Uniting Church in Australia
Koonung Heights Congregation
Sunday 30th. June, 2024 at 10 am
Worship, Commissioning of Chaplain Ray Michelle, and Holy Communion
Introit: Introit tune: Eriskay Love Lilt, Scottish folk melody
Lord of life, we come to you,
Lord of all, our Saviour be,
Come and bless and to heal
With the light of your love. X2
Words Catherine Walker, Hymn 782, Church Hymnary Scotland
Lighting of Candle
WELCOME & ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
From before recorded time, the First Peoples of the Wurundjeri Nation abided in this Land. We honour them, who have cherished this country for millennia. We acknowledge all who have told and tell the sacred stories, who have preserved and hand on culture and nurture faithfulness to the Creator.
We ask God’s courage, sustenance and blessing on all those who continue to work for the healing and restoration of this land and her communities.
Call to Worship
Come among us, Healing God; we wait for you.
We come, hungry for your Word to bless us.
Come among us, Compassionate Christ; we hope in you.
We come, hungry to be filled with the Bread of Heaven.
Come among us, Restoring Spirit; we wait and hope in you.
We come, eager to rest in your peace.
We sing: TiS 667 How shall I sing to God when life is filled with gladness
How shall I sing to God
when life is filled with gladness
loving and birth
wonder and worth?
I’ll sing from the heart
thankfully receiving
joyful in believing
This is my song
I’ll sing it with love
How shall I sing to God
when life is filled with bleakness
empty and chill
breaking my will?
I’ll sing through my pain
angrily or aching
crying or complaining
This is my song
I’ll sing it with love
How shall I sing to God
and tell my Saviour’s story
Passover bread
life from the dead?
I’ll sing with my life
witnessing and giving
risking and forgiving
This is my song
I’ll sing it with love
Prayer of approach and confession
Lord God of a new morning, and of all our days and nights,
we gather here to praise you in sound and silence,
in story and song
with voices and hearts
eager to know you and to move a little closer to you.
Life giving God,
You have called us from many places, along many roads
and through many histories
to this moment and place,
that we might be reminded
of your faithfulness.
You have heard the song of our souls,
mingled with tears and laughter,
burning with anger and shouting with joy
as we navigate life’s pathways
with you as our constant companion.
You have shared flesh with us,
known blood pulsing through your veins
and flowing from your wounds;
experienced death and isolation
so that you might know for yourself
our struggles and our sorrows.
You came back to us;
threw off the weight of dirt and stone,
to unearth a promise made before time,
and hand it to us, fresh and clean,
and full of life.
And you have stayed with us, Lord,
even as our song has fallen silent,
our minds have become closed and our words have become sharp,
like a sword in your side.
How can we help but seek forgiveness
when we have failed to recognise you?
How can we begin to understand grace
when it comes into even the hardest of hearts?
How can we not go from here,
amazed all over again,
at the mystery of a God
who sees potential in our reluctance and has the patience to pursue it?
Lord God, you have blessed us and freed us from all our failures.
You have put your trust in us
that we might bring blessing and freedom to others
through your word.
May our voices always be praising you,
may our actions always be sharing you,
may our hearts always be open to you,
and may our lives be a living sacrifice to you
so that all may see and hear your glory.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Source: Tina Kemp, Church of Scotland)
A Time for All: Commissioning of Ray Michelle
It is the intention of the church that the sacrament of Holy Communion will normally be conducted by an ordained minister, but there are certain circumstances where this is not possible and special permission may be given to lay people to preside. This permission is given for a certain time and in a certain place, and after appropriate training has been completed. There will be regular acts of re-commissioning.
Today I am delighted to say that Ray Michelle will be commissioned to provide the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion in his role as a Chaplain at Royal Melbourne Hospital in three facilities. I will continue to mentor Ray in this role.
The Act of Recognition
There are diverse gifts;
but it is the same Spirit who gives them.
There are different ways of serving God:
but it is the same Lord who is served.
God works through people in different ways:
but it is the same God whose purpose is achieved through them all.
Each one of us is given a gift by the Spirit:
and there is no gift without its corresponding service.
There is one ministry of Christ:
and in this ministry we all share.
Together we are the body of Christ:
and individually members of it.
