Easter Living, A Way to Have an Honest Relationship with Time and Change

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024
Acts 10:34-43 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-8

Lectionary Link
 

When we compare the past and the present, sometimes we might like the past better than the present, and sometimes we might like the present better than the past.

But our comparison is irrelevant because we cannot stop change or time.  Whether we like the present better than the past or not, we still must orient ourselves to the present in realistic ways.

The disciples and friends of Jesus who once had hoped for someone who had not yet been born, found that special unforgettable person.  Jesus was the unforgettable person of their lives.

We are very selfish about the people we love because they make us better.  They make us feel hopeful, they bring out of us things about ourselves which we could not discover without them.

We would like to freeze-frame our lives with the people we love the best.  We don't want the very best of relationship to change or end.

The friends and disciples of Jesus were not unreal about life and death.  They knew that people live and die.  But it seemed drastically unfair that their best friend would be gone in his mere thirties.  Surely we could grow old with Jesus and have him do our funerals.  It reminds me of the young man at his grandmother's funeral who said to the priest, "I hope you will also do my funeral."  And the old priest thought, "Well, I'm going to be long gone before you die."

The disciples and friends of Jesus have become for us a part of the Christian program of Easter living.  What is Easter living?  It is living realistically with the fact of time and change.

And what is the hardest fact of time and change?  The hardest fact of time and change is when starkly apparent discontinuities occur.  When we can visibly note the starkest of change, the experience of loss can be great.  And the greatest discontinuity for us as humans is death.

All things considered, we'd rather be alive and have those closest to us alive as well.  This is our preference, even though we begrudgingly know that at certain age our bodily functions diminish to the point of not having the quality of life of body and mind that we desire.  It is easier for us to accept death as discontinuity in a very mature old age, than to experience the seeming untimely death before one's time.

What the disciples of Jesus did not know at his death is that they would be a part of his continuity after his death.  They would be important witness to how the dead Jesus would continue in their lives and in the life of the world as the Risen Christ.

And again on this Easter Sunday, we return to the events of this transition phase in the continuity of Jesus of Nazareth to become the Risen Christ, not just from and for Nazareth, but for all the people of the world.

The resurrection of Christ in story is about the transitional occasions of the appearances of the Risen Christ to his friends who had been devastated by his death.  His appearances provided for his friends and disciples a continuity of his former life with his afterlife.  They were given the assurance that their friendship with Jesus would continue into their future, and they would continue to know him.

The transitional continuity of Jesus in his post-death appearances indicate that his continuity was different in aspect and abilities.  He seemed to be able to tele-port from Jerusalem to Galilee in a moments time.  He seemed to be able to appear suddenly through locked doors.  He could eat a meal of fish to prove the substantiality of his continuity with his previous self.  He could hide his identity and suddenly reveal it in with an abrupt unveiling.

The fact of the resurrection of Jesus is the fact of the continuity of Jesus after his death.  But it is also the fact of the distinctly different states of appearance for this future continuous Risen Christ.  The continuity of Jesus as the Risen Christ has continued in the lives of people for many years now.  St. Paul had a different experience of the continuity of Jesus than did Peter, the disciples, and the women who visited the empty tomb.  But the different experience of Paul was a valid experience of continuity with Jesus, and so is our experiences of the Risen Christ.

The resurrection of Christ teaches us to live realistically with time and change, both with the more seeming gradual changes but also with the great and stark seeming discontinuities, such as the poignant and profound event of death.

How can we bear to lose the visual and tactile continuity with our beloved ones?  How can we bear to lose our favored ways of interacting with our beloved ones?

What the resurrection of Christ teaches us is that everything is retained and sustained in the future.  What we have to learn is how to accept and appreciate that what is retained and sustained is always different than it was before.  And adjusting to the differences in future continuity is the most difficult for us who live after our loved ones have died.

But the truth of the resurrection is the truth of life itself.  Life is spontaneously sustaining into the future and in this sustenance all that has come before is retained in continuity but in various degrees of different continuity in appearance and consciousness.

And if we are worried about the loss of recognizable continuity in our lives, let us also remember that as long as language users exist, then the eternal Word will be the continuity of life as we know it.

The Risen Christ is also the Eternal Word from the beginning, and as the Eternal Word, our continuity is forever memorialized in the memory of the Eternal Word forever.

Today, on this Easter Sunday, let us not forget that the resurrection is not a single magical event that happened to Jesus; rather it is a process of sustaining life which manifested itself in a poignant way in the life of Jesus Christ.  With the resurrection as a way of life, we do not deny the reality of time and change, and the extremely painful transition of death; but resurrection gives us permission to accept the continuity of ever future life, even the future life of reunion with those with whom we always feel like we have unfinished relationships.

Today we celebrate the continuity of life that happened to Jesus in becoming the Risen Christ, and we ride this resurrection energy for our continuously different future lives.  Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.  Amen

Aphorism of the Day, March 2024

Aphorism of the Day, March 31, 2024

Easter is a celebration of continuity when death seems like the event of greatest discontinuity because it leave no appearance that a once living person has obvious apparent personal continuity after death.  Continuity is most registered in words riding on memorial traces, and we may all have to return to the great reservoir of Word itself to be retained in Christ the Word.

Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2024

For many, the Gospels have been reduced to detailed empirically verifiable events instead of the later visualizations of the presence of the Risen Christ within one's life.

Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2024

Being honest about the Passion accounts means understanding them as the visualization presentations of  Jesus Movement leaders from the years 70 to 90 or so C.E. to provide a genre for the much earlier spiritual identity mysticism of persons like Paul who wrote that he had been crucified with Christ.  

Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2024

A public meal is the central liturgy of the church.  It has become so stylized and one has to have incredible faith to believe that most communion bread is actually bread.  What is practical value of a public meal?  Making sure that every one has adequate food to eat.  If we divorce the feeding of the needy public from the Eucharist, the Eucharist loses its "agape" nature.

Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2024

The irony of life is that the meaningful truth of one does not function as such for other people.  Meaningful truth functions within the solidarity of community.  One can understand how scientists favor "meaningful truth criteria" that can be verified by any community.  The meaningful truth criteria which pertains to religious and aesthetic discourse tends to be more verified within particular communities with people converted to prior commitments that are not opened to the method of falsification as is required by the tentative conclusions which prevail in science until a better explanation is discovered.

Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2024

Nietzsche referred to truth as "well-worn metaphors," meaning that truth is culturally established through repeated use.  This might make "truth" seem to be a function of mob hits, like internet hits totals determining what is really true or factual.  The renewal of past traces in time bespeaks the current pragmatic relevance of a past trace having longevity in truth value.  The unfolding relevance of ancient text often was registered based upon the re-inking of fading texts upon papyrus.  If a text was being used, such use was seen in a community re-inking the text.  Today metaphors are not so much "re-inked" as they are naturally deconstructed through the processes of language by language users.  Biblical texts are used in different ways by biblical readers depending upon the circumstances of the many variety of readers.  A metaphor which does not wear out is this, "language is, therefore everyone else comes to be known to be."

Aphorism of the Day, March 25, 2024

Too many people regard Scriptures to be like a "mirror" of what actually happened in the past and a predictive "mirror" of what will precisely happen in the future.  It is actually literature, a written art form, written evocatively, to provide the continual occasions for reader projections upon it in an interaction to evoke meaningful identities.

Aphorism of the Day, March 24, 2024

Long before the Ignatian method of visualizations of events in the life of Jesus, the Gospels themselves were visualizations of the life of Jesus and therefore part of the spiritual method of the early Jesus Movement communities.

Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2024

AI is inevitable when the proliferation of world knowledge cannot be maintained and usefully manipulated by simply human memory capacity.   In times past, seeming omni-competent people could command most of the world knowledge of the time. In the morass of information today tribal leaders do the thinking on behalf of their constituents and not for the common good of the alliance of all "tribes" but for narrow parochial interests often with the goal of raising funds for the tribal leader continued power and well being.  Frightening to think that what interests many in AI is its propaganda potential and the options of endless alternative facts.

Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2024

AI is the compilation of memory traces of human data on a massive scale which can be continuously juxtaposed units to reveal pragmatic syntheses coupled with technological action plans to make the total number historical units of memory accessible in creating products for human use.  If AI is also expressive of "garbage in, garbage out," then how can AI be guided toward, "do no harm," be kind, be just, provide enough for everyone?  Can we input justice into the AI requirement?  

Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2024

The barrage of information today challenges us with the problem of people not having the capacity to deal effectively with the complexity in the expanding world knowledge. The easiest solution for many is to simply be involved only with one's own small tribe and subscribe to the talking points of the leaders of the tribe.  Now we have the phenomenon of "alternative" facts which means "tribal" facts, or how reality is parsed according to one's tribal view.  Scientific standards are the most reliable for group objectivity, and converting the method of science to law, history, and news reporting discourse has meant there were valid ways of establishing what actually happens.  In the media of the internet age, everyone is a reporter and photographer, and everyone can portray any view as having seeming equal validity.  With the proliferation of news reporter and lack of policing about reporting criteria, "facts" are presented as commodities on behalf of a political ideology.

Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2024

Rumi used a figurative story about various blind men in contact with an elephant and describing it from their particular perspective of the elephant part accessible to each, but not being able to name or know the huge mammoth.  The figurative story names the elephant which indicates the limitation of the metaphor since only Plentitude could know or name Plenitude.  The story is a reminder that there is always MORE to what I experienced, you experienced, and what everyone has experienced, all together, all at once.  We only inhabit but an micro-nano-spot of the great MORE.

Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2024

The covenant we have with nature needs to be two ways.  What will nature do for us? Feed us and provide us with what we need to exist.  What will we do for nature?  Will we treat it well so it can continue to sustain into the future?

 Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2024

With language we have come to explore the behaviors of the world towards us in the continual development of natural laws.  One could say the articulation of such natural laws is the languaged projection upon the world which confronts us and it is the expression of the covenant of the total environment toward us.  Even without invoking the name of God, we can accept that we project upon the All a covenant relationship in terms of what it promises to us.

Aphorism of the Day, March 17, 2024

God's omnipresence might best be understood as human being possessed with language ability and from this ability projecting words upon everything else even using like everything else as a negligible.  If something does escape language, we cannot know it except by language declaring a mysterious state of escaping language.

Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2024

Everyone is called to be priestly in that all our lives are lived as offered.  We become priestly through intentionally offering our lives as belonging in solidarity with all.

Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2024

Noted contrast.  The Ides of March is the death of Julius Caesar who was also a declared god.  The death of Jesus in contrast is remembered by a continuously reconstituted group of followers who changed a historical event into a spiritual process as seen in the Pauline confession, "I have been crucified with Christ."  Is anyone saying, "I have died with Julius Caesar?"

Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2024

The writer of Jeremiah wrote about a new covenant of the law being written upon the heart.  This new covenant is appropriated by New Testament writers as the law of Spirit accessible to everyone.  In practice there often seems to be a disconnect between Spirit and the people who are channeling this Spirit.  Can Spirit be the overcoming of the continuous deconstruction which happens in language use?

Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2024

Language is used by people to constitute their identity within contexts.  Biblical language was generated to constitute the identity of people in various places regarding a "transcendental," or a mystery of how promulgated values regarded to be superlative could reconfigure the inner language of people and result in behaviors which are consistent with the superlative values.

Aphorism of the Day, March 12, 2024

In a metaphor, the words of Jesus compares a seed which dies and becomes a plant with what will happen to him.  Does the plant have continuity with the seed from which it came?  Indeed, but it is noticeably different.  The post-death state of Jesus and everyone is quite different.  In the case of Jesus, some people got to experience Risen Christ appearances.  In the case of our departed loved ones, it remains mostly not yet in such appearances, save for memories, dream apparitions, and our mourning as proof that our loved one was indeed here.

 Aphorism of the Day, March 11, 2024

Preachers most often use the Gospels as eye-witness accounts, whereas the writing provenance of the Gospels make them more about the issues of the early Jesus Movement communities encoded in narratives about Jesus.

Aphorism of the Day, March 10, 2024

If those who have died are lucky they don't escape being in the language of the thoughts of the memories re-manifested in those who knew them, and perhaps even in those who didn't.  Who knows where the energy concrescence of selfhood goes and travels and in what varied forms?

Aphorism of the Day, March 9, 2024

Some would like to "escape" language by pretending that silence or any human life expression or activity could be known without first assuming language.

Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2024

To blame a politician for being political is like blaming a fish for being in water.  The question is "for what polis" does a politician speak and legislate?   Is it for a true common good, for the largest number of people, or is it for only a local tribe?

Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2024

Meaning is the differentiation of value that a person has learned within their community to place upon the events which occur to them.  Meaning is not final because in time meanings create and give birth to new variations in meaning.  Therefore finality in meaning cannot be fixed.

Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2024

The present brings into existence a new past in how the past is assessed.  The past can only be dealt with from the now because we cannot be anywhere else.  History is the practice of anachronism since we cannot avoid import our questions from life now onto the historical traces which we have received.

Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2024

The appearance of writing was magical in that it could be the trace of someone actually speaking without being there.  The appearance of writing created orality since when only orality existed, it is not known as such because it is not yet contrasted with having writing.

Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2024

Reading the Bible not about reading eye witness accounts of things which could be empirically verifiable, it is about appreciating the symbolic codes used for scribal leaders (the Bible is writing) to promote community identity as that identity related to the highest values of the community, which in the case of the early Christians was the mystagogy of the Risen "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2024

With language a person is trying to manifest the connection of everything that is within oneself with everything that is outside of one epidermis and sensory portals.

Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2024

The Bible is a collection of writings which were preserved and elevated to a place of community importance instantiated by the legacy of values which readers perceived and deemed worthy of promulgating and passing on to the next generation.  Within the entire universe of existing texts now, the biblical writings get evaluated among the vast amount of world knowledge.  The quantity of world knowledge necessarily changes the place and value and functional use of all previous literature, and the Bible too is subject to constantly being seen differently in the expansion of the universe of knowledge.

Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2024

Writing and speaking can only be done in a fragmentary way since what we say and write is a miniscule  portion of the possible linguistic universe of everything which might come to language.  What we say and write is also imprisoned by the particular paradigms in which we find ourselves located.  We at all times should humbly admit that there is a great MORE universe of language which can dissolve our miniscule language efforts leaving our language constructs deconstructed by greater contexts.  The fact of the smallness of our language products being dissolved by existing within a great MORE, should not diminish our efforts to make them comply with what we regard to be highest, namely, what love and justice in word and deed can mean within our limited contexts.

Quiz of the Day, March 2024

Quiz of the Day, March 31, 2024

The blood of the Passover lamb was spread

a. on the foreheads of first born sons

b. on all family members' foreheads

c. on the lintel and door posts of homes

d. on the hands of all male children

Quiz of the Day, March 30, 2024

The entombment of Jesus was

a. the final resting place for the body of Jesus

b. a temporary place until his bones would be placed in an ossurary

c. the tomb intended for Nicodemus

d. arranged by his disciples

Quiz of the Day, March 29, 2024

"My God, why have you forsaken me," is found in which book of the Bible?

a. Genesis

b. Ruth

c. Jonah

d. Psalms

Quiz of the Day, March 28, 2024

In which Gospel is the "Last Supper" not a Passover meal?

a. Matthew

b. Mark

c. Luke

d. John

Quiz of the Day, March 27, 2024

What is not true about "Tenebrae?"

a. it means darkness

b. it is the Good Friday Liturgy

c. it is a Holy Week liturgy during the three days before Easter

d. it is a liturgy with progressive extinguishing of candles

e. it ends with a loud noise

f.  it includes readings from Scriptures interspersed with Psalms

Quiz of the Day, March 26, 2024

Who cursed a fig tree when it did not bear fruit out of season?

a. Moses

b. Elijah

c. Elisha

d. Jesus

Quiz of the Day, March 25, 2024

Which of the following book includes mournful verses about the demise of Jerusalem?

a. Isaiah

b. Daniel

c. Lamentations

d. Jude

Quiz of the Day, March 24, 2024

What book of the Hebrew Scriptures is referenced for Jesus riding on a donkey?

a. Isaiah

b. Psalms

c. Zechariah

d. Jeremiah

Quiz of the Day, March 23, 2024

What book is read on the feast of Purim?

a. Ruth

b. Jonah

c. Job

d. Esther

Quiz of the Day, March 22, 2024

Of the following, one is not associated with "High Church" Anglicanism?

a. James DeKoven

b. James Lloyd Breck

c. John Henry Newman

d. John Keble

e. C.S. Lewis

Quiz of the Day, March 21, 2024

Which of the following was not a plague to befall Egypt?

a. gnats

b. frogs

c. flies

d. locusts

e. thunder and hail

Quiz of the Day, March 20, 2024

What was the first sign Moses showed the Pharaoh?

a. turning the waters of Egypt into blood

b. turn his staff into a snake

c. turn the Pharaoh's hand leprous

d. calling down fire upon an offering

Quiz of the Day, March 19, 2024

What features are shared by the two biblical Josephs?

a. they went to Egypt

b. they were dreamers

c. they were from the same tribe

d. none of the above

e. a and b only

Quiz of the Day, March 18, 2024

What did Moses believe about himself?

a. he was ineloquent in speech

b. his marriage to a Midianite disqualified him from leadership

c. he believed the Israelites would willing follow him

d. he was too close to the Pharaoh because of his adoptive mother

Quiz of the Day, March 17, 2024

In what biblical writing are we implored to present our bodies as living sacrifices?

a. Ephesians

b. John

c. 1 Peter

d. Romans

Quiz of the Day, March 16, 2024

How did God prove the divine self to Moses?

a. appeared in a burning bush

b. called him to go back to Egypt

c. rescued him from death

d. spoke to him the holy name

Quiz of the Day, March 15, 2024

The wife of Moses was

a. an Egyptian

b. an Israelite

c. a Midianite

d. none of the above

Quiz of the Day, March 14, 2024

Of the following, who propounded the notion of the church as the "Body of Christ?"

a. John

b. Luke

c. Peter

d. Paul

Quiz of the Day, March 13, 2024

What is true about the disposition of Joseph's remains?

a. he was embalmed in Egypt

b. he was buried in Egypt

c. Moses exhumed his remains

d. his remains were taken to the Promised Land

e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, March 12, 2024

Where can the earliest written instructions of the Eucharist be found?

