Sunday, September 22, 2024: Join us for our Emmaus community celebration:
We start at 3:45 with a welcoming: 4:00 Liturgy:
5:00 Yummy Potluck and massive sharing
In-Person at Knox Presbyterian and Thanksgiving Lutheran (a facility we share with both congregations)
or Join Zoom Meeting with this link:
Passcode: 1234
Or Use the Meeting ID: 519 315 8573
Passcode: 1234
Or by Phone: +16699006833,,5193158573# US (San Jose) +16694449171,,5193158573#Emmaus Liturgy for August 25, 2024
Emmaus Liturgy for September 22, 2024 by Dan V. and Patti
Emmaus Liturgy for September 22, 2024
Welcome: As we witness the profound transformation of our world, our traditions, and our institutions, we would be wise to follow the insight of Black Theologian Howard Thurman, who encourages us to “Look well to the growing edge!” Perhaps, that is why Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron wrote about it as “falling apart, letting go, living as an experiment.” So let us be introduced to this game of loss and gain by two different stories.
Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer of the sixteenth century, was trying to detect the planetary orbit of Mars, but he was not able to match his theory with what he observed. After months of desperation, he figured out that planets travel in ellipses, causing him to sacrifice his fascination with the perfection of the circle and assume the sacred imperfection of the ellipse. Now, another story of resistance, loss, and revelation. In the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10), Peter is orbiting in a circular way around the villages of Judea in a comfort zone with no initiative, creativity, or risk. While he is praying, however, he experiences a divine intrusion that messes up the order of his existence. The heaven opens, and something like a large sheet comes down, a hodge-podge of all kinds of four-footed creatures, reptiles, and birds. And a voice presses Peter to get up, to kill, and to eat. As Kepler was fascinated with his beloved circle, so Peter is caught in the unchanging perfection of his religious tradition. Startled out of his wits by the voice from above, he opposes with a resolute refusal to change. “Damn it! I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” But the subversive answer from on high opens a radical new vision and sensitivity on earth. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 10:15). Immediately after, Peter is asked to incarnate the vision: agents sent from Cornelius, a pagan centurion from Caesarea, arrive and invite Peter to leave and to be a guest at the centurion’s house. Peter is urged to enter into contact with people excluded by the law: foreigners, strangers, aliens. In Peter’s enlarged embrace a loss happens, the dissolution of a limit that prevented him from stepping forward, stretching out, and welcoming what was repudiated. In his gesture of inclusion he opens a window of creativity where the Spirit spreads over and includes the excluded, with great astonishment. It is said that human transformation was the only miracle that the Buddha recognized as such. Kepler’s and Peter’s stories reflect our personal and collective stories of transformation, happening through our losses, perilous times, and new beginnings.
OPENING SONG:
Opening Prayer: “If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel capable of being in, go a little bit out of your depth; and when you don’t feel like your feet are touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.” -- David Bowie
First Reading: Victoria Quiet PsalmLet there be a quiet that falls like grace,
over all of us:
over our hands
which have slowly become guns,
our teeth, now daggers,
and over our hearts,
which explode with the suicide bombs.
Let us take ourselves back
to the first time we saw each other
on the Fertile Crescent,
where we drew water to drink
from the same river,
or back to the first playground
where you asked, What’s your name?
and I responded, I am you.
Let us follow this unmentioned history
back in time so that we may see
that the suffering of one
is the suffering of all,
and furthermore,
the responsibility.
Let us gather up our missiles,
our shrapnel, our tanks,
our nuclear threats, and our hatred
and ask:
How could I have thought
to use these against you?
And let there be a quiet that falls over us like grace,
as we stand dumbed by the asking.
And then
let there be a Listening
for the deepest of answers. -- Silvio Machado
Gospel: Peter Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
Another Exorcist
38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name,[a] and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. 40 For he that is not against us is for us. 41 For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.
Temptations to Sin
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,[b] it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin,[c] cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell,[d] to the unquenchable fire.[e]
45 And if your foot causes you to sin,[a] cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.[b][c
47 And if your eye causes you to sin,[a] pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,[b] 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.
