Great Thanksgiving for Black History Month (Liturgy)

God of hope and grief,

God of power and strength,

God of the widow and the orphan,

God of the imprisoned and impoverished,

God of the poor in spirit, the merciful, the mourning…

God who sees the proud and arrogant,

God who does not forget those who turn away from the one in need,

God who waits to be greeted in prison, in hunger, in hospital, on the corner,

God who grieves the word spoken in hate and the action that excludes…

You are the one true God and it is our gift and right and duty to call upon you here.

We praise you for your faithfulness in history.

We praise you for your prophets who have shouted the truth.

We praise you for your saving action in leaders, in the church, in the community

And for what You have done sometimes in spite of them.

With all faithful people of Christ, with all your children across the world, with all the saints we name now [insert names appropriate to your congregation regarding Black History Month and local observances], with the whole creation, we praise your name and join the unending hymn.

[Insert whatever form of Holy, Holy, Holy you may choose]

God, with our sighs to deep for words, we come to this table

And we remember when it has been closed.

We remember when the invitation was not open.

We remember when the feast was in part, but not the whole.

With gratitude and thanksgiving, we celebrate in our spirits and our bodies that the barriers people erect cannot withstand the Holy Spirit.

With gratitude and thanksgiving, we celebrate in our spirits and our bodies that the prejudices that people hold will not withstand the Holy Spirit.

With gratitude and thanksgiving, we celebrate in our spirits and our bodies that the ignorance people profess will not withstand the Holy Spirit.

We gather here today and we remember Jesus gathered with those whom he loved.

They celebrated the first Passover, that event that marked the move of the people from slavery into freedom.

As they ate and drank their celebration, their actions anticipated the second Passover- from death into life, from fear into joy, from resignation into resurrection.

Jesus took the bread, a food that they as Jews had in common with all people,

gave thanks to you, O God, broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said:

"Take, eat; this is my body - given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me."

After supper, he took the cup- filled with wine-

A drink they had in common with all people.

He gave thanks to you, O God, gave it to his disciples, and said:

"Drink from this, all of you; this is a new covenant in my blood,

 shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sins.

Do this in remembrance of me."

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

You have brought us thus far and we trust that you will not leave us.

Pour out your Holy Spirit on these gifts

That they may strengthen us in the faith, in the fight, and in our freedom in Christ.

Draw us together and bring us ever more fully into being the people you have created us to be.

Through your Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in your holy Church,

all honor and glory is yours, almighty God, now and for ever.

This is free and open for use in any congregation with attribution to Pastor Julia Seymour, Lutheran Church of Hope, Anchorage, AK. 

Copy and paste to other electronic formats is only permitted WITH inclusion of the blog link. 

Please comment if you use this in your congregation so I can pray for you and your church. 

Corpus Christi

Thirty-five days ago, I left Poland. It has not yet left me and I don't really expect that it will. I am still sorting through what I saw, felt, heard, and experienced. Some of these things may take years to put together and some I may have already forgotten. Only God knows how these things will finally take shape or root within me.

There is one experience that I actually continue to think about almost daily. Going in, I thought about this with almost anthropological interest, but very little emotional attachment. Yet, now, I think of it constantly. When I think of this situation, I feel grief and frustration, sadness and hurt, impassioned and, yet, paralyzed.

By Manederequesens (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday, May 26th, Roman Catholic Poles, along with Roman Catholics around the world, celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi. In Krakow, the Friend of Calvin who came to visit me and I were interested to see the observance of this feast. It is a national holiday in Poland with many shops and places closed for observance. There is a procession from Wawel Castle to Krakow's Main Square and St. Mary's Basilica.

The procession involves a priest carrying the Host, the consecrated bread of communion, in a monstrance under a canopy, which is itself carried by deacons. Behind the priest is a procession of hundreds, if not a thousand, people. There were soldiers, nuns (so many nuns), monks, priests, bishops, first communicants, town elders, town leaders, church leaders, Roman Catholic bishops and archdeacons, and probably several groups that I missed or don't know how to classify.

Krakow's Main Square, one of the largest in Europe, was filled with people who were not in the procession, but who came to see it, to honor the Host, to hear the sermon (presumably about Holy Communion and the presence of Christ. It was in Polish), and to receive communion. People stood(!) on pavement and cobblestones to listen. There were young men in dress shirts, ties, and dark slacks, wearing portable speakers to broadcast the sermon all around the square so that all could hear.

As the sermon concluded, the priest carrying the host (at the very front of the procession), began to move again- toward the Basilica and the altar. As the monstrance passed, people knelt. Some bowed deeply, but others fully knelt on the cold stones, crossing themselves. Some wept and stayed down. Others stood again after the Host had gone by. These people were acknowledging what they believe is the Presence of Christ, the Real Presence, in the wafer framed in the monstrance. (See the pic above for an example of an empty monstrance.)

I was pulled along in the crowd until I realized I was very close to where communion was going to be celebrated. Suddenly I realized that not only was I not in the right frame of mind to observe this, but that there were people behind me who would like to be closer. So I moved through the tightly packed crowd back to the more open air of the square, toward the clock where my friend and I hurriedly gestured that we would meet.

In chatting, we decided to go for a coffee, but when we sat down at a table in the square, I ordered bison grass vodka and apple juice. In a rare moment of actually feeling my feelings at the time they were occurring, I realized that I was mad. By this time in my trip, I had toured Jewish history sites in Warsaw. Friend of Calvin and I had gone to Auschwitz and Birkenau just two days before Corpus Christi. In all my reading, I knew that Poland (not alone in this) has not ever dealt fully with its anti-Jewish history (or present). Due to Germany's attack on Poland, most Poles felt/feel that they were more sinned against than sinning in World War II (and preceding), despite the complicity of Polish men and women in turning in their Jewish, homosexual, Roma, and "political" neighbors. Poland does not acknowledge complicity in the Holocaust, despite making money through "dark tourism"- the thousands of people who travel to see the concentration and death camps each year.

Additionally, Poland is currently struggling with government leaders (and communities) who want to keep their borders closed and reject immigrants. Anti-Jewish activities have seen a rise in the past few years, as well as anti-immigrant displays and commentary. All of this knowledge, of this awareness, of all the grief, came swirling into a head as I poured cold vodka down my throat and thought about the procession I had just seen.

People had reverently, tenderly, carefully acknowledged the presence of Christ in pressed bread, but would they do the same to their neighbor? Had they done the same in 1942 or 1968 (Polish Jewish Exclusion) or today? The Feast of Corpus Christ is nearly 1000 years old. This means that Poles (and others) likely observed this same procession in the German occupation. There were probably soldiers and others who knelt, receiving the body of Christ in their mouth, and then rose to go back to the hideous work of the war and its atrocities.

Christ is as present in the host, in the bread and wine, as he is in the person next to us. Furthermore, He is as present therein as he is IN us as we do anything in his name.

The truth is that most people willfully ignored what was happening around them or followed orders because they either believed what they had been told or shut their minds to the cognitive dissonance of the words of their faith and the words of their political leaders

We want to believe that we would be different. That we ARE different.

At least, I assume we do.

Most of us, though, still kneel reverently at the altar and, with Christ's body still in ours, make excuses for why we do what we do, say what we say, think what we think. It happens all the time.

How do we change that? What are the words, the steps, the turning that need to be done?

If Christ's presence in communion does anything, it gives us the strength to make that change. The power is actually IN us when we commune. We just have to be willing to join into the work, to participate in the change, to bear the cross of truth and to lift it high.

It seems likely that a very, very, very tiny percentage of people present in Krakow on 26 May 2016 were also present in that same procession in, say, 1943. Yet, the repercussions of the actions against Jewish neighbors and others, before and after, still reverberate through that country. And the repercussions of what I witnessed and felt on that day still reverberate through me.

Washed and Fed for the World

Easter 4 (Narrative Lectionary, Year C)

21 April 2013

Acts 8:26-39

The Holy Spirit does not hold to geographic boundaries. The Spirit does not hold to racial lines or ethnic markers. The Spirit does not detour to avoid the people we’d prefer not to see, not to hear, not to sit beside, or have included in our gathering. In the passage from Acts 8, that person is the Ethiopian eunuch. A eunuch is a man who does not have functioning testicles- either because they did not develop or because he has been maimed. A eunuch’s ability to reproduce has either withered on the vine or been pruned.

