Kicking off our Love is a Verb storytelling project, Mennonite Church USA commissioned a litany to be written by Kelly Bates Oglesby, pastor at Parkview Mennonite Church, Kokomo, Indiana. Has your congregation seen and used this beautiful litany in worship?
Reader 1: Beloved, let us Love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Reader 2: In the beginning Love created reality, time and place from nothing.
Reader 3: Love created reflections, images of Love, to care for creation and one another.
Reader 4: Reflections of Love, of their own free will, lingered around and listened to chaos.
Reader 1: Giving and Taking are the offspring of Love. They are twisted offspring of the reflections of Love. Taking in confusion killed Giving, and blood stained the Earth.
Reader 2: Love promised Redemption for reflection and all offspring. Love so loved whomever will receive Love.
Reader 3: We are the regeneration of Love.
Reader 4: We seek Love and the righteousness of Love.
Reader 1: We serve Love by reflecting light wherever we go so that others will come to know and receive Love.
Reader 2: We hear the cries of those needing Love. Cries from prisons, wails of the sick, moans of the grieved, and the pleas of the oppressed. We sit with the lonely, stand for the rejected, comfort the bereaved, and serve those in need. We reflect Love.
Reader 3: We see Love in the faces of the anguished. We see Love in neighbors and family. We see Love within, for we are created in the image of Love. It is in Redemption that we live and move and have our being. We see Love because Love first saw us.
Reader 4: We uplift Love with praise and honor Love with worship. Love is our life. We are alive because Love breathed life into our nostrils.
Reader 1: Love defines us. Love frees us. Love saves us. Love moves us to lean on one another. Love calls us and keeps us together.
Reader 2: Love whispers in our soul and comforts us when our spirits are low.
Reader 3: Love created us. We reflect love.
Reader 4: We love in word and deed because Love first loved us.
Reader 1: We give ourselves and all that we have in the work to which Love compels us.
Reader 2: We find ways to share all Love provides.
Reader 3: We are loving.
Reader 4: The being and doing of Love.
Kelly Bates Oglesby is grateful to share life with her husband, Herman. She is lead pastor of Parkview Mennonite Church in Kokomo, Indiana. Kelly is committed to cultural competence, reconciliation ministry and pastoral care.
