Trinity as Text about Texts and Dissoi Logoi

Trinity Sunday A June 4, 2023

Gen. 1:1-2:3 Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14 Matt. 28:16-20

Lectionary Link

On Trinity Sunday, it behooves one to speak about the Trinity. The logic of Greek philosophy was used to establish it as the official teaching of the churches of the Great Councils.  And when it came to dealing with the seeming contradictions in logic, of one plus one plus one equals One, one quickly resorts to it being an inexplicable mystery.  This could be something like, "I believe because it is absurd," which was the phrase attributed to the "heresy" of fideism.  Does one avoid "fideism" by assuming a supra-rational or para-rational doctrine?

In the history of Trinitarian thinking, there have been many paths taken to try to absolve such position of the surface appearance of unavoidable "polytheism."  Does one plus one plus one equal three or One?

The Trinity came to explication within a context of various ways of articulating the reality of God.  Even profoundly monotheistic religions that are established on the belief of the complete otherness from human experience of God, end up succumbing to their own anthropomorphic setting by having to enter into naming the "otherness" of God as One who has many names and attributes, all of which are positive registrations in language.  God is so other but we still have to talk about God; there is a degree of irrationality even in this dilemma or apparent contradiction.  Approaching the divine only in the apophatic mode without any positive registration in language is in fact cataphatic or positive.  Because everything that comes to language is a "positive."

Today, we might ask ourselves, why are we as Christians Trinitarian in the way in which we articulate our understanding of God?

One might say that we are Trinitarian because of the historical ways in which the church in council decided to validate texts as tellingly sacred containing words of Jesus regarding his relationship with God.  And while we've read the Trinitarian baptismal formula from the Gospel of Matthew,  the council of Nicaea which gathered to provide a community official position of the church's articulation of the reality of God, primarily were using the words of Jesus found in the fourth and latest Gospel, the Gospel of John.  These included such phrases as, I and the Father are One, and that he would send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.  The bishops of Nicaea used a variety of Platonism to explain how the different Persons of the Godhead could be One.

One of the striking ironies of Nicaea is that the Emperor called the meeting because he did not want the Empire divided by disagreements within the churches from region to region.  Ironically but not surprisingly, the bishops were not gathered to speak about the words of Jesus like the Beatitudes, or what to render unto Caesar and what to render unto God, or about all the words of Jesus on behalf the poor and the oppressed.  Yes, the Council of Nicaea, a high point in Trinitarian theology, instantiated that the faith of Jesus, once for the oppressed and poor, was becoming the prescribed faith of the Emperor and the Empire.

The articulation of the Trinity is the coming to text of official doctrine about the texts of preferred Gospels which had become the standard for setting what the church would regard as "right belief."  And this means that the Trinitarian formulas of Nicaea are essentially the doctrinalization of the words of Jesus from the Gospel of John.

One might ask if all the sayings of Jesus could be forced to conform to the Platonism of the Nicaean bishops, like what is the difference between Jesus saying, "the Father and I are One, and the Father is greater than I?"

In the world of understanding doctrinal development, it might be more insightful to understand the process as texts about texts.  The ancient pre-Socratic Heraclitus held the notion of dissoi logoi or the "double arguments," meaning language was able to embrace contradictions.  Since the Gospel of John uses in the Prologue, the Logos as the starting point, one which was well known to Philo, one might find the Logos as the bearer of the dissoi logoi quality of the inherent contradictions in lived experience.  Consistent logic is a lesser by-product of language which is a more embracing phenomenon.  The Logos notion is a more embracing conception for explication of the Trinity than any logic of Platonism which eventually results in the apologists' cop out of saying, "It really is a mystery."  The dissoi logoi of the Johannine Logos can bear the unity of discourse for speaking of the relational logic of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit found in the Gospel of John.

So, what am I suggesting today on Trinity Sunday?  Let us understand the Trinity as a relational dynamic which embraces apparent contradictions.  Let us embrace the rhetorical dissoi logoi, the double arguments that are consistent with the Philo/Gospel of John notion of the divine Logos, as embracing of the oppositional differences which makes up the differences of this world in things and time.

