Gospel Puppet Show: Animal Conference

Puppet Show for January 29, 2012

4th Sunday after the Epiphany

Animal Puppets:

Too-key the toucan, Big Guy, the elephant, Rocky the Racoon, Octie, the Octopus and Harry the horse.

Too-key, the toucan:  Are you looking at me?   Why are you looking at me?  Are you laughing at my big nose?  Do you think that I’m funny?  Do you know who I am?  I am Too-key the toucan.  And I want to introduce to my friends.  First, Big Guy, the Elephant.

Big Guy: Hi, boys and and girls. Do you have some peanuts for me to eat?

Too-key: And next is Rocky the Racoon.

Rocky:  Hi boys and girls, can you show me where the garbage cans; I’m hungry.

Too-Key: And from the ocean we have Octie, the Octopus.

Octie: Hi, boys and girls.  You get to count to ten on your fingers and thumbs; I only get to count to eight.

Tou-key:  And now let us clap our hands for Harry the Horse.

Harry:  Hay, hay, hay, hay….I love to eat hay!

Too-key:  Boys and girls, you see that we are all different in how we look.  I have a big nose for eating fruit and lizards.

Big Guy:  I have a big hose trunk, so I can give myself a shower.

Rocky:  I have really good eyes so I can see at night.

Octie:  I have pads on all of my legs so I can stick to rocks in the ocean.

Harry:  I have strong legs so I can run fast in the meadow.

Too-key:  So all of are different, but we are also all the same.

Big Guy:  Tou-key, I don’t look at all like you.  How are we all the same?

Too-Key: We are all the same because God created us all.  God created us different because 

God wanted more beauty in the world.  If we were all the same then that would be like having to eat broccoli at every meal.  How many of you would only want to eat broccoli? 

Rocky: That would be boring and I like lots of food in the garbage cans.

Harry:  Hay, hay, hay, I like to eat hay, but I also like oats, apples and carrots.

Tou-key:  God made us all different and all of us have different problems.  Sometimes we are sad or sometimes we are sick.

Big Guy:  Catherine read a story today about a man who was really sad.  He was really sad and fearful.

Octie:  But this man found help from Jesus.  Jesus helped to make this sick man healthy and happy.

Harry:  When I am sad, my mom comes and rubs her nose on my nose.  And she whispers nice things in my ear and I feel better.

Rocky:  And even though we are all different, we can still help each other.

Tou-key:  Jesus taught us to be like doctors.  Because if we treat each other with kindness it will help us feel better.

Big Guy:  I am going ask my friends a question and I want them to raise their hands.  How many of you will be kind and help each other to feel really good?

Harry:  Is everyone raising their hands?

Tou-key:  Yes, they are and just like Jesus made a sick man feel better, we too can help each feel better with kindness.  Do you agree?    If you agree say, Amen!

Harry:  Hay, hay, hay, Father Phil can you get this show moving….why don’t you start the children’s creed.

Father Phil:  Okay, Harry, hold your horses……the Children’s Creed starts on page 3. 

Jesus, Ultimate People Whisperer?

4 Epiphany B  January 29, 2012

Deut. 18:15-20  Ps. 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13   Mark 1:21-28

Lectionary Link

   In the Gospel of Mark, the first act of public ministry by Jesus is when he commands an “unclean spirit” to come out of man who was at the synagogue in Capernaum.  As we attempt to evoke some meaning for us today from this text required as lectionary reading, we come with many pre-conceptions about unclean spirits, many of which are perpetuated through film and television.   Part of modern entertainment includes ghost whisperers and ghost busters and the ancient religious psychiatry of exorcism gets portrayed in extreme forms in the cinema.  One wonders if our fascination with such things is a protest against the certitude of modern science in purporting to explain everything, even while in the lives of most people, the unexplainable dynamics of the invisible interior world seems to influence what happens in our external world.

  For the purposes of a sermon we can but selectively offer some cursory reflections knowing that limitation of time requires that we exit this sermon with the relevant good news for our lives today.

  We begin like archaeologists who have collected shards of knowledge about the topic of the Gospel texts.  Such knowledge comes from many historical contexts and so we set a surface taxonomical grid into which we place the shards of knowledge.  And then we analyze and move to formation of cogent meaning.

