We Gather
Welcome
Call Upon the Threshold
Hearts open, minds awake,
change us now for heaven’s sake.
Leave us not alone in hatred’s wake.
Show us how to love.
Show us how to love.
Show us how, show us how to love.
Eyes open, shocked awake,
much to learn from our mistakes.
Draw us closer in our heartache.
Show us how to love.
Show us how to love.
Show us how, show us how to love.
Finding Words for Sorrow & Forgiveness
One: Let us join together in opening our hearts to the love of God. Before we even utter a word, we can be assured God will offer us grace and a way forward. For this reason, we can be honest with what pains us most about our own thoughts and actions. Let us pray:
One: Holy and Merciful One, in this season of discernment we come bringing our deepest longings, and our failed attempts at satisfying them. We have often looked for love in things that cannot give us love.
All: We yearn for lives that matter, we desire relationships that thrive, we want less regret.
One: At times we fail to see that you have already given us what really matters: your love and acceptance. You provide opportunities all around us to make a difference in the lives of others. You give us a fresh start each day, inviting us to do better.
In this silence, we bring to you our pleas for openness to a different way of living.
[Silence]
My friends, be assured by the Psalmist who says, “God has mercy according to God’s steadfast love.” Let us respond together:
All: We open our hearts, our minds, our souls, our vision to the ways of love created by God, embodied in Jesus, and already moving in us by the Spirit. By this grace, we are forgiven, loved, and freed. Amen.
Passing the Peace
One: The love and peace of Christ be with you!
All: And also with you!
Hymn #186 Black Dust and Ashes Dust and Ashes
- Dust and ashes touch our face, mark our failure and our falling. Holy Spirit, come, walk with us tomorrow, take us as disciples, washed and wakened by your calling.
Refrain: Take us by the hand and lead us, lead us through the desert sands, bring us living water, Holy Spirit, come.
2.Dust and ashes soil our hands — greed of market, pride of nation. Holy Spirit, come, walk with us tomorrow as we pray and struggle through the meshes of oppression. Refrain
3.Dust and ashes choke our tongue in the wasteland of depression. Holy Spirit, come, walk with us tomorrow, through all the gloom and grieving to the paths of resurrection. Refrain
Exploring the Word
First Reading Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near — a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains, a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God?
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.
Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?'”
Second Reading Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
”Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Sermon “Words in the Dust” Rev. Kent Gilbert
Setting Ourselves to the Search
Kyrie
Prayers and Ashes
One: This is … the dust of dreams deferred the ashes of burned bridges, the dust of worn out, dead end paths, the ashes of destroyed relationships, the dust of years of accumulated unfinished business, the ashes of neglected passions
we are marked by both love and sorrow, dreams and disappointment, fear of death yet undying hope. We are wholly yours. We are yours, holy one
All: Amen.
One: This is the oil of anointing, the joy and fullness of your grace
strength of those renewed, the inspiration of those who serve, the hope of generations turning to better ways, the love of your Holy Spirit mingling in our madness to show us the way.
We are wholly yours. We are yours, holy one.
All: Amen.
Imposition of Ashes
Choir Anthem O God Unseen Ashley White Union Church Choir
O God unseen yet ever near, thy presence may we feel and thus inspired with holy fear, before thine altar kneel.
Here may thy faithful people know the blessings of thy love, the streams that through the desert flow, the manna from above. We come, obedient to thy word, to feast on heavenly food: our meat the Body of the Lord, our drink his precious Blood.
Thus may we all thy word obey, for we, O God, are thine; and go rejoicing on our way, renewed with strength divine.
We Go Forth
Nurturing Love in this Season
Closing Hymn Change My Heart, O God Change My Heart
Benediction
One: Go forth into the world, looking for love in all the right places!
All: We will look for signs of Love, making the true treasures of our lives the center of our hearts!
Postlude
Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
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