We are creating liturgy around our common meal preparation and serving and eating in a sacred mindful conversational way, full of singing, prayers, interesting questions to discuss, sharing of stories from our lives, bringing items from home from our kitchens or lives to put on the altar, bringing items for salad and for soup, making our bread for communion and to share for the Thanksgiving dinner, potlucking any other items we want to contribute, and will close our meal worship gathering in time to also host a 1 pm (ish) showing of the movie "Of Gods and Men" based on a true story of French monks serving their Muslim neighbors, not trying to convert them, and being caught between corrupt government forces, terrorists, and their own crises of faith in what it means to follow Jesus even in dangerous times and places.
Here is our order of service to help shape and deepen our customary and beloved holy chaos; this worship meal experience will, it is hoped, help individuals and families to make all their meals more sacred, by affording models to use, and even after this special Thanksgiving Service we will adapt a modified version of the liturgy for use at all our common meals.
Thanks to missional progressive colleague Christy Moore for inspiration, participation and co-leading this first of our worshipful meals or meals of worship.
We hope to see you there, as we seek to make our worship more missional as well as our service in and with community, even if it is your first time to gather with us. Come and see. This is Reverse Offering Sunday, our annual giving out of money to persons and families to take and be a blessing in the community, to be creative and start something lasting, or contribute to something new, to say thanks to someone, to surprise someone and yourself; we will hear stories back from our reverse offering when we gather in January on Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday. Even if this is your first time, please come and take a reverse offering back into the world with you.
The Welcome Table Gathering
free.universalist.christian.missional.community
Thanksgiving Worship
Meal
Liturgy/Menu
Experiencing God in Radical
Hospitality and Service To Others
“While at Levi’s House, Jesus ate
with tax-collectors and sinners (today we would say he was eating with
terrorists and child sex offenders); when the religious authorities saw him
doing so, they asked his followers why he was shaming himself and them and
their whole community by doing so; on overhearing this, Jesus stepped in
(reminding them by his action that if anyone had a problem with another they
should go directly to that other with it and not to someone else) and he said, “Anyone
can eat with those who are like them, and who they like and are liked by them, but
those of us especially who follow our God of Israel, a God who commands us to
treat the strangers as one of us because we were once strangers in another
land, we must do more than that in order to do God’s will. After all, even
though the world of the Empire may think and do otherwise, should doctors treat
only the well and not the sick? Our meals are like doctors for the soul. If you are full and happy and think you are
perfect and have brought nothing to
give, you won’t understand God is at this table, that God is for the ungodly. But
if you are not well, take off your heavy burdens and lay them down, and come
rest and be nourished at this table and yes, even by these people of God.” ---a
rendering of the gospel based on Mark 2
“We’ll stay hungry if we eat alone.
We’ll starve if we believe that a community is a supernatural kind of miracle,
or a product we can buy—not something we create by offering ourselves
recklessly to others. We’ll never feel truly fed if we’re constantly competing
to get our share, if we believe that love is scarce, and are afraid to give it
away.”---Sara Miles
Invocation and
Gathering
Today is the
day which God has made. Let us rejoice
and be glad therein. For what does the Eternal require of us? To live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly
with our God. We covenant to walk together with one another not in creed,
but in deed, to walk together in the ways of God known and to be made known. In the light of truth, and the loving and
liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and serve
others.
Responsive Reading 425: from Psalm 65
First Movement: Washing and Blessing The Hands and Preparing the Meal
Blessed are
you, Holy One. You hold us in your hands. Be with us in THIS day. Bless our hands, that we might hold
others as dearly as you hold them. Blessed
be the hands that grow food and those that prepare meals. Blessed be the hands that wash dishes and clean floors. Blessed be
the hands that anoint the sick and offer blessings. Blessed be the hands that guide the young. Blessed be the hands that
grow stiff with age. Blessed be the hands that comfort the dying and have held
the dead. Blessed be the hands that greet strangers. Blessed be the hands for all the work, all the play, all the love,
that we give. Blessed be the hands into
which we receive life; bless be the hands into which we pass the future.
Blessed be the hands that pass peace.
Greetings
Preparing the Meal and Conversation:
Where did our components of the meal come from? Do we just eat with an
assumption of food that just appears? Sharing Stories of where our food
ingredients came from, whether shopping or gardens. How have we prepared the
space for our meal? How does food grow community? Where is God in the garden,
in the slaughterhouses, in the factories, in the transport, in the stores, in
the kitchen?
