God is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description. Yet, in love, the one eternal God seeks relationship.
So God creates the universe and with it the possibility of being and relating. God tends the universe, mending the broken and reconciling the estranged. God enlivens the universe, guiding all things toward harmony with their Source.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

With the Church through the ages, we speak of God as one and triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We also speak of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer God, Christ, and Spirit Mother, Friend, and Comforter Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love, and in other ways that speak faithfully of the One on whom our hearts rely, the fully shared life at the heart of the universe. We witness to Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

God is creative and self-giving, generously moving in all the near and distant corners of the universe. Nothing exists that does not find its source in God. Our first response to God’s providence is gratitude. We sing thanksgiving.
Finding ourselves in a world of beauty and mystery, of living things, diverse and interdependent, of complex patterns of growth and evolution, of subatomic particles and cosmic swirls, we sing of God the Creator, the Maker and Source of all that is.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Each part of creation reveals unique aspects of God the Creator, who is both in creation and beyond it. All parts of creation, animate and inanimate, are related. All creation is good. We sing of the Creator, who made humans to live and move and have their being in God. In and with God, we can direct our lives toward right relationship with each other and with God. We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life. We can grow in wisdom and compassion. We can recognize all people as kin. We can accept our mortality and finitude, not as a curse, but as a challenge to make our lives and choices matter.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Made in the image of God, we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God. Yet we choose to turn away from God. We surrender ourselves to sin, a disposition revealed in selfishness, cowardice, or apathy. Becoming bound and complacent in a web of false desires and wrong choices, we bring harm to ourselves and others. This brokenness in human life and community is an outcome of sin. Sin is not only personal but accumulates to become habitual and systemic forms of injustice, violence, and hatred.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

We are all touched by this brokenness: the rise of selfish individualism that erodes human solidarity; the concentration of wealth and power without regard for the needs of all; the toxins of religious and ethnic bigotry; the degradation of the blessedness of human bodies and human passions through sexual exploitation; the delusion of unchecked progress and limitless growth that threatens our home, the earth; the covert despair that lulls many into numb complicity with empires and systems of domination. We sing lament and repentance.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Yet evil does not—cannot—undermine or overcome the love of God. God forgives, and calls all of us to confess our fears and failings with honesty and humility. God reconciles, and calls us to repent the part we have played in damaging our world, ourselves, and each other. God transforms, and calls us to protect the vulnerable, to pray for deliverance from evil, to work with God for the healing of the world, that all might have abundant life.
We sing of grace.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

The fullness of life includes moments of unexpected inspiration and courage lived out, experiences of beauty, truth, and goodness, blessings of seeds and harvest, friendship and family, intellect and sexuality, the reconciliation of persons through justice and communities living in righteousness, and the articulation of meaning. And so we sing of God the Spirit, who from the beginning has swept over the face of creation, animating all energy and matter and moving in the human heart. We sing of God the Spirit, faithful and untameable, who is creatively and redemptively active in the world.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

The Spirit challenges us to celebrate the holy not only in what is familiar, but also in that which seems foreign. We sing of the Spirit, who speaks our prayers of deepest longing and enfolds our concerns and confessions, transforming us and the world. We offer worship as an outpouring of gratitude and awe and a practice of opening ourselves to God’s still, small voice of comfort, to God’s rushing whirlwind of challenge. Through word, music, art, and sacrament, in community and in solitude, God changes our lives, our relationships, and our world. We sing with trust.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Scripture is our song for the journey, the living word passed on from generation to generation to guide and inspire, that we might wrestle a holy revelation for our time and place from the human experiences and cultural assumptions of another era. God calls us to be doers of the word and not hearers only.
The Spirit breathes revelatory power into scripture, bestowing upon it a unique and normative place in the life of the community. The Spirit judges us critically when we abuse scripture by interpreting it narrow-mindedly, using it as a tool of oppression, exclusion, or hatred.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

