Pentecost 2021

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

Blessed be God's family now and forever.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit.

Spread abroad this grift throughout the world by the preaching of the gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each other.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

How is that we hear each of us in our own native language?

Parthians, Medeus, Alamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phragya and Hamphrilia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and Protelites, Cretans and Arabs in our own languages.

We hear them speaking about God's deeds of power.

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?

But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine.

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them.

Indeed, these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.

No.

This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream visions dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire, and smoky mist, the sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

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

Thanks be to God.

O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all.

The earth is full of your creatures.

Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living things too many to number.

Creatures, both small and great.

There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, made for the sport of it.

All of them look to you.

Give them their food in due season.

You give it to them, they gather it.

You open your hand and they are filled with good things.

You hide your face and they are terrified.

You take away their breath and they die and return to their dark.

You send forth your spirit and they are created.

And so you remove the face of the earth.

May your glory, O Lord, endure forever.

May you rejoice in all your words.

You look at the earth and it trembles.

You touch the mountains and they sing.

May these words of mine please you.

I will rejoice in the Lord.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly while we wait for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

For in hope we were saved.

Now hope that is seen is not hope.

For who hope is for what is seen?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray as we ought.

But that very spirit intercedes with his eyes too deep for words.

And God, who searches the heart, knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God the people.

Thanks be to God.

Jesus said to the disciples, When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who comes from the Father, the Advocate will testify on my behalf.

You also are to testify because you've been with me from the beginning.

I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to the one who sent me.

Yet none of you ask me, where are you going?

But because I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.

For if I do not go away, the advocate will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send the advocate to you.

And when the advocate comes, the advocate will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.

About sin because they do not believe in me.

About righteousness because I'm going to the Father, and you will see me no longer.

About judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth.

For the Spirit will not speak on the Spirit's own, but will speak whatever the Spirit hears, and will declare to you the things that are to come.

The Spirit will glorify me, because the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you.

All that the Father has is mine.

For this reason I said that the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Not everybody notices this, but it's worth reminding you that the disciples aren't from Jerusalem, they live in Galilee, and here they are in Jerusalem this week on the day of Pentecost.

Most of us don't realize that this is a traditional Jewish holiday and it's one of the high holy holidays.

In Hebrew, it's usually called Shabuot, and it happens 50 days, what do you know, after Passover.

On Shabuot, what happens is that our Jewish brothers and sisters go to the synagogue.

This is a really old practice.

The disciples of Jesus would have gone to the temple to do this, and they celebrate and commemorate God's gift of the Torah to Moses on top of Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, depending which book of the Bible you're reading.

So just to put you in the sequence, Passover happens, and then 50 days after Passover, Moses gets the law on top of Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb.

And just like we do Easter, right, on Passover, 50 days later it's Pentecost, right?

Fifty days after Passover, our Jewish brothers and sisters commemorate God's greatest gift.

So this is really important.

Sometimes we say, oh, this is all about the law.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters would never use the word law to describe the whore the Torah.

In fact, when it's read in the synagogue and in the temple, there's sweet things eaten like honey, because God's word is the sweetest gift.

Sometimes we think, oh, look, a lot of our Hebrew Bible, that's about obligation.

And our Jewish brothers and sisters don't hear it that way at all.

They hear the Hebrew Bible and the guidance of the Torah as how we can live into deeper and deeper joy with one another and with God.

So this is God's greatest gift.

Now, the disciples have gone back up to Galilee after Easter, no doubt about it.

And here they are back down in Jerusalem for another high holy day.

I don't know if you notice so.

They've got the doors locked.

They are a little worried.

Perhaps it would happen to Jesus might in fact just happen to them.

So they are celebrating the goodness of the Torah, but it's one of those bittersweet celebrations because there's some danger involved.

And if it's okay to say, um, they're at a moment where I think the breath has been knocked out of them.

So today is a day about getting a second wind.

Couple of thoughts about the Holy Spirit before we talk about, I think, what the uh opportunity of Pentecost is for us, because honestly, I don't know if you realize this, um, Christians have been pretty wary about the Holy Spirit since the third century when a guy called Monthenus showed up and said he was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit.

You know, like Jesus was the incarnation of the Son.

