Among god’s most enduring desires is the desire to be with us in our lives – as we wake and sleep, as we work and play, as we struggle and as we sing, as we eat and drink. In our confession and in our celebration, God is with us.

This meal, then, is God’s continuing work to be with us. We share bread and wine because Jesus did and said that we should also. It went like this:

The night he was about to be arrested, after a too-short life of provoking the powers, teaching the crowds, and showing compassion to those in pain…

God be with you.

And with you.

Thank you. I give thanks to you, and I give thanks for you,

as we share a journey of faith to who-knows-where,

try to listen to the Spirit tell us who-knows-what…

We pray that it is ever so, O God, that when we gather, you are among us,

your spirit guiding nurturing feeding us as we grow into the people you intend us to be.

From creation, you imagined a world of peaceable community, people and animals and earth, cherishing and holding one another.

But from the beginning, we had other ideas, a world that served only us, our people, our kind,

our notions of good and fair…

People of God, friends of Jesus, today we have joined a parade that’s been underway for weeks, for years, for generations.

For Jesus, it ends in Jerusalem, on a cross, strapped to a gurney, belted into an electric chair. We kill what we cannot control…

This is World Communion Sunday, a day when Christians everywhere celebrate something special about this meal, about all being at the table together.

But is it such a good idea? Is communion really special?

((This is mostly not my original work, but adapted from Why World Communion Sunday Is a Bad Idea By Debra Dean Murphy, 2 Oct 2012, which includes “Wheat” By BH Fairchild. Accessed at http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2012/10/why-world-communion-sunday-is-a-bad-idea). She wrote it as essay; I redrafted it as liturgy, for use with multiple voices.)

My Friends …

We gather around this holy table at the beckoning of Christ, an unconventional king.

and in company with generations past and yet to be.

Let us pray:

At your table, O God, we receive the gift of bread and cup, edible symbols of your love…

Communion is supposed to represent the cross-cultural solidarity of the cross, yet we practice it within the not-so-cross-cultural safety of our homogenous church groups.

What if communion were me sitting on my Rastafarian neighbor’s back porch, listening to reggae, and hearing about his week?

(This was inspired by/adapted from a blogpost called “Rethinking Communion” by Christina Cleveland, which used to be found at http://www.christenacleveland.com/2014/07/re-thinking-communion, but seems to have disappeared. It is intended for use with multiple voices. I hope Dr. Cleveland doesn’t mind that she has inspired me. Please credit her if you use this.)

My Friends …

We gather around this holy table at the invitation of our God

and in communion with generations past and generations yet unborn.

We come in praise of God, always and forever.

We have been made holy in Christ.

At this table, we are mindful of the virtuous and godly living

of saints who have become an inspiration for us.

It is so that God is with us as we gather in worship, in sacrament, in service, and now in a sacred meal.

We gather as jesus told us, as jesus showed us, gathering to find strength and joy, gathering to share peace and hope.

Among all the other ways we gather, at this moment we join in a feast, called by some “the feast of the world’s redemption,” a meal wherein community is born and covenant is kept…