Holy Spirit: The Ultimate Regulator of the Sublime

Day of Pentecost  A June 4, 2017

Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

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

When I lived overseas, I had a professor friend whom I was visiting one day after a class.  I noticed that she kept looking at her watch and seemed very concerned about the time.  I asked if she were waiting for something, and I offered to excuse myself.  But she replied, "I am waiting for 1 p.m. because I never drink before 1 p.m."  And I thought, well I guess that is restraint of a sort, but it might be indicative of a problem,

In the account about the Day of Pentecost found in the Acts of the Apostles, there was great ecstasy and euphoria early in the morning and Peter felt he needed to give a disclaimer about the ecstatic behaviors.  He said, "Indeed, these people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning."

So here we are at church, having looked at our watches and waited until Mass started at 10:15 a.m., because "we don't do ecstasy and euphoria" before 10:15 a.m.

It is interesting that drunkenness, a negative behavior is used metaphorically for the appearance of the joyful behaviors of people who have come to know themselves as possessed enthusiastically by God's Holy Spirit.

Have we ever been accused of looking like happy drunks in our worship here at St. John's?  In our Anglican tradition we've inherited a long tradition of the "stiff upper lip" in face of everything and so our Prayer Book liturgies involve locking all signs of enthusiasm and ecstasy out of our worship.   We save our enthusiasm for our sporting events and rock concerts as if we feared having too much excitement about God.

On this Day of Pentecost, let us be invited to contemplate coming into apparent experiences of the sublime.  The experience of the Sublime is to come into the sense of being touched or altered through the influence of someone or something that is beyond our control.  The experience seems to stop time, it seems to melt our ego, it seems to give a sense of euphoria or harmony or a merging with other people or with Nature.

Perhaps the greatest epidemic in our world today is all of the attempts at simulations of the Sublime that end in some sort of addiction.  Perhaps the best known form of universal religion today is one of the many different 12 step programs.  12 step programs are found across religions and borders because people have become addicted to simulate the Sublime in ways do not allow them to integrate the addictive behaviors with holistic living. 

Alcohol, mushrooms, peyote, drugs have all been used in ways to simulate the experience of the Sublime.  Scientist who have wanted to simulate the Sublime have come to see this experience as but the chemical state of one's brain.  The chemical state of one's brain can be altered in various ways to simulate the euphoric sense of the Sublime.

One might say that since the late 1960's pharmacology has become the main way that people simulate the Sublime.  Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and John Lilly were some of the early proponents of simulating peak minds states through the use of various drugs.  In our world today, we regard freedom from pain and anxiety to be crucial to the experience of the Sublime, but we've come to have an incredible opioid addiction crisis.  When a TV commercial for a pill uses 5 seconds to tell about a possible benefit and then the rest of the commercial to explain possible dangerous side effects, we know that we are a world that has been tricked to elevate counterfeit simulations of the Sublime to be the surrogates for religious experience.

On this feast day of Pentecost, we are here to proclaim our belief in the validity of the human quest to know and experience the Sublime.  You and I were made for ecstasy.  We were made for the release of profound desire.  We were made to experience profound joy.  What did C.S. Lewis call his autobiographical spiritual journey?  Surprised by Joy.  You and I were made for the Sublime.  Why do I say this?

We have a built in natural high that has been given to us by virtue of our being created in God's Image.  When the Spirit of God moved and breathed life into creation and into us, the Spirit of God never left the created order.  But the Spirit of God has had to live incognito and anonymous for so much of human history.  The Spirit of God has lived ignored by you and me for long periods in our lives, especially when we thought that other simulations of the Sublime were easier or more accessible.

The Day of Pentecost is when the church gives the Holy Spirit a "coming out" Party.  And the Holy Spirit says to us, "Thanks for the recognition party, but I never left; it is just that sometimes you have forgotten about how close I am to you all of the time."

The proof that you and I were made for the experience of the Sublime is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  The experience of the Holy Spirit is the highest of the natural highs.  Sometimes we experience the Sublime effects of the Holy Spirit in random and intermittent events.  We also adapt rules of life and spiritual practices to help us access the always already Sublime presence of the Holy Spirit.  It is so easy to get distracted from obviousness of the Holy Spirit that we can seek Sublime replacements in sports, work, the erotic, in pharmacology and many other kinds of escapist entertainments.

