Sunday School, January 8, 2017 1 Epiphany A

Sunday School, January 8, 2017    1 Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ

Themes

Baptism

Baptism is a celebration of being in God’s family with others.

At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of God’s Son, Jesus into a human family, the family of Mary and Joseph of Nazareth.

When Jesus was born, he was already God’s child, but we celebrate that Jesus was a human child because we believe that God wanted to become so much like one of us to show us how God could be known by human beings.

Jesus as God’s Son, did all the human things that we as humans do.  Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist the Jordan River.  He did this so show us how much God was with us in our human lives.  Jesus was baptized to show us that we could be baptized too as a celebration of being members of God’s family.

Jesus was baptized so that we might follow him and be baptized too.

What is baptism for us?  It is a celebration of being members in God’s family.  So we have two families is our lives; the family of our birth and the family of God.

Jesus came to us as God’s special son to show us that we too can know ourselves as God’s sons and daughters. 

Why is it important?  Because we will live our lives differently if we know and live as a member of God’s family.  We will live with love, kindness and forgiveness.  We know that our human families are not perfect but we know that God is perfect.  Since we know this we can forgive each other for not being perfect.

Sermon:

How did you come into this world?  You were born right?  And you were born into a family, right?

  But did you know that you were born into another family too?

  Who gave birth to this entire world and the sun and the moon and the stars and everything?

  We might say that God gave birth to this entire world.  That’s what it means when we say that God created the world.

  But sometimes we forget that God is the creator of the world.  Sometimes we forget that we are a member of the great world that God gave birth to.

  How do you and I remember that we were born?  We remember that we were born by celebrating our birthdays each year.

  So how do we celebrate that we are also a member of the family of God?

  We celebrate our membership in God’s family by what we call baptism. 

  Jesus Christ came into this world to remind us that we also belong to the family of God.  And Jesus Christ was baptized into the family of men and women, boys and girls, so that he could show us how much God cares for us and how close God is to our lives.  God joined the human family to remind us that we belong to the family of God.

  So as we remember the baptism of Jesus today, we also remember our own baptism too.

  So when you are born into your family, how do you keep alive as a little baby?  Do your mom and dad feed you?  How many of you had a high chair?  Why do we put babies in high chairs?  We do it so when a baby is still young, a baby can still be at the table with us when we eat our meals.  Family meals are important because that is how people in a family get fed; but they are also important because that is when members of a family talk with each other, share stories  and memories.  And each family has special meals at birthdays, at Thanksgiving and at Christmas.  So family meals are very important to us for many reasons.  If your dad does not come home for dinner because he has a business trip, does that mean that your dad does not like you?  No.  Even though dad misses a meal, dad is still with you in his love and his care and his concern.  Even when we don’t see mom or dad at our meal, their love is still present within us.

  Do you see this piece of furniture here?  What do we call it?  An Altar?  But another name for this piece of furniture is the “Lord’s Table.”  What meal do we have on the Lord’s Table?  We call it the Holy Eucharist or our meal of Thanksgiving.

  Holy Eucharist is the Christian family meal and it is a very special meal…we have a special plate and cup and we have nice candles.  And when we have our meals we sing and we share stories about Jesus.  And even though we don’t see Jesus, we know that Jesus is with us in his love and in his promise that he would be with us as we receive the bread and the wine.  When we receive the bread and the wine, we take it into our mouth and it goes into us and it becomes us.  And so the food we eat becomes a part of us.  And that is how close Jesus promises to be with us in our Christian family meal; even though we don’t see him, he is close to us.

  Since this is a special meal, I want you to have some special practices in receiving this meal.  When you come to receive the bread and wine. First we are kneeling as a sign of respect to Christ.  Next we can prepare for receiving the presence of Christ in different ways.  We can whisper some prayers: Be near to me dear Jesus and be near to my friends.  We can make the mark of our Christian family…the sign of the cross.  We put out our hands and when I put the bread on your hand, I say, “The body of Christ the Bread of heaven.”  And when you receive the bread, you say,  “Amen.”  Do you know what Amen means?  It means, “Yes!  I agree.”  And then when you hold your bread to dip into the wine and the cup bearer say, “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”  You say again, “Amen.”  And then you carefully dip your bread to just have a little wine in it.  And then you can whisper, “Thank you Jesus for being in me.”  And you can make the sign of the cross again before you go back to your seat.

  You are baptized and so you are in the family of God.  And you receive the bread and the wine because this is our Christian family meal.

  And we remember that we need lots of things for our life that we cannot see.  We need air and we can’t see air, But we also need love, and hope and joy and faith and we can’t see them even though we know that they are real.

  Do you now understand baptism and Holy Eucharist a little better now?  I hope so. 

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

January 8, 2017: The First Sunday After theEpiphany

Gathering Songs:Hallelu, Hallelujah!, Peace Before Us, There is One Lord, I’ve Got Peace Like a River

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

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.  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: Hallelu, Hallelujah!  (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 84)

Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Praise ye the Lord!  Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!  Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Prophet Isaiah

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations..

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Let us read together from Psalm 29

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his Name; * worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the LORD is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders; * the LORD is upon the mighty waters.

The voice of the LORD is a powerful voice; *  the voice of the LORD is a voice of splendor.

.

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.

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

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

People:                        And also with you.

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

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

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

2-Love,  3-Light, 4-Christ

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of God.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar.

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

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.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

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

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

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

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

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

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

 

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

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

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

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

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Hymn: There is One Lord (Renew! # 161)

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.  There is one God who is Father of All. 

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: I’ve Got Peace Like a River (Christian Children’s Songbook # 122)

I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.  I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river.  I’ve got peace like a river in my soul..

Love

Joy

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God! 

Naming Is the Human Vocation

Feast of the Holy Name   A  January 1, 2017
Numbers 6:22-27  Psalm 8

Galatians 4:4-7  Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 2:15-21 

Lectionary Link

  An Iowan farmer who also raised livestock, cows and pigs, had only daughters and no sons.  So the daughters had to do chores.  They had to take care of the animals too.  But with his daughters, the farmer realized that he had a seriously emotional dilemma.  His  girls loved to feed the cows and the pigs but the problem was that they got so attached to the animals, they gave all of the pigs and cows names.  They could recognize their individualities and they would talk to them, call them and train them.  But this became a real problem when the calves and the young swine were fed out and became massive huge animals destined for the stockyards and for the tables of carnivores in America.  Once the girls had given the animals a name, it was hard to view them as simply commodities for sale.

  What do humans do?  We give names.  In the story about the first human being, Adam, we are told that God gave Adam the task of naming all of the animals.

  This story about naming means that the most profound way that men and women were made in the image of God was because we name.  When we name we create difference.

  The creation story tells us that God created by naming.  God named something and then it came into being.  God said, "Let there be Light," and there was light.   So God giving something a name before it existed is how we are told that creation happened.

  The beginning of the Gospel of John retells the creation story:  In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.  All things were created by the Word.  And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

  And what is the name of the Word becoming a fleshly, human being?  His name was Jesus.

  The story of Jesus is a story about how new creation happens in a significant way.  New creation is always happening as long as there are human beings using language.  We are made in God  image in having language and we are called to name things.  Everything eventually comes to have a name if it comes to human attention.  Things that we don't know, we still name them as "mystery."  We give names, even to things that we don't know.

  What we do know is that in this world of creation there is freedom for lots of good things and bad things to occur.  The story in the Bible is about how to live in a free world and participate with a good and loving kind direction in our lives?

  The way in which we know the direction of goodness and kindness is when a personal example arises in our lives and history to show us what is the greatest and best way to live.

  Jesus Christ arose in the life of human beings and he was so good and so great that he became the standard for how humanity should live and love and care for each other and for our world.  The New Testament is a story about the after effects of the life of Jesus.  When there were so many profound after effects in the life of Jesus, his story had to be told and preserved for people of every generation and so the words had to be preserved.  Words are spirit and they are life; they are a hidden reality of our humanity which guide the directions of our lives.  So we need to be not just passive recipients of word ability, we need to be informed about how we use our words.  We need to focus upon the examples of people who have been most creative, loving, just and kind with the words and body language loving deeds of their lives.

  In the telling the story of Jesus, the story of his birth was told.  Jesus was born into a family in Nazareth.  He lived within the religious tradition of Judaism.  In the rituals of Judaism, a baby boy on the eighth day of his life was circumcised and named in a special dedicatory ceremony.  This ceremony marked the young baby as belonging to God's people and he bore that mark on his body.  And the eighth day was the day for naming.

  We name babies with aspiration and hopes for their future.  Different cultures have different naming traditions.  The entire Hebrew Scripture could be called a "naming" tradition.  If fact, if one simply looked at the meaning of the names of the persons whose stories are told in the Hebrew Scriptures, one can find the theology of the authors represented in the personal names.

  Jesus came into a family that had a naming tradition.  They were proud of him but the church believed that the parents of Jesus had communication before his birth about his name and his destiny.  The angel told his parents that his name was to be Jesus.  This was an Aramaic version of the Hebrew name Joshua, or Yeshua.  This name means, The Lord God, Yaheweh is salvation.

  So the name of Jesus was a proclamation about nature of God and God's purpose for humanity.  God's nature is to preserve and save.  God's action is to save and preserve and this is the theology of the name of Jesus.

  We can fast forward from the naming ceremony of Jesus to his afterlife in his post-resurrection appearances, his ascension and his ability to be continually made known to people who are alive.

  The resurrection of Christ was an announcement that God is the one who can preserve and save all life and that the Holy Spirit is given to us as evidence of this assurance that we will be preserved with the personal identity that each of us has as signified by the fact that we have been given a personal name within our community of significant people.

  The significance of the name of Jesus is related fully after his resurrection life within the church.  The resurrected Christ is the active sign of God's preserving and saving action.

  We sometimes try to forget the subsequent events in the life of Jesus when we try to read the story of his life in the chronological order of the Gospel writers.  We need to embrace the Holy Name of Jesus as a proclamation of what the church believed about God and how the nature of God was further revealed because of the life of Jesus.

  The name of Jesus is Holy because he has attained a special human uniqueness to inform, guide and inspire the direction of God for humanity toward, faith, love and justice. Why?  Because we live knowing that God is our ultimate salvation and preservation.  Amen.

Sunday School, January 1, 2017 Feast of the Holy Name A

Sunday School, January 1, 2017 Feast of the Holy

Themes:

The Feast of the Holy Name

Naming and the meanings of Name

What are your names? First, Middle, Last Name?
What do your names mean? If your last name is Cook, does that mean that some ancestor in the past had the job of being a cook?
How did your parents choose your Name? Are you named after a family member or friend of your parents? Did you parents just like the name?

Cultures have naming traditions. Native Americans are often named after events in natures or animals.
The Old Testament is a book of Names. You can study the names of all of the people in the Bible and the meanings of their names will help tell the story of the people who believed in God.

