This is part of the worship series,
"Rattling Heaven's Door”
Series Introduction
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4
Week 5 | Week 6
Week One: The First Petition
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
The Opening of Worship
Song
"O Lord, Hear My Prayer" (st. 2) Communaute de Taizé
Call to Worship
We gather on this Sunday to draw wisdom and courage from the One whose life and death and resurrection give us hope.
In this time of worship, we draw apart from life’s busyness to wrestle God in prayer, as Jesus taught.
Song
"O Lord, Hear My Prayer" (st. 1) Communaute de Taizé
Opening Litany
On this day, we step boldly, humbly into the presence of our God, praying with our suffering Savior as he taught us to pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
With voices around the world, we call:
Creator God of many names, the beginning and the end of all there is, who created sacred ground out of chaos and birthed the earth: blessed be your name.
Great Spirit whose home is anywhere and everywhere, beyond stars and moon, who lives in Afghanistan, Cuba, and Eritrea, with the hungry and dying children in Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq: hallowed be your name.
—Gifts of Many Cultures, p. 48ff.
Our Parent God in heaven, who works in schools, farms, and faraway places, who doctors the sick and ministers to the poor and unwanted: holy is your name.
Our God in heaven, holy is your name.
Silence
A time of reflection
Song
“The Lord’s Prayer” (st. 1) Westra, Post
Passing of God’s peace
Prayer of Confession
We confess that we are a brokenhearted people, unable to change.
We do not hallow your name in your children, made in your image, who go to school hungry or not at all, in the emotionally and mentally fragile who walk the streets alone.
We confess that we are a brokenhearted people.
We do not hallow your name in children sent to war, in the elderly left homeless, in our inability to forgive.
We do not hallow your name or each other—the ones who sit or walk beside us without hope.
We are a broken people.
Song
“How I Have Longed” Winter
We bring our broken lives to you, the One who hallows life. Encircle us with your healing, won through sacrifice, with your many-colored cord of grace.
Extend to us this cord of life, assure us of your forgiveness, and give us the courage to honor the holiness of your hallowed name.
Holy is your Name!
We are threads bound together in that name: friends, brothers, sisters of Christ. A hundred hands, held together and washed by the blood of the lamb.
Silence
Assurance of Pardon
As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
For he knows how we were made;
he remembers that we are dust.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
—Psalm 103:13–14, 17–18 NRSVUE
Song
“Nothing Can Trouble” St. Teresa
Prayers of the People
The focus of this prayer is petition and intercession, including an invitation for different people to offer spoken prayers.
Proclamation of the Word
Prayer for Illumination
Scripture
Matthew 9:1; Ezekiel 36:22–28; John 12:23ff.
Sermon
“Hallowed Be Your Name”
Sermon Notes
Addressing God as our Father reminds us that God clings to us with parental determination and love, particularly when we remember that the idea of God as Father stems from Israel’s experience of liberation: “out of Egypt I have called my son.” By addressing our prayers to God in heaven, we are reminded that our help lies not in the transitory and arbitrary, but in the steadfastness of heaven.
This first petition, make your name holy, is really asking God to live up to God’s own reputation among the nations. As we see in Ezekiel, the holiness of God’s name is completely wrapped up in God’s actions of justice, mercy and salvation. The way God’s name is made holy is by restoring what has been ruined—renovating the run-down, resettling the refugees, embracing the exile.
A second window of insight comes from John 12:23ff. Jesus announces that by his suffering and death he will glorify the Father’s name. From this we learn that the holiness of God is a cross, a crown of thorns, a wounded man. Jesus’ death is a consequence of his radical obedience to the demands of love and justice, his commitment to renewal. In the words of Martin Luther, we need to see God’s holiness in the crucified son of man.
So the summons to “be holy as God is holy” is not an invitation out of the world but into the world in a life of service and self-denial. In a word, holiness looks for justice.
Response to the Word
Song
Offering
Everyone comes forward to place their offerings in a basket
Song
"You God Are My Firmament" (st. 1–2) Winter
Prayer
The focus of this prayer is thanksgiving, including invitation for people to offer spoken prayers.
Song
"You God Are My Firmament" (st. 3) Winter
Service of Communion
"Concelebration" Wise
This is a sung liturgy for the Lord's Supper composed by Joe Wise. During the communion, a singer introduced verses and phrases the congregation echoed. Other sung arrangements of the Lord's supper liturgy include "The Lord Be With You" Rienstra
Dismissal
Closing Prayer
We Go Forth
Most High in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Parting Song
“Sing a Song of Jubilation” Winter
Parting Blessing
Shalom, my friends, until we meet again, shalom.
Shalom.
Revised Common Lectionary
Year B: Lent—Fifth Sunday in Lent