How and why can the Holy Spirit be known as the highest of all natural highs?  I would call the Holy Spirit the ultimate regulator of the Sublime.  And what do I mean?  The experience of the Holy Spirit is the appropriate integration of the experiences of the Sublime into a holistic experience of life.  How does this happen?  It happens because of the Sublime effects of the Holy Spirit, called fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Hope, Patience, Gentleness, Humility, Goodness, Self-Control and Faith.  All of these effects contribute to the appropriate integration of all our experiences in life.  So the Holy Spirit is the ability to let God take control of our lives and steer us to the appropriate integration of all of our life experiences, and to allow us the freedom to enjoy, experience pleasure, survive pain and loss and minister to each other without falling into addictive or harmful behaviors.

The Holy Spirit is the great regulator of the experiences of the Sublime.  If we submit to the Holy Spirit, we can discover and affirm the multi-faceted appearances of the Sublime in our lives: In art, cinema, theater, comedy, in beautiful things, in environmental arrangements, in our home and in special places, in a quiet church,  in music, in the company of friends, in love's embrace, in the discovery of something creative occurring within us, in being a beneficial presence to others,  in Nature, with our pets, on the mountain, at the ocean, in a good meal, a good nights' sleep, in a fantastic dream, in shouting joyful alleluias, in meditative silence, in the liturgical event, in the Eucharistic event, in eye to eye gaze.  The Sublime effects of any human experience can be blessed events and not addictive events, if we achieve the experience of the Holy Spirit as the great regulator of the Sublime.

Today, we need to submit to the creative control of the Holy Spirit.  You and I like to limit where we think the sublime effects of the Holy Spirit can occur.  We can lock the Holy Spirit in our own limitations of our own religious groups, our own national and ethnic habits or own socio-economic educational groups.  The Holy Spirit is truly universal.  Each person's body has the limitation of physical location.  We have blood types and different DNA.  We have different color skin.  We have different inward and outward orientations.  And as we look far below the layer of our skin, we can arrive at the true universal of the world, the universe and of all life: we arrive at the universal and all inclusive Holy Spirit, who is the One regulator of all human differences.

As we celebrate this feast of Pentecost, this feast of the Holy Spirit of God, let us invite the Holy Spirit to be the creative regulator of our experiences of the Sublime. 

Today, I wish for each of us many of the most delicious experiences of the Sublime, not of the addictive kind, but the ones that come because our lives have been to be regulated by the Holy Spirit who gives us in all experience, the experience of love, joy, peace, hope, gentleness, humility, patience, self control and faith.  With the Holy Spirit as our creative regulator, we can experience a wide variety of the Sublime to keep us surprisingly joyful and always with the ecstatic alleluia in our mouths.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Sunday School, June 4, 2017 The Day of Pentecost A

Sunday School, June 4, 2017    The Day of Pentecost  A

Theme:

Pentecost is the Holy Spirit’s Day

Pentecost is also called the Birth Day of the Church

What is the Bible Story about the Spirit?

In the Creation Story of the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew word for Spirit (ruach) means Wind or Breath.  We know that breathing is a sign of life. 

Wind can erode and shape rocks and mountains and cause waves.

In the Creation Story, the Spirit created by moving over unorganized  stuff and began to bring light, darkness, land, sea, plants, animals, human into being.

Something of Spirit life is found in all of creation

In the Bible story, the Spirit is kind of forgotten for many years even though the Spirit was seen as responsible for anointing leaders, kings, judges, prophets and wisdom teachers for teaching about God.

On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit begins a new era.  We know that we cannot see God and yet God is everywhere.  We may not see the wind but we can see the effects of the wind.  This is what the Holy Spirit is like.  We can’t see the Holy Spirit but we can know the effects of the Holy Spirit.

What are the effects of the Holy Spirit that we can know?  Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control, faith and justice.

If we know the effects of the Holy Spirit we should spend our entire lives in learning how to gain more of the effects of the Holy Spirit, by knowing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control, faith and justice.

If we allow the fruits of the Holy Spirit to be expressed in the deeds and words of our lives we will be letting the life and the personality of God the Holy Spirit be known in our lives.

This is what we celebrate on the Day of Pentecost

Sermon (using a harmonica)

Do you know what kind of instrument I have in my hand?    It’s called a harmonica?  And do you know how this instrument is played?    It’s played by putting it up to my mouth and blowing.

  How is this instrument different than a whistle?    A whistle usually makes just one sound, but this harmonica can make many different sounds.

