Sunday School, 2 Christmas A , January 5, 2019

Sunday School, December 3, 2016     2 Christmas C

Sunday School

Taking a long trip

Did you ever drive on a long trip with your family for a special vacation?  To Disneyland?  Disneyworld?  Lego Land?  

Do you remember the trip?  Do you remember how excited you were as you waited to arrive at your destination?

The story of the Magi or Wise Men is about three people who took a long trip because they could not wait to arrive at special event, the event of the birth of a very special person who would change their lives and the life of this world.

The Magi or Wise men were foreigners.  They came from other countries to travel to Bethlehem to see Jesus.

This journey is the story of the early church.  The early church was a large group of foreigners who left their homes and their ways of living with the gods of the Roman Empire and they accepted the God who was known to them because of Jesus Christ.  They experienced the birth of Jesus Christ into their lives and so they gave everything, all of the most important gifts of their lives to follow Jesus Christ and to share this message of the Gospel to everyone.

Remember that sometimes we have to take journeys to reach important destinations in our lives.  We have to take a journey through school and education to learn important things which will make ourselves better.

Think about your life as a journey.  The star of God is leading you to new discoveries in your life.  We celebrate the story of the Wise Men because it shows us that we are on a journey to know what the birth of Christ means in our life.

Sermon

  Is Christmas over?  Yes and No.  Christmas Day is gone but the season of Christmas last for 12 days.  Perhaps you’ve heard the song about the 12 days of Christmas.  The song is about getting to open one Christmas gift for each day of the Christmas season.  How many of you opened all of your Christmas Gift on Christmas gifts on Christmas day?  How many of you adults said in July after buying something expensive,”   Dear this is my Christmas and birthday gift?”  How romantic!

  So today is the 12th day of the Christmas Season and when will the Christmas Season end?  It  will end tonight at midnight because, do you know what tomorrow is called?  It is called The Epiphany.  And what season begins on The Epiphany?  Epiphany.

  Today we have read about the wise men who came to see the baby Jesus.  Did any of you play a wise man in the Christmas Pageant?  What did the wise men bring the baby Jesus?  They brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Most of us might like gold for a gift…but frankincense and myrrh?  It depends upon how much one is into aroma therapy to appreciate those two gifts.

  How many of you like getting gifts at Christmas?  Well, if you like getting gifts at Christmas then you should thank the wise men, because they are the ones who inspired giving gifts at Christmas.  So let us say to the wise men.  Thank you for starting the gift tradition.

  But the wise men are not just important for the giving of gifts at Christmas time.  They are important for something else.

  Did you know that the wise men were from a different country than Jesus?  And they travelled a long distance to come and visit him.

  Let me ask you a question.  Do you like chocolate?  How many people in this room like chocolate?  If someone who had never had chocolate came to visit us, should we let them have chocolate?  Why should we share our chocolate?  If is it good an sweet, why should we share it?  Does everyone have the right to taste and enjoy chocolate?

Now if we like chocolate and if we should share chocolate with everyone, what about God?

  If we know that God is close to us, should we let everyone know that God is close to them to?  Or should we hide it from them.  Should we let other people know that God loves them and is close to them too?  Why?  Because the best things in life have to be shared with everyone.  The wise men were looking for the best thing in life and they came a long distance to find it.  They found the best person in life in Jesus Christ who is person who taught us that God is very close to us and who taught us that God loves us.  Should we keep that a secret or should we share it?  Just like everyone should be able to enjoy chocolates, everyone should be able to know that God loves them and that God is close to their lives.  That is one of the meanings of the story of the wise men today.  Let us remember that God’s love is for everyone even for the people whom we don’t know.  So let us always be ready to share God’s love with the new people we meet.

Intergenerational Holy Eucharist

January 5, 2019: The Second Sunday after Christmas

Gathering Songs:

 We Three Kings of Orient Are, Away in a Manger

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

People: And Blessed be God’s Kingdom, Now and forever. Amen.

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

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

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

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: We Three Kings ( Blue Hymnal # 128)

1-We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar, field and fountain moor and mountain, following yonder star.  O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

2-Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, King for every ceasing never, over us all to reign. O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

O God,  you have wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: All us to share in the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our human life, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. 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

Liturgist: A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Please join in reading from Psalm 84

How dear to me is your dwelling, O LORD of hosts! * My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.

The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; * by the side of your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.

Happy are they who dwell in your house! * they will always be praising you.

Litany of Thanksgiving: Chant: Thanks be to God!

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.

