Sunday, May 26, 2013

Puppet Show for Trinity Sunday

Gospel Puppet Show
May 26, 2013
Trinity Sunday

Characters:
Officer George
Father Phil
  
Sign on the Puppet Theatre

Security Agent, Security Systems and Driving Instruction

Fr. Phil: (knocks on the puppet theatre) Is anyone in?  I need some help.

Officer George:  (pops up)  Hello, I’m Officer George here.  Can I help you?

Fr. Phil:  Yes,  I need some one to teach a friend of mine how to drive.

Officer George:  Happy to help you.  Just have them come and sign up and I will be do the driving instruction.  I have never had a ticket but I wrote lots of tickets for speeders when I was a traffic cop.

Fr. Phil:  Great, I’ll have my friend come by to see you and sign up for the class.

(Officer George leaves)

Fr. Phil:  Oops, I forgot that I needed something else.  (Fr. Phil knocks on the theatre again)   Hello, is anyone still in the office?

Officer George: (pops up)  Yes, I’m still here.  Do you need another driving lesson?

Fr. Phil: No, I want to talk to your security person.  I need to have an alarm installed at my home.

Officer George:  Well, you’ve come to the right place.  I’ll be happy to help you.

Fr. Phil:  But aren’t you the Driving Instructor?

Officer George:  Yes, but I also install alarm systems.  Is that a problem?

Fr. Phil:  Well, no but you must be a busy person.  I will give you my address.  When can you come by and give me a bid.

Officer George:  I’ll come by tomorrow and help you decide what kind of alarm system that you need.  Good bye…..(Officer George disappears)


Fr. Phil:  Oops.  I forgot I still need something.  I need a security guard to come by each night and check our property.  Knock!  Knock!  Is anyone still there?

Officer George:  Oh, hello.  I see you are still here.  How can I help you? 

Fr. Phil:  I want to talk with your security agent.  I need a watchman to check out the church each night.  Can I hire one of your night watchmen?

Officer George:  Yes, you can.  I am the night watchman.

Fr. Phil:  How can you be the Driver Instructor, the alarm installer and the night watchman?

Officer George:  Well, I could ask you how you, the one and same person, could need a driver instructor, an alarm installed and a watchman.

Fr. Phil:  Well, as a person I have many needs.

Officer George: So you can be just one person and have many needs?  Don’t you think that I can be one person and have many jobs and titles?  I am a Driving Instructor, an alarm installer and a watchman.  Fr. Phil as a priest you should be able to understand that?

Fr. Phil:  Why do you say that?

Officer George:  Well, today is Trinity Sunday.  God is One, but we know God in different ways in God’s different Persons.  We know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Fr. Phil: Officer George, thank you for your instruction about the Trinity.  Do you think this will help the children at St. John’s understand the Trinity?

Officer George:  Maybe a little…but now you’ve given me a fourth job, a teacher.  I think that I’ll stick to my three jobs.  Good bye, as you see I’m a very busy person having three different jobs.


Fr. Phil:  Good bye Officer George and thank you.  God must be a very busy God since there are so many people who have so many needs.  It’s a good thing that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Don’t you think so?

The Trinity: Affirming Dynamic Personalism


Trinity Sunday  May 26, 2013
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8/Canticle 13
Romans 5:1-5  John 16:12-15



  For most of my preaching life I have begun my sermons with the rather presumptuous invocation, “In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Please be seated.”  I say “please be seated” since a child once quoted back to me my introduction with also the “Please be seated” which I found humorous; kind of like when one is reading a play script and one reads the stage directions which are written in parenthesis or italics as though it were part of the script.
  It is rather presumptuous to invoke the Trinity upon my little talks, as if, what I had to offer was worthy of such.  But just regard it in this way; if God abandons the  meanings of my sermons in the mind of the listeners, there is no hope for my sermons at all.
  Since this is Trinity Sunday and not Angels Dancing on a Pinhead Sunday, my sermon topic is assigned to be on the former not the latter, even though the Trinity may be as arcane and mysterious as that other proverbial topic of angelology.
  I think that I should begin by polling you my listeners about the state of your Trinitarian thinking.  America is a place of polls; we take polls for everything because it is related to what we want to sell to people and we want to have an indication what they might be buying before we go into full-scale production.
  When you pray, to whom do you pray?  God the Father?  God the Son?  Or God the Holy Spirit?  Or do you just pray to God?  And when you pray to God are you thinking about God the Father or all three Persons of the Trinity?  Or perhaps you are not consciously addressing any particular member of the Trinity?  Do you spread out the prayer attention that you give to each person of the Trinity?  Or do you assume that you are praying to God the Father, in the name of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit?  What is the nature of your Trinitarian prayers?
  Do you pray differently with regard to the Trinity because you’re attending the Episcopal Church?  Would it not seem that Pentecostal churches perhaps give more attention to the Holy Spirit than do other churches?
  How come when people cuss and swear they generally just use the name God and are more likely to use some form of Jesus Christ as their scatological expletive?  It seems as though the Holy Spirit does not get mentioned in most scatological references and why is that?  Is it because the Holy Spirit is lesser known or is it because Jesus said that to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin?
  Are you or people you know more likely to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary or to a favorite or designated saint than to God?  Or to a saintly departed grandparent?
  If it took more than four centuries of church history for the Trinity to become established as normative for most of Christianity, what are the roots of the Trinity and why did it become important for Christian identity?
  The Christ communities of the first four centuries were finding their identity in the ways in which they came to speak and teach about God.  There were other teachings about God and gods.  The followers of Jesus at first were another sect within Judaism.  Judaism is what we call a radical monotheistic religion; that God is One was crucial to the distinctive identity of the Jews in ancient Canaan which had people who had other gods and goddesses.  One of the main criticisms of the prophets against Israel was that they often were drawn to the polytheistic practices of their neighbors.   In Judaism there was the notion of a divinized human figure known as the Messiah or God’s anointed.  The most famous messiah was King David.  David was not a divine being but he was assumed as God’s chosen one to a special divine work.  Many ancient cultures had emperor cults and the monarchs used association with gods and goddesses as a way to perpetuate their divine right of rule.  The gods, as it were, “ordained the rule of the emperor” and so one should not oppose the will of the gods. 
  The notion of a messiah king for Israel was something of a copying of the way other kings in the region used divine selection as a way of legitimizing the right to rule.
  The early Christ communities inherited the notion of a messiah as a divinely designated figure.  For many Jews, the proof of the Messiah would be in his power like King David to restore Israel to freedom and success.  Jesus could not be such a figure; he would be a secret messiah, one who suffered and one who would be a king only to those who had his risen presence made known to them.  It would be true to say that Christians came to understand Jesus as not just a selected messiah like David; rather Jesus was one who was a pre-existing God, known as the Word from the beginning.  Christians re-interpreted the Royal Psalms as a way to speak about Jesus as God’s Son.  “The Lord said to my Lord, you are my Son; today I have begotten you.”  This language from the Psalm gave the followers of Jesus the language for them to present their claim that Jesus was God’s only begotten Son.
  Remember too, that the Roman Emperors even after the famous Christian Emperor Constantine were still designated as Augustus or as divine beings by the Roman senate.  So Roman Emperors were gods and sons of god; one can see where a “son of god” vocabulary was accessible and prevalent in understanding the nature of Jesus and how he would be presented within the Christian communities.
  The amazing thing is that Christianity was so successful in the first four centuries in the Roman Empire that the Emperors lost their significant “cultic role” as gods and sons of a god, and for political purposes began to play second fiddle to Jesus, Son of God.  They began with Constantine to see their role as the regents of Christ on earth, as Christian monarchs.  So after noticing the success of Christianity, Constantine the Great noticed that the Empire consisted of some significant metropolitan Christian centers; Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome.  But these centers had Christian religious disagreement within their regions and among themselves.  No particular bishop was exercising or had authority throughout all of the church.  And so Constantine called the bishops together in 325 in Nicaea.
  The Nicaea Council was a watershed event in the history of the church in establishing a worldwide collaborative practice to set an official language as how to talk about the Christian understanding of God.
  Essentially, the Council of Nicaea established what was regarded to be important in the Gospel narrative in the life of Jesus.  Jesus addressed God as his Father and so Jesus was his Son and equal with God.  Jesus spoke of sending of the Holy Spirit who is also God.  The Council of Nicaea really confused things for philosophers who were baffled by the saying that three Persons are still one God with all three still being equal.
  The big elephant in the room for us and for the bishops at Nicaea is and was  that we must use language.  Language is used for things and beings for which we have no empirical references and so when dealing with invisible things like love, hope, and God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, their meaning and truth for us does not mean being able to point to them like we point to a particular tree.
  The Trinity is an agreement by the church about the language that we use about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The agreement was put in the form of a creed for teaching purposes and to organize an expanding community.  The agreement about the Trinity was the result of trying to reduce the narrative form of the Gospels into abbreviated teaching points for Christian initiation and identity.  The problem is that because a group of people decide about how to use language at a certain time in history, it does not guarantee that the very same meanings of the language will be grasped in the same way at a different time.
  What is meaningful is that the language of the Trinity has remained as a part of our Christian identity and that it still invites us to seek interpretation of knowing God as primarily a relational God, not an aloof God, because we believe that personhood in humanity is what makes us unique and so personhood as dynamic relationship must also exist as a reality of God.
  If personhood is definitive as something that is superior in human beings; surely it must derive from some super-dynamic personhood community.  And so we confess God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not to limit metaphors for God but to celebrate the notion of “person” as crucial in our own self-definition and self-knowing and this finds its parallel in our assignment of these important words to our confession of what we regard to be greatest, namely, God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Pentecost: A Day to Confess this Universe as a Friendly Place