The problem is Monthenus, he died and he didn't come back.

So that was sort of the end of that.

So we tend to be a little bit skeptical talking about the Holy Spirit, especially in the Episcopal Church.

We're not usually prone to charismatic gifts.

So a couple of thoughts here.

Um the word spirit in both Hebrew and Greek, it's it's curious that they align.

In in Hebrew the words ruach, and in Greek the word is pneuma, uh, really is best translated as moving air.

Now that sounds really strange.

What's the spirit have to do with moving air?

Well, moving air, as you know, could be a wind.

Um in general, it's a breath.

And we get this really lovely image of what a holy breath does when you read Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

God makes the human beings out of clay, and they're just models and they're lifeless, and then God gives them a holy breath, and spirit is an equally good translation.

God goes and the clay becomes alive.

Curiously enough, God's name in Hebrew sounds like this.

This is all tied up.

And sometimes we don't realize because uh in our Western, we we've kind of westernized our Hebrew tradition without realizing how eastern it is, and I want to give you a couple images for this.

Uh, I don't know how familiar you are uh with Hinduism, but in Hinduism, the seat of your person is called your Atman, and it is in fact your breathing.

There's a story from the Mahabharata about this, that's one of the Hindu sacred books.

Uh that one time the body's senses had a competition.

Which sense is the most important?

So vision went first, and vision was really proud of itself and said, Let's see how you fare without me.

So vision left the body, the body suffered, but survived.

Vision came back, the body was happy.

Hearing went next.

Hearing left the body, the body survived, wasn't happy, was delighted to have hearing back.

And then it was Atman's turn.

And the Atman, the breath, got ready to leave.

And the rest of the body said, Don't go, you win.

And this is really curious to know because a lot of times in Western tradition, we say the spirit lives in your heart.

In the Hebrew Bible, your soul, your spirit lives right here.

This is called your nephish, but the word ruach is sort of like the word qi, if you know anything about sort of Eastern thought.

It's your life force and it lives here.

That is to say that the spirit of God is as close to you.

The Quran says God's presence is as close as your jugular vein, right?

But here we're hearing that the ruach, the spirit of God, lives right there.

And with each breath I put to you, we have this opportunity, like the disciples, to find a second wind, to be constantly recreated into God's image, to be nourished and sustained, or to not breathe in deeply enough to change us.

What I love though about folks like the poet Rilke, Rilke says that whether we want it or not, the Holy Spirit is moving within us.

It's lovely theology, isn't it?

Whether we want it or not.

Sometimes you look back over a span of years and you say, like Jacob, surely God was in this place, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I do now.

This is a little bit about what Pentecost is about.

One other word about spirit, because Jesus uses a funny word today.

He uses the word advocate.

Sometimes it's translated the word comforter.

This in Greek is the word paraclete, and it's a little bit ambiguous, but I want to put to you an oppositional pair here.

That's really interesting.

We have two words for like the not good spirit.

Uh one of them is the word Satan.

It's a Hebrew word.

Sometimes we call it Satan, but it's Satan in Hebrew.

And it just means accuser.

When you read the Hebrew Bible, the accuser works for God, kind of like the DA or the prosecuting attorney, and goes around and says, look, that guy's phony.

Works for God.

We've got this word in Greek called diabolos, and it doesn't mean a like the devil, it actually means slanderer.

So I want to put to you an interesting idea that the Holy Spirit, the advocate, is sort of like your court-appointed defense attorney.

And in the middle of accusation and slander, good news, God has appointed for you a court-appointed defense attorney that is very different from the kind you could expect in courts here in Houston.

Forgive me for saying this.

In general, you don't want the court-appointed defense attorney.

They've got a huge caseload.

They don't have a lot of time.

This is a different one.

See, the advocate, the court-appointed defense attorney, doesn't just work for God.

The court-appointed defense attorney is God.

And God is the judge.

And God is going to represent you in front of God as your advocate.

It's a lovely legal image, isn't it?

And Jesus says, look, it's to your benefit that you get this.

Because if you just fixate on me, you might miss that God is in other places.

So here are the disciples.

And they're tired and they're scared.

And there's this thing that happens that I only encountered really a couple of years ago.

I never had this happen as a wrestler in high school or college.

