RISE Worship Element Archive
Special / Seasonal Elements
Celebrating the Baptism of Miguel Antonio Garcia
Pastor Amanda Miller Garber
Welcome/Brief Explanation of Baptism
The RISE Community is excited to be celebrating this very special day! Through the Sacrament of Baptism, we are initiated into Christ’s holy Church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new life through water and the Spirit. All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.
Lighting the Baptismal Candle
Representative of the Community (Seth Owens)
On behalf of the RISE community, I am honored to present Miguel Antonio for the sacrament of baptism. Your community celebrates with you today, and we love you! Miguel, you are a gift!
Profession of Faith for the Family and Community
Pastor: As Miguel’s family, I invite you to respond to the following questions.
As you guide, teach and love this child, will you seek and offer forgiveness and the healing and restoration of relationships? Will you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
Family: We will.
Pastor: Will you seek to embody God’s unstoppable love and persistent hope in every possible way?
Family: We will.
Pastor: By God’s grace, will you promise to follow the way of Jesus, embody his teachings, and mend God‘s creation – together with the beloved community of Jesus?
Family: We will.
Pastor: Will you do all in your power to raise this child in a community of faith that will help him more fully understand what it means to follow Jesus’ teachings of mercy, forgiveness, justice, grace, and love?
Family: We will.
Pastor: And to you, Miguel’s faith community, I ask the following:
As a community, will you nurture, encourage, and forgive one another, and hold one another accountable, as you seek to follow Jesus and mend God’s creation together? Will you include Miguel in your care and embody the love of Jesus for him?
The RISE Community responds:
With God’s help, we will proclaim God’s good news and seek to live like Jesus.
We will surround MIguel with a community of love and forgiveness, so that he may grow in his service to others.
We will pray for him, laugh with him, cry with him and seek to model God’s unconditional love for him and all of God’s beloved children.
Melissa Harmon shares the story of Jonah
Prayer before the Baptism
Let us pray.
Creator God, thank you for Miguel Antonio Garcia. Surround him with a community of love and forgiveness, so that he may grow in faith and remain deeply rooted in your love. Throughout his life, send your Spirit to strengthen and guide him. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Baptism of Miguel Antonio Garcia
The Signation
Presentation of the certificate and gift from the RISE community
A Final Blessing
(adapted from a quote by Archbishop Desmund Tutu)
Miguel Antonio,
As you grow, remember that God dreams that you and I - and all of us - will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness and for compassion.
God loves you, now and forever!
Amen.
ADVENT ReFLECTIONS
~Sandra Reisinger
WEEK 1
God of heaven and earth,
tis the season of expectation.
Of waiting for what’s coming.
We’re full.
Of the ongoing battle with Covid,
Of guns and violence, political rhetoric of all flavors,
News that dismays.
Do we have room for what’s coming?
We share Thanksgiving turkey, ham,
cranberry relish, stuffing and pumpkin pie
With friends.
Or relatives we can’t relate to,
but still hug, sit close to, legs touching
around full dinner tables;
We fill the roads alongside other impatient
Drivers getting in each other’s way.
We fill our ears with the sounds of
Christmas songs in stores, radio waves and
on our Spotify playlists.
And light our houses and lawns and trees
with plastic red-nosed reindeer and festive lights of green, red, blue
and all the colors of the rainbow.
Is there room in all of this for waiting?
We peek out from behind all the trimmings,
In hope of getting a glimpse of what is coming.
Can we make more room to see, to hear, to feel and taste what’s coming?
God, you have invited us to sit with you in expectation.
Bless us in our urges to empty ourselves of all the noise and sensory overload
So we can see, hear, touch, and taste
What’s coming …
“A Benediction for All the Feels”
Be people who feel as you wait in expectation.
Share what you feel and are waiting for with all those you meet.
Feel the expectation steeped in the hope of Advent.
See Advent’s hope by noticing another’s humanity.
Share the hope by listening to someone’s story,
Taste the expectation while you wait in anticipation for the flavors of the season.