Day of Pentecost   May 23, 2010
Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32
Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17 

  Today is the day of the Holy Spirit.  Long before the church had used Hellenistic philosophy to institutionalize an official doctrine of the personhood the member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the notion of Spirit was used as the best metaphor for the reality of unseen and mysterious, but very real Life.  How do we know if a person is alive?  They have breath.  If you put your hand under the nose or in front of the mouth you can feel the movement of air.  On a cold day one can see one’s breath because of the water that is present in one’s breath.  Breath is same word for spirit and it is a sign of life.  And how could breath within a person be used in a larger metaphorical sense for life itself?  The entire world is breathing and how do we know?  We have the presence of Wind, an unseen force but a very real force to be reckoned with.  In a storm we see the destructive force of wind; in erosion we see the creative shaping force of wind.  One can easily see how breath and wind became the metaphor for Spirit and sign of invisible but obvious Life.
  In the creation story there is a speaker, a word spoken and an agent of creation.  And that agent of creation is the Spirit.  The Spirit of God, the Wind or Breath of God moved over the face of the Deep, over the Abyss.   I love the appointed Psalm for the feast of Pentecost.  It refers to the creative work of the Spirit in the incredible diversity of Nature.  The Psalmist of the 104th Psalm was probably one who had some sea experience on the Mediterranean; and don’t you just love the Prayerbook Psalter rendering, “there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.”  One has a sense that the creative Spirit is like a dance choreographer who has devised characters, moves and performances for the joy of the performers and for those who watch.  The Spirit is one who creates the sense of play that we feel is present within the world.  The Psalmist invites us to stop and smell the roses, stop and enjoy the entertainment that is present within life as continuous performance of the Spirit creator.
  What is it that makes human beings different at observing life and nature than the other creatures of the world?  Human beings attain their distinction of existence because of another unseen force that epitomizes human existence, namely our language ability.  Remember in the creation event, there is a speaker and a word spoken. Word is how word users have their world created.  Text seems to make language visible but the language or word ability is the invisible ability embedded in human consciousness which gives us our distinction in perceiving and thinking and extending the kind of control that humans have learned to exercise in this world.
  Jesus said that his words were “spirit and they were life.”  His words were words that invite us to a quality of life that the Gospels refer to as abundant life.  Spirit and word are used as ways to speak about creation and the invisible and yet omnipresence of Word in human experience is literally what creates the human experience and makes us observers of the world in ways that no other creatures do.  
  Because we have Word-spirit life, we interpret the world so that we can interact with the world.  This interaction does not take place in a vacuum; mutual experience is conducted through a marvelous connectivity in this world.  This connectivity is mysterious even as it is just assumed as a matter of fact.  I see you, you see me because there is an entire situation of connectivity that allows mutual experience.
  We as human being have developed our language ability to diversify and to project incredible theoretical understanding of our connections within this world.  In theoretical particle physical we think that with Higgs boson we have discovered an elementary particle of life itself.  We think that we can interpret the presence and meaning of sub-atomic particles and attempt to see what religious people have called “spirit.”
  I believe that what we as people of faith have to add to this equation is how we interpret and project the meaning of how we are connected to each other and with this world.  In faith we project that the connectivity of Omnipresent Spirit has personality.  As human beings with personality we believe that we bestow honor upon everything that we interpret and project upon, the honor of having something like personality, because personality involves the force of relationship.
  Scientists in their realm of study and discourse want to project impersonal forces but a scientist as eminent as Einstein once said, The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”  The friendly place question is the question of religion and faith and it is where we believe that it makes a difference in quality of life if we can project an essential friendliness onto the universe and with an echoing effect believe that what we regard to be the very best about ourselves has come from someone greater than ourselves in every way.  And if personality is part of the greatness of human experience we have derived this personality from the super-Personality of the universe, whom we Christians have come to address as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We do this not to present limiting metaphors for God’s greatness, but at the very least if human personality is a great wonder of humanity then it is not difficult to imagine that we derived human personality from Super-personality. 
  And if what is definitive about humanity is our ability with spirit-word then the entire purpose of spirit-word is to interrelate in very personal ways within an entire community of different beings.  And God is the fullness of community of beings in relationship.
  What is the difference between calling something elementary Higgs boson or the Holy Spirit?  Where is the evidence of a tradition and a community derived from Higgs boson?  Scientists may be able to convince us about this basic elementary particle, but so what?  For two thousand years we have a very personal and friendly force in the world that has been able to replicate and reproduce in successive generation a community of people who have gathered to celebrate the mysteries of the personal but hidden forces of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, patience and self control.  And we cannot see any of these virtues; they are sub-atomic but yet they are evident within a community of people who find that they partake of a personal force who makes these virtues real in experience. And even though they are very inexact in how each person experiences them, they are common enough for people to nod in recognition and agreement when they have experienced this personal force of virtue.
  Today, on this feast of Pentecost we celebrate our faith in how we answers Einstein’s question:  Is the universe a friendly place?  Yes indeed.  Jesus revealed God with a personality accessible to humanity.  Jesus revealed God as a Fatherly person.  But Jesus also revealed God to be personal without having to be limited to the body of a human person.  The physical body of Jesus left this world but the Friendly and Lively Presence of God is celebrated in the Pentecost event.
  At Pentecost there was painful discovery, painful because of the lateness of discovery: My, my God you have always been personally present as Holy Spirit since creation and we are late to discover this reality.  So Pentecost is the day the party began because of the discovery that indeed the universe has always been and is always a friendly place.  In life or death we are going to find friendliness and friendship because of the Holy Spirit as comforting presence.
  Let us continue this party that began two thousand years ago when a group of people discovered that indeed the universe is a friendly place because of the friendly, Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Pentecost Puppet Show: Happy Birthday Party of the Church


