Glynn Cardy
17 Aug 2008 00:00:00
This morning we have begun to use a new liturgy, the culmination of seven months of writing, consultation, and composing. It’s titled: “Journey in Aotearoa”.
The journey referred to is the spiritual journey into God. It’s a journey of discovery – discovering who God might be, who we might be, and what might be asked of us. Traditional church language, of which this liturgy uses little, would have called this ‘revelation’, ‘redemption’, and ‘sanctification’.
Aotearoa, our context, is both the starting place for this journey, the means of travel, and the destination’s cradle. It is similar to T.S. Eliot’s famous words ‘at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’. Note I use the word ‘cradle’ to indicate that the destination itself may feel like a beginning, or a beginning again. For the spiritual journey never ends.
There are many ways that the Church has promoted as the highways or backstreets to God. The life of Jesus, the Bible, and the traditions of the Church, the sacraments, and worship come to mind. Yet how we read, how we listen, how we know, and how we pray are all shaped by our context.
This emphasis on context [people of the land… people of the sea… ] is what is called in technical language ‘incarnational theology’. It means that God is not far off somewhere over the universe but, as revealed in Jesus, is in our midst. God is around us, among us, and within us. The feelings and experiences we have of God being transcendent, mysterious, and beyond are interwoven with our experience of God being with us here and now in this place. We know God and are known by God in our physical, cultural, and emotional contexts.
One of the key metaphors for this liturgy is water. Water is literally all around us here. It refreshes us, it disturbs us, and it nourishes us. In the Church it is used in baptism [a beginning ritual], in blessing houses [an owning ritual], and in the Eucharist [a sustaining ritual]. It is also symbolic of our ancestors’ journeys in coming to this land. All peoples have travelled either on or over the water to get here.
The Song of Praise, written by Joy Cowley, talks about life as a river. Life flows, but not from a bad place to a good one or from sin to grace. Rather struggle, pain, loss, endurance, tenacity, hope, love, and joy are all blended into the flow; tossed and tumbled by the river. Sometimes we float sedately and at other times we are thrown through the white water. Sometimes we are in control and sometimes we’re not. The refrain ‘Where does the sea begin? Where does the river end?’ asks the question whether there are any limits to where God, has been, is, and will be in our lives.
The Words of Encouragement and the Prayer for Everyday are not the comforting ‘God loves you’ words of traditional liturgies. Neither are they of the ‘you-are-a-sinner-God-forgives-you variety. These words are not to make us feel good about ourselves but to encourage us to get up and do something. Like love one another, know our neighbour, loosen bonds of oppression, and protest. They are focussed on our mission to others not on our own needs. Daniel Berrigan, the resolute Catholic peace advocate, reminds us that when we are tired, weighed down, trying to care for the fractious and the fragile, when we want to avoid anything difficult, then like it or not, we just have to do what is right.
Similarly the response after the first reading: ‘Kia kaha. Be strong’. The traditional liturgy asks us to ‘hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church’. This liturgy however asks us to take what hear, if we can, and use it as spiritual fuel for the tasks of mission.
The crux of any Eucharistic liturgy is the prayer of The Great Thanksgiving. They usually have an up-down movement. God is up. He [and God unfortunately is always a ‘He’] creates humankind, who quickly screw up. God tries a variety of fix-it formulas. Then Jesus is sent down, dies, and is resurrected/elevated back up to God. He leaves behind his Spirit and the Holy Communion. We, the disciples’ offspring, are to carry on his work and message.
This Great Thanksgiving however starts with the earth, our planet. Spirituality, God, earth, and humanity are all interwoven. Earth is not a profane object. It is part of us. When we care for it and listen to it, it is like listening to our own bodies or listening to our parents/partner/children. In order to underline the intimacy of our relationship with the earth the liturgy uses some anthropomorphic language e.g. ‘ocean’s fingers caress’ and ‘the pregnant forest tends’.
It is important though to note that the liturgy is not trying to deify nature. It isn’t equating the earth with God. The purpose of the personifying language is to build connection, recognizing that our Western thought has in the past sought a disconnection with nature in order to utilize and exploit it. What we are seeking today are ways to cooperate with nature, and theologies that support that.
The first responsorial has us addressing creation ‘O brilliant sun… O bountiful earth’. Again this is not an attempt to deify nature. There is a long tradition of praying to others beside God – like Mary and the Saints, ‘Brother Sun and Sister Moon’, etcetera. Praying to them, despite what early Protestants would have us believe, doesn’t mean we equate them with God.
