALL VOICES Traditional Setting, all speaking: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me Contemporary Setting, all singing:We Will Run, chorus only
ONE VOICE
Compassionate One, it has been 15 years, yet the pain is fresh for so many. Comfort all who continue to mourn the loss of loved ones. Come with assurance and peace for all who remain fearful for the future. Bring wholeness and hope to every broken place-
To broken bodies, broken hearts, and broken spirits
To broken relationships, broken systems, and broken faith
Light candle 11
ALL VOICES Traditional Setting, all speaking: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me Contemporary Setting, all singing:We Will Run, chorus only
ONE VOICE
Our world remains a dangerous place O God, but with you there is safety and shalom.
ALL VOICES
You are our Rock, our Shield, our Defender.
ONE VOICE Light candle 12 as the following is read
Draw together leaders of every nation. Give them ears to hear your wisdom and the courage to respond. Inspire them to work together for peace, justice and freedom.
Light candle 13 as the following is read
Strengthen all who risk their lives to protect others. Guard and favor all who work to make your world a place of peace.
ALL VOICES Traditional Setting, all speaking: Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me Contemporary Setting, all singing:We Will Run, chorus only
ONE VOICE
We light the final two candles, one for our enemies and one for ourselves.
Light candles 14 and 15.
ALL VOICES
God of the Nations, it is so hard to love and pray for those who hate us. Help us to be faithful. Save us all from revenge, false teaching, and blind suspicion. Help us all recognize our contributions to conflict. Help us all understand the hurt that causes the hate. Change the hearts of all who seek their way by evil and violent means. Create in us clean hearts that beat with your unconditional compassion. Leave no one in the dark. Fill us all with your light. Make us all instruments of your peace. Amen.
ALL VOICES Traditional Setting, all singing:Let There be Peace on Earth
(United Methodist Hymnal #431)
Contemporary Setting, all singing: We Will Run, chorus only
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Fred Rogers
When we don’t speak, people die.
If we are silent people die
Speak! Keep speaking- Speak up, Speak out
Keep speaking until
Hate is overcome by affection
Bullying is overcome by blessing
Discrimination is overcome by opportunity
Violence is no more
This place looks like heaven
– Lisa Degrenia
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe. – Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech
A Statement from the Bishop and the Cabinet of the Florida Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church in Response to the June 12, 2016, Violent Crime of Hate against the LGBTQ Community in Orlando, Florida
2016 Florida Annual Conference Resolution– Help End Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning Individuals
Prayer offered by the Rev. Dr. Steve Harper at the Florida Annual Conference prayer vigil for all involved with the Pulse Orlando Shooting
Almighty God,
We come before you in this moment as one human family, all of us created in your image and intended to glorify you with our lives–particularly in the ways we treat each other.
We also stand in your presence as heirs of the first sin after the Fall–the sin of murder, continuing to behave like Cain in our refusals to care for the lives of others, harming and murdering them with our words, our actions, our silence, and our judgment.
We come before you confessing our sins of commission and omission–the sins of saying and doing too much or too little–the sins of silence and shunning–the sin of self -righteousness which is no righteousness at all.
Forgive us for all the ways we have failed to love one another, to care for one another, and as the shooting in our city reveals, the particular ways we have failed to love our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, LatinX family, and their allies– turning a deaf ear to their pain and acting against them in ways which create a spirit of fear and a culture of discrimination that spawns acts of violence.
We especially lament the ways we have failed to love as Christians and as United Methodists, ways we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves–creating the false impression that our silence, our skewed perspectives and our retributive actions reflect the will of God. We humbly repent and are sorry for these our misdoings. The remembrance of them is grievous unto us.
Move among us by your Holy Spirit and remove our hearts of stone, replacing them with hearts of flesh that love you and everyone with a love as inclusive as your love for the world. Remove all walls that divide and drive far from us the desire to ever build a wall again.
We pray for the souls of the departed–those killed in the Pulse nightclub, and for their families and friends who grieve their deaths. We pray for the others who have been wounded, those whose lives will from now on be marked by this tragedy. And we pray for the soul of the one who committed this crime, and for his family and friends who are shamed and saddened by what he did.
We thank you for all those in the law enforcement and medical communities who risked their lives and offered their care to save others, and for our civic and religious leaders who must now guide us to beat our swords into plough shares and study war no more.
God, dwell among us to give us comfort, but not simply a comfort which enables us to move beyond our grief, but a comfort which causes us to move beyond our sin, so that we may be instruments of your peace–daily sowing love where there has been hatred, replacing injury with pardon, instilling faith where there has been doubt–until that day when justice rolls down and mercy like an ever flowing stream. Amen
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I’m excited to now offer mp3’s of my Sunday messages. A huge thank you to Leon and my brothers and sisters at Trinity United Methodist Church, Sarasota for all their help in making this possible. If you’re ever in Sarasota, please drop by for worship Sundays at 9am or 10:30am, or drop by during the week for a chat or small group. You and those you love are always welcome.
ONE VOICE
We gather today with persons all over the world to remember and to pray. We gather together in faith, in hope, in God’s infinite love.
Heavenly Father, we commend to your mercy and grace all who died in the September eleventh attacks and all who have died since while laboring to end terrorism.
Over 70 countries lost loved ones that day: family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, heroes. In the face of their loss, and all the losses since, we claim your goodness, your faithfulness, and your power to bring good out of evil.
ONE VOICE
Compassionate One, it has been years, yet the pain is fresh for so many. Comfort all who continue to mourn the loss of loved ones. Come with assurance and peace for all who remain fearful for the future. Bring wholeness and hope to every broken place-
To broken bodies, broken hearts, and broken spirits
To broken relationships, broken systems, and broken faith
ALL VOICES
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me
ONE VOICE
Our world remains a dangerous place O God, but with you there is safety and shalom.
ALL VOICES
You are our Rock, our Shield, our Defender.
ONE VOICE
Draw together leaders of every nation. Give them ears to hear your wisdom and the courage to respond. Inspire them to work together for peace, justice and freedom.
ONE VOICE
Strengthen all who risk their lives to protect others. Guard and favor all who work to make your world a place of peace.
ALL VOICES
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me
ONE VOICE
God of the Nations, we light this candle for our enemies and for ourselves. It is so hard to love and pray for those who hate us. Help us to be faithful. Save us all from revenge, false teaching, and blind suspicion. Help us all recognize our contributions to conflict. Help us all understand the hurt that causes the hate. Change the hearts of all who seek their way by evil and violent means.
ALL VOICES
Lord Jesus, create in us clean hearts that beat with your unconditional compassion. Leave no one in the dark. Fill us all with your light. Amen.
As we gather for worship, we recognize the deep pain of our world- Haiti, Cuba, the fires out west, Louisiana, Afghanistan, and so many other places.
ONE VOICE
Revlisad.com 