Saturday, June 7, 2025: Join Us Tomorrow for our Emmaus Celebration at Christ Church United Methodist or on Zoom: All are Welcome!

We begin with welcoming at 3:45

In Person 

in Classroom 8 at Christ Church United Methodist

1717 Yulupa Ave, Santa Rosa, 

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Thanksgiving  Meal for June 8, 2025:

Welcome All!

Jesus loved to compare the kingdom of God to a meal – kind of a potluck in which everyone shared food and their lives. Everyone – and I mean everyone; sinners, outcasts, women and the poor were invited. Some of the most memorable and scandalous stories of Jesus happen around meals where he reclines with tax collectors, sex workers, beggars, the sick – lepers even - the sick at heart and people who believe they will never be forgiven. By sharing a table with people from all walks of life Jesus showed that the kingdom of God is not a fortress but rather a place without walls -  a meal where miracles happen, a place of endless love and forgiveness. 

His was an open table with an open invitation to everyone. It’s just like our Emmaus table. We’re here just like Jesus before us, unafraid to break all the rules, invite everyone in, forgive and to bless and to heal.

Jesus’ most consistent social action was sharing meals with an open invitation. In the midst of that eating, he announced the reign of God and broke through all the dogma that had so bound his tribe – old food restrictions, the problem of celebrating on the Sabbath, the prohibition of women at table, turning water into wine  -- all dangerous acts that threatened the rigid social order of the day and for which he would pay so dearly.  

A great number of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms take place while he’s either entering a house to have a meal with someone or leaving a house just after having had a meal with someone. 

 And here we are, so many years after Jesus. We share our table and our lives together. We make food and share it out – our potluck. We invite everyone to join us. This is our meal, our Thanksgiving – which is English translation of Eucharist. We share Thanksgiving together again here at this physical table and on zoom – where we extend our table to our distant sisters and brothers. We extend our table, always expanding our boundaries in order to widen our circle. 

It’s very likely that the Last Supper was a Passover meal -- the final one of many that had been shared by Jesus and his closest followers. The disciples, women and men, had come to understand it as a way of joyful gathering, as the way to define their reality and their relationship to one another. It became for them a powerful symbol of unity, of giving and sharing, of breaking the self and giving the self over to celebration in community. This meal evolved into a ritual offering of bread and wine which became the Mass.

In these few moments we’re together let’s think about our special meal and being together as family.  Just like at home, we begin with Grace:

Grace Before Meals by John O'Donohue

As we begin this meal with grace,

Let us become aware of the memory

Carried inside the food before us:

The quiver of the seed

Awakening in the earth,

Unfolding in a trust of roots

And slender stems of growth,

On its voyage towards harvest,

The kiss of rain and surge of sun;

The innocence of animal soul

That never spoke a word,

Nourished by the earth

To become today our food;

The work of all the strangers

Whose hands prepared it,

The privilege of wealth and health

That enables us to feast and celebrate.

1: I've got peace like a river,

I've got peace like a river,

I've got peace like a river in my soul.

I've got peace like a river,

I've got peace like a river,

I've got peace like a river in my soul.

2: I've got love like an ocean,

I've got love like an ocean ,

I've got love like an ocean in my soul.

I've got love like an ocean,

I've got love like an ocean,

I've got love like an ocean in my soul

3: I've got joy like a fountain,

I've got joy like a fountain,

I've got joy like a fountain in my soul.

I've got joy like a fountain,

I've got joy like a fountain,

I've got joy like a fountain in my soul.

Return to Verse 1:

Reading 1: From Matthew 9:10-11: Jesus accused of eating with the unclean:

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Reading 2: Special things happen to Jesus and guests at meals

Luke 7:36–50: When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

40 Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

41 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.,

And Jesus forgave the woman her sins.

Reading 3: Jesus even ate with lepers – the most feared and despised people on the planet from Mark (Mark 14:3), 3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Reading 4: The story of Zaccheaus when Jesus invites himself to dinner with a tax collector:

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Jesus didn’t want his community to have a social ethic; he wanted it to BE a social ethic. This radical idea is given in a simple clue found throughout the Christian Scriptures—one that biblical scholars overlooked until only recently: Jesus’ presence with others at table. 