Adam means man
Abraham means father of many
Abigail means “my father is joy”
David means beloved
Moses means son or deliver
Deborah means “bee”
Elisha means my God is salvation
Jesus means God is salvation

The Feast of the Holy Name is the 8th day of Christmas and in the life of Jesus Mary and Joseph took Jesus for a naming ceremony and another birth ritual of all Jewish baby boys.

Why do we have names?
To identify us and make our uniqueness stand out.

Why do we say the Holy Name of Jesus?
Holy means most special or most unique. Jesus was the most unique person who ever lived. He came as God Son to show us that God is our salvation. God is the one who can save us even when we know that we won’t live forever. We know that our bodies die and so it appears that we are not saved or preserved. Jesus came to show us that God loved us and that God will preserve us beyond our deaths. God is our salvation, the salvation which we call resurrection. Jesus had this special name because he was the one who was God’s gift to the world to show us how much God cares for us. Even when we die and all of the people who knew us die, our name will not be forgotten because God will remember us all beyond our deaths.

The Holy Name of Jesus means God is our salvation. Jesus showed us that this is true.



St. John the Divine Episcopal Church
17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
Family Service with Holy Eucharist
January 1, 2017 The Feast of the Holy Name

Gathering Songs: How Majestic is Your Name, Jesus Name above All Names, Praise the Name of Jesus, Majesty


Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever. 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: How Majestic is Your Name, Renew! # 98
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in al the earth. O Lord, we praise your name. O Lord, we magnify your name: Prince of Peace, Mighty God, O Lord God Almighty. O Lord, we praise your name. O Lord, we magnify your name: Prince of Peace, Mighty God, O Lord God Almighty

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

Liturgist: Let us pray
Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen..

Litany Phrase: 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 Book of Numbers

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them,The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 8

1 O LORD our Governor, * how exalted is your Name in all the world!
2 Out of the mouths of infants and children * your majesty is praised above the heavens.


5 What is man that you should be mindful of him? * the son of man that you should seek him out?
6 You have made him but little lower than the angels; * you adorn him with glory and honor;

7 You give him mastery over the works of your hands; * you put all things under his feet:
8 All sheep and oxen, * even the wild beasts of the field,

9 The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, * and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.
10 O LORD our Governor, * how exalted is your Name in all the world!

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 Luke
People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

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

Sermon: Fr. Phil
Children’s Creed

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

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (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.

Song: Jesus, Name Above All Names, Renew! # 26

Jesus, Name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord, Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, Living Word.

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

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

The Lord be with you
And also with you.

Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord.

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

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

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

All may gather around the altar

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant: Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
People: Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Praise the Name of Jesus, Renew! # 7
Praise the Name of Jesus, praise the name of Jesus, He’s my Rock, he’s my Fortress, he’s my Deliverer, in whom I trust. Praise the name of Jesus.

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: Majesty, (Renew # 63)
Majesty, worship His majesty. Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise.
Majesty, kingdom authority flow from His throne unto His own;
His anthem raise.
So, exalt, lift up on high the name of Jesus.
Magnify, come glorify Christ Jesus the King.
Majesty, worship His Majesty; Jesus who died,
now glorified, King of all kings.

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

Aphorism of the Day, December 2016

Aphorism of the Day, December 31, 2016

December 31st is the last day of our common calendar year though it is the 7th day of Christmas on the Christian calendar.  One might note how cultures have "secularized" Lent by moving some of the Lenten intensity to the famous end of the year activity known as the "New Year" resolution.  In a New Year resolution a person sets goals for the amendment of one's life behaviors.  Ironic how things which are anthropological sound behaviors within the church lose their relevance there for many even while "amendment of life" goals for New Year's resolution are perfectly fine.  Amendment of life is a human universal and such intentional goal setting is needed within or outside of the church.  So do both; observe a "secular" Lent by having New Year's resolutions and when Lent actually arrives see how you've done and how you can continue the practice of excellence.  Intentional resolve towards excellence is good at any time of the year, secular calendar or Christian calendar.  Good luck in your resolve!

Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2016

The Feast of Holy Name celebrates the event of the naming ceremony of Jesus which according to Jewish custom coincided with his circumcision.  In popular parlance, baptism is also called "christening."  To christen in English means to name, though the actual etymology means to "make Christian," which in fact sums up the baptismal event which includes water baptism and anointing with "chrism" as one is sealed by the Holy Spirit and "marked" as Christ's own forever.  In the Episcopal liturgy there has been a change from "Name this child" to a presentation of the child using the child's "Christian" or "first" name. Naming ceremonies are confessional ceremonies signifying the belief that a personal entity can retain the same identity over time even when the "atomic" structure of one's physicality may be in constant renewal and transformation.  The "christening" in Christian baptism has a hint of the name of Yesuha/Jesus, meaning the Lord God is our salvation.  Christian baptism is a confession that through Christ one believes that the eternal solidity of God can save or preserve or give everlasting health to people so as to attain a continuing singular self-recognizable identity beyond death.  In the Holy Name, one aspire to believe in an enduring and continuing identity signified in the act of assigning a name.  At death one makes the confession, "I was, therefore I will continue to be in the preserving memory of the memorializing God."