In the time of King Herod  when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him honor to this king of the Jews." When King Herod, who was also called the King of the Jews, heard this, he was frightened, and as well as the people of Jerusalem.  He called together all the chief priests and scribes of the people and he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.  They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search for the child; and when you have found him, come and tell me so I can go honor him too. When they had heard the king, the wisemen went in the direction of the star until it stopped over the place where the baby Jesus lay. The wisemen were joyful to arrive at their destination. They enter the house and they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and honored him.  Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They were warned in a dream not to return to Herod so they left for their own country without telling Herod where the Christ child could be found. 

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon:

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

Song: We Three Kings (Blue Hymnal # 128, vss.3-4)

3-Frankincense to offer have I: incense owns a Deity nigh; prayer and praising gladly raising, worship him, God most hight. O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

4-Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb. O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

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,

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Breaking of the Bread

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

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia.

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Away in a Manger

1-Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.  The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

2-The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.  I love thee, Lord Jesus!  Look down from the sky, and stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.

3-Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask thee to stay close by me for ever and love me I pray.  Bless all the dear children in thy tender care, and fit us for heaven to live with thee there.

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: We Three Kings (Blue Hymnal # 128, verse 5)

5-Glorious now behold him arise, King and God and sacrifice; heaven sings alleluia: alleluia the earth replies. O, star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright; westward leading still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God!  

Aphorism of the Day, December 2019

Aphorism of the Day, December 31, 2019

The magi in the infancy narrative is an indication of writing the Christ appeal to the Gentile into the origins of the Jesus story.  Since Christ came to have "universal" appeal among the peoples of the Roman world, it must have been the case from the beginning.  In fact, anyone who is "wise" who seek out the birth of Christ.  And of course Bethlehem because the topos of the birth of Christ within the hearts of many Gentiles.

Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2019

The life of Jesus was presented to an audience of Jews and Gentiles.  Even though the Gentile membership of the early Jesus Movement grew to be more than the members of the synagogue, the expositors presented Jesus in parallel with themes found in the lives of heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Moses came forth from Egypt; Jesus had to as well as he is presented in the flight to Egypt during the reign of Herod who is a figure re-presenting the infanticidal Pharaoh.

Aphorism of the Day, December 29, 2019

One of the most poignant proofs of Word creating our life is the story of Helen Keller.  When she understood Word, her life was created.  All things are created by the Word.  Word is the condition for everything to be in the flux of continual deferring signifiers.  Life is only about the continual shuffling of synonyms in an endless tautology of this is this is this is this...….

Aphorism of the Day, December 28, 2019

When we imagine what it is like to be like an infant and not have a significant language capacity or when we imagine unevolved pre-language creatures, we only bring the pre-linguistic state into existence by the contrast with the state of having language.  In the "imaginary" pre-linguistic state there would be no such consciousness of such a state because "language" would not exist.  Having language creates everything that can be known as having being.

Aphorism of the Day, December 27, 2019

In the beginning of human life as it can only be known is Word, word ability.  If anything comes into being known it is through language mediation.  That everything human that can be known is meditated through Word means that Word is co-extensive with anything that can be humanly known, including existence itself.

Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2019

All things came into being through the Word.  Does coming into being, or becoming actually mean that existence is only known through language?   Existence or awareness of the same presume language and a language user.  How we like to ignore that everything is mediated through language even the awareness that we are language users.  Philosophers and scientists often like to build incredible systems without acknowledging that such systems reside on language traditions which all derived from "having language in the first place."

Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2019

For the Christian mystic, the feast of the Nativity forces a different kind of empirical verification.  Does the birth of Christ actually happen within a person and does it make a noticeable difference in one's life after such a birth is said to have happened?  The empirical verification of the birth of Christ is seen in behaviors of love and justice.  Such is much more important than trying to import twentieth century biology back to the first century.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2019

If everything that can be known is mediated through having word ability then everything that can be known or that came come to some language product has equal standing in being a "word product."  What human communities and solidarities of people coalesce around are their organizing values regarding what is most adequate for human excellence within the areas that pertain to living within community.  Each genre of language products include a dynamic struggle for both defining adequacy and manifesting the most adequate adequacy.  In faith communities we are saying that love and justice for the most people is what is most adequate and tactics and strategies for reaching the most adequate are called for.  Our society has become defined as "partisan;" this is antithetical to the common good because partisans are saying that my good is the common good and all that matters is having the power to say that my good is the most common good.

Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2019

We have externalized the Christmas story into such garish excess that we have forgotten that it is the coded mystagogy of the early church, a revealed mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory and the early church initiates reading the Gospel understood that Mary was the paradigm for everