Living Water From an Ancient Well: communion

Showing posts with label communion. Show all posts

Thursday, April 10, 2014

A Simple Foot Washing Liturgy for Holy Thursday

FOOT WASHING LITURGY

Posting this on the Thursday before Holy Thursday so you have time to use it if your so inclined

Prayer of Preparation for Worship
God of love, as we prepare to remember the events of this poignant night, open our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus’ self-giving love, and by your Spirit work in our community a desire and commitment to serve each other and our hurting world. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tolling of the Bell

Bearing of the Light (lighting of a candle)

Solemn Declaration (Sung Amen)

Call to Worship
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
In worship on this night, we testify to God’s love shown perfectly in Christ. We recommit ourselves to love one another as a community of faith.
O taste and see that the Lord is good!
Come, let us worship the Lord!

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.

Call to Confession
As we remember this night of betrayal and desertion, let us confess our sins before God and one another.

Prayer of Confession
Merciful God, we have not loved you with all our heart and mind and strength and soul.
[Silent prayer]
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
We have not loved our neighbors as you have taught us.

[Silent prayer]
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
We are indifferent to the saving grace of your Word and life.

[Silent prayer]

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Forgive and heal us by your steadfast love made known to us in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

The Word

Old Testament: Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
Psalm: Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Gospel: John 13: 1-17, 31b-35

Affirmation of Faith: The Nicene Creed

Ritual of Footwashing

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done for you.

Call to Prayer
As Jesus prayed to his Father in the shadows of the Garden of Gethsemane, let us pray together now in the shadow of his love.

Prayers of the People
For the leaders of the world, that they may put aside their differences and seek the peace of Christ, we pray,
Lord, hear our prayer.
For the Church, that she may become a servant offering hope, life, and compassion to all who seek God’s love, we pray.
Lord, hear our prayer.
For all who receive daily bread in welfare lines, food banks, and at this table, that they may forgive our daily trespasses, we pray,
Lord, hear our prayer.
Lord, gather your people around your table, that we who celebrate this sacrament may understand what Christ does for us and follow in his way, we pray,
Lord, hear our prayer.
That we may long for the day when all may feast at the table of our Lord, no one will be an outsider, and all will be loved, we pray,
Lord, hear our prayer.
As our Lord continues to make intercession for us, let us unite in this prayer, remembering those who asked us to pray and those who need our prayers.
[Silent prayer]
Gracious God, as we eat and drink the sacrament of the body and blood of your Son, given for us on the cross, help us in turn to give ourselves to you by giving ourselves to others. We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Meal

Blessed are you, Lord God of the Universe, you are the giver of this bread, fruit of the earth and of human labor. Let it become the bread of life!

Blessed be God, now and forever!

Blessed are you, Lord God of the universe, you are the giver of this wine, fruit of the vine and of human labor. Let it become the wine of the eternal kingdom!

Blessed be God, now and forever!

As the grain once scattered on the fields and the grapes once dispersed on the hillside are now reunited on this table in bread and wine, so, Lord, may your whole church be gathered together from the corners of the earth into your kingdom!

Come, Lord Jesus, come!

Communion

Silent Prayer

The people leave in silence

graphic: Ethiopian Icon of Christ washing Peters Feet

Modified from the reformed worship web sight

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

By 400 the simple way of celebrating communion used by the earliest Christians became more and more developed and complex. In time each city had its own way of offering the Holy Eucharist. Eventually as the church became more centralized communion became more standardized. The Divine Liturgy most frequently used today in the Orthodox Church is called the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. It follows the traditions of the city of Constantinople, where St. John Chrysostom (+407A.D.) served as Patriarch.

Here is a link to the Divine Liurgy of St John Chrysotom in it's entirety as used by the Orthodox church.

living water reprint from 2009

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Gregory of Siani ( died 1346 )

Born in Smyrna, he was captured by Turks as a young man. He was eventually ransomed to Cyprus and became a monk at Saint Cathrine monastery on Mount Sinai. Later he moved to Crete where he learned the practice of the Jesus prayer and hesychasm from the monk Arsenios.

