Our little church fellowship has recently started sharing communion once a month, and to help with this we’ve developed a little home-grown liturgy that not only reflects who we are but also reminds us of who we’re called to be.
As a group that treasures the Jewish roots of our Christian faith, we’ve eagerly delved into the connections between communion and Passover. As such, we’ve tried using the “Four Questions” of a Seder dinner as a way of telling the story of Jesus on the night He instituted the Lord’s Supper.
For example:
Question: Why is this meal different from all other meals? At all other times, we eat foods of all kinds; why at this meal do we only eat bread and drink wine?
Response: This meal is different because it helps us to remember. Jesus told His first followers to do this in remembrance of Him. We remember that on the night He was betrayed, Jesus gathered with His disciples to celebrate the traditional Passover meal. This meal remembered how God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, and foreshadowed how God would deliver His people from slavery to sin and death.
Our liturgy uses four questions to go through 4 R’s of Eucharist: remember, repent, rejoice and receive. Then, after serving one another, we take a moment to pray for the needs of our community and to give thanks together. We usually close with a song and the Lord’s Prayer. We recall especially the Passover Seder’s anticipation for the coming of the Messiah, only we focus on our Messiah’s promised return.
Eucharist, then, points us towards both the past and the future– and as a group, we feel this is an important way to help us live well in the present.
A LITURGY OF A LIFE 