  In one box we have unclean spirit, the unclean being particularly Judaic since Judaism had a classification system designating what was pure and impure.  This system was meant to keep them pure from “outsiders” since they had a vocation to be a “holy” or “pure” people because God is a Holy God.  States of disease were designated as impure and people who had such diseases had to be quarantined from society until they attained ritual purification.   In another box, we have the ancient Greek notion of the demon or “daimon.”  In the Greek culture such a daimon was neutral or could be used to refer to a spirit guide or even a god or demi-god.  But as a foreign concept to Judaism, the word demon became synonymous with “unclean” spirit and the Gospels seem to use, demon, unclean spirit and evil spirit in interchangeable ways.  In another box we have the knowledge of the holistic approach to the understanding of health.  Spirits were involved in being unhealthy; spirit/body causal connections were believed to exist.  Often physical disease was given spiritual causal explanation.  So healing and the expulsion of an unclean spirit were co-extensive events.  Another box on our taxonomical grid: In early Christian baptismal practice, exorcisms were normative practices as each convert from a “pagan” religion had to make sure that residue spirits of other religions were expelled before baptism.  Finally, another prominent grid of Christian knowledge is the Christian designation for one of the persons of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.  What is more contrasting with unclean spirit than the Holy Spirit?

  Now where do we go for Gospel meanings for our lives?  When we are ill what do we do?  We look for a physician.  We want someone who has knowledge that can effect a powerful intervention over the force of our disease.  In our own experience with disease we settle for a gradual process of a return to health; rarely is the cure instantaneous.   In our lives we also know that we can have disturbed interior states.  We can feel helpless to addictive impulses that dominate and disrupt the quality of our lives.  We can also be socially stigmatized by our weakness, disability, disease or addiction.  And if any portion of society defines our existence as “impure” or “unacceptable” to full inclusion, we can feel our life is devalued because of who we are.

  What I would like for us to take from the Gospel reading today is this:  Jesus was able to reintegrate a man who was known as the one with the unclean spirit into the synagogue community.  Let us embrace the holistic health of Jesus that is also community health.  The worst sickness of all is to be alone and without the possibility of community.  We can bear all sorts of conditions in life if we can do it within a caring community.  Jesus was not a ghost whisperer, he was a people whisperer.  He was able to make the man presentable to the community and he was able to change the community’s designation of the man to be one who was included, and therefore worthy of care and support.

  Any physical or mental health condition includes the social threat of being feared or excluded by the community.  And we need to proclaim Gospel health.  We need to preach release to the captives and preach health to the quarantined.  This is the holistic Gospel health of Jesus Christ, a people whisperer who introduces us to the Holy Spirit as the higher power within us to integrate us within a community of health and be a part of a community that proclaims salvation or health to all. 

  May God lead us to the people who can whisper each of us to optimal health and may God use each of us to be people who whisper others to their optimal health, for the sake of Christ, the ultimate people whisperer.  Amen. 

The Transforming Call of Christ

3 Epiphany B  January 22, 2012

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 62:6-14

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20

Lectionary Link

   Jesus said to the fishermen, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

What if Jesus walked onto the football field at Candlestick today about 3:30 p.m. and said to the professional football players, “Follow me and I will make you score touchdowns for all people.”  What do you think that they would say?  Perhaps, one would say, “Jesus could I have the same deal that the Denver quarterback, Tim Tebow has?  He gets to keep his day job and moonlight as a Jesus representative; could I do that too?”

  For the fisherfolk of Galilee, the call of Jesus meant that they left their day jobs to follow the itinerant Rabbi Jesus on the road.  You really can’t do too much fishing on the road and so one wonders about how those disciples and Jesus were fed and clothed.  If their message was successful, then their audience probably fed them.

  The call of God in Christ has as many scenarios as it does people who have actually heard the call of Christ and who have responded to it.  Historically, we have given a distinction to the call of Christ for those who enter the priestly or pastoral professions.  The contexts of the call of Christ have changed as well.  The years around the time of Jesus of Nazareth were apocalyptic times; that is, many people believed that the end of the world was drawing near.  And they believed God’s great interventionist, the Son of Man and Messiah would appear to establish a different kind of order in this world.

  If this catastrophic intervention was about to happened, then who needed families?  Why have children if the world order was going to drastically interdict all personal and family lifestyle.

  The method of the call was to recruit an itinerate group of on-the-road preachers to get the message out as quickly as possible and to cover as much territory as possible.

  And now about 2000 years later we can say that the catastrophic intervention did not happened but the Gospel message of Jesus Christ catastrophically intervened in the entire history of humanity.  The Gospel message and the call of Jesus Christ has become much more than what was intended by the apocalyptic preachers who surrounded the itinerate Rabbi Jesus.

