A Pentecost Postscript . . . A FREE-RELIGIOUS PENTECOST COMMUNION SERVICE

Following the Sunday Gathering of Mindful Meditation, Music and Conversation, I held a very short communion service on the same theme as my Thought for the Day, ‘Dissolving the Closed Horizon: A Free-Religious Pentecost’. I wrote it specially for this occasion, and since a couple of people expressed a desire to have a copy, I publish it here . . .

A FREE-RELIGIOUS PENTECOST COMMUNION SERVICE

Reading Acts 2:1–4: ‘And, when the day arrived that completed the fifty after Passover, they were all gathered together in one place; and suddenly there came a noise like a turbulent wind borne out of the sky, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting, and there appeared before them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest, one each upon each one of them, and they were all filled with a Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them to utter.’

Service Leader: As we gather today, let us acknowledge the reality of the same Great Life and Spirit which moved among the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. It filled them with the energy to speak their truth and brought their separateness together into cooperative community. May that Great Life and Spirit be in us and among us right now. And may we, in all our diversity, discover our deeper unity and become part of a renewed humanity, ready to reach out, do good, and help heal the oppressed, just as Jesus did. Amen

Great Life of free and unobstructed creative evolution, 
    
     Moving within and among us all, 

     May the universal Cooperative Community 
come. 

May your Absolute Newness be realised, 
    
     Here on earth, in this very moment. 

Grant us today our daily bread, 
    
     And forgive us our rigid certainties, 
    
     As we forgive those who close their hearts to 
the future. 

And lead us not into the despair of ‘no alternative’, 
    
     But deliver us into an ever open world. 

For yours is the realm of possibility, 
    
     The gentle power, and the unfolding 
splendour, 

     Now and in every moment. Amen.

You will recall that on the night of his betrayal, just as he had done so many times before, Jesus shared a simple meal with his companions. He broke bread with them, turning it into a symbol of his own body that was soon to be broken. He drank wine with them, making it a symbol of his own blood, soon to be shed. Looking back on this, his friends saw in the bread a symbol of themselves as his living body here on earth, and in the wine, a symbol of the continuation of the Great Life and Spirit which he taught they shared with him. In breaking the bread and pouring the wine, they remembered his brave witness right to the end, and the enduring triumph of his free spirit. And today, we do the same.

¶ The bread is broken & the wine is poured. 

Service Leader: In sharing this broken bread we become one body with all who share the human form. As we eat of it may we feel our return-to-oneness with all who have striven to restore our broken humanity.

¶ The bread is shared in silence.

Service Leader: In sharing this wine we affirm that we are of one blood with all who share the human form. As we drink this wine may we feel our return-to-oneness with the Great Life of free and unobstructed creative evolution moving within us all.

¶ The wine is shared in silence.

Service Leader: May the Great Life and Spirit that was in Jesus—which roared and blazed in his friends at Pentecost, and which makes one cooperative community of all who love and serve their neighbours—be among us and within us now. May it set us free to walk the path of Absolute Newness that is safer than the known way. Amen.