10/06/2024: World Communion Sunday, For Everything Born

For Everything Born

I Corinthians 12: 12-26

Rev. Loren McGrail

Holmdel Community United Church of Christ

October 6, 2024

 

Homemade Taboon bread from the village of Tuba, West Bank.

October 4, 2003, Photo by Linda Noonan

 

 

Dear Ones, in the summer of 2014, Global Ministries asked me to write something for their website because churches shared stories about our mission co-workers and partners on World Communion Sunday. I struggled for days trying to find the words that I knew was expected of me but couldn’t write because the violence, the missiles, and the bombs going off every night were too much. Friend and theologian Marc Ellis said write about why you can’t write the liturgy. So, I did, and it was published later in December as a prayer/poem with credit to Creative Corner to shield my identity for security reasons. Here is an excerpt:

 

Living and serving in an illegal military occupation in Israel and Palestine, changed me and gave me new insights into how our suffering relates to his and others. For example, I am struggling with the mounting death toll in Lebanon which includes the targeting of Father Gregorius Saloum and his family of four daughters and a wife. Father Saloum was the pastor of St. George’s Greek Orthodox church. And this is on top of other targeted families. I am well aware that many of you are tired of hearing me talk about the genocide in Palestine which has now spread to Lebanon. I am tired too, but if our faith and scriptures have any meaning, they call us to care about all members, especially those suffering. Dear Ones, genocide is not only happening on our watch but with our consent and money. On top, we are on the edge of further escalation and violence. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers today as we remember the one who took on suffering for us so there would be no more.

It is for all of these reasons that I chose 1Corinthians 12:12-26 for our text for World Communion Sunday. I wanted to bring forward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be one body in Christ. I wanted to begin where Paul begins with the fact that we are one body with many members and that all have value and worth but then also introduce you to an ecological perspective as well. I wanted to emphasize the unity in diversity message but also talk about how this also applies to God’s body as the earth. Theologian Sally McFague says in her book, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, that the earth itself is God’s body.  Listen to how she describes incarnation:

Now pair this with this Gaian Reading of 1 Chronicles by Valerie Luna Serrels to see what this new reading might sound like:  For in the one Spirit, we were all created into one body – Jew or Gentile, all faith traditions or no faith traditions; of all genders; of all languages; of all colors – black, brown, white skin, green and multi-colored scaly skin, fur, feathers, stems, flowers and roots; two-legged, four-legged, multi-legged, legless, winged, finned, and rooted; All creatures, minerals, and elements of land, sea and sky;

Dear Ones, our planet is on fire and bodies are dying as we speak from floods and fires. Dear Ones, we are all members of God’s body which means when we take communion we are invited to share in this suffering. Sharing the bread and wine means not only to care but to do something to alleviate or stop the suffering; to love kindness and mercy and seek justice.

Let me share some examples from my week on this topic. Some of these stories might be new to you. Let’s start with the fact that there were five executions last week. Five. Did you know that the death penalty is a direct descendent of racism and slavery and Black people who make up 12% of the population represent 42% of those on death row? The states that have held onto slavery the longest are the ones holding onto the death penalty and yes, they are also the states in the bible belt.

Dear Ones, these lives mattered to God and should matter to us now. Our Black Lives Matter flag reminds us that these members of God’s body are important and that they should not have been executed.

In my Climate Justice and Faith class this week, one of the members of my cohort from Tanzania said he was late to the zoom meeting because he was talking to his Lutheran youth group about the relationship between the deforestation by the big oil companies and the looming forced famine about to happen. He told us that people were giving up and were preparing to leave in search of food. My colleague was reminding us that what we are doing is more than a discussion of readings or even shared prayers but a preparation for how to live while people and creatures around us are threatened and dying. And in spite of these threats, he asked us Americans about Hurricane Helene and what was happening to our people.

It is out of these experiences I decided to use a Communion liturgy that focused on the incarnation in our elements-the bread and the wine. As Rev. Molly Baskett Phinney writes in her beautiful liturgy:

Furthermore, in our new Lord’s Prayer we ask for forgiveness for “trespassing other humans and other-than-human.” Just as God loves diversity in people, they also love biodiversity in creation. In fact, it is a requirement for life.

Dear Ones, it is indeed difficult and tiresome even to keep being reminded that we are all interconnected and interdependent and that a suffering of one member matters to the whole body of God.

In 2016, I was asked again to write the call to the table for World Communion Sunday again. I share these words now today as a reminder of who we are called to be: