(Queue: after Kyrie or Gloria)
The liturgy will be different today. Today we have an instructed Eucharist. That means that I will be interrupting the liturgy periodically to explain what we are doing together.
But first comes why we are here.
Why?
If all we want is to be decent people and to have a basic competence in life then we are wasting our time here today.
But, if we want to see God, then we are in the right place.
We are here for Communion, for Union with God.
What is Communion?
Perhaps communion is seen most clearly in its absence, since that is what we know best, dis-union, dis-order, diss-ease, dissent, failure to thrive.
Communion. Union with God, longing for God, from whom all thriving finds its source.
In the year 170, St. Iranaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”
That is what communion brings, God’s glory, and that glory has everything to do with humanity becoming fully alive.
In Jesus the glory of God and fully alive humanity are joined, at communion, at one.
The Eucharist is all about this Communion that is Jesus, a Communion that we share in, that we take into us, through Word and Sacrament, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, food indeed and drink indeed.
Eucharist means giving thanks, and what we do today is the Great Thanksgiving, we give great thanks for the gift of Jesus.
So the liturgy begins with praise to God for the miracle of Communion that we share, that we have been gifted with, that has graced us, that we are invited into, “Blessed be God!” We then follow with prayers, prayers that collect us, gathering our fragmented lives, our fragmented attentions, we are collected by the collects of purity and the collect of the day.
Then we listen, we receive.
We started with praise and prayer, now we pay attention, we attend to God’s Word, the Word of Scripture and the Word proclaimed in the sermon. That is why the first half of the liturgy is called the Ministry of the Word.
Now for the Collect of the Day.
(Next: Collect, Readings)
(Queue: after Gospel)
So we began with praise and prayer, then we attended, we listened, we received the Word from God. Now comes the sermon, or homily. Technically a homily is based on the scripture lessons of the day, and a sermon is more topical. Homilies begin with scripture and build up to a topic, sermons begin with a topic and apply relevant scripture, tradition and reason to it.
So technically I almost always give homilies, though today really is a sermon because it is topical: the topic being Communion.
The sermon begins our response to God’s Word, we proclaim the Good News, we then confess our faith in the Good News by saying the Nicene Creed.
I believe, I give my heart to the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We then pray for the Church and the world in the Prayers of the people, we have given ourselves to God and we then ask that all things my be filled with God’s life, God’s livelihood, God’s intention and purpose, that all things will find their completion in God.
After we confess our faith and offer up our prayers our next response to is to confess our sins.
We are preparing for Communion with God, for receiving the Sacrament. In our listening and responding, we give our selves to God, we repent of all that we think, say and do that opposes communion with God, that breaks communion, that does harm to God’s good creation.
We are not worthy, so God makes us worthy, we confess our breaking away from the thriving life that God intends, and we are absolved, we are given absolution, God pursues and reaches out and finds us is our lostness, our downward spiral and lifts us up.
It is gift, all is gift. We confess and give great thanks, all is gift all is thanksgiving. So we then proclaim the Peace of God that has entered the world, we offer and share it with each other in the passing of the peace.
This passing of the peace will finish the first half of the liturgy. The Ministry of the Word will be finshed.
(Next: Creed, prayers, confession, peace, announcements, offertory)
(Queue: after table is set)
We are now in the ministry of the Sacrament, the second half of the liturgy, where we offer up, the bounty of our lives in the offering, with the bread and the wine. We are fed.
That is why is called the offering, not the collection, they are offering plates, not collection plates. What we are doing is offering all our life to God, we put our selves into the offering plates, we pour our selves into the chalice, we place our selves onto the plate.
We offer our lives up that we may be transformed and transfigured, that our brokenness will become communion with the Creator of the heavens and the Earth, that we may join in the praises of all time, all beings, of the Triune God, that we may gaze into the eyes of love, and see the eyes of our lover.
We celebrate the great thanksgiving by remembering God’s self revelation and reaching out to our fallen and broken lives, we remember God’s mighty acts: the creation, the calling of the People of Israel, the ministry of the prophets that all lead up to Incarnation of the Son, of God becoming the flesh and blood of Israel, the flesh of Mary, the flesh of humanity, the flesh of creation.
We remember the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the gift of the Spirit, and our coming Judgment when our redemption will be complete and creation is renewed.
We remember the Last Supper and obey the command to eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ, that we may share his life, his communion, that we may have life, that we may become a humanity that is fully alive, that we may become the glory of God.
God became like us that we may become like God.
We eat drink that miracle at this table.
We celebrate the Great Thanksgiving for Communion.
And what is Communion? Communion is a person. Communion is Jesus.
(Follows: Eucharist-Dismissal)