Eucharistic Prayer for Advent.

Invitation to the Lord’s Table

This is the holy meal of the future

where we share now

in the life of the One-Who-Is-to-Come,

Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

It is a foretaste of his coming to make all things new.

It is a sign of the way God transforms us from within.

In this sacrament

the One who becomes flesh to dwell among us

becomes our flesh, 

and we become him,

sharing in the divine nature.

This is the Lord’s table.

Our Savior invites those who trust in him

to share in the feast which he has prepared.

Communion Preface

Open our hearts, O God, to your coming.

Broaden our vision to embrace your whole creation.

For at this table we see from the perspective 

of your promised Kingdom of peace,

where violence and inequality are banished,

and all races and nations, families and tongues,

gather in joy.

Sanctus

And so we lift up our hearts, O God,

joining with all your people

of every time and place

in the angels’ song of grateful praise.

Holy, holy, holy….

Eucharistic Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer

God of tomorrow:

daily we pray for the coming of your Kingdom,

when debts are remitted,

wealth redistributed,

reparations made,

and the earth and her people

enjoy a blessed sabbath rest.

You created the universe 

by your overflowing love,

and you declared it all very good.

Your unstoppable love

continued to overflow

until the time came

and you emerged among us

as one of us

in Jesus Christ.

You invite us to place our trust in him

and share in the life of eternity.

As the ultimate expression of love

Jesus gave himself up

to death on a cross

for blasphemy and sedition,

identifying fully with our brokenness and shame.

And your love finally triumphs over death

in his resurrection

revealing our true nature and destiny.

Your love now continues to overflow,

spreading your life over the whole world,

by the power of the Holy Spirit

with, within, among, and around us.  

Send your Spirit, O God, upon us, your people 

whom you call out from the world and gather together,

and upon these holy gifts,

of bread and the cup,

fashioned from the fruits of the Earth,

revealing here and now 

the living and saving Presence of Jesus Christ

with us, within us, around us, and among us.

Let this meal be our medicine,

healing our souls and bodies,

opening our eyes to the truth of your love,

shining in all the world.

O God,

like a mother who will not forget her nursing child,

you love us forever.

And so we are bold to pray in the words Jesus taught us,

saying: Our Father….

Evergreen Liturgy.

Evergreen Liturgy.

We come to the time of bare trees.

Branches shaking stiffly in the pale air 

and whistling in the cold wind.

The leaves have turned brown and dried up,

falling to the earth,

disintegrating into the soil. 

The trees have gone dormant,

their life hidden within,

waiting for the stronger light of resurrection.

And yet some trees refuse to go into the cold unadorned.

Some trees brazenly shine a continued hope 

into the barren, gray landscape.

Some trees stubbornly stay green

even into the dead of winter.

Some trees refuse to surrender

to a hostile season.

God has placed these trees among us as a sign.

A sign of life.

A memory of warm abundance and joy.

A sign of hope.

An anticipation of spring.

A sign of abiding.

A bold act of resistance.

We call them “evergreen.”

The Light shines in the darkness

and the darkness did not overcome it.

The green persists in the cold

and the cold does not overwhelm it.

The icy darkness of bigotry, vulgarity, hatred, exclusion, and fear

cannot overcome Christ’s warm light of compassion, justice, peace, and welcome.

In the face of a harsh season:

some stay green.

In this season of waiting

as the darkness deepens

as the colors drain from the world

fading into the grays of winter:

We lift up the evergreen.

Pine, fir, cedar, holly, ivy, juniper, hemlock, 

spruce, cypress, rhododendron.

We give thanks to the Creator

for the witness of the evergreens.

We carry springs and branches to the Communion Table.

God of Life and Light:

you fashioned this Earth in love

and placed among us in nature

reminders of your abiding Presence.

Your life shines through your creation

and every living thing points to you.

Your Word echoes in everything you breathed into being.

So today we lift up in recognition

our sister and brother evergreen trees

whom you place among us

as a reminder

that in your economy

nothing is ever lost.

Life always remains.

Love always wins.

Keep us ever green as well, O God,

ever witnessing to the power of your verdant love

shining in all you have made.

Amen.

Why the PCUSA Needs More, Not Less, "Death Talk."

Death Talk.

The Stated Clerk of the PCUSA, someone I admire immensely, has suggested that Presbyterians need to cut the “death talk.”  By that I think he means the negative predictions of the imminent demise of the PCUSA.  When we talk like this, I suspect what we mean by “death” is a comprehensive collapse into permanent non-existence.  Death here means extinction or annihilation.  

But I wonder if by insisting on understanding death in this way, we haven’t bought into the secular, materialistic, reductionistic way Modern America thinks.  After all, having lost a sense that there is anything transcending this measurable, quantifiable world, we are consequently a chronically death-fearing, death-denying, and death-avoiding culture.  Has this small-minded paranoia entered the minds of Presbyterians?    

Presbyterians — like other orthodox Christians — are not supposed to understand death in this shallow way.  Our faith tells us, first of all, that in the economy of God nothing is ever lost.  This which means that even if the PCUSA ceases to exist as an institution, the mission of God on Earth continues in other ways.  How many of our PCUSA churches have closed… only to reopen to house congregations of other Christian denominations?  Our demise will be sad for us; but God’s mission will continue.

Even more importantly, we confess that death is not an absolute termination, but really the pathway to transformation and new life.  Jesus says a lot of things like "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25).  Then he goes to the cross and dies… and is resurrected three days later.  The apostle Paul talks about resurrection in terms of a transformation that involves some kind of death (1 Corinthians 15:35-57; 2 Corinthians 4:4-14).  The ritual of baptism illustrates this movement through death to new life (Romans 6:3-23; Colossians 2:12).  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said "When Jesus calls someone he bids them come and die."  Above the entrance to one of the monasteries on Mt. Athos, there is inscribed the motto: “If you die before you die then you won't die when you die.”  Finally, we have that well beloved prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi, in which we hear that: "It is in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”  The heart of Christianity is that there is only one way to resurrection, and it is through some kind of death.  We have to die in order to live.

As long as we keep holding on to the Christendom model of the Presbyterian Church, that is, as long as that particular, temporally conditioned manifestation of the church does not die, we are like the caterpillar who refuses to enter the chrysalis and die to its old self, allowing its new self to emerge.    

The PCUSA is not going to make it through this extended crisis by mere technical or even adaptive change.  In other words, we cannot adjust or reform our way into a restoration of our cultural relevance.  What we become cannot be the result of our reacting to the perceived needs and desires of our “context.”  We’ve been trying that for half a century.  More repackaging isn’t going to cut it.  

The caterpillar does not adapt to its environment; its metamorphosis is a response to the call of the identity and destiny the Creator has placed within it.  Our future will be the fruit of our renewed engagement with the good news of God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ, which is always radically transformational.  Transformation means becoming who we are.

Therefore, we need more “death talk.”  Because only if we take seriously what we have to give up, relinquish, release, let go of, and even kill in ourselves, will we be open to the emergence of what God has placed within us to do.  Frankly, we remain a denomination colored and flavored by the divisive values of Modernity.  We continue largely unconsciously to privilege particular ethnic, ideological, gender, economic, and class identifications.  These biases are deeply embedded in our polity, liturgics, ecclesiology, and theology.

And change is not going to happen from the top down, because the General Assembly, synods, or even presbyteries advocate for it.  Change is only possible when local congregations and individual disciples start realizing the awesome implications of their baptism, that now all of us are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28), in whom God is scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away empty (Luke 1:51-53).

In other words, what we need is not to adapt, but a radical, thorough repentance which dies to the old so the new — and original — may emerge. 

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