INVITATION
From the Beginning, followers
of Christ have broken bread together.
Gathered at tables fancy and
simple, sharing wafers or full meals.
In this era of pandemic and
separation we continue to gather together.
Sitting in our homes, with
our own supplies, but linked together by the bits and bytes and
cables.
The meal we share is hosted by
the God who meets us where we are. And so all who seek to live by the
values of God’s Kingdom are welcome to join as we eat together,
from a distance.
Let us break bread together
in our homes.
GREAT
THANKSGIVING
May the Peace of Christ be with
you.
And also with you.
Feel the wind of God blow in
your lives.
Refreshing us, bringing in
new air.
We
offer the God who is in our every breath our prayers
With the breath of God in us
we share our fears, our hopes, our dreams, our thanks.
God you speak Creation into
being. We give thanks for all that You have made.
For the waters from which life
sprang forth, for the wind that fills our lungs, for the food that
fills our bellies,
for the fellow creature with
whom we share the world.
We sing songs and shout
cries of praise and thanksgiving.
God you call us to live in you
and you choose to share our lives.
And so we pour out our fears
and anxieties...
We scream our laments....
We dare to share our dreams and
visions...
Trusting that you hear our
prayers, trusting that in love you hold them and answer them.
God
you meet us where we are, be that in our churches,
or in the fields, or in the
forest, or in our living rooms.
You
speak to us constantly through many voices.
You
remind us over and over again that even when we are distanced from
each other we are not alone.
We thank you for all those
voices that have shared your love and promise over the centuries:
prophets and pastors, men
and women filled with your Spirit,
all those who remind us of
who you would have us live within the world you have made.
And as followers of Jesus of
Nazareth,
who we call Christ, we join in the cry of the ages:
Blessed is the One who comes
in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest!
REMEMBERING
As followers of Jesus, the one
we name as the Messiah we remember his story.
Born of the young woman
Mary, raised in a backwater town,
he came out to share your
vision for the world.
He modelled your Kingdom, lived
by its values, and in doing so enraged those with power.
Knowing
what was to come, he promised that we would not be left orphaned;
that an Advocate, the Holy
Spirit would be there to sustain us always.
Then he was arrested, tried,
convicted executed.
But the story was not over.
You, God of power in weakness,
you raised him from death
and he returned to breathe
hope and life into his fear-filled followers, into us.
As we gather for this meal we
remember a meal Jesus shared with his friends on the night before his
death.
We remember that he took some
bread, blessed it, broke it, and passed it to the saying:
This
is my body broken by and for the world. Eat it and remember me.
Then later he took a cup of
wine, blessed it, and passed it to them saying:
This is the Cup of the New
Covenant, Drink it and remember me.
And so, even all these years
later, we continue to eat and drink and remember, sharing in the meal
of faith.
And pledging, as we
remember, to follow the Way that Jesus laid out for us.
INVOKING
Holy Spirit, you blow though
closed doors and into the places where we are.
You meet us in our homes and
fill us with hope, you light the fire of transformation in our
hearts.
As
we pause to eat and drink this morning,
make us, while separate,
unified in heart and hope.
In this bread and this cup may
we meet the Risen Christ.
In this meal of faith and
transformation may we feel the fire and wind of the Kingdom.
And once we have eaten, may we
be unified in the common quest to share the dreams You have given us.
Willing to offer what we
have so that those dreams and visions take shape in our world.
We pray in the name of the
Risen Christ, who breathes hope and peace into our fear, and who
encouraged us to pray together saying:
Our Father, who art in
heaven...
And all the people said
AMEN!
BREAKING/POURING
The Bread we break is the Bread
of Life
The Drink
we pour is
the Drink
of Love
These are Gifts from God for
the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Shall we eat and drink
together?
PRAYER
AFTER THE MEAL
We have broken the bread, we
have poured the drink, we have shared a meal together.
Even while we remain
physically separated, we have been united in our souls.
May this meal we share with
each other and with the whole Christian family across the centuries
and miles change who we are.
May it feed the fire in our
bellies. May it strengthen us when the storms blow through.
And now, as we continue to live
as people who have had the Holy Spirit breathed onto and
into us, may we love and
serve God, our neighbour, and ourselves.
So that the Kingdom of Love
is made real in our lives. Amen
