Emmaus Celebration for Sunday, September 13, 2026: Grateful for the World

Dear Sisters and Brothers: Please join us tomorrow for our Emmaus Community celebration in person or on Zoom!

In person: We meet in Classroom 8 of the Christ Church United Methodist

1717 Yulupa Avenue, Santa Rosa 95405

We begin at 3:45 with a joyful and exuberant welcoming. Everyone is Welcome!

Or Join us on Zoom using this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5193158573?omn=87234625262

Passcode: 1234

Or start Zoom and enter 

Meeting ID: 519 315 8573

Passcode: 1234

Emmaus Celebration for Sunday, September 13, 2026:

Grateful for the World

Nancy: This afternoon’s we celebrate relationships - relationship to each other, to our neighbors to the earth we share with all its creatures. We take a few moments to take a deep breath and contemplate our interconnected world. Our liturgy reminds us to live in gratitude – to be grateful for our family, friends and our community. 

How we relate to all of creation is an act of gratitude.  When we begin to realize we are part of nature, our concept of God changes.  We are no longer able to think about dominion. Rather we begin to see we are an integral part of nature and that there is a living, animating Spirit within all of creation. Think divinity as a verb, an energy holding all things together. 

David: Then we ask - what really connects us? Wendell Berry, a humble farmer and poet thinks it’s the soil: He writes “Soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for the soil we can have no life.” 

Our web of human relationships is shaped from the people we love and those we have loved and lost. It’s appropriate we include readings from Saint Paul, as well as from those we lost this week - Wendell Berry, Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton. 

The world is scary right now but Dolly Parton reminds us: 

“It's just a mountain, I can move it  

And with faith enough there's nothing I can't do

And I can see the light of a clear blue morning.  

And I can see the light of brand new day 

And everything's gonna be all right. It's gonna be okay.”

We open with a song we all know and love: Morning Has Broken

Opening Song: Morning Has Broken

When we stop and think about life, we know we have been blessed in so many ways. Wendell Berry explains his gratefulness in a simple poem called, What We Need Is Here 

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. 

Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, 

Clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.

Brother David Stendal Rast explains gratefulness in this meditative video: 

Meditation: A Grateful Day with Brother David Stendal Rast

Reading from Gloria Steinem:

We have founded our community on the idea of a road of faith we are traveling together. Gloria Steinem traces this evolution from the perspective of nature: 

“Long before all these divisions were opened between a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, the animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight.” We are all on the road.  -  Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

Reading: Paul to the Romans: And while we are on the road how should we treat others? Paul answers that question in a few simple lines to his community in Rome: 

Brothers and sisters:

Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; 

for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; 

you shall not steal; you shall not covet, " 

and whatever other commandment there may be,

are summed up in this saying, namely,

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 

Wendell Berry Comment:

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. We are all on the road we share. - Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Shared Homily: Question: What are we grateful for?

 For whom and for what do we pray?

The Eucharist: Our Thanksgiving Meal: 

The Eucharist is intended to be a thanksgiving event  – an event of remembrance and gratitude and celebration. It is dining with our community - of friends and making a joyful din. We listen to readings and we respond in prayer. We sing, we speak, we eat and drink together. The Eucharist is a social event, but it is also much, much more. And the “more” is what makes it a sacred meal. 

The people of Jesus’s day desperately wanted a savior who would drive out the Romans and free the people from imperial oppression and the unbearable yoke of taxation.  Who can blame them. They counted the days until the Son of Man would come in glory and power to save them.  They didn’t expect a wandering prophet who would proclaim the Beatitudes as his central call to action. Who broke all the rules. Who ate with sinners and tax collectors. Seeking out and saving the lost and forgotten was not in the plan. And what a prophet – one who loved to engage people in discussions over food. 

Jesus was seriously into eating and drinking—so much so that his enemies accused him of doing it to excess. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel the Pharisees and their scribes said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink” (Luke 5:33). Jesus spent his time eating and drinking—a lot of his time. One might say he was something of a party animal. His mission strategy was a long meal, stretching into the evening. He did evangelism and discipleship round a table with some grilled fish, a loaf of bread, and a pitcher of wine.

Robert Karris concludes: “In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.”

How appropriate then that Jesus shared his last meal with his friends. But this meal was different – more solemn, more tense, more final. At this meal Jesus asks his friends and followers to continue his work with the only command he ever gave: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." And when we remember that fact, Jesus makes his sacrifice present to us as food and drink for our lives. 

And so we ask the Spirit to bless this bread and wine so that it transforms us into more loving, more compassionate people. And we remember as Jesus asked us to: 

On the night before he died, Jesus was at table with his friends. He took bread, gave thanks to you, broke it, and gave it to his friends saying,

All: This is my body for you to share tonight and with future generations.

As supper was ending, Jesus took the cup of wine. Again he gave thanks, gave it to his friends and said,

All: This cup is the new agreement I make in solidarity with you for today and for all the tomorrows. And as often as you celebrate this meal in my name take joy in my memory.

All: After we are fed at this table, we must go out and feed others with our generosity, talent, service, and resources.

Sign of Peace:  Let us now offer one another a sign of peace.

Welcome to the table:  We are grateful for everyone who joins us this evening. Everyone is welcome at this table. The Spirit, whom the universe cannot contain, is present to us in this bread.  The sacred presence, and our own sacred hearts meet us in this cup.  So come, take this bread, drink this wine.  In them, the Spirit comes to us that that we become one with the Spirit.

Song with Dolly Parton Peace Train

Final Poem: “remember” by joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away tonight.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. 

Talk to them, listen to them. 

They are alive poems.

And the people of the Emmaus Community say: Amen!

Announcements

Addendum: The Eucharist is a sacred meal!

Luke’s Gospel is full of stories of Jesus eating with people:

In Luke 5 Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners at the home of Levi

In Luke 7 Jesus is anointed at the home of Simon the Pharisee during a meal.

In Luke 9 Jesus feeds the five thousand.

In Luke 10 Jesus eats in the home of Martha and Mary

In Luke 11 Jesus condemns the Pharisees and teachers of the law at a meal.

In Luke 14 Jesus is at a meal when he urges people to invite the poor to their meals rather than their friends.

In Luke 19 Jesus invites himself to dinner with Zacchaeus.

In Luke 22 we have the account of the Last Supper.

In Luke 24 the risen Christ has a meal with the two disciples in Emmaus, and then later eats fish with the disciples in Jerusalem.