Alas, such a deep breath choked on the frigid air, as if my lungs rejected their own impulse to breathe, lest they themselves freeze as solidly as the lake beneath my feet. As for seeing the face of CHRIST in our enemies, let us try. So the question about the kind of body the risen Jesus had was, as Paul puts it, quite simply, stupid. we invite your life to fill us; Faith and EthicsKaren Armstrong is amongst a group of religious scholars who have noted that the essential teaching of each of the major religions usually includes some version of "love your neighbour". Thanks be to all that is HOLY! Our continued evolution relies upon our ability to metanoia, to move beyond primitive ways of thinking. We are sent out with these words It was an epic trip on which my once innocent 20-year-old self learned to swig akvavit like a Viking. It was Jesus who introduced this meal to his followers. Let us be LOVE in the world, by fearlessly serving the poor. So, rather than side-step the subject of resurrection, I decided to include both readings today. Our count was based on the number of spouts that emanated from their blowholes. Still no luck. Our gospel-storyteller wrote his story within a deeply wounded community to provide the much need hope for their own resurrection. Nor can I believe that Jesus saw YAHWEH, the GREAT I AM as a fool. Glory be to you, Lord Jesus. To experience the liveliness of the resurrection is something quite different. Christ's peace is ours forever! Breathe in the goodness of that space. My family had travelled to the west coast of Vancouver Island to what was back then, a mostly unknown treasure. For more than a decade and a half churches around the world have been relying on Sacredise for prayers, liturgies, sermon starters, and devotional materials to help them create worship gatherings that draw people in and that connect them more deeply with God, themselves, others, and our world. Time for quiet reflection: I am eternally linked with the source of all life, Please respond Amen after each of the following affirmations of our Eucharistic Prayer. Pinging is currently not allowed. The PROMISED ONE has come not to be served, but to serveto give one life in ransom for the many.. And all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldnt put Humpty together again. Please come, the meal is ready. Concessions will be made, and war averted. The sun is in the same place at the same time as it was yesterday, but today all our clocks insist that it is actually 11:00 and not 10:00. At every opportunity that our busy schedules allowed us, Anna and Steve did their level best to save me from my wicked ways. if ( thisact == "contact" ) { Come then to the joyful feast of the Lord! Old and New Testament Canticles at Morning and Evening Prayer. He is risen indeed! Well, like, this egg falls off the wall and if you study biology or physics, you know you can never put an egg back together again. Today, it doesnt matter how CHRIST rose nearly 2000 years ago. In my sacred imagination, I can see the Apostle Paul smiling and nodding. As frightened as I was, I was determined to get close to these magnificent beasts. As we recall the trusting of impotent rocket ships escaping for mere moments the confines of the empires we thrive in, do we have the courage to see our own hypocrisy? We join our tears to theirs and when we have no more tears to cry, we roll up our sleeves and we do what we can to help them. //jQuery('#submit-action').attr('href','/paupress/?rel=contact&pau_form=contact_form'); Social Justice Lectionary, Bruce Sweet, 2014. good times, bad times - give me some of that: blogging on faith and life. window.location.replace('https://progressivechristianity.org/paupress/?rel=contact&pau_form=contact_form'); Risen Christ, The world despised and rejected you. Everyone knows that.. Jesus, the archetypal human, in which DIVINITY is embodied, confirms that human life, does not die, but is resurrected, transformed. Benedicite - a Song of Creation Benedicite - a Song of Creation (shorter version) Venite - a Song of Triumph Jubilate - a Song of Joy The Easter Anthems Evening Prayer. We share this bread and drink, as Jesus shared a Passover meal with his disciples, and we partake of it together as our pledge of openness to the Spirit of Love in our midst, and as our remembrance of Jesus who invited us to do even greater things than he did. *Leader: O sing unto the Lord, for he has done excellent things. I dont much care about silly arguments about Jesus rising from the dead unless those arguments lead us to a place where we ourselves can claim the power of resurrection to create a hunger for SHALOM, a passion for the justice which creates peace. Standing beneath a clear blue sky, looking out towards the horizon, I tried to breath in some of the vastness which stretched before me. We break and share this bread, as Jesus broke and shared it. Posts tagged "progressive Christian Communion liturgy" . Friends, let us come out of the darkness and join together in the light of Gods love. My youth and inexperience allowed the more ornery side of my nature to come to the fore. Longing to experience and share the fullness of Life that you offer, I like the Apostle Paul, do not believe in the resuscitation of a corpse. Some will hurl the text at me in ways which communicate their anger, their disgust, and in some cases their hatred of me. It is hard to maintain the heights that we attain on the celebration of Resurrection Day. Blessings on your Holy