Communion Service For Pentecost

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

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