A Eucharistic Liturgy for Families with Young Children

When it happened that families with young children wanted their children to remain with them during a very adult Rite II Eucharistic service, I decided that we needed a family Eucharist on Sundays.  The Book of Common Prayer gives permission for developing an Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist, one that is not intended to be used at the principal Sunday celebration of the Holy Eucharist, sometimes called Rite Page 400.

The goal for this Eucharist was to make it participatory for children while at the same time providing something substantial for adults.  What did we want to achieve?  We wanted to make the meaning of baptism and Eucharist as transparent as possible in the liturgy.  We wanted to provide accessible metaphors for the meaning of the Nicene Creed and Real Presence.  We wanted to make transparent the connection between the liturgy and every day life.  We wanted to make corporate prayer accessible.  Praying litanies of Praise, Thanksgiving and Petition using the intonation patterns for the Lord, Have Mercy, S-106 has proven to be very accessible to young children.  We wanted to make the service less wordy and more compatible with attention spans of children.  We wanted to choose more child friendly songs, ones that could also include dance and gestures.  We wanted to use young readers as our liturgists.  Other things that we do to invite participation:  We ask for children to express what they are thankful for before the litany of Thanksgiving.  We have baskets of instruments which children can choose to play, including drums, tambourines, triangles, cymbals, wood blocks etc.  The children also circle the altar after the Sanctus and remain until the Great Amen.  They also "con-celebrate" in that they are encouraged to mimic the gestures of the celebrant.

Below is a sample of our Eucharistic Liturgy for families with Young Children

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

September 25, 2011: Fifteenth Sunday of Pentecost 

Gathering Songs: Do Lord; Thy Word; May the Mind of Christ, Our Savior; Awesome God

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And Blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Do Lord  (Christian Children’s Songbook,  # 42)

1. I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun.  I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun.  I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun, ‘way beyond the blue. 

Refrain: Do Lord, oh do Lord, oh, do remember me.  Do Lord, oh, do Lord, oh, do remember me. Do Lord, oh, do Lord, oh, do remember me, way beyond the blue.

2. I took Jesus as my Savior, you take Him too. I took Jesus as my Savior, you take Him too. I took Jesus as my Savior, you take Him too, ‘way beyond the blue.  Refrain

Liturgist: The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Alleluia (chanted)

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 Letter of Paul to the Philippians

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 78

Hear my teaching, O my people; * incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 

We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the LORD, *

and the wonderful works he has done.  

Birthdays:  

Anniversaries:  

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 Matthew

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" And they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven,' he will say to us, `Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, `Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.  "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him."

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.

Your Prayers are asked for healing for  

Faithful Departed:  

Your Prayers are asked for those in the Armed Forces 

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

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.

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 Music:  Glory to God in the Highest,  St. John’s Children’s Choir

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 up 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.

(Children may gather around the altar)

The Celebrant now praises God for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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.

The Prayer continues with these words

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.

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, 

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

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 Hymn:  May the Mind of Christ, My Savior, (Renew! # 285)

1. May the mind of Christ, my Savior, live in me from day to day, by his love and power controlling all I do and say.

2. May the word of God dwell richly in my heart from hour to hour, so that all may see I triumph only through his power.

3. May the peace of God, my Father, rule my life in everything, that I may be calm to comfort sick and sorrowing.

4. May the love of Jesus fill me as the waters fill the sea.  Him exalting, self abasing: this is victory.

5. May we run the race before us, strong brave to face the foe, looking only unto Jesus as we onward go.

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: Awesome God, (Renew! # 245)

Our God is an awesome God, he reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love our God is an awesome God.  (Sing three times)

Dismissal:    

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

People:      Thanks be to God!  

A sermon on "Exceptionalism"

Lectionary Link

14 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 20, September 18,2011

Jonah 3:10-4:11   Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-30  Matthew 20:1-16

   Believe it or not a Frenchman or two actually had good things to say about America so when such praise is forthcoming from the French, we should savor it. (We’ll have to ignore what they say about our cuisine).   There was Lafayette, who fought with us in the American Revolution.  And we did get the Lady Liberty Statue in the New York Harbor as a gift from France.  Perhaps the most quoted French admirer of America is the traveler and writer Alexis de Tocqueville.  In 1831 he admired the birth of the new nation America and the ingredients of American ideology that included egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire.  In 1831 and 1840 he described America as “exceptional.”  As individualists we probably did not need a Frenchman to tell us this, but we’ve agreed with him and almost every American has an opinion about our “exceptionalism.”  Politicians give their opinions about our “exceptionalism” all of the time and “exceptionalism” has been re-written by many to mean something different. American exceptionalism to people around the world is different.  Some would define our exceptionalism to be our military might and our possession of the best bombs and the best unmanned drones.  American “exceptionalism” has had religious overtones; indeed what gave our founders the right to run the Native peoples from their land?  It was an “exceptionalism” something like the Israelites had when they chased the inhabitants of Canaan from their Promised Land.  America was our Promised Land; it was our Manifest Destiny to possess it.  It is not surprising that so many places in America have been given biblical geographical names.

