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Living Love
Julie Welcome! We are so happy to have you join us this afternoon as we celebrate our liturgy together. Today we look at life and death and resurrection and imagine how to live our love.
Opening Prayer: (From the Second Letter to the Thessalonians 2:16-17 and adapted from E. Peterson’s The Message)
Let us pray. May Jesus the Christ and our Loving God, who reaches out in love to surprise us with gifts of unending comfort, courage and good hope, refresh you, strengthen your hearts, invigorate your work, and enliven your speech. AMEN.
Opening Song: Loving Kindness by Karen Drucker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLwm68BlH_4
Liturgy of the Word
A Reading from the Second Book of Maccabees (7:1-42 abbrev.)
About 170 BCE, when Greece ruled Judea under the “Seleucid Empire,” the ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, sought to quash even the most basic Jewish practices. Epiphanes’ attempt to suppress Judean law resulted in the Maccabean Revolt. The following narrative is set within that historical context.
It happened that a woman, and her seven sons, were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the ruler, their captor. He had tried to force them to eat pork in violation of God's law. One of the brothers, acting as spokesperson for all of them, said: “What do you expect to achieve by questioning us? We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”
The ruler fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and cauldrons heated. They were heated immediately. The ruler commanded that the tongue of their spokesperson be cut out and that they torture him gruesomely while the rest of the brothers, and their mother, looked on... The brothers and the mother did not falter: They encouraged one another to die nobly.
After the first brother died, they brought forward the next. At the point of death, the second brother said: “You accursed fiend! You deprive us of this life, but the Ruler of the Cosmos will raise us up to live again forever...”
Then, the third brother suffered their cruel sport. He put out his tongue at once when told to do so, and bravely offered his hands as well, as he spoke these noble words: “It was from Heaven that I received these. For the sake of God’s laws, I disdain them. From God I hope to receive them again.” Even the ruler and the attendants marveled at the young man’s courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
After he had died, they tortured and maltreated the fourth, fifth and sixth brothers in the same way. When near death, they all affirmed their choice to die at the hands of mortals while trusting God, who would raise them up. “But for you,” one brother said to his torturers, “there will be no resurrection to Life.”
The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with tremendous courage because of her hope in God. She encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors.
Filled with a noble spirit, she shared the wisdom of her heart, saying, “I don’t know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the depth of character within each of you. Therefore, the Creator of the Cosmos, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will give life and breath to you again. Since you now forget yourselves for the sake God’s law, God will remember you forever.”
She then encouraged her seventh son: “Do not fear this butcher. Follow your brothers. Accept death, so that in God’s tender compassion I may receive you again along with your brothers.”
Last of all, after the seventh son was put to death, the mother was put to death.
Enough has been said about the sacrificial meals and the excessive cruelties.
These are the inspired words of a Hellenistic Judean Historian and the community affirms them by saying AMEN.
Alleluia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC4nbwmQDVw
Gospel
A Reading from the Gospel attributed to Luke (20:27-40)
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked a question. “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children with her for his brother. What if there were seven brothers? The first married and died childless. Then the second and the third married their first brother’s wife, also leaving no children. In the same way, all seven married her and died, without leaving her any children. Finally, the woman also died. At the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age get married. Those who enter the age to come and the resurrection from the dead, do not marry. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, like the angels. They are children of God, children of the resurrection.
“The fact that the dead are raised was upheld by Moses himself in the story about the bush. He speaks of God as the God of Sarah and Abraham, the God of Rebekah and Isaac, the God of Leah, Rachel, and Jacob. God is not God of the dead, but of the living. To God, and in God, all of them are alive.” Then some of the religious scholars answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” They no longer dared to ask Jesus another question.
These are the inspired words of the anonymous storyteller we call Luke, and the community affirms them by saying AMEN.
Shared Homily
Julie: Earlier this week we celebrated first All Saints’ Day and then All Souls’ Day, such a bittersweet time as we remember those who have gone before us. We’ve all lost someone we loved. We’ve all grieved. And, perhaps in time, we will all reach the point of being able to remember our beloved dead with a smile for the love we shared with them in this life, love that we carry in our hearts always.
