Pentecost 16 2021

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And with thy Spirit.

Let us pray.

Grant us, O Lord, so to trust in you with all our hearts.

For as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.

Amen.

Our children are invited to children's chapel with Alex in the back.

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

The rich and the poor have this in common.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail.

Those who are generous and blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.

Do not rob the poor because they are poor or crush the afflicted at the gate.

For the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil of them.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

The hills stand about Jerusalem.

So does the Lord stand round about the chosen people for this time or forever.

The scepter of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just.

As for those who turn aside to crooked ways, the Lord will lead them away from with the evildoers.

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, Have a seat here, please, while to the one who is poor you say, stand there, or sit at my feet?

Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

But you have dishonored the poor.

It is not the rich who oppress you.

Is it not they who drag you into court?

Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

For the one who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not murder.

Now, if you do not commit adultery, but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.

For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?

Can faith save you?

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyrae.

He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, yet he could not escape notice.

But a woman, whose little daughter, had an unclean spirit, immediately heard about him.

And she came and bowed down at his feet.

Now the woman was a Gentile of Syrio-Phoenician origin.

She begged Jesus to cast the unclean spirit out of her daughter.

He said to her, Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.

But she answered him, Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.

Then Jesus said to her, For saying that you may go.

The unclean spirit has left your daughter.

So she went home, found the child lying on the bed and the unclean spirit gone.

And then Jesus returned from the region of Tyrae and went by the way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis.

They brought to Jesus a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.

Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.

And then he looked up to heaven.

Jesus sighed and said to him, Epapha, that is, be opened.

And immediately the man's ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

And then Jesus ordered them to tell no one.

But the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

They were astounded beyond measure, saying, He has done everything well.

He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

The gospel of the Lord.

You probably have not heard of him, but he was really astute with his commentaries on language.

And one of the things he said is that since God is so transcendent, since God is above humanity and different from us, that all theology is blasphemy because it puts transcendent God into human terms.

You may or may not agree, but I'm going to warn you I'm about to do some blasphemy.

And I don't know how to introduce it other than that.

I'm going to try to be gentle with it, but I hope you'll suspend disbelief and follow me through this thread because this first part of the gospel to me is jaw-dropping.

And I want to explain why.

And let's have a look here that here is a woman who is not Jewish ethnically or religiously.

She's come to Jesus perhaps not in faith at all.

She might be has come to him in desperation, as any mother would do for a sick child, I believe.

And Jesus says this rather curious response, and I want you to hear, there's really no getting him off the hook for this.

He says to this woman, it is not fit to take bread for children and throw it to the dogs.

Now, Greek is a language similar to German and Spanish, in which all nouns have genders and are conjugated.

So please understand that Jesus says to this woman, it is not fair fit to take bread for children and throw it to female dogs.

We have a word in English for female dogs.

It is used exclusively to oppress women and frankly strip their humanity and dignity.

I have a hard time imagining Jesus saying that word, but I want you to understand, this is not my imagination.

This is how the text reads.

Jesus calls this woman a female dog.

Perhaps he is doing this, so I was raised to test her faith.

I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of God incarnate using gender-based epithets to test my faith.

So I want to give you a blasphemous understanding of perhaps what is going on.

And it comes from this idea that this really lovely Anglican priest John Wesley wrote down.

You may know of him, Methodism came after Wesley, but he was an Anglican priest until he died.

And John Wesley opined that ignorance is not sin.

Willful ignorance is sin.

So opined John Wesley.

It is not sinful to be ignorant.

It is sinful to choose and hold on to ignorance.

Now, here comes the blasphemy part.

I'd like you to consider that Jesus was ignorant.

That's a really bold claim.

But I'd like you to consider that Jesus was not born into a human body knowing how to do differential equations.

I'd like you to assume with me that Jesus was born just like your sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and grandchildren are, reliant upon learning from his own community.

I'd like you to dare to believe that our Lord, like us, was nurtured not only with empathy and compassion, but with cultural prejudice, racially, ethnically, sexually.

And I'd like you to consider that Jesus offers us extreme hope in this way, because quite honestly, if Jesus was not raised with cultural prejudice, if Jesus did not have to learn, then he is of little value to us who are raised with these things.

