This liturgy was written for a Pentecost communion service, based on the service I wrote for Maundy Thursday which can be found here; http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/maundy-thursday-new-communion-service.html. It can be used as a short act of worship at a meal, on it's own or as part of a full communion service.
Communion Service For Pentecost
The presiding minister
says;
Jesus and his disciples had come to
Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of the Passover.
The Passover was a weeklong
celebration in the capital city, where they remembered the time when, through
God's guidance, Moses brought them out of captivity in Egypt, the sacrificial lambs
were brought to the temple, because, in the time of the Exodus, the blood of
lambs was used as a marker on the doors so that the angel of death would pass
over those houses.
As part of the celebration Jesus and
his disciples joined together in a traditional meal in an upper room that they
had hired for the occasion; a meal of thanksgiving for their freedom.
Raising the cup the
minister says;
And so today we raise our thanks to
the father of creation; Thanks be to God, amen.
But their
freedom was not complete; it was temporary and rooted in earthly promises.
A new promise was to be made there in
that room by Jesus. Moses, great though he was, was only a man, speaking the
words of God. But Jesus was God in human form;
And on the night before Jesus died,
there in that upper room he took the bread and broke it and gave it to his
disciples saying something like this; take this and eat it, imagine that this
is my body which is being broken for you.
The bread is distributed through
the congregation by the minister and communion stewards
And so as we share this bread we may
share these words;
In the breaking of this bread; we
are broken;
Like the body of Christ; we are
broken
As we share in his self sacrifice; So
we are remade in the image of God.
We all eat the bread together
In the days of Leviticus when the
priests made animal sacrifices, the priests would say that no one should drink
the blood, because it contained the spirit of the animal. The spirit of the
animal was poured out for the sins of the people. When Jesus offered himself as
sacrifice on the cross, he declared an end to the sacrifice because his spirit
was poured out for the forgiveness of all sins for all time. For this was not
the spirit of one of God's creatures, but the spirit of God himself being
poured out for all people.
The wine is poured from a
central cup into small cups as we sing H&P 295 Spirit of the Living God,
saving one cup to be poured during the following words;
Knowing what was about to happen, at
the end of the meal he took the cup gave thanks and gave it to his disciples
saying something on the lines of; drink from it all of you and as you do,
imagine that this is my blood which is about to be poured out for you, to seal
the new promise which God is making with all people.
The cups are distributed
around the room.
This is God's spirit poured out for all.
It is freely poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Amen
It is freely poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Amen
We all drink from the cups.
And Jesus told them to do this
whenever they met to remember him. Do what, I wonder?
Well, John tells us that after the
meal Jesus washed their feet, and insisted that they washed each other's feet,
a humble act of service. It is above all things our call to serve each other as
Christ has served us and to serve those who have not yet known Christ, just as
once we did not know Christ.
We serve each other and the world in
the breaking and in the pouring.
We do this in remembrance of Jesus
We do this in remembrance of Jesus
who awaits the opportunity to share this meal with us in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Hymn
Blessing