The Great Thanksgiving goes on to talk about, as with the river, the toss and tumble of human life. It identifies the structural, political, and cultural arm-wrestle between generosity and greed, with the cop-out option of apathy. Generosity and greed compete for allegiance in our hearts, in our neighbourly relations, and in our governments’ policies. This struggle impacts upon our earth and upon our soul.
Jesus knew this struggle and took sides. For centuries mainstream Christianity preached a Jesus who was above the struggle, who wasn’t interested in politics but only in saving souls, a Jesus who was on all sides and none. What that meant in effect was a politically neutralized Jesus, a Jesus who was in the pocket of the powerful, and therefore a Jesus who was bad news for the poor.
The resurrection is a way of talking about Jesus’ life and commitment living on in his followers. This liturgy again uses a water metaphor: the precipitation cycle. As water flows from river to sea and back again so Jesus life feeds and flows through our lives. It is not constrained by his death. The indication of a life affected, infected, by Jesus is love – i.e. a giving life rather than an absorbing love. This love comes like a gift.
The gift of love, the Jesus legacy or spirit, is both a comfort and a disturbance. While it is sustaining and supportive it also obligates us to be generous and confront the policies and practices of greed. It obligates us to work for justice. This love is our compass, paddle, and destination of our journey.
The Prayer after Communion expresses not only our gratitude but also that we are gifts of God given to the world. With all our faults and failings God flows through us, trusts in us, and believes in us. We are grace and hope, holy and powerful.
You may notice there is no subtitle called ‘Blessing’. On one level the whole liturgy is a blessing, declaring God’s generosity. On another level the blessing is the gift of Jesus’ life known as we gather together around an open Eucharistic table and journey on into God. On another level earth, our here and now, life itself is the blessing. And on another level we are the blessing. Warts and all, worries and all… we are God’s eyes, ears, hands, and hearts… God’s love and hope for the world.
Aotearoa Liturgy
Processional Hymn
Welcome
Liturgist May we have the wisdom and humility to realise the gifts we have been given and use those gifts to bring healing and justice.
All People of the land
Liturgist giving and receiving sustenance and hope.
All People of the sea
Liturgist nurtured by blue expanse and rolling waves.
All People of the night
Liturgist soothed and held by silence.
All People of the dawn
Liturgist ready to venture and experiment.
All People of community
Liturgist offering comfort and nurture.
All People of the journey
Liturgist leaving the old certainties behind.
All Spiritually we are like rivers, connected to our source and our destination as we travel through the world. The knowledge that the entire journey is held in God runs deep within.
Song of Praise:
Liturgist Life is like a river that flows towards the sea. It has a small beginning increasing gradually,
All until it’s in a larger place, a current deep and wide, giving its abundance to the land on either side.
All sung And I have questions to ask you, my friend. Where does the sea begin? Where does the river end?
Liturgist The river has its secrets. In its depths it knows, the nature of the ocean, where its water flows.
All It hears the sea birds singing. It feels the touch of foam. The sea is always calling
the river to come home.
All sung And I have questions to ask you, my friend. Where does the sea begin? Where does the river end?
Liturgist Life is like a river and deep inside my mind, the call of love grows stronger as I leave each day behind.
All We’re moving with the current of this unseen mystery. Already we have knowledge of the presence of the sea.
All sung And I have questions to ask you, my friend. Where does the sea begin? Where does the river end?
-Joy Cowley
Words of Encouragement:
A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you.
Jesus
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbour. Do you know your next door neighbour?
Mother Teresa
Hold fast therefore to the liberty wherein Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Paul of Tarsus
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel
You just have to do what you know is right.
Daniel Berrigan SJ
A Prayer for Every Day
Pilgrim,
When your ship,
Long moored in harbour,
Gives you the illusion
Of being a house;
When your ship
Begins to put down roots
In the stagnant water by the quay:
Put out to sea!
Save your boat’s journeying soul
And your own pilgrim soul,
Cost what it may.
-Dom Helder Camara
Sentence and Prayer for the Day
The First Reading
after reading
Reader Kia kaha
All Be strong
Gospel Hymn
The Gospel Reading
The Holy Gospel according to ...
This is the Gospel of Christ
The Sermon
The Reflection
The Prayers of the People
Let us be still and mindful of the world, the Church, this nation, our communities, and ourselves.
The Peace
Peace be with us all.
With justice comes peace.
Let us build peace together
and change our world.