Responsive Reading: We Give Thanks
This Day, #512
Songs of Thanksgiving: For The Beauty
of The Earth, #21, Tis A Gift to Be Simple #16, Come Thou Fount of Every
Blessing, #126
Second Movement: Deepening Our Lives At The Tables and The Altar
Setting the Altar and Moments of
Silence and Sharing Stories with items that have meaning from our homes and our
lives. What kind of tables did Jesus gather? Where have our tables come from?
What makes the communion table different and the same? What is a blessing? What
do we bring to the table, of blessings?
Songs of Meditation and Mindfulness:
Find A Stillness, #352
Prayers of Community
Dona Nobis Pacem, #388
The Prayer Jesus Taught Those Who
Would Follow in his Radical Compassionate Way:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever
and ever. Amen.
Responsive Reading: We Lift Up Our
Hearts in Thanks, #515
Third Movement: Breaking Bread/Pouring Cup/Eucharist/Meal
Songs of Communion: We’re Gonna Sit
At The Welcome Table, #407
Responsive Reading: Food For the
Spirit, #726
Conversation: Vulnerability as
Virture. How do we break open our lives to share with others?
Communion Prayer: O God, we gather at this welcoming
table open to all no matter what, remembering how Jesus gathered people from
all the walks of life, stranger and friend and enemies, gave thanks to you,
offered all the bread of life and the cup of blessing and proclaimed a covenant
of love for all in your name. We
remember too the wonder of his life, as we remember the wonder of all of
Creation given unto us and how all are One, and all lives sacred. We remember his death and how on the night
before he died he still gathered in love to share a meal and the hope for a
better world, and we remember all the terrors and the tyrannies that oppress
people today. In the mystery of faith in the everlasting Spirit, the triumph
over fear, help us to remember to practice resurrection everyday, as we
remember all those who have given Love the ultimate trust and the last word and
who have worked to create the beloved community of renewed and abundant life.
Help us to remember with this meal especially all those who are hungry, and may
we treat all our meals as sacred and to be shared. Take us, bless us, so that
even in and with our brokenness we may serve others and receive Your Spirit. Amen.
Breaking and Passing the Bread of
Life, Pouring and Passing the Cup of Hope
Song of Communion: Let Us Break Bread
Together, #406
Passing Our Plates and Serving One
Another
Dinner and Food Justice Conversation
on Questions
Fourth Movement: Taking Home
Unison Prayer for Our Composting and
Recycling: Creator God, we thank you for the abundance of resources with which
we are blessed. We repent the abuse and overuse of these gifts. And we now ask
for your guidance in restoring the face of the earth. Amen.
Song of Thanksgiving: We Sing Now
Together, #67
Reverse Offering Blessings: #702,
distributing envelopes, #704
Song of Benediction: Go Now in Peace,
#413
You are invited to stay for the movie
and discussion of the film “Of Gods and Men” based on a true story of a
monastery of French monks caring for Muslim neighbors and caught between
corrupt government forces and terrorists.
About The Welcome Table Missional
Community
We seek to freely follow the radical Jesus
in deeds not creeds. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. That
is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to
all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual
orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political
affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would
have it any other way.
Free.
Universalist.Christian.Missional. Community.
Free because we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for
admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for
you. Universalist because we
believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love is
for all for all time and nothing can separate us from the Love of God. Christian because the generous
compassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary, but not exclusive,
pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others
more than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own,
putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our own
organization. Community because we are made not to be autonomous
individuals but to be a people of God.
Our Mission, Vision, Values
We are created by and for the Mission
of God. We seek to make the spirit of Jesus visible in the world, especially
through small acts of justice done with great love. To heal the sick, feed the
hungry, give drink to the thirsty, invite the stranger, visit the prisoner, free
the captive and the oppressed, give sight to the blind, clothe the naked, and
proclaim the year of God’s Jubilee Forgiveness of Debts.
We are a simple church, but it can be
a deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberating
Jesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to live
for and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us,
to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are our
times to refresh our spirits for the service of God. We will at some time break
one another’s hearts and not be what and who we want ourselves to be; we begin
again in love.
We encourage one another in common
practices: daily acts of random acts of beauty and kindness; daily prayer and
meditation; weekly worship; monthly spiritual accountability; annual retreat;
lifetime pilgrimage. Striving to find ways to Relinquish wealth and privilege
and Living Simply so that others may simply live. Working for the Relocation of
our lives and resources to the abandoned places of the American Dream Empire.
Redistribution of Goods and the Common Good. Reconciliation through
Relationships with those who are different from us.
5920 N. Owasso Ave. Turley/NorthTulsa,
OK 74126 918-691-3223 918-794-4637
Learning More About Us and Our
Associations and Links
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