Friday, March 31, 2017

Aphorism of the Day, March 2017

Aphorism of the Day, March 31, 2017

One should not miss the textual fact that women in the Gospel of John receive privileged revelation in direct conversation with Jesus.  To the Samaritan women at the well he said, "I am he, the Messiah."  To Martha/Mary of Bethany: "I am Resurrection and Life."  And to Mary Magdalene the first witness of the resurrection: "Go tell my brothers.."  It might make one ponder why women in the intervening years were erased from leadership roles within the church.  Authority derives from encounters with Christ; this is the charismatic event which should guide the "office" of ministry.  The signs of the "office" without the charismatic encounter can mean official ministry without effective or engaging ministry.

Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2017

The coming back to life of Lazarus who has to then die again begs a contrast of this kind of resuscitation with the kind of "coming back to life" that is proclaimed about Jesus.  The issue is complicated since the same Greek word is used both for what happened to Lazarus and what is confessed about Jesus.  The resurrection body of Jesus was different from the resuscitated body of Lazarus.  We moderns may be motivated by our scientific proclivities which did not trouble the early writers imbued by mystical experiences regarded to be so genuine and impactful in their lives that they had a equality of true meaning with the perceptual empirically verifiable experience.  (See doubting Thomas periscope) Gospel mystic writers believed mystical experience was as "really real" as the eye-witness empirical verification.  We on this side of modern science tend to privilege the "truth meaning" of empirical verification because it would assume an openness to all and not be foreclosed to the unique incidence of an individual mystical experience.  Lots of Christians had individual mystical experiences of the "Risen Christ" and the experiences were not corporate experience but they were corporate in the interpretative language which was available to them which enabled them to describe their individual experience.  The experiences were individually unique while the interpretations of the experience were provided by the community.

Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2107

John's Gospel is identified by the "ego eimai" εγω ειμαι  declarations of Jesus.  "ego eimai" is Greek for "I am."  There are eight "I am" statements in the Gospel of John.  "I am" is an affirmation of existence and it is followed by an equivalence tautology.  I am resurrection and life.  John's Gospel begins by declaring the beginning of human life as we know it as Word, which was with God, which was God and became flesh in Jesus Christ.  Jesus said that his words were spirit and life.  In John's Gospel Jesus speaks his personal existence into being in the life of the church.  In the poetry of the church, Jesus is way, truth, life, resurrection, good shepherd, gate of the sheep, light of the world, living bread from heaven and even the "I am" who was before Abraham.  The printed words of Jesus only have sense when one assumes the entire Worded universe.  In John's Gospel there are individual words which only have significance because the entire human universe is essentially a "worded one" since that is the only one we know and having words is the only way we can know that we know.

Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2017

Blaming the absence of Christ.  "Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died."  It is sometimes a hard adjustment to reconcile one's belief in Christ and the hard reality of the outcomes of freedom in time, like illness and death.  If we think belief in Christ exempts us from probable occurrences in time, we may be asking for an exemption that Jesus did not have for himself.


Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2017

In the Gospel of John, physicality or naïve realism or commonsense reality is used as a metaphor for substantial experience.  Nicodemus was supposed to be "born" again.  People were to partake of living water and living bread and actually eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus.  The writer of John's Gospel repeated mocks the characters in the story who take things so literally, i.e., just the physical sense of something happening as being real while denying or being unaware of the substantiality of an inner spiritual event which really changes one's life.  The death of Lazarus and his being called back to life fits in consistently with "physicality" being used as a profoundly expressive metaphor to highlight what it really feels like to be called to spiritual life from the state of spiritual death.

Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2107

"Again" is the adverb denoting repetition.  Repetition means that present action shares something of what has been done in the past and yet since it represents an action later in time it is totally new.  Something done for the first time and not repeated will never need the word "again" until the action is done for the second time.  Routine actions are done again and again and while they may seem to the same each time, there is a slow accrual of difference based upon the context of the subsequent event.  The Gospel of John uses "again" as a metaphor for the spiritual seeing which parallel the physical counterpart.  Born and born again.  Seeing again refers to spiritual sight.  Life can be fresh "again" as the interior lives are reconstituted by word and spirit.

Aphorism of the March 25, 2017

According to the Samuel the Judge when selecting a successor to King Saul, he was told that humanity looks at outer appearance but the Lord looks at the heart.  How does one have these "X-ray eyes" to see within?  The Gospel of John is all about having these "X-ray eyes" to see things about God that others don't see.  How does one receive this kind of "X-ray sight?"  By being born from above and receiving the Spirit of God.

Aphorism of the Day, March 24, 2017

People who use the phrase "born again" often limit the phrase.  "Again" is an important adverb since it cites what is central to human life, namely, the repetition of actions over and over again.  Born again sometimes refers to a one time event of a spiritual rebirth but that places a limit upon the metaphor.  Conversion should be continuous and one should never stop being born into new knowledge and insights about God and life.  We are going to do things "again" today and while they may seem to be but the repetitive trace of what has been done before, we should appreciate the newness in time of what we do again and so bring an intentional new quality to what we do "again."

Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2017

As much as we strive for agreement in science for having a common way of agreeing about what is seen outside of us and agreeing upon how nature behaves, the way we see is determined by how our internal lives are constituted by the language of this interior and parallel life.  Our language constituted insides is our spirit and our life and determines the way in which we see.  Our interior lives can become re-constituted through interaction with new word influences in such a way that we become converted to see things anew.  Former states of seeing become regarded to be blindness in contrast to the new ways in which we come to see things.  This is the sight and blindness model found in the Gospel of John to account for why some people found Jesus to be the telling insight of their lives and why some found him to be one to oppose because he was "over-throwing" a familiar way of seeing the world.

Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2017

The Gospel of John treats the outward and visible life as a metaphor for an inward and spiritual life.  One can be born from above, walk again in Jesus as the Way, see again, live again after death, believe again after doubt, eat living bread, be quenched by living water, and restored to pastoral ministry after denying Christ.  The physical world and ordinary passages of life are but the vehicle for the spiritual in the Gospel of John.

Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2017

What is most literal about the Gospels is that they are literal about being non-literal in their interpretation and appropriation of the theological symbolic order of Judaism.  St. Irenaeus said one was suppose to prefer a "plain reading" of Scripture.  But the most "plain" reading of "I am the gate of the sheep," is in fact an appreciation of metaphors that are quite distant from "empirical verification."  Even the seeming plain narrative of the life of Jesus in the Gospel is a metaphorical reading encoding the practices of the early Christian churches who trace the origins of their practices to the root event of Christianity, the life of Jesus.  All of the Gospel writing is but variations in metaphorical discourses.  So the Gospel should be read in a literary and artistic way and not in a journalistic literal way.

Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2017

The writers of the Gospel of John looked for answer as to why people could resist the otherwise irresistible truth of the Gospel.  Why do people disagree with us by benignly ignoring the relevance of our good news for them or by actively, even violently opposing us as a mortal threat to their way of existence?  One can see the Kuhnian notion of people living in different paradigms as a way for accounting to the fact that people "see" things quite differently even to the point of characterizing another person as being "blind" to one's truth.  The Gospel of John uses "sight" and "blindness,"  "light" and "darkness" to account for irreconcilable differences and incommensurable world views.

Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2017

Jesus promised the Samaritan woman "living water."  Baptism and the immersion in mikvah were supposed to be done in "living water" such as a river or spring, signifying their direct connection with divine creation.  The "living water" which Jesus promised was an inward baptism so that one could worship in "Spirit" and in truth.  Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born of water and the Spirit.  He told the Samaritan woman that he could provide living water within her life to help her worship in Spirit and truth.  This is that answer to the perpetual prayer request: "Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me."

Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2017

The non-literal New Testament writers co-opted the symbolism of Judaism and "spiritualized" them.  The church was the new "Israel" (how could anyone who remained in the synagogue accept this?).  The meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is an origin discourse for the Jesus Movement in Samaria and since Samaritans were the offspring of the divided Northern Kingdom, the New Testament writers were announcing the reunification of the two divided kingdoms in the New Israel, the church.  One needs to appreciate the "creative" interpretation going on here.

Aphorism of the Day, March 17, 2017

In analysis of how the meanings of words attach in approximation to empirical verification, one can note that John's Gospel move such approximations to quite a "poetic" distance.  The Gospels presents the Christ acts and words as "Signs."  The semiotic switch in the Gospel of John makes elements like wine, light, water, bread, flesh, blood, sight, blindness, death, life, being lame, gate, vine, birth, shepherd and storm on the sea into poetic metaphors quite a distance in verisimilitude from the actual empirical signification of the words themselves.  One can note that the author of John's Gospel is quite comfortable with the notion that Word creates the reality of human experience and all of the nuances therein.  Word creates the very notion of "physicality" in the Gospel of John whereas in the other Gospels one can still sense that their authors believe that outer physical world determines the world of words.  This has been overturned in the "advanced" Word metaphysics of John's Gospel.  Birth from above means one lives in a realm of "word reality" in different way than commonsensical "naïve" reality.

Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2017

The recorded insults of the opponents of Jesus in the Gospels include being in league with the devil, being mad and being a Samaritan.  Could be that Jesus and the Jesus Movement was a "Samaritan sympathizing" movement in that followers of Jesus befriended members of the Torah-based Samaritan faith whose members also had expectations of a messiah.  The living water discourse of Jesus with Samaritan woman at the well represents evidence of a Samaritan/Jesus Movement rapprochement.

Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2017

John's Gospel begins with the creating Word.  The creating Word in John is able to show how the signs of God are able to convert one to awareness of an alternate linguistic universe that one is born into and in this alternate universe one drinks living water and eats living bread and Jesus as this new word universe is Way, Truth, Life and Messiah and I Am, and Gate, Vine, Good Shepherd, Light, Truth, Resurrection, Life, Healer, Calmer of the sea, Alchemist of water to wine, Gospel text and much more.  The creating Word of John reveals that anything human can only be so because it comes to word.  Word in John is revealed to be the only valid human metaphysics and because of Word, humans name God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  That we have Word is the precursor to the confession of what is extra-linguistic and so Word is co-extensive with everything including the consciousness of humanity being word users.

Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2017

One can understand the scientific frustration with "biblical poetic discourse" when metaphors of equivalency can seem to be on "steroids" and seem to lose all connection with empirical verification.  In John, Christ is Word and the words of Jesus are spirit and truth and God is spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and in truth.  One can see the trouble that the empiricist might have in wanting "exact" language that can gain community objectivity wider than a group of people using poetic words of faith.  On the other hand, the answer is rather obvious; don't limit language and fail to appreciate contextual use.  Let your science be science and let your poetry be poetry and don't confuse the two and don't limit the valid truth values of either.  The two can have overlapping interaction, as when actual aesthetic, "spiritual," poetic truths move and guide that actual body language(empirically observable) of a person in morals and ethics.

Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2017

An underlying dynamic of the learning process presented in the Gospel of John is a transformation in understanding discursive practices.  Disciples and interlocutors of Jesus are presented as being crassly literal about everything and do not have the discursive insight which comes from being "born from above" to embrace the transformative meanings derived from the appreciation of an entire range of metaphors for the meaning of the life of Jesus presented within the Gospel discipleship manual of the community that has come to have the name of John assigned to its Gospel.


Aphorism of the Day, March 12, 2017

Evangelical means something different today than it meant in the early Jesus Movement.  Evangelical means sharing the Good News of Christ.  Nascent Christianity was essentially evangelical because it was good news for a wider audience than the audience of the synagogue members who observed ritual purity.  It was an alternate theology to Roman citizens who had a smorgasbord of divinity choices and who knew the effects of the chief practical god of their everyday lives, namely, the Caesar and his political presence everywhere.  Evangelism in this context meant that Christians and their message was adaptive and winsome in the interstitial personal spaces of private lives and political context.

Aphorism of the Day, March 11, 2017

In a Monty Python satire, a vicar in the pulpit declares, "My text for today is: "My brother Esau is an hairy man but I am a smooth man.""  Part of the satire points out that we read the Bible selectively privileging certain portions and certain verses because they represent key features of our own group identity.  There are too many biblical words to give each word the same complete "inspirational" status.  For fundamental Evangelical Christians, they privilege John 3:16 as a verse of their identity and it is found in the same discourse which trumpets another marker of their identity: Ye must be born again.  Does the editorial selection of what is read from the Bible expose the fact that not everything in the Bible is regarded equally?  When is the last time you heard a sermon preached on the verse in Song of Solomon, "We have a little sister and she has no breasts?"  Such satires work because of the uneven way in which people regard various portions of the Bible.  One should not be too proud of how one regards biblical inspiration, especially if one has both purported it is all inspired and each word has equal inspiration in one's daily application.  Inspiration may have to do with the always already potential sublime effects of the biblical texts.

Aphorism of the Day, March 10, 2017

The biblical record involves a posthumous theological deliberation on people in the past.  Abraham was a pre-historic, patriarch who fulfills an important role in establishing the coming to "self identity" of the covenantal people of Israel.  But much, much later Abraham becomes for Paul, the pre-Mosaic person who had a valid relationship with God before the Mosaic law existed.  Therefore if people could have valid faith before the Mosaic law and before covenantal relationship had become limited to keeping the Mosaic law within a community, then the Gentiles could be seen like Abraham; they could have valid faith without the benefit of living under the conditions of the Mosaic law within a segregated Mosaic community.  Abraham was "used" by Paul as a way to tie the Gentiles in with how Paul needed to understand Gentile Christianity in continuity with his "Mosaic" of "pre-Mosaic" roots.

Aphorism of the Day, March 9, 2017

The writer of John's Gospel presents Jesus as challenging the unenlightened who see things with a literal mind.  Nicodemus asks how he can get back into his mother's womb.  The disciples say that if Lazarus is sleeping, it is good.  The Samaritan woman at the well has a mind set on actual water.  The seeing religious folk ask they are blind.  Jesus is not literally a shepherd, a gate, way, life, vine and light.  Disciples appear to be offended at the horrendous thought of eating flesh and drinking blood.  John's Gospel is about the "mysticality" of Word.  Word is Spirit and Word is Life.  Having word and language is the essence of human life.  That language is able to use physicality as its metaphor is also one of the magic effects of language.  As much as we trust an objectivity of the observations of our senses, such observations are both pre-constituted and post-constituted in word and language.  The Gospel of John mocks people who are trapped in the discursive habit of "physicality" being the only valid and true presentation of language.  Word and language are metaphorical in being and so being essentially metaphorical, word and language cannot help but spin endless metaphor.  John's Gospel asks us not to favor the metaphorical discourse of empirical physicality over the variety of discourses in language including the poetic.  The language of faith and love forces us to wax poetic beyond being limited to the metaphor of physicality.  Since seeing with our eyes is a most commonsensical discourse (based on our ability to manipulate things in our outer world),  in a comparative sense, such physicality is used to reinforce the reality/realness/actuality of other discursive truths, namely the aesthetic "moving" truths.


Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2017

The last shall be first.  This ironic statement found in the Gospel is hermeneutically true since the last or latest one who interprets anything actually creates the meaning of what happened in the past for the present.  St. Paul exalted the more obscure Abrahamic tradition to rewrite Gentiles into a spiritual lineage which pre-dated those who had inherited the Mosaic law.  When it comes to the Bible or to the U.S. Constitution, the latest interpreters are always reconstructionists since they make it serve their own current political needs.  We build our own view of the past and use the designation of antiquity to say, "See my tradition is longer and therefore more venerable than yours; ergo you must agree with my views."  We should be very humble about being the last or latest interpreter since very shortly we will be used to justify other people in the position of the latest.

Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2017

Sometimes the religious discussion about faith and works seem to be like a dog chasing its own tail.  We are told that by our works we cannot make ourselves "acceptable" to God and yet we have the words of Jesus which say belief or having faith in Jesus Christ is the work of life.  And so some religious people purport to be better in their work of believing in Jesus than others.  It is like congratulating oneself for being wise to take a gift and forgetting about the generosity of the Giver.  It might be that the work of belief has to do with the continual effort in time not to accept the habits of the inner sense of alienation from living and having our being in God.  We can easily become so locked into egocentric and ethnocentric limitation we act as though the divine Ground is so negligible as to be absent in its relevance to our lives.  Accepting the Risen Christ nature within us means that we work to acknowledge our connectedness with the Plenitude of the Divine Environment.

Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2017

One might re-appropriate the Gospel of John as a "deconstructive post-modern" Gospel in that the physical creation story of Genesis is re-visited as a linguistic creation of the world since awareness only happens because of Word and the derivative languages.  In John words are "spirit and life" and making word equivalent to spirit reveals the fact that words are invisible mystifications of interior states of human being.  Within worded beings, who are created by the Word, the Gospel of John also shows that one is re-born by Spirit-word to continuously be converted to the wider contexts humans can have as they explore the endless discursive realms of words.  Remember we have to use words even to talk about what we think generates words, such as "mind" or "consciousness" or even the science of the places in the brain responsible for "language."  We use words even to create the origin of words.  Words about words perhaps is the only valid circular argument because it is unavoidable.

Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2017

Opponents of Jesus said that his great works were achieved because he was in league with the devil.  The temptation of Jesus presented his resistance to Satan and the asserted his perfect agency as God on behalf of God within the human situation.  Jesus is God's bilingual expression in humanity uniting the mystery of God with what can knowably come to human word in personal manifestation.  Jesus as eternal word used his words to defeat the shadowy Satan at the horizon of consciousness.  The shadow of evil still lies at the edge of consciousness waiting as a possibility to tempt human agents to make it actual.  Following Jesus, we must resist and keep evil in its shadow form and not let it become actual in the agency of our lives.

Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2017

It could be that temptation and the valuing behaviors designating sin arise in the training liminal phase of moving from infant/child sense of time to the sense of time as chronological sequence of occasions or events which adults are attempting to give children orientation into.  When time as sequence of events results in comparative judgments as something bad or good or better and worse, people are vulnerable to the main issue of temptation, namely, the timing and frequency of human behaviors.  Learning proper timing is expressed in the famous verses of Ecclesiastes: there is a time and purpose for everything under heaven.  Wisdom faith is about finding "Kairos" timing or purposeful timing for doing everything in life.  Temptation involves possible choices set before us to mistime what we do in both when we do something and frequency (how many times we do something).  It may be fine to drink an alcoholic beverage at the right time.  We may be tempted to drink at the wrong time and the wrong frequency or repetitions.  Temptation is about mistiming in the choices before us that instigate the actions we end up performing.

Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2017

Satan asked Jesus to cast himself down from a high place to prove his faith that God's angels would catch him.  And he quoted a Psalm as a text to support his suggestion.  There are several elements to this temptation.  Mistiming: Die before your appointed time.  Literalism: Take the Scriptures literally and not metaphorically.  Anti-natural laws: Belief in God allows one to defy gravity and its effects.  All of these temptations still occur for people today and to fall for these tricks makes religious folks often look very silly.


Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2017

Temptation involves being thrown off in our timing of what, when and where we should do certain things in our life.  Fasting as a religious discipline is a corrective measure for interdicting mistimed behaviors in our lives and reasserting a true freedom of self-control.

Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2017

If we are supposed to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect, then we are assigned the perpetual state of being "less than God" as the state of sin.  And if sin means perpetually shooting the arrows of our mind, soul and strength toward an unreachable perfection, what is important is that we are shooting the arrows of our intentional words, deeds and thoughts in the right direction toward the right target.

Quiz of the Day, March 2017

Quiz of the Day, March 31, 2017

Which of the following are not lines from John Donne?

a. No man is an island
b. ..for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
c. any man's death diminishes me...
d. Death be not proud
e. This is the way the world ends Not with a whimper but a bang

Quiz of the Day, March 30, 2017

Whom of the following would qualify as being resurrected as opposed to resuscitated in the biblical record?

a. widow's son by Elijah
b. Dorcas
c. centurion son by Jesus
d. Lazarus by Jesus
e. child revived by Elisha
f. Jairus' daughter
g. Jesus
h. Eutychus
I. son of the widow of Nain
j. a dead prophet who body touched the bones of Elisha

Quiz of the Day, March 29, 2017

John Keble is credited with beginning which of the following:

a. Oxford Movement
b. Tractarian Movement
c. Anglo-Catholic Revival
d. all of the above


Quiz of the Day, March 28, 2017

Whom of the following woman received the confession of Jesus that he was resurrection and life?

a. Mary Magdalene
b. Mary of Bethany
c. Martha of Bethany
d. The Virgin Mary

Quiz of the Day, March 27, 2017

The account of the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany being called back to life from his tomb is found where in the Bible?

a. Matthew, Mark and Luke
b. Luke and John
c. Mark, because it is the earliest Gospel
d. John

Quiz of the Day, March 26, 2017

What is Fourth Sunday of Lent called in the Church of England?

a. Mothers' Day
b. Mothering Sunday
c. Pink Sunday
d. Rose Sunday

Quiz of the Day, March 25, 2017

What Feast is also known as Lady Day?

a. Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary
b. Feast of the Annunciation
c. Feast of our Lady of Lourdes
d. Feast of the Visitation


Quiz of the Day, March 24, 2017

Archbishop Oscar Romero was a martyr from what country?

a. Mexico
b. Honduras
c. Cuba
d. El Salvador
e. Panama


Quiz of the Day, March 23, 2017

Which Gregory was the apostle to Armenia?

a. Gregory the Great
b. Gregory of Nyssa
c. Gregory the Illuminator
d. Gregory of Nazianzus
e. Gregory Palamas

Quiz of the Day, March 22, 2017

Bishop James DeKoven was associated with which of the following controversies?

a. reunion of the church after the Civil War
b. ritualism
c. lay presidency
d. pacifism

Quiz of the Day, March 21, 2017

Which of the following is not true about Thomas Cranmer?

a. dispensed with clerical celibacy and got married
b. appointed Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII
c. gave papers of annulment for King Henry VIII's marriage
d. Martyred in the reign of Queen Mary I
e. translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English
f. was the chief wordsmith of the first Book of Common Prayer

Quiz of the Day, March 20, 2017

Which of the following is not true about Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary?

a. he was from the house/lineage of King David
b. he was a carpenter by trade
c. he is referred to as the Guardian of Jesus
d. his feast was set according to the date of the spring equinox

Quiz of the Day, March 19, 2017

Mikvah is what?

a. refers to the Jordan River
b. a transition rite for occupation in Judaism
c. a bath for immersion of Jewish converts
d. the water of the Rock struck by Moses

Quiz of the Day, March 18, 2017

In which Gospel are all the following metaphors for Jesus?  Light, Lamb of God, Word, Vine, Gate, Way, Truth, Life, The Resurrection, Good Shepherd.

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John


Quiz of the Day, March 17, 2017

Which of the following does not pertain to "St. Patrick's Breastplate?"

a. a poem/prayer attributed to St. Patrick
b. aka Lorica of St. Patrick
c. "I bind unto myself" hymn in the Episcopal hymnal
d. the armor St. Patrick wore to defeat a pagan king
e. a prayer for protection by invoking God in all of God's attributes

Quiz of the Day, March 16, 2017

Which of the following is not true about St. Patrick?

a. Native Irish
b. Native English
c. Slave
d. Captured by pirates

Quiz of the Day, March 15, 2017

Who died on the Ides of March?

a. St. Stephen
b. Julius Caesar
c. Judas Iscariot
d. Simon Peter

Quiz of the Day, March 14, 2017

Samaritan comes from "Shamarim," meaning the keepers, guardians or watchers of what?

a. the messiah
b. the Torah
c. the ark of the covenant
d. the Temple on Gerizim

Quiz of the Day, March 13, 2017

Which of the following is not found in the discourse of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well?