Alternatively consider that Jesus, quite frankly, like most of us, was raised in a misogynist culture.

And so Jesus speaks from his ignorance.

And this woman does what desperate women do.

She bears indignity for the sake of her child.

Now look, I don't think any man would do this.

I think a man would say, How dare you talk to me?

But this woman does like mothers do.

She forfeits her dignity for the sake of her daughter.

This is a real story, by the way.

I am not making this up.

This happens every day.

Ask any mother in the room.

And I would like to suggest to you that because of her perseverance, Jesus encounters, perhaps for the first time, a woman who is not Jewish, who is a woman, so has two strikes against her.

Let's be clear in the cultural world.

And somehow in this interchange, he is no longer talking to a label, he's now talking to a human being.

And what's hopeful for me about the story is Jesus encounters cultural ignorance and he learns from it.

And that's our opportunity.

That's our opportunity when I read this story.

The truth is in my life, whether or not, regardless of my age or learning, the only way I have changed cognitive categories about who God loves and who has dignity is when I met a person first, and then I discovered they had a label on them that I used to use to exclude them from God's interest in love.

And then I was at a crisis.

Do I lose my judgment or do I lose my friend?

This is how transformation works for most of us, quite honestly.

And the story is hopeful.

If Jesus can learn, so can we.

Don't you see?

And when we learn, we don't just do something nice.

We're participating in God.

The story also says to me how doubly unfair that somebody who's discriminated against because of her gender has to teach her oppressor a lesson.

That is the definition of unfair.

Sadly, most of the times I have flipped categories, that's what it took.

Somebody who I was prejudiced against chose to be patient and teach me.

And this story offers us insight.

We should not impose that on other people.

And that way, this story is an omnibus story.

It is not just about women, it's about anybody who you would put under God's table.

Anybody I would put under God's table.

And I have to tell you, I think there's a magic word in this text.

It's that word female dog.

I thought about this since I heard AOC talk last year about how she was labeled this word by a fellow congressperson, and it occurs to me that this word, female dog, is a word that is essentially similar to a racial epithet.

And I'm going to tell you my conclusion is no man has a right to use that word.

No man should ever use that word.

Because it represents not only misogyny, but fundamental human degradation.

The proof about Jesus' learning for me in the story is the follow-up, because you see, in the ancient world, and let's not pretend we're so different now, we'd like to pretend we are, but I'm not convinced we are.

They bring to Jesus a man who can neither hear nor can he speak.

And the cultural understanding of this is that person deserved the condition.

He earned it by being evil or unworthy or unholy.

Those people were not touched because touching them could make you sick.

Not with viruses and bacteria, but with something even worse, with spirituality.

And I put before you that maybe this woman teaches Jesus so well that now he's able to go forward and touch the untouchable.

We have this really curious line in the proverb today, and I want to make sure I quote it correctly.

The rich and the poor have this in common.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

The gay and the straight have this in common.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

Men and women have this in common.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

We have this invitation in this story to think about how we treat the maker of us all.

And this story revolves around language, so I'm going to do that for a second.

It's not just that we have this B word that describes women who have opinions we don't like.

And let's be honest, that's when we use that word.

We also do it to little girls.

We swap B words.

We use the word bossy.

I've never heard a boy called bossy.

Never.

Never.

We can change the words we choose and how we relate to one another.

And if we don't, don't you see that we're falling under the indictment of the book of James?

We're showing favoritism of the worst kind.

Favoritism, let's call it what it really is, discrimination.

And the gospel tells us not only should we not, but we get to join Jesus in resisting it and learning from it.

Now I'm going to tell you something really strange because it rhymes with the B word and it's another word that we only use for women.

I don't know if you've realized this.

Most ladies, you probably know this.

Do you know why your pants don't have pockets?

Oh, my pants have pockets.

I'm going to guess your pockets are about as big as a credit card.

My pockets are really quite big.

They hold a mobile phone, they hold a um, I can put many things in my pockets.

Do you want to know the history of women's pockets?

The reason you don't have pockets, ladies, is so you can't do spells.

Because women are witches.

It sounds funny and it's real.

It's real.

And it's crazy and it's wrong.

And this is our gospel story.

