God our Creator, we offer our thanks as we greet each other around this table. We remember that you blessed human life with the Divine Presence in many traditions and with many names. But always it is in the ordinary signs of life that your Sacred Presence is revealed. In stinging sandstorms and in Arctic blizzards, your people have sought you, only to lose sight of you again. You call us in famine and in feast to recognize your abiding love that wills abundant life for all. And this time of pausing, teach us to choose the pathway of your Beloved and grant us what we need to follow him.

 

At the time of Passover, your Beloved Jesus became the Christ in the world. We remember the gift of that life when we learned the power of naming and challenging the power of healing and solidarity. Jesus showed us how to see our community as one family, the lifeblood.

 

One night in Bethany, Jesus sat down with his family and friends. A woman prophet anointed him with oil to recognize the unique gift of his life.

 

All: We remember this woman, the first witness to resurrection within this life.

 

Presider: Before his trial, while everyone was eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it. Then, looking at his people, he said for them to receive the sign of the bread. Looking at them all, he said, “This, my body.”

 

All: For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body.

 

Presider: Then Jesus took a cup of wine, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and all of them drank from the one cup, like one family, one blood. And he said to them, “This my blood of the new understanding, which is offered for many.”

 

All: You are the vine; we are the branches. May your joy abide in us so that we may be one family, offered for love of the world and chosen to bear the fruit of justice and peace-making.

 

Presider: And Jesus prayed to God, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I bless myself, so that they too may be truly blessed. I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will  believe in me through their words, that they all may be one.”(John 17:18-20)

 

All: May we all be one in purpose and many in inspiration. May we all be one in compassion, although diverse in understanding.