  The book of Jonah was a book written by a very wise and satirical writer who was challenging how the people of Israel were living with their notion of “exceptionalism” as God’s Chosen People who had been given a Promised Land.  I believe that every nation and every group or community and in fact every person has to come into a right relationship with “exceptionalism.”  A wrong relationship with “exceptionalism” is an exclusive, boastful, chauvinistic pride which demeans disenfranchises and devalues others.

  What did the writer of the book of Jonah believe?  The writer believed that Israel had been made exceptional through the gift of God and that gift was not to be hoarded or kept within the borders of Israel.  The writer of Jonah believed that the foreigners in Nineveh, if given the message about God and repentance, would discover a new sense of their “exceptionalism.”

  And so you have the rather comedic story of Jonah.  God said to Jonah, “Go preach to those foreign Syrians in Nineveh.”  And Jonah said, “Why would I want to share with them the gifts of our nation, the Torah for living and the message of God’s mercy?  Why would I share that with our potential enemies?  Why would I give them our State secret?  I’m not a traitor.”  What did Jonah do?  He as it were tried to take a “slow boat to China” to get as far away from Ninevah as possible.   But a storm arose and when Jonah realized that his disobedience was the cause of the storm, he asked to be thrown overboard to Davy Jones’ Locker at the bottom of the sea.  But God sent a big whale to swallow the pouting prophet.  The prophet was so caustic, the digestive juices of the whale could not digest him for three days and night, and so the whale vomited the prophet upon the beach.  And Jonah reluctantly obeyed; he went to Ninevah and preached and sure enough, the Ninevites repented and received the message.  And the pouting Jonah was angry? “See I told you God.  The message is so good about God love and mercy, I knew they would accept it, but they are our enemies.”  The pouting Jonah is an example of someone who did not understand why he had been given an exceptional gift.  The gift was not to be hoarded or limited to people within the borders of Israel.  The gift of God’s mercy is catholic, it is universal and open to people who are different than we are.  The sense of “exceptionalism” and God’s favor is so wonderful that it always makes us feel like we are the privileged first in honor and recognition.  But we are made exceptional in God’s grace and favor so that we can share the gift with others and become the last in honor as we see the enthusiasm and joy of those newly born in the experience of God’s grace.  “Exceptionalism” in our relationship with God takes us from first to last and we are to become happily last in honor when we see the joy of the new ones who have experienced the sense of “exceptionalism” from God.

  The parable of Jesus from the Gospel today is also about “exceptionalism” but it is also highlights what came to make our country exceptional.  “All are created equal.”  All are different but equal; equal in honor, dignity and justice.  Our baptismal vows to honor the dignity of every person expresses this ideal.  Different but equal.   In our difference we can appreciate that God meets us with favor in our uniqueness.  But in honoring equality, we also celebrate that God meets others with equal honor and dignity in the very ways in which they are different from us.

  Sometimes in our difference we want to protest how God measures and quantifies the value and worth of people.  As good capitalists, just like the original hearers of the parable, people’s worth were determined by the same standard of wage and work.  It seems unfair that a person who worked one hour would get the same wage as the one who had worked all day.

  But we do understand the equality of human dignity.  The worth of a child is not determined by how much work he or she can do to earn money.  The worth of an elderly person is not determined by what they can contribute to the national economy and work force.  The worth of people with impairments is not imputed as being less because they don’t have the able bodies to complete with those who do.  People are different but equal.  And this is the everyday struggle that we have with “exceptionalism.”  Sometimes we who have been blessed with exceptional wealth, gifts and talents, wonderful backgrounds with loving parents and every kind of social and educational opportunity;  sometimes we need to learn how to practice being last to help people who are different and who have not yet been able to experience their own “exceptionalism”  in the eyes of God.  We as followers of Jesus Christ, need to share our sense of “exceptionalism” and become those who bring the message of God’s favor and mercy and grace to those who are living in a world that does not give them easily the sense of being exceptional.  Parents naturally will give up their part of the stage of “exceptionalism” to let their children rise in the experience of “exceptionalism” in order to build their esteem.  But we need to know that the Gospel can make us exceptional in how we come to practice the justice of equality for all people.

