Author Archives: marcuscurnow

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People’s Table Liturgy

Sunday 9th September 2012

Ordinary 23B, Colour: Green

At Newmarket Baptist we are asking how  ‘Slow Food’ can help reframe our understanding of what it means to be “church”

The “Slow Food” Movement arose in Italy as a response to the negative impact of multinational food companies and its influence is spreading around the world – slowly!

Slow Food opposes the standardisation of taste, protects cultural identity tied to food and seeks to safeguard processing techniques inherited from tradition.  It involves valuing time to prepare, eat and build community through food.

It is sometimes critiqued as being an elite pursuit, however Jesus himself would often seek out the best feed in town!  Far from extravagant eating, Slow Food is about the celebration of the connections that food can make with sustainable production and local food traditions that are often lost in our economy.

Together we are discovering that that if we read the gospels without getting hungry we aren’t paying attention! The how, what, where and with whom Jesus eats is a central point of gospel conflict. “Understanding about the loaves” (Mark 6:52) is presented as essential to understanding Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation.

This ministry is symbolised in the offer of wilderness bread and of his body and blood in the Eucharist.  Our prayer is that like his  followers at Emmaus, it would be in the offer of hospitality to strangers, and at the breaking of bread that our eyes will be opened and that Christ may be made known among us.

 

 

Reading: Mark 7:24-30

 

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness.

Conviviality is healing.

To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.”

 

– Wendell Berry

menu

drinks hors derves:

Welcome Blessing

Acknowledgement of Country

Candle lighting

entree/ starters:

2nd blessing :  Seeds Prayer

Breaking and Sharing of Bread

Introduction of  Guests

mains:

3rd blessing :  Thanks to Guests

Reading and Reflection

dessert:

Sending Blessing: Seeds Prayer

last drinks

A final toast to the way of Christ

Welcome Blessing

Welcome. We invite you to this table with the cry and promise of Jesus

 

“Listen, I stand at the door and knock: if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you and you with me.”

In the gift of Christ and through the presence of his Spirit, we have tasted God’s gracious hospitality to us.  And so we extend this grace to each other…

Welcome to the table…

What is it you bring?

2nd Blessing Seeds Table Prayer

Holding up the packet of Seeds
Holy community of gracious hospitality, in the midst of our homelessness you extend us an invitation to Grow Home.

We thankyou for your invitation to join the vocation of those who through the ages have vowed to grow new households of love.

Set us free to share our wealth and may the poor always be with us.  May we live in fidelity with your wild creative power respecting the sacred connections between your Spirit, our bodies and all creation. May we be obedient to your power above all others. Grace us with mutual submission. Give us courage to give of ourselves with the same passion with which you lived and died.

Lord hear us.
All: Lord hear our prayer

Holding up the Bible
May we Know the Word. Not ancient words on a page but the living Spirit of Christ among us.  Guide us in our speech at this table, choosing our stories and storying our choices. May this table be rich in story. Give us strength to raise our voice and the discipline to listen for you in the voice of others
Lord hear us.
All: Lord hear our prayer


Holding up the bowl
May we Eat Slow. Make us mindful of all that has been given and received in the process of production and consumption. ( At this point mention could be made about different elements of the meal and what is known of their process of production). May this meal reconcile us with God, creation and others. May our eyes be opened to your presence through the breaking of the bread and may our eating bear witness to the meal to come, to which all are invited and where there is enough for all.

Lord hear us.
All: Lord hear our prayer

Sending Blessing

Holding up the bottle of oil
May we leave this table energised to Go and Engage our world. To speak truth to the powers and to each other; to name and cast out that which is evil in our world and within; and in the midst of our brokenness may we know and share your healing power; your gracious hospitality to us.   Lord hear us.
All: Lord hear our prayer  Amen.

 

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Last Sunday’s Playlist: Clean Sparkling White Melbourne

Last Sunday’s Playlist @ Newmarket Baptist 

2nd September 2012, Ordinary Time 22B: Colour: Green

Greetings,

At this stage Sunday’s 10am gathering is central to our Rhythm of Prayer at Newmarket Baptist.  As we can’t each be present every Sunday we like to share highlights from our ‘playlist’ in the hope that it may re-source you to better follow Jesus in your world…

PoC (Prayer of Confession):

Clean Project by Nic Lowe of 2006.