Gospel Puppet Show
May 19, 2013
Day of Pentecost

Characters:
Dovey the Dove
George


Dovey: (singing) Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday Christian Church.  Happy birthday to you!  And many more!

George: Why did you sing Happy Birthday to the Church Dovey?

Dovey:  Well today is the Day of Pentecost and the Day of Pentecost is the Birthday of the Church.  Let’s see the church is 2013 minus 33 equals 1980.   Happy 1980th birthday to the church.  But who’s counting?

George: Obviously you are counting.  We are a pretty old group of people.

Dovey:  Yes, you are one of the oldest and long lasting organizations that ever existed.

George: I wonder why the church has lasted so long.  Do you think that the church will still be here after I die?


Dovey:  Well George, you’re not going to die for awhile but yes the church will be here after you die to have more birthdays.

George:  How do you know Dovey?

Dovey:  Well, because even though you are a member of the church, the church is really not about you.

George:  Well, what is the church about?

Dovey:  The church is about Jesus Christ.  His message of love was so wonderful and it created so much excitement in people they called his message Good News or Gospel.  And Jesus said if we just keep sharing this good news to each new group of people who are born then this message will live forever.  This is why the church will continue to have birthdays forever.  Do you know what Pentecost means?

George:  Do I have time to Google it?

Dovey: Goo..goo…goo…Google it?  What’s that?

George:  It’s like a big storage brain outside of me where I store all of the information of the world and maps.  Google maps can even tell me where to go.

Dovey:  Well, I’ve got a built in Google maps and GPS.  Did you know that my family has been making a nest and laying eggs in the same tree for more than a hundred years.  I’ve got GPS in me that automatically tells me where to go.

George:  Wow, where did you get that?  That’s better than Google maps.

Dovey:  God made me this way and God the Holy Spirit is everywhere like a divine GPS system.  But the Holy Spirit became better known to everyone on the Day of Pentecost.

George: So what does Pentecost mean?

Dovey:  It means 50 days after Easter and it is the day when the Holy Spirit became known to the friends of Jesus.

George:  What happened on the Day of Pentecost?

Dovey:  Well, the Holy Spirit was discovered by the friends of Jesus and they were happy and joyful and they found that the Holy Spirit helped them to tell the Good News about Jesus in every language.

George:  So the Holy Spirit is like a great Google translator?

Dovey:  I guess you techies might say it that way.  Yes, the Holy Spirit is the wonderful personal energy of God’s love with us to help us to continue to tell the Good News about Jesus so that the church will continue to have birthdays into the future.

George: Wow!  Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are exciting.  But where are we going to get 1980 candles for the birthday cake?  Oh well, at least we can sing Happy Birthday.  Sandra, can you hit it on the piano and help us sing?

Everyone:  Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday Christian Church.  Happy birthday to you!  And many more!

George:  Do you think I can have some chocolate cake for the church’s birthday party?