  The direct and catastrophic intervention of God has turned out to be the imaginations of deliverance by peoples who faced incredible suffering and needed intervention narratives of hope as a way of coping with their dire circumstances.  There was no catastrophic ending of the world in the years after Jesus appeared but the life and the call of Christ has had a catastrophic effect upon the peoples of this world.  That little seemingly insignificant mustard seed of Jesus of Nazareth is now seen as a towering tree that has taken over people and cultures.  The intervention of God has not been a catastrophic ending, it has been the consistent and gentle call of God as the Holy Spirit active in the hearts and lives of people.

  And this inside job of the Holy Spirit of God in the world is the universal call of God to all people.  This universal call sounded most clearly in the life of Jesus Christ whom we know to be God with us in human experience.

  And what does the call of God in Christ offer to us today?  The call of God in Christ is a baptismal call.  It offers us the process of burying in death all that is past and a resurrection to a new moment and a new future where we can surpass ourselves.  This death/life process that is ritualized in the baptismal event is the process of the continual renewal of our lives through repentance: Leaving old states of mind to take up new ones with attending behavioral consequences for our lives.  Repentance and renewal is also what we call transformation.

  The promise of the call of Jesus Christ is to transform our lives.

  The early suffering apocalyptic people of the Jesus movement desired a catastrophic transformation of life as they knew it.  What actually happened has not been a one event catastrophic intervention; it has been a subtle and drawn out process of the call of God at work in this world.  Transformation has not been sudden and dramatic, it has been subtle because it involves the Godly lure to humanity to choose what is good and better and not be forced into some catastrophic outcome that did not involve genuine freedom in the world.

  How do you and I approach the call God in our lives today?  How is God seductively luring us into the gradual transformation of our lives?  How are the interior sweet spots of our lives being touched and registering what is sublime in our lives?  The call of God is everywhere and can become evident at any moment; a laughing, playful child, a sleeping baby, a sunset, falling rain, pride in the achievement of one’s child, the discovery of friendship and the endurance of a friendship, the joy of creativity and the sense of being useful to the lives of others, the looking back in gratitude at events, and wondering, “How did I get through that?”   On and on the events of the call of God in Christ break into our lives, if we are but ready to switch our method of reading the events of lives and begin to interpret God’s loving involvement with us.

  And what is outcome of the call of Christ?  Our lives get transformed and God takes our natural gifts and makes them supernatural when complemented by the Holy Spirit who gives us a different kind of motive for living our lives.

  Transformation means that a football player can have a calling from Christ and still play football.  So too a banker, a lawyer, a teacher, a mason, a builder and a hedge fund manager.  Once we perceive the call of Christ we begin the transformation of our lives into the Gospel motives and Gospel purposes of life.

  Learning to understand that all that we do is ministry is the result of God’s call being successful in our lives.  Often the call of God is promoted as great sacrifice and giving up lots of things in life.  Seeing and understanding life differently may at first seem like a sacrifice, but once we are converted by the call of God and once the Gospel motive comes to our lives, the transforming effects of God’s Spirit pay us great reward.  There is a great relief and peace that comes when we adopt the Gospel motive for everything that we do in our lives.  Saying “yes” to God’s call makes us wonder why we ever wanted to ignore God in our lives.  God is going to accompany us in our lives whether we want God to or not, so it is much better to just surrender to the fact of God’s call.

  We can indeed change our lives by taking on the Christ-motive, the Gospel motive for everything that we do.  And the end result is that we will enjoy what we have and are in a more appreciative way.

  I would invite each of us to listen closely for how the call of God in Christ has been given to us.  Let us not fret about what we might have to give up; let us with hope look to how the call of Christ will work transformations of our lives to our own benefit and for the benefit of the people in our lives.  Amen. 

The Call of all Callings

2 Epiphany B  January 15,2012

1 Samuel 3:1-10  Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 6:11b-20  John 1:43-51

Lectionary Link 

  The lessons that we have read today from the first book of Samuel and from John’s Gospel are about what is often referred to in religious terms, a call from God.

  The young boy Samuel heard God speak to him at night.  Philip heard the call of Jesus and shared it with his skeptical friend Nathaniel.  And Philip was not sure how to convince him so he simply offered an invitation, “come and see for yourself.”  And Nathaniel went and showed his skepticism to Jesus and Jesus was impressed with how he spoke his mind and Nathaniel became impressed with Jesus.

