Today’s post is from Savanna Sullivan, Program Associate for the Strategy on HIV/AIDS with the ELCA.

As Lutherans, we believe in the power of prayer. We believe in the power of song, of the gospel, of community. We believe in the power of worship.

There is power in calling upon God to touch the lives of people or groups who society has stigmatized or ignored by name. There is power in asking forgiveness for the ways we as the church have contributed to the perpetuation of that stigmatization and marginalization. There is power in reaching out to God for health and wholeness and healing; and all of this is exactly what the ELCA Strategy on HIV and AIDS has tasked our church to do.

This Strategy was adopted by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in 2009, and has since served as a guide to outline the ways we, in ministry, walk alongside all whose lives have been touched by HIV. Worship is a huge part of that ministry, and so we call upon ELCA congregations to be intentional in their inclusion of language that lifts up People Living with HIV specifically in worship services.

This year, our church will intentionally reflect on the call we accepted in the Strategy on HIV/AIDS on three separate days:

• On June 27th, National HIV Testing Day – we encourage all ELCA members to lead by example in their communities and get tested for HIV, and to talk about HIV with their families and congregations.
• On September 10th, “God’s Work, Our Hands” Sunday, we encourage ELCA congregations to spend this intentional day of service reaching out to organizations that serve People Living with HIV.
• On December 1, World AIDS Day, we encourage all ELCA congregations to take time to learn more about the HIV epidemic in the US and around the world, and to incorporate HIV-specific language into their Sunday worship services.

Join us! Below, you will find suggested petitions for prayers of the church that might be included in such a worship. (You will also find hymn suggestions and a World AIDS Day liturgy linked at the end of the post.) These petitions were written by different members of the ELCA churchwide staff, state public policy offices, and partner organizations – and identify many of the communities who disproportionally bear the burden of the HIV epidemic in the United States and around the world.

 Suggested Prayer Petitions:

Abundant God, You gave us a beautiful world with enough for all, but we have selfishly squandered your gifts and erected walls that prevent others from enjoying these gifts.
By your grace, turn our hearts toward one another, so that we may walk together and work together, accompanying each other toward a world without hunger or disease, without HIV. We pray that the systemic barriers that keep us and our neighbors from health, from sustenance, and from one another may one day crumble; so that we may all break bread together as one body and be made full in your Holy name.
Lord, in your mercy. Hear our prayer.

• Phil LaDeur, ELCA World Hunger

We give thanks for the progress reached in understanding, reducing and treating HIV/AIDS. We also acknowledge that the pandemic of HIV/AIDS continues to be one of the most serious health concerns in the world.

We pray for individuals, families, and communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by this pandemic—both globally and domestically.

We pray for the silence, shame and stereotypes associated with HIV/AIDS to be broken. We pray that greater access in health care, treatment, testing, and education be provided.

We ask for a greater commitment from our church to educate, equip, and implement strategies to eliminate HIV/AIDS. We pray that our congregation be a house of hope and healing.

Lord, in your mercy. Hear our prayer.

• Judith Roberts, ELCA Racial Justice

We pray for those in the LGBTQIA community who have been affected by HIV. Hold in your gentle embrace those who have to hide their identity or their status out of fear and stigma. Shower with compassion and love those who face a new diagnosis, dating rejection, health issues, or long-term survivor’s guilt.  Guide our hearts, O God of Healing, to work to remove barriers in our hearts and our communities for all those seeking care and understanding.  In your Holy Name, we pray.

Lord, in your mercy. Hear our prayer.

• Leo Bancroft, ReconcilingWorks Board Member

You are a God of love, justice and compassion.

We pray for women who live with HIV/AIDS– especially those who feel overlooked. We pray for women who fight for the control of their own bodies, and women who have been victims of violence. Let their stories be heard with compassion and love. Grant us the love and compassion to create a space to listen and support each other.

Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.

• Marit Johnson, ELCA Justice for Women and Lutheran Volunteer Corps

Additional Resource:

Includes World AIDS Day liturgy, hymn suggestions, scriptural suggestions, and links to ecumenical resources.

http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/World_AIDS_Day.pdf

John Weit recently wrote in the Worship E-news,

“As we near the end of the 50 days of Easter, I hope you have had some time to reflect on worship during Holy Week and the Three Days in your context. Worship planners often look forward to what comes next, but it is equally important to take time to think about how things went recently… [and] Spring is a good time to think about your congregation’s worship life in general. There are many resources available and we want to remind you of the free resource “Worship Care: A guide for reflection and connection” published in 2016.”