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Prayer as Meaningful Discourse


7 Easter    C     May 12, 2013
Acts 16:16-34 Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21    John 17:20-26            

   If one says that something is true if and only if something can be empirically verified then this is a denial of lots of things that occur which are meaningful for us.  One can understand why people would want to put such a limitation upon truth.  It is an effort to control and certify meaning so that communication can be precise.  It is an attempt to bring the replication ability of the scientific method into all human use of language.  But really why would we want to do this even if we could?  If this were all that we aspired to in language then we might as well be happy that robots could take over, but human language gets colored in many more diverse ways in the fullness of human experience.  Moods, emotions, dreams, love, fantasies, music, intuitions and much, much more enter into our use of words and we are in fact complex language users with subtle upon subtle use of various discourses that arise from the endless variety of human experiences.  For us to limit meaningful truth to only what can be verified by scientific method would be a serious denial of what words do to communicate the fullness of human experience.
  Today’s Gospel is another reading from John’s Gospel on the Sunday after the Ascension.  And really all of the Gospels are post-Ascension word art that pertain the experience of knowing Christ in his resurrection.
  The events of the past are never empirical because as we relate the words about them, they are no longer here.  And everything before our eyes is rapidly becoming the immediate past tense much as looking at a river and assuming one is looking at the same water; oops, the water I was staring at has already gone downstream, the current flowing water only looks like what has already flowed past.
  And so we have recounted a prayer of Jesus, a prayer that Jesus would have said as it was shared by some people who believed that they knew Jesus rather well.
  John’s Gospel as I say endlessly is a confession about Word.  I find it very conducive to our postmodern period when we have begun to recognize the most obvious insight of all, namely, that words mediate every human experience.  Word accounts for the nano-second time delay between experience of something and the word that constitute our experience of something.
  The old insight was that things exist independently and before words rather than co-extensively and at the same time with people word-users.  Now we understand that things exist for us as humans because we use words.
  Let us try to force the prayer of Jesus into empirical only word use.  Jesus is praying?  Empirically it looks as though he would just be speaking to himself.  Or is he praying out loud so that his disciples taking dictation can record the words and then spend 2000 years trying to interpret a theology from the words of prayer by Jesus?
  Okay, by the content of the prayer of Jesus, Jesus is not just speaking to himself; he is speaking to a Being whom is addressed as Father.  And like Philip is quoted in the same Gospel as a preeminent doubter, we might ask Jesus, “Show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.”  This is another way of saying, “Jesus, use language in only empirical ways and we will be happy.  Keep it simple.  Don’t go all poetic on us and refer to people and things that we cannot see.  Jesus, where is your Daddy to whom you are speaking?” 
 And of course Jesus had already answered, “If you have seen me, then you have seen the Father.”
  And this answer raises all kinds of questions for empiricists and monotheists.  An empiricist wants to say, “So Jesus you are Jesus and you are also Father and if you are Father, we assume that within your skin is the God the Father.”  So is not this an incredible limitation on where God could be? 
And if one is a radical monotheist, one believing that God could not be identified with anything in human experience since that would make God something empirical and thus limited and thus an idol.
  And of course we know the solution offered by the writer of the Gospel of John.  God is Word who is flesh in Jesus and Jesus gave us the model of how we are functioning, living and having our being in the reflexive play of words because the entirety of human life is constituted by a continuous performance of words about former words.  John’s Gospel is about how we find ourselves in the variations of how we know ourselves and our world in and through the word.
  Do you see how reflexive word is?  By word I say that I have human experience and then I turn around and say that it is human experience to use words.  We are caught in total circular word reflexivity and I think the acknowledgement of this is the great secret of the Gospel of John.
  Word is monumental; by word we attain the type of poetic oneness that Jesus was speaking about in his Prayer.  By word Jesus can say that he is in the Father and the Father is in him.  By word Jesus can ask that his disciples and all of the future disciples might be in the Father and in him.  But do you see how if one is a literalist about words and deny the explosive poetic meanings of word, how limiting this would be on Jesus as a user of language and upon us who desire to have the manifold expansive types of human experience that draw from us all many kinds of word use?
  So Jesus prayed that his disciples would be one and all in the future would be one.  And one wonder if it isn’t like a desperate request of mother about her children, “Can’t you all just get along?”
   The writer of John’s was well aware that there was a world outside of the writer’s community who did not understand his community and their language and their confession of a relationship with a risen Christ.  I believe that he was accounting for different language identity communities, something of what we call today a paradigm.  Why do bird of feather flock together?  Because they share a “paradigm” of word use that have them to believe that they are unified.  This happens in science, in politics, nationalism, in sports or any time there is a group identity.  What is it that gives group oneness or cohesion to a community?  It is an interior practice of a sense of agreement about how words unify around what is regarded to be a common experience.  The writer of John is very much aware about the unity that can come because of words.  Through words we get the closest to one another as is humanly possible.  The closest literal physical union between two people is in their child, but they lose their person identity because a new person comes into an independent existence.  So the way that people become closest is in the exchange of words; words go deeply into that mingling processing center within us and then goes throughout our entire being in becoming flesh in the action and presentation of our lives.  John truly understands the significance of Word and its vital comprehension of our lives.
  And if word is so vast as to encompass many discursive practices, can we admit that the discourse that we call prayer is a discourse that has a long history of practice in the history of humanity?  Prayer one of the best ways we can be involved with other people.  Sometimes it is better for us to express our thoughts about someone else to God rather than directly to the person.  Prayer is to practice a relationship with a person as preparation to actual interaction.
  Today is a day when we celebrate probably the most significant prayer force in the world, the prayer force of mothers.  Don’t mess with mother’s prayers, amongst other things.  The prayers of mothers are like long reaching tentacles that surround their children wherever they go.  The prayers are so pervasive probably most children ask first in all that they do, “What would Mom do or what if Mom is watching?”
   Let us remember today to accept the expansive use of word; let us not limit meaningful language to only what we can verify with our eyes.  Let us accept the discourse of prayer and accept that Jesus prayed and we should too as a way of acknowledging our visible and invisible connection with all things and everyone.  And because we have specific location within the group of people to whom we've been called let us pray for one another as we mobilize our desire for the mutual well-being of each other.
  And let us not get too theological and scientific about God and try to figure out God as Father and Son as theological doctrine.  Let us accept the example that Jesus called his inner guide, his Father and he invites us to this identity with our inner Guide and Parent whom we know as God.  And let us confess that we never want to be separated from God at all and so we can say like Jesus, if you have seen us you can see God as the originator of all life.  Amen.