Homily: Dan
Maybe God’s kingdom unexpectedly happens in the narrow and disquieting passages of our life when a voice, a vision, or an event breaks into and upsets the limits of our previous perception and urges us to welcome another way of sensing, envisioning, or acting. Pieces of our previous experience dissolve under the pressure of something new and unknown that is about to be generated in our hearts, if we say yes to the challenge, the risk, and the involvement. God’s energy and care don’t remain in a separate and perfect sphere but from the beginning flare forth as a creative wave, inspire the hearts of humans through all the ages, and in an astounding way shine in Jesus, embracing vulnerability, brokenness, and the unknown. Jesus’ life, passion, and death incarnate God’s foolish love that overcomes our resistances of control and oppression, arrogance and power, inaugurating a new realm of radical inclusivity, of peace and freedom, of communication and joy. We are pressured from within by Jesus’ Spirit to become channels of God’s creativity, aware that every conscious act, gesture, and decision opens new possibilities and resonates in the atmosphere around us, giving shape to a new world.
What do you see as new life on the edge of your tradition or community?
What can we leave behind, to allow the emergence of a new creation?
What do we bring to the table this evening?
Offertory song:
• Eucharistic Prayer:
Patti: God is within us and God is among us.
All: Amen.
Dan: Let us lift up our hearts,
All: We lift them into the Mystery.
Patti: Let us be thankful for all the ways in which we feel God’s presence.
All: It is good to be grateful.
Dan: With our bodies we expose ourselves to the subtle and creative breeze of God, aware of a Mystery, open and receptive to others, cultivating a language of interiority, experience, and empathy. We live at the threshold of our time without a fixed, guaranteed abode. We are cooperative with the Spirit in opening the cages and the tombs of the world. We feel reverence for the Earth as conscious parts of her body. We welcome discontinuities, weakness, crises, and even death, with the hope of resurrection, of God’s transforming love.
Patti: We break and share this bread, as Jesus broke and shared it, and we give it to one another as our pledge of openness to the Spirit of Love in our midst and as our remembrance for the life of Jesus, who enlightened our minds and hearts and who was ready to die for what he believed.
All: Come to the table and break this bread with us and understand that it is life itself.
Dan: This cup of wine and drink is symbolic of the cup of life. As you share this cup of wine and drink, you undertake to share all the future may bring. May you find life’s joys doubly gladdened, its bitterness sweetened, and all things hallowed by true companionship and love.
Patti: We take this wine and drink, as Jesus asked his friends to drink, mindful of a relationship of love and trust between ourselves and the Virgin Heart, believing, as Jesus believed, that to live in love is to live in God and to have God live and love in us.
Dan will sing: ONE BREAD, ONE BODY, one life for all.
One cup of blessing which we bless. And we, though
Man – y, throughout the earth, we are one bod – y in this One Love.
• Patti: The Lord’s Prayer:
Patti: O God, Mother and Father of Us All, Like your son, Jesus of Nazareth, who blessed a variety of human relationships: parents and children, siblings, masters and servants, tax collectors and citizens, prostitutes and thieves, foreigners and their companions, the wealthy and the poor, may we have the wisdom and grace to foster, strengthen, and support all loving relationships and all families. May your command to love one another as you have loved us, O God, cause us to pay heed to the movement of your Holy Spirit, who calls us to embrace the rainbow of loving human relationships that reflect your love for all of humanity in its wonderful diversity.
Dan: May we speak out courageously when others try to pass laws that exclude, diminish, or demonize other persons and their families because of who they are, whom they love or their status as determined by unjust laws.
May we take to heart what we know to be true: that where love and charity prevail, you are to be found.
Patti: We ask this, as always, through your Many Holy Names. Amen. (Bernard Schlager)
Dan: Kiss of Peace
Patti: • Invitation to the Table:
Jesus reveals an extreme passion for the world that he expresses in the many seeds he sows: gestures of empathic listening, healing of wounds, taking care of the excluded; opening a reign of love where divisions, powers, and hatred reign, inaugurating new beginnings for people stuck in guilt, repression, and dominion. He reveals our unitive link with the intimate connection between sower, seed, and soil. He embodies radical concern and becomes the seed that dies into the earth to bear fruit. He incarnates the vital truth that if we want to save our lives we must spend them with abandon.
So, let us eat bread and drink wine now, as a way to symbolize our readiness to sprout and to our willingness to stand up and be counted upon to work toward the realization of our common human dream.
COMMUNION SONG:
Closing Prayer:
“You have become flesh, God.
You are the flesh of the world.
Help us embrace the foolishness of your love wiser
than human wisdom,
to be expansions of your imagination that resurrects us
from our tombs of violence and inhumanity.”
n Ivan Nicoletto
And the people of this beloved Emmaus community say: Amen
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