Sunday June 22, 2025: Join Us This Afternoon for our Emmaus Celebration either at Christ Church United Methodist in Santa Rosa or on ZOOM!
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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Passcode: 1234
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Meeting ID: 519 315 8573
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Emmaus Liturgy for Sunday, June 22, 2025: The Body and Blood of Christ
Welcome by Dan: I begin with a quote of Pope Francis, who declared some time ago, “If investments in the banks fail, ‘Oh, it’s a tragedy,’……..but if people die of hunger or don’t have food or health, nothing happens. This is our crisis today.”
A sense of crisis pervades our world today, not different from the deserted place where the disciples of Jesus were, in a day drawing to a close, and with a huge crowd hungry and thirsty: hungry for jobs, health, civil rights, human dignity, meaningful life, and peace. Not only the body of humanity but the entire body of the Earth faces dire threats because of climate disruption, pollution, and population growth. When the body of Jesus was broken in Jerusalem by the powers of violence and injustice, he opened new territories of freedom and love.
Today, old behaviors and patterns are also breaking down, and reality is being transformed in unexpected ways. A new body of Christ is emerging, including all creation. We could feel powerless and overwhelmed like the friends around Jesus: “We have no more than five loaves and two fish, but what is this in comparison with the crowd, with the huge problems we are facing?” Maybe we can find comfort and direction pausing on the three gestures expressed by Jesus in the gospel: care, blessing, and sharing.
R!: Care: Jesus invites his friends to have people sit down, establishing a welcoming relationship. Jesus does not send them away in resignation or discomfort; he enacts a liturgy of hospitality. As sons and daughters of God’s grace. Ministers of God’s compassion, this gesture elicits a receptive mind and an open heart. Do we really care about these persons? Are we open to release any unease in ourselves in order to welcome these persons no matter their status, gender, story, or brokenness? The spirit of Jesus enhances our imaginative powers and our capacity to be loving and kind, generous and caring for others, ethically and ecologically sensitive in our behavior, and able to experience others as embodiments of the divine nature.
R2: Blessing: Jesus invites us to be open not only to the others but to the source of every “otherness,” to the unfathomable Fountain of selfgiving love that we call God. With gratefulness and radical amazement we are receivers and processors of the creative energy that from the beginning is forging the body of the Universe, pours the blood of life, consciousness, beauty in the unfolding cosmic adventure. Our blessing today corresponds to our entry in an era of universal consciousness. We are awakened to a mystery greater than us, increasingly able to transcend the tendency to look at the physical world merely in separate, utilitarian, or mechanistic terms. We discover that all expressions of life are connected, interdependent, particles of a divine body, a corporate body of Christ, a bid body of love.
R3: Sharing: Jesus first shares his love with us. He loves us to the end: This is my body that is for you. Jesus breathes out and radiates his Spirit of resurrection, the radical love shred with the Source and the Spirit, a love stronger than death. Jesus invites us to live out divine nature in our bodies, our relationships, our careers, and our communities.
OPENING PRAYER: (Dan) We who feel in our bodies the presence of Godthe brooding Spirit who warmly awakens us to the day, the One who presses the universe against us, the Breath that breathes in us our true calm our true joywe who are tangibly caught in God’s net can “hope for what we do not see” and “wait for it with patience.” We live knowing that despite all the anguish, anger, absurdity, loss, loneliness, and stark terrorall is well for humans in God. But we cannot say this lightly or easily for other humans; we can only speak for ourselves. Perhaps, we cannot even testify; because where war falls upon a people, when law and justice seem in conflict, when age and youth think themselves at odds, the praise of God can sound like evasion of the world’s agony. But we can hope; and we can live within our hope; and by our hope we can heal, though we do so without fanfare. Because we can hope, we can believe in other humans. We can engage in listening to what the other side says. We can, in our hope, keep our heads our “cool” when voices are crying out for reprisals and punishments. In hope we can love our country and all its people, and we can send our hope across the spinning earth. And the people of this beloved Emmaus community say, Amen.
OPENING SONG: Jake Shimabukuru – KAWIKA – Live at the Ludlow Garage [Note: Kawika is a Hawaiian derivative of David, meaning “beloved of Yahweh.”]
First Reading: (Linda) In the Shadow of Babel
To run along the Hudson is to pass through ghosts of the Meal Market, where grains were sold beside Native and African captives. Then inland, weaving between the skyscrapers of Wall Street, where even in high summer alleys are shaded to night and cold as snowmelt streams.
Which makes it easy to believe men who would be gods once built a tower
to rival the heavens, laid the foundation while seaweed creped the remnants of redwoods and dolphins rotted in mountain lakes—
the Flood not myth but memory, their desire to build beyond drowning
sensible. Yet as one generation built on the next, citizens were muscled
into one mold, indivisible, indistinguishable as the clay bricks they passed from hand to hand in that assembly line to the sky.
And the whole earth was of one language: However differently they felt it, people had to speak their pain the same.