  In the religious world sometimes a call from God is used to refer only to those who go into the official ordained ministries.  And so priests, bishops and pastors have callings from God.  But that is truly a very limited notion of calling, since the call of God is available to everyone and obedience to the call of God must mean more than the ordained ministry of the church, since if all people became ordained, it would be like joining an all tuba band; lots of bass without any variation.

  What can the call of God mean for you and me today?

  I would suggest that our lives are made up of many callings.  Those callings arise from the circumstances of our lives.  I did not have any choice to be a son.  That happened as soon as I was born.  And since I have an older brother and sister, I did not have any choice in being a brother.  The circumstances of our lives provide us our social definitions and in many ways we find ourselves to have as many callings as we have roles in life.  In the household division of labor, one gets the call to be the cook, the dishwasher and the one who gathers and takes out the trash.  Our situations and the requirements of each social obligation in some way define the various calls of our lives because as social beings, whether we want it or not, we have obligations to other people.  And since we are not islands, there are people who are called into our lives who have responsibility to us.  Indeed, we have some freedom in where we live and with whom we live, but all of the details of the roles that we play in life are not always completely pleasant or inspiring; in fact lots of our roles require tolerating or even enjoying a certain amount routine drudgery. 

  We don’t usually see our roles as citizen, spouse, brother, sister, son or daughter as callings in life but we know that to be successful in life requires a certain amount of multi-tasking shifting in and out of the time that we must give to the fulfillment of the various roles in our lives.

  What we normally refer to as our life’s calling is the profession for which we have trained and from which we earn our livelihood.  Hopefully our professions are chosen because we have discovered and developed our personal gifts and then can express those gifts in a vocation that can provide for us the means of livelihood.  And even our professions are not always completely satisfying.  We may feel burned out because we are forced to earn a higher standard of living and end up taking positions that do not really express our true life passion.  Sometimes we earn a living in a job and express our life passion in a hobby or avocation.

  Whatever our relation is with our life work, our life work is very important.  After we say hello, what is your name, how are you, we ask, “What do you do?”  What we do is a very important identity question in our lives.

  I would suggest to you that we do many things in our lives based upon the roles that define in our place.  Spouse, parent, sibling, student, citizen, pet owner….all of these are callings in our life.  They require our time and each role require a degree of proficiency or even excellence in order to satisfy and be satisfied.  I would also suggest that we spend our entire lives dancing with all of the various callings in our lives, and we know success and disappointments in all of our various callings of life.

  And since you and I are caught in a web of life callings, we need a Calling of callings.  And that is place for the call of God in our lives.  We can disappoint people in our lives because the way we execute our life role may not please the people who are most effected by us.  And other people can disappoint us even when they have important roles in our lives.  We can also know great joy and success in the various roles of our lives but if we try to place all of our expectation upon a particular role, we are bound to be disappointed.  That is why we need a Calling of callings.

  The call of God is the Call of callings.  We believe the call of callings is what is expressed in our baptism.  We are primarily called to be sons and daughters of God and the realization of this is to become aware of the call of God to us in our lives.

  And if we can hear and heed the call of God in our lives, then we can find the wisdom to do the balancing act which is required by all of the other calls that come to us in our life roles.

  The call of God tells that we are made first and foremost for God and that we should try to please God first, in all that we do.

  If we learn how to perform all of the roles and callings in our lives as unto God, then we will be able to weather the uncertainty that all of us have to face in all of the roles that we must fulfill in this life.

  You and I through prayer and worship are invited to attend to this call from God, a call that is universal, but unheard, if not attended to.  If we can attend to the call of God, we can find an inner place of love, peace and joy, and from this inner place of peace and joy, we can execute the requirements that meet us each day in our circumstances.

  Today, you and I have many roles and many callings, but one call from God.  And if we can hear and heed the call of God, we can find the wisdom and the ability in all of our life’s callings.  We should not expect equal success or disappointments in all of the callings of our lives; but we can expect God to be equally presence with us in all of the times and places in our lives and we can know that God is a success in our lives even when we don’t seem to be.  The call of God can make us know a kind of equalizing success in all that we do.

  I wish each of us many great adventures in the callings of our lives; but I hope that each of finds the call of God in Christ, at all times and places in our lives.  Amen. 