Our readings today talk about resurrection. In our rather gruesome first reading, it is a resurrection for the righteous. In the gospel, Jesus tells us more about the resurrection and how we will be then. In sidestepping the trap the Sadducees laid for him, Jesus lets us know that we won’t be resurrected into a life like this one with its social constructs. No, instead we will be set free of this world’s limitations of patriarchal culture, of racism, of xenophobia. We will be raised up with those we love and without all the nonsense that keeps us apart, more like angels than messy mortals. Can you imagine being with your loved ones without all the baggage of this world? Can you imagine how sweet that would be? Maybe we can give ourselves a little preview of that now and love more freely today, love with fewer expectations right here, right now. Maybe, like angels, we can be messengers of God’s word and spread love to all we meet, whether we know them or not, sprinkling love, like confetti, everywhere we go.
What did you hear? What will you do? What, if anything, will it cost you? Please unmute and share your thoughts and insights on today’s readings.
Statement of Faith
We believe in the Holy One, a divine mystery
beyond all definition and rational understanding,
the heart of all that has ever existed,
that exists now, or that ever will exist.
We believe in Jesus, messenger of the Divine Word,
bringer of healing, heart of Divine compassion,
bright star in the firmament of the Holy One's
prophets, mystics, and saints.
We believe that We are called to follow Jesus
as a vehicle of divine love,
a source of wisdom and truth,
and an instrument of peace in the world.
We believe in the Spirit of the Holy One,
the life that is our innermost life,
the breath moving in our being,
the depth living in each of us.
We believe that the Divine kin-dom is here and now,
stretched out all around us for those
with eyes to see it, hearts to receive it,
and hands to make it happen.
Liturgy of the Eucharist
(Written by Jay Murnane)
Julie: As we prepare for this sacred meal, we are aware of our call to serve, and just as Jesus is anointed, so is each of us. We bring to this table our prayers for the community. Please share your blessings, cares, and concerns starting with the words, “I bring to the table…”
We pray for these and all unspoken intentions. Amen.
Please join in praying the Eucharistic prayer together.
Blessed are you, Holy One, source of all creation. Through your goodness you made this world and called us to be Your co-creators. We give thanks for the diversity and beauty of life around us and within us.
We open our awareness to the goodness of all of creation and we remember our responsibility to serve. You invite us to build the earth into a community of love rooted in justice. You placed confidence in us, for you made us and you know that we are good.
In joy and in thanksgiving we join with all the faithful servants who have gone before us and we sing:
Holy Holy Holy by Karen Drucker
We thank you for Jesus, simple servant, lifting up the lowly, revealing you as God-With-Us, and revealing us as one with you and all of creation.
He lived among us to show us who we are and challenged us to know you. He taught us the strength of compassionate love.
Please extend your hands in blessing.
We are grateful for your Spirit at our Eucharistic Table and for this bread and wine which reminds us of our call to be the body of Christ in the world.
On the night before he died, Jesus gathered for supper with the people closest to him. Like the least of household servants, he washed their feet, so that they would remember him.
(All lift their plates and pray the following:)
When he returned to his place at the table, he lifted the bread, spoke the blessing, broke the bread and offered it to them saying:
Take and eat, this is my very self.
(pause)
(All lift their cups and pray the following:)
Then he took the cup of the covenant, spoke the grace, and offered it to them saying:
Take and drink.
Whenever you remember me like this,
I am among you.
(pause)
What we have heard with our ears, we will live with our lives. As we share communion, we become Communion both love’s nourishment and love’s challenge.
You are called, consecrated, and chosen to serve. Please receive Communion with the words: I embrace my call to love.
Communion Song: I Will Remember You by Sarah McLachlan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TYDnb1i1BA
Prayer after communion:
Julie: Holy One, we are willing to do everything Jesus did, to re-create the living presence of a love that does justice, of a compassion that heals and liberates, of a joy that generates hope, of a light that illumines people and confronts the darkness of every injustice and inequity.
We trust you to continue to share with us your own spirit, the spirit that animated Jesus, for it is through his life and teaching, all honor and glory is yours, O Holy One, forever and ever. Amen.
All: AMEN.
Let us pray as Jesus taught us:
Holy One, you are within, around and among us.
We celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come; your will be done,
unfolding from the depths within us.
Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limits and we let go.
You support us in our power, and we act with courage.
For you are the dwelling place within us,
the empowerment around us,
and the celebration among us,
now and forever, Amen.
Adapted by Miriam Therese Winter
Blessing
Julie: Let us raise our hands in blessing and pray together:
May we continue to be the face of God to each other. May we love compassionately and live fully. May we call each other to extravagant generosity! May we walk with an awareness of our Call as companions on the journey, knowing we are not alone. May we, like Jesus, be a shining light and a blessing in our time! AMEN.
Closing Song: One Thing Remains by Jesus Culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_KXsMCJgBQ
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