Salt Lake City — “Listen, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters… Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.”
Acting Stated Clerk Bronwen Boswell began the worship service with these words from Isaiah 55 on Sunday, June 30 before the in-person plenary sessions began for the 226th General Assembly (GA) in Salt Lake City, Utah. After many at GA attended morning worship at local Presbyterian churches, the GA service, “To Hear God’s Word,” was “something more like a service for midday prayer: a chance to reflect together on the Word, join our voices in song, and join our hearts in prayer as the assembly begins,” said David Gambrell, the coordinator of worship planning for the GA.
The theme for the opening worship at the Salt Palace Convention Center was, “To hear God’s Word.” The call to worship began quoting Isaiah 55 with a responsive reading led by Boswell: During each part of the reading, a new symbol was added to the communion table. Then the gathered assembly sang the theme hymn, “Live into Hope” with an invitation for worshipers to sing in the language of their preference.
Historically, the opening worship would occur on the first Saturday of GA, before the election of moderators and the committee business.
Due to the hybrid format of this 226th assembly, the committee business has already taken place and most of the commissioners spent Sunday morning worshiping at local congregations in and around the Salt Lake City area, arranged by the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the Presbytery of Utah.
All of the worship for the week is designed around the assembly’s theme, “Live into Hope.” The six planned worship services are shaped around different stanzas of Jane Parker Huber’s hymn of the same name and grounded in Scripture, particularly Luke 4:16-20 when Jesus enters the synagogue, reads the Isaiah scroll, and declares: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
The prayer of the day asked for a blessing on the work ahead. “We turn, together, toward the front of this space, toward the hard and holy work that you have set before us, and pray that you would enable us to walk side by side, with honesty, grace, and steadfast faithfulness. All this we pray to the one who renews us, sustains us, and calls us by name. Amen.”
The core Scripture reading, Isaiah 55:3-11, was interspersed with questions including: How can we be faithful witnesses in this place? How can we be respectful guests in this place? What seeds are being planted? What fruit do we hope to bear? After each question, a two-minute time of reflection allowed participants to discuss the Scripture and question.
The closing litany, led by Elona Street-Stewart, executive of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, invoked the Holy Spirit to help the commissioners hear and respect one another, asked Christ to make this a community of love and unity, and called on God to gather separated people.