A eunuch is still a Jew, but may have been excluded from the assembly. Thus, for the purposes of temple life and worship, a eunuch is a man who is essentially a woman. And women don’t get to offer sacrifices. They don’t have standing. One’s blessings come through one’s husband and one’s ability to be receptive to his offerings, so to speak. (This is just awkward for everyone, but this eunuch is important. So stay with me.) A eunuch cannot fulfill the “actions of a man”(so to speak), so he does not get the privileges of being a man… including gathering in the assembly of the faithful. (Deut. 23:1)

Now, in your reading of Isaiah, you may recall a little song about eunuchs with a different tune. The prophet writes: Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain,“ I am only a dry tree.” The prophet goes on to say that God will give a memorial better than children to faithful eunuchs, to faithful people. It might have served for God to mention that in one or two other places, since repetition is one of the main ways we learn, but sometimes I think God says to us, “How many times do I have to tell you this stuff?” (Isaiah 56:3)

            The Ethiopian eunuch is a servant in the queen’s court, chosen for that valued position because of his sexual safety. He will not overthrow the government because he cannot have children to continue his line, so (presumably) it would not be worth it. He obviously understands himself to be Jewish because he has traveled to Jerusalem for worship, for worship in the community that may not receive him. He goes to be present with people who are, mostly, of much lower social status than he is as a royal servant. The man has his own chariot and copies of Scripture. Even Peter doesn’t have that!

            Now consider this: how badly would you have to want to worship to travel hundreds of miles to go to a place that wouldn’t receive you to worship a God whose people have conspired to exclude you from the fullness of community? How much would you have to crave sacramental life to be enriched by just being close to it, much less participating? How much would you have to desire to know more about God’s salvation, which might not include you, to be reading a scroll of Isaiah on a bumpy chariot ride back to your home country? Does anyone here have that much desire? Is anyone here willing to allow the Spirit to be that powerful in his or her lives?

            And Philip appears- running alongside the chariot. Philip, who has been assigned to be a part of the food distribution in the Jerusalem meeting houses, is now speaking to someone who might as well be from the ends of the earth. Philip says, “Do you know what you’re reading?” and then goes on Isaiah’s servant song in the light of Jesus Christ. When Isaiah wrote it, it was understood in to apply to God’s servant Israel and Israel’s people. The Spirit’s interpretive expansion helped the early followers of Jesus to understand him (and their own call) as the servant who suffers for the sake of God’s work in the world.

            Moved by this interpretation, moved by this Bible study, the Ethiopian eunuch stops the chariot and says, “Here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He is so transformed by hearing Philip’s discourse on Jesus that he cannot wait to be included in the community through God’s promise in water and word. Baptism will change his allegiance, and his alliances, but it will be worth it because he will be drawn, clearly, into the story of God that the Spirit has been whispering in his ear.

            Does anyone here desire baptism that much? Does anyone long to revisit their baptism? Have you held yourself back from just splashing your face in the font- to remember, to clear your vision, to wake you up to your life reorientation in Christ? We trust that God loves and uses people who are not baptized, but in the Christian community it is the marker of beginning and belonging. It is a moment we can revisit again and again- a moment when the salvation we work out with fear and trembling became tangible. We are supposed to crave this moment- remembering it and desiring it for all around us.

Along with holy communion, the baptismal font give us a different lens for seeing ourselves, the people around us, and the people who we encounter outside of these doors- the same expanding circles of Spirit-inclusion that are in the Acts reading (the people in Jerusalem, the people in Judea, the people in Samaria, the people in Ethiopia and beyond). These sacraments, two places where we are assured of Christ’s presence, make us citizens in the kingdom of God with work to do right now. Part of that work is sharing the message that is implicit in these acts of communal washing and eating together- the message that all people are children of God.

When the world says, “racial minority”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “sexually suspect”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “illegal immigrant”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “homeless by choice”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “Palestinian or Israeli”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “mentally ill”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “terrorist”, we say “child of God.”

            The naming of our people, our friends and our enemies, as children of God puts us in the position to do the work of Christ. Work of feeding. Work of peace-making. Work of creating equality. Work of ensuring justice. The work of making God’s presence real by revealing that presence through the actions of God’s people. I am not saying we make God real through our right actions. I am saying that who God is becomes understandable through the clear actions of the people who call themselves people of God.

            In a world full of terror, natural disasters, and preventable human tragedies, there are people who crave good news. There are people who need advocates, though they may be in the wrong. There are people who are certain that they will never belong to the community of God- but they read the story anyway. In a world with this kind of longing, how do you account for the hope that is within you? Do we dare to cheapen God’s grace by assuming that the font and the table exist merely to assure us of God’s affection for us?

            These are dangerous places. They change the way we see the world and the way we see all children of God. We should approach these places with trembling- longing for the truth of their promises and afraid of what faithful participation will lead us into doing?

            The Holy Spirit does not hold to geographic boundaries. The Spirit does not hold to racial lines or ethnic markers. The Spirit does not detour to avoid the people we’d prefer not to see, not to hear, not to sit beside, or have included in our gathering.  And the Spirit does not, cannot, will not, pass by you. 

Amen.