A Communion Prayer for May 31, 202 -- Pentecost During COVID-19

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