Against or Through? With or For? But or And? Skits for worship

I was . . . suddenly so uncomfortable with the words I have always known to say during communion

As Christians we are called to love one another above all else, but what happens when we unwittingly bring in elements that illicit feelings of exclusion, rather than loving inclusion, among those at our worship services? Monette Chilson explores two practices with the potential to ostracize and calls us to reexamine them.

O golden doors now open wide Revealing myst'ry's grace, The grace beyond the imaged word; Beyond all time and space.

This body knows what it is like to have a nice house and a good job It knows what it is like to feel uneasy about being wealthy

For deeper love we spread the bread I won’t be full till all are fed Till every soul has home and bed The rest of us can’t move ahead

The image of a scapegoat recalls a ritual performed by ancient Israel on their holiest day of the year—Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. A goat was chosen by means of casting lots. Actually there were two goats chosen, one was killed as a sin offering to make atonement for the holy place, the other was allowed to live to make atonement for the sins of the people.

From grains, bread connects us to soil and a three billion year old process. Photosynthesis, first begun when ocean organisms, earth's first populations, with neither brains or bibles, learned how to create a chlorophyll molecule. Since then all biological life is able to trap, store, and convert sun's energy into food that sustains both the plant and that specie's place in the food chain. Like the elements connect Christians to the nourishing ways of Jesus, food unites us to our ecology and the life-sustaining ways of nature itself. Communion, it is not only a rite of Christianity, it is the evolutionary levan in the Earth story itself.

The Year of Luke is the first in a series of commentaries on biblical scripture found in the three-year cycle of Christian liturgical

Soulful music that combines elements of folk, blues, jazz, and gospel. Lyrics are spiritual yet progressive, philosophical yet earthy, and realistic yet hopeful.

Christianity follows the humble faith of an empty man. So how did we Christians become so full of ourselves? It’s time to empty ourselves of the belief that our religion is better than others.

I hope it will be a long time from now; I am grateful to be occupying this body today. But when you see this body lying before you in your gross anatomy lab, don't call it mine. It will be for you, and for all the patients you will serve in your career as a doctor. Cut this body open with deep reverence, not for me, but for the living people whose bodies you will work to heal. My experience of eternal life during the process of my death will transcend this body completely.