Jenny Preston, member of Presbytery Ministry Formation Committee says:
The Basis of Union reminds us that the “Uniting Church acknowledges that Christ has commanded his Church to proclaim the Gospel both in words and in the two visible acts of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Christ himself acts in and through everything that the Church does in obedience to his commandment.” (Basis of Union, para 6)
Given that an ordained minister is not available on a regular basis to conduct the sacraments at end of life, the Presbytery of Yarra Yarra, in consultation with this congregation and Royal Melbourne Hospital, has determined that special arrangements need to be made in order to ensure that the sacraments can be properly celebrated.
To that end the Presbytery has resolved to authorise Ray Kenneth Michelle to preside at the celebration of the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion within his workplace as Chaplain to Royal Melbourne Hospital for an initial period of 12 months.
Ray, do you confess anew Jesus Christ as Lord?
I do.
Do you believe that you are called by God through the Church to this ministry?
I do.
Do you promise to exercise your ministry under the supervision and discipline of the Presbytery?
I do.
We acknowledge, with gratitude, Ray’s willingness to undertake this ministry and now pray for God’s blessing on him and for the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray:
Gracious God, we thank you that you never cease to call women and men to serve you in and through the life of your church and that for this purpose you provide them with all the gifts of the Spirit they need.
Today we thank you especially for Ray, who has answered your call and is now authorized by the Presbytery of Yarra Yarra to preside at the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion within his work as Chaplain in the team at Royal Melbourne Hospital..
By your Spirit enable him faithfully and prayerfully to fulfil the responsibilities now entrusted to him. Unite him in heart and mind with those amongst whom he will minister.
Bless your church in this place and make it strong in its worship, witness and service, for the sake of Christ, in whose name we pray.
Amen.
Blessing:
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Amen.
We listen for the Word of God:
2 Samuel: 1:1, 17-27
David Mourns for Saul and Jonathan
1 After the death of Saul, when David had returned from defeating the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag.
17 David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. 18 (He ordered that The Song of the Bow[a] be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:
19 Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath,
proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.
21 You mountains of Gilboa,
let there be no dew or rain upon you,
nor bounteous fields![b]
For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.
22 From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return empty.
23 Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
24 O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
25 How the mighty have fallen
in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
27 How the mighty have fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!
2 Samuel: 1:1, 17-27. Jenny asks: “What can we learn from this passage?“
David’s song points to the mysterious gift that marked his life and bound men and women and ultimately a nation to him in love. Possibly, remembering the preceding chapters of 1 Samuel, we could be forgiven for detecting a cynical ploy to clothe a naked inter-regal conflict in a few golden words. –Seeking to build up his power base while Saul seeks to kill him.
If the winners write history, then David writes this one as a song that nods to his Righteous innocence and promotes the inviolability of God’s anointed king. Maybe these verses are propaganda. Or maybe it’s just a song and David actually means it.
David’s song points to the mysterious gift that marked his life; people didn’t follow David Because he possessed strength or skill with a sword. Saul had that too. But David had a Magnetic heart and a poet’s ear. David lived from something deep-down true.
They are true words tapping something true in his life. Sure the shepherd understands that ‘the Lord is my shepherd (12 Samuel 17:34; Psalm 23). But he also pens the tender ‘my soul is like “the weaned child that is with me” (Psalm 132:2) and the unabashed longing of
Psalm 63 (O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Poetry buzzed in David’s heart.
The magic isn’t just that David had a penchant for epic poetry.. You can say that about any Tom, Dick, or Ashurbanipal. What makes his life an authentic life that prompted books of Sacred history (1 , 2 Samuel, 1, 2 Chronicles) and the treasuring and passing on of his verse In that he lived in response to what Eugene Petersen calls the ‘previousness of God’s speech.” His songs of praise and reverence and lament flowed from God’s word dwelling within him, and in that David was really a prophet.
I resonate with Eugene Petersen’s description of the way David felt God’s speech within him. Previousness, or prevenient is how John Wesley felt God’s grace comes to us all –waiting, longing, making approaches to us in many, many ways. We are so unaccustomed to hearing true prophetic voices, rather than the usual voices megaphoned up to the prophetic volume, that we struggle to make heads or tails of Nahum, or Paul or Mary or David. Cynicism leads us to miss the plain goodness of God speaking true through another person. And Maybe our passage comes from a corner that lies beyond the political convolutions of David’s life.
We sing: Nothing is lost on the breath of God ;
Words and music by Colin Gibson1.
Nothing is lost on the breath of God,
nothing is lost forever,
God’s breath is love,
and that love will remain,
holding the world forever.
No feather too light,
no hair too fine,
no flower too brief in its glory,
no drop in the ocean,
no dust in the air,
but is counted and told in God’s story.