Also let us be humble about how we understand the Trinity as a gift to us in understanding a relational God.  We can be humble about it just as we need to be humble about every analogical imagination that comes to language about God, even if we are tellingly moved by the hierarchy of divine value that has come to us in embracing God as Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Holy Spirit As Nurturing Mothering Sophia Telling Us To Make Room for the New

Day of Pentecost A  May 24, 2026
Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

Acts 2:1-11 John 14:8-17, 25-17

Lectionary Link

How can we believe in unity when diversity seems much more obvious?  This is a timeless question for people of all times and for all level of community life. We are different nations, peoples with different languages, different cultural backgrounds, different physiological, genetic, and ethnic backgrounds and so many more differences due to the reality of time which is a engine of motions between objects which continually creates newness of difference, even with perhaps a hidden string of continuity with what has come before.

What do we want to believe?  We want to believe that there is a time and a place harmony for everyone and everything in some grand reconciliation of everything such that we can confess with the simple and naive seeming faith of Julian of Norwich, "All manner of things will be well, indeed."

We need to read the accounts of Pentecost with interpretive charity for the people who were generating what has become our canonical texts.  We do this by exercising the cross-historical imagination of empathy, imagination because we can't be there but we make assumptions about their having a common enough humanity with us to share the same great questions of life, with their own contextual nuances for writing their stories to indicate how they were living with these great questions.  In the accounts of Pentecost we need to appreciate their own internal logic in using story to give insights to their communities who are providing a life style program within the Roman Empire world consisting of many communities with diverse life style programs centered around what we have come to call religious perspectives.

The Christ communities survived because they found relevancy among enough followers in their lifestyle programs, and the texts survive as evidence of the institutional success of these lifestyle programs.

Every lifestyle program has a "self authenticating" presumption that sounds arrogant if one is a member of a different lifestyle program.  What is the great presumption of each lifestyle program?   We think that everyone and things belongs together, and our lifestyle program has the most adequate answer for living what it means to belong together.  It is anthropological sound to have this presumption about the adequacy of one's own lifestyle program.  Why?  Because we all possess language.  Pentecost is a language event, a diverse language event, an event of different languages for different people with the cultural nuances which are embedded in each language.  Togetherness is the presumption of all language users, even if no language user has the ability to manifest the universal efficacy of unity or togetherness.  Why do I say that togetherness is the presumption of language users?  Because all language users imply togetherness without being able to verify what a total togetherness or solidarity would mean.  We can only model total togetherness with local solidarities, even though with catholic presumptions we often try to sew together many local solidarities into total world solidarities and act with hegemonic unified purpose.  But even in our hegemonic efforts we are still humbled by differences because there are always people who are different who ask the group to "make room for me, even with how I have come to understand how I am different from you."

Differences continually arising in time is the challenge and the impetus for local groups to expand the meaning of the expression of unity.  Many people in the melting pot of America are wanting to say that our unity cannot include people who are different from the way that we used to understand our majority view.  In church after church people leave when church bodies vote to include in full participation members who have been heretofore excluded because of their identity.

Perhaps we can understand Pentecost as the perpetual task of integrating differences into a greater vision for our lifestyle programs for what unity means.  And this is where we might have the wisdom to admit that the Holy Spirit is like a great nurturing mother asking the older siblings to make room for a new member, and to do so it means that the family lifestyle program is going to have to be expanded.  "Move over children because new brother or sister is here, and he or she or they will change us all into what a future unity will mean."

I hope that we can appreciate the Pentecost, not as some finalizing event of fixing who can be a true member of humanity, but as the process of a great Mothering Sophia Spirit who is always welcoming new members and new events in time with an integrating love.  The Holy Spirit of Pentecost is the Great Mothering Sophia Spirit for us learning to surpass ourselves in excellence in a future state because we have grown the largesse of our hearts to make room for the new.  Family unity is often the messiness of incorporating the new.  May the Holy Spirit be evident in expanding the largesse of our hearts in empathy for the new, and even different person.  Amen.

Finding the Divine Parent Within

7 Easter Cycle A   May 17, 2026
Acts 1:6-14 Ps. 68
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 John 17:1-11

Lectionary Link

We have been reading from the John's Gospel portions of the departure discourse of Jesus, words which seem to be preparation of the disciples for not having the presence of Jesus with them.

The writings are the early Christ communities trying to understand how it is that this experience of the Risen Christ has been able to continuously comprise a gathered community.  The assumption of the Gospel of John is that the persuasive persistence of the experience of the Risen Christ has been transmitted by a "Word" program including the Gospel writing itself.  Perhaps the punchline of the entire Gospel writing is expressed as "these things are written so that you might believe, that you might be persuaded that Jesus is the Christ..."  The writing program referred to by John involves understanding the Christ as the Eternal Word who is God from the beginning, who became particularly instantiated in the life of Jesus, whose words were Spirit and life, meaning that they had foster internal change in the word structure of his disciples lives such that they had altered their body language lives, and speech lives to become preachers, rhetoricians to persuade others through words in the alteration of their lives.

The Gospel reading on the Sunday after the Ascension, implies that Christ is not of this world and lives in a liminal state, an intercessory state of prayer for his disciples and the world.  "And now I am no longer in the world," says Jesus after he says, "that he has been glorified in the lives of his disciples."

The early Gospel preachers of John's Gospel are using a presentation of Jesus at prayer,  as an identity with the Risen Christ discourse.  And what is the essence of this identity discourse?  It is knowing oneself as a child of God, having a heavenly parent, but the heaven is not a physical location somewhere beyond the stars, the heaven is within the person.  In short, the Fatherization of God as presented in the Gospel of John is invitation for each person to know the inward expanse as a parenting divine presence.

That is quite a revelation since we can know our interior lives as being imprinted by so much of the chaos which our doors of perception have allowed from what may happen to us in our lives.  We can have been permanently "damaged" by the traumas of life so as to continuously live with post traumatic stress syndrome responses.  The Christ Eternal Word program is to have our interior lives given a linguistic healing such that we might know our interior lives overseen by a comforting Divine Parent, even the Father figure addressed in the prayer words of Jesus.  As we know, a good parent is not one who takes us out of life circumstances but who mentors us and helps us organize adequate responses to life circumstances.  We also know that many people have parents who have "failed" them in the mentoring process.  The Gospel promise is that we can come to inward remedial parenting to teach us how to improve our life adequacy.  The implication for the Christ communities is that the community could provide "fathering and mothering" models for positive transference for members to be able to then access within themselves the great divine inner parent of their lives.

This is the radical make over promise of the Gospel.  You and I can come to know our interior lives as graced by a caring divine parent who abides with us to assure us of our family status and in knowing our status as children of God we are to follow our sibling Jesus to take up the ministry of the Interior, namely the intercession for the lives of others in the world.

The Gospel message for you and I from the intercessory prayer of Jesus is this: God is not in some distant physical heaven; God is closer to us that we are to ourselves in our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit and residing place for the divine parent to be the great expansive Ear for our perceptual prayers for the will of the divine to be realized not just in our asking prayers, but in our acted prayers of oblation, even the deeds of love and justice in our local situations.

Let us embrace God as our internal Parent, the one who cares for us, especially as we act like Christ in caring for each other and our world.  But let us also be a fathering and mothering community of mutual nurture.  By modeling good nurture and care, we can help persons find God as the great internal Parent of life.  Amen.

Proto-Trinity and Orphanhood

6 Easter A May 10, 2026
Acts 17:22-31 Ps. Ps. 66
1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21

Lectionary Link

In his departure discourse as presented in John's Gospel, Jesus states that he will not leave his disciples as orphans.  Does this mean that Jesus is a departing parent?

In the context, we would have to say that Jesus is more like a realized Child of God reminding his siblings about their own identity, and having a heavenly Parent as well as a connecting Advocate.  