a. living water
b. field white with harvest
c. Jacob's well
d. living bread
e. God is spirit

Quiz of the Day, March 12, 2017

Why does Abram and Abraham refer to the same person in the Hebrew Scriptures?

a. Abram means noble father
b. Abraham means father of many
c. Abram was his name when he was childless
d. Abraham was his name when he had sons
e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, March 11, 2017

What is the liturgical wear for Jews who were instructed to bind God's law on their hands and fix them on their foreheads?

a.Tallit
b. tefillin
c. gartel
d. kippah
e. phylactery
f.  all of the above
g. b and e

Quiz of the Day, March 10, 2017

Whom of the following was not a Cappadocian Father?

a. Basil the Great
b. Gregory of Nyssa
c. Macrina
d. Gregory of Nazianzus

Quiz of the Day, March 9, 2017

Why were there two sets of the 10 commandments written on stone tablets?

a. one for the ark and one for public display
b. one for the temple and one for the shrine in Shiloh
c. Moses, in anger about the golden calf, broke the first tablet
d. one copy was on earth, the other in heaven


Quiz of the Day, March 8, 2017

In which Gospel(s) does Jesus invite his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood?

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John
e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, March 7, 2017

Where were Perpetua, Felicity, Revocatus, Secundus and Saturnius martyred in 202?

a. Alexandria
b. Timbuktu
c. Carthage
d. Rome

Quiz of the Day, March 6, 2017

The phrase "born again" derives from a dialogical discourse of Jesus with whom?

a. Peter
b. Thomas
c. Nicodemus
d. Mary of Bethany

Quiz of the Day, March 5, 2017

Which of the following is not a biblical name or agent of the evil one?

a. Satan
b. the Devil
c. the Anti-Christ
d. Mephistopheles
e. Lucifer
f. the Beast
g. the false prophet


Quiz of the Day, March 4, 2017

Which of the following is not true of Paul Cuffee?

a. He was a Shinnecock Indian
b. He is on the Episcopal Calendar of saints
c. He was an Episcopal priest
d. He was a Presbyterian minister


Quiz of the Day, March 3, 2017

How did the Methodists receive their name?

a. John and Charles Wesley conceived it
b. Oxford students branded the Wesley's "holy club" as a group of Methodists referring to their rule of life
c. John Wesley conceived of it when at the Oglethorpe colony in Georgia
d. It came from the Quaker friends of the Wesleys

Quiz of the Day, March 2, 2017

A responsorial prayer is called what?

a. Kyrie
b. Intercession
c. Litany
d. Antiphon


Quiz of the Day, March 1, 2017

How many Fasts are prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer for the church year?

a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4

Sunday, March 26, 2017

A Most Important Adverb

4 Lent A        March 26, 2017

1 Sam. 16:1-13   Ps. 23 
Eph. 5:1-14     John 9:1-38      


The Gospel of John is built around the contrast of the physical world and the spiritual world, the outer world and the inner world.  The inner world is the world of words, soul, thought, volition, dreams, desire and spirit and we have to have our inner world changed if we want to affect our agency or how we act and speak in the outer world.  We need to know our inner world as the kingdom of God if we are going work to make God's will done on earth in the outer world like it is done in the inner world which can be effective place of the kingdom of God.

So what are the physical situations and rites of passage in human life?  Birth, sight, drinking, eating, walking, dying, believing and human vocation.

Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born again in another way.   Jesus told the woman at the well to drink another kind of water.  Jesus told the man born lame that he could walk again.  Jesus told the blind man that he could see again.  Jesus told his disciples about Eucharistic bread being the living bread and food of life.  Jesus told the sisters of the dead man Lazarus that he would live again.  Jesus told the doubting Thomas, who once had believed that he could believe again.  Jesus told the once called Peter who denied and failed him, he could be forgiven and called again to ministry.

The Gospel of John is all about how we can learn to live from this parallel existence in the Kingdom of God by being born of water and the Spirit.  Birth and new birth.  Blindness and sight.  Light and darkness.  Crippled or mobilized.  Thirsty and quenched.  Hungry and fed.  Death and Resurrection.  Doubt and Faith.  Failure and Forgiveness.  These are the contrasts found in the teaching of the Gospel of John.

The illustration used in our appointed Gospel for today is the giving of sight to the blind man.  The blind man had to receive his physical ability to see.  Physical sight was only the first seeing; the eyes of faith to understand Jesus as the Christ was the second seeing for him.

There is a model in this story which is descriptive of the community which was responsible for writing the Gospel of John.  What was a significant dilemma within their community?  One of the dilemma was this:  Why did not everybody come to see Jesus as God's special Messiah?  If people have the physical ability to see, then why could they not see that Jesus was God's special Messiah?

And the answer is that seeing Jesus in a qualitative way is not just about having physical proximity to Jesus or having information about him.