  It is a reed instrument.  If we open up the harmonica, we can find many differ little pieces of thin metal and they are different sizes.  Some are short and some are long.

  When I blow air across the short ones a high sound is made.  When I blow air across the long ones, a lower sound is made.

  So if we blow in the correct way, we can play many different notes and different kinds of music.  A harmonica is not like a whistle because a harmonica can make many different sounds.  And we can play many different songs with the harmonica.  We can even bend the notes and make it cry….or we can make it sound like a train.

  What is it that makes the harmonica play?  It is blown air or wind that comes from the lungs.

  Did you know that one of the ways that we talk about God is to call God, the Holy Spirit.  The Special Spirit.  The Special Wind or Breath.  Can you see Wind or Breath?  Well we can see clouds or we can see our breath when it’s cold.

  But we don’t actually see the Wind or Breath.  We know Wind and Breath are here because we can feel and see the movement that is caused by Wind and Breath.  When you blow on a Wind mill, you can see the wind mill turn.

  So today in when we celebrate the Invisible presence of God who is everywhere, just like wind and breath. 

  And we celebrate the fact that God’s wind or breath is within us blowing us…or playing us, just like I blow air into this harmonica to play the different sounds to make music or noise.

  We cannot see God Spirit…But God’s spirit is blowing through us and playing us as music.

  So we need to see ourselves as God’s musical instruments.  All different sizes and shapes, ages, with different appearances, different abilities and gifts.  God enjoys that we are all so different.  Because we’re different God can play lots of different songs through us.

  And what kind of music does God’s breath or Spirit play through us?  We call that music love, joy, peace, faith, self-control, gentleness, patience and all of the other good things that God wants to do through us.  How many of you want to be God’s instrument today?  Do you want the Wind or Breath of God to be blown through you today?

  Today, we remind ourselves that the Breath or Wind of God, the Holy Spirit is filling us today to help our lives be like a beautiful song for God today.  So today we let God the Spirit play a beautiful song through us.  Amen.

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

June 4, 2017: The Day of Pentecost

Gathering Songs: Every Time I Feel the Spirit;  We Are One in the Spirit, Lord, Be Glorified

 Liturgist: Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People: The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.

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

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

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

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Every Time I Feel the Spirit, (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 48)

Refrain: Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.  O every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray.

1-On Pentecost day, the Spirit came.  The people praised with joyous tongues.  The Spirit came to everyone.  Jews and Gentiles, all the same. Refrain

2-God’s Spirit lives, within the church.  He gives us gifts to build us up.  God’s Spirit fills us with his love.  O blessed Spirit, heavenly dove.  Refrain

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 104

You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; * and so you renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of the LORD endure for ever; * may the LORD rejoice in all his works.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, `Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

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

Since God is so great and we are so small,

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

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

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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

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

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

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

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

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People:                        And also with you.

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

Offertory Song: They’ll Know We Are Christians,  Worship and Rejoice, # 595

1-We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.  We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord.  And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.  Refrain: And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.  Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

2-We will walk with each other; we will walk hand in hand.  We will walk with each other; we will walk hand in hand. And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land.  Refrain

3-We will work with each other; we will work side by side.  We will work with each other; we will work side by side.  And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each other’s pride. Refrain

4-All praise to the Father, from whom all things come.  And praise to Christ Jesus, his only Son.  And all praise to the Spirit who makes us one.  Refrain

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 our birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

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

You have made us in your image

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

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

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

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

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

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

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Breaking of the Bread

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

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:    Jesus Shall Reign,   arr. Linda Lamb

                                        Divine Joy Handbell Choir

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: Lord, Be Glorified (Renew!  # 172)

1- In our lives, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our lives, Lord, be glorified today.

2- In our homes, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our homes, Lord, be glorified today.

3- In our church, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in our church, Lord, be glorified today.

4- In your world, Lord, be glorified, be glorified, in your world, Lord, be glorified today

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Aphorism of the Day, May 2017

Aphorism of the Day, May 31, 2017

As human beings we cannot help but take life "personally."  We filter experience through our personality.  We cannot help but project anthropomorphic interactions between us and everything that is not human.  Everything that is happening is much too mysterious for us to really understand negligible causation and so we look at the apparent causation of things that are very close to us and things that happen to us get apprised in various ways:  Favorable, Unfavorable, etc.  It is hard to separate how something affects us from what we perceived to cause the effect.  Mislocation and mistiming may account for the "apparent" cruelness of Nature, as in being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a tornado hits.  For the Greeks it was the Fates that had it in for humans in "determining" their conditions.   If we as humans tend to anthropomorphize all that is not human, we might assume that the Divine Life has theomorphized everything in stamping degrees of divine likeness upon everything in terms of personality and freedom.  Personality and freedom are two "high qualities" of humanity; we anthropomorphize God in saying these two high qualities must have originated in our Superior.