With the closing ceremony of the London Olympics and Paralympics in progress this years lectionary coincided with a similar theme from 2006 when I was working at Urban Seed:church and the Commonwealth Games were in Melbourne.

“This evening Urban Seed: church was competing with the Closing Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games so I went with it.  For our Call to Worship we listened to the African drum rythyms of the Late Late Service’s  “All the Earth is the Lords” (LLS4) and then quietened it down by singing “He is Lord” accapella. Every knee bowing and every tounge confessing that Jesus is Lord.   I contrasted the once called Empire Games with that of the Roman Empire and bunting that appears all over Melbourne.

For our own bunting I used the wallpaper of the CLEAN exhibition that was part of the Next Wave festival that had run concurrently with the Commonwealth Games.

For the exhibition they wallpapered a big section of Hosier Lane, the Melbourne City laneway famous for its street art and now the home of Living Room, the medical service for homeless people that was first located at Urban Seed.  Urban Seed’s Kate Allen was down Hosier Lane with Nick where a street artist was complaining about the wallpaper that had covered the graffiti during the Commonwealth Games.   Nick told him to look more closely….the CLEAN wallpaper consists of athletes and cleaning products covering over lots of the “unclean” images of the city.

It’s a broader statement about what we lose or is covered over when we seek to “clean up” the city.  For example the same week the State Govenment spend $60,000 to house homeless people in hotels during the Games they also spent $160,000 on flowers to line the streets.

Beyond the visuals the exhibition involved an “audio ambush” where speakers were ingeniously hidden in rubbish and the voices of homeless people etc. were contrasted with triumphant sounds of sporting success. The sounds were triggered as people walked up the alley way. Nic did some of recording at Urban Seed’s Credo Café of homeless people sharing a meal during the Games.

I juxtaposed CLEAN with the banner of the movie Dirty Filthy Love, a movie that takes a serious look at obsessive compulsive disorder in a light hearted way.  There is a scene in the movie where the therapy group of pathological clean freaks wallow around in a field of mud as a cathartic act of liberation. (You can scroll to 32.45-35.30 on the video embedded below)  I had always thought this scene would make a good basis for some kind of confessional prayer and the idea of sitting it alongside the themes and images of CLEAN was too hard to pass up.

MoW (Ministry of the Word)

Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

“It’s not that clean and unclean does not exist and is not important in any culture.  It’s just that Jesus redefines purity in terms of what comes out of a person in the qualities we demonstrate in relationships.”  

– Sarah Dylan Bruer  www.sarahlaughed.net

The other idea we explored is that the idea of purity as demonstrated by Jesus as being something fragile that is easily contaminated, is on the contrary contagious, the we can pass on in the way we live and bless others.

 

 

 

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Last Sunday’s Playlist: Asylum Seeker Psalms & “If you Eat, You’re In”

Last Sunday’s Playlist @ Newmarket Baptist 

19th August 2012, Ordinary Time 20B: Colour: Green

Greetings,

At this stage Sunday’s 10am gathering is central to our Rhythm of Prayer at Newmarket Baptist.  As we can’t each be present every Sunday we like to share highlights from our ‘playlist’ in the hope that it may re-source you to better follow Jesus in your world…

C2W (Call to Worship):

Our Call to Worship was taken from this weeks Sunday Lectionary, Psalm 34, which for the purposes of reflection upon the week ‘s national and global events we dubbed “The Asylum Seeker Psalm” based on its traditional prefix,

 ‘Of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.’

This is based on a story from 1 Sam. 21:10-15 where David sought refuge but instead found himself going from frying pan to fire.

We read the Psalm 34 singing the antiphon, ” I make my boast in the Lord, let the humble hear”, from Issac Everrets’ Emergent Psalter.

PoC (Prayer of Confession):

We considered theses two images above of aslyum seekers from the weekly news.

