Queerying Holy Trinity C as Protest

The following Call to Worship and Opening Prayer are inspired by the Romans 5 reading for Holy Trinity in Year C as part of a series on Protest as Worship for Trinity Las Americas United Methodist Church.

Call to Worship
We gather in relationship
The dance of the Trinity dances among us.

We gather for relationship
The dance of the Trinity calls us to a global dance.

We gather through faithfulness, seeking righteousness and grace.
God’s love pours into us through the Holy Spirit.

Through the Trinity God binds us one to the other
Your suffering is my suffering; their suffering is my suffering.

God calls us into relationship with our neighbors--known and unknown.
Relationship invites us into solidarity.

Solidarity gives purpose to suffering so that suffering might produce endurance.
The “suffering with” of solidarity’s endurance produces character, and character hope.

The hope of solidarity is the hope of faithfulness to God in relationship
The hope of the Trinity liberates us for the dance of collective freedom, the dance of the Trinity.

Opening Prayer
Triune God,
Your existence danced the world into existence. Together you Create, Liberate, and Empower. You invite us into the deep relationship that is the heart of who you are. You are the love that grounds us, that becomes us, and that inspires us. Bring us into relationship with you and with our neighbor. Transform our relationships with others to provoke solidarity, inspiring our collective struggle for justice. Root our worship in protest and our protest in worship as we root ourselves in you. We pray in the name of our God who is Justice, Organizer, and Protest.
Amen.

 

Queerying Pentecost as Protest

The following Call to Worship and Opening prayer are rooted in the Ezekiel 37:1-14 as a Pentecost text.

Call to Worship
The graveyard is full. The dead, dying, and killed with blood on the ground.
The price that has been paid is already too high.

The breath of God calls the prophets to prophesy,
even when all seems lost, when everything around is death.

The prophets prophesy. The people shout in so many languages
Black Lives Matter!
Free Palestine!
Trans people are divine!
Accessibility is a human right!
Ninguna persona migrante es ilegal!
Queer Justice, not Gay Rights!
Nothing about us without us!

The Spirit breaks in, knitting bone to bone, sinew on bone, and the very breath of life back into what was given up for dead.
People rise, not for the end that they can see, but for the present they can resist.

Life breathes in. Life breathes out.
The Holy Spirit is alive in resistance. In worship. In protest. In the world.

Opening Prayer
Creative Spirit,
You breathe life into your people in unexpected ways. When we’ve given up all for lost. When we’ve resigned ourselves that the government will never change, leaders will never listen, justice will never come, you break into our lives like the rush of a violent wind at Pentecost. Upsetting our assumptions, you upend the apathy and despair that we fall into. You celebrate the diversity of your people in tongues of flame and many languages. You breathe new life into bones that are weary, dead from violence, oppression, and neglect. You bring us back to life and send us into the world with new power, creativity, and connection. Inspire our worship. Inspire our protest. Be our breath.
Amen.

Queerying Mother's Day

The following Call to Worship and Opening Prayer are adapted from Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870.  Mother's Day originated in response to the Civil War as a call to work towards peace.

 

Call to Worship

Arise, then… women of this day!

Arise, all who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our loved ones shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our children shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our children to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: Disarm, Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
let us all now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let us all then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.

Opening Prayer

Creator God, Mother and Parent beyond imagining,
You create each person bearing in their own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God. You value humans for our inherit worth, not capitalism and the exploitation and war it provokes. In the name of motherhood and of humanity, we earnestly ask that you guide us all, without limit of nationality, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of justice that leads to peace.
Amen.