Smell the expectation and hope of something new coming in the cold and gray scents of winter.
Go, with all your senses, in wonder of God’s gifts in our midst and in expectation of those coming.
In this advent season, see, taste, touch, hear and feel the coming of hope and share it.
Amen.
WEEK 2
We were created using the sense of touch. The book is Job tells us that God’s hands shaped us, molded us from clay, knit us together. The Psalma tell us the same thing. In Advent, we are waiting in expectation for the re-coming of God into the world in a shaped into a human body, a baby born like us, a baby who smells, hears, sees, touching and tasting the milk from Mary’s breast, this God touches the earth through Jesus’ feet, probably kicked a rattan ball down a Bethlehem street, got splinters in his hand in Joseph’s carpentry shop - he breaks bread, touches fish and cleans them, bumps up against crowds of people, touches water and turns it to wine, touches the unclean lepers, women bleeding, blind people, people who died. In Jesus, God touched all that we have touched, healing and bringing peace. Created in God’s image, we are made to do the same.
(Pause...)
God, we are waiting.
Longing.
The world needs healing.
We need healing.
We can’t imagine
A wolf living with a lamb,
or a leopard lying down with a goat.
Lions and calves together with a child
is impossible to comprehend.
Lions touching them, children touching lions.
Not our infants near a cobra’s den
or our five-year old’s hand in a viper’s nest!
We can’t imagine.
And yet
We long.
for peace when our hands touch fear,
when our hearts race hearing
of more gun violence,
and see a graph of statistics on climate change,
when we hear the name of another life lost
too young.
We want the courage to reach out,
And hope the other wants to reach out, too
and share Your healing touch.
To trust that in this touch no more
harm or destruction will come.
So we wait.
We wait to feel the healing touch of your hand.
We imagine
Warriors ending wars with clasped hands,
Guns reshaped into tools of peace,
Our own hands healing,
Spreading hope as we wait.
in expectation
For leopards and goats, lions, and lambs
And the children who will walk with and lead them.
“A Benediction for Feeling and Sharing Peace”
Be people of peace and healing.
Let peace live in your heart and share the peace of Jesus with all those
whose lives you touch.
Act out of compassion and not fear.
Share peace that offers healing by listening to all sides of the story.
Pray for peace and healing for our world.
In this Advent season, we need to see, feel, and share peace.
Go, be a lion who plays with a calf,
Or a goat who rides on the back of a leopard,
Wherever you are, share this peace and hope with those you meet.
Amen.
WEEK 3
Let’s take time to engage our imaginations and challenge our assumptions about Mary…
Who was this girl, Mary? Would she have stood out in the crowd? Why did God choose her? Here’s what we know … she was in her teens. Let’s say sixteen. Right about the time for acne to cover her brown skin. That’s right. She wasn’t white like many of the nativity scenes and icons and artwork insist she was. While she hurried to see her cousin Elizabeth, did she trip over the hem of her clothes and fall down onto the dusty road and scrape her knees and elbows? Did she forget her toothbrush for her stay in her hurry to reach Elizabeth? Why do we assume she was feminine, “pure” and perfect? She was a young woman and pregnant. What is the first thing you think when you hear of a teenager who is pregnant? Do you think that about Mary? Maybe you should. Perhaps we should not make assumptions. Back in Mary’s day, assumptions could have led to stoning and death. Do our assumptions today cause harm? Imagine Mary, scared shitless, crying, her young face furrowed in worry and fear, running to the protective arms of her older cousin, Elizabeth, until they concocted a nuanced story - so that maybe she could stay alive.
How is Mary trapped in history, and in our minds eye, so we do not truly see her and honor her story?
“FINAL BLESSING”
Go, be people who see,
May your sight be a blessing
May it be healing,
May it be kind, and loving and embracing,
May you see with Christ’s vision
The vision that sees each one in their wholeness
Of their own identity
Given to them with Love and purpose
By the God who created us all.
Amen.
