Eastern Hills Community Church

Ash Prayer

Setup: Black oil crayons or ash on tables. Cross and bunch of small white flowers (one for everyone) at front. Passage Ezekiel 36:25-26 at cross.

Intro to Ash Prayer:

This last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of the Season of Lent. Its name comes from the ancient practice of placing ashes on worshippers’ heads or foreheads as a sign of humility before God.

Ash reminds us that we and our world are in a real mess.  Sin leaves its mark on each one of us.  Only God can get us out of our mess.  On this day we wear ashes to admit that we are messed up sinners, but we make those ashes in the shape of a cross to remind ourselves that God loves and works with us to do better so we can live a life of love, no matter how we mess up.

I invite you to make a sign of a cross – the symbol of mess, yet also the symbol of love on your hand from the black oil crayon / ash on your table.

(Wait for everyone to make the sign of the cross)

This day in the Christian year, this day of ashes, tells us that ashes—dust, dirt, earth—are the stuff from which we have been made, and to which we will return.

Let us turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Play gentle music

In this time we will invite God to examine our hearts as we wait silently before him. Allow God to gently bring to mind the mess you need to turn away from in your life.

Let’s now read together the Confession – Psalm 51. A psalm written by David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had been with Bathsheba. Read the parts in bold with me.

Powerpoint

PSALM 51:1-12
Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;
according to your abundant compassion blot out my rebellious acts.
Like a cloudburst, wash my wrongdoing from me and scour my sins from me;
for I am only too aware of my rebellion, and my sin is always in front of me.
I have sinned against you – you alone, and done what is displeasing in your eyes
and so you have a just case when you speak; blameless when you judge.
The truth is, I was born among waywardness,
and my mother conceived me in a sinful society,
though you desired faithfulness in the womb,
and in being kept hidden you caused me to know wisdom
Unsin me with hyssop and I shall be clean;
wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my wrongdoing.
Create for me a clean heart, O God,
and re-create a generous spirit within me.

(http://thebillabong.info/psalms/)

We invite you now to come to the foot of the cross, to leave your mess there, to turn away from it and take away in its place a flower.

The hyssop plant referred to in the psalm was a small bush with bunches of small, white flowers. It was sometimes used as a symbol for making a person clean from sin. Today this flower will symbolise the cleansing that God promises us. He will wash away our sin this morning and transform our mess.

Play track ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ by Jars of Clay

Prayer to Close

Let us open ourselves to the God who brings life from ashes, who works wonders amid destruction, who cries out and grieves in the presence of devastation and terror, and who breathes God’s own spirit into the rubble. It is this God who breathes into us, calling our awful and glorious ash-strewn selves to speak words of life and freedom and healing amid violence and pain. Like Sojourner. Like Jesus. (Jan Richardson)

Ideas from http://worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com.au/

Join us as we follow the traditional Liturgical calendar with churches around the world. Our first Sunday begins with a special Ash Prayer.

10:15am Sundays 26 Feb – April 8

Tenebrae Service ‘Garden Sounds’ Friday April 6

A beautiful time of reflection as we partake in communion and experience a gallery in the Tenebrae tradition. We invite you to wear black – the colour of mourning and join us after this short service for a hot-crossed bun Fair Trade breakfast.

8:45am sharp at CCC, doors close at 9am.

Easter Sunday Celebration

Celebrate the Amazing Beauty of Easter Sunday and participate in the tradition of the flowering cross. We will close our time with an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids!

10:15am at CCC.

Lent

Lent in this (southern) hemisphere heralds the autumn. Nature pares down to her essentials. She carries with her the seeds of the future. She concentrates her energies on the one thing necessary that life may be renewed when the globe turns once more towards the sun. Gardeners do their essential tidying and preparation. We plant our bulbs, hoping for new life in the future.

We, the church, also pare down in Lent. Lent focuses on the essentials: the new life in the death and resurrection of Jesus and our participation in this through our faith and baptism. After the busyness of the summer there is a time to learn to pause.  We Christians can plant some bulbs together, praying that through our celebration of Lent new life may spring up in our community and throughout the world.

These forty days, approximately a tenth of the year, are our tithe of the year. (This is traditionally a time where the church community renews their commitment to God, through prayer, fasting and giving.) Our personal Lenten disciplines, however, are not just another self-improvement course. They are to prepare us for a party, the party of Easter.

Rev. Bosco Peters. From liturgy.con.nz

Today is World Day of Social Justice. Let’s begin this week in prayer.

Thanks Andi for sharing this on Sunday.

Lord’s Prayer for Justice

Our Father . . .who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of the day.

Who art in heaven . . . where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

Hallowed be thy name . . . may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbor.

Your kingdom come . . . help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love ten­derly, and walk humbly with you and each other.

Your will be done . . . open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor.

On earth as in heaven . . . may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth.

Give . . . life and love to us and help us to see always ev­erything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them.

Us . . . the truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.

This day . . . not tomorrow. Do not let us push things ort into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justi­fied lives in the face of injustice because we can make good ex­cuses for our inactivity.

Our daily bread … so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, ade­quate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our suste­nance and not just from our surplus.

And forgive us our trespasses . . . forgive us our blindness toward our neighbor, our self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about our­selves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.

As we forgive those who trespass against us . . . help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed, and ignored us.

And do not put us to the test … do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend»our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.

But deliver us from evil . . . that is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more. Amen.

The Holy Longing Ronald Rolheiser OMI