Week observance and Easter celebrations! Today, thanks to daylight savings time, the earth hasnt quickened its course around the sun. There is real wisdom, Lord, in the adage. That beautiful, glorious embodiment of CHRIST is singing these words: Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom, She has courageously begun the difficult, painstaking, slow work which lies before her. The colossal profits we offer up to billionaires are not simply the result of corporate greed. All who are truly sorry for their sins, who sincerely believe in the Lord Jesus as their Savior, and who desire to live in obedience to him, are now invited to come with gladness to the table of the Lord. Some of these messages convey ways we might experience subtle resurrections and deaths in our everyday lives. The PROMISED ONE has come not to be served, but to serveto give a ransom for the many. Sure, it is easy to scoff at billionaires squandering their ill-gotten gains on momentary flights of fancy. One: On this day, we embrace the grace which reaches from the tomb. The liturgy wasdeveloped for use during Lent. The seed you sow does not germinate unless it dies. Certainly, in the church the Bible is considered to be the supreme authority of the nature of God. Lent & Holy Week BEYOND Atonement! I failed to capture the sunset. The liturgy was adapted by Dr. Bert Polman from a form prepared by the Liturgical Committee of the Christian Reformed Church for use during an Easter Service; this liturgy can be used for all Sundays in Eastertide. February 11th, 2013. Yesterday, when the sun was in the same position in the sky as it is now, we insisted that it was an hour later. But then I looked at the readings assigned for next Sunday and discovered that, yet another section of 1st Corinthians 15 is included. We pray to theLord. If you have already donated, thank you! If I could, I would comfort the young woman I was by reassuring her that whatever the MYSTERY which we call God is, it is not a vengeful murderer whose thirst for a blood sacrifice, compelled Him and I do mean him, to come up with a plan which required violence, torture, and a slow, painful death. accept our lives as holy offerings to you, Theres nothing wrong with that. Alison Etter. and the capacity to give people an experience of God. Years ago, a good many years ago in fact, when my life as an adult had only just begun, I was backpacking around Europe, and I began to hear people talk about the land of the mid-night sun. Killer whales. Justice is what LOVE looks like when LOVE is unleashed here on Earth. Let us give thanks to our Creator. Resist reading into the parables a too small personal shepherd, woman, or father to act the part of a too small recklessly, foolish god. May the Spirit open our souls in order for us to see humanity, God and creation through the eyes of Jesus. United States We jumped into the rubber dingy, and we paddled as fast as we could, determined to chase whales. If you have not donated yet, please do so today. [on the night before he died, Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Repent from the Greek word metanoia to think new thoughts. } else { Beautiful liturgy. The grace and passion to love wastefully, CLOSING We Will Rise Again David Haas, *Parts of the liturgy were taken and modified from Michael Morwoods Praying a New Story, **Slideshow was taken and modified from Sapphire Productions. Let LOVE live in, us, through us, and beyond us, for now as always, LOVE lives, LOVE dies, and LOVE rises, again, and again, and again. We must put all our many blessings to use, to seek justice where-ever we can whenever we can.We cant do it all and we cant do it alone. Nothing was said until dinner the next day, by which time Steve and Anna had been back to church twice. This bread and drink represents our life and all the giftedness that each of us bring to the table. You can also watch the videos of the homilies our videorgrapher is enjoying the Family Day weekend so my head is missing from the first parts but thanks to a volunteers intervention my head is restored in the third video. The response is Alithos Aneste! It is the vison of the foolish who are prepared to risk it all for the sake of what we have lost, the SHALOM we long for. Ever since they began to practice resurrection, people have been trying to figure out exactly what may have happened. 2021 All rights Reserved | Site by Fix8, Communion: SALTs Lectionary Commentary for Twelfth Week after Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary Commentary John 6:51-58, Three and One: SALTs Lectionary Commentary for Trinity Sunday, What Does This Mean? SALTs Lectionary Commentary on Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary Commentary Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary Commentary Acts 2:1-21, Abide in Me: SALTs Lectionary Commentary for Easter 5, Progressive Christian Resources for Advent, Revised Common Lectionary Easter 5 Year B, Love and Mercy: SALTs Lectionary Commentary for Lent 4, Progressive Christian Lectionary Resources, Why is Jesus Angry? Her unseen hand was stuck inside her great-grandmothers vase. Youll find it in the first Book of Kings. But Jesus did not let them linger for very long. Father, Son, and Holy . /* The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Jesus. Traditionally, the season of Lent is a time of repentance. When we forgo our obsession with Jesus death and open ourselves to the passions of Jesus life, we begin to see new ways to