Puppet Show for Mothers Day


Gospel Puppet Show
May 12, 2013
7 Easter   Mothers Day

Characters:
Jane
Henry


Father Phil:  Boys and girls, Jane and Henry are with us.  Can you give them a welcome.

Jane:  Henry, did you know that I have the best mom in the world?

Henry:  Are you sure about that?  I think that I have the best mom in the world.

Jane:  But my mom is so great, she’s like Jesus.

Henry: Well, my mom is great too and she’s like Jesus too.  How is your mom like Jesus?

Jane: Well, she’s kind to me.

Henry: So’s mine; she makes me waffles in the morning.  And remember Jesus fixed a fish breakfast for his disciples.

Jane:  Okay, but my mom drives me everywhere.  To school, to ballet, to soccer, to my friends house, to the movies and to get ice cream.

Henry: My mom drives me everywhere too.  How would we do anything if mom didn’t drive us?

Jane:  And my mom always makes my birthday special.

Henry:  So does mine and she also makes Christmas and Thanksgiving special for me and our family.

Jane:  My mom goes shopping with me and she helps me to pick out pretty clothes.

Henry:  Well, my mom shops for my clothing and she doesn’t make me go with her.  I trust her good taste.  And don’t you notice how I am such a fine dresser?

Jane:  I guess if you like twenty shades of denim, you’re a good dresser.
My mom gets me accessories and shoes, Dorothy shoes.

Henry:  My mom reads to me at night before I go to bed.  And she makes the stories so interesting.

Jane:  Well, my mom tells me stories about when she was young.

Henry: Well, my mom taught me how to cook my own eggs.  I can do them  “over easy.”

Jane:  Well, my mom taught me to ride my bike without training wheels.

Henry:  Well, my mom sings to me at night before I go to bed.

Jane:  Well, my mom taught me how to read.

Henry:  My mom, taught me how to do my arithmetic.

Jane:  My mom taught me how to spell.

Henry:  My mom bought me a brand new bike.

Jane:  My mom bought me new leotards and tutus for dance.

Henry: Well, I admit my mom never did that for me.

Jane:  So see, my mom is better.

Henry: Well has your mom ever bought you a toy truck?

Jane:  Well, no, I don’t want a truck.

Henry:  Well, I don’t want a tutu or leotards, touchee.

Fr. Phil: Henry and Jane, can we agree that you both have great moms?


Henry:  Okay.

Jane: Okay

Fr. Phil:  I know something else about your moms.

Henry: What’s that?

Fr. Phil:  Your moms pray for you, just like Jesus prayed for his friends.  Your moms pray for you all of the time.  They think about you when they are not with you.  And they love you and care for you and they want the very best for you.

Jane:  I think it’s wonderful to have a mom?

Henry:  Mom’s are the perfect delivery system for bringing us into the world.

Fr. Phil:  And after delivery the lifetime work of motherhood begins.  When you are forty or sixty or more you’ll still want to come home for the favorite dish that your mom cooked.

Jane:  I have a prayer today?

Henry:  What is your prayer today, Jane?

Jane:  Thank you God for my mother and for all mothers!


Henry: A thousand Amens to that prayer.  Can all of the children say Amen?

Children:  Amen!

Jane: And can the children say, “Happy Mother’s Day?”

