Women lead prayer
Saturday February 17, 2007
St. Cronan’s
Sponsored by Women for Justice in the Catholic Church
a project of CAN
Hagar and Sara’s journey
Genesis 16- 21
But we recognize in her
Impatience - our own –
The passion to make and make again
Where such unmakings reigns
The refusal to be a victim
We have lived with violence so long.
Am I going to say for myself, for her
This is my body take and destroy it
-Adrienne Rich, Natural Resources
Opening Song: There is a Balm in Gilead
Gather #460
Lead by Shanta and Janice
Refrain:
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.
Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.
Refrain
If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.
Refrain
Lead by Karen Flotte
(to each invocation please respond: Come)
With humble heart and body, let us listen to the cries of creation and the cries of the Spirit within it.
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Hagar, Egyptian, black slave woman exploited and abandoned by Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of our faith.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Uriah, loyal soldier sent and killed in the battlefield by the great King David out of the King's 'greed for his wife, Bathsheba.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Jephthah's daughter, the victim of her father's faith, burnt to death for her father's promise to God if he were to win the war.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of male babies killed by the soldiers of King Herod upon Jesus' birth.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Joan of Arc, and of the many other women burnt at the "witch trials- throughout the medieval era.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of the people who died during the Crusades.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit Of indigenous people of the earth. victims of genocide during the time of colonialism and the period of great Christian mission to the pagan world.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Jewish people killed in the W chambers during the Holocaust.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Korean women in the Japanese "prostitution army" during World War II, used and torn by violence-hungry soldiers.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Vietnamese people killed by napalm. Agent Orange, or hunger on the drifting boats.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Victor Jam. Oscar Romero, and many unnamed women freedom fighters who died in the struggle for liberation of their people.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of people killed in Bhophal and Chernobyl, and the spirit of Jelly babies from the Pacific nuclear test zone. Come. The spirit of people smashed by tanks in Kwangju, Tienanmen Square, and Lithuania.
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of the Amazon rain forest now being murdered every day.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of Earth, Air, and Water, raped, tortured, and exploited by human greed for money.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of soldiers, civilians. and sea creatures now dying in the bloody war.
Rs. Come
Come. (strike bell) The spirit of the Liberator, our brother Jesus, tortured and killed on the cross.
Rs. Come
Dear sisters and brothers, with the energy of the Holy Spirit let us tear apart all walls of division and the “culture of death” that separate us. And let us participate in the Holy Spirit’s political economy of life, fighting for our life on this earth in solidarity with all living beings, and building communities for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Wild wind of the Holy Spirit, blow to us. Let us welcome her, letting ourselves go in her wild rhythm of life. Come, Holy Spirit, renew the whole creation. Amen
Chung Hyun Kyung, 1991 World Council of churches assembly
Reading: Hagar by Gail Golden
Readers chosen Saturday morning
Reader 1: Sara, it was you who sent him to my tent,
so great was your shame at giving him no son.
I never longed for him, his body aging,
his eyes seeking only his God.
It was you who sent him to my bed.
I suffered vaguely his withered touch.
Was it my fault that he began to notice
my dark skin, my long smooth limbs?
I did exactly as you wished. I conceived his child.
Through months of desert heat, aching and swollen
I carried the baby you could not bear.
For this you began to hate me, your hatred growing
as your eyes came to rest on the beauty of my son,
on Ishmael.
Reader 2: Whatever did you think,
that I would not love him?
His birth was a miracle to me as in time
the birth of Isaac was a miracle to you.
My son was magnificent and strong.
I think his father loved him for a while.
Then Isaac came. Of course Ishmael teased.
Your house grew small with two sons.
Your face spoke hatred for me and my child.
Your face spoke death.
Abraham turned away, showing Isaac his favor.
Ishmael claimed the power of those who are spurned.
So I loved him even more
because he needed me.
Reader 3: Finally you gave us one flask of water,
one loaf of bread and sent us
into the desert to die.
The wish was yours.
The words were Abraham's.
For many hours I held my child, parched and burning
but I could not watch him die. When he no longer knew me
I placed him in a patch of shade and walked away weeping.
In later years your scribes wrote
that an angel came and helped me find water
so that Ishmael would live.
Reader 4: Today Sara, I tell you there was no angel,
only a band of travelers who heard my grief,
offered water, and took us to another place
where Ishmael grew to manhood
in anger and in strength.
Did you wonder or know we had survived?
Did you once regret your heart's angry mandate?
We often listened for news of you. We heard once
that Abraham took your son to a mountaintop,
tied him like an animal and put a knife to his throat
before some kind spirit stayed his hand.
I wept for you then though I did not love you
and do not love you now.
Sometimes when I remember today, there are times when
I weep for us both.
Reader 5: Sara, we never talked. Why was it necessary
that our sons grow with no love for each other?
The land was endless,
there were acres enough for many,
blessing enough for both.
Lost in the wounds and furies of our souls
we did not see the danger, that while we broke each other's hearts Abraham would have murdered both our sons.
Response: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sung by Janice other join in us desire
Harry Thacker Burleigh, 191? (1866-1949)
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child :|
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
|: A Long Way From Home :|
True Believer
|: A Long Way From Home :|
|: Sometimes I wish I could fly,
Like a bird up in the sky :|
Sometimes I wish I could fly,
Like a bird in the sky
Little closer to home
|: Motherless children
Have a real hard time :|
Motherless children
Have a such a real hard time
So long so long so long
|: Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child :|
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
So far away
|: Sometimes I feel
Like freedom is near :|
Sometimes I feel
Like freedom is near
But we're so far away
|: Sometimes I feel
Like it's close at hand :|
Sometimes I feel
Like the freedom is near
But we're so far from home
|: Sometimes, sometimes, |
Sometimes
|: So far, so far, so far, :|
So far Mama from you, so far
Shared Homily: Ree Hudson and Elsie McGrath
Small group sharing: Please gather in groups of 4 or 5 and share your wisdom on:
What Sarah has to teach us today? and What Hagar has to teach us today?
Petitions: As you prepare to share your petition consider the questions offered by our sister Hagar: Who has heard your grief? To whom do you want to offer water?
Please come forward and pour some water from the pitcher into the bowl saying
Gracious spirit, thank you for ______ who has born my grief. We invoke you on behalf of ________ who is in need of your healing waters.
Rs. Come Spirit. Come.
Presider: When all are through
Gracious Spirit you have listened to our
Anger and tenderness: our selves.
And now we can believe they breathe in us
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere --
even from a broken web.
Take our brokenness and make it whole. May the prayers instilled in these waters grace us to offer water to all who thirst.
We pray this in the name of Jesus, our living water. Amen
(Bless all with water)
Sign of Peace
Presider: May you know fully the Spirit who abides in You.
Let us greet one another in that same Spirit.
As we prepare to go forth let us be strengthened by these words from Sojourner Truth
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Rs. Thanks be to God.
Closing Song: Wade in the Waters
Gather # 553 led by Shanta and Joyce