understand the new images of the HOLY ONE that Jesus encouraged his followers to see. One of the whales rose out of the water and as she came crashing down, I marveled at the magnificence of this beast. We must put aside our expectations of a quick and easy fix and settle in for the difficult generational evolution of our species. On this her Feast Day, let us commemorate Julian of Norwich, who is perhaps one of the greatest English Mystics. endobj <>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 594.96 842.04] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> And our Creator needs us to pay for our sinfulness. Christ is risen! Frame 4: A smile from you can bring joy to anyone and everyone you encounter. Yes, the woman should have been content with her 99 coins. The truth is Humpty Dumpty was not an egg. Not all bodies are the same! Frame 15: Honor the Divine in everyone and in all creation. When Grandma finally arrived, both Crystal and her mother were almost hysterical. We are smart. Think about it, Jesus cant have being trying to teach us that the DIVINE MYSTERY was a reckless fool. Lets try to focus on what is actually happening in the story. God is with you! Maybe if we are unwilling to fight, all we can do is join our tears to the tears of that little Ukrainian family. jQuery(document).on('change', '#submission-action', function(){ Your resurrection we affirm with joy. We believe that faith can move mountains, and that caterpillars can be transformed into butterflies. The Gospel this morning comes to us from the anonymous Gospel storyteller that we know as John. But she couldnt see it, so she reached in for her candy and thats when she got stuck and she couldnt get her hand back out. Lord, help us to make. These parables have an air of foolishness about them, if we see them as simple stories told by Jesus about the way a personified god loves us. Communion is a ritual that draws us into a longing for God's justice to find its place on earth. How dare I flirt with new ways of understanding REALITY, new discoveries about the Cosmos, new theories about the nature of human consciousness? We were Stayin Alive, Stayin Alive all week long, working toward Saturday Night Fever, when we Should Be Dancing, dancing the night away. Through his resurrection Life you gave birth to your church, After two long years of isolation, I have learned how to block out the world. Amen. Through this prayer, the people of God sanctify the day by continual praise of God and prayers of intercession for the needs of the world. But they will not be tears cried in vain. Our friend, Dom Crossan makes the point that, it is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally. I believe that in order to understand the power of this particular story of resurrection we must move beyond simplistic literal explanations and open ourselves to the more-than-literal symbolic dare I say it, spiritual understanding of resurrection. As tensions escalated and our world held our collective breath, the fragility of the peace we cling to, the peace built through military might, and threats of violence and mutual annihilation, this illusion of peace was threatened by the ambitions of a powerful oligarch obsessed with delusions of restoring tribal supremacy for his once mighty nation. Easter offers meaning and hope to all people. Living the Resurrection Second Sunday of Easter, Year B On the Sunday after Easter, there is a general let down. We dont have to travel to Europe or Afghanistan, or Syria, or Myanmar to catch a glimpse of the EMPIRE of DIVINITY, for the not yet REIGN of LOVE is already here. window.location.replace('https://progressivechristianity.org/paupress/?rel=pauContent&pau_type='+thisact); I dont know. Progressive Christians are constantly challenged to claim the title of Christian in the sense of being a follower of Jesus' teachings while letting go of most of the dogma that has been developed over the centuries by the human institution that is church. I Do Deny the Resurrection! After spending far too long cornered by Steve, who preached a gospel of not very good news, I was desperate to silence him, so, I reluctantly agreed to attend a Tuesday night youth service. Suddenly, the Cosmos reminded me that freedom from ancient ways of knowing does not mean freedom from REALITY. Today, when science confirms that humans did not rise out of the Earth fully formed, but are continuing to evolve, surely today we can metanoia, think beyond the primitive, childish notions of original sin, and begin to see humanity as an incomplete, ever- evolving species which runs the very real risk of extinction if we dont move beyond the myth of redemptive violence. I mean who in the hell believes that billionaires ought to be allowed to engage in a giant pissing contest disguised as a space race? See if you can pick them out. Anna had copied it from the Good News for Modern Man paraphrase of New Testament. Occasionally, I was able to hear Jesus say, Have you believed because you have seen me? Try as I might, I could never convince either of them that I was saved by grace. The safety of the mountaintop must have been glorious. For the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it (here the minister shall break the bread) and said, "This is my body which is for you. Pauls description of resurrection does not conflict with our 21stcentury inability to accept the suspension of the natural order of the Cosmos. Frame 11: When life hands you a lemon make lemonade!