Everyone:  Happy Mother’s Day.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

John's Gospel: Writing as a Technology of Memory to Keep the Word of Jesus


6 Easter   C       May 5, 2013             
Acts 14:8-18      Ps. 67
Rev. 21:22-22:5      John 14:23-29


    What is that both creates human lives as we know them  and then preserves then into the future?  It is our word ability.  What keeps animals from becoming extinct?  Their ability to continue to propagate their species into the future; for animals it is only a biological preservation.  With human being it involves a preservation of all that humans have attained in what we call human culture.  And human beings use word or language and language products to preserve what they can retain of human culture from one age to the next.
  What is a bee keeper?  Someone who tends to bees in hives in order to harvest the honey.  What is a zoo keeper?  A worker at a zoo who takes care of animals.  What is a house keeper?  A member of the household who takes care of the interior maintenance of a house.
  In our appointed Gospel lesson for today, we have a reference to word keeping.  “Those who love me will keep my word.”  That’s a quote from a discourse of Jesus unique to John’s Gospel.  Word Keeper?  What does that mean?   I’m as guilty as anyone in being sloppy often about word use and I think perhaps we often miss the meaning of word keeping in this Gospel lesson based upon what word keeping has come to mean in our English usage, which probably came about because of a misuse of this Gospel passage.
  In English if it is said that someone keeps their word, it means that they honor their verbal contracts but we normally only use this phrase in reference to the words that belong to the same person who is keeping them.  He keeps his word.  I keep my word.  But I don’t usually say that I keep someone else’s word.  And it would be a rare English expression for someone to ask me to “keep their words.”
  We probably are used to thinking that “keeping the word” of Jesus would mean to obey Jesus, but there is another Greek word for obey and that is not the word used in this Gospel lesson.  In earlier verses it was written that the disciples were asked by Jesus to keep his commandments.  This is a direct identification of Jesus as one who is greater than Moses when it comes to having commandments that should be regarded.
  But back to keeping the word of Jesus.  John’s Gospel is all about Word.  Word or the Greek word logos can be used in various ways.  It can mean a single word; it can be used as a collective plural as “entire” body of words; it can be used as a metaphor for what God is for us in trying to understand God.  The beginning phrase of John is “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And that Word also became flesh and dwelled among us.
  The dilemma of the community for whom the Gospel of John was written concerned how the reality, the life, the memory, the presence of Jesus would be retained or kept in this world.  Jesus was so special his disciples were concerned that his memory could die out just as the memory of the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived has died out.
  The words that we read today in John’s Gospel were written to a previous question.  Judas   (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, “How are you going to make yourself known to us and not to the rest of the world?”  This question is really a dialogue analysis of the “staying power” of the remembrance of Jesus within the world.  You can appreciate the doubt of the question.  Jesus, if you don’t make it on the big stage of world history, like Julius Caesar did, how are you going to be remembered?  And how can our small little band of followers keep you alive in the world?
  And the answer is?  Jesus said that he and the Father and the Holy Spirit were all going to come and make a home in their followers.  Jesus had just said that in his Father’s house there were many dwelling places.  So Jesus was indicating that each body of his followers was to become an address, a location for the residence of the life of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  What was going on in the community of the Gospel of John?  They were taken up with the issue of the “staying power” of the memory of Jesus in their life and world.  They were well aware of the success of the Jesus Movement but at the same time they were not taking for granted the future presence of the memory of Jesus in the world.
  The punchline is this:  The quality of relationship and the re-creation of Godly presence in the life of each person wer so pronounced that it created such excitement as to be able to be transmitted through a continuous succession of words of Jesus from one disciple of Jesus to the next disciple of Jesus.
  We are so assuming about the doctrine of the Trinity that really did not become such a theological abbreviation for God until after the fourth century, that we forget the pregnant impact of the metaphor of the family of God becoming resident in one’s life as a continuing location of God’s presence in this world.
  If the Ford logo fell off one of Henry Ford’s car would it still have been made by Henry Ford?  Were the early members of John’s community worried about the label of God and Christ being removed such that their maker and originator would no longer be recognized?
  “Don’t worry” says the dialogical Jesus in John’s Gospel, “our the divine family brand is going to be all over you and in you and through you and this basic DNA of the family is going to be spirit-word within you and it will keep the Jesus-family brand alive and well for a long, long time.
  One of the major themes, in my opinion, of the Gospel of John has do with the word and how it is by the word that the identity of the community is going to remain connected with the identity of Jesus.
  In John, Jesus is the Christ, who is the Word of God, the same word that was spoken when the world of human beings came into being.  Jesus did not write books; Jesus spoke words.  Spoken words are harder to remember forever.  How do spoken words remain?  Oral tradition is passed on in spoken words that are reduced to mnemonic devices such as metaphors and stories.  Metaphors and stories are units of memory in oral traditions.  They help the listener be able to retain the gist of the conversation.  Oral traditions are not always precise and exact; they get slightly altered in transmission due to inexact human memory.  John’s Gospel is about anchoring spoken word of Jesus into a written word of teachings that Jesus would have said to help his followers to retain the importance of the mission of his life.  The punch line of John’s Gospel is about word as written word or as a more precise technology of memory for retaining exact words into the future.  This is what the Gospel of John has done; writing has retain exact words and these words limit the possible number of interpretations for these words and the faith meanings that they can come to have to people who read and hear them. You cannot say that John’s Gospel is written about Julius Caesar.
  The gist of the appointed Gospel is that the quality of the life of Jesus is so special that it could go from face to face contact; to personal witness existing in oral transmission and then into written word and the life of Jesus could be transmitted across history into the next generation.  And this has happened; we ourselves still try to account for the staying power of this transmission of the presence of Christ to us and in the many and varied way in which we have come to confess that God is Emmanuel, God is with us.
  Let each us accept that fact that we are individually a crowded house; God has taken up residence in us, set up home and it started because we were made in God’s image and now we just get to flat out confess it because God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Word, Comforter, Wisdom or the Great One by any name resides in those whom the Divine one has designed and created.  Jesus made this known is a special way and the memory of him has been retained in a profound way.  We may not understand the staying power of Jesus even as atheist, agnostic and all have to admit that Jesus has hung around for a long time.
  Without trivializing God’s presence in our lives let us accept it as the basic Mystery of our lives that we revere and live towards each and every moment.  Let us not be too proud about how we know God; let us be more grateful that we have the privilege to be humble dwellings for God in our world.  Amen.

