Call to Celebration
We enter this sacred space with praise and thanksgiving for God’s grace.
This is our story, this is our song.
From the beginning of creation, God’s intention was beloved community.
This is our story, this is our song.
We have been marked as God’s people.
This is our story, this is our song.
God has chosen us to fulfill the promise of our love covenant.
We will remain steadfast in singing our song as the
covenant is being revealed and actualized through us.
Beloved Community, we are blessed to be God’s symphony.
We will sing God’s praises all the day long.
Amen
Offertory
Great God, you entered the world through flesh for us to become fully alive. Our names are known by you. Our community is an appreciating asset, because the Holy Spirit surrounds us. May we have the courage to live imaginatively so that the communities we enter may know the fullness of your grace. Amen.
Full Service January 2nd
Scripture Lesson
John 1.1-18
The Cotton Patch Gospel
1. When time began, the Idea already was. The Idea was at home with God, and the Idea and God were one. This same Idea was at home with God when time began. Through him the universe was made, and apart from him not one thing came to be. In him was life, and the life was humanity’s light. And the light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness never quenched it.
6. A man arose—sent from God—whose name was John. This man came forward as a witness, to testify for the light, so that people might be con- vinced by him. He wasn’t the light himself, but a witness for the light. The true light, which enlightens every man, was entering the world. In the world he was, and the world was made by him, and the world ignored him. He came into the things he had made, and the people whom he loved turned their backs on him. However, to those who did let him in—who lived up to his name—he gave the right to be God’s children. Such children were not fathered by bloody sacrifices, nor by a moment of lust, nor within wedlock, but by God himself.
14. Well, the Idea became a man and moved in with us. We looked him in the face—the face of an only son whose father is full of kindness and integrity.
15. As John preached, he had this to say about him: “This is who I meant when I said, ‘The one coming behind me has gotten ahead of me, because he was here before I was.’”
16. All of us got one favor after another from his overflowing abundance. Moses gave us rules; Jesus the Leader gave us kindness and integrity.
18. While no one has ever actually seen God, the only One—the Father’s dearest One—has revealed him.