Baptism: Cosmic and Particular Identity

1 Epiphany B  January 8, 2012

Genesis 1:1-5   Ps. 29

Acts 9:1-7   Mark 1:4-11

Lectionary Link 

  Did you ever really wonder about the meaning of Baptism?  Historically, the church has argued about baptism a lot.  Should a person be immersed?  Sprinkled?  Stand in water to the waist and have water poured down one’s head?  Should authentic baptism only be done in the Jordan River?  Should it be done in any river or natural body of water?  Should baptism be preceded by forty days of fasting with some salt sprinkled on the candidates and some exorcisms performed?  Should only adults who can fully and rationally choose baptism be the legitimate candidates for baptism?  Is baptism only a public testimony of a personal profession of faith?  Is baptism a supernatural infusion of God’s grace whereby one is made a Christian once and for all?  Can one lose baptismal grace?  We are told that the Emperor Constantine did not become baptized until his death bed because he was sure that he was going to have some post-baptismal sins, and some in the early church were very concerned about post-baptismal sins.

  What is baptism for us today?  A cute little rite of passage for baby and family with an opportunity to make little baby boys don white dresses so that the pictures can be brought out later to make their faces red?

  There is some meaning of baptism found in all of the baptismal practices of Christians.  I guess today, I am more interested in what baptism means to me and to you and to our lives as a community who call ourselves the body of Christ.

  Might I suggest that baptism is very much a belief about our creation by God and the type of good stuff of which our human lives and the life of the world are made?  In the creation, we are told that God looked at all that had been created and God said, “It is good.”

   I believe that baptism is a public rite of celebration that affirms that the creation of the life of the baptized, is good, very good.  And it is good and filled with dignity. . Even while we don’t attain full goodness at any moment of our lives,  baptism is the invitation to actualize our full human potential.

  And what might that potential be?  I would liken the human life to be lived on a continuum between particular experience and cosmic experience.  We are very much made of dust in that we have a body and each body has a location in time and space.  And there are detailed descriptions of the particulars of our existence; our families, languages, cultures, societies and countries.  Yet we are made of mysterious stuff that we call spirit and so we have godly-potential.  We have cosmic potential.  So we live our lives in the dynamic between the particulars of our physical location and our cosmic spiritual locations.  And we need both to live up to our human potential.  In our baptism, we celebrate our cosmic potential because if we are only determined by our material, physical and historical circumstances, then we may find ourselves trapped; trapped by the imperfections that we find in us and around us.  We can get so burdened by the imperfections in us and around us that we can believe that we are negatively determined toward death, entropy and despair.

  But the experience of hope and joy and the sublime cannot allow such imperfection to define our destiny in an absolute sense.  So, we have our cosmic side, our cosmic identity, our birthright, not just into flesh and blood families, but our birthright as children of God.  And

that is what is celebrated in our baptism.  We celebrate our cosmic birthright so that we might rise above mere material determination.   And how often do we need to rise above mere material determination.  The experience of pain and losses of all kinds shout out to us to be what is powerful to determine our lives and our fate and that is where we need to turn to our cosmic destiny so that we do not get buried in the despair of any particular state of imperfection.

  At the baptism of Jesus, the heavenly dove descended and the heavenly voice declared, “You are my Son, the beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  Isn’t that what God said after creation.  “With you I am well pleased.”

  Mozart got more than the average or above average share of cosmic musical ability at an age that baffles our ability to understand, so we declare him a musical genius.  Jesus of Nazareth was so much overwhelmed with the realization and actualization of the cosmic dimension in his life, we have had no other human language to use except to say that Jesus was extra-human, supra-human, even divinized.

   He was divinized more than any other human being, yet we undertake baptism too, because Jesus did not keep likeness to God or divinization to himself; he shared it fully.  He told his friends and disciples to go and baptize.  And as God abided in Jesus, Jesus promised to abide with his friends until we could not longer speak of time in the way that we do.

  We baptize, not because we will ever be as cosmic as Jesus was, but because the risen and cosmic Christ is shared with us to awaken the cosmic dimensions of our own souls.

  And we need to experience our cosmic dimension to help us to rise above our mere material existence and to have our vale of tears touched with the sublime of love, friendship, joy, beauty and insights that move and inspire us to keep on keeping on, because in the end our lives will be determined by love, faith, hope and resurrection and not by demise, loss, despair and death.