a. Matthew

b. Mark

c. Luke

d. John

e. 1 Corinthians

Quiz of the Day, March 11, 2024

What did Jacob do before he died?

a. gave instructions about Jacob's well

b. gave a prediction about Moses

c. gave a prediction about his sons

d. gave instruction for his burial in Egypt

Quiz of the Day, March 10, 2924

The bread of heaven discourse in in which Gospel?

a. Matthew

b. Mark

c. Luke

d. John

Which of the following is true about the burial of Jacob?

a. he was buried in Egypt

b. he was buried with his wife Rachel

c. he was buried in Bethlehem

d. he was buried with his father and grandfather

Quiz of the Day, March 8, 2024

In the biblical story, what brought the people of Israel into Egypt?

a. Joseph

b. Moses

c. a drought in Canaan

d. Jacob

Quiz of the Day, March 7, 2024

According to the book of Genesis what did all Egyptians despise?

a. asps

b. frogs

c. lice

d. shepherds

Quiz of the Day, March 6, 2024

Of the follow, who had the most to say regarding food sacrificed to idol?

a. John the Divine

b. Paul

c. Jesus

d. Luke

Quiz of the Day, March 5, 2024

Goshen is

a. where Abraham was buried

b. where Jacob's family settled in Egypt

c. the birth place of Moses

d. the location of the Red Sea

Quiz of the Day, March 4, 2024

"Talitha cum" means what?

a. come quickly

b. little girl, get up

c. why have you forsaken me

d. help, O teacher

Quiz of the Day, March 3, 2024

Joseph as chief minister of the Pharaoh, show favoritism to which brother?

a. Benjamin

b. Reuben

c. Asher

d. Judah

Quiz of the Day, March 2, 2024

Rachel was the mother of

a. Jacob and Esau

b. Joseph and Judah

c. Benjamin and Judah

d. Joseph and Benjamin

Quiz of the Day, March 1, 2024

Of the following, who did not go to Egypt with Jacob?

a. Reuben

b. Benjamin

c. Rachel

d. Judah

The Vigil as a Rosary Bead of Salvation History

Easter Vigil   B      March 30, 2024

Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13 [The Flood]
Genesis 22:1-18 [Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea]
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]
Baruch 3:9-15, 3:32-4:4 or Proverbs 8:1-8, 19-21; 9:4b-6 [Learn wisdom and live]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]
Zephaniah 3:14-20 [The gathering of God's people]

Romans 6:3-11

Mark 16:1-8

Lectionary Link

To do an inclusive homily for the Vigil, I would like for us visualize a special rosary consisting of beads, and each bead on this rosary represents an event of memory in how our relationship with God has been understood and record in Holy Scriptures.  Let us ponder the inherited insights which we have received to inform the stories of our past.  Our identity as people has been forged within these great stories and in the Vigil event we return to review these story milestones.

Creation

Our origin story of creation is obvious insight that all that has ever been has come from some great BEFORE.  How does awareness of differentiation happen within the plenitude of everything?  The Genesis story says it happens when speaking arises.  God says, and speech creates the awareness of differentiation of all things.   And human beings are at the top of the chain of beings and human beings are speaking beings, beings who name the diversities within their environment.  The creation story includes the insight of lost innocence in humanity discovering moral significance, with the real freedom to make bad decisions.

The Flood

The next bead on our rosary of salvation history ponders the circumstances of humanity having the freedom to be so evil that there is a need to start over with but a remnant of people and animals.  The story about the great Flood should be seen from the view of the gift of the rainbow in the insight revealed about God.  God does not destroy humanity even when humanity interprets the furies of Nature as punishment.  We are often caught in the conflict of the systems of nature and the human community, often being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the rainbow is the promise of life after life, and life after much death and destruction within this glorious system of the free play of probabilities.

Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac

Humanity has had to deal with the issue that time and aging means perpetual loss.   Life is perpetually the loss of the state of what comes before to what comes after.  How do we come to have useful meaning from the reality of perpetual loss?  The past is sacrificed or voluntarily given up for the future.  The story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is a story about having faith in God who gives us insights about how to sacrifice for beneficially outcomes.  One can see in the story an insight about humanity moving from the false view of God wanting human sacrifice, to the obvious fact of carnivore societies where animals are the meat food for humans.  In carnivore human society, animals are sacrificed for the sustenance of people.  To be human is to deal with the reality of sacrifice.  With faith, we endeavor to make what we must lose work for the benefit of a better tomorrow.  Isaac became a sacrificed who lived, bespeaking the notion of being living sacrifices, namely, giving up selfish behaviors for the good of others.