2.Nothing is lost to the eyes of God,
nothing is lost forever,
God sees with love,
and that love will remain,
holding the world forever.
No journey too far,
no distance too great,
no valley of darkness too blinding;
no creature too humble,
no child too small for God to be seeking and finding.
3.Nothing is lost to the heart of God,
nothing is lost for ever;
God’s heart is love,
and that love will remain,
holding the world forever.
No impulse of love,
no office of care,
no moment of life in its fullness;
no beginning too late,
no ending too soon,
but is gathered and known in its goodness.
Mark 5:21-43 – dramatised
A Girl Restored to Life and a Woman Healed
Narrator, Jairus, Jesus, woman, disciple, person1.
NARRATOR: Today’s Gospel reading is taken from Mark, chapter 5. Mark writes:
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat* to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake.22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet23and begged him repeatedly,
JAIRUS: ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.
NARRATOR: So Jesus went with Jairus. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said,
WOMAN: ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’
NARRATOR: Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said,
JESUS: ‘Who touched my clothes?’
NARRATOR: And his disciples said to him,
DISCIPLE: ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”
NARRATOR: He looked all round to see who had done it.33But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.34Jesus said to her,
JESUS: ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.
NARRATOR: While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say,
PERSON 1: ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?
NARRATOR: But overhearing* what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue,
JESUS: ‘Do not fear, only believe.
NARRATOR: He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.39When he had entered, he said to them,
JESUS: ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.
NARRATOR: And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.41He took her by the hand and said to her,
JESUS: ‘Talitha cum’, ‘Little girl, get up!
NARRATOR: And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about. She was twelve years of age. At this they were overcome with amazement. Jesus strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Here ends the reading. May God bless our hearing with understanding.
REFLECTION
Mark 5: 21-43:
Did you read that Tayla Willliams one of our Supernetball greats, with her heavy bleeding and finally, a diagnosis of endometriosis, has gone public with her condition: many, many women can go for years without finding a sympathetic GP who actually listens to the symptoms being described by the person. My young exercise physiologist knows that with a recent similar diagnosis she may be unable to have children. Or did you read the article headed: why are women retiring at 54? Not because we are sick. Maria was describing what my older daughter had been going through – Jill sought all sorts of tests, none of which helped her realise that it was extreme menopause symptoms she was experiencing. Hormone patches have given her back a regular sleep cycle so that she is restored to continue doing her valuable radiation work at Peter Mac. Just “women’s issues”!??! Taylor hopes more science will aid her condition.
RESTORATION – is an accurate word for today’s Gospel passage; it is also the word to sum up the previous 20 verses of chapter 5 where, after the stilling of the storm on the way across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus encountered a man hiding himself away from society, possibly living with voices of schizophrenia; it was a fruitful encounter, with restoration of sanity to this man, who was encouraged to stay in his home town, and witness to Jesus’ loving restoration of his normality..
In today’s lectionary reading we meet Jairus, a high official of the Temple, whose name means Enlightened; we can imagine his daughter belongs to a socially affluent group of young families; She is a lass approaching the age of betrothal, and the possibility of bearing children for lineage. A note of injustice, of premature dying. The woman with the flow of blood is in an opposite position, possibly being infertile, and of a different class, being desperate because no medical treatment she has tried has brought her any relief from her symptoms. Hers is a slow long bleeding of energy and life.
The number ‘twelve’ is used by the author to mention the twelve tribes of Israel. Mark often puts two stories together – called a Markan sandwich –Jairus, an important gentleman falls at Jesus’ feet with his formal request; perhaps the sandwich of passage reflect an actual sequence of events, or perhaps they were linked at a later stage. Two stories about the everyday life of women.
Jesus gets waylaid when he becomes aware that something, someone has touched him, something his disciples scoff at, due to the size of the crowd of onlookers accompanying him to Jairus’ home. Some commentators wonder if the ‘who touched me?” is rather like Jesus’ hesitation when the Syro-Phoenician woman requested help for her daughter. However, the woman came straight round to Jesus, falling to her knees and laying out her whole history: straight away, Jesus called her ‘daughter’ and honours her for her request. Today we are wondering – how did the cure occur? it is rather ambiguous; her faith played a role, but the message of Mark is: we don’t need to know how the healing occurred, we need to celebrate her restoration.