Eventuallyi n 1310 he moved to Hount Athos to the Magoula skete near Phileotho Monestary where he remained until 1335. Thus, having gained the experience of many centuries of the monastic life from the ancient monasteries, Gregory settled down in a solitary place for the purpose of pursuing "hesychia" (stillness doing the Jesus Prayer).

With his contemporary Gregory of Palamas, he helped to establish Mount Athos as a center of hesychasm. From there he wrote and traveled widely teaching this approach to contemplation as a method of union with God.

Concerned with spreading of monasticism, Gregory founded several cells on Mount Athos, as well as four monasteries in Thrace.

Increasing Muslim raids on Athos pushed Gregory and some disciples into the Bulgarian empire, where he would find protection under Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Alexander and where he founded a monastery near Paroria, Strnadzah mountains in south east Bulgaria where he died on November 27th 1346.

The Philokalia includes five works in Greek by Gregory,

On Commandments and Doctrines, Warnings and Promises; on Thoughts, Passions and Virtues, and also on Stillness and Prayer: 137 Texts
Further Texts
On the Signs of Grace and Delusion, Written for the Confessor Longinos: Ten Texts
On Stillness: Fifteen Texts
On Prayer: Seven Texts

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Writings of Bonhoffer ( Part 2)

Life Together (1938)

In Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954), written the following year, Bonhoeffer theologically interprets the daily life of the seminary he directed. “The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes,” he writes “the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”

Ethics (1943)

Ethics, on which Bonhoeffer worked from 1940 to 1943, was intended to be a magnum opus. But it was never finished.

Bonhoeffer composed its manuscripts during the time of his political resistance activity. Portions were even temporarily confiscated by the Gestapo when he was arrested and imprisoned in April 1943. Thus, questions remain about how the manuscripts are to be ordered. The second English edition (Macmillan, 1965) rearranges the order of the manuscripts; the new German edition will present yet a third arrangement. But such technical problems are for scholars to worry about. The reader looking for insights on living the Christian life will find plenty.

To begin with, Bonhoeffer repudiates the idea that Christian ethics is concerned with the knowledge of good and evil. One must reject the questions “How can I be good?” and “How can I do good?” and instead ask “the utterly and totally different question, ‘What is the will of God?’ ” The God who is incarnate, crucified, and resurrected in Jesus Christ is the ultimate reality. Thus, Bonhoeffer argues, Christian ethics is about the formation of human life into the form of Christ.

For Bonhoeffer, Christians do not live in a separate divine, holy, and supernatural sphere. Rather, they must seek and do God’s will in the natural, historical, public world—in work, marriage, government, and church. As a theologian involved in political resistance against tyranny, Bonhoeffer asked, What does it mean to act responsibly for nation and church? A free and responsible life, he concluded, means acting on behalf of others, in accordance with reality, and being willing to accept guilt. In other words, doing the will of God is finally rooted only in the grace of God.

Fiction from Prison (1944)

In his first year in prison, Bonhoeffer tried to take stock of his life with attempts at a play and a novel. These were published as Fiction from Prison (Fortress, 1981).

This highly autobiographical book gives an intimate glimpse into the Bonhoeffer family. It expresses through characters and conversation some of Bonhoeffer’s most distinctive theological ideas.

Letters and Papers from Prison (1944)

Anyone who has not read Letters and Papers from Prison (Macmillan, 1972) has an intellectual feast in store. The book electrified theological debate in this century.

These letters ask the provocative question: Who is Jesus Christ for modern people who have “come of age” and outgrown religion? What may sound like the much-dreaded “secular humanism” is, on the contrary, a profoundly Christocentric theology of the cross.

If that sounds paradoxical, begin with the letter of July 21, 1944, the day following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler. Bonhoeffer wrote that “the church is the church only when it exists for others.… The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.” In a letter of August 21, he wrote, “If we are to learn what God promises, and what he fulfills, we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus.”