WEEK 4
God, You created the heavens and earth
And all that is in it and called it good.
Then dropped us in it
In Your own image,
with noses and taste buds
To experience all the sweetness of corn and peaches, sourness that draws our cheeks in a pucker, the nutty buttery-ness of almonds and peanuts, and comfort homy-ness of macaroni and cheese and fresh baked bread.
You draw us to Yourself
through aromas and flavors
and remind us that the earth and all its fullness is good.
That we are Yours,
You created, provided, and continue to feed us.
All of us, every woman, girl, boy and man.
The bread, the cup,
The wheat, the wine,
You come to us, again and again,
A mighty God, a baby, a man,
Reminding us of your creation, your presence
And the more still coming.
Let us smell the aroma and taste the sweetness of God.
“FINAL BLESSING”
As we go, may we taste, smell, Your promises of the Peace that is coming. May we smell the joy of the celebration that a New Life is bringing. May our tastebuds dance with flavors of the coming New Creation. Go from this place rejoicing that God was, is and always will be near, Creating.
Advent Final BLESSINGS
Today, on this first Sunday of Advent,
We begin our journey.
This is a journey of searching,
A journey of longing and yearning,
A journey of uncertainty and waiting,
A journey where we risk hoping … again and again.
May we journey with expectation.
May we journey together, remembering that we are not alone.
And may God’s presence surround us as we journey into the heart of the Divine - our one true home.
May the rough places in our lives be made smooth.
May the valleys of despair be filled with comfort.
May the door to our hearts be wide open.
And may the spirit of Immanuel be with us all our days
As we prepare ourselves and our world for the good news of Jesus Christ coming again…
We leave this space in peace and joy because of what the Incarnation means. We have a Savior who knows what it is to be tired and tested, befriended and betrayed, adored and reviled. There is no sadness, no pain, no grief we can experience that he has not already plumbed to the depths. He is in every circumstance, in every place, at all times with us. And he shows mercy to everyone. So go, beloved, to walk with God. And let our hearts glorify and rejoice in Jesus, our Savior.
Liturgy of the Palms
Mark 11:1-11 (CEB)
1 When Jesus and his followers approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives. Jesus gave two disciples a task, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.’”
4 They went and found a colt tied to a gate outside on the street, and they untied it. 5 Some people standing around said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them just what Jesus said, and they left them alone. 7 They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes upon it, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread out their clothes on the road while others spread branches cut from the fields. 9 Those in front of him and those following were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. After he looked around at everything, because it was already late in the evening, he returned to Bethany with the Twelve.
Choral Recitation of Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 (NRSV)
Everyone is invited to wave palm branches while reading the “All” verses
Leader: O give thanks to the LORD, for God is good!
All: God’s steadfast love endures forever!
Leader: Open to us the gates of righteousness, that we may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.
All: This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it!
Leader: We thank you that you have answered us and have become our salvation.
All: The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone!
Leader: This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
All: This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Leader: Save us, we beseech you, O LORD! O LORD, we beseech you - give us success!
All: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD!
Leader: The LORD is God, and has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar!
All: You are our God, and we will give thanks to you; you are our God, and we will extol you!
Leader: O give thanks to the LORD, for God is good!
All: God’s steadfast love endures forever!
AN EASTER BLESSING
~John O’Donohue
On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry -- old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling -- and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.
We don't realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren't put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously.
May the spirit and light of this Easter morning and the special spirit and light of this space bless us all, watch over us and protect us on our journey, and open us from the darkness into the light of peace and hope and transfiguration.
Amen.
AN EASTER BLESSING
~Adapted from a prayer by Michelle Torigian
As we enter a world where resurrection is possible,
Nudge us forward when the unknown is overwhelming.
Empower us when anxiety and amazement seize our spirits.
Allow our trembling voices to share Alleluias with a hurting world,
a world that needs to be reminded of your promise that this is not the end.
Open our hearts to our neighbors yearning for rebirth.
And allow us to see the empty tomb in each season of our lives.
Amen.