But what does such pain mean to me who runs with no one chasing her, with no one lying in wait—to a woman running simply because she wants to?
The past is a tower tall enough to pierce time, transmit all echoes, to continue
casting shadows ( by Jessica Jacobs)
Second Reading: (Mary Fitzgerald) Corinthians 11:2326
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
RESPONSORIAL SONG Bread of Life, Hope for the World/Bernadette Farrell & Our lady of Hope Choir:
GOSPEL: (Dan Lambert) LUKE 9:1117
Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.”
He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have. Unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.” Now the men there numbered about five thousand.
Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.” They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.
Dialogue Homily: Mary Ellen: Here are some questions to reflect on?
What do you hunger for?
What is one of your best memories of feeding others or of being fed, literally or figuratively?
How do you envision the new body of Christ that is emerging? What do you see as your role in helping this vision come about?
What do we bring to the table this evening?
Preface Dialogue
Dan: Theologian M. Shawn Copeland describes how the Eucharist (Thanksgiving) calls us to solidarity with those who suffer:
“Eucharist/Thanksgiving is the heart of Christian community. We know in our bodies that eating the bread and drinking the wine involve something much deeper and far more extensive than consuming elements of the ritual meal. We all strive to become what we have received and to do what we are being made.
Eucharistic solidarity orients us to the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, where we grasp the enormity of suffering, affliction, and oppression as well as apprehend our complicity in the suffering, affliction, and oppression of others.… Eucharistic solidarity teaches us to imagine, to hope for, and to create new possibilities. Because that solidarity enfolds us, rather than dismiss “others,” we act in love; rather than refuse “others,” we respond in acts of self-sacrifice—committing ourselves to the long labor of creation, to the enfleshment of freedom.”
Mary Ellen: God is within us and God is among us. All: Amen, indeed it is so.
Mary Ellen: Let us lift up our hearts. All: We lift them into the Mystery.
Mary Ellen: Let us be thankful for all the ways in which we feel God’s love.
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 welcome discontinuities, weakness, crises, and even death with the hope of resurrection, of God’s transforming love.
Mary Ellen:” And on the night before Jesus died, he compared himself to a woman in childbirth, knowing that her hour had come, but then rejoicing that her suffering has brought forth new life into the world.
Mary Ellen: 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, you undertake to share all the future may bring May you find life’s joy doubly gladdened, its bitterness sweetened, and all things hallowed by true companionship and love.
All: We take this wine. 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.
Sing: One bread, one body, one life for all. One cup of blessing which we bless. And we, though Many, throughout the earth, we are one body in this one Love.
Taught by Jesus’ command we pray:
All: Heavenly Mother , Heavenly Father,
Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come,
We pray that your good will be done,
Let heaven and earth become one.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river through us,
From each one to each one,
Lead us to holy innocence
Beyond the evil of our days,
Come swiftly Mother, Father, come!
For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy –
Forever your name is All in One.
Parker Palmer
Kiss of Peace
Mary Ellen: “When I stand behind the table, calling this beloved Emmaus community to remembrance, I call forth all your sacred memories: those connected to the biblical text and those that emerge from your own lives. In that divine moment and in this one, I take seriously the exhortation in 2 Peter 1:13: “As long as I live in the tent of this body,” I will call the people to remembrance….
We do this in remembrance of the Holy One, who was and is and is to come.... In remembrance of the warriors for justice, the table turners, and the freedom riders. Those prophets who stood outside the gates of the city and declared the Word of the Lord. Those poets who penned indictments against inhumanity and degradation.
In remembrance of those who have experienced justice delayed and justice denied. Those whose sadness has yet to turn to joy, and those whose weeping has endured for more than one night…. We are all welcome at this table, whether with visible wounds or unblemished flesh, in the radical belief that only God’s justice quenches our thirst, heals our spirits, and renews our hearts.” (Pass the bread and the cups.)
COMMUNION SONG: COMPANIONS ON THE JOURNEY
Refrain: We are companions on the journey, breaking bread and sharing life; And in the love we bear is the hope we share
For we believe in the love of our God, We believe in the love of our God.
No longer strangers to each other, no longer strangers in God’s house;
We are fed and we are nourished by the strength of those who care,
by the strength of those who care.
We have been gifted with each other, and we are called by the Word of the Lord; to act with justice , to love tenderly,
and to walk humbly with our God,
to walk humbly with our God.
We will seek and we shall find; we will knock and the door will be opened; we will ask and it shall be given, for we believe in the love of our God, we believe in the love of our God.
We are made for the glory of our God, for service in the name of Jesus; to walk side by side with hope in our hearts, for we believe in the love of our God, we believe in the love of our God.
CLOSING PRAYER: ALL
All creation is groaning in labor pains,
We are God’s self unfolding,
Promised seeds planted in time.
And there is a potential energy of love
At the heart of every seed,
Asking for receptive ears,
Inviting us to trust
In what we don’t see yet,
In this mysterious yeast of grace
Soaring free
In the skies of our bodies.
And the people of this beloved Emmaus community say, Amen!
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