 Aphorism of the Day, May 30, 2017

Something can be always, already and yet still seem to be freshly appearing in the linear, before and after sequence of how people experience history.  To say that the Holy Spirit only achieved equal divine status on Pentecost would not be true to divinity.  The always, already Spirit only came into human experience in uneven ways over time.  The feast of Pentecost was the occasion of accounting for ecstatic uprising of God's omnipresence in marking the lives of the followers of Jesus with invisible but knowable presence using the metaphors of a mighty wind or living water from within.  In Jesus, what became clear is that anthropomorphism became a valid way to declare theocentrism as accessible to human experience.  In Jesus, one admits God is the best example of what it means to be a "person" and with Jesus, the Personhood of God was embraced with his articulation of his relationship between Father and Holy Spirit.  If "personhood" is definitive of human experience, Christians came to believe that "Personhood" proceeded from divinity.

Aphorism of the Day, May 29, 2017

The Gospels sometime prove that it is difficult to build theology for teaching around biblical narratives.  When did the Holy Spirit arrive?  The Gospel of John indicates that Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon his disciples on Easter, whereas the "general" descent of the Spirit happened on Pentecost.  What about the Spirit of God moving over the face of the deep at creation?  Was nothing of Spirit left in creation as God's Omnipresence and the trace of divine likeness upon all?   One of the problems is that systemic synchronicity is attempted to be represented in linear historical cause and effect narratives.  Linear cause and effect narrative does not do justice to the mystery of how mystical poets try to talk about the involvement of God in their lives.

Aphorism of the Day, May 28, 2017

The post-resurrection appearances of Christ gradually diminished to one final appearance of the Ascension.  The Ascension is the event of Christ becoming invisible again and returning to a parallel yet present realm of the divine.  The Ascension highlights the "glorification" of Christ in the heavenly realm even as this glorification was instantiated in the success of the mystical appearances of Christ becoming evident to more and more people.  A glorification of Christ somewhere must have been the reason that the fame of Christ on earth was spreading.

Aphorism of the Day, May 27, 2017

Since John's Gospel is the last Gospel to come to writing, one can assume the last editor witness the significant effect of the Jesus Movement.  Great after-effects create the notion of Providence, a sense of everything unfolded in such winsome ways that it became easy for the Gospel writer to declare providence.  Biblical writer have providential outcomes for both great good and evil.  For evil, the writers wrote about the anti-Christ and the Beast, seeming to make such infamy as inevitable in a divine plan.  The Christ-effects within the Roman world came to be regarded as the elevation of Jesus into God's glory.  The mutual divine esteem in the Trinity is called "glory" and this glory spilled into the experience of the energized early church.  The language of "glory" is how the church accounted for the mystery of the success of the church.

Aphorism of the Day, May 26, 2017

The Johannine church wrote the oracle prayer of Jesus to his Father to promote "oneness" with God the Father as central to their message.  John's Gospel  writer writes that Jesus is the eternal Word of God, his words are spirit and life and they are words from his Father that are able to give and create this eternal life within his disciples.  In John's mysticism, the shared family likeness with God is profound.  Jesus said, "If you have seen me you have seen the Father" and Jesus prayed that his disciple would "be one with the Father even as he was one with the Father."  The end of the mystagogy of John's Gospel is this: Don't be separated from God; be "one" with God in bearing the family likeness of the creator.

Aphorism of the Day, May 25, 2017

In the prayer of Jesus in John's Gospel, Jesus asked to be glorified to return to his state of existence before the beginning of the world.  That state, according to John's Gospel, was being the Word of God from the beginning.  So the departure of the particular historical Jesus meant that he would return to the place of being WORD=GOD or the realm of the possibilisms of all things.  Philosophically this would be a contrast between actual existence and All Possible Existences.  If there is no actual word product then one does not know about the realm of all possible word products.  One wonders if the writer of the Gospel of John was such a linguistic constructivist as to use this kind of philosophical speculation/meditation in the presentation of Jesus Christ.

