Living God, last week, on Easter Sunday, with fanfare we shouted, “Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!” And this morning, we read in Scripture that only a week after your resurrection, the disciples hid themselves behind shut doors. We can relate with that. War and fighting rage in Ukraine and the Middle East. Outbreaks from measles, a disease that had been declared eliminated in 2000, currently plagues the United States. Wildfires burned causing thousands to flee in the flames neighboring New Jersey. Gun violence reared its ugly head again leaving a Florida campus grieving the dead and wounded. It is easy to want to lock the doors to pray and hide away. Pray we will. We intercede because our hearts want to be one with yours in caring for all creation, the world, and the people in it.

But closed doors do not impede Jesus from coming to us this Easter season saying, “Peace be with you.” Amid the turmoil out in the world, you bring us comfort and assurance. You invite us to touch you – even your scars that remind us that you are there through all of the pain, not just some of it. Help us remember we are your body. We are the body of the risen Christ. We have scars but through your Spirit, we have been made alive. We look around at this body and we are here to celebrate with one another in the joys of having applications accepted at schools or the workplace, of lives born anew or joined in matrimony. In the same way we ask that the Holy Spirit work through this body comforting those with troubled hearts, ailing bodies, precarious financial situations, and bidding farewells.

As we are inspired through worship, reminded that we are loved, forgiven and enough, as well as reinforced with good Christian education, grant us the courage to live in your peace. May we continue to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, cover the exposed, and visit the sick and imprisoned. Help us to joyfully participate in multiplying joy and dividing sorrow by living into our call of being the light, leaven, and salt in this corner of the world and beyond.

Trusting you, we pray the prayer Christ taught us by saying together…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.