The wholeness of scripture testifies to the oneness and faithfulness of God. The multiplicity of scripture testifies to its depth: two testaments, four gospels, contrasting points of view held in tension—all a faithful witness to the One and Triune God, the Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love.
We find God made known in Jesus of Nazareth, and so we sing of God the Christ, the Holy One embodied.
We sing of Jesus, a Jew, born to a woman in poverty in a time of social upheaval and political oppression.
He knew human joy and sorrow. So filled with the Holy Spirit was he that in him people experienced the presence of God among them. We sing praise to God incarnate.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Jesus announced the coming of God’s reign—a commonwealth not of domination but of peace, justice, and reconciliation. He healed the sick and fed the hungry. He forgave sins and freed those held captive by all manner of demonic powers. He crossed barriers of race, class, culture, and gender. He preached and practiced unconditional love—love of God, love of neighbour, love of friend, love of enemy— and he commanded his followers to love one another as he had loved them.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Because his witness to love was threatening, those exercising power sought to silence Jesus. He suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution. He was crucified. But death was not the last word. God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope. We sing of Jesus raised from the dead. We sing hallelujah.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

By becoming flesh in Jesus, God makes all things new. In Jesus’ life, teaching, and self-offering, God empowers us to live in love. In Jesus’ crucifixion, God bears the sin, grief, and suffering of the world.
In Jesus’ resurrection, God overcomes death. Nothing separates us from the love of God.
The Risen Christ lives today, present to us and the source of our hope. In response to who Jesus was and to all he did and taught, to his life, death, and resurrection, and to his continuing presence with us through the Spirit, we celebrate him as the Word made flesh, the one in whom God and humanity are perfectly joined, the transformation of our lives, the Christ.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

We sing of a church seeking to continue the story of Jesus by embodying Christ’s presence in the world. We are called together by Christ as a community of broken but hopeful believers, loving what he loved, living what he taught, striving to be faithful servants of God in our time and place. Our ancestors in faith bequeath to us experiences of their faithful living; upon their lives our lives are built. Our living of the gospel makes us a part of this communion of saints, experiencing the fulfillment of God’s reign even as we actively anticipate a new heaven and a new earth.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

The church has not always lived up to its vision. It requires the Spirit to reorient it, helping it to live an emerging faith while honouring tradition, challenging it to live by grace rather than entitlement, for we are called to be a blessing to the earth.
We sing of God’s good news lived out, a church with purpose: faith nurtured and hearts comforted, gifts shared for the good of all, resistance to the forces that exploit and marginalize, fierce love in the face of violence, human dignity defended, members of a community held and inspired by God, corrected and comforted, instrument of the loving Spirit of Christ, creation’s mending. We sing of God’s mission.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

We are each given particular gifts of the Spirit. For the sake of the world, God calls all followers of Jesus to Christian ministry. In the church, some are called to specific ministries of leadership, both lay and ordered; some witness to the good news; some uphold the art of worship; some comfort the grieving and guide the wandering; some build up the community of wisdom; some stand with the oppressed and work for justice. To embody God’s love in the world, the work of the church requires the ministry and discipleship of all believers.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

We place our hope in God. We sing of a life beyond life and a future good beyond imagining: a new heaven and a new earth, the end of sorrow, pain, and tears, Christ’s return and life with God, the making new of all things. We yearn for the coming of that future, even while participating in eternal life now.
Divine creation does not cease until all things have found wholeness, union, and integration with the common ground of all being. As children of the Timeless One, our time-bound lives will find completion in the all-embracing Creator. In the meantime, we embrace the present, embodying hope, loving our enemies, caring for the earth, choosing life.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Grateful for God’s loving action, we cannot keep from singing. Creating and seeking relationship, in awe and trust, we witness to Holy Mystery who was, is and always will be: Wholly Love.

Grateful for God’s loving action, We cannot keep from singing.
Sung Response:
Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, Glory Glory Hallelujah, God’s truth is marching on.

Amen.