*. Im not talking about some Pollyanna notion of passivity in the face of violence, and I know that we are not going to solve our addiction to violence anytime soon. Followers of the Way are called to reject the myth of redemptive violence. Dying you destroyed our death, But we must honour the suffering of generations, by doing something now, so that generations from now little families wont have to cry all over again. O God, let us take in the moment of this day of crucifixion, not remembering it in the context of what came after it, but how it left Jesus' disciples and followers in tragic sadness and heart-wrenched disillusionment. Violence, how long will we put our faith in violence? Alas, the sun does indeed shine at midnight in the summer months, but in Norway summer does not include the month of August. Lift up your hearts. Thanks be to ALL that is HOLY! Heaven above the Earth and Hell below, all depending upon a smile or a frown from the omniscient god, Himself confined to sit in judgement in a celestial realm from which He sent His Son, to save creatures of His own creation from their own depravity. Prayer of Communion The apostle Paul who was the first to write about Jesus, portrays Jesus as a doorway into the ultimate. Jesus vision of the BASILEIA ton THEON, the Empire of DIVINITY, is not the world we live in. } In fact, in a specific celebration the Presider might select only one or two items from the many alternatives . Frame 13: I would rather have one rose and a kind word from a friend while I am here than a whole truckload when I am gone. Do we have the courage to serve? But I digress. And there was no official campsite back then. of our connectedness with God and with all people. Bunnies remind us of all the animals You made, and all the beautiful things You created. A Progressive Easter Liturgy - Rev Dr Lorraine Parkinson 2 Replies Easter Liturgy [Power Point images] Easter 2022 Quiet music PP The God of Easter - Introduction What on earth can we do with Easter? Resources for planning and leading worship, Lift Up Your Heartsand Voices: Involving the congregation in the Communion liturgy through song, The Three Days: Celebrating the summit of Holy Week with four services and two sacraments. Jesus suffered the worst of his worlds violence. People: Your death, O Christ, we proclaim. var thisact = jQuery('#submission-action').val(); Yes, the shepherd should have been guarding the 99. Get their attention and then, deliver your point! */ So, it made it difficult for us to work up much speed. I am using it this Sunday and sharing your credit information! I had just moved up to Jasper, Alberta, determined to make enough money during that summer, so that I could continue my backing excursions in Europe. As for that little Ukrainian family, what do we do in the wake of their tears? Carmel Lutheran Church, Portland, OR: Easter Morning: a service of the dawning of new light with Holy Communion. //jQuery('#submit-action').attr('href','/paupress/?rel=contact&pau_form=contact_form'); Sign up for an account and get your newsletters right away! God has sent me to proclaim liberty to those held captive, recovery of sight to those who are blind, and release to those in prison to proclaim the year of Gods favour. Rolling up the scroll, Jesus gave it back to the attendant and sat down. Whenever the news became more than I thought I could bear, I just switched it off. EASTER WORSHIP SERVICES The liturgy, and particularly the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter, are never a re-enactment of the events that happened two thousand years ago. On this Easter, we pray in Your name. Repent Metanoia let us think new thoughts so that we might ask: What can Jesus teach us? This story with which we have been conditioned to look at the issues of our doubts about the resurrection itself, was written in the midst of colossal violence, violence which had escalated in the 70 years since the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. You can catch glimpses of this LOVE resisting the violence of domination systems, in every champion of the environment, every compassionate advocate for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. I had to confess right then and there, in my twentieth year of life, I struggled to believe that any GOD who sent His only Child to die, on a cross, is worth getting up on a Sunday morning for. For the LOVE expressed in the life and death of Jesus lives in you and in me. But if this MYSTERY really is BEYOND the BEYOND and BEYOND that also, and we are in GOD and GOD is in us, then every character in every parable you have ever heard is in GOD and GOD is in every character. In this way God shows that he himself is righteous and that he puts right everyone who believes in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26), Below these passages, Anna wrote: Repent and believe! Alleluia! God is with us! Let it go. Sure enough, the vase slipped off as smooth as silk. Once again, I struggled to keep a straight face. Included here are just a few calls to worship, prayers, Scripture passages, and songs you can use in your Easter worship. Liturgies. *The ThanksgivingLeader: Lift up your hearts. Imagine knowing everything there is to know about that final day in Memphis, about the motel, about the people who were on that balcony when Dr. King was shot, about the shooter, the gun that was used, about the funeral procession, the grieving, and about the people who tried to go on walking in the ways of Dr. King.