  And so we baptize and have been baptized into our cosmic identities as son and daughters of God and our lives are changed if we can but hear the whisper of God behind the scenes of our lives say, “You are my beloved child; you are good, you are no mistake, you are wonderfully put together, and I am pleased with you.”

  We baptize in order to be a baptismal community to baptize others.  Why?  Because the people of this world need to discover their cosmic identities as sons and daughters of God.  This is the way to world peace; to rise to our cosmic identity beyond our oft pitiful worlds of material determination.

    Today you and I are invited to live in this dynamic between our particular identity and our cosmic identity.  We need a balance of both; we cannot be purely spiritual or cosmic beings; if we try, we become world denying, dreamy, cosmic space cadets.  And take the “s” out of cosmic and we become “comic space cadets” living in escapism.

  But if we deny the cosmic and live only a reductionist material existence then we will live solely at the whim of happenstance.  If we’re lucky, all is well.  If were unlucky, all is ill.  We need our experience of the cosmic to help us rise above the particulars of our happenstance so that we can tap into a source of wisdom that helps us have the creative freedom to choose our particular futures with wisdom.

  Baptism invites us to our cosmic identity as sons and daughters of God, so that we can not just survive our particular circumstance but live with some inspired actions.  Jesus was baptized and his true cosmic identity was known.  You and I have been baptized and we are part of a baptismal community to share the knowledge of the cosmic family of God with this world.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

What's in the Name of Jesus?

Holy Name              January 1, 2012  

Ex. 34:1-8            Ps.8        

Rom. 1:1-7           Luke 2:15-21  

Lectionary Link

  Today is a day we mark on our secular calendars as New Year’s Day.  Also, today is the First Sunday after Christmas, but on this year, the Feast of the Holy Name falls on a Sunday.  And when a feast of our Lord falls on a Sunday, it takes precedence over the Sunday on the Church Calendar. (That is some liturgical trivia that you are thrilled to get).  The older name for the Feast of the Holy Name was called The Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord. And that event is an elective surgery that no 8 day old boy would elect if he could speak,(“Rabbi, you’re going to do what?”) Since we would have to explain the meaning of Circumcision to our young children, the Feast of the Holy Name is a more comfortable name for this feast. So it is the eighth day of Christmas, but following the Jewish custom the son of Mary and Joseph was presented to be circumcised but also he was given his name on that day.  The eighth day was the day that Mary attained the required level of ritual purity after giving birth.  The custom of naming was adopted in baptismal practices of the church as well, for at a baptism a person receives ones Christian name.  That is why baptisms are often called christening because one of the meaning of christen is to receive ones name.  Although the literal meaning of christen is to be made to be “in Christ.” Or to be anointed with the oils of chrism.

   When we name a child we do so for many reasons.  We may want to connect a child with the past.  Sometimes we name after a father, mother or family member.  Sometimes we name after a friend.  Some people name based upon how a name sounds.  Some people like to invent new names and new spellings of names, emphasizing that their child is unique, special, one of a kind. My child is going to be a “one of a kind” just like a one of kind snowflake; and sure enough my child certainly goes on to prove that there is no one like him or her.   Native Americans often named their children after a contemporary event that occurred at birth.  From the Hebrew Bible, we know that places and people were named according to the narrative of significant events that occurred at a place or with the birth of a person.  Names were given in response to people and places that were seen as signs of God.

  Do you know what your name means?  Are you living up to your name?  My name means “lover of horses,” and Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great was a great horseman.  I really have never lived up to my name….it’s not that I dislike horses.  I have never spent that much time with horses to be able to develop a special love for them. I think that my parents probably had Philip the Evangelist in mind when they named me; probably not an Episcopal priest.   The failure to live up to my name has made me even more presumptuous; I use the shortened name “Phil,” which means, “lover.”

  In the case of Jesus; his name was given to Mary by the Angel at the annunciation.  So on the occasion of his circumcision he was given the name of Jesus or Yeshua.  Meaning in Hebrew: The Lord God Saves.  God saves.  God is our salvation.

  So today we ponder the meaning of the name of Jesus:  God saves.

  Salvation is not necessarily all that it is cracked up to be.  Many people don’t use their garages for their cars because they save everything.

  Our memories save quite a bit too.  And many of our saved memories come back to haunt us if we experienced trauma in our lives.

  We know our life is transitory and much is passing away.  But do we really want someone who can save everything?                     Maybe we should consider the word saves as meaning: God rescues.  Probably rescues is closer to the meaning intended than a common

notion of the word save.  Some Christians think that saving and salvation refers mainly to being saved from hell after one dies.