I don't know if you've ever exercised and got your second win.

Can I ask you to do something really un-Episcopalian?

Has anybody ever had their second win before?

I was talking to somebody this morning and they said that in elite athletes, you get it 12 minutes in.

I'm not an elite athlete.

It takes me like 30 minutes.

I never got it until I started running long enough.

Three miles wasn't long enough.

It has to be like seven.

And I go from being like puffy and like out of sync to just finding this natural rhythm.

And at a certain point, if it weren't for my joints, like I could run all day.

This is what happens to the disciples.

They get a second wind.

They're able to get up from this moment of potentially quitting or potentially being afraid and open the doors and go out.

That's what they do.

And they preach, and this is what's really interesting that we don't often recognize.

There's a couple of things that happen here in this proclamation that they make on Pentecost.

First of all, you notice that people from all over the globe, the known globe at the time, are able to hear what the disciples have to say.

And a lot of times we say, look, this is speaking in languages.

But if you know anything about languages, I won't ask you to raise your hand again.

Most of us had to learn some of a foreign language when we were in high school.

Languages don't work word-to-word translation-wise.

There's these things called idioms, you know?

And they don't translate.

And then certain languages, I could say something in English, like if you told a German person, don't cry over spilled milk, that's an idiom, right?

They would say, Why would you do that?

Right?

I mean, it makes no sense at all.

And for example, I don't know if you realize this in Spanish, if you've got a group of a thousand women and you add one man, the group is now in what gender?

It's now masculine.

That's not linguistic, friends, that's a worldview.

Languages imply worldview.

So here's the miracle of Pentecost.

It's not that everybody hears exactly the same words with the same Meaning, it's that God is recreating the world not in spite of, but fully excited about a variety of worldviews.

None of the people on Pentecost leave believing the same thing because linguistically it's impossible.

I don't know if you've ever heard that message before.

But I think it's right.

And you know what it leads us to?

I don't know if you've seen those little bumper stickers that have that, those religious symbols that spell out the word coexist.

Coexist is the minimum.

You think you have to have that in a civilized society.

What happens on Pentecost is the Holy Spirit changes those letters so that it spells respect.

And don't you see that's our invitation on Pentecost?

Is to change tolerance to respect.

Because the message of Pentecost is not that we are to be unified.

Let me say the wrong thing.

We're not supposed to be uniform in what we believe.

I am a hundred percent confident this is right.

We are meant to be unified in worship.

Uniformity does not equal unification.

My biggest hope for the Episcopal Church, having been a part of every other church there is, I mean it.

I have, except for I wasn't a Mormon.

Um there's room for me.

I've got some pretty wack-aboo beliefs.

And I belong here.

And here's the good news, you do too.

There's room for you.

And the message of Pentecost is guess who else there's room for?

Anybody who does this.

Well, that's a lot of people, isn't it?

And I feel this is really, really important because I just was uh hiking with one of my best friends in high school, uh, and I was doing some some kind of recollections and memories.

And uh, I don't know if this has happened to you.

I hope it hasn't, but um, I had a really, really great friend in high school.

This is not the guy I went to Carl Art with.

And um man, like we would finish each other's jokes.

Uh he was we had so much fun together.

And then one day we started talking about some of the things we believed.

And I had changed my mind a little bit, to be honest.

And uh when I told my friend some of the things I was chewing over in my brain, he decided we couldn't be friends anymore.

Because I didn't believe the right stuff.

Now I get because I grew up with this.

Don't want to water down what you believe.

You gotta be careful, you don't want to lead anybody astray.

Some of the ways I grew up were that if people were gonna possibly lead you astray because they believe the wrong thing, you would take that friendship and you put it up here on the altar, and you'd sacrifice it to the Lord.

Pentecost is not about that.

There's a time when maybe that's the response, and that's the response when you're immature.

We teach our children when they're young, we try to spare them from growing up too fast, but we want them to grow up.

And I want us to grow up.

Somebody believing something different from us is no threat to God.

That's how good God is.

You cannot threaten God with what you think.

If you hate God, good news.

That's not a threat.

That's how big God is.

So instead, friends, of us putting relationships on the altar and sacrificing them for the Lord, Pentecost is about bringing people to God's table and saying, look, you had a seat here all along.

