In this season of Lent, we are inviting you to feast. That’s right, to feast, not fast. Lent is a season of reflection and preparation and while the typical approach to Lent is framed in terms of abstaining, fasting, or giving something up, I wonder if we might find there is more to Lent than forgoing chocolate or coffee or smoking or soda or any number of daily realities we choose. Instead, we invite you to fast from resentment and feast on connection and reconciliation, to fast from excess and feast on simplicity or moderation, to fast from acquiring and feast on generosity. We are inviting you to feast, to feast on God’s presences and abundance.

During this season we made the entire service framed around the communion liturgy. The sermon was concluded with the breaking of bread and consecration of elements.

We invite you to prepare for Easter by fasting from anger and feasting on patience, by fasting from pride and feasting on humility, by fasting from selfishness and feasting on God’s abundance. We invite you to feast on hope in what can be and prepare for the work of God’s call. The table is set, will you come.


First Week of Lent: Fasting from greed and feasting on generosity

Call to worship/ Confession and Pardon

We have gorged our bellies while children ache with hunger and consumed beyond our needs, we have offered harsh words and nursed our wounds of bitterness.

Forgive us, love us and teach us to feast on your generosity and all-loving grace.

Forgiven and loved, we feast on your abundance and grace, singing of possibilities that sprout in the rocky soil and hope that shines in the thin, worn-out spaces of life.

Open us, love us and teach us to feast on your way of peace.

Today we fast from excess and feast on life lived simply, today we fast from resentment, bitterness, indifference and greed, today we feast on your bread of hope and your cup of compassion. Rejoice you are forgiven and loved in God’s Grace.

Teach us to set your table and invite all to your feast.


Second Week of Lent: Profession of Faith

Do you confess your faith in God, Source of Life, Word of Love?

We confess our faith in God, ever-present, seed of hope and all-loving grace.

Do you commit yourself, by grace, to turn from a world of brokenness and live into the ministry of Jesus Christ, feasting on a life of justice and traveling the road of paradise?

We commit to a life of faith and Christ’s journey of peace.

Do you commit yourself to the life of the church; celebrating its witness, living into its call to make change and connecting in its worship with your heart open wide?

Forgiven and loved in grace, we give thanks and commit anew.


Third Week of Lent: Fasting from oppression and feasting on justice/compassion

Call to worship/ Confession and Pardon

We have taken more than our share and thrown the rest away;
said no to fair trade and silenced voices praying for equal exchange.
We have shut the doors of justice and brick by brick we have walled people out.

Forgive us, love us and teach us to feast on your justice and all-loving grace.

Forgiven and loved, we feast at changing tables over turned, coins and true change spilling out, calling us to open our hearts and roll up our sleeves; to make clear the path of new possibilities.

Open us, love us and teach us to feast on your way of peace.

Today we fast from excess and feast on life lived simply, today we fast from resentment, oppression, indifference and greed, today we feast on your bread of justice and your cup of compassion. Rejoice you are forgiven and loved in God’s Grace.

Teach us to set your table and invite all to your feast.


Fourth Week of Lent: Feasting on Eternity

Call to worship/ Confession and Pardon

We have closed the doors of paradise with platitudes, indifference and greed, we have privileged few and paraded the least as an unfortunate reality, and brick-by-brick Christians have spun hate into walls of ‘gospel’ truth.

Forgive us, love us and teach us to feast on your justice and all-loving grace.

Forgiven and loved, we gather to be more, to be changed not by magic but by miracles alive in our hands, seeded in our souls and woven through this sacred place.

Open us, love us and teach us to feast on your way of peace.

Today we fast from excess and feast on life lived simply, today we fast from resentment, careless indifference and greed, today we feast on your bread of justice and your cup of eternity. Rejoice you are forgiven and loved in God’s Grace.

Teach us to set your table and invite all to your feast.


Fifth Week of Lent: Feasting on Humility and Fasting from Pride

Call to worship/ Confession and Pardon

We have filled our bellies as crumbs trickle-down, we have consumed out of fear and lived beyond our needs and closing our eyes to change that is real we have prayed that the invisible hand might reach down and bail us out.

Forgive us, love us and teach us to feast on your justice and all-loving grace.

Forgiven and loved, we gather not to deserve more but to be more, to stimulate our hope and reclaim our full humanity, to roll up our sleeves and plant seeds of change.

Open us, love us and teach us to feast on your way of peace.

Today we fast from excess and feast on life lived simply, today we fast from pride, careless indifference and greed, today we feast on your bread of justice and your cup of humility. Rejoice you are forgiven and loved in God’s Grace.

Teach us to set your table and invite all to your feast.

Sixth Week of Lent: The journey from Palm Sunday to Passover: A Markan Litany

Leaving the Palms and taking the cup: Mark’s Journey to Passover

Hosanna’s wait on spellbound lips and the palms are now at rest, as Jesus full of righteous rage, turns the tables and draws the temple thieves out, saying no to the eclipse of domination, power, violence and greed.

And a few were so afraid, they plotted to stop the wave of change.

Seeking substance, beyond rhetoric, Jesus teaching in the temple bests the Priest and the scribes at their own game, speaking truth to all who thirst for God’s reign, crowds gather and listen with delight as he calls each one to love their neighbor as self and God with all their strength.

And a few were so afraid, they looked for ways to kill the man calling for change.

Days before the feast of unleavened bread, remembering Moses cried let my people go, Jesus anointed by the last and the least was sought, sought by the authorities, sought by those fearing the nuclear wrath of Rome and changing the status quo. So the lot was cast and the plan was made to arrest by stealth and evade a riot among the people of hope.

And the Passover came and the beloved children brought the unleavened bread of freedom to God’s feast.