The first are “Boat People” travelling to Australia via Indonesia who’s plight has been influenced by the passing of legislation in the Australian Parliament reinstating the so called ‘Pacific Solution’.   The second image is from protests in London where the Ecuadorian Government granted asylum to “Wikileaks” founder Julian Assange.

We asked people to imagine the words of the Psalm in the mouths of those depicted in the images.  How would we hear the Psalm if we were in their shoes? The descriptions of David feigning madness and the warnings of predicted mental illness for boat people who face mandatory and possible indefinite detention was sobering and people were invited to respond by voicing or writing their own confession.

One offering reflected a protest banner outside the the Ecuadorian Embassy stating “In the Kingdom of Lies the Truth is Treason” and how it might lead us to confession of complicity in our own failings of honesty, courage and hospitality, both personal and collective.

We noted that for the Psalmist the terror and fear of foes was meaningfully surpassed by a greater fear (awe and reverence) for God.  We prayed this for ourselves and others.  The Assurance of Forgiveness was based upon verse 4, 5, 7 and 22 of the Psalm.

4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me,

and delivered me from all my fears.

5 Look to him, and be radiant;

so your faces shall never be ashamed.

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around

those who fear him, and delivers them.

22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants;

none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

And so I declare to you, that in Jesus Christ,

your sins are forgiven.

            Thanks be to God.

MoW (Ministry of the Word) :

“The will to live life differently can start in some of the most unusual places” – Pam Warhurst

We compared the word of Jesus in this weeks Lectionary Gospel reading John 6:51-58 

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

with the motto of the Incredible Edible “Propaganda” gardening project in Todmorden in Northern England.

IF YOU EAT, YOU’RE IN! 

The video above explains in part why we have re-worked the garden at the front of our church building and are investing our vision of  renewal in local connections through our People’s Pantry & Table Projects in Flemington.

Together we considered how the ‘feeding ministry’ of Jesus in passages such as John 6 might relate to this contemporary call to conversion by Pam Warhurst and become something more profoundly sacred for each of us in our lives and neighourhood relationships?

“Can you find a unifying language, that cuts across age and income and culture that will help people themselves find a new way of living? See spaces around them differently? Think about the resource they use differently? Interact differently? Can we find that language and then can we replicate those actions?  The answer would appear to be yes and the language would appear to be FOOD!” – Pam Warhurst

Much Grace & Peace,

Marcus

 

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Last Sunday’s Playlist: London Olympics

Last Sunday’s Playlist @ Newmarket Baptist 

29th July 2012, Ordinary Time 17B: Colour: Green

Greetings,

At this stage Sunday’s 10am gathering is central to our Rhythm of Prayer at Newmarket Baptist.  As we cant each be present every Sunday we like to share highlights from our ‘playlist’ in the hope that it may re-source you to better follow Jesus in your world…

C2W (Call to Worship):

With the Olympics Opening Ceremony having just completed we reflected upon the Olympics as a religious event.  The role of an Opening Ceremony is to express something of the best ideals and hopes of humanity.  In this instance I was impressed ( blown away!) with the contrast of a traditional Christan hymn and stunning modern choreography in the tribute to those who died in the London 7/7 terrorist bombings (video here).

Written by a man on his death bed, “Abide with Me” has a powerful cultural sporting relevance being sung regularly at FA Cup Final’s in England.

Together we thought about the hope of the gospel’s promise of life in the face of death and sung the old hymn together… not quite the production values of Danny Boyle but powerful nonetheless!

PoC (Prayer of Confession):

We reflected upon the other side of the Olympics… The difference between the narratives of the God’s of Olympus… “Higher, Faster, Stronger” and those of Jesus of Nazarteth in the Beatitudes “Lower, Slower, Meeker”!?  We had a moment to think about things we didn’t like about the Olympics which included advertising and the behaviour as well as treatment of athletes who hadn’t met ours or others expectations.

In what ways has striving for “Higher, Faster, Stronger” in our lives actually disfigured our humanity, hurting ourselves and others. What are the areas in our lives we may be avoid the call or the necessity to go “Lower, Slower, Meeker?”

Michael Leunig captured the same idea beautifully later in the week… “Slower, Deeper, Wiser” here

Much Grace
Marcus