Call to Worship
Let our mourning be
Like an ocean that cannot be emptied
Like a river that cannot be stopped
Like the strong summer rain that puts an end to drought
Let our mourning be
A vigil in the darkness
A light that searches out the lost
A hand that reaches out to save and hold
Amen
Scripture Reading
John 11:1-35
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus,“Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep.
Silent Reflection on What has Been Lost
A Song of Mourning
Dead Horse by Andy Squyres
Here is my harvest of heartbreak
Here is my threshing of tears
I’d give you my dream but i lost it
Down in the locust years
Still praise is the song that I’m singing
Even though sorrow’s my tune
My love is only a whisper now
But nothing is wasted with you
Here is my secret miscarriage
Here is my public divorce
Nobody taught me to let go
So i learned how to beat a dead horse
Now all of my altars are empty
Save for this lone hallelu
The heat of you fire’s just a memory
But nothing is wasted with you
Hungry as a mother who cannot find her child
We keep missing each other, i’m in the liquor aisle
Prostrated in your glory, i’m bowed low under this:
Either nothing is wasted, or everything is
Here in the holy of holies
Here by the blood of the lamb
Words i have said all my life, and believe
But still i do not understand
But i want to live in your presence
However inopportune
The heat of your fire’s just a memory
But nothing is wasted with you
And my love is only a whisper now
But nothing is wasted with you
Scripture Reading
Selection from Psalm 55
Give ear to my prayer, O God;
do not hide yourself from my supplication.
My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
I would hurry to find a shelter for myself
from the raging wind and tempest.”
But I call upon God,
and the Lord will save me.
Evening and morning and at noon
I utter my complaint and moan,
and the Lord will hear my voice.
Cast your burden on the Lord,
and the Lord will sustain you.
Prayer of Mourning
We bring to you now the weathered fragments
of our former dreams,
The broken pieces of our expectations,
The rent patches of hopes worn thin,
The shards of some shattered image
Of life as we once thought it would be
In our hearts, we know that you are trustworthy and present even in this—
Over our tears, our confusion,
And our disappointment.
But there are still times
Where we feel as if we have been abandoned,
As if you do not care that these hopes
Have collapsed to rubble
Yet we know this is not so
That you are among the rubble
As you’ve always been
Breathing onto the embers of the fires in our hearts
And casting the shards of our shattered lives
Into something new
“I invite you over these next few moments to come light a candle for what you’ve lost. In doing so, we are both bearing witness to the loss, and also acknowledging the gratitude for what has been lost that drives such feelings of grief—that warmth that will continue to burn on as we walk the winding paths of healing into life.”
Candle Lighting
Reflection
Song of Hope
Twice Begun by ubcmusic
Jesus Christ did not cling tight
To height nor form divine
But instead emptied himself
Into the hands of time
The wind drew cracks in the lips of love
The sun beat down the light
Now life itself has torn the veil of death
That all the rest may rise
Now life and death and resurrection
Are painted over all creation
The colors swirling into one
As if every moment is now twice begun
And doesn’t stop: the past, the pulse, the clock
Jesus Christ did not cling tight
To height nor pow’r divine
But instead emptied himself
Into breath and blood and spine
As the feeble crowds began to mount
The powers of state and faith aligned
To crush that which might tear their mountains down
But he turned not his mind
That all the rest may rise
Now life and death and resurrection
Are painted over all creation
The colors swirling into one
As if every moment is now twice begun
So mourn your losses, sing your songs
But build your houses with fingers crossed
There is a hope now graven in the dawn
And every ending to that burning edge belongs
Prayer of Hope
In our mourning, we grieve the loss of good gifts
The greater the gift, the greater the grief
In the midst of our tears off loss, there are tears of gratitude,
the light of mourning
The greater the loss, the greater the gratitude
And so in bearing witness to our pain,
in bearing witness to what is lost
We turn our hearts also toward gratitude,
knowing these gifts live on in our memory
Living God, may the light of mourning
illumine the world around us
May we notice the beauty of the ordinary world
with new urgency
Living God, may the light of mourning illumine a path before us
Guiding our feet into a life lived fully
Living God, may the light of mourning be for us the dawn of hope
Reaching out in rays to meet the Dawn of Resurrection
Amen