Being an orphan is to experience the loss of visible and apparent relationship.  The disciples and many of all times can often like they are in something akin to the state of orphanhood.  Why are we left with a sense of lacking nurturing relationship in our lives?

The Gospel of John is not about the doctrine of the Trinity; it wasn't conceived of in the time of Jesus or in the time of the writing of John's Gospel in perhaps its extended history of editing and redacting.  I have used the term Proto-Trinity for this pericope of John's Gospel as a way of overlaying anachronistically the later doctrine of the Trinity with its implied Gospel roots.

The significance of this departure discourse is to address the general Angst of people who feel like bereft orphans.  Many people can feel unchosen by God, unregarded by God, because of what seems to be allowed to happen to them in their life circumstances.  "My goodness, we feel like abandoned children with no great Nurturer who is caring for us."

Jesus is portrayed by the Gospel writers as one who came to correct a misrepresentation of God and provide another model for understanding the divine.  And how did Jesus want to represent God?

As dynamic relationality.  One could call John's Gospel the Fatherization of God for all people.  God is to be understood with the metaphor of a nurturing parental creator who called us good and who remains attached and who does not evict us from the divine household of God's creation.  Jesus is insinuating that the problem of alienation and the seeming experience of orphanhood is a human problem.  Human situations create the orphanage condition; not the divine intention.  Other human beings tell you that you are not chosen and that you have lost or never had any divine familial status.  Jesus said, "I am here to say that relationality is the essence of God and that relationality is known intensely in me, as I know my self as Son of the Father, who has an interior connecting Advocate to continuously know this intense relationality.   I, as Son of the Father, instantiate what you too are to know life as intense relationality.  You are a child of a nurturing divine parent connected with an affirming Advocate, an interior Lawyer to make your case against the enemy, the great liar and accuser, who would not have us know our true familial relationship with God."

The writer of the Acts of the Apostles, gives a story of  Paul as one who presents the notion of God as parent and great Container of all by borrowing from the Greek philosophers and poets.  Paul could agree with them that we are indeed divine offsprings, and as divine offsprings we live in the divine household, "we live and move and have our being in God."  We are contained in God.

God is the great Nurturing Container of the entire creation, who has personal children, with whom he connects through a divine Advocate.

Let us appreciate the Gospel as a presentation of God as a great Nurturing Parent who presides over a great household of children created in his image who have the opportunity to embrace God as our parent and to know this world as a divine milieu to live in.  Let us appreciate that we can know within our interior the presence of the divine as an incredible Advocate, a Divine Lawyer who challenges the lies about our status with God and the lies about who this world belongs to, and the lies about human beings being trapped in the state of orphanhood.

Let us embrace relationality as what is divine about this life in terms of the highest order of mutual connection with God and with each others.  And let not the oft seeming dire conditions of the world lead us to think that we are bereft orphans without significant care.  And let us who have the power to nurture, represent a nurturing parent God to the many in our world who may be tempted to believe that they are orphans.  Let us go forth and nurture and rightly represent a Nurturing God.  Amen.

How Do We Account for Christly Presences after Jesus?

5 Easter a May 3, 2026

Acts 17:1-15 Ps. 66: 1-8
1 Peter 2:1-10 John 14:1-14

Lectionary Link

In the Gospel of John, we can find that the writer is quoting Jesus as saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and this pertains to having a relationship with God as Father.

In the Acts of the Apostles, "The Way," was a description of the early Christ communities.  This would suggest the metaphor of a life journey.   We are on a journey with the passing of time being occasions of life on this journey.

But our Gospel reading presents us with perhaps a conflict between life as a journey as nomads in time, with the metaphor of the homing desire of a divine parent to prepare seeming permanent dwellings.

How does one have a dwelling while one is on the road?  In our modern era we have recreational vehicles which provide travelers with portable living spaces.  In ancient times, sleeping on the road would be done in tents or the caravanserai, the ancient roadside inn.

The discourse of Jesus that we have read in John's Gospel is a preparation discourse for the physical Jesus being absent from the lives of his disciples.  

Essentially the New Testament is about Jesus from Nazareth being physically absent from the lives of his followers, yet having to account for the continuing popularity of this now unseen Rabbi Jesus.  The New Testament is trying to account for the success of the Christ Movement.  How has this Movement remained when this Jesus is no longer seen?  How can we account for the effervescent social energy which is now institutionalized by having writings about the origins of the movement?  When a movement attains a social coherence it institutionalizes through writings to teach and explain its reason to be and continue.  The Gospels are writings by the early Christ communities to explain their very success to themselves.

The Christ communities are a way of life, zoe, or abundant life.  It is not just bios, biological life, or pseuche or soul life, it is zoe, esprit de corps life, the invisible linguistic  wind of Christ as eternal word creating continual Christly presences when the actual physical Jesus is no longer seen.

How did the Gospel writer explain this continuation of Christly presences after Jesus was gone?  One explanation was this departure discourse of Jesus to his disciples.  Why are we still thrilled with these extraordinary Christly presences long after Jesus is no longer seen?

Jesus promised that even though he would leave he would prepare a place for us and come back to us in the place prepared for us.  He said that in his Father's house there are many "dwelling places."  We perhaps with Downton Abbey pretensions prefer the King James version, "in my Father's house there are many mansions."  This is a bit more high brow living quarters.

But what if the dwelling places of the Father God is each person as a tent moving in time?  A tabernacle, a moving temple of the Holy Spirit, to invoke the Pauline writings of the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.  In this way, God as heavenly parent, Christ as paradigmatically unique Son of God, and sibling of all humanity, embraces each of us as suitable dwelling places in our journey on the Way of this abundant life.

Let us embrace the Gospels, and the New Testament writings as writings of people who were amazed and surprised that continual Christly presences associated with this figure Jesus of Nazareth could continue in such manifest ways to become such a prominent social phenomenon in history.  To write their amazement they resort to the poetry of metaphors, because the language of wonder is the only language which seem appropriate to account for the occurrences of the experiences of Christly sublime.

The Gospel for us today is to continue in this Way, this Christly lifestyle, and to appreciate how the Eternal Word has individualized the Christly presence within our own lives and in the lives of people around us.  Let us embrace this Christly lifestyle as the Way of abundant life, a continuous wondering life and as a truthful life in being authentically honest to way that the eternal Word has become locally and continually resident in our nomadic lives in the Way of Christ.  Amen.

Sunday School, May 3, 2026 5 Easter A

  Sunday School, May 3, 2026    5 Easter A

For Discussion

Jesus came to teach us about being members of the great family of God.

It is easy to know that are members of the family of our mom and dad and brothers and sisters and cousins, uncles and aunts and grandparents.

Families live in houses.

Did you ever think of your body as a house?

The body of each mother is a special house because each baby first lived inside of mother.

But even when we are born, we still live inside of the heart of our mothers, because our mom’s keep memories of who we are as her special treasure, so we always have a place inside of our mothers.

Jesus reminded his friends that they always had a “dwelling place” inside of God his Father.

Jesus came as God’s Son to show us that he was made in special image of God.

Jesus came to remind us that we are made in God’s image and so we too are children of God.

God gave this world as the house that we live in now when we are alive.

But Jesus promised his friends that even after they died, they would still live in rooms and dwelling places in the Father’s house.  So after we died, we can know that we will still have a place to live and it has been prepared for us.

But while we are still alive, Jesus said that we had great work to do.  The great work that we have to do is to tell everyone that we belong to the family of God, that God is our heavenly parent and that Jesus is our brother in this great family of God.

Question did you ever think of your body as a house?

Think about the rooms in this house as the memories you have inside of you about each of the people in your life.

The people whom you love have a special room inside of you.

Can you accept yourself as person who is loved by God and who has been given a dwelling place in God’s house forever?

Sermon

What do we call this building where we are now?  A church.

Now if we sold this building to someone who opened a restaurant here, what would we call the building then?  A restaurant…we might say, “It’s a building that used to be a church.”

  So what makes this building a church?  The way it is built, or does the people who use this building make it a church?