Israel's Deliverance at the Red Sea

There is something sad about needing fantastic deliverance stories.  Why?  It is the sad fact of human history that people mistreat each other to the point of oppression and slavery.  Divine intervention to save a people fleeing from slavery is a wonderful story but how much better it would be for people to treat each other with kindness and share the ample resources of the world?  The Bible is often story about humanity's own misanthropic behaviors and therefore needing divine intervention to save us from ourselves.  What about the poor chariot drivers who were killed in the sea, each but doing the bidding of the Pharaoh who required them to do so?  While the Red Sea story may seem like a heroic one, it is in fact a story about human hatred being overcome by drowning deaths.  The human epic is the constant effort to escape from being enslaved, but also never to become those who use power to oppress or harm others.  In our efforts against the selfish ego, we need to know graceful moments of being helped by the higher power.

Salvation is offered to all

The writer of Isaiah wrote about a call of God going to all nations.  The seeming natural tendency for all people is to try to speak exclusively for God and make God into the totem of one's tribe or people, and even use God as propaganda for the legitimacy of one's own nation.  For religion to be honest to God, God cannot be limited to any particular group of people.

Learn Wisdom and Live

The Hebrew Scriptures include wisdom writings.  Wisdom is the human ability to use language and thinking to arrive at pragmatic love and justice in life.  Wisdom is the discovery of the proper purpose of everything in life, especially in justice being the proper relationship between people.

A New Heart and New Spirit

The Psalmist requested a new heart and renewed spirit.  The prophet wrote that the heart is above all things exceedingly wicked.  Dealing with the worst of interior motives is a great human dilemma.  If we believe that God made us good, how do we get to that which is our original goodness and act from that place?  The prophet Ezekiel believe that there would be help for us to discover the deepest creational goodness within ourselves.  The image of God upon us can be activated and found to be a new heart and new spirit.

The Valley of the Dry Bones

Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones is a poignant reminder that the situation for those who wrote the biblical books was more often than not dire and unfavorable.  If one thinks that they Bible is a book for only the historical winners and triumphant, one is misreading it.  Sometimes survival depends upon merely the vision of things being different, even ideal, even utopian and fantastic.  For those who criticize people of faith for being people who spin stories of wish fulfillment, we might argue that part of the inherent condition of human goodness is to have hope.  That hope always needs projective stories of what such hope might mean in the direction of what is ideal for humanity.  The salvation story is a story about people being unapologetic about hope, and having hopeful stories motivate the direction of our future behaviors.

The Gathering of God's People

The gathering is actually a re-gathering.  Sometimes we don't not know the value of being at home until we've lived away or in exile.  The image of humanity in exile and away from the familiar is evocative of the state of alienation that we often find ourselves in.   The gathering is the occasion for collective effervescence being energy of joy and hope in the experience of original blessing. 

In the reading from the letter to the Roman, St. Paul writes the goal of Christian mysticism; identity with Christ, or identity with the image of God within each person.  According to Paul, we are buried with Christ in his death and raised with him in his resurrection.

And finally, the empty tomb narrative.  Christ is not in the tomb, he is risen to be known within each person.  Christ is Risen Indeed!  In you.  Alleluia. Amen.

Prayers for Lent, 2024

Holy Saturday, March 30, 2024

God, on many days we wait while it seems like your beneficial present is dead and absent in our world of death and suffering; give up hope to believe in the continuity of substantial personal identity of all whom we have lost.  Amen,

Good Friday, March 29, 2024

God, you are with us totally in an omnipresence which encompassed death when Jesus died upon the cross; today we return to the icon of suffering and weakness knowing that you do not prevent the freedom for people to be evil; grant that we might receive the identity of Jesus with death as the power for us to die to what is unworthy in our lives so as to make room for transformation of such seeds of death with new sprouts of teeming life.  Amen.

Thursday in Holy Week, March 28, 2024, Maundy Thursday

Hospitable God, your Son provided the Eucharist as a way of modeling the entire world sitting today at an agape feast with enough to eat and in peaceful fellowship; keep us working toward the exalted aspirations of the Eucharist as the holy agape feast of God with humanity instantiating reciprocal service as our survival.  Amen.

Wednesday in Holy Week, March 27, 2024

God of light, as it sometimes seems that the light of hope is being gradually extinguished in the dire circumstances of human grief; give us hope in your eternal flame which can always relight the world through people who open themselves to your renewing Spirit.  Amen.

Tuesday in Holy Week, March 26, 2024

God of the Passion of Christ, we walk in our accessible traces of how the Christ event has been regarded within our history; as we remember those traces, we also pass on those traces and thus etch deeply the groove of belief that you are with us in every life circumstance even if such with-ness does not always seem to be in our immediate favor and partakes of the voice of Jesus saying, "my God, why have you forsaken?"  Amen.

Monday in Holy Week, March 25, 2024

God of the sufferers and who suffers with us; grant to us during this Holy Week to find the paths of being living sacrifices, in obedience to our identity with Christ, and for the benefit of the people of this world.  Amen.

Sunday, Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion, March 24, 2024

God who is omnipresent in our suffering and who partakes of the weakness caused by genuine freedom and freedom's outcomes; let us know the reverse power of the seeming victory of death and suffering over us to be but the prelude to what is next in the scenes of hope for us and the world.  Amen.

Saturday in 5 Lent, March 23, 2024

O vastness of God, the ocean of your plenitude requires that we find rafts of identities to traverse vastness in time; give us grace to apply justice and bring together all the rafts of human identity into an island of hope for the common good of all who derive their being from you.  Amen.

Friday in 5 Lent, March 22, 2024

God, the scream evils of war, hatred, and harm, seem to drown out the obvious fact that sustaining continues in life and death; you as Sustainer, are before, during, and after the appearance of every weal and woe on the stage of continuity; let us know that sustaining cannot never leave and let us not fear the changes which can occur upon your sustaining ground.  Amen.

Thursday in 5 Lent, March 21, 2024

God, you are more than I can know or say you to be and it is fearful that you have the ability to be all things to all people.  You become unknown, irrelevant, or a silly notion to many even while if you are All cannot ever be avoided;  give us the wisdom to promote the obviousness of the connectedness of All rather than to make local liturgical practices the telling truth of your presence.  Amen.

Wednesday in 5 Lent, March 20,2024

Great Continually Surpassing God; give us the humility not to overestimate our knowledge or our power but give us courage not to underestimate what we can do in  small things in our circumstances to contribute to future common good.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Lent, March 19, 2024

Give us, O God of beauty, the ability to appreciate both the simple and the complex, and know when we are abstracting unity from total number of occasions of becoming.  Amen.

Monday in 5 Lent, March 18, 2024

Grant us strength to weather the increasing complexities of life because of the incredible proliferation of world knowledge; as old ways are being dissolved, let us find rafts of love and justice on the ocean of knowledge.  Amen.

Sunday, 5 Lent, March 17, 2024

God of all possible language expressions, the co-existence of every expression creates the conditions for supreme irony such that the Cross of Jesus becomes a state of glory.  Give us faith to uphold your ultimate irony upon everything such that what confronts us as impossible is reconciled within future outcomes.  Amen.

Saturday in 4 Lent, March 16, 2024

God of all, invite everyone to the priesthood of lives being offered in solidarity with all as living sacrifices; and let our sacrifices promote love and justice in our world.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Lent, March 15, 2024

God who makes history providence by outlasting all occasions by being continuous Becoming; the death of Jesus has become a spiritual process for us to die to what is unworthy and be renewed toward what is better.  Help us to know the submission of our selfish egos for loving you and our neighbors. Amen.

Thursday in 4 Lent, March 14, 2024

Holy Spirit of God, we commit to you the impossible human task of making unity out of diversity; give us the wisdom of orchestrating differences into a harmony which can balance the simplicity of unity or oneness with the complexity of differences.  Amen.

Wednesday in 4 Lent, March 13, 2024

God of who inspires us to doubt any sense of final sufficiency; give us the humility of continual reappraisal of our values so that we might ever be looking for surpassing values on which we can model our personal identities.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Lent, March 12, 2024

Lord Jesus Christ, you were not saved from death, even as we are not either;  give us the hope of endless continuity so that we can have future time to make the baffling and present have a greater context for more graceful meanings.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Lent, March 11, 2024

God of all, in our day Gentile means the "other" who have often been excluded from the salvation programs of society; give us the heart of Jesus to extend the welcome of love to all so that we might faithfully represent you as God of love. Amen.

Sunday, 4 Lent, March 10, 2024

Eternal Word, give us grace to inculcate the values learned from our inherited traditions, but give us open hearts to love beyond our tribal formation toward your love for everyone in the world.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Lent, March 9, 2024

Eternal Word, since our human life is founded and known because we have language, let us work to have the meaningful expressions of language in speaking, writing, and body language be witness to our best quest at living lives of love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Lent, March 8, 2024

God who comprises the greatest collectivity of differences, you have placed us among different people with the task of living together well as it is known as justice for each member;  give us the largesse of heart to live beyond the affinities of our own tribe as we seek for the categorical imperatives of love and justice for all.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Lent, March 7, 2024

Eternal Word of God, generating continuous meaningful occasions of becoming; let our new syntheses of meaning today integrate what has happened for us in ways that first help us to survive, then to act is better ways, and further to enhance the common good.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Lent, March 6, 2024

God of grace, your mercy is abundant in the seeming endless chances that you give us by the continual sustaining of everything; give us light toward our continual improvement in the practice of love and justice let those who hurt the common good know that they are hurting themselves.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Lent, March 5, 2024