By this time, Jairus’ daughter has died, and the professional mourners have gathered around Jairus’ home. I came across a paper, which I can’t authenticate just now, suggesting that the young lass could have been anorexic, was comatose, faced with anxiety, not wanting to reach womanhood and marriage. Others have speculated that the lass may have been diabetic, hence Jesus command that she be fed. Whatever, Jesus clears all the mourners away, taking his three disciples, and Jairus and his wife into the girl’s bedroom, and raising the lass with his hand, he said Talitha koum, which means little girl get up.
The gospels share many stories of Jesus in relationship with girls and women, when women were not held in high prominence in most cultures of the time, and were often excluded; Jesus often acted to liberate women. Possibly a first century audience would have been aghast that Jesus took no notice of purity violations of touching a haemorrhaging woman, and a dead young woman. Bill Loader says that more probably, Jesus took no notice of these purity violations. For Jesus, human need always trumps technical rules.
However we feminists have fallen into the trap of anti-semitic in our rush to take note of the prominence Jesus has placed in liberating woman. We haven’t researched enough about Jewish purity laws, in our hurry to use this passage as an example of Jesus rejecting any practice that would keep women from being equal to men. The problem with the argument is that it rests on faulty historical reasoning, and bad history can’t lead to good theology.
Amy-Jill Levine is a Orthodox Jewish scholar of the New Testament. Levine says there is no reason why the woman would not be in public; there is no reason she should not seek Jesus’ help. No crowd parts before her with the cry “get away, haemorrhaging woman!” No authorities restrict her to her house to require her to proclaim herself ‘unclean’. There is no law forbidding the woman from touching him. In fact Levine described this woman as fabulous, advocating for herself; maybe her bleeding is a result of pregnancy and childbirth, we don’t know. We know she was courageous.
The purity laws of the Penteteuch (Leviticus 15: 19, 25-30) do not explicity state that a zaba (a woman with a discharge of sorts) communicates ritual impurity simply by touching someone – or someone’s clothing. Unless we suppose that ordinary Galilean peasants knew and observed the more rigorous rules of the Essenes or anticipated the hallchah of the later Rabbis, there is no reason to think that either the woman or Jesus thought that impurity was being communicated by her touching his garment. Some bystanders probably didn’t approve of Jesus stopping to converse with this lower class woman yet he chose to interrupt his journey to be in solidarity her.
So we have two miracle stories – why is not restoration, a resurrection in fact, not more widely available; how did it happen? Did it really happen? The sacredness of this text lies not in what history it might purport to tell and more in what it celebrates – that the human yearning for new life, set out in dreams and visions for the climax of history, can find its fulfilment in being connected to Jesus. Any taboos we may bring to the story are our own taboos; men in other cultures have weird paranoia about bleeding.
Paul Tillich, an influential theologian in the fifties and sixties, says: the first duty of love is to listen. We asked Ray last Sunday, “how do you care for yourself as you listen carefully and gently in your chaplaincy role; he acknowledged that yes, his ministry does deplete him of energy, and he has been trained to pay attention to caring for himself; mostly he slows into a meditative frame with a vigorous walk with his dog.
Rev Deacon Jenny Preston
We sing TiS 661 Woman in the night, by Brian Wren (verses 1,2,7 & 8)
Woman in the night,
spent from giving birth,
guard our precious light;
peace is on the earth.
Come and join the song,
women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again!
Woman at the well,
question the Messiah;
find your friends and tell:
drink your heart’s desire!
Come and join the song,
women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again!
Women on the hill,
stand when men have fled;
Christ needs loving still,
though your hope is dead.
Come and join the song,
women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again!
Women in the dawn,
care and spices bring,
earliest to mourn,
earliest to sing!
Come and join the song,
women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again!
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE: Rhonwen Pierce
Lord God
We come before you aware of the human frailty revealed by Saul, David and Jonathan in the readings today and realise they have not changed in the centuries since. Jesus came to make us aware of our need to love and respect everyone equally. In this world we see so much wrong always being reported. May we speak up each time we get the chance.
Bring healing. Bring peace.
We pray for all the people in the world suffering from climate change – people dying from severe heat or freezing cold and those who produce the food everyone relies on as rain or lack of rain ruins the harvests. Lord you know the needs and you are able to move people to see better ways to change things to return your creation to the way you planned it.
Bring healing. Bring peace.
Let us remember the refugees, displaced people and those being ethnically cleansed. So many around the world are not welcome in the only place they know as home. We need to make these situations more noticeable in media so that the countries that continue to force such issues are called to account.
