Minister: Lift up your hearts!
Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord!
Our great God, Father of Jesus Christ, and the God who bestows the Holy Spirit, we come to You now in the name of this Jesus, in the power of the Spirit You have given, in order to worship You as You have commanded.
You are the God who confounds all carnal wisdom, and who throws down all lofty pretensions. You are the God who became a man, contrary to the expectations of our earthly nobility. And as if this were not enough, You then decreed that this man, this Word enfleshed, would suffer the indignity of a criminal’s death, stripped naked and flogged down to the bone. Your wisdom determined that the respected theologians and Bible students of that day would gather at the foot of the cross, and, far from adoring Your wisdom there, would taunt the one who embodied all that You are. They saw with their eyes a God who became man in order to bleed, and they did not want Him.
But Father, we are Christians, and we want Him. We rejoice, O Father, that as we gather before His throne and Yours, we have come by way of this cross, which is our salvation.
And so, gracious Father, we worship You now through Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end, amen.