Offertory Hymn
The Great Thanksgiving
Our Earth is a taonga, a treasure. Here we find food, water, shelter, company, beauty, and solace. Entrusted to us by our forbears, it calls to our soul, and when our soul listens there is harmony. As the ocean’s fingers caress our shores, the pregnant forest tends our land, and the night’s cool whispers soothe our dreams, our life and spirits are woven into the fabric of this land.
Cantor O brilliant sun, gifting the earth with light and warmth.
All sung We are thankful, let us show our gratitude.
Cantor O fresh’ning rain, falling to irrigate and cleanse.
All sung We are thankful, let us show our gratitude.
Cantor O crashing waves, surfers’ and walkers’ delight.
All sung We are thankful, let us show our gratitude.
Cantor O bountiful earth, you suckle and tend us.
All sung We are thankful, let us show our gratitude.
From the beginning, powerful forces of generosity, greed, and indifference have vied for allegiance in the human heart. Individuals, tribes, and nations have been shaped by these forces. Generosity, that amazing power of gift and trust, has rarely been in the ascendancy. Time and again, ruling elites have found ways to undermine and ignore it. The powers of greed have no room for costly self-giving.
Our planet has absorbed the desecration, carrying the scars. Rampant human greed has ravaged our whenua. We wait a time when the taonga Earth will be valued.
Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Palestinian Jew, uncompromisingly lived and preached generosity. He railed against the barriers of self-interest and the fear used to maintain them. He broke the law. Then the law broke him. It seemed the powers of avarice and apathy had vanquished the powers of gift and trust.
As water flows from river to sea and back again, the life of Jesus did not end. His spirit lived on in his followers, and continues to do so down the centuries among people who let love be their compass, compassion their paddle, and justice their destination.
Sanctus sung
Holy, wonderful, and precious is the gift of life; death cannot defeat it. The power of Love that is God permeates our world, casting aside the power of greed. Praise be for all who know the gift, and live the Love.
And so we remember the rebel Jesus who, on the night before he died, took the gift of bread; when he had given thanks he broke it, gave it to his friends and said: Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this to remember me.
After supper he took the cup; when he had given thanks he gave it to them and said:
Drink this, all of you, for this is my blood which brings new life; do this as often as you drink it, to remember me.
With this bread and wine we remember the gift of life and the call to our soul.
Cantor O bread of life entrusted to us, may we be nourished.
All sung May we share bread so the world may be fed.
Cantor O cup of life entrusted to us, may we be satisfied.
All sung May we share drink so none may thirst.
Cantor O Jesus’ memory entrusted to us, may we be motivated
All sung to simply share so the world may simply live.
May we give, work and struggle for a renewed world, where generosity, love and justice abound, and planet earth is honoured and replenished.
Priest Come renewed world
All You call to our souls
Priest Come spirit of Jesus
All You call to our conscience
Priest Come let us bless, break, and share
All To embody the power of God
We all sing
Three-fold Alleluia
The Lord’s Prayer
Kua akona nei tatou e to tatou Ariki, ka inoi tatou:
E to matou Matua i te rangi kia tapu tou Ingoa. Kia tae mai tou rangatiratanga. Kia meatia tau e pai ai ki runga ki te whenua, kia rite ano ki to te rangi. Homai ki a matou aianei he taro ma matou mo tenei ra. Murua o matou hara, me matou hoki e muru nei, i o te hunga e hara ana ki a matou. Aua hoki matou e kawea kia whakawaia; engari whakaorangia matou i te kino: Nou hoki te rangatiratanga, te kaha, me te kororia, Ake, ake, ake. Amine.
The Breaking of the Bread
The bread is broken
for all to share
The cup is consecrated
for all to bless.
All Sung x3 We are guardians of the earth, born to care and share.
The Invitation
Come, bringing your varied faiths and backgrounds, for all are welcome to share in this grace.
There is a chalice for dipping - simply hold the bread in front of you to signify your choice.
Music during Communion
Prayer after Communion
We have a deep sense of gratitude for the blessings of this land, our communities, traditions, mentors, families and friends. Through them we can know ourselves to be loved, and gain the courage to trust one another.
Liturgist We are gifts
All entrusted to share life.
Liturgist We are grace
All entrusted to be gentle.
Liturgist We are hope
All entrusted to confront injustice.
Liturgist We are holy
All entrusted to nurture souls.
Liturgist We are powerful
All entrusted to love and to cherish.
Liturgist Let us journey on in the name of the Christ
All to share, to challenge, to love, and to hope.
Notices
Recessional Hymn
Dismissal
Liturgist With beauty, awe, wonder, and love
All We journey on into God.
Organ Voluntary
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