Communion Prayers for the Eve of the Nativity

These are the prayers I have composed for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper on the Eve of the Nativity. They are part of a longer service which includes more prayers, readings, and music.

Offering

To the Lord belong the Earth
and everything in it.
the world and all its inhabitants. Psalm 24:1 (REB)

*Doxology, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” 5

*Prayer of Dedication

O God,
what shall we give in return for your gift
of coming into our lives and our flesh in Jesus Christ?
You have no need of anything we have;
indeed everything belongs to you from the beginning:
our bodies, the Earth, and matter itself.
Yet we offer to you these signs of our trust in you,
for the ministry of your peace, justice, and love in the world.
With these gifts we give to you Mary’s answer:
let it happen to us according to your Word.
Amen.

Invitation to the Lord’s Table

This is our communion meal with Christ our God;
it is a foretaste of his coming commonwealth,
it is our thanksgiving for God’s abundance and generosity.

Jesus Christ welcomes us to his Table.
He invites those who trust in God’s love revealed in him
to participate with him in the feast which he has prepared.

Here we become his body in the world,
taking on his ministry of peace,
sharing his message of hope and love,
and spreading his life to all.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

O God,
on this blessed night
we lift our voices in praise to you
for your great act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ:
Your Word, by whom you made all things,
now becomes flesh to dwell among us,
sharing our body and our history.
In him you, O God, become one with us,
so that we may become one with you,
and one in ministry to all the world.

And so we join our voices to the choirs of creation,
past and future, within and without,
in singing the song of praise and glory:

Holy, holy, holy Lord
God of power and might:
Heaven and Earth are full of your glory,
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is he,
O blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna in the highest!

In the beginning, O God,
you created all things by your Word and Spirit.
Tonight your Word becomes flesh to dwell among us,
bringing together prophecy and hope
in a pure act of living Presence:
Jesus Christ, born of Mary.
He reveals once and for all your love for your creation.

By his birth in Bethlehem to homeless, migrant, refugee parents,
abused by the government, and given no room by business,
by his recognition by women, poor shepherds, and faithful old people,
though the rulers were blind or resistant to his coming,
by his healing and teaching,
his exorcisms, and his raising of the dead,
by his lifting up of the poor and the powerless
and his including of the outcast,
by his preaching of justice and love,
and his nonviolent resistance to evil,
by his critique of wealth and hypocrisy,
and his zeal for the Temple as a house of prayer for all nations,
by his gathering of a holy community of disciples,
and his sending them out in service to all,
and finally by his execution at the hands of fearful human authorities,
and his defeat of the power of sin and death in his resurrection,
he fully revealed your saving love for the world,
and opened the way for us to life in union with you.

As you offer Christ to us as your living Presence
and our pure and shining example and Master,
we make our offering to you, O God.
Transform us for his sake.
Send to us your Holy Spirit,
your beautiful gift to those who trust in you,
and sanctify us and these elements,
drawn from your creation.
May we discern here and now your Presence.
Empower us to follow Jesus Christ,
that as he takes our life on himself,
so may we take his life on ourselves.

The Lord’s Prayer

O God,
in Jesus Christ you revealed yourself first to Mary,
who bore you into the world you came to save.
And so we are bold to pray in the words Jesus taught us,
saying:

Our Father….

The Breaking of Bread

On the night when he was born
Jesus Christ, the Word of God,
became human flesh and blood,
revealing the depths of God’s love for the world.

And on the night before he died,
he gathered his disciples for the Passover meal.
He took a loaf of bread,
blessed it, broke it, and said:
“This is my body. Mark 14:22

The celebrant breaks the bread.

Here we share in Christ’s Body,
God’s living Presence,
given to us that we might be his body,
his living community,
witnessing to God’s love in all the Earth.

And after supper he lifted the cup, saying,
“This is my blood.” Mark 14:24

The celebrant pours the juice into the cup.

Here we share in the Blood of Christ,
the very life of God,
given to us and spread over all the world
blessing and a binding us in love,
restoring the connection between Creator and creation.

Now as often as we share this meal,
we proclaim with joy
that our Creator is now with us in Jesus Christ,
in our mortal flesh,
in our life and our death,
bringing us and all creation from death to life.

It is a sign of the new covenant of peace
in which we remember Christ,
participate in Christ,
and await Christ’s coming.

The Holy Communion of the People

Therefore,
I invite you to come to the Table
with hearts overflowing with love and joy,
in humility and thankfulness,
and receive the life of God.

The people come forward to share in the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Closing Prayer

Gracious God,
you came to us at Bethlehem.
We have come to you at this Table,
and you have given us your life in this sacrament.
Send us out into the world in peace,
sharing that life in ministries of justice and love.
And gathering together
your new community of blessing.
Amen.

Jubilee.

Jubilee is a very basic theme in Scripture. Rooted in the laws of Leviticus 25, Jubilee is affirmed by Isaiah and prominently mentioned by Jesus at the outset of his ministry.

Jubilee has two important meanings. The first is justice. In Leviticus it is about not allowing the accumulation of wealth among God’s people. Periodically, the economic system is deliberately reset. Debts are cancelled and property reverts to its original owners. Unlike the exploitative system the people had just escaped from in Egypt, there was to be in Israel no widening division between rich and poor. It is explicitly designed to undercut economic “growth” that allows some to grow fabulously wealthy at others’ expense.

The second purpose of Jubilee is indicated by its connection to Sabbath. Jubilee is really a super-sabbath. And Sabbath has to do with resting as well as justice. (In Exodus 20:8-11, the emphasis is on resting; in Deuteronomy 5:12-15, it is justice.) I don’t think it is too big a leap to connect Sabbath resting with the practice of contemplation and the spiritual life. The various manifestations of Sabbath in terms of periodic cessations of economic activity have the benefit of being times of focus on God’s Presence. I would say that this is done in deliberate meditation, quietness, listening, and prayer in which that Presence is “practiced” and experienced.