Aphorism of the Day, May 24, 2017

In John's Gospel, God is the Word made flesh in Christ.  Jesus said that his words were "spirit and life."  We have quite some equivalencies in John: Word=God=Jesus Christ=Spirit=Life.  And we have word products in John's Gospel, the writing about the words of Jesus which appear in rather long discourses and in the longest prayer of Jesus found in John 17, which is in fact the "real" Lord's Prayer since the other one was actually the Disciples' Prayer.  John's Gospel is the most revealing about the nature of word and essentially instantiates that if anything is then it is because of being in language.  Heidegger called language the house of Being and yet he needed to use language to indicate that completely reflexive statement about Language itself.  In the Gospel of John word is used to establish word as what word establishes what word is and will be in it manifold discursive ways. Once one moves from discursive mode of word use back to the fact that one is using word, then discursive mode immediately is deconstructed.  Time may imply a sequence in experience but the operation of word is coexistent with Time which in fact word creates in human experience.

Aphorism of the Day, May 23, 2017

Christian theology is a narrative version of the Great Chain of Being.  One assumes that God as "none greater than can be conceived" is so rarefied as to be incomprehensible and we assume a translation of non-human divine life into the language of human experience.  And what is most translatable?  Humans have words.  So the highest human metaphor for God is Word from the beginning of human experience and Word being God.  God is emptied into Word and Word is emptied into particular human experience in the life of Jesus who exemplifies that even though we live in the prison of anthropocentrism we accept our prison because we believe God emptied the divine self into human terms as we presume to accept human experience as a valid way to know about the non-human being of God.  So God takes a journey downward into Word, into the person of Jesus who plumbs the depth of human experience, including death, but not just death, but below death to the abode of the dead.  And then God takes a journey upwards to rise again, ascend and then return to an exalted glory.  All of this is done on the invisible background of the omnipresent Spirit the conducting Essence of mutual relationship that has always already been.  And all of the  above has been words about other words about other words since words reflexively refer to themselves even while we see rise within the world of words things like ego states of continuing identity and the rising of the human ability to name God.

Aphorism of the Day, May 22, 2017

There occurs religious language narrative for conducting experience between realms of "natural" existence and "heavenly" existence.  We encounter a ladder from heaven, assumptions and the unique ascension of Jesus Christ.  There are community narratives of the mystery of inter-realm communication and travel signifying a messaging system between the invisible realm and the visible realm.  All of this takes place because we have words and word nuance the setting, the mood, the explanation and the very visionary seeing of interspatial communication.  Words are invisible and they even create the "as if" of materiality since by words we name materiality.  In biblical words Jesus is the one who ascended to another realm and he is also the ladder on which others can ascend and descend, even the angels or God's messengers (words themselves are messengers).  When it comes to Jesus, as to any experience, one must not limit the kinds of discursive responses which can have meaningful insights.

Aphorism of the Day, May 21, 2017

One might say that Christianity became the triumph of Hellenistic philosophy over its Hebraic roots.  Since Alexander the Great and the spread of Greek culture throughout the world, the superiority of what had happened in ancient Greece was distilled throughout the known world.  When the Temple was destroyed the regrouped synagogue communities tried to "rid" Hellenistic influences from their Scripture, meaning that the books of the Apocrypha were excluded from their canon.  The presentation of St. Paul on Mars Hill engaging the Stoics and the Epicureans is indicative of the synthesis between the Hebraic roots of Jesus and what the Risen Christ would become when the meaning of his life would be explicated using the philosophical metaphors of Greek philosophy.  One could say that even though the Council of Nicaea seems to be a triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire, it was also a triumph for Plato and Aristotle because the categories of Greek philosophy were used to "explain" the Trinity.  The message of Christ certainly does baptize and Christianize cultural practices in its evangelizing wake, but the reverse happens as well, Christianity has become Hellenized, scholasticized, Enlightenized, modernized and now post-modernized.  Mutual conversion can happen without the message of the Risen Christ about love and justice being lost.