It's about that.

And we're be we're being invited not to wait until somebody has to correct us.

Here's an omnibus scene where we're invited to join Jesus in correcting ourselves.

Otherwise, we're living into this deep business.

So I want to invite you.

I don't know what to do, and I'm going to say it, and I don't like to bring politics into church, but I'm going to say this.

This was a deeply unsettling week for me in the state of Texas.

Deeply unsettling.

And what I'm going to call sin is putting an entire punishment on one person who maybe had no choice in a relationship.

Punishing one person.

That's sin with a capital S.

I choose to be angry.

I'm really sad about it, and I'm choosing to be angry.

But I want to suggest to you that if James is right, if works are the way we show our faith, then one of the ways we can do the works of righteousness is with our language.

So when a law is unjust, the Christian language is it's sinful.

You have my permission to use that word because that's the language the Bible uses for unjust laws.

Sin.

If we really believe that God has made rich and poor, black and white, male and female, that a work of our faith can be the way we use our language.

So I would like to invite you to strike the word bossy from your vocabulary.

I would like you when you hear the phrase, he is sowing his wild oats, to say he's being irresponsible.

I would like you when you hear the B word or the word witch to say, those words strip the dignity that God intends for every human being.

I would like you to do that.

And I would like you to hold me accountable to do that, because that's what the gospel of Jesus Christ is about.

That's the story today.

And don't you see?

I'm not putting these precepts before you because God demands them.

I'm putting these precepts before you because there are opportunities to join, and I mean literally join God in what God does.

That's what the story says.

This is what Jesus Christ does.

He turns around for a woman, we don't know anything about her faith, but we know she's not Jewish.

Wow, does that mean God cares about Muslims?

Yes.

Does that mean God cares about people who are atheists?

Yes.

And don't you see that when we choose to join God in caring for those people, it's not a burden.

It actually heals those parts of ourselves that we're most afraid of.

This is a, we talked about this this morning on the call.

This is a whole lot of work with a W.

And it's holy work with an H.

This is holy work.

How we talk to one another.

It's not semantics, it's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now I'm going to tell you, I'm really going to go off the deep end here.

This shows up in the most surprising of places.

My wife probably would not want me to share this, but I'm going to anyway, because it's not just about her.

There was an many of you know, my wife is a professional attorney, and back before COVID, there was a major article in the Atlantic that she confirmed in her own experience that when a woman goes into a courtroom, she essentially needs to bring three outfits.

Because judges will call one appropriate and the other's not.

And you know, it only depends on the judge's preference.

So will it be a pantsuit or a skirt suit or a dress?

My wife is an attorney.

She graduated top in her class.

She has to bring three changes of clothes to court.

That's sin.

That's sin.

It's unholy.

It's wrong.

Sometimes I'm surprised with how steeped in it I am because many of you know our curate Jenny, who is here being mentored in ministry by our congregation, she asked me one day, we were going to a formal event.

She said, What should I wear to a formal clergy event?

And my response was, you should wear a rabbit.

Not a bunny.

A rabbit is this wool vest and has a lot of buttons, and you put it on, and there's your collar.

I said, you just go to Almy and you order the rabbit.

Almy is like a maker of clergy clothes.

We went to Almi.

Guess what they don't make?

Rabbits for women.

Because women should wear dresses.

It shows up not just in the legal profession, in the medical profession, in elementary schools, and in the Texas state legislature, it shows up in our churches.

And it's wrong.

I don't know what to do about the women who have spent twenty years in Afghanistan able to go to school, who now are covered with Bercas.

I don't know.

And I know that's not the only problem of misogyny in the world.

I'm steeped in it.

I'm steeped in it.

Part of the reason I care, quite honestly, is because I have a wife who cares.

The other part is because I have that right there.

And this might be interesting to you that when it comes to voting on women's issues in Congress, do you know the most important factor?

It is not your political party.

It's whether or not a congressperson has a daughter.

You all have a daughter right there.

Because this is God's family, and that's your daughter.

You had a sister sitting next to you in the pew, even if you've never met them.

This is what the gospel is about.

And I want to be hopeful.

You don't have to.

It's not a nice thing to do.

This is how we participate in the identity of Jesus Christ.

