Complete Service - Communion: Earth Eucharist

We are part of a community of creation, that could also be called a communion of creation. God created us to be in an interconnected relationship with all life, and God’s great plan for salvation (restoration, healing, and wholeness) includes all of creation. And so, at Burning Bush Forest Church when we celebrate communion together we offer the first piece of bread back to the earth and the last drops of wine/juice back to the earth.

Communion is an earthy, embodied ritual. It connects us with the elements of life - water, wind, earth and fire. It engages our senses of taste, touch, sight, and smell. It reminds us that we are part of the food chain – in order to survive we must eat, and in turn our bodies support the lives of others (ie, mosquitoes and all the microbes that live on our skin and in our intestines). In this ritual Christ offers the bread of life and the cup of a new covenant through his broken body. Today we receive our physical communion elements through the broken body of the Earth, even as we understand them to also be the symbolic body of Christ.