Aphorism of the Day, May 20, 2017

Living and moving and having being in God in the dynamic mode might be restated as "living and moving and have one's becoming in God, who is also the Omni-Becomer, who becomes, not as the sign of the imperfection of not yet being "complete" but as One who is Freedom who permits lesser free entities to contribute to that actual outcomes of future becoming.  This view is compatible with a Big Bang creation and expanding guided becoming of the way things are and permitting genuine freedom.  This gives the most cogent response to the theodicy problem of innocent suffering and allows God to be "weak" in not overriding genuine freedom to protect the moral integrity of the realm of human experience that is manifest in being beings who use language.  This view avoids the deeply mechanistic view of a  perfect God who has determined fatalistically a final outcome which would totally contradict the perfection of Freedom ever ceasing to have a static state of being.  How could one view perfection as a static freeze frame state of cosmic harmony?  Such a fossil may be good for a final museum but not true to the blessed and exciting dynamism of perfect freely becoming life.

Aphorism of the Day, May 19, 2017

When in Athens do as the Athenians do.  This was Paul's method of evangelism presented in the Acts of the Apostles when he quoted a Greek poet who wrote, "We are "his" offspring," referring to humanity being children of deity.  That Paul was trying to make connections with traditions of ancient Greek and not just the Hebrew Scripture is an indication of his apologetic efforts to explain the faith of Jesus in varying contexts.  People with "interpretation limitations" seal themselves off from all of the language products available in the experience of all humanity and pretend that their "exclusive" interpretations about Jesus cannot and do not have connection with the fullness human language experience.  If one is not willing to let one's faith raft be afloat upon the entire ocean of every possible human linguistic product, then one does not really practice the universality, "catholicity" of one's beliefs.

Aphorism of the Day, May 18, 2017

Jesus said, "I will not leave you orphaned."  This seems to be place Jesus is the role of a foster parent or guardian for his disciple friends.  Is this akin to the adjustment a baby has to make to leave the maternal body, to lose contact with the maternal body, to lose sight and sound connection with mother or another caregiver?  How does a baby get weaned from the traces of maternal presence except to become confident that she has the maternal spirit being expressed through herself knowing the inner advocacy of her own divine likeness.  Jesus is trying to teach the disciple that the loss of external presence is to result in the gain of being forced to experience profound inner advocacy.

Aphorism of the Day, May 17, 2017

Being in the family of God is an important metaphor for the mysticism of the Gospel of John.  Belief means having the power/authority (birth certificate) to be a child of God.  One is born by water and the Spirit to realize one's membership in the family of God.  And one is not left an orphan even when Daddy or big brother Jesus cannot be seen because the life of God the Spirit, the Advocate is the image of God through each family member.  Daddy has a big house and a dwelling place forever for each child and Jesus came to remind the children of Adam and Eve that they are also children of God.  And what is the rule and the commandment of God's family?  Love.

Aphorism of the Day, May 16, 2017

Jesus said, "I will not leave you orphaned."  Was Jesus a parent who died or left this earth with children?  St. Paul referred to Greek poets who said that we are God's offspring.  The Gospel of John is about Jesus coming into a world that did not know that people were valued "children" of God.  Sometimes we focus so much upon the "sole" sonship of Jesus as Son of God, we forget that the Sonship of Jesus was the particular reminder of the general reality of all people being children of God.  Jesus came to say, "You are not an orphan, you never were an orphan and resist anything that would give you the disinformation about you not being a child of God."  Knowing the image of God upon one's life is the Gospel of John.

Aphorism of the Day, May 15, 2017

According to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul accepted the description of one of the poet for the human situation, "We live and move and have our being in God."  In this model everyone and everything is "interior" to God.  There is nothing "exterior" to God and so the divine being has no environment except the "divine Self" in a future state, a state that is expanding to acknowledge the genuine freedom which adds to a future not yet known as actual.  Understanding God to be "vulnerable" to real freedom is perfectly expressed in Christ as the self-emptied divine into human experience even death on the cross.  This expresses the fullness of God's vulnerability to the permitted freedom in the order of things.  It is not conception of a weak God but of a profoundly superior God without rival in being Love, a Love inspiring us all to use our freedom rightly toward love and justice.

Aphorism of the Day, May 14, 2017

"If you ask anything in my name, I will do it."  World peace? Everyone fed? Cancer cured?  We have asked for lots of things in the name of Jesus and things do not seem to have gotten done.  It could be that "doing it" means that Jesus is asking with us continuously for good things as an expression of children of God who have child-like relationships with God to ask.  What we cannot ask is that the nature of God as pure Freedom, sharing freedom, be overcome.  Within the limitations of freedom, we have the freedom to ask for anything that comports with goodness and health and in asking we know that the Christ-nature within us is doing it.  It is enough to know that we are being "asked through" for the well-being of the world, as long as we also are making ourselves available to become the quickest answer to most of our prayers.

Aphorism of the Day, May 13, 2107

The body of a mother is the first house of every human being.  But the babe before and after birth attains a place in the "heart house" of mom too.  The metaphor of each perceiving being as a house of traces of perception is insightful for the mutual inner and memorial retention we have of each other.  Analogically, we move to a great Perceiver who has retained and given a memorial place, a dwelling place within the great House of the "Body of God" as a Place of places wherein everyone and everything can dwell.  The metaphor of a Father's House/Mother's House/Parent's House as containing dwelling places for us all is insightful regarding a divine holy family of God.

Aphorism of the Day, May 12, 2017

Jesus is quoted as saying about his Father:  "In my Father's house are many dwelling places..."  If we live and move and have our being in God, it would mean that coming into the world gives each person a dwelling place within the perceptual interior of God.  Homelessness, having no dwelling place in this world is an abject condition; having no dwelling place in God would mean that we are not valued enough to be remembered by having a place in God's interior life.  Jesus promised his disciples that they had a dwelling place prepared for them in God's house and that house is perpetually expanding as it surpasses itself in future states with many additions as each person attains a dwelling place in the One with the greatest memory of all, a memory so great as to be able to continuously re-constitute a continuing identity of each person passing through successive states of becoming.

Aphorism of the Day, May 11, 2017

The Gospel of John is about the "Christ-traces" found in the community which was responsible for its writing.  It is a mosaic of "traces" presented in ways that could inculcate the kinds of values and understandings that the mystics of the Johannine community used for the formation of their members.  It is an apology for the Christ-identity of the community of those who saw the Gospel of John as their constitution.

Aphorism of the Day, May 10, 2017

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus promised that his disciples would do greater works than he had done, because he was going to the Father.  Let's see, that means healings, walking on water, resurrections, water to wine, opening the eyes of the blind should be an every day occurrence in the church.  Or could greater works refer to the fact that the absence of Jesus' physical presence meant that the presence of the Risen Christ would be born into the lives of so many people that greater works would be accomplished because of what was regained in the presence of Jesus was a recovery of the "original" omnipresence of God from creation?  In John's Gospel, the main work is "believing."  And if a million people are believing after Jesus is gone, instead of a few handful of followers while he lived on earth, then the sheer quantity of believers is a much "greater works."  It is useful to note the difference in the use of the notion of "works" and "signs" in John's Gospel.

Aphorism of the Day, May 9, 2017

Jesus said, "“I am the way, and the truth, and the life."  These words referred to the familial truth regarding Jesus.  John's Gospel said we are given authority/status to know ourselves as children of God.  Jesus is the way to understand God as heavenly parent.  Jesus is the honest truth about bearing the image of God our heavenly parent.  Jesus is the life of the Spirit, the essence of our divine likeness.  Historically, the church has used the metaphors of the Gospel of John for church fights about the Trinity when in fact they are the metaphors of mysticism of John's Gospel as bespeaking the Christian mystic who has let the image of God become the primary identity of one's being.

 Aphorism of the Day, May 8, 2017

Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."  In the mysticism of John's Gospel the Image of God upon Jesus being seen was regarded seeing the divine.  Why?  Because particular seeing cannot be separated from the entire universe of "All seeing."  Only in the condition of alienation does one want to pretend that everything is not always already having been and will not always have been seen together.  Why parse seeing to individual occasion when a moment cannot be isolated from being wit and, on the Ground of all Being, all of the time.  The Gospel words of Jesus reveal the alienated state of trying to pretend an isolated ego state can exist alone on an island of perception.

Aphorism of the Day, May 7, 2017

Being a good shepherd society means that there is an ethic of care for the strong and the fittest to actively take care of the vulnerable.  In brute Nature, the survival of the fittest might be the "law of the jungle," but in the community of the Good Shepherd, those with knowledge, wealth and power legitimize their privilege by obeying the Good Shepherd who said "to whom much has been given, much is required."  Justify one's knowledge, wealth and power today by being a "good shepherd."