Aphorism of the Day, December 29, 2016

Naming is the ultimate practice of abbreviation.  Think of all of the occasions of becoming that are rather reductively reduced to a name.  We may think to know someone involves knowing their name but their name is only a faint abbreviation of who they are.  Naming is the necessary habit of language; it tries to fix things that are moving.  Time means constant motion and change and the conversion of experience in time to its equivalence is impossible.  (There is no equivalence to being there while being there).  So we have language and naming as our futile effort to "uncomplicate" the fact that we are becoming in time.  Language is the production of illusion believing that the experience of the senses can be rendered in words.  We as language users need to take the further humble step of actually naming language as the main human occupation even if it is but a life of continuous abbreviation and reduction.  The ultimate human reduction in language is the word, "God."

Aphorism of the Day, December 28, 2016

Cultures have naming traditions.  Part of the rise of individualism has resulted in the power of the individual expressed as seemingly choosing one's own name or the name of one's child apart from the restrictions of the cultural.  There is nothing more powerless than a baby receiving a name since the babe is a person without determining power.  The worst of naming power would be a slave owner naming of the slaves.  Cultures, families, tribes and clans with naming traditions do not regard their traditions as disempowering the babe but as placing the babe within the overall gift of empowerment which comes through having a group identity.  Within empowerment which comes from the group tradition a name can also be the aspiration for the destiny of a child.  The tradition of the holy name of Jesus is that his name was God given and that he lived up to the proclamation which his name signified, "God is our salvation."  In the holy name of Jesus one finds a confession about God but also a sign in the person of Jesus of how salvation would be instantiated in human experience.

Aphorism of the Day, December 27, 2016

In the rise of hierarchy within human comparison, Jesus was given and bore a  "holy" name.  The word "holy" designated such a specialness which meant unsurpassable by any other human being.  In the general sense of specialness, the sense of unique individuality, everyone is "special" like the claim about each snowflake, viz., each snowflake is unique.  Holiness is a specialness which is orientated toward godliness and it refers to how human beings move from holy innocence as babes into holiness as an outcome of knowing good and evil and learning to prevail in the conditions of Freedom which permits both good and evil.  By prevail, one might mean how to go beyond good or evil with a sense of the super-good, the supreme Good which in human action and intent involves the continuous habit of overcoming evil with good, and reinforcing good with affirming practice.

Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2016

We're heading toward January 1, 2017 or the Feast of the Holy Name.  As humans with language ability, we name.  In the primordial story, first person Adam was given the task of naming all of the animals.  This is a really simplistic brilliant way of noting that if Word creates the human world, then the human subject reflects the image of word by being a "Namer."  Naming is the way in which humanity differentiates their word experience.  Naming is the human effort to try to force identities upon "moving targets."  A person is a an accumulation of occasions of becoming in time, a moving subject, who with a name is abstracted from the states of becoming and reduced to a singular word.  The name or word is the human way of saying that a subject maintains a unity of being within the changing states of becoming.  Yeshua, Jesus was the Holy Name given to the Christ Child.  His very name referred beyond his particular earthly identity.  It means the "Lord God" is our salvation/preservation.  Humanity names the "Lord God" as the ultimate preserver of all identities and values since God as the Greatest and Expanding Container is the Omni-Becomer who preserves all that has previously Become within the Divine Ground of Creative Freedom.  To name the Chief Representative of God to humanity, Jesus, means that we confess God to be the one who preserves, ironically, all identities within an overall dynamic of becoming.  Holy naming is our task of celebrating unity of identity in the midst of continually changing subjects.

Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2016

Christmas is a day to differentiate between "secular" humanism and Christian humanism.  The "Word" made Flesh or "Incarnation" is a variety of humanism which celebrates the obvious, namely, that anthropomorphism is unavoidable.  If we cannot but have human experience we can enshrine that as a counterpart of the old Ptolemaic geocentricism with our own brand of "humanocentricism."  After all, if we can only have a human experience of anything, why not enthrone ourselves as those who have been lucky ascenders of the evolutionary convergent impersonal forces to become "persons."  Christian humanism does indeed accept our human limitation but within the limitation we value things about what we can perceive as being gifts beyond us and from higher Personality than our own personalities.  Higher Personality "tinkered" with the chaotic forces to bring an order, even the order of human personality founded by being inhabited by word ability.   In Christian humanism we think it is reasonably faithful to believe that our personality derives from Higher Personality.  The story of Jesus in his life and afterlife has given us a revelation of the derivation and the direction of our humanism, and the history of humanity, even "religious" humanity proves that we need creativity in more than science and in our own abilities; we need the Horizon of the Higher Personality to beckon us to include love and justice in the basic pursuit of creative genius.

Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2016

We with glee participate in the "childification" of Christmas because after all it is about the birth of a baby.  Christmas is easier to discuss with children than Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter and so it has taken cultural preference over Easter even though the Christmas story did not really become significant until after the post-resurrection appearances of Christ.  As we participate in the cultural excesses of the childification of Christmas, let us not forget the prominence of the "child motif" in the Gospels.  Jesus said things were revealed to babes that the wise did not know.  He said one had to become like a child to perceive the kingdom of God.  He said that one had to be "born again" which could mean that one's second birth is a Sanctified Holy Regression to one's first birth in its original joy and yet unsullied by the process of knowing good and evil that comprises the becoming adult experience.  St. Paul said that Christ is "born" in us and that happens because one is over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit.  As Christmas is childified by so many secular rituals, let us not forget to access the original blessing of our births.  It resides within each person and the original cinders of its flame need to be rekindled as adult cynicism born in the harsh battle between good and evil in the freedom of the world has threatened to extinguish the original innocence.  Let us now return to innocence but not in naiveté but in the hard work of holiness.  After the freedom of living with all probabilities let us return to our birth as original blessing and hear God say, "It is good, it is very good."

Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2016

Interaction between people involves having words drawn out of people something like a magnet.  We are magnetically, perhaps by human desire, drawn to commit language acts towards each other in a wide variety of ways.  When we look at the people who have come to be called in our history, "Great," we can analyze the kinds of language products that have been used to tell how and why such a person was Great.  The Christmas Stories, the infancy narratives of Jesus are particular story form  ways of how the writers of the Gospel were drawn to commit language products to members of their community as they used existing rhetorical forms in their linguistic environment to wax eloquent about the greatness of Jesus Christ.  With insight and intuitions of our own reconstruction of their contexts we can seek to appreciate why they were drawn to write about Christ's greatness in the way in which they did and we can in corresponding ways of our own time be drawn to make the stories of the greatness of Christ live again and in new ways contextually specific to our own lives.

Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2016

When one grinds coffee beans, the longer the grinder is on the more powdery the beans become and more surfaces are created through which hot water can help to release the taste of the bean.  When one reads and study more, each word, "as it were" attains more surfaces and so when one has created more "word" surfaces through reading, reading continually becomes a new and different experience.  This means that when there is an effort to communicate same words, they have different meanings for people who have different reading contexts for their vocabularies.  A person who has read the entire Western Philosophical tradition, history and most of the holy books and mythologies of all people of faith as well as the founders of modern psychology, sociology and anthropology and then added findings of modern science, such a person reads the biblical words differently than those who do not have the same word contexts into which the biblical words have their signifying possibility and colored moods.  So biblical words attain different meanings of truth based upon the context of their "hearing."  In this way the experience of the same words can be both truthful and contradictory for different people; they can be truthful meanings in different way.  Since context specific means "located" in time, the truth of one context in time using the same word can be different at another moment in time for a person or persons in a different context.  One can confess the universal truth of Language as the Container of all meanings even while noting that the experience of individual language products within this great Container can be contradictory.

Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2016

If we understand the name Emmanuel to be "God with us," then the very notion of God would open the meaning of "us" to mean every human being.  It was written within a context to have "us" perhaps refer to a group of people who were feeling oppression during the time of Isaiah.  By coming to writing the particular "us" has become a generalized "us."  And it is an "us" which transcends our own small contextual us.  We have to admit that God is also with the "us" who on the surface of things might be our enemies.  When the early followers of Jesus believe Emmanuel to be a title of relevance for Jesus Christ, they had already proclaimed Jesus as relevant to the lives of the Gentiles and so the "us" of Isaiah was generalized to include all Gentiles or all people.  What happens when "us" becomes all inclusive?  The "them" is eliminated.

Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2016

The last shall be first.  The experience of Jesus Christ in his risen life by the church meant that how Christ appeared to his followers began to give shape to the Christian notion of the messiah.  We sometimes just assume the notion was fully developed in Hebrew Scriptures and it was exactly instantiated in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  This far from the case; the Risen Christ redefined the meaning of the Messiah for Christians and so the Hebrew Scripture references to messiah are worn like Christmas ornaments upon the tree of Jesus the Messiah for what he had become for Christians.  People who are more interested in enforcing doctrine as precisely formed meaning that the herd must "subscribe" to or be "excommunicated" lose the Spirit of the Messiah which is a luring and beckoning way for many people in many ways to know how God is with them.  The notion of the Messiah became instantiated in a new way in the Risen Christ and the notion of the Messiah is still flexibly inviting and friendly today for people to discover their lives touched by the divine.

Aphorism of the Day, December 19, 2016

The most philosophical Christmas Story in the Gospels is not the birth in Bethlehem but the Gospel of John which states that the Word was from the beginning and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.  So Word is what preexists and creates all particular human experience of everything including language users becoming conscious of the fact that it is their use of language which is the preexistent condition for creation of any human life as we know.  And to deconstruct this, I must be brutally honest that I am using words to say all of this.  So we are on a whirling referential cycle of words continually referring to other words and yet those words attain a concrescence in become flesh or material existence.  Material existence may have existence apart from words but without words we could not know it.  The Bethlehem story needs to be appraised in its function as qualifying a constellation of words within the overall universe of words.

Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2016

Reading the Gospels and biblical literature fully clouded by all of the scientific finding that have happened since has meant that people import too much of what has happened since the Gospels were written back into the Gospel writing.  This is "natural" because where else can readers be but here and now?  It is also like a foreign invasion of people of a later time into the "recreated" straw people that we make of biblical characters.  Our questions are not the ones raised and answered in the same way that biblical writers wrote for their readership.  Our taken for granted logic and science is vastly different than theirs.  What sanguine Bible readers try to do is to translate between the reconstructed paradigms of biblical writers and our own paradigms which govern what we take for granted in our constellation of knowledge.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2016

The Infancy narratives are in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark and John.  They represent the heuristics, the inventions of writers who determined using the familiar ethos, pathos, logos criteria of discourse to communicate with their readership.  They determined the make up of their readership, they devised the kinds of appeals to the hearts of their readership and they presented the logic of their story.  Their audience was familiar with the titles of the Caesar (Bringer of world Peace, Savior, son of god, divine one) and they were familiar with the miraculous birth stories used to legitimize the Caesar's greatness=August nature.  They were also aware of the templates of the Messiah from Hebrew Scriptures and so the infancy narrative discourses plumbed the familiar word and story "vocabularies" of their readership to present the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  All the while, they also hid the mystagogy of the early church within the Gospels as spiritual manuals for an exclusive readership, the ones who knew that Christ had been born within them when their lives had by overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.  One can only applaud the inspired rhetorical achievement of the Gospels within their original settings.

Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2016

Who can avoid interpreting God, revelation and holy books?  Even if one says something is self-evidential or obvious it still involves human interpretation.  Interpretation can only be inexact and partial.  The best that we can say is that interpretations which become established within a community which agrees about interpretations, then such interpretations become "infallibly" adequate for the sustaining the unity of that community until more infallibly adequate interpretations come to prevail for the functional success of the community.  Infallibility is a function of the community which accepts it as a designation for the preferred method of a standardized unity even while all members may not really be in agreement with the specifics of how anything is interpreted.  Infallibility is a functional designation to give force to community cohesion.  Scientific paradigms do not need to declare "infallibility" about their theories; their theories reign with functional significance even as the specifics of the functional significance can change overtime.  In science one can be honest about the changing functional significance of a theory since everything is always open to falsification in the future.  The height of delusion is for anyone to assume to have the "final" interpretation on anything or to presume to be a final oracle on anything, but particularly the plenitude of God.  By the very definition of God, God would always be more than the progressive knowledge and the interpretations of God which come to language. About God and scientific truth, it is equally true that "More can be said," since both still have a future within human experience meditated by human language.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2016

All writing if it is continued to be read dies a death after it is written.  It dies the death of time in originating in a time that is no more after it is written.  The life of a written text is based upon how it get used in its future and a text gets reused and misread over and over again because the original context is lost.  When the original setting is lost, what remains are the words and the words have embedded within them universal transhistorical traces which can be re-interpreted into new context.  Immanuel was a name which derived in an Isaian situation and many years later other readers of Isaiah applied this name to another person, Jesus of Nazareth as a way to express the significance of who Jesus had become in the early church.  One can say that all past language predicts all future language because word bears within its very usage by users the possibility of the eternal return of meanings, not exact same meanings, but the reworked traces of former meanings.

Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2016

"Emmanuel" or God with us was to be the name of a child born in the time of Isaiah.  Much has been made out of this Isaian reference about this child to be named "Emmanuel."  It became for Gospel writers one of the names of Jesus since in their method of interpretation the template of Hebrew Scriptures provided the predicative referential framework for speaking about the significance that Jesus came to have in the house churches spreading through the cities of the Roman Empire faster than Starbucks franchises.  There is not a little irony in "God with us" because of the meaning of "us."  In the fullest sense "us" means all of humanity, though that is not probably what it meant in the Isaian context.  "God with us" has been claimed by Christians fighting each others in all sorts of battles both ideological and also with the weapons of war.  Every theist presumes to have "God with us" as somewhat of a personal "possession."  God being with all and God being with me and mine is the continuum between and the general and the particular.  And the generalized "God with us," with humanity as a whole ends up deconstructing "God with us as church, communion, country, tribe, clan, parish, family, person since we are the contained and not the Container in the grand scheme of things.  God as the Container of All has no external environment to the Divine Self; as the contained we have environment and so we end up making everything "relative" to our location.  In the greater environment, our "relativity" gets deconstructed.

Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2016

How does the past "predict" the future?  Humanity get all excited about Nostradamus-type prediction even if like the daily horoscopes the mind is clever enough to project how one interprets one's current life as fitting the "predictions" of the horoscope.  We exist upon a reservoir of language and our particular language base within a cultural tradition upholds us with access to particular word habits which predict how we are going to describe current events.  When something great happens in the present, we use the traditions of greatness of the past, to speak about current greatness.  Past greatness predicts future greatness since the superlative is a category of human language and when the superlative is articulated it will be like the superlative in the past and it will seem "predictive" because a group of people have a Yogi Berra experience of it's like "Deja vu all over again."   We would rather believe in specific clairvoyance rather than the general eternal return of the same when past language structuring will continue to restructure what comes to language in the future in a like manner because we like to think current greatness compares favorably with past greatness.



Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2016

Isaiah wrote about a sign being a young woman with child and this child will be called "Emmanuel" meaning "God is with us."  There is something rather generic about this in that many parents who have had a child have felt the child to be such a special gift as to be able to declare that indeed "God is with us" in the birth of the child.  St. Paul, long before the birth narratives of Jesus were written, spoke about the spiritual birth of "Christ in you, the hope of glory."  How did Christ become in one?  One was over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit, essentially fathered and mothered by the Holy Spirit.  One can see how this Christian reality of being made aware of one being a child of God in the event of spiritual awakening could be coded in the birth narratives of Jesus as the mystagogy of the early church.  The Christmas story is cryptic mysticism and it can ruined by literalism even as literalism is a very attractive "primary naivete" to live in.

