'Call Me Ishmael'

So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.

—Gen. 22:14a

I. Papa Was a Rolling Stone

Call me Ishmael. You’ve probably heard that name before. Certainly, God has… in fact that’s what my name actually means: God Has Heard …more about that later.

My mother was from Egypt, and a wandering Aramean was my father. They weren’t married, by the way. My mother was a slave—she belonged to my father’s real wife, a woman I was never exactly fond of. And I guess that’s as good a place to start as any: My father and the woman who was not my mother.

Their names were Abraham and Sarah, and they were from a place known these days as Iraq. But, as I said, Abraham was a wanderer, and his wanderings eventually took him all the way to Egypt, and one of the mementos they picked up while they were there was my mother. Her name was Hagar.

A Pentecost Liturgy for the Lord's Supper

GREAT PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING [1]

May God be with you.
And with your spirit.

Let our souls bless God.
O Sovereign God, you are very great.

Let us sing to God our whole lives long.
We will sing praise to God while we have being.

You are very great, O God, for you are before all things;
and all that is came into being
when you spoke the Word
and called upon the power of your Spirit.
You make the winds your messengers—
Fire and flame your ministers.

Water, Wind, Fire & Earth

Invitation to the Table for the Day of Pentecost

I. Water

In the ancient Hebrew understanding of the cosmos, what preceded creation was not emptiness, but the waters of chaos. And water continued to mean chaos and nothingness throughout the scriptures—in the story of Noah, the story of the Exodus, when Jesus himself both walked on water and calmed the sea, the primordial threat of water was symbolic of death. Indeed, all Christians experience this threat the moment we first enter the faith, for the Apostle Paul makes clear that one of the main meanings of the water of baptism is the death of who we were and who we would’ve been without the loving intervention of God.

But water also brings life.

A Pastoral Prayer for Pentecost 2017

Living, loving Spirit, you are the very power of God.
You were before all things, and you swept over the waters of chaos.
You have spoken to us through the prophets,
and, in these latter days, through God’s Son.
It is you who have called us together in this place,
and it is to you we pray: Come, Spirit of Renewal.

Behold your church in all its variety and brokenness.