You had a seat here all along.

These tongues of fire, a lot of times we like to think about, I don't know, Mick Jagger, the emblem from the Rolling Stones, right?

But you need to know that in the Bible, fire never means torment, and it's never about some kind of special whoop-the-doo display.

Fire in the Bible is about refining and cleansing, it's about licking up our draws so we can be precious metals.

And the world needs this kind of purification with the words that we speak to one another, with our imagining God's presence at this level in every human being that we see, especially the ones that bother us.

And if you don't get anything else out of today, let me tell you how you speak in tongues of fire.

If you can't think of something nice to say about somebody, think harder until you can.

Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Niceen Creed.

We believe in one God.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

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.

Gracious God, you created the heavens and the earth.

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

Lord hear us.

Gracious God, you created us in 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.

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 hearing us.

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

Bless the clergy and laity of our diocese and church, together with Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kai, our bishops, in the diocesan cycle of prayer, Grace Galveston, Holy Trinity Dickinson, Mosaic Church Plant Pearland, and St.

Andrew's Pearland.

Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Michael, our presiding bishop.

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.

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.

Bring us all to penitence and reconciliation.

You broke down the walls that divide us.

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

Christ hear us.

You taught us through Paul, your apostle, to pray for kings and rulers, bless and guide all in authority.

You were rich, yet for our sake became poor.

Those who have wealth to share, move those who have wealth to share generously with those who are poor.

You sat among the learned listening and asking them questions.

Inspire all who teach and all who learn.

You cured by your healing touch and word.

Heal the sick and bless those who minister to them.

You were unjustly condemned by Punctius Pilate.

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

You lived as an exile in Egypt.

Protect and comfort all refugees.

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

Give us strength to follow in their footsteps.

Remember our petitions and thanksgivings before God, especially Chris, Sean, Jerome, Eric, and Lee, and enhance our vision to see your presence in them.

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

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.

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

Give to us and all people all 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.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

And I apologize, there's one highlighting slip here.

In that first paragraph, may God forgive you.

That's going to be your line to me, and then I'll get to say it back to you.

So pretend like that's high lit.

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

May God forgive you.

Christ reveal 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 live our lives, the lives of others, and the lives of the world.

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

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

A couple of announcements I want to call to your attention.

First is that now that we've entered Pentecost, expect that we're going to do something a little different with the Eucharistic prayer.

So in Lent, we did Rite One.

In Easter, we did Rite Two.

And beginning today, we'll start rotating every other week.

So next week we'll be right one at both services, and the week after we'll be right two at both services.

And that way we really live into the prayer book as, you know, whether you're in 8 o'clock or 10:30, you get the breadth of this.

Today we'll be getting uh prayer C, and we'll be using the prayer books that are in front of you.

They're in general, they'll be red.

So we're gonna start going back to our prayer books today.

I want to call to your attention something that happened this morning.

Um, Jennifer Salazar, who works for the Better Business Bureau in Houston, uh, gave us a really nice report on the top 10 scams of 2021.

And that'll be on our YouTube page later today.

So if if you if you've had an email from Amazon that wasn't Amazon, uh, or if you're not sure if you got one of those and what to do, uh, you can watch this video on the YouTube channel.

It's really, really helpful and concrete, like ways to make sure you don't encourage more robocalls, just for example.

So um that that'll be up on the web.

Uh next week I want to remind you that we'll be talking about theologies of the cross at nine o'clock on Zoom.

So you'll see this in the Wednesday uh e-news.

Uh that'll be in between services next week.

A couple other thoughts.

Um, one is uh the the school has left the art up for us on Sunday.

They were gonna take it down Friday, but they left it up so you can see it again.

They're gonna send it home with kids.

So please take time to look at the creative and fantastic work of our school.

It's really amazing what the teacher's done with them this year.

Um, the other thing I want to tell you about the school, because we don't always know on a day-to-day basis what's going on, but we are losing from the school somebody who has really been part of like the breadth of the school for 22 years.

Our director of admissions, Moisina, uh, is retiring.

This will be her very last week, in fact.

You may not know Moisina, and that's okay.

I know her, and you should be proud of her.

Not only has she kept the school open, I mean literally, but that lady has been the presence of grace and hospitality and care for children, for parents, and for teachers.