Aphorism of the Day, December 11, 2016

As human beings we sometimes use religion and science to pit specific human language capacity against the other even if this denies the human language capacity to deploy many discursive practices of language.  What is the discursive practice of language which is occurring in the continuous "day-dreaming" going on within a person?  Such language products rarely are brought to conscious life even though they perhaps consist of the creative abstractions which help us solve problems even while providing entertainment and relief in the midst of the tedium of life.  Such day-dreaming and imaginations which manifest themselves in "interior" language are true even if they don't attain the same "external" visible verification in actual events of spoken or written word or acted out deed.  The Bible uses multivalent discourse, some of which is naïve realism about events which could have been empirically verified.  It also contains language of inspiration which is more of the nature of "day-dream" language.  This kind of language is equally true as the language which pertains to what could be "empirically verified" since it makes no sense to say that one human way of using language is intrinsically superior to another human way of using language.  The problems comes when people interpret dream language as empirically verifiable referential language.  Language use in both production and interpretation is validated by the pragmatic function of a language event in being insightful.  What needs to be said is that many adult religious people still treat much of the biblical language in childish, and not child-like ways.  Childish language use occurs when poetic imagination is treated as the empirically verifiable.  Child-like language use as an adult is when an adult can be unafraid to use poetic imagination to express wonder at Plenitude.

Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2016

Christians treat "Gospel" as though it originated with them.  It was in fact taken from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus used the Hebrew word "basar" or "good news" to characterize the essence of his mission.  An aspect of the Messiah as understood from the prophet Isaiah was that there would be one who was "divinized" by having the Spirit of the Lord be upon such a Messiah.  For what purpose?  To proclaim good news to the poor, release the prisoner, comfort the afflicted and liberate the captive.  When John the Baptist and his "followers" had doubts about Jesus, the response was to let them know that in the ministry and mission of the Isaian messianic prerogatives were being fulfilled in Jesus.  Sometimes we treat all of the later definitions of Messiah as having been final in the times when the notion was still in fluid development.

Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2016

The Enlightenment and modern science dethroned God as center of the intellectual universe and placed Reason there.  Reason became accessible by the Cartesian transcendental subject who "thinks, therefore he or she is."  Science dethroned theology as the "queen" of the sciences.  In order to be credible biblical literature had to be paraded as recounting events that all could be "empirically" verifiable.  This contortion of presentation has resulted in scientists discounting religious people as weak minded mythologists and religious people feverishly trying to prove to scientists and to themselves that all of the stuff of the Bible was and happened in empirically verifiable ways.  And so we have the situation where the heads of the congressional science committee believe that the world is only a few thousand years old because that's what the "Bible says."  The false stand off between Bible reading and science is quite easily resolved by embracing the fact that both parties are using words and language.  Word and language embody universal recurring experiences of humanity dressed up in the particular details of the prevalent cultures.  Word and language have created human beings in discursive ways and with many nuances of how the ways of being human are translated into language products.  Science creates language products which have functional and pragmatic uses for humans; modernity seems to prefer the pragmatic results of science even while denying the relevance of the discourses found in the Bible.  Persons who have come to privilege science over biblical relevance for the most part have allowed the discursive aspects that once was engaged by biblical writings to now be nourished in the plethora of other kinds of literature and within the cinematic and cyber by-products of language.  Scientific people now just interact and embrace the "universal themes embedded in biblical writings" in non-biblical formats.  Narrow biblicists decry such secularity when they should be those sewing the correspondences between universal biblical themes together with how those universal themes are present always already in modern and post-modern culture.  Biblicists have chosen to be cloistered and irrelevant to anyone except those who want to escape and live within the cloister of those who pretend that everything written in the Bible is and was "empirically verified and comports to the scientific method."

 Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2016

One could say that modern science brought about changes in how the Bible was read.  Modern science caused a reappraisal of myth.  Myth in New Testament era was used in the pejorative if it referred to non-Christian or non-Hebraic topics within the Greco-Roman traditions.  Modern science brought about modern historicism when the empirical verification insights were applied to the past, namely, that a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system pertained in New Testament times in the same ways as they do now.  Some Christian apologists who embraced the truth of empiricism decided that everything in the Bible had to be defended as "could have been empirically verifiable" in order to be "true."  They did this even though they conveniently ignored the notion that something had to be able to be replicated and tested in order to be a "true" theory.  Things like walking on water, virgin births and resurrection tended to be "one-time unique" events with the scientific verification being that they "might" happen again in the future and therefore they cannot be diminished in having "scientific" truth status.

Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2016

The book of Isaiah is a book with lots of visions of a much better world, even a world of perfect harmony.  Such utopian visions function as invitations to become better than we are now or for the oppressed, they function as rhetorical analgesics.  The words hit the memory places in the brain which retain original innocence and activate soothing effects in very unsoothing times.  Such visions are given to wish away the cruel wound of freedom which includes the outcome of the powerful not caring for the weak but exploiting them.  The cruel wound of freedom is the freedom for things to go wrong for lots of people.  Visions of utopia spin a return to innocence when there is the total lack of awareness of good or evil.  Utopian views pretend a state of innocence and pretend to heal permanently the wound of freedom in time.  But the state of automatic innocence is but the parallel memorial state accessible to all because all were once infants and children who were yet unaware of the meaning and value of the great wound in freedom, namely that bad things can and do happen.  This is an unavoidable outcome of true freedom.  The conditions of freedom do not falsify the rhetorical function of utopian vision as long as one realizes that the Ground of Freedom is greater than the visions of utopia.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2016

The oracle words of Jesus which arose in the early church and were written in the Gospels are sometimes rather enigmatic and baffling, but as a wisdom teacher his words were meant to baffle the logical mind to think beyond.  Baffling words? The least in the kingdom of heaven are greater than John the Baptist?  The first shall be last and the last first? Huh?  When something is written or said in the present, it is always the latter or latest day in time.  This means that the one with the last word is always the first in determining meanings of all that came before.  Even when we try to be "true to the history of things as they were" we are doing it from our selective perspective now and so our last word makes it first in explicating the meanings of what went before.  This also highlights the fact that we think we have "insider" information about past because we actually know what happened.  The Gospel writers knew what happened and from the success of the Jesus Movement into the churches in the cities throughout the Roman world, they wrote the meanings of the life of Jesus and the life of John the Baptist.  And now I have claimed a first while being last, since I am now writing about the meanings and intentions of the Gospel writers.  So it's not so baffling after all; it's quite unavoidable.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2016