  Jesus promised his disciples that he would provide for them a place to live, but he didn’t mean houses and buildings.  He meant that he would provide for them a group of people with whom they could live and call friends.

  And just as a church really isn’t a building but the people who worship there.  A home is not just a building.  A home is where one lives with one’s family.

  Jesus promised to make his followers sons and daughters of God, so that they would have another family, a Christian family.

  So that is why we have a church.  A church is a Christian family where we can live.  It is group of friends with whom we pray.  It is a group of friends that we join so that we can worship God, learn about God, pray together and help people who are in need.

  Jesus promised that his friends could find a group of friends to be with even after he was gone.  And he promised that whenever they got together, they could feel as though Jesus was still with them, because they were doing the work that he gave them to do in this world.

  Remember that our church is a group of friends where we belong.  And so we gather to offer prayers, to help one another, to share in eating the bread and drinking the wine, and know that the presence of Christ is with us.

  Jesus said that in his Father’s house there were many dwelling places.  God’s big house is this world we live in; and God dwellings inside of the people who live in this big house world of God.

  You and I can know that God dwells with us.  We can invite God to be in us and let him always be a special guest inside of us.

  Let us be thankful that Christ taught us that God dwells within each of us and so we can celebrate God’s closeness to us.  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

May 3, 2026: The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Gathering Songs: Glory Be to God on High; We Will Glorify; If You’re Happy

Liturgist: Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People: The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.

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: Glory Be to God on High  (Christian Children’s Songbook  # 70)

1-Glory to be God on high, alleluia.  Glory be to God on high, alleluia.  

2-Praise the Father, Spirit, Son, alleluia.  Praise the Godhead, three in one, alleluia.

3-Sing we praises unto thee, alleluia, for the truth that sets us free, alleluia.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the First Letter of Peter

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation-- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.  Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 31

In you, O LORD, have I taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; * deliver me in your righteousness. 

Incline your ear to me; * make haste to deliver me.

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.

Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."  Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it."

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 Anthem:  Peace Before Us (Wonder, Love and Praise,  # 791)

1          Peace before us.  Peace behind us.  Peace under our feet.  Peace within us.  Peace over us.  Let all around us be Peace.

2          Love, 3 Light, 4 Christ

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 our 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, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Alleluia.  Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  We Will Glorify  (Renew! # 33).

1. We will glorify the King of kings, we will glorify the Lamb; we will glorify the Lord of lords, who is the great I Am.

2. Lord Jehovah reigns in majesty, we will bow before his throne, we will worship him in righteousness, we will worship him alone.

3. He is Lord of heaven, Lord of earth, he is Lord of all who live; he is Lord above the universe, all praise to him we give.

4. Hallelujah to the King of kings, hallelujah to the Lamb; hallelujah to the Lord of lords, who is the great I Am.

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: : If You’re Happy  (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 124)

1-         If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.  If you happy and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it, if your happy and you know it, clap your hands.  

 2- If you’re happy and you know it, make a high five.  If you happy and you know it make a high five.  If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it, if your happy and you know it, make a high five

3-Make a low five

4-Make a fist bump  

5- If you’re happy and you know it, shout Amen!.  If you happy and you know it shout Amen!.  If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it, if your happy and you know it, shout Amen!  

Dismissal:    

Liturgist: Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Good Shepherd as Metaphor for Power Dynamic

4 Easter A   26, 2026
Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a 51-60 Ps. 23

1 Peter 2:19-25 John 10:1-10

Lectionary Link

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and I would like to present the Good Shepherd metaphor as diagnostic insight upon the power dynamic which exists in human relationships.

I would propose that the Good Shepherd metaphor in John's Gospel presents at least three subject positions on which we can project ourselves to expose our own dynamic of how we live out power relationships in our lives.

The three subject positions might be called, the sheep, the exploiter, and the Good Shepherd.  Each of these subject positions highlight our relationship to power as perhaps passive subjects and as active agents in the articulation of the kind of agency that we assert toward other people.

Every person is a sheep, even Jesus, since he was exploited and he also received ministry from the kindness of others.

