Creation: Called to Freedom
During the summer of 1991 the Luther Park Bible Camp of Cheteck, Wisconsin focused on care of the earth with campers. On Sunday mornings, staff members presented a worship service called "Creation: Called to Freedom" to congregations in the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin. This service could be adapted for the locale and situation.
Prelude and Announcements
Beginning
Leader: In a land of pines and palms, sun and water, we gather to worship our God.
Response: We are God's people, splashed with promise!
Leader: The Creator's promise takes us through all the seasons and surprises us with grace hidden among the colors of every race.
Response: God orders the chaos surrounding our lives and gives us light to see a hidden redemptive presence.
Leader: So we begin this day with the sign of the cross in the name of our God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Response: With a splash and a word of promise we are called to freedom.
Entrance Hymn: "All Creatures of Our God and King"
Dying to Sin
All: Cover us with your mercy, O God. We forget so easily and quickly. Forgive us for failing to witness to the power of our love with those with whom we work. Forgive us for not seeing your grace hidden deeply within creation. Uncover our busy-ness as an excuse and cover our sin with mercy. Our gentle, loving caring hands have already turned into fists of anger. Restore us, Lord, to your new creation and help us to start all over again.
Leader: Do you renounce the devil and all his works and ways?
Response: We do!
Leader: Do you reject the old, the dead, the life apart from God?
Response: We do!
All: We are called to live free as God's people.
Leader: Will you live in your baptismal covenant, a life of service to the Lord, a life of giving and forgiving?
Response: We will! In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we will start all over again.
Rising to New Life
Leader: If we become one with him in dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was.
Response: Our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Leader: We know that Christ has been raised from death and will never die again -- death has no more power over him.
Response: The death he died was death to sin, once and for all; the life he now lives is life to God.
Leader: We are God's creation! We are called to freedom.
Response: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
All: Amen!
Hymn: "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee"
Prayer of the Day (in unison)
The mountains echo your majesty, creator God. The hills roll with amusement. The oceans clap with praise, and the wind whistles for joy through the leaves on the trees. How wonderfully gracious you are. Enable us to see your redemptive power even in creation. Free us to celebrate life in your image, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
We Listen to God's Word
First Lesson: Genesis 1:26-31
Psalm: Psalm 65
Second Lesson: Galatians 5:1, 13-15
Gospel: John 3:16-18
Special Music
Message
We Respond
Creation Creed
I believe that God has created me and all that exists.
He has given me and still preserves my body and soul with all their powers.
He provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all I need from day to day.
God also protects me in time of danger and guards me from every evil.
All this he does out of fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it.
Therefore I surely ought to thank and praise, serve and obey him.
This is most certainly true.
(Martin Luther's explanation to the first article of the Apostle's Creed)
Offering and Offertory: "Create in Me a Clean Heart"
Closing Prayer and Lord's Prayer
Response of Faith
Leader: I hear God's voice in the vision of men and women who call us to a better way, a higher hope. We are God's creation! We are called to freedom.
Response: For God works miracles in common clay pots, changing caterpillars to butterflies, changing seeds to oak trees and night to day, changing winter to springtime, changing lives from ordinary to abundant.
Leader: We as God's celebrants dance through this world together:
Response: Listening to God's music, responding to God's word, praising God with clapping hands and moving feet, praising God with justice and mercy and humbleness, praising God with changed lives.
Leader: Let's celebrate the church of Jesus Christ where wonderful wildness of God breaks through the common clay pots and fills us with a holy spirit that overflows and we see rainbows, many-splendored colors, light in pitch darkness -- and every day is a festival of faith!
Response: O God our Father, send us forth now, sure of forgiveness for our sins, sure of freedom to be ourselves, sure of joy and peace through life in Christ. Send us out of this place -- united to one another in faith, united to one another in love, united to one another in service to all, united to one another in and through your Son.
Leader: Go now into the world that God, the Creator has made for you. Go now and tell the story of the God of God, Light of Light, who for our sakes sent Jesus, the Christ, that we might be reconciled to the one true God. Go, believing only in God, the Lord and Giver of Life. Amen.