Ever wonder what a Trinity’s Place gathering looks like? Because we’re open and participatory, we have different people take lead and shape the particularities of each get together. All the same, we seem to have developed a basic ‘shape’ and ‘feel.’ Below is one of our recent worship guides, the sort of thing you’d have handed to you as you join us in our ‘extended living room’ at Love Wins in downtown Raleigh. This one in particular outlines our current (and perhaps somewhat strange-sounding) emphasis of eating God. While it’s no substitute for actually joining up with us, we hope that this whets your appetite for sharing life together with us this Fall!

Today’s storytelling helps move us into a Fall Series on a Spirituality of Consumption: What is the Spirit Saying About Food and Water Today with Mike Morrell and Bern Mutia. Please sign up for conversations you’d like to lead!

Eat God – two Trees in the primordial garden, Life and Wisdom, being nourished by God: detoxing, and digesting

Feed God (When I was hungry…) – about Jesus’ subversive meal-sharing practices, how they were the hallmark of his practice of the sprouting new creation ecology of God, and how this got him killed. How we can go and do likewise.

Seed God - about our global food crises, and how people of faith can change the system, both at grassroots and policy levels. “What is the Spirit saying about food today?”

Drink God (I Thirst…) – the same, looking at our global water crises, as well as the ways in which God is depicted as streams of water, intoxicating wine, et al – the path of spiritual ecstasy.

“…the Spirit once again has a new story to tell…”

A Spirituality of Consumption: What is the Spirit Saying

About Food, Water & Nourishment Today?

 

we open ourselves to God

meditation through song                                 a capella

As I Went Down to the River to Pray

What prayers do we carry down to the river?

 

we engage in holy reading

– selections from John 6                            everyone

The crowd wondered:  Can You show us a miraculous sign? Something spectacular? If we see something like that, it will help us to believe.  Our fathers ate manna when they wandered in the desert. The Hebrew Scriptures say, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus replied:  I tell you the truth: Moses did not give you bread from heaven; it is My Father who offers you true bread from heaven.  The bread of God comes down out of heaven and breathes life into the cosmos.

The crowd exclaimed:  Master, we want a boundless supply of this bread.

Jesus implored:  I am the bread that gives life. If you come to My table and eat, you will never go hungry. Trust in Me, and you will never go thirsty. Here I am – standing in front of you – and still you don’t trust. All that My Father gives to Me comes to Me. I will receive everyone; I will not send away anyone who comes to Me.  And here’s the reason: I have come down from heaven not to pursue My own agenda but to do what God desires. I am here on behalf of the Father who sent Me.  God sent Me to care for all he has given Me so that nothing and no one will perish.

The low whispers of some of Jesus’ detractors turned into an out-and-out debate.

The crowd asked: What is he talking about? How is he able to give us his flesh to eat?

Jesus replied:  I tell you the truth; unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Humanity and drink his blood, you will not know life.  If you eat My flesh and drink My blood, then you will have eternal life and I will raise you up at the consummation of the aeon. My flesh and blood provide true nourishment. If you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you will abide in Me and I will abide in you. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is bread that came down from heaven; I am not like the manna that your fathers ate and then died! If you eat this bread, your life will never end.

He spoke these words in the synagogue as part of his teaching mission in Capernaum.  Many disciples heard what he said, and they had questions of their own.

- based on The Voice and NIV

we share in God’s sacred stories              

            Eat, Feed, Seed & Drink God: An Overview                         Mike

we tune our hearts: a chant from Psalm 34:8       Everyone

Taste and see that the Lord is good

Taste and see that the Lord is

Taste and see the Lo-ord

 Taste and see

 Taste

we share a sacred meal                                          

                                                                                                                       

            The Cupboard’s Full                                       TP musicians/everyone                     

 

we close and bless the city

Rise                                                                 TP musicians/everyone

 

For more of Mike’s reflections on these themes, see Evolution & the Two Trees in the Garden on his blog.