Here is a little more information about what Worship Care is and how you can use it in your context.

In essence, Worship Care is a free workshop resource designed to help worship leaders and worshippers have an honest and creative conversation about worship in their own congregations. It is flexible enough to use for a council retreat, a worship committee meeting or even a synod event. As the introduction says,

If you choose to use the full resource as written, you can plan to spend approximately 90 minutes together in reflection and conversation. Worship Care has three objectives for that time:

You can download this Worship Care as a pdf at ELCA.org/worship (under Worship Resources -> General) or directly via this link. A hard copy was also mailed to congregations along with the worship and culture resource “Can We Talk.”

Today’s post is by Robyn Sand Anderson, artist.

“Coming to faith is analogous to falling in love. One cannot fall in love in the abstract. Love comes through an encounter with another person. The same is true of faith. If faith is a relationship with the living Christ and the living God who sent him, then faith can only come through an encounter with them. And the Spirit is the one who makes this presence known.”   -Pastor Craig Koester

I often begin a painting with only a vague notion. In this case, all I knew was that I wanted to show a deep contrast between the real, material silk cloth and the beauty of color blending and moving underneath and around it. The first time I thought I was done with this painting it looked very different from what you are seeing right now. Something bothered me, though, which is how I can tell I am not finished. It sometimes takes a while to really “see” what needs to be done. I simplified by covering many colors with a deep brown around the outside of the silk and left brilliant color cradled inside of the silk. But it still needed something. You will often see movement in my abstract paintings. I’ve come to understand that for me, movement gives a sense of God’s Spirit moving in the world. I added movement with white strokes. Now the painting was complete.

Who is this “Advocate” Jesus speaks of, this Spirit most Holy? The word “advocate” in Greek is “paraklétos” meaning helper, or one who walks alongside you and supports you. Jesus was fully human, of this Earth, material, flesh and blood. He knew sorrow, joy, fatigue, exhilaration, laughter and pain. He suffered with those he encountered and suffered his own loneliness, torture and death.

Jesus reached that point in his journey when he knew that those in power were circling and that his ministry on earth was drawing to a close. And so, he gave us this gift, God’s Spirit, an Advocate who will walk with us. The disciples and future generations would know and experience God’s intimate presence.

Today’s post is from Jennifer Crist, Pastor Mission Developer of Communities of Hope in Harrisburg, PA.

Communities of Hope, a synodically authorized worshipping community, began as an experiment to gather those unfamiliar with church and those who haven’t been to church in a long time. From the beginning, we made an intentional decision to include advocacy in our liturgy. In exploring how to do this, we realized advocacy could be expressed in our liturgy in many ways.  I want to emphasize three of these examples.

First, we practice Advocacy as offering.  We often take a minute during our offering time to speak about the latest updates and action alerts from ELCA Advocacy.  We have letters and computers available on site for those who want to write or take 20-30 seconds to fill out the action alerts online and send them at any point throughout our gathering.

Second, we practice Advocacy as prayer.  During our prayer time, we provide paper and coloring supplies for both adults and children to creatively offer their prayers.  Prompts are written on paper that relating advocacy efforts to current events.  Later, we collect and share these in a variety of formats.

Third, we practice Advocacy as service.   We often end our worship time with service that can include advocacy as well.  During this time, we have put together refugee kits for LIRS; gathered for events in our community that promote advocacy; and organized fundraisers.

You might have noticed that I intentionally referenced that we PRACTICE Advocacy.  One of my daughters studied the violin using the Suzuki method.  And one of the phrases we repeated over and over throughout her years of study was, “PRACTICE MAKES EASY.”  This is very different from Practice Makes Perfect. So we practice advocacy frequently to make it EASIER to live and do advocacy.  Advocacy is a skill that needs to be practiced in order to make it part of our being.

Today, our first gathered missional community has now multiplied into three missional communities that all gather in public places outside of church buildings.  Though these communities appear very different from one another, the expressions of these Communities of Hope are similar focusing on advocacy as a means of loving our neighbors.

Advocacy is not a topic for certain occasions or special events. We consider advocacy essential to our liturgy; part of who we are as God’s children gathered to do God’s work through us for the sake of the world.