God of the future which will reinterpret the meanings of what we think we are experiencing now; give us grace to live without knowing the full implication of the outcomes of what we do now, and let us be bold about love and justice being our current motive and goal.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Lent, March 4, 2024

Gracious God, we interpret the life of Jesus as your love for us in being completely with us, not to abolish freedom, but to give us the example of the direction that we are to choose to act with the deeds of our lives; grant us to honor the freedom of perfectability by becoming more loving and just in our actions today.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Lent, March 3, 2024

Gracious God who is the flowing life at the sub-molecular level of all, give us a wise connecting flow of our interior lives with the exterior lives so that peace, love, and justice might be the visible outcomes.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Lent, March 2, 2024

God who preserves by continuously being the compilation of all that is which retains all that has been; help us not to fear the loss of what has, is and will be the chief values of life, namely love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Lent, March 1, 2024

God of the ever created great MORE, keep us humble about our importance in the great scheme of things and let us seek the perfection of completeness which comes from joining with others in the work of love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Lent, February 29, 2024

God of omnipresence, forgive us for limiting your presence to temples; and teach us that as the body of Jesus was a temple of your supreme presence, so too are our bodies, and in fact the body of the entire world which bears your glory.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Lent, February 28, 2024

Eternal Word, give us the wisdom of language use to appreciate the variety of discourses which pertain to the many ways of communicating what it is to be fully human; help us to avoid the falsehood of interpreting wrongly the nature of the language being used so that we might rightly defend the validity of spiritual discourse.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Lent, February 27, 2024

God of love and law, we thank you for law as it teaches us to love our neighbor as our selves and we ask for grace not to use our performance of our codes of law to imply that we are better than others.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Lent, February 26, 2024

Eternal Word of God, you have made us in your image as languaged beings; give us the wisdom to articulate the discourses of our lives to the appropriate uses of the manifestation of the languages of spoken word, writing, and body language deeds.  Amen.

Sunday, 2 Lent, February 25, 2024

God of all, forgive us for tolerating the tacit hypocrisy of our own favored communities while being so discerning of the faults of others; give us grace to continue in kindness as the hidden source of survival in the midst of seeming rampant and systematic oppression.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Lent, February 24, 2024

God in whom we live and move and have our being; we cannot see your boundaries and we often limit our love for only those with whom we have affinities; let your inclusive borders expand the direction of our love so that we might grow in our love for this world as you inclusively love this world.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Lent, February 23, 2024

God, you inspire the mysticism of who have come to know an interior identity with Christ, let the higher power results of identity with the death and resurrection of Christ empower repentance in our personal lives so that what happens in our social lives manifests the excellence of love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Lent, February 22, 2024

God of all, help us to be global enough to commit to you the things over which we cannot directly control and help us to be very local in doing the immediate good in our power that we can do.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Lent, February 21, 2024

God of time, the before dies and is replaced with the after; give us wisdom to make every after a surpassing in excellent love and justice with what has gone before.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Lent, February 20, 2024

God who can be referred to as All; we don't enjoy everything which moves and has being within your Allness; give us the courage to influence the field of probabilities by overcoming evil with good.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Lent, February 19, 2024

Jesus the Christ, we often would only want you to be the triumphant one and not the suffering one, even as we would rather not have to incorporate suffering into our life experience; give us grace to be able to embrace and survive all the probable things which may happen to us today.  Amen.

Sunday, 1 Lent, February 18, 2024

God, you gave us Jesus to be for us the one who was bilingual in being what divinity would look like if it were limited in appearance to human experience; we thank you that Jesus was a witness of you inflicting yourself freely by being completely with us in temptation, suffering, and death and so incorporating all probability within the scope of your becoming.  Give us grace to incorporate what may come to us and let subsequent meaning beyond what is happening now redeem us and let us know that we have been always already together in and for all.  Amen.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

God, what will happen lies before us with a freedom that makes us both excited and trembling; help us to have wisdom to isolate from our past and current experience the ability to embrace what might happen to us next.  Amen.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Gracious God, give us grace to live with global things which we cannot directly change, but give us courage to accept the small but indirect acts of justice which can have eventual domino effects on the global level.  Amen.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Bless our Lenten fasts, O God, with the result of impulse control which gives us the true freedom to practice the kind of justice to distribute enough to everyone in our world.  Amen.

Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Gracious God, we know that our material existence can be reduced to ashes and recycled into the physical world; we ask that our sub-atomic life of spirit can be recycled into world as causative for future goodness as we leave irrefutable legacies of love and justice in the human chain of causation and let future good be a witness to our humble anonymity in being lost in the common good.  Amen.