There were religious people during the time of the writing of John's Gospel who knew about Jesus but they were blind about the significance of Jesus which was the basis for the church.

Seeing Jesus and knowing him as a life changing Messiah was not everyone's experience.  An inner condition of the heart was needed to be aware of how Christ could change their lives.  There is something very cruel about the conditions of freedom.  Like why can't everyone be in love?  Doesn't it seem cruel that everyone can't be in life-changing love with Christ?  The preachers of the early church found it hard to believe that everyone did not find Jesus Christ to be irresistibly winsome.  How could anyone resist this irresistible Jesus Christ?  Why aren't other as madly in love with him as we are?  And why are they actively opposing us who have found Christ to be the light of our lives?

This Gospel stories encodes the reality about those who comes to belief and those who do not.    In everything that we do in life, how we see and believe is determined by the inner condition of our lives.  We see from within.  The Gospel of John is all about the inner life of the Word and the Spirit.  If the words of our inner life can be rearranged into certain lenses, then we will be able to see through those word constructs and see Christ in a way that inspire us.

There is the ambiguity of freedom in our lives.  Those who don't believe in Christ feel sorry for us that we believe in Christ.   Those who believe in Christ feel sorry for those who don't believe in Christ.  And what is the difference?  The difference is about the conditions inside of us.  The difference resides in how we are constituted by the words that have come to make up the scripts of our lives.

What is the up side of this very ambiguous freedom of who believes and who does not believe?  The up side of freedom is time.  Time means we have a future.  And the future means that we can always come to the vision of new belief and new belief in Christ.

The blind man who was healed by Jesus had to learn to see again.  He had physical sight but he came to also have spiritual sight in knowing who Jesus was. 

I think that positive message in the Gospel of John can be summed up in one of the most important adverbs in the human language.  What is that adverb?  "Again."  Why is the adverb "again" important?  "Again" refers to basic human repetition.  Human behaviors can be summed up by this adverb.  In life, we continually do things over and over again.  Repetitions may seem to being doing the same thing, but because they are later in time, they are different.  "Again" means life can be either the routine of a boring and losing habit or state of ignorance, or doing something again can be the possible expression of something new and insightful and life changing.

The Gospel of John is all about the possibility of a better future of doing things again, only with better seeing.  As the blind man was able to see again and see Christ as a new hopeful model for living, his seeing again was a better way of seeing.

The Gospel of John is also about the danger of the continuous repeating our losing habits of seeing the world in ignorance without insight and understanding.

Today, you and I are invited by Jesus Christ to the positive notion of the word, "again."  We cannot help but do, see, know, think and speak again.  So the question is this?  How are you and I going to see, know, think and do "again?"  Are we going to perform everything again with a better excellence than we have been doing before now? 

Who are we going to use as the models to inform the standards of excellence in seeing and doing?  Let us ask ourselves who are the heroes of our lives now to whom we submit as models for our lives, our thinking and our actions.  Do the models of our lives line up with Jesus the Messiah?

The Risen Christ invites us to see again today.  We do not want our seeing to be a blindness to the Risen Christ.  We ask for the Risen Christ to open our eyes to see him and his excellence which will help us perform the words and deeds of our lives in an enlightened "again."

If you and I cannot avoid repetition of the adverb "again," how will we perform the next repetitions in our lives in word and deed?  Will we be informed by seeing the excellence of the Risen Christ?  Or will we repeat the words and deeds of our lives in unenlightened blindness to the excellence of Jesus Christ.  May God grant us enlighten vision again as we receive the life of the Risen Christ. Amen.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Sunday School, March 26, 2017 4 Lent A

Sunday School, March 26, 2017   4 Lent A

Theme:

Seeing

What kind of vision did Superman have?
He had X-ray vision.
What could he see with X-ray vision?  He could see the what was behind a wall.  He could see a hidden gun in a pocket.  He could see through things.

Before David was chosen to be king, a Judge named Samuel was sent to the house of Jesse to look for the next king.  David had many bigger and stronger older brothers, but God did not tell Samuel to choose any of the older brothers.  God told Samuel to choose the youngest boy, a shepherd boy named David.  And Samuel ask God, “Why should I choose David when there are so many other stronger brothers?”  And God told Samuel, “I don’t choose like people choose; people look at things on the outside like muscles and appearance, but I choose because I see inside a person.  I see their hearts.  And so I choose David to be the next king.”

Jesus healed a blind man and when the blind man could see he learned to see that Jesus was the Messiah.  Many religious people could not see that Jesus was the Messiah but this blind man learned to see that Jesus was the Messiah.

We have to be changed inside of our hearts through learning and through prayer to learn to have God’s X-ray vision and see what is in the hearts of other people.

