L: What is the word? What is teaching?
all: It is the radical encountering of difficult, hard, honest, comforting, holy truth.

 

L: let us confess before God and one another our distraction from the Word and God’s word.
silence

 

L: Holy God,

all: Have mercy on us,

for we have sought truth only in the places we wanted to find it.

 

men: we looked for your voice in ourselves,

in our strength, in our confidence,

in the definition handed to us by our peers. We are told: I define our own truth.
all: And we believed it.

 

women: we looked for your voice in society,

in the autotune of pop culture, rather than the symphony of your voice,

We look to the cover of a magazine to reveal your secrets.

all: and we believed them.

 

all: have mercy on us, for we need to hear your voice.

Speak to us through your word, through your example, and through your Son.

Teach us to listen, teach us to follow, and teach us to die so we may rise with you.

AMEN.