  I believe that the book of Jonah and the Gospel parable provides us some insights on how we can be related to the experience of being “exceptional.”  But the greater message is how can we come to let others know that they are “exceptional” in God’s eyes too.  When we can see the success of esteem come to others, it is easy for us to be last.  The joy of the success of God’s love coming to another person, is unmatchable.  Amen. 

Forgiveness on 9/11? Really?

Lectionary Link

13 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 19, September 11, 2011

Exodus 14:19-31   Psalm 114

Romans 14:1-12  Matthew 18:21-35

  On this tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it may be very difficult for us to ponder the notion of endless forgiveness and this is implied when Jesus told his disciples not to set a limit on the numbers of times that one should forgive.    It may be hard for us to ponder the command of Jesus to  “love our enemies and to love those who hate us.”

  Does God forgive endlessly or is there a point when human willfulness can no longer access divine forgiveness?   Recently a Baptist preacher got himself into trouble with some of his base when he published a book entitled Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Has Lived.  Heaven and Hell has been a prime motivator for Christian religious communities for years.  How could a Baptist preacher, of all people, put such imaginations of heaven and hell into question?  How could he view such imaginations as but temporary states for people to learn ultimately the lesson of God’s unconditional love which in the end becomes convincing to everyone?  It is almost like Heaven and Hell are reduced to imaginations of a purgatory, through which every person works their way in the afterlife, until they learn to accept the love of God. 

  How could he give up the finality of heaven and hell and the incredible motivation that they can be for cleaning up our act in this life?  And how could he give up the finality of heaven and hell as tools of fundraising in the church?  We Episcopalian preachers know that hell, fire and brimstone do not work for fundraising in the Episcopal Church nor does guilt.  So how do we acknowledge the seriousness of evil in our world and ponder the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God’s love?  How do we reconcile the obvious presence of evil, the notion of justice and the final winsomeness of God’s love? Can we really envision Hitler, Stalin, and the 9/11 terrorists reconciled with God’s love?  Do we even want to envision that?

  I think that the controversy of Rob Bell’s books highlights the questions that are raised in the Bible about some great mysteries of life: Innocence and disproportionate suffering, Evil, justice, the limits of love and forgiveness.  The Biblical records provide many images regarding all these great mysteries and the churches at various times have tried to mold the diverse images of the Bible into a single and coherent theology.  And I don’t really think that can be done. The questions and the mysteries are what each of us live each day and we don’t have a silver bullet answer to any mystery.  We look for biblical insights to help us live with the mysteries.

    The Bible is a record of God’s people dealing with the question of the disproportionate dispensing of the suffering of this world amongst the people of the earth.  Many times in the history of the people of Israel as being God’s chosen people, they probably would say, “God if our conditions mean that we are chosen by God, then please do not choose us anymore.”  The whole notion of resurrection came into the Hebrew Scripture as a vision of an afterlife judgment program to rectify the inequities of life.  We may have to suffer now; but in the afterlife there will be justice and our tormentors will get their punishment, and we will get our reward.  This notion of the afterlife is why Marx called religion the opiate of the people.  We can submit to our fate of poverty in this world, because we know that in the afterlife we will get to live on the streets of gold and the tables will be turned on those who had it fortunate in this life at our expense.

  In the biblical record and in the Gospel one can find reflections upon both the global and the local situation of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.  The events of 9/11 force us to think about both local and global issues of justice and forgiveness.  Those events which were painfully local for the people of our country have been both global and local issues for the last ten years of our lives.  Just think about your most recent trip to any airport.

  The Gospel message about forgiveness includes the words of Jesus that encourage us always to think very locally about people.  We are always to think of people as our brother and as our sister.

  Terrorist attacks occurred because the terrorists reduced people to be impersonal masks of politics and national identity.  In the 9/11 attacks the terrorists reduced individual people to images of someone they thought they hated.  If they had been able to meet John and Mary in their neighborhoods or coffee shops or as someone who gave them a friendly greeting, they could have behaved as local kind people.  But they allowed de-humanization to occur when they reduced real flesh and blood people to an effigy of their hatred.

   I think that the message of Jesus and forgiveness encourages us to live, love and forgive locally.  Do not let anyone become a de-humanized image or effigy of global hatred or group hatred.  We also know that in our warring response to 9/11, soldiers too have to de-humanize others to be able to accomplish their mission of retribution.  De-humanizing global hatred sets off events of revenge and retaliation.

  The message of Jesus is a preventive message; practice forgiveness early and often on the local level.  Do not let anyone become an effigy of global or group hate who can be de-humanized in order to make it easier to harm or injure.

  Today, we are at a very local Eucharistic event, but with global and future aspirations.  We are just a few here at the Lord’s table.  We hope that we are practicing love and forgiveness in our local situation but we also hope that people around the world know that they are invited to be with us at the Lord’s table where we can practice God’s great hospitality to everyone.

  And oh how we pray that forgiveness and love can be known as local and global experience.  And how we pray that God’s love can win us all in this life so that we don’t have to speculate about afterlife outcomes.

  And we pray today, may war and hatred cease in our world, may forgiveness never never end  and may the love of Christ win our world, both locally and globally.  Amen.

What about the Messiah?

Lectionary Link

11 Pentecost, Cycle A  Proper 17, August 28, 2011

Exodus 3:1-15  Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c

Romans 12:9-21  Matthew 16:21-28

  In today’s appointed Gospel, we find some rather harsh words from Jesus for the man who was to become the premier leader in the Christian Movement after Jesus left this earth.  Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me Satan.”  Satan is the personification of the lie.  Lying is not just saying things that are not true, it is also choosing to remain in comfortable opinions of things that are only partially true.

  This Gospel highlights an issue amongst the early followers of Jesus and the Judaic community that excommunicated them from the synagogue around the year 80 of the Common Era.  This was an issue:  How is Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?  And what is the significant definition of the Messiah?  When Jesus told his disciples that he was going to suffer and die, it was hard for Peter to accept this.  How could this be the Messiah?  How could this be God’s anointed one who would be like King David and come to re-establish independence and order for the people of Israel?  Peter was saying to Jesus: “Jesus you are wrong about yourself.  You don’t know how to understand yourself.  The Messiah can’t suffer and die and so you cannot suffer and die.”  It does seem rather comical if not absurd that Peter is trying to correct the Messiah about His misunderstanding of the Messiah.

  The early expositors of the Messiah had a dilemma.  Those who witnessed the suffering and death of Jesus had to look for other Hebrew writings to find other models of the Messiah.  They found such a model in the Prophet Isaiah who wrote about a Suffering Servant Messiah.   But what about a King David triumphant kind of Messiah?   The early expositors wrote that the Suffering Messiah would leave but someday soon return as the triumphant Messiah, and so the two notions of the Messiah were reconciled in a first coming and a seconding coming.  Many members of the  early church and St. Paul believed that they would see this second coming in their own time.  And lots of Christians are all oriented towards this second coming today, even to the point of being apocalyptic fatalists and dismissing the need for taking care of our planet.  After all if Jesus is coming tomorrow, why do we have to conserve and preserve?  We still do have varied opinions about the Messiah today.  Just recently, a preacher was predicting the rapture on May 21st, now delayed until October 21st.  Another TV preacher--who is a self proclaimed spokesperson for the divine meaning of natural disasters-- said the Earthquake that put a crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God of the approaching coming of the Messiah.

  Get behind me Satan!  Let us not get trapped into a lie about very narrow and limited views of the Messiah.  The record of the Scriptures presents a variety of messianic meanings.  The notion of messiah comes from the Hebrew word that is associated with the ritual anointing with oil.  It meant that people understood the person or the object to represent God’s selected mode of presence or action in this world.  It was used to refer to early Levitical priests in Israel.  The sons of Aaron were God’s chosen and anointed priests.  The notion of anointing and designation referred also to the Temple and the holy objects as well as the unleavened bread.  (In the same sense the Eucharistic bread and wine are also messianic objects in how we regard them to bear the presence of Christ).  Messiahs were not necessarily always good; King Saul was the first “anointed” king of Israel but he and his lineage lost the “messiahship” to the Davidic line.  The investiture of Israel’s Kings involved the pouring of a horn of oil over the head of the new King thus designating God’s anointing and selection.  The Davidic line declined and lost the “messiahship.”  In fact, the Kings of Israel and Judah became so bad that the prophet Isaiah even called the conquering King Cyrus the Great of Persia, a messiah.  This conquering king was designated as one who was doing God’s will and work in carrying the people of Israel off into exile.  So can we admit that the notion of the messiah in the Bible is quite diverse in its application?

  Yes, indeed the hope of people in Israel was for restoration and for someone and some way to make it actual in their lives.  Hope is always looking for a narrative and heroes to bring justice in our world.  Justice is always looking for laws and law givers to make justice actual.  Hope springs eternal and so Hope will always inspire notions of the messiah, notions of how God will be present to us in significant ways.