With our language, with the way we look at one another, with the prohibitions we put on the clothes people have to wear to fit our own inclinations.

It is not too late.

It might get harder the more steeped we are in this habit, but it is not too late.

This is a gospel of hope.

Your sister that you've never met before you is worthy of God's love and belonging.

Worth receiving it from you and me.

With our expectations, with our language, with our touch.

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Your spirit lives in us, and we in your spirit.

Hear us, for it is your spirit who speaks through us as we pray.

Lord, hear us.

Bless the produce of our land and the works of our hands.

Lord, hear us.

Gracious God, you created in us your own image.

Teach us to honor all of your children.

Lord, hear us.

Gracious God, in your steadfast love, you provide for your creation.

Grant good rains for our crops.

Lord, hear us.

Gracious God, you inspired the prophets of old.

Grant that your church may faithfully proclaim your truth to the world.

Lord, hear us.

Gracious God, you sent your Son into the world.

Reveal him to others through his life in us.

Lord hear us.

Lord Jesus, you sent your apostles to make disciples of all nations.

Bless the courage and the laity of our diocese and church, together with Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops, and the diocesan cycle of prayer, St.

Cuthbert's Houston, St.

Dustin's Houston, and St.

Isidore's Spring, Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Michael, our presiding bishop.

Christ hear us.

Lord Jesus, for your sake, men and women forsook all and followed you.

Call many to serve you in religious communities and in the ordained ministry of your church.

Christ hear us.

Lord Jesus, you called your disciples to take up the cross.

Deepen in each of us a sense of vocation.

You prayed for your church to be one.

Unite all Christians that the world may believe.

You forgave the thief on the cross.

Bring us all to patience and reconciliation.

Christ hear us.

You broke down the walls that divide us.

Bring the people of this world to live in peace and concord.

Christ hear us.

You taught us through Paul your apostle to pray for kings and rulers.

Bless and guide all in authority.

Christ hear us.

You were rich, yet for our sake became poor.

Move those who have wealth to share generously with those who are poor.

Christ hear us.

You sat among the learned, listening and asking them questions.

Inspire all who teach and all who learn.

Christ hear us.

You cured by your healing touch and word.

Heal the sick and bless those who minister to them.

Christ hear us.

You were unjustly condemned by Pontius Pilate.

Strengthen our brothers and sisters who are unjustly suffering violence and persecution.

Christ hear us.

You lived as an exile in Egypt.

Protect and comfort all refugees.

Christ hear us.

You knew the love and care of an earthly home.

May your presence and protection be made known to migrant workers and their families.

You open and none can shut.

Open the gates of your kingdom to those who have died without hearing your gospel, especially Mark, Von Bailey, and Barry.

You have been glorified in the lives of innumerable saints, especially Saint Thomas.

Give us strength to follow in their footsteps.

Holy Spirit, you help us in our weakness and intercede for us when we cannot.

Remember our petitions and thanksgiving before God, especially Chris, Sean, Jerome, Lee, Paxton, and enhance our vision to see your presence in Spirit Hear us.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebration or petitions silently or aloud.

In your infinite compassion, Spirit, hear us.

Compassionate God, make your healing and peaceful presence known to the world.

Comfort those who mourn, strengthen those who are weary, encourage those in despair, and lead us all to fullness of life.

Spirit, hear us.

Father, we know that you are good and that you hear all those who call upon you.

Give to us and to all people what is best for us, that we may glorify you through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns through you and the Holy Spirit now and forever.

Amen.

We pray to you also for the forgiveness of our sin in mutual confession.

Before God, with the people of God, I confess to my own brokenness, the ways I wound my life, the lives of others, and the life of the world.

May God forgive you, Christ renew you, and the Spirit enable you to grow in love.

Amen.

Before God, with the people of God, we confess to our brokenness, to the ways we wound our lives, the lives of others, and the life of the world.

May God forgive you, may Christ renew you, and may the Holy Spirit enable you to grow in love.

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

There are a couple announcements I want to call to your attention.

Most of these you'll see in the e-news.

The first is uh we had sort of a little bit of an off week where we had um our fresh food distribution on a Wednesday, and an off week looks like 60 families, almost 300 people taking home a couple hundred dollars worth of groceries.

