Welcome! Bridget
Mary Meehan, ARCWP
Gathering
Song: #437 On Eagle’s Wings, 1-4
All: In the name of God our creator, Jesus our
brother, and the Holy Spirit, our wisdom. Amen.
Presider: God is with you. All:
And also with you.
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| Chaplain Chuck Moffett, Sally Brochu ARCWP and Janet Blakeley ARCWP |
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Opening Prayer. Presider: Loving God, we gather to
remember Imogene who recently died. We give thanks for
her life and the many blessings she brought to us and to the world. We ask you
to comfort Michael, Mary & Thony,
and all of Imogene’s family and friends in our grief. We ask this in the
name of the risen Christ. All:
Amen
All sing: Glory
to God, glory. O praise God, alleluia. Glory to God, glory. O praise the name
of our God. (x3)
1st reading from the book of Wisdom (3:1-6, 9)
All: Thanks
be to God.
Psalm 23. All sing: My
God is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want,
#834. Verses recited.
God,
my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
You
have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you
find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word, you let
me catch my breath
and send me in the right
direction.
Response: My God is my Shepherd, there
is nothing I shall want
Even
when the way goes through Death Valley,
I'm
not afraid when you walk at my side.
Your
trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.
You
serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies.
Response: My God is my Shepherd, there
is nothing I shall want.
You
revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing.
Your
beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
I'm back home in the
house of God for the rest of my life.”
Response: My God is my Shepherd, there is nothing I
shall want.
(Excerpt From: Eugene H Peterson. “The Message.”)
2nd reading from Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy (4:6-8)
All: Thanks
be to God.
All Sing:
#565 Alle, Alle, Alleluia
A reading from the gospel of John (14:1-6)
All: Thanks
be to God. All sing: Alle, Alle, Alleluia.
A Time of
Memory and Hope
Imogene’s Family and
Friends
Presider Reflections
Profession of
Faith.
All: We believe in one God, a divine mystery
beyond all definition & understanding. God the Creator is the heart of all
that has ever existed, that exists now, or that will ever exist. God’s divinity
infuses the entire cosmos, making everything in it sacred. We believe in Jesus,
the messenger of God’s Word, bringer of healing & the center of God’s
compassion. Through his incarnation, we have become a new people, called beyond
the consequences of our brokenness. We believe in the Spirit, the Wisdom that
strengthens our call to follow Jesus, who is the vehicle of God’s love, a
source of God’s compassion & truth, & instrument of God’s peace in the
world. And we believe that God’s kin-dom is here now & will be forever. It
is stretched out all around us for those with eyes to recognize it, & hands
to share it with everyone—no exceptions.
Community
Petitions.
Presider: Mindful of
God’s love and care for us, we bring the needs of all people to our loving God.
Please
respond: Hear us, O Holy One.
For
what shall we pray?
Presider: Source of
healing, you faithfully listen to our prayers. Strengthen us as we
strive to respond to the needs of your people. We pray in the name of Jesus the
Christ. All: Amen
Collection
and Procession of Gifts to the Table.
All
Sing:
#361 Seed Scattered and Sown, 1&3
Eucharistic
Prayer.
(Please gather around the table for our
community meal
All
sing: We are holy... You are holy... I
am holy... We are holy...
All:
As we do in this place what you
did in an upstairs room, send down your Spirit Sophia on us and on these gifts
of bread and wine that they may become for us your body, healing, forgiving,
and making us whole. And may we become for you, your body, loving and caring in
the world until your kindom comes. Amen.
We remember Jesus.
Presider: On the night before he died, Jesus sat at the
Seder meal with his companions. Reminding them of what he taught, he bent down
to wash their feet.
All: Jesus returned
to his place at table, lifted the Passover bread and spoke the blessing, then
broke the bread saying: “Take and eat, this is my very self.” (Pause)
Jesus then raised the cup of blessing, spoke the
grace, and offered them the wine saying: “Take and drink of the covenant made
new again through my life for you and for everyone. Whenever you do this, you
remember me.”
All: Remember,
gracious God, people throughout the world who are in need. Make us open to
receive everyone. In union with all people, may we strive to create a world
where suffering is diminished, and where all people can live in health and
wholeness.
Through Christ, with
Christ, in Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit, all glory is yours, gracious
God. Amen (sing)
Prayer of
Jesus -
(Sing “Our Father and Mother”)
Group Sign of
Peace.
Presider: Let us share
with each other a sign of the peace as we sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth”.
All: This is Jesus who liberates, heals and
transforms us and our world. All are invited to partake of this banquet of
love. We are the Body of Christ.
