Holy Communion at the End of an Appointment

The Lord is with us always.
How do we approach God carrying grief?

We lift up our broken hearts.
We lift them up in thankfulness for what has been.

But what has been is not what shall be.
We must look to the Kingdom that will be.

In the midst of our mourning of endings,
We will also celebrate new beginnings.
God will turn our mourning into dancing!

And so we are thankful this morning, Creator God.
You continue to renew us day after day by your love.
When one chapter of your people's story ends,
You are always here:
Speaking a new creation into being,
Calling a new prophet into preaching,
Bringing a new vibrance and continuation to the journey begun.

As in the days of Moses and Joshua,
Deborah and Gideon,
Naomi and Ruth,
Elijah and Elisha --
through each generation and appointment time
you have been present and at work during transitions.

We are thankful, great God, for the doors you take us through.
You comfort us in the closing of yesterdays
and you guide us in the opening of tomorrows.

And so we your people praise your name
joining the voices that have sung from time antiquity
and the voices of today and tomorrow that rise:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord
God of Power and Might
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!

We are thankful this bright day for Jesus Christ, our Savior.
He came to walk side by side with us in our journeys.
He called us away from the everyday to spend time with the Holy.
He taught us to find the Holy within the everyday.
Each time we think that life has perished,
He is always here:
Offering living water of hope to those with tears,
Giving forgiveness to those burdened by mistakes,
And loving the lost onto a faith path of purpose.

Jesus called disciples --
Peter, James and John,
Mary, Martha, the Samaritan woman at the well.
He calls us still to be a part of the Body of Christ,
renewed within his baptism, death, and resurrection.

On the night in which he gave himself up for us,
Christ took bread, gave thanks to you, broke it,
gave it to his disciples and said:
"Take, Eat, this is my body given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."

When the supper was over, he took the cup,
gave thanks to you, gave it to 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."

This is the great mystery:
that through Jesus Christ, God brings new relationships out of old,
that in giving ourselves away
we truly find ourselves in union with Christ.
In Christ every goodbye leads one day to an eternal hello.
Christ is with us in life, in death, and in life after death.
This is the great mystery:

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

Pour out your Guiding Spirit this evening nightfall
and turn it again into the sunrise of day.
Be here we pray!
Renew us in the midst of change!
Pour out your gifts on the Body of Christ.
Pour out on us!
Pour out on the Pauls and the Pricillas of our day.
Pour out on us!
Pour out on the Susanna and John Wesleys.
Pour out on us!
Pour out on the sons and daughters who you are calling and sending this day!
Pour out on us!
Pour out on these gifts of bread and wine,
that we may know your body and blood are always here:
refreshing, renewing, reviving our hearts and minds and bodies!

This we ask in the name of the Relational God, Three-in-One and One-in-Three, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

This resource is covered under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license. You may copy and distribute it freely by any means, but you may not alter it or sell it. If you wish to comment on this resource, please do so by establishing a user account on the Open Source Liturgy Project Wiki (http://wikigbod.org/wiki) and using the comment tool associated with this resource in the Beta section of the wiki, or by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. The comments we seek from testers are responses to these three questions: What works? What doesn't work? And what could be changed to improve this piece for your setting or settings like yours?