There are many people who do not “look pretty, or strong or successful” but inside they are really good and kind people.  And we need to learn how to have this kind of X-ray vision to learn how to see and honor true goodness.  The most popular people are not always “good” people in kindness and love.  We need to learn to find God’s X-ray vision which helps us see goodness.

If we practice looking at Jesus by reading and studying his life and by prayer, we can learn to receive the X-ray seeing and vision of God that helps us find true goodness.

Sermon:

Could you close your eyes for a moment and pretend that you cannot see.
  And imagine that you could never see.  And try to imagine sitting on the street and asking people for money to help you live.
  That would be a really difficult life wouldn’t it.
  That is what people who were blind used to have to do.
  Today, we know that a person who is born blind can do many things that seeing people do and they also do many things better than seeing people do.
  Jesus met a blind man and he made the blind man to see.  But he also taught people a very important lesson about blindness.
  You and I can see, but that doesn’t mean that we always see everything.  We miss seeing lots of things.
  What about when your mom asks you to clean your room and pick up all of your toys?  And you finish and you say,”I’m done Mom.”  And then Mom comes in your room, and she sees some clothes on the floor and toys.  And she says, “Didn’t you see these toys?  How could you miss seeing these toys?”
  Sometimes we miss seeing things don’t we?  Why?  Because we’re not paying attention.  Or we forget.  Or we’re in a hurry.  Or we just don’t think it’s important.
  When Jesus helped the blind man to see, he also said that there were many people who could see, and yet they acted as though they were blind.
  They missed seeing this blind man; for them he was just a beggar sitting on the street.
  If they truly saw the blind man they would have helped him and taken care of him so he wouldn’t have to beg.
  And we too, even with good eyesight, we can miss seeing some important things in this life.
  Jesus said that misfortune and bad luck was just an opportunity for God’s work to be done.   And so we have to have our eyes open to the people whom God wants us to care for.
  If we care for the people who need our care, then we will not miss the good work that God wants us to do in our lives.  Amen.


St. John the Divine Episcopal Church
17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
Family Service with Holy Eucharist
March 26, 2017: The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Gathering Songs: Only a Boy Named David; Have Thine Own Way,  The Lord is My Light;  May the Lord

Liturgist: Bless the Lord who forgives all of our sins.
People: God’s mercy endures forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.
And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.
Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Only a Boy Named David (All the Best Songs for Kids:  # 112)
Only a boy named David, only a little sling.  Only a boy named David, but he could pray and sing.  Only a boy named David, only a rippling brook.  Only a boy named David and five little stones he took.  And one little stone went in the sling and the sling went round and round.  And one little stone went in the sling and the sling went round and round.  And, round and round and round and round and round and round and round.  And one little stone went up in the air, and the giant came tumbling down.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.
People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Praise be to God! (chanted)
O God, you are Great!  Praise be to God!
O God, you have made us! Praise be to God!
O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Praise be to God!
O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Praise be to God!
O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Praise be to God!
O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Praise be to God!
O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Praise be to God!

Liturgist: A reading from the First Book of Samuel
Samuel said to Jesse, "Are all your sons here?" And he said, "There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep." And Samuel said to Jesse, "Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here." He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, "Rise and anoint him; for this is the one." Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord
People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; * I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures * and leads me beside still waters.
He revives my soul * and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.


Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:
For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!
For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!
For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!
For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!
For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!
For work and for play. Thanks be to God!
For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!
For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!
For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.
   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John
People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, `Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."  They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.
People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.
Since God is so great and we are so small,
We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.
We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and
     resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.
We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is
     welcome.
We believe that Christ is kind and fair.
We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.
And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.


Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.
For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.
For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.
For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.
For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.
For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.
For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.
For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.
For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.
For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.
For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.
People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory:  Have Thine Own Way Lord  (LEVAS, # 145)
1-Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way.  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me, after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.
2-Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way.  Search me and try me, Master, today.  Purer than snow, Lord, wash me just now, as in thy presence humbly I bow.


Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”
All become members of a family by birth or adoption.
Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.
A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.
The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you
And also with you.

Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.
It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 
Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;
You have made us in your image
And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:
Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.
And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph
And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.
Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat
  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  
  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,


Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)
Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.
Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.
As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.
But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.
Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.
Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread
Celebrant:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 
Words of Administration

Communion Song: The Lord Is My Light (Renew! # 102)
The Lord is my light, my light and salvation: in Him I trust, in Him I trust.
The Lord is my light, my light and salvation: in him I trust, in him I trust.

Post-Communion Prayer. 

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;
We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.
And His Presence has been known to us.
We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers
    and sisters in Christ.
Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the
     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,
As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: May the Lord (Sung to the tune of Eidelweiss)
May the Lord, Mighty God, Bless and keep you forever, Grant you peace, perfect peace, Courage in every endeavor.  Lift up your eyes and seek His face, Trust His grace forever.  May the Lord, Mighty God Bless and keep you for ever.
Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 
People: Thanks be to God! 



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