That theme is so constant in the Christian Scriptures that scholars today see it as central to Jesus’ message. Jesus never appears to be pushing what we call social programs. He is much more radical. He calls us to a new social order in which we literally share table differently!   

The mystery of sharing food at a common table takes place on different levels. First, there’s the unifying idea of sharing the same food. Then, there is the whole symbolism of the table itself: where we sit at the table and how the table is arranged. Together, the food and table become a symbol of how our social world is arranged. Once we rearrange life around the table we begin to change our notions of social life.  

We know in our bodies that eating the bread and drinking the wine involve something much deeper. And we strive to become what we have received.

Sidebar: Scholars say now that even while Jesus was still alive, there seemed to be two traditions of open table fellowship: one of bread and wine, the other of bread and fish. The bread and wine meal won out—that meal is what we call the Mass today in the Roman Catholic church.  

A lot of current scholars think it’s unfortunate we lost the bread and fish ritual meal, because the bread and wine ritual meal didn’t emphasize this idea of surplus: real food that actually fed the poor. The bread and wine tradition lent itself more to purity codes, insider/outsider dynamics, and the kind of exclusion we see of those who have been divorced, who are from different faith traditions. They are barred from full participation in the meal . I don’t think Jesus would have recognized anyone as an outsider.

The bread and fish tradition, if retained, might have contributed to issues of justice, community, and social reordering. We see this after the resurrection. In John 21:1–14, the apostles are out on the lake. They see Jesus on the shore, cooking fish at a charcoal fire. He invites them to come share bread and fish.  

Peter is there and Jesus says, in effect, “Peter, it’s okay. I forgive you.” Peter - who just a few days before rejected, betrayed, and abandoned Jesus in his hour of need. Bread and fish… who knew?

Shared Homily: Let’s talk about significant meals we’ve shared.

Thanksgiving  Prayer:

We gather together to share the Mystery of the Divine in every person, in everything we do. Spirit of Life, Spirit of the Divine, come to us in this celebration and bless these gifts of bread and wine. Encircle us with your love and inspire us to become the transformation we seek to become.

We are on a journey and our road meets with those of everyone who is walking toward freedom and liberation tonight – wherever they come from, whatever sadness they face. With Mary we keep the human family together, telling them “we must go on, we cannot turn back. We have a role in creating a world of peace for us and all our children. Everyone is welcome in this new world without borders. Lament cannot take hold if gratitude gets there first.”

This is the message of our brother Jesus, who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Our brother Jesus now invites us to share with Him this simple meal, which he celebrated the night before he died with his companions. He knew the hours were precious and the time short. This gave new meaning to his words:

ALL: (Extend Hands) This is my body given up for you

Then He took the cup, gave thanks, and shared it with them, saying:

ALL: (Extend hands) 

This is the cup of my blood, poured out for all of you. Do this in memory of me.

And so, with all creation we join in a hymn of praise: 

We remember how you loved us all your life. And still we celebrate for you are with us here. And we believe that we will see you  When you come, when you come again!  We remember! We celebrate! We believe!

Let us pray: All: O God, Mother and Father of Us All,….  Like your son, Jesus of Nazareth, who blessed a variety of human relationships rooted in love, 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 in the here and now to embrace the rainbow of loving human relationships that reflect your love for all of humanity in its wonderful diversity. 

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 and whom they love. May we take to heart what we know to be true: that where love and charity prevail, you are to be found.  We ask this, as always, through your Many Holy Names. Amen. Bernard Schlager

Kiss of Peace

The Invitation 

Everyone is invited to this table.  The Spirit, whom the Universe cannot contain  is present to us in this bread.   She who redeems us and calls us by name  now meets us in this cup.   So, come, take this bread,   Drink this wine,   In them, the Spirit comes to us,   so that we may become one with the Spirit.

We invite everyone now on Zoom to partake of this communion we share while we listen to our Communion Song, 

Grace After Meals

We end this meal with grace

For the joy and nourishment of food,

The slowed time away from the world

To come into presence with each other

And sense the subtle lives behind our faces,

The different colors of our voices,

The edges of hungers we keep private,

The circle of love that unites us.

We pray the wise spirit who keeps us

To change the structures that make others hunger

And that after such grace we might now go forth

And impart dignity wherever we partake.

Enid: January Birthday blessings to our Emmaus sisters and brothers