Presider: All are
welcome at the table. As you pass the bread and wine to the person next to you,
please say, “You are the Body of Christ.” “You are the Blood of Christ.”
After
Communion: #531 Prayer of St Francis
Prayer of
Thanksgiving (Didache, Instruction, 100CE)
Men: For the
thanksgiving, give thanks this way: First, for the cup: We thank you, Abba God,
for the sacred vine of David your son, whose meaning you made clear to us
through our brother Jesus, yours ever be the splendor.
Women: And for the
bread fragment: We thank you, Abba God, for the life and wisdom whose meaning
you made clear to us through Jesus, yours ever be the splendor.
All: As this
fragment was scattered high on hills, but by gathering was united into one, so
let your people from earth’s ends be united into your single reign, for yours
are splendor and might through Jesus Christ down the ages.
Prayers of
Thanksgiving.
—-All:
(traditional Irish blessing) May the
road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun
shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we
meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Presider: Go in the
peace of Christ, may our loving service to all, continue!
All: Thanks be to God. Alleluia!
Closing song:
#545 Sing to the Mountains, vs 1&3
Imogene Ann Stewart Rigdon
April 2, 1937 – January 3, 2019
Interment of
Ashes
January 19,
2017
St Andrew
United Church of Christ Memorial Garden
Sarasota ,
Florida
Presiders:
Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP & Sally Brochu, ARCWP
Gathering & Welcome:
At liturgy
today we celebrated the life of Imogene Rigdon. Now we bring her remains to
this sacred resting place. Let us remember that this life on earth is only a
phase of our full life. When we have accomplished God’s work in this physical
life, God calls us to continue that work in a higher sphere, or what many of us
call, heaven. We come from our Creator
God and we return to the open arms of our loving Creator God. So has Imogene.
We
also acknowledge that while we rejoice that Imogene has entered into the nearer
presence of God, we join all who mourn her, all who loved her deeply. We pray
especially for her loving husband, Michael, for their daughter Mary and her
husband, Thony and all gathered here whose lives were touched by Imogene.
Let
us begin with prayer to our God of unconditional Love and Mercy.
Creator
God, we come to you in our sorrow. Grant us your comfort and strength as we
struggle with the loss of this good woman. As much as we mourn her loss, we are
also filled with gratitude that Imogene was part of our lives. Just as we can
know you, O God, through the good in people, so too can we catch a small
glimpse of you, in Imogene’s life. We are grateful that she now rests with you,
Gentle and Loving God. We make this prayer in Jesus name, ever aware of your
magnanimous and unconditional love for us. Amen.
Gospel: (1 John
4:11-12, 17)
Dear friends, since God so
loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but
if we love one another, God lives in us and God’s love is made complete in us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how
love is made complete among us.
To which I say, Imogene,
like God, knew how to love. And it is that love which nourishes us and helps us
grow into fuller human beings. That is her legacy.
Poem:
An excerpt from the poem “High Flight” By William Gillespie
This is a poem published after the Challenger Space
Shuttle disaster of January 28, 1986. It first speaks of how these astronauts
soared so high that they saw the Face of God. Here’s the second half:
If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not long blacken your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The things that made us laugh and weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the
spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
Those are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand,
And mighty
mountain peaks in time reduce to sand,
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A co-joined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked
together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my
shadow,
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
Interment of Ashes:
Seeing
now that Imogene has been set free from her physical body to enter into a new
life in the Spirit, that spark of the Divine that lives in each of us, we
commit her spirit into God’s hands. We commit her physical remains into this
sacred ground and give thanks to God for the gift of her earthly life; with the
promise of a sure resurrection; and our happy reunion with her in the life to
come, in the glorious life of the Spirit. We now gently place these cremains into
their physical resting place.
I
hold in my hand this sacred soil from this Memorial Garden. This soil, which
symbolizes our mortality and also our connectedness because we are of the
earth, this soil is now gently placed on this resting place.
(If anyone would like to come forward and place some
soil, please come)
A blessing from the Book of Numbers 6:
24 -27 (Moses)
(Will you join me by extending your hands in
blessing)
Imogene,
may our loving God bless you and keep you. May God’s face shine upon you and be
gracious to you. May God look upon you kindly and give you peace.
We
know that Imogene now rests with her loving God - the God who created her and
us and to whom we all return.
And now in keeping with the
caring and compassion of Imogene for us as we go forward, let us raise our
hands in blessing of each other.
May
God bless us all, this day and always, as we go forth from here knowing that
the gift of love, which is from God and of God, is what connects us to one
another forever, to us from Imogene and from us to Imogene.
To
this we say, Amen.
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