Visions of utopia, words about the end of life as we know it, presentations of a an intervening super-hero Messiah or Son of Man are included in the Bible lectionary for Advent.  Be patient, prepare and rejoice are the commands of Advent.  We swim in a universe of Christian teaching discourse and we hope to find in the ocean of discourse rafts of insights to help us survive for some moments within the plenitude of all possible discourse which is always present.  It might be wise to accept the exciting serendipity of what can come to insight in the context specifics of our moments rather than try to fit the cookie cutter ideological certainty of Group Mob Think trying to conform us as robots of the idols of objectivity which in fact get their objectivity dissolved within the plenitude of discourse much like a sugar cube in a body of water.

Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2016

The biblical writers from their agrarian settings used metaphors about trees and vines.  In the phases of plant life with the intentional direction of bearing fruit, there is a pruning phase.  Pruning is necessary and inevitable.  The biblical writers often find their communities in a "pruning" phase when they are knowing some sharp cuts of seeming loss of once flourishing states of existence.  The pruning phase is not all that attractive; but pruning means that there is the intention of future growth and revitalization.  The Jesse Tree was actually the highly pruned Jesse Stump of the prophet Isaiah.  A stump can be the remnant of a tree left to rot or it can be the source of life for new branches.  The prophet Isaiah believe the condition of his people to be in their stump phase, not as an end of the Davidic glory, but as a pruning phase which was the prelude for something glorious to arise because there was still amazing life in the roots of the stump.  We should not forget the root of life is the always, already Holy Spirit, invisible and yet continuously  sustaining and life giving and ready for new branches to flourish.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2016

The irony of the Advent Jesse Tree is that the Jesse Tree for the Isaian prophet was called the Jesse Stump.  One thinks of a stump as a tree on the way to death.  One thinks of a stump as the end of something beautiful and leafy and fruit bearing or perhaps useful for the lumber derived in the cutting of the tree.  Advent is the time of the stump as the metaphor for significant outward and visible changes in the continuity of institutional life.  For the Isaian writer, the Jesse stump referred to what had passed away in the visible glory of Israel.  The stump is cherished for the continuous life contained in the roots and its ability to engender new life.  A scion or grafted branch can be a different variety of surface and visible manifestation of the root life which previously supported a different visible manifestation.  The prophets, John the Baptist and St. Paul, used this metaphor of grafting to explain the end of visible aspects of institutions without denying the continuing divine life of the roots which can bring forth new life in the grafted branches.  John the Baptist and Jesus both grew out of the Jesse stump.  We need to believe that the root experience of God can ever bring forth new and different kinds of life to adjust to new environments.  America and the Episcopal Church are confronted with stumps which we nostalgically still regard to be trees but they are phantom appearances.  We need to return to the root life and see what new kind of growth will thrive within the setting of the postmodern world.

Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2016

John the Baptist is recorded as calling some religious people, a "brood of vipers."  The viper is a serpent; the Bible serpent was the original liar and trickster in the Garden of Eden story.  John the Baptist, an Advent figure, also said the axe was chopping down the trees which did not bear fruit, even while it was written in Isaiah that the tree of Jesse had become a stump, out of which a branch would grow.  Circumstances may reduce institutions to stumps out of which new branches can grow because the roots of the stump are still deeply connected with life, a life that is able to engender new growth.  The creative force of God is still present even when institutions have risen to their own incompetence to the point of irrelevance in being beneficial function in the lives of enough people to keep a critical mass of interest alive to perpetuate the specific structures of the dying institutions.  Out of the stump of Jesse in the post-Temple world, new synagogue life for the Jews grew and the Jesus Movement grew as a branch into a new tree to adapt the salvation found within the Hebrew Scriptures to the Gentile populace.  The post-Temple synagogue "revival" and the Jesus Movement both became new branches out of the stump of Jesse.  Christians usually only center upon the Jesus Movement branch.  The New Testament writings represent the gradual struggle for the separate identity of the church from the synagogue and the founding words of the Jesus Movement includes words which are harsh critiques of what Christians felt they left and adopted in a direction which would account for the way in which the message of Christ found a hearing among the Gentiles.

Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2016

The Gospels present "many" Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized by John the Baptist and he is offended by their hypocrisy.  He viewed them as simply adding his baptism to their collection of ritual purity acts on their resumes.  The purpose of his baptism was to be the outward sign of an interior life changing repentance.  For the Gospel writers, the Pharisees, Sadducees and John the Baptist were set in contrast to what was happening in the post-Pentecost church, i.e. baptism of the Holy Spirit.  This was an interior cleansing of the heart, a renewal of a Right Spirit.  The nascent Jesus movement was more about interior life changing grace than it was about the outer sign of one's religious party identity.  On the continuum between the group identity and the individual identity, reform movements without institutional trappings emphasize the interior life of the individual.  Reform movements go "outside of the institutions" while parasitically borrowing the vocabulary of the former institutions and re-valuing the theological concepts within a new paradigm.  Same words, different meanings.  Messiah meant something different for the Pharisees and the Sadducees than it did for Christians who took the word and understood it quite differently.