© Rev Rex A E Hunt, MSc(Hons)

A JESUS BANQUET

Welcome to the Table...
At this table we give thanks for justice, love, peace and freedom.
Mn  At this table we give thanks for friends and strangers
together in community in this safe place.
Wm  At this table we welcome old and young.

v2  A place at the table.  And all are invited.

Thanksgiving...
We give thanks for the unfolding of matter,
mind,
intelligence,
and life
that has brought us to this moment in time.

All  We celebrate our common origin with everything that exists.
v1  We celebrate the mystery we experience and address as ‘God’.
ground and sustainer of everything that exists,
in whom we live and move and have our being.

v2  And we acknowledge this mystery embodied
in every human person,
aware that each one of us gives G-o-d
unique and personal expression.
All  G-o-d is everywhere present.
In grace-filled moments of sharing.
In carefully created communities of loving solidarity.

We are one with everything, living and nonliving, on this planet.
Connected.
Interrelated.
Interdependent.

The Story...
We remember the stories from our tradition...
How on many occasions Jesus would share a meal with friends.
Bread and wine, the very basics of life, shared in community.
v2  For everyone born, a place at the table...

How the bread would be taken,
a blessing offered, and then shared between them.
And all of them ate.

How some wine would be poured out,
a blessing offered, and then passed between them.
And all of them drank.

A time of concern, conversation and celebration.

v2  The bread and the wine symbolised human lives
interconnected with other human lives,
and the power of giving and receiving.

v1  May the passion for life as seen in Jesus,
and in the lives and struggles of many other
committed and faithful people then and now,
enable us to dare and to dream and to risk...
All  Together may we re-imagine the world.
Together may we work to make all things new.
All  Together may we celebrate the possibilities and hope
we each have and are called to share.

v2  For everyone born, a place at the table...

Bread and Wine...
Bread is broken several times during the following

We break the bread for the broken earth,
ravaged and plundered for greed.
All  May there be healing of our beautiful blue and green planet.

We break this bread for our broken humanity,
for the powerful and the powerless
trapped by exploitation and oppression.
All  May there be the healing of humanity.

We break this bread for those who follow other paths:
for those who follow the noble path of the Buddha,
the yogic path of the Hindus;
the way of the Eternal Guru of the Sikhs;
and for the descendants of Abraham, the children of Hagar and Sarah.
All  May there be healing where there is pain and woundedness.

We break this bread
for the unhealed hurts and wounds that lie within us all.
All  May we be healed.

White Wine is poured into the cup

This is the cup of peace and of new life for all.
A sign of love for the community of hope.
All  A reminder of the call to live fully,
to love wastefully, and
to be all that we can be.

The Sharing...
To eat and drink together reminds us of the deeper aspects of human fellowship,
for from time immemorial the sharing of bread and wine
has been the most universal of all symbols of community.
The Bread and White Wine will be served at four points/places around the Gathering space

After The Sharing...  (Optional)
We give thanks that we have gathered together in this sacred place.
All  We rejoice in the giftedness of each person here.
We are grateful for who we are for each other.
May we continue to be truly thankful
in all we do and in all we become.

The Liturgy
• Shaped from resources created by and adapted from: Carter Heyward, L Bruce Miller, Michael Morwood, Shirley Erena Murray, David Bumbaugh, John Shelby Spong, David Galston, Rex A E Hunt, the Iona Community.
A similar copy has also been published in Hunt & Smith. (ed). Why Weren’t We Told? A Handbook on ‘progressive Christianity. Polebridge Press, 2013.