Go in peace to love and serve God and neighbor
Last week in Part 1: Being Fed, I wrote about the phrase “behold what you are; become of what you receive” which is said as part of the invitation to receive communion every week.
This week I’d like to look at the words that send us out into the world at the end of worship. The bolded words above are our dismissal during this season after Epiphany. There are several dismissals to choose from in the Book of Common Prayer, and it has become practice over time to use other forms as long as they exhort us to go and “do the work you have given us to do,” as our Postcommunion Prayer says.
Our current dismissal is a riff on the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40) in which Jesus was asked, ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ to which he responded, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
The call and responsibility of following Christ is awesome and life-changing. We gather weekly to sing our songs, tell our stories, say our prayers, and be fed – to be reminded that we are the body of Christ in the world today. The flip side of that reminder, is that we have to actually BE the body of Christ in the world, every day and in all that we do.
Scripture has a lot to say about how we are to do this. In recent weeks we have heard from Micah that we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God – from Matthew’s sermon on the mount with the Beatitudes and their promise of reversing the status quo of earthy power – from Isaiah who proclaimed the fast that God chooses is to loose the bonds of injustice – and Matthew again, exhorting us to shine the light of Christ’s love for all to see.
In this season after the Epiphany when we tell stories of God manifest in the world, how are you making God known by the life you lead?
Yours in God’s peace,
Kristin+