So that's an off week.

And isn't it incredible to be involved in the gospel that way?

Uh thank you so much for making time for this.

And again, you'll hear me say this.

What I love about it is that this is an activity of service for all ages.

And it is truly awesome to watch second graders, kindergartners, sort and load food in the cars.

I mean, it just absolutely touches my heart.

So thank you for supporting that.

Um, the other thing I want to call to your attention um is that our last call for the little photo exhibition we're gonna run in the hallway is Tuesday.

So we're asking for a high-resolution image of somewhere you've been in the world pre or post-COVID.

You could be in the photo or not.

At the end of the exhibition, you get to take it home.

But the goal is to connect this with beauty that we've missed from travel to see where our neighbors have been so we can be curious and connect with them.

Uh, and we just need those by Tuesday so we can get this thing up and running and enjoy one another's sense of beauty in the world.

Uh, if you have any questions, just let me know.

Um, the other thing, this is gonna sound like a weird announcement, but I do want to make sure you know that um you're invited to chapel every day at school.

St.

Thomas School has chapel five days a week, not on holidays like tomorrow.

Um, but from 8.15 to 8.25.

And one of the things we do in our chapel that I want to tell you now that most Christian folks don't know about, is that Wednesday is a high holy day for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

It's actually the beginning of the year.

It's called in English we say Rosh Hashanah.

In Hebrew it's Rosh Hashanah, it's head of the year.

And this is sort of an interesting bit because um the belief is that on Rosh Hashanah, God writes your fate for the next year.

And you have eight days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to repair the breaches you've made in the past year.

Before on Yom Kippur God seals your fate for the year.

Now, I don't know what I think about fatalism, but this is a beautiful thing our Jewish brothers and sisters do.

They will spend eight days, beginning on Wednesday, and I know this because I've been the recipient of one of these calls, calling people who they've experienced a breach in relationship with and trying to repair the breach.

Before COVID, this is true.

Some of our Jewish brothers and sisters would literally fly across the country to repair the breach, person to person.

And I just want to uplift what a beautiful practice that is.

And uh we have the opportunity to join that because the truth is it's not too late.

That's the promise.

It's not too late.

We get 40 days to do this in Lent, I want to point out our Jewish brothers and sisters do it for eight.

Uh, we probably could do it both times of the year and be the better for it.

So um, happy and holy Rosh Hashanah to you beginning on Wednesday.

Continue to walk in love as Christ first loved us, and gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God.

Lead me in my rotusness.

All things come of thee, O Lord.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.

You who have much faith and you who have much desperation.

You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.

Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.

The Lord be with you.

And with thy spirit.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up unto the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

It is meet and right so to do.

It is very meat, right, in our bound and duty that we should at all times and in all places and in all people give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

According to whose true promise the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, lighting upon the disciples to teach and lead them into all truth, uniting peoples of many languages and worldviews in the confession of one faith, and giving to thy church the power to serve thee as a royal priesthood and preach the gospel to all nations.

Therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we Lord and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.

Blessed is the one that cometh in the name of the Lord.

All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth, and didst make us in thine own image.

And of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.

He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that, his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.

For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.

And when he had given thanks to thee, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat.

This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.

And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for all for the remission of sins.

Do this as oft as you shall drink it in remembrance of me.

Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people do celebrate and make with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that there may be unto us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and our bodies.

Grant we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son, Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.

And also that we and all thy whole church may be made one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom and with whom and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.

Amen.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

Therefore, let us eat peace.

Hallelujah.

These are the gifts of God for you, the people of God.

Come and eat joyfully, with the resolution and understanding that we will continue to struggle and that God will always sustain us as we sustain one another.

Come and feast, let's pray together.

God of truth, we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life.

Nourish our faith that we may grow in love for you and for each other, and nourish the world in your image through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

What we choose changes us.

Who and how we love transforms us.

How we create remakes us.

Where we live reshapes us.

So in all our choosing, O God, make us wise.

In all our loving, O Christ, make us bold.

In all our creating, O Spirit, give us courage, and in all our living may we become whole.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you and those you love, and those for whom you pray this day and forevermore.

Amen.