Worship Resources for
the Center for Faith and Giving
First Sunday after Pentecost
(also called Trinity Sunday)
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
Call to Worship (adapted from Ps. 29)
Encourage the congregation to shout out the word “GLORY”!
One: The Psalmist announces
“God’s voice, powerful and majestic, shakes us!”
Many: In this place, we join together to cry out “GLORY!”
One: The Lord is mighty, and reigns forever.
Many: May the Lord give strength to us
and to all God’s beloved people.
One: May the Lord bless us, and all people, with peace!
Many: With God’s strength and peace, let’s offer our prayer
as we enter into this time of worship.
Opening Prayer
Holy God, in the psalms we hear of your power and might.
Open us to know you more fully,
to honor you more honestly,
to worship you more joyfully in our time together.
Help us hear your call for this congregation and for each of us today,
that we might be confident in our work, our play, our lives as your people.
AMEN
Moment for Stewardship
Scripture has a way of working inside us as we hear, read and contemplate.
In Romans, Paul teaches clearly that “brothers and sisters” have not been
given a spirit of slavery, but a spirit of adoption.
For many who have been adopted, their adoptive parents work to assure them of their place in the family. Sometimes adoption means a change of name. Paul uses this image to assure those who will hear his language that
“adopted” means “claimed”. Adopted children are heirs, just as children born into a family. Believers, now adopted into the family of God, are God’s heirs, and joint heirs with God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
What a gift! In joyful recognition of being claimed and named as heirs, our natural instinct is gratitude.
So, with full delight, let us share our gifts to support this part of the Body of Christ as we receive our morning offering.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
We are grateful, Abba/God, for the ways you claim us and name us as your own beloved children. Thank you for this adoption, and for our ability to recognize we are fully yours.
Receive our thanks offerings. Inspire us to use them wisely.
Help us be a nurturing community into which all your adopted children will be welcomed. AMEN
Invitation to Communion (based on John 3 and the story of Nicodemus)
In John’s Gospel, we hear the story of Nicodemus, a Pharisee.
Nicodemus was a leader in the Jewish community, and someone on the
quest for knowledge.
He comes to Jesus by night – perhaps in the hope his fellow Pharisees would not know of his interaction with this traveling rabbi. Yet Jesus welcomes him, and speaks to him about the way to come into God’s Realm, saying: “be born of water and Spirit”.
It’s confusing! How can one be born after growing old? How can we know the Spirit…which is something like trying to corral the wind?
Jesus makes clear he’s speaking about a different reality than what Nicodemus knew from all his study.
Today, many come to this Table to recognize we do not know the answers to every question we have…but we do recognize it’s here we connect with the Spirit. At our best, we take a tiny piece of bread and a thimbleful of juice and find we’re somehow linked to God’s Spirt at work in us and in this place.
Come! For it’s here we can come close to the Love which creates life,
the Love which sustains us, and the Love which draws us on to new life.