Taize service, March

On the first Friday of each month, I lead a Taize service for the Episcopal church Hugo and I attend. Taize is a contemplative style of worship that consists of biblical readings, songs, and silence. I take the readings from suggestions given at the Taize website, but I spend a bit of time reworking the texts (in consultation with a variety of translations) to avoid gendered language, to pull out new interpretive possibilities, or to make familiar texts "fresh."

For this Sunday's post, I felt moved to post my reworking of the two biblical readings from this past Friday's service.

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EZEKIEL 37: 1-2, 9-14

The hand of God came upon me,
and the Spirit of God carried me away like the wind
and set me down in the middle of a valley
full of bones.
The Spirit carried me all around the valley
so that I could see the bones—
the valley was filled with them,
and they were very dry.

Then God said to me:
“Speak to the Spirit, mortal;
command it in the name of God.
Say: Come from the four winds, O Spirit.
Breathe upon these who have been killed,
so that they may live.”

I spoke as God instructed me.
The Spirit breathed life into the dead,
and they got up onto their feet—
a vast multitude.

Then God said to me:
“Mortal, these bones are my people, your kin.
They say: Our bones are dried up;
our hope is lost; we are cut off!
Speak to them for me.
Say: These are the words of God—
I am going to open your graves
and bring you up out of them, my people.
I will breathe into you my Spirit,
and you will live,
and I will bring you back to your homeland.
Then you will know
that it is I, your God,
who have decreed it and accomplished it.”

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JOHN 6: 35, 37-40

Jesus said:
I am the bread of life.
No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.
No one who believes in me will ever be thirsty.
No one who comes to me will ever be turned away.

I have come down from heaven,
not to do my own will
but the will of God, who sent me.
And the will of God is this:
that at the end of time,
I lift up everything God has entrusted to me
and that nothing God has given me be lost.

This is the will of God:
that all who see and believe in the Only Begotten
may have eternal life,
and I will lift them up at the end of time.