  We still look for the messiah today in many, many ways.  The problem for Christian messianism is that some still are just like Peter; they want to cling to a very limited notion of the messiah.  Popular messianism today of fundamentalist Christian communities today has more to do with assuming precise correspondence  of catastrophic events with their own  interpretations of the Bible.  Most of these communities and their leaders essentially hope for a messiah who will come in the way they want and they mostly think that God will prove that they were right and to prove it their followers will be whisked away in a rescuing rapture.  I assert their right to have such narratives of hope and such visualizations to bear up with the pain that they think that they are in; but it is a very limited notion of the messiah and like Peter’s notion of the messiah, it is a selfish notion of the messiah that centers on their own exclusive beliefs and communities.

  We do not have to give up hope for our future; we do not have to give up dreams and visualizations of Peace and Justice achieving actual success upon earth.  We can maintain hope and the narratives of hope without falling into very limited notions of the Messiah.

  I would invite us to find the messiah as personal events for us today.  Where has God anointed our lives and our world with the divine presence?  How and where does God get through to us?  How and where does God move us and inspire us in the work to surpass ourselves for better and more excellent outcomes for our lives and the betterment of our families and communities?  The messiah and the messianic come to us in many ways, and even in suffering and apparent failure or in the experience of lack.  It is not that the actual events of suffering, failure or lack are messianic but it is our faith and hope in the future that helps us to redeem such negative experiences in subsequent events of our lives.  Resurrection gives death a new meaning; suffering, failure, and lack can be made to be messianic events with subsequent redemptive events.  Peter could not see anything messianic about the suffering and death of Jesus.  And we can forgive him for that; the notion of a suffering messiah is very counter-logic.  The risen Christ invites us to think outside of the box of logic so that we do not limit the notions of the messiah.

  We like Peter, should always hear the rebuke of Jesus: “Get behind me Satan!”  when we try to limit the work and the presence of the Messiah.  Let us believe that the Messiah touches our lives in many ways and let us be attentive to present ourselves so that we can be the hands, the hearts and feet of the Messiah to bring hope and good news to our world.  Amen.

What does MacDonald's Hamburgers Have to Do with the Feeding of the 5000?

Lectionary Link

7 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 13, July 31, 2011 

Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 17: 1-7, 16

Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

  From today’s appointed Gospel: And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.   (And one wonders what the total would have been with women and children, because they count too, and if there were teenage boys there, there would have to be a major food miracle).  Now where in our history and culture have we found posted the number of people who have been fed?

  Do you remember when those golden arches signs grew out of the sides of that hamburger chain in the 1950’s?  McDonald’s Hamburger.  And they had a sign that changed each week.  Over a million hamburgers sold.  I googled the most recent count and some speculate that it must be over 247 billion hamburgers sold.  That’s a lot of beef; though I often wondered about the beef content of those 15 cent wafers.  (I remember when they were 15 cents a piece).

  What if the Christian Church had a sign at each church posting the number of communions served since the Last Supper?  No sign would be big enough for the number of zeroes required.  And MacDonald’s total of 247 billion would not even be a speck of dust in the total number of communion bread served.

  Today’s Gospel looks like a miracle story in the life of Jesus, but more likely it is an early church recounting a teaching in the ancient tradition of the bread of heaven.  If this story were just a miracle story about Jesus feeding the masses, we’d have a moral dilemma on our hands.  Why isn’t Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes to feed all of the people in the world, right now? And why did he selectively decide to do it for one group of people in an event and why does he not choose to do it for all hungry people in the past 2000 years?  One really needs to be careful about how one literalizes the Bible, because then we only encourage the skeptics to demand that we be consistent in how we present God and Jesus Christ.

  The writers of the Gospel who gave liturgical writing or scripts that could be performed within their community worship gatherings, inherited the bread of heaven tradition from the Hebrew Scripture.  And so they told the story of the Eucharist and the story of Jesus using a development upon this motif of the bread of heaven tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures.

  When I hand you the little wafer of bread at Communion, all of you know the routine, otherwise if you were a young child when I hand you the wafer and say, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven” you might say, “What’s this?”  And how is this the body of Christ?

  That’s exactly what the Hebrew people said when the bread of heaven tradition started.  You remember that one of the greatest heroes of the Hebrew faith was Moses.  And he led the people Israel out of slavery in Egypt.  But it took them 40 years of wandering in the wilderness before they got into the Promised Land.  And Moses as the leader, as a good leader, was supposed to feed this large group of nomadic people in the barren wilderness.  And there were not any MacDonald restaurants in the wilderness.  The environment did not provide subsistence for the people of Israel and with a food shortage, they complained to their leaders.  They even wished for the good old days of slavery in Egypt, At least there they had a supply of leeks and garlic.  And what Gilroyian could blame them? (After all it is the Garlic Festival Weekend).  So Moses prayed to God and God sent from the sky each day, a strange substance on the ground.  And when the people saw, they asked, “What’s this?”  Or if they are like children who are asked to try some new food, they probably said, “ooh, What’s this?”  So “what’s this” became the name of this bread from heaven, Manna means, “What’s this?”  This was God’s intervention in providing heavenly bread for the life of the people of Israel.

  When the Gospel writers preached about Jesus and the Jesus Movement that became the church and were explaining the significance of the practice of the ritual of Holy Eucharist, they used the bread of heaven tradition in their teaching.

  Jesus was the new Moses.  And he like Moses led a large group of people out of slavery to Roman traditions and hypocrisy in the Judaic tradition.  And Jesus provided a new source of sustenance for this new community of people in the wilderness trying to get started and attaining their Promised Land to be the New Israel.

  The Passover Meal, a meal done within one’s natural family, was expanded to be a meal for all within the community of Christ.  And what was one of the early Christian titles for Jesus Christ?  Jesus was called the bread of heaven.  Just as Manna was special bread from heaven for the ancient people of Israel, so too Jesus was the bread of heaven to the new Israel, this new community who came into being because of Jesus Christ.  And when Jesus took bread and sealed his identity with it by saying, “This is my body which is given for you.  Take and eat in remembrance of me” he was expressing a continuity with the bread from heaven tradition.  Ever since, Christ has been identified with the Eucharistic bread, made that way by repeating the words of Jesus.  And we with our thoroughly skeptical sides receive the odd bread in our hands each week, with the even stranger words, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”  And our skeptic side cannot help but say, “Man na?  What’s this?  Body of Christ?  Bread of Heaven?” 

  And yet this “Man na?” has been gathering the church for two thousand years.  The Eucharistic gathering is the most literal, and the most incarnate expression of the continuing life of Jesus Christ in the world today.

  The story of the multitude of the loaves and fish is a crucial story in the bread of heaven tradition that came to be the Eucharistic practice of the church.  And just as those early Gospel writers proudly posted the number of people who were fed by the presence of Christ, the church, even more than MacDonald’s,  has lost track of the number of people who have been fed and sustained by the presence of Risen Christ, in the bread and wine, and in countless other ways in this world.

  The 247 billion burgers sold at MacDonald is laughable when compared with the living bread of heaven, the risen Christ, who is known to us not only in the breaking of bread, but in countless mega-billions of way.  Let us thank God today that we are part of this wonderful bread of heaven tradition.  Amen.

What Is the Wisdom of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Lectionary Link

6 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 12, July 24, 2011

1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39   Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

  In the biblical tradition, who is regarded to be the wisest person in the Hebrew tradition?  It is King David’s son, King Solomon.  We have read the prayer request of Solomon before he ascended the throne to succeed his father David.  What did he ask for?  He asked for wisdom and God answered him by saying to him, “I will give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.”  Solomon became the inspiration for the wisdom school in the Hebrew religion and the wisdom teacher was to ancient Israel what the philosopher was to ancient Greece.  Some people have questioned Solomon’s wisdom though, because he is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines.  (How’s that for biblical family values?)   What is the wisdom in that?  Well, one woman once said that Solomon had a source for wisdom because he had 1000 counselors who gave him free advice.  How could he not be wise?

  Some Gospel scholars believe that the wisdom teacher was a model for the ministry of Jesus.  The words that seem to be most original to Jesus were teaching stories call parables.  A parable is a story that teaches through the attempt to get the listener to identify with a scenario.  It is an attempt to teach through appreciative participation.  But the parables of Jesus were also riddles; in them he required the listener to confront his counter logic.  How do the parables of Jesus that we’ve read today, represent counter logic?  And how does the counter logic of Jesus trick our literal minds into seeing things in a new way?

  Most people believe that civilizations are great because of the people who are heroes.  Kings and Warriors, philosophers, are normally thought to be the pillars of civilization.  Most of us understand history as the public record of why things have occurred because of the great people who attained fame in their public deeds.  These people are like the great oak trees of the forest.

"Not so", says wisdom teacher Jesus.  The kingdom of God, or the most embracing realm of life itself is known because of the little mustard seed deeds.  Heroes and heroic acts do not make a great society; rather it is the collection of all of the small deeds of kindness and caring that result in the success of any society.  If all of the deeds of kindness and caring ceased; society would come to a halt.  If moms did not care for their babies, and people did not do the millions of menial chores required to sustain communal life, societies would break down and fail.  When great disasters hit, the immediate goal is to return life to it normal sequence of the many rituals of care and mutual accountability.  These are the scaffold and telling reality of the kingdom that Jesus spoke about.  The kings and leaders get to prance on the stage held up by scaffolding of all the tiny mustard seed acts of care and kindness and mutual accountability that makes a society work.  No matter what the president or congress or governors or legislatures or captains of industry do; the people in this network of small acts of kindness and mutual care and accountability will still have to keep on, keeping on.  Parents will still have to do all the things they do for their children; dishes and clothes will have to be washed, traffic laws obeyed, shops opened, groceries sold, produce delivered.  We in the course of all of our little mustard seed deeds don’t have the luxury of worrying about whether we are doing big and important things.  But in the logic of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, it is in these every day micro-events of kindness, care and mutual accountability where the reality of God’s kingdom is found and known, and in fact this reality rules the world because we only survive because this micro-network magnified is the very infrastructure of human community.  We will still be a part of the scaffolding of the kingdom of heaven no matter what they decide or don’t decide in Washington.  How do you like the logic of Jesus?

  The parable of the leaven or yeast is like the parable of the mustard seed.  The kingdom of heaven is like a small portion sourdough culture.  You put it in the dough and this tiny substance infiltrates the dough and gives bread its very “breadiness.”  Jesus was saying, “You hero worshippers think that important people are really making life important and that is wrong.  It is each person exercising the moment by moment small deeds of kindness and mutual care and accountability that gives us abundant life.  Don’t be fooled by all those who tempt you to believe that the spot light of fame, power, and fortune are the key to survival in life.”

  The next parables of Jesus also have the counter logic of this wisdom teacher.  It’s is dishonesty to have discovered the abundance of minerals on a piece of property, and then buy the property without disclosing to its owner that the minerals are there.  What Jesus was indicating by this is that most people do not know the value of their own lives and therefore do not tap the native wealth that is accessible in human experience.  Why is it that two people can look like they are doing the same thing, but one person will express the experience of wonder and the sublime, while the other will be bored?  The kingdom of heaven is the experience of knowing another level of value in this “seemingly” ordinary life.

  The parable about the pearl of great price, is really about another stock market “no-no.”  We call it “insider trading.”  It is about having privileged information that others don’t have.  It’s like going to a rummage sale and offering a couple of dollars for old baseball cards that you know are worth thousands of dollars.  What Jesus is saying is that people can live this life in such a way to understand another level of value.  Within life, Jesus said that we can find abundant life.  And Jesus is inviting us to find that abundant life.  This parable is also about the purpose of human life. We are ever to be re-educating ourselves towards the discovery of higher values.  When we look at our lives, things that once were regarded as important now seem to be trivial.  How is it that our values change?  How is it that we discover new values?  We do so in the event of finding what is great and then we organize our lives around what we regard to be the highest inspiration in life.  The kingdom of heaven is the process of coming to higher values; that’s a problem since values are experienced as being relative to our own moral and spiritual progress.

  How do I tolerate myself for the higher values that I do not yet have nor have discovered?

Well, Jesus said the kingdom heaven is about patience, with ourselves, with each other and with our world.  The net is cast to catch all sorts of values in the mix of our life experience, and we need patience with the mix both in our own life and in our world.  We need to have the patience to wait for a more complete sorting out of the values in our lives and of the values in all human experience.  The kingdom of heaven is about having that kind of patience, but also having that kind of hope that justice amongst all values will someday attain.  The kingdom of heaven is about having patience with hope.

  St. Paul believed that we could have that kind of patience and hope in the midst of the extreme mixture of human experience, because we have God’s Spirit within us and because nothing can separate us from the love of God.

  Let us hear the Gospel today: We live in the kingdom of God’s love, a patient and hopeful love.  And this God of love is educating our values as we grow in wisdom in the art of living.  And may the Gospel also be this:  In the middle of the seeming ordinary, God has for us events of the sublime, events of such wonder that we feel a bit guilty about “having inside” information.  These events guide us upward in the values of our lives.  May God grant to each of us events of the extraordinary within our ordinary lives.  Amen. 

Futility and God's Patience

Lectionary Link

5 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 17, 2011

Genesis 28:10-19a ,Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23

Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

  What if I were to let you get on your soap box with the following unfinished conditional clause: If I were God, I would  (fill in the blank).  If I were God, I would have eliminated that large pit in the avocado.  Think of how much more guacamole you could get from each avocado without that big pit.  If I were God, I would have finished creating the human foot by making every pinkie toe beautiful.  If I were God, I think I would have left the cockroach on the R & D table.  If I were God I would not have allowed the coming into life experience people such as Hitler or Stalin.  How would you finish this conditional clause if you were given a soap box?

  When we have finished speaking and begin to look at our statements, we might find that we express an intolerance or impatience for many things in this life.  Such intolerance or impatience might be proof that at heart, we are all utopians in wanting a better life and a better world.

  What our intolerance and impatience would also express is that if to truly be God is to allow freedom in the world, then we could not be such a God.  If to be God means to be the most patient of all beings, then we would fail at the task of being God, because as we look at things that are evil or occasions of innocent suffering, we do not think that we can have such patience.  In our temporal pain and suffering we are too willing to sacrifice “freedom” for automatic or robotic good outcomes.  Would good be good, if it were automatic or robotic?

  In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus presents the message of a tolerant and patient God.  In the biblical writings, God was not always been presented with such patience.  In the story of the great flood, God is presented as seeing the human community to be so depraved that he has to use a great flood to rid the earth of its evil population and save only eight people.  And what does his saved hero Noah do after he comes out of the ark?  He gets drunk and curses his son.

  By the time Jesus comes, God is seen to be much more patient and God’s patience has to do with the fact that good and evil have true meaning because of freedom.  To limit human experience to the sole ascendency of good or evil would be to remove freedom and also the definition of good or evil.

  The parable of wheat and the weed gives us an insight about God’s tolerance and patience.  But it does not suggest that we should just wait until a final day of judgment before we do anything about improving our world.

  What it suggests is that catastrophic intervention would mean destroying the potential good crop of the future because of the presence of some inconvenient inter-mingling pesty weeds.  Some of the legal penalties of the Old Testament law were catastrophic in nature, sometimes called the law of the claw, an eye for an eye, a tooth or a tooth, and a life for a life.  There was a law that said an insolent child should be stoned to death.  What sort of future redemption is present in such catastrophic reactions?

  Catastrophic intervention is the chief mythology of Hollywood.  In action adventures, catastrophic intervention by a hero doing super human martial and military acts wins the day in less than two hours.  This virtual cinematic myth is rotten with the rage of a perfect one who knows that good and evil are so clear cut that good can be forced with the rage of catastrophic intervention.  Such cinematic myths do not have the patience necessary for the way life really is.  Nor do they represent the patience of God.

  How can we come to grow in the patience of God?  How did Jacob come to have patience?  Jacob came to have patience by believing that he had a future and for him to have a future, he had to escape from the wrath of his twin brother Esau, whose birth right he had tricked from him.  Jacob escaped to an unknown future and in his night of sleep he had the dream about the angels ascending and descending upon the ladder from heaven.  In this dream, Jacob was reassured that there was and would be messengers from another realm who could bring messages to his own realm of comprehension to enable him to be patience with the unfolding events of his life.

  St. Paul was aware of the tolerance and patience that he needed to have with himself and he also preached of a cosmic patience that we need to have with this world.  If Paul did not come to have patience with himself, he would have said, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.  He participated in the stoning of Stephen; therefore he too deserved to be stoned.  But if Paul had died of a stoning, the entire mission of the Gospel to the Gentile world would not have happened in the way that it did.  Being complicit in murder is perhaps a great weed in one’s life that would challenge one’s right to live and go on.  How could Paul forgive himself and accept the forgiveness of Christ?  The severity of his murdering ways cried out for a great redemptive mission in his life. 

  What did St. Paul call the conditions of weed and wheat of this life?  He called it the condition of futility.  Futility is when we hope for so much more than can become actual.  Futility is when we know that the aspirations of hope cannot be accomplished in the span of an action movie, or even in a span of one’s lifetime.  Futility is when our actual lives seem to tell us that our hope is not valid and we are to be pitied for being so delusional.

  But the Gospel of Jesus and Paul would tell us today that the experience of the Spirit in our flesh is in fact proof that the wheat of hope will someday be ascendant for us.  The experience of God’s Spirit even in our actual weakened conditions of our flesh is the proof itself.

  Let us today accept our limitation as beings who are much less than God.  In our limitations, we do not have the capacity for catastrophic intervention in this world, nor do we have the ability to know that we have the best vision of what is truly good.  What we do have is the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives to inspire us to begin to do a little weeding in our own patches.  O, Spirit of God, what kind of weeding do I need to do to rid my life through personal choices of the things that hinder more excellent human fruitfulness?

  I often worry about apocalyptic fatalism of some people who wish for a catastrophic end of the world as we know it.  They assume a position of God in thinking they truly know from their precise and certain Bible knowledge who is good and who is bad.  Let us not be so certain that we know how the situation of futility in our world, country, community, family or personal lives can be resolved in a final way.

  But let us be certain about the Spirit of God in our futility to be energy and power of hope and patience with us and with each other.  And let us get busy by the Spirit of God to do a little weeding in the patches of our lives.  Amen.