Jubilee thus encompasses the two foci of a faithful life. On the one hand, we have the very concrete concern for the “outward journey” of lived and practiced justice in the structures and relationships of society. Jubilee is a way of living in the economic world. On the other hand, we have the contemplative “inward journey” side, which has to do with being, presence, contemplation, meditation, and prayer.

I think that Jesus intends the Kingdom of God to refer to this dual focus Jubilee life. The Kingdom is a social network, a community of peace in which justice, simplicity, and non-violence are practiced in actual inter-personal relationships. And at the same time the Kingdom is practiced in more interior ways through prayer, worship, ritual, Sacrament, and contemplation.

Thus it is not the case that the inward focus of “navel gazing” contradicts or draws energy away from the outward “activist” focus on actual relationships; the two movements inform and define each other. Indeed, each needs the other for authenticity. The two movements are not disconnected. They are more like inhalation and exhalation, or the back and forth movement of something vibrating.

The two are brought together in the life lived in intentional community.

1) A contemplative community is by nature and necessity a community of justice. The “resting” of contemplation/meditation explicitly excludes consumption and exploitation. When one is just sitting one is not in any kind of adversarial relationship with anything. I suspect that all the monks on Mt. Athos put together have a smaller carbon-footprint than I do.

Without justice, contemplation is not contemplation but a self-indulgent escape, or masturbation: like the false contemplation of comfortable people vacationing at an exclusive, expensive spa. Real contemplation is engaged.

2) A community ordered by principles and practices of justice must also practice contemplation. Justice is impossible without presence. Presence feeds justice by keeping it connected to what is real and true. It counteracts the fears, thoughts, desires, and memories that distort our normal functioning by making us not present. In them we dwell in a dead past or a non-existent future.

Trying to make an outward journey without being rooted in inner awareness is to be subject to every principality and power, starting with one’s own ego. This is the tragic failure of every revolutionary, from Cromwell to Mao. It is a forcing people to be good without any understanding of goodness beyond the arbitrary will of the one with the most power. This inevitably results in a reign of terror. Real justice is (for want of a better word) dispassionate or detached.

Jubilee/Sabbath is one place where a detached justice and an engaged contemplation flow together. The emerging called/gathered/sent community of Christ-followers will be jubilee people.

History.

First of all, I love history. I like to read history and biography. I enjoy exploring historical sites and can spend hours in a trance reading every piece of information in a museum. History is very valuable and interesting to me.

I have never served in a church that did not lead with its history… but I have learned that this is often a big problem. As I peruse Church Information Forms, almost all of them mention somewhere prominently the date of the church’s founding. Now, I can understand why churches do this. They want to establish a sense of continuity and stability, proving their effectiveness and faithfulness over time. Like a business attesting to its own trustworthiness, churches are proud to have been around “since 1886,” or whatever.

But one of the biggest problems in established main-line churches today is nostalgia. Presbyterians often have this mindset that dwells on the past, viewing it in rosy and idealized tones. Compared with the “glory days,” our work today seems weak and inconsequential.

The most intense focus of this nostalgia is the 1950’s, when sanctuaries and Sunday Schools were overflowing and we couldn’t build churches or educate new ministers fast enough. For so many churches the tacit expectation of a new minister is to make it 1956 again. Much of the “church growth” industry feeds on this vain hope. Churches have sacrificed their very souls for the promise of full pews and abundant budgets, caving in to advertizing gimmicks and slick, pop “worship,” designed more to attract spectators than to cultivate disciples.

But this problem is deeper. For the whole edifice of Christendom has changed dramatically over the past few decades. I fear that the more we are identified – in our own minds and in the minds of others – with our past, the less able we are to communicate the gospel to today’s world.

In the first place, the past is a distraction. It may be interesting to us to celebrate a church’s colonial heritage or its revolutionary war history, or even to make a big deal out of the Reformation. But how does this emphasis serve the church’s mission today? What does that focus say to unchurched people today, except to proclaim how “yesterday” we are? We may veer very close to the mentality of museum curators or historical reenactors, as if the church were sort of a religious Colonial Williamsburg.

Too many of us think of our past as a golden age of splendid faithfulness. But there is an awful lot in our past not to be particularly proud of. The church of yesterday often supported and encouraged racism, militarism, nationalism, violence towards indigenous peoples, economic injustice, and environmental depredation. Eighty years ago parts of New Jersey were hotbeds of Klan activity, whose leadership included Presbyterian ministers! Some of our past we only lift up in shame and confession.

On the other hand, there are elements of our past that might be worth dusting off and placing front and center. In my first parish in far upstate New York they told the story of how their church was a last stop on the Underground Railroad. There was even a network of tunnels connecting the church basement with nearby homes, so escaped slaves could be hidden before being shepherded across the nearby Canadian border, in perfect violation of Federal law. There is a quality of active and risky faithfulness to be proud of!

But even these positive historical memories can be counterproductive if they simply remind us of how domesticated, timid, complacent, and reactionary, is a church’s mission today.

My point is that, in framing our history as a church, we need to be intentional and conscious that what we are communicating to people today. If we look like we have more to say to people and issues of one or more centuries ago, people are going to notice that and find us and our message hard to relate to.

The good news of God’s love for the world, revealed in Jesus, is timeless. It speaks to each generation. It is always new, fresh, wild, and amazing. When we sift through our past in articulating our identity, we need to lift up the times when our forebears were most faithful at the greatest cost.

And we need to be always seeking to speak and live this faith in terms intelligible to people in our own time and place. We need to lead with what God is doing with and among us today.