  I think that the notion of redemption is probably closest to the meaning of the name of Jesus.  God is our salvation.  God is our redemption.

  You and I know that everything that we have done and everything that has happened to us makes up who we are now.  While we would like simply to erase some of the past deeds and events of our lives, we know that all of these deeds and events are saved because these very deeds and events constitute who we are right now.

  The notion of redemption is that God embraces and accepts our lives as they are and then helps us to come to a positive outcome without regretting what we have actually done or had happen to us.

  To me this is the most positive notion of salvation, because it is not based upon denying the facts of our lives.  It is a redemption that says in spite of everything that we have done or has happened to us, we can use all of it to make good positive decisions for our future.  And we are not ashamed of our past life, because we have integrated the events of our past life to be used to help us minister to others.

  Let us embrace the holy name of Jesus today, not just as a name, but as a functioning spiritual reality of our lives.

  God places before each of us a vision of ourselves in future states as more fully integrated and spiritually mature persons.  All that we will become preserves what we have been but it also does so with integration and wisdom regarding all of the experiences of our life.

  The Holy Name of Jesus shows us the personal salvation to which each of us is called.  The experiences of the present and past may not yet be integrated or may still seem without purpose.  But by faith in the Holy Name of Jesus, we can know that we are on the path to realize the full purpose of our lives.

  I do wish each of us events in 2012 where new purpose of our past lives is discovered.  And I wish for St. John the Divine Episcopal Church further discovery of why received our name as a parish 55 years ago.  And in the Holy Name of Jesus, I wish you a Happy New Year.  Amen. 

John's Gospel: An Entirely Different Christmas Story

Christmas Day        December 25, 2011    

Isaiah 52:7-10   Psalm 98

Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12)  John 1:1-14

Lectionary Link

  There are two of the Gospels that do not include the Infancy Narratives of the Christmas Story.  The Gospel of Mark begins with the adult ministry of Jesus.  And the Gospel of John does not include the stories of the manger, the stable, the wise men and Mary and Joseph.  The Gospel of John is the last of the Gospels to come to its textual form and so many more years of making Christian theology had occurred.

  St. Paul spoke of the Christian life as living in Christ, by Christ, for Christ, with Christ and to Christ; in short St. Paul believed that we lived in an “In-Christed” world and that it was our wonderful favor to discover this mystery.

  The Christmas story elevates the Virgin Mary as the paradigm of all Christians since the spiritual path of each Christian is to realize the birth of Christ in ones lives.  St. Paul said that the mystery of the ages was to realize that Christ in us is the hope of glory.  And Christ is known to be in us as our lives are known to be over-shadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  The Gospel of John has moved the metaphor of the physical town of Bethlehem to the speculative origins of human consciousness itself.  What is it that has given birth to what makes us distinctively human in the order of all other beings?  It is the Word that is indeed the very order of human existence in how we know ourselves.  We receive Word without asking for it; it is our past and present ability.  Even when we are not good users of Word, it uses us because even before we can speak or read or write, we have come into a completely worded human world. 

  Adam in the beginning was given the task of naming everything in his world.  Humanity has been engaged in the task of naming everything for as long as we have been human.

 And our naming of this world is still the human task.  Even when we say the word tree we are reaffirming how this tree is recreated in a new moment of our lives since each moment in one sense is a new beginning, a new birth and a new creation.

  So the writer of the Gospel of John identifies that the telling aspect of Jesus of Nazareth to be WORD made flesh.

  Each of us in our own way is Word made flesh too since we have received the creative understanding of our lives from the Eternal Word that always, already was.

  The way that Word was made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth has changed our world.  And the Word made flesh is still an invitation to us to change our world in the direction of the values of Jesus of Nazareth:  Love God with all of our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves.

  The Christmas Story can be an invitation to childlike wonder as found in the narratives of the birth of the baby Jesus, or it can be a fully adult appreciation of a poetic, linguistic, philosophical Christ who is the eternal Word who has given birth to human consciousness itself.  And I like all of the Christmas presentations since each presentation appeals to a different way in which I am human.

  Let us be thankful for Christ as the eternal Word and let our Christmas gift to God be the finding of our Voice to use our words to tell our good news and let the body language of our lives speak the kind deeds that our world surely needs to hear.  The Gospel presentations of Christmas say to us in many ways:  “Merry Christmas!”  Amen.