Communion Focusing on Justice for Women, Minorities, and LGBTQ+ Persons

Jesus, Lord of Love, we hear your invitation.

All are Loved by God and welcomed.
This Love changes how we see one another.
This Love embraces broken hearts and creates peace.

Encountering you, Great Love, causes us
to admit where we got it wrong
to own our part actively or in apathy allowing evil to thrive
to see how we have hurt you.

Great Love,
We have not loved you,
and we have not seen the image of your Love in one another.
We have stripped humanity from one another in language and action.
We have put our brothers and sisters in slavery
making them things to be owned, used, sold, abused
instead of siblings to be embraced.
We have discriminated against your diversity of being.
We have weaponized shame and minimalized the gift of difference.
We have violently attacked the beauty of the Creator’s creation
with cat calls slandering women as the weaker sex
and turning acts of intimacy into rape and power.
We blamed the Gays for AIDS while we beat them bloody at Stonewall Inn.
We have not loved you in one another.
Lord of Love, have mercy on us.
Forgive us, we pray.
Free us to see your Great Love in each child of God
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.

Beloved, hear the good news:
Christ died for us while we were still captive to hatred and apathy.
This proves God’s Great Love toward us.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

Glory to the God of Love!  Amen.

 God’s Great Love is with you.

And also with you.

 Lift up your broken hearts that God might heal them.

 We lift them up to the Lord.

 Give thanks to the God of Love.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

 Holy Love,
You are other, different, and unlike anything we will ever encounter.
And yet, you created us in your image.
We hear you in the dream of Martin Luther King.
We see you in the rainbow flag of Harvey Milk and Gilbert Baker.
We are shaped by your Words of Love
from Marjorie Matthews, Leontine Kelley, and Karen Oliveto.
You, Love, just won’t stop.
You, Love, continue as a persistent wind of prophetic change.
Our love is fickle, flagrant, and fails.
You, Love, have never failed.
You, Love, travel across the cosmos on the lips of your prophets,
the songs of your peoples, and all the saints of glory as they sing:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Love and Beauty,
Heaven and Earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the Highest!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the Highest!

Holy Love,
You are among us as Jesus Christ, Word in Flesh.
You came welcoming the outcasts and scorning the in-crowd.
You kissed the leper, helped the lame to walk, the blind to see.
You, Jesus, broke human traditions to teach the Divine Traditions:
Compassion, Mercy, Grace, Jubilee.
By your own life, suffering, death, and resurrection
You gave us Love as community, as fellowship, as church.
You delivered us from hate and apathy.
You made with us a new promise of life in water and Spirit.

 On the night in which Christ gave himself up for us,
he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it,
and gave it to his disciples, saying:
“Take eat, this is my body given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
When the meal was over he took the cup, gave thanks, gave it to all of his disciples, and said:
“Drink from this all of you;
This is my blood of the new covenant,
Poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Love makes us remember.
Love causes our hearts to change.
Love awakens in us a spirit of giving.

So we offer ourselves to you, to be a part of your selfless giving,
as we proclaim the mystery of faith:

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

Holy Love,
Come among us as the Holy Spirit.
Come as the great Comforter.
Come as the great Sustainer.
Come, make this bread and this cup be for us the body and blood of Christ.
Come, make us be the body of Christ, diverse in grain and united in love.
Come, redeem us by the blood of Christ, crushed in suffering and poured out in love.

Give us the vision, the perspective, and the dream of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
Reveal your presence as we take each other’s hands and join in one voice.
Unite us all in You, Great Love, in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Guide, 

Amen.