The Sierra Pacific Synod, No. CA and NV, sponsors a series of worship
seminars. Included in the fesivals and workshops is one entitled, the
"Liturgy
of Fire Up!" Here is Forum Letter's description of that service:
"The institution narrative, such as it is, besomes a moment when
worshippers
give themselves to each other. Since 'we' somehow 'never possess
ourselves
more fully than when we give ourselves away,' we 'offer [the bread] to
one
another.' 'And we pour ourselves into this cup and offer it to one
another,'
too, just to be sure it is 'us' to which 'we' refer in the deification
of
self."
Please note that Forum Letter speaks against this practice.
"The January 23 festival featured a 'Eucharistic Canon' from "Fire Up!"
With
purposeful resolution "Fire Up!" refused to make clear exactly whose
supper
was
being commemorated. The name of Jesus shows up but three times and
never once
in direct association with the supper being celebrated. This is
because the
'Verba' (Words of Institution) are entirely absent from the liturgy, and
absent
the 'Verba' we never learn precisely why the bread is broken or why the
cup is
poured. There is no indication in this Eucharistic liturgy, a term we
employ
quite loosely, that sin might have had even a little something ot do
with
Jesus' death. But in the event that hardly matters at all. Jesus'
death is
never mentioned. What we do learn, reading the liturgy, is that while
there
is 'true body and blood' it appears to belong to no one but ourselves.
For
the
image of God, so the presider is made to say, is found "in the face of
a
friend, or the body of a lover, or in the spirit of a saint." (The echo
from a
New Age 'I am god/you are god' is glaringly distinct.)
If is is not Christ who is invoked, who is being remembered in this
Eucharist? "No one and nothing is being remembered. The participants
are
asked to acclaim a series of declarations. 'We break this bread for the
earth
that we have plundered... for those who have no bread... for the broken
parts
of ourselves..." Never once is the bread broken for the rembrance of
Christ or
the remission of sin.
"Why is
it so
hard, even for the Church, to remember Jesus in his Supper? From
whence this
impulse to remake it, jazz it up, do that wackadoo-wackadoo we do so
the
supper
becomes something other than his Supper? Perhaps it is because of the
inconvenience of his death *for* us sinners. Oh, there are grand
causes,
bigger issues one guesses -- poverty, the environment, our own pretty
self-obsessions -- that are all said to be more relevant in these times
than a
preoccupation with personal sin. But the trouble with trying to make
liturgy
relevant is the clear irrelevancy and outright silliness to which
liturgy
swiftly descends whe it is not guided by our memory of Jesus before the
Father."
However, the criticism itself is an acquiesence to the
relevancy of
ecumania. The *Church* has no problem remembering Christ in His own
Supper,
and anathematizes all such deviancies in its celebration. "Fire Up!"
is no
mere jazzing up of liturgy in the attempt to make it relevant; "Fire
Up!" is
heresy, and as such, the Church has no part with it.