Give Me Water

Call to Worship

Welcome pilgrims on the way to the cross.
We are learning to follow Jesus.

The way is long, and we are thirsty.
We seek the living waters of Jesus.

We feel the weight of scarcity warring with hopeful whispers of abundance.
We need the living waters of Jesus.

We wonder if God will provide us with what we need, here and now.
As God gives us the living waters of Jesus, so God calls us to quench the thirst and meet the needs of our neighbors.

Pilgrims on the way, come let us worship God!
We come to worship God as we learn to live inside out! Amen.

Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts, August 2022.

Prayer of Confession

We are dry, Lord, like the pavement on a sweltering summer day. Our lives are heated, and the streams of our souls sometimes run dry. We catch our tears, but they cannot ease our thirst. We drip in sweat, but this cannot ease the heat. So we beg for only a few drops of refreshing rain to moisten the dryness in our world.

Time for Silent Confession

God’s promise is greater than rain or streams. God promises a Savior sent to redeem and fill us with water eternally. [Living] in the will of God, we [live] without thirst anymore. Amen.

Ciona D. Rouse, The Africana Worship Book, Year A, edited by Valerie Bridgeman Davis and Safiyah Fosua (Discipleship Resources, 2006), 141 and 154.

Litany for “Healing the Waters”

Some waters need healing. Call to mind the places on this Earth where the waters are polluted, troubled, or in drought. (Pause) Let us name them and pray, “May all waters be healed.”

Leader: In the Two-Thirds World hauling water is one of women’s main daily occupations.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: Many people in large cities worldwide do not drink water out of the faucets because the water is polluted.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: The Bagmati River in Kathmandu is characteristically dirty brown and full of particles that carry waterborne diseases.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: Many urban areas in the United States are working to clean up their rivers, while others fear that their rivers are drying up.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: In many parts of rural India women walk many miles in search of water because the rivers are dammed to irrigate commodity crops like sugarcane.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: Across the world, rains fail and drought prevails followed by rains that arrive in torrents and flood communities with disastrous consequences.

Response: May all waters be healed.

Leader: May all waters be healed by the One who said, “The water I will give will become in them spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Response: God our Creator, heal us that we may heal the waters of our world. Amen.

Adapted from Diann L. Neu, “Healing the Waters,” in Return Blessings: Ecofeminist Liturgies Renewing the Earth (Pilgrim Press, 2002), 65-67.

Benediction

As you leave today, may you be blessed with thirst that produces compassion, with living waters that restore your soul, and with a heart flowing with the healing waters that our parched world desperately needs. Amen.

Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts, August 2022.