Liturgical Resources

Focus Texts: Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Call to Worship

Today, we join our voices with Mary to sing the truth of God’s love that meets us in our upside-down world and dares to turn us right side up.
God, we will sing of your steadfast love forever!

We come to listen for the good news that God is already at work, filling up the hungry and turning away the rich, lifting up the lowly and removing the powerful from their thrones.
God, we will sing of your steadfast love forever!

We come to encounter God’s faithfulness once again, trusting that God persists in setting the world to rights even when everything feels so wrong.
God, we will sing of your steadfast love forever!

Come, let us worship God, who has restored and is restoring us to live as followers of the Christ Child, whose birth we eagerly anticipate and whose life, death, and resurrection make our restoration possible.
God, we will sing of your steadfast love forever! Amen.

Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Discipleship Ministries, May 2026.

Opening Prayer

O God,
you broke down the barriers when you crept in beside us.
In Jesus, your hands touched all and touched us.
You opened our minds
to recognize how the hands of the rich were empty,
and the hearts of the poor were full.
You took the widow’s mite and the child’s loaves
and used them to show us the Kingdom.
Here in the company of the neighbor whom we know
and the stranger in our midst,
and the self from whom we turn,
we ask to love as Jesus loved.
Make this the place and time, good Lord,
when heaven and earth become one,
and we in word and flesh
know ourselves beloved. Amen.

Adapted from “Opening Prayer: Loving as Jesus Loved” on the website of Old South Church in Boston, http://www.oldsouth.org. Re-posted on the re:Worship blog at https://re-worship.blogspot.com/2015/11/opening-prayer-loving-as-jesus-loved.html.

Prayer of Confession

We sing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” God, but we confess that we are not always faithful. We could have shown love this past week, but we kept ourselves busy with other things. We spoke without thinking and hurt someone. We treated the gifts and greetings and meals as chores, leaving out the most important ingredient—caring. We are sorry. Please forgive us and accept our worship.

Amid the bright colors that surround us this season—the red, the green, the gold—send the light of your Christ, that all that is good may be revealed more clearly and all that is wrong may be exposed and changed.

We pray in the name of Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem, who lived and died for our sakes, and who lives and reigns forever. Amen.

Words of Assurance

God chooses us, forgives us; lights our paths with the serenity of starlight, and sends us as messengers of hope, peace, joy, and love. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.
Glory to God! Amen.

Written by Ruth C. Duck and Maren C. Tirabassi in Touch Holiness: Resources for Worship, Updated, ed. Ruth C. Duck and Maren C. Tirabassi (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2012), 7-8.

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Benediction

Beloved, the birth of Christ is near. May God, who is Love, bless you as you watch, wait, and notice Love Incarnate moving into the neighborhood, the embodiment of God’s steadfast love nurtured in a womb and born as a vulnerable infant. Amen.

Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Discipleship Ministries, May 2026.