We are sheep because we all know human vulnerability and situations of relative dependence upon the power, knowledge, and wealth of others.  As pre-adult human beings we know the sheeply states of being dependent children.  Most animals in nature attain "quick" self-sufficiency after birth or hatching, whereas a human being is quite dependent for maybe twelve years and longer in order to have the ability of significant individual agency within various societies.  Because humans are "late bloomers," human societies need to be organized around the care of the human vulnerable.  And because we as human beings do not die soon enough, the last days and years of life care required is quite significant, requiring societies to develop strategies of care for persons at the book ends of life.  But even as adults with significant independent agency and self-care, we find ourselves to be contextual vulnerable sheep in a host of life events, because no one is omni-competent to all of the life situations with diverse requirements for care.  Even in our modern era of prizing individual independence, we are manifoldly dependent in many specialized area.  We go to mechanics for our cars, doctors for our health, brokers for finances, lawyers for legal issue, and on and on.  This means we retain our sheeply vulnerabilities in various areas for which we must rely upon "shepherd" figures to tend to the need at hand.  The notion of the sheep as a symbol of needing experts in various life skills is very easy for us to grasp if we are willing to give up our denial pride stated as, "I don't need anyone; I am self reliant and self sufficient."  This model should encourage us that it is okay to need each other and surrender our prideful "I don't need you or anyone" attitudes.

If we have grown to be quite proud of our own self care and self agency, rather than live in denial, we should use our own discernment of gifts as the expression of our agency toward others, and in our model, there are two models for our agency toward others, the exploiter and the good shepherd.

The oracular voice of Jesus in John's Gospel is a warning about exploiters; those who deceive, and those who rob and steal.  One form of human agency is to be the exploiter of others for one's own advantage, in short, users and abusers.  How much of our economic life is expressive of the agency of exploitation.  People with greater knowledge can use it to hoodwink the ignorant or the naive.  People with power can use their influence to suppress or oppress those with less power.  People with wealth can use their wealth solely to gain more wealth, even making life for the poor more disadvantaged.  As the saying goes, "You have to have money to make money."  The Good Shepherd metaphor is a rebuke of the gift of human agency for the purposes of exploiting other people for one's own advantage.

In this Gospel presentation of the Good Shepherd, we have the recommended mode for human agency; use you power, influence, knowledge, and wealth to care for those who need it.  Those who have shepherding power, knowledge, and wealth, are the perfect match for the needy sheep who need the power of justice and dignity to raise them to foster their own human agency for the common good.  This does not mean a person has to be wealthy, powerful, or highly educated to be a good shepherd, it simply means that one needs to understand that one's gifts in life are the opportunity to help some others in need, the ones at hand.

The Gospel for us today on Good Shepherd Sunday is to understand our own participation in the power dynamic of human relationships.  Let us be honest about our own needs.  Let us be honest about our dependence upon others for our dignity and will being.  Let us be thankful that we have received significant shepherding in our lives in our many times of need.  Jesus as God with us, came to be with us in our human situation to help us rise into thanksgiving for all the help we have received in life, and knowing this we are exhorted to follow the Good Shepherd in complementing our thankfulness with good shepherding acts so that many more people can rise to be thankful for resolutions of their situations of need.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd, so that we might learn to be good shepherds for the common good of the people in our lives.  Let us be rebuked about any exploiting tendencies in our lives, and let our human agency be converted to Good Shepherd caring action today.  And let us remember that Good Shepherd is not just an individual agency, it is also social agency since greater volume shepherd can be done through governments, organizations, businesses and corporation.  In short, that we make corporate decisions in business, church, and government, for the broadest health, education, and welfare of people, is how we can be a good shepherding society.    May we be inspired personally and corporately to be good shepherds today. Amen.

A Theology of "Poof-ification"

3 Easter A.     April 19, 2026
Acts 2:14a,36-47 Ps. 116:10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23 Luke 24:13-35

Lectionary Link

From the Emmaus Road account we have of the sudden arising from being incognito Jesus to revealing his identity when breaking bread with the disciples, I have derived the sermon title, "A Theology of "Poof-ification."  It is an attempt to bring to language a theology of the serendipitous encounters of the Risen Christ.  The Gospels and the other writings of the New Testament embed the traditions of the Risen Christ.  Essentially the New Testament was written because of these traditions of the Risen Christ.  Why would the church exist without  traditions of how Christ was still an accessible continuous presence within the lives of people for the last two millennia?

The New Testament that we have today is a compilation of writings which were collected distributed and written, edited, redacted, to come to various surviving collections that make up canonical versions available to various faith communities today.  They are often defended wrongly as modern eye witness historical accounts with some apologists being highly defensive about how they are literal empirical verifiable accounts of events.  They should be defended as love and faith language about the beauty of holiness as aesthetically true events of the sublime which result in actual moral and spiritual transformations of ones life.

Weak apologists might say, if the resurrection wasn't true in a modern scientific empirically verifiable way, then how could the church and its message survive all these years.  Such thinking bespeaks the limitation of truth and meaning to something "if and only if it could be empirically verified.  Love, justice, peace, experiences of the sublime occur in the hidden recesses of the person with life changing meanings and truth without being available to the kinds of scrutiny of the very limitations of scientific discourse.

The Emmaus road account encodes the modes of sublime presence which characterizes the early churches, of knowing the divine through Scripture and the Eucharistic breaking of bread.

When the Risen Christ was incognito, he was the biblical commentator explaining the Scriptures to the disciples in a way that made their hearts "burn" with excitement, surely an expression of the sublime.  But the climax came when like a parent pulling a blanket from the baby's head and saying, "Peek a boo, I see you."  In the breaking of the bread the incognito Jesus goes "poof" and is revealed as the Risen Christ whom the disciples thought to have just died in Jerusalem.  Herein one can find the modes of Christly presence in the early churches which was finding Christ in Word and in the Eucharistic meal, the visible social reality of the church around the table of bread and wine and repeating the words of Jesus over the elements.

One thing that we can say about the Gospels and the other New Testament writings:  They are proof of a movement becoming an institution and on its way to further institutionalizing manifestation.  An institution is proof that an organization has staying power and is developing features to promulgate its values and perpetuate its survival into the future.

We need to retain what I have called the "theology of poof-ification."  Why?  The institution of the church and the Scripture writings can become museum pieces with calcified dormancy.  The Scripture writings can become associated with set and fixed and final interpretations without flexible openness for the freshness of interpretation to allow new sublime events to happen now and into the future.  Scripture and institution can become regarded as such a rigid orthodoxy as to lock the Risen Christ from having any new apparitional sightings or experiences for people.  People end up going outside the church for anonymous Christ "poof-ication" events because the church can lose its relevance for being the context for interpreting the sublime events in the lives of people.

I would propose that in the theology of "poof-ification," new sightings and new of the occasions of the sublime and manifold differentiated appearance of the Risen Christ would be not only welcome but recommended.  Scripture and the institutional church should be word context and the coded word environment for prayer to happen in the way that Archbishop Temple suggested, "When I pray, coincidences seem to happen, and when I don't, they don't seem to occur."

Certainly, the serendipity of the sublime cannot be forced or planned; such would violate the nature of the curious unpredictability of the future as continuously open probabilities.  But through community and Scripture as our worded value context, we can promote a hermeneutic community, an interpretive community that can enable people to see the "poof" appearances of the Risen Christ, under the guise of their very own telling subjectively relevant experiences.  In this way, Scripture and the church as institution does not usurp the personal subjective sublime, but serves as the very interpretive framework environment for the sublime to be recognized as the Christly reality of the image of God upon each person's life.

Let us appreciate the Emmaus road Gospel account as the affirmation for the continuing theology of "poof-ification."  Let it be encouragement for us to live in anticipation of the blanket of experience or life events being suddenly lifted and as children of God, we hear the risen Christ say to us, "Peek a boo, I see, I love you even in the your deep subjective inward self with many outward tranformational consequences."  Amen.