Gospel Puppet Show: Dove as the Holy Spirit


Gospel Puppet Show
May 5,  2013
6 Easter

Characters:
Dovey the Dove
Fr. Phil

(Pictures of the Dove of Noah's Ark and the Dove of the Baptism of Jesus are posted on front of the puppet theatre)

Father Phil:  Today I want to introduce our guest for today.  Welcome please Dovey the Dove. 

 Dovey: Coo, Coo, coo, coo, coo, coo.  Hello, I’m a bit of a shy bird but I like to coo.

Father Phil:  Dovey, welcome!  You don’t have to be shy with us.  These children are very friendly.  Aren’t you friendly children?  Dovey, aren’t doves usually seen in pairs?  Isn’t that why you’re often called love birds?  So where is your love bird?

Dovey:  We do go around in pairs.  My husband is having a day out with the boys.  They know a farm that has just planted some new seeds and so they have gone to have a big feast.  I’m sure that he will put on some pounds today.

Father Phil:  I invited you here today to tell you that you are a very famous biblical bird and I wanted these children to know what you symbolize.

Dovey: Symbolize?  Sounds like a disease.  I don’t know if I want to symbolize.

Father Phil:  No, it’s a good thing.  It means that doves are so gentle and kind that they can teach us about the very best things about God and life.

Dovey:  Okay but what do I symbolize?



Father Phil:  Well, a dove was very important in the story of Noah’s ark.  The dove was like the first scout who left the ark after the flood and when the dove came back with a olive branch, Noah knew that the water from the flood had gone down enough to get out of the ark.

Dovey: Well, I did not know that a dove was a famous scout, though is that something like being a canary in a deep mine?

Father Phil:  No, it was a good thing to be a messenger for Noah and all of the animals on the ark.  It was good news to know that they could finally get off the ark.  But you have an even more important value in the Bible.

Dovey: What’s that?

Father Phil:  You are a symbol for God the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence in this world that Jesus promised us after he left.  And there are lots of famous pictures of doves.

Dovey:  What kind of pictures?

Father Phil:  Well, the most famous one is when you fly down and light upon the head of Jesus at his baptism.

Dovey:  Doves don’t do that.  We’re too shy and frightened.  Occasionally we accidentally drop some stuff on people but we don’t land on people.

Father Phil:  I wish you hadn’t mentioned dropping stuff on people in church.

Dovey:  Oops….Sorry.

Father Phil:  But Jesus was so wonderful and doves are so gentle that a dove was the perfect symbol for God’s Spirit.  So that makes you very famous, being a symbol for God the Holy Spirit.

Dovey: Well that is pretty special.

Father Phil:  Jesus wanted everyone to know that God would still be with us after he left and so he said that God would remain with us as a gentle comforting dove, sort of singing a sweet coo, coo song to keep us peaceful.

Dovey:  Well, we do coo a lot.  And we are gentle.  We don’t like to fight.  Thank you for teaching me about the biblical doves.  I feel better about being a dove now.

Father Phil:  Thank you Dovey for helping us to learn about God the Holy Spirit.  Children, let’s give Dovey a big hand.

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