Aphorism of the Day, May 6, 2017

The Good Shepherd allegory encapsulates three significant "power" positions in our lives.  Two of the positions require significant choices.  Sheep are metaphors for being vulnerable and needing care and guidance due to the limitation of sheeply nature and knowledge.  The role of shepherd and hired hand bespeak power choices.  If one has knowledge and wealth, one can use these assets of personal power for one's own advantage to exploit and take advantage of the vulnerable or one can use knowledge and wealth to care for the vulnerable.  Each of us know situations in life of being like vulnerable sheep needing care.  We don't like to be exploited in our time of need.  Each of us has situations of when we have wealth, knowledge and ability to seek our own advantage due to the weakness of others, or we can use our power assets for the care of those in need.  In our political life and economic life these power positions are instantiated in actions every day.

Aphorism of the Day, May 5, 2017

Our education systems are filled with tests as we try to quantify knowledge for specific occupational standards.  Wisdom may best be understood as knowledge hidden within human activity.  The parables, allegories and proverbs of Jesus were discursive practices which hid knowledge within human actions included in a story and the goal was to inspire wise insights and wise actions.  The story items instantiated human practice and was geared to becoming in human agency what the insights evoked.  Wisdom insights are not measured in "tests" but experienced in human kindness and justice.  We have been blessed to meet many people without degrees which proved that they had passed tests but who touched us with kindness beyond measurement.



Aphorism of the Day, May 4, 2017

What about the shepherd/sheep metaphor in Holy Scriptures?  Sheep are animals and a shepherd is a human persons.  This is a stark distinction in the order of being.  When shepherd is used for the divine and sheep is used for human beings, the function of the analogy is to indicate the great gap between the Being of God and human beings.  The shepherd/sheep analogy has limitation if one tries to be too literal in analogical application.  Some times the purpose of poetic imaginary is to give a glimmering glimpse for endearing insight and not to linger to make every possible empirical outcome of actual sheep/shepherd relationships.

Aphorism of the Day, May 3, 2017

The Psalmist pens, "The Lord is my shepherd."  Shepherd is used as a metaphor for the God the Great One.  The Gospel of John appropriates the metaphor Good Shepherd as fitting of Jesus Christ.  As pastorally romantic as the metaphor of shepherd might be on the surface, in reality a shepherd presides over the eventual loss of all of the sheep for sacrificial purposes.  Their lives exist for someone higher on the food chain.  God as shepherd  is the one who presides over the death of every moment in time, a death that is sacrificial for the next moment in time.  Such a Cosmic Shepherd is a confession of the permanence of a future that retains the sacrificial traces of all that is pass.  The Cosmic Shepherd is the Cosmic Future retaining the traces of us in reconstituted ways such that we continue to believe that we always have a future because of the ache and the ecstasy of interior Hope.

Aphorism of the Day, May 2, 2017

Vegans and vegetarians probably prefer "I am the Vine you are the branches" to "I am the Good Shepherd" because the role of the shepherd is presiding over the eventual sacrifice of the sheep for the life of others.  Pruning in horticulture may seem to be "violence" against plant life even though the pruner who talks to her quasi-sentient plants may say, "I am doing this for the general good and it will hurt me more than it will hurt you."  A shepherd presiding over "good deaths" in order to provide food for those "higher" on the food chain is not the metaphorical end of most preaching on the Good Shepherd.  But it is meaningful to say all past life and the ending of the life of others becomes the sacrificial base of the now and the future.  The traces of the sacrifice of people in the past who attain death is in fact the memorial foundation of all that is now and will come.  A goal of any life is to attain a good death and we all need shepherds and mentors along the way to help us reach this goal.  We may leave this life with the following responses of survivors, "I want to be like him."  "I don't want to be like him." 

Aphorism of the Day, May 1, 2017

We sometimes forget the logical outcome of the sheep in the Good Shepherd metaphor in John's Gospel.  The metaphor derives from a carnivorous culture.  Indeed the shepherd takes care of sheep not because they are favored "pets" destined to die natural deaths which are mourned and remembered with burial chambers for their remains; sheep are products.  While they live they can provide wool and milk but they are destined to be sacrificed for the life of the human community.  We don't often highlight the notion of the Good Shepherd presiding over a flock to be sacrificed for others.  An alternate meaning of Good Shepherd would be the one who presides over the eventual sacrifice of the lives of the sheep for others.  In human terms, we need shepherds to guide us to "good deaths for others" in the sense that we should live our lives sacrificially for those who will come after us proving that we do not exist just for "now" but for the continuance of quality of life for others in the future.