Bring healing. Bring peace.
We thank you Lord for Jenny Preston and pray your loving hand continue to hold her and her family and all the projects she supports. Be with all our members who are travelling. Keep them safe until they return. We pray especially for all those who are unwell or in hospital or in care places. Be with everyone involved in their care be they doctors, nurses or family members. We thank you for all these people’s dedication.
Bring healing. Bring peace.
Open our hearts and minds to love you more dearly and serve you more truly day by day.
Amen.
CHOIR SINGS:
1 Come, come to the feast,
Ieave your oughts and your musts at the door.
Put your duty away, let a child show the way;
be at peace, you need do nithing more.
2. Come, come to the feast,
the food is the best and it’s free.
There’s a chalice of wine, break the bread and we’ll dine;
all your hungers are gone; taste and see.
3. Come, come to the feast,
bring your tears and your laughter here.
Take my hand, dance along, in our hearts sing the song,
God, the host, invites us all to share.
The words are by Rob Ferguson, and the music is by Colin Gibson.
Invitation to the feast
This is the table of our Lord on which he sets
his tokens of love and hope and to which he calls
all who want to share his life.
So come –whether your faith is strong or weak,
whether your hope shines brightly or is dimmed.
Come, ready to receive –
for all are welcome at the feast of love.
Communion narrative
Now let us hear the stories of the bread and wine:
This bread is a sign of hope …
it holds a story of dying and rising
…of breaking and sharing
…of nourishment and strengthening
… of being more than enough …
It is both the story of what it is in itself
and the story of which it reminds us –
that, on the night before his death,
Jesus took bread and broke it with friends.
This wine is a sign of hope …
it holds a story of dying and rising
…of pouring and sharing
…of refreshment and renewal
… of being more than enough …
It is both the story of what it is in itself
and the story of which it reminds us –
that, on the night before his death,
Jesus took wine and poured it for friends.
The wine is poured.
And we too are a sign of hope …
for we too hold a story of death and rising
… of old and new …of offered life
taken into the hands of God,
who wastes nothing, and there
becoming more than enough …
It is both the story of who and what we each are
and the greater story of which we are a part –
the ongoing story of God’s Kingdom.
Thanksgiving
Generous God whose story and song are now
and always the hope of the world:
We praise you for the stories of creation
and incarnation redemption and resolution
– the unending words of love.
We rejoice in your song of yearning and calling
waiting and welcoming gathering and cherishing
– the eternal music of hope.
And we join our voices now in that
great song of love and adoration
that creation sings back to you.
All: Holy, holy, holy God
Of new and transforming life
Heaven and earth are full of your glory
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is the one who comes in your name,
O God: hosanna in the highest.
Consecration
And so, as we do in this place what Christ did
in an upstairs room,
Send down your holy spirit on us,
And on these gifts of bread and wine,
That the story of hope –
Of death and rising
Of new life and the fruit of the kingdom
May continue on in us, and through us
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
now and for ever, Amen.
The Peace as you are able, share the sign of peace with your neighbours
The peace of the Lord be with you,
And also with you.
Invitation and distribution
God, the source of all hope,
offers to us now these signs of hope
and invites us to share in their story …
Bread and wine are shared
The bread of life
The cup of joy
Closing responses
Lord Jesus Christ, you have called us to share
in God’s story of hope.
And so we offer ourselves to its telling,
Breathe your life through ours
That the story may continue on in us,
And through us,
Until the world is remade. Amen.
TiS 154 GREAT IS YOUR FAITHFULNESS
1.Great is your faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning we see,
you never fail and your love is unchanging:
As you have been you for ever will be
Great is your faithfulness
Great is your faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies we see
All we have needed your hand has provided
Great is your faithfulness, Lord God, to me
2.Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in unspoken witness
To your great faithfulness, mercy and love
Great is your faithfulness
Great is your faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed your hand has provided
Great is your faithfulness, Lord God, to me
3.Pardon for sin and a peace that ‘s enduring,
your living presence to cheer and to guide
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow –
these are the blessings your love will provide.
Great is your faithfulness
Great is your faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All we have needed your hand has provided
Great is your faithfulness, Lord God, to me.
BLESSING:
The love of the faithful Creator,
the peace of the wounded Healer,
the joy of the challenging Spirit,
the hope of the Three in One
surround and encourage you,
today, tonight and forever.
(sing) Go now in peace, go now in peace,
May the love of God surround us
Everywhere, everywhere we may go (twice