Leader: Come! Listen! A voice cries out: “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
People: We come, and we wait in the just peace of the coming Messiah.
Leader: Pay attention! God is removing barriers and leveling the playing field, making a way for all people to witness the glory of the Lord.
People: We pay attention, and we wait in the just peace of the coming Messiah.
Leader: We wait, and we work as God’s landscapers, filling in valleys and making rough places a plain, bringing justice where conflicts and obstacles once reigned.
People: We wait, and we work in the just peace of the coming Messiah.Leader: As we gather, may we prepare our voices to proclaim and our hands to get messy as our lives declare the coming of our Savior and Comforter.
People: We come to worship and to grow in the just peace of Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah. Amen.
Opening Hymn: To The Tune of Beginnings (This is the Day of New Beginnings)
Verse 1
In shadows deep, anticipation,
A quiet hope begins to grow,
As candles glow in expectation,
The advent promise starts to show.
Verse 2
Through starlit nights and dreams unspoken,
A promise stirs in winter's air,
The world awaits a sacred token,
Embracing peace beyond compare.
Verse 3
The manger scene, a sacred story,
A King in swaddling, pure and small,
In advent's peace, behold the glory,
A servant's heart, embracing all.
Verse 4
This is a day of new beginnings,
Time to remember, and move on,
Embrace the dawn with hopes ascending,
Past shadows fade, a bright new song.
The Lighting of the Advent Candle
Reader 1: In days when God’s people longed for peace, Isaiah declared, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1).
Reader 2: We who gather today also seek comfort and peace, yet we are unsatisfied with ideas of peace that tell us to keep quiet and go with the flow. We long for real peace, true peace, just peace.
Congregation: We wait as people who yearn for peace that bears the fruit of community, equity, and flourishing for all.
Reader 1: We light these candles as signs of God’s shocking hope and just peace. While the world still does not know peace, we keep lighting the candle longing for that day. May they be beacons calling us to repent and to live the good news of Jesus Christ as we fan the flames of peace so that all might be illuminated in its light.
Light two candles of the Advent wreath.
Sung Response:
O Come, O Come, Emanuel UMH 211 Vs. 3,4
Merciful God, in your gracious presence we confess our sin and the sin of this world. Although Christ is among us as our peace, we are a people divided against ourselves as we cling to the values of a broken world. The profit and pleasures we pursue lay waste the land and pollute the seas. The fears and jealousies that we harbor set neighbor against neighbor and nation against nation. We abuse your good gifts of imagination and freedom, of intellect and reason, and have turned them into bonds of oppression.
Lord, have mercy upon us; heal and forgive us. Set us free to serve you in the world as agents of your reconciling love in Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the Bleak Midwinter UMH 221 Vs. 4