So, if you got a minute, if you'd write her a card, I don't know you, but the priest says you're good.

Thanks for loving our people.

That would be huge.

She'll be here this week.

You can drop those off, you can mail them in, you can find her email and just send her an email.

We've never met, but thank you for making a difference in the lives of our community for 22 years.

I mean, really, she's a wonderful, wonderful woman, and she deserves encouragement and thanks.

So I just want to lift that up to you.

Um, I also want to make sure you know that um in two weeks from yesterday, that'll be June the 5th, that'll be our next fresh food distribution uh right here in the parking lot from 7.45 in the morning till 10.

And there is a job for every age group.

You don't have to sign up in advance, you can just show up.

Last time we had so many volunteers, we got to watch, some of us got to stand around and watch children do the work.

I could watch that for hours.

What a gift.

Guys, really, what a gift that you are to the community raising up children.

You know, most organizations don't allow kids under the age of 12 to volunteer at all.

It's beautiful to see how we do family ministry here.

So that opportunity is open for you.

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

There's a little wheel, little wheel, little wheel, turn and there's a little wheel, little wheel, turn it in my heart.

There's a little wheel, little wheel, little wheel, turn and spare my heart.

There's a little wind, a spare wheel.

There's a little and a spare wheel.

I know there's a little wind, the spare wheel, I walk a spare every time.

I can feel the spirit of my heart.

All things come of you, 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 little, 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.

He invites you to meet him here.

Our service this morning continues on page 370 of your red prayer book.

You'll want to turn there unless you've got to memorize.

There's a lot of responses in prayer C.

Page 370.

While you're turning there, I forgot to tell you that during Pentecost, we're going to pray the traditional version of the Lord's Prayer, and then we're going to pray it again from a different worldview.

So we'll get to hear it both traditionally and in a new way, and we'll pray them back to back throughout the season of Pentecost.

The Lord be he with you.

Let us give thanks to the Lord of God.

God of all power, ruler of the universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

At your command, all things came to be.

From the primal elements, you brought forth the human race and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill.

You made us the stewards of creation, but we turned against you and betrayed your trust, and we turned against one another.

Again and again you called us to return.

To prophets and sages you revealed your righteous law.

And in the fullness of time you sent your only son, born of a woman, to fulfill your law, to open for us the ways of freedom and peace.

Therefore, we praise you, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope to proclaim with them your glory in their unending hymn.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.

He said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, Drink this, all of you.

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

Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.

Remembering now his work of redemption and offering to you this sacrifice of thanksgiving.

We celebrate his death and resurrection as we await the day of his coming.

Lord God of our parents, God of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, and Keturah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob, Leah and Rachel, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us.

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal.

Let the grace of this holy communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

Risen, Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Accept these prayers and praises, Father, through Jesus Christ, our great high priest, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, your church gives honor, glory, and worship from generation to generation.

And now, as our Savior Jesus 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.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Please pray with me a second version of that prayer.

Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are.

Set the world right.

Do what's best, as above, so below.

Keep us alive with three square meals.

Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.

You're in charge.

You can do anything you want.

You're ablaze in beauty.

Yes, yes, yes.

Hallelujah.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Hallelujah.

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

Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.

And I'm going to invite you to receive bread, and you can receive wine through intention only, or you can skip either with arms crossed and receive a blessing.

I'm going to invite you to come to the aisle closest to your right to come down forward for the elements and return to your seat on the far side.

And I'll start over here on the far right.

Freely thou hast given me thy body for my food, O thou who art afire, consuming the unworthy.

Consume us not, O our Creator.

Consume the thorns of our transgressions.

Instead enter into our members, our veins, our hearts, cleanse our souls and sanctify our reasonings.

Make firm our knees and bodies with this nourishment from your table.

Illumine our five senses to see you ever at work in the world.

Always protect, guard, and keep us from soul-destroying words and deeds.

Give us understanding and illumination.

Show us to be a temple of thy one spirit, and not the home of many sins.

Thou art the only sanctification, nourishment, and light of our souls, O good one.

And to thee we ascribe glory day by day.

Amen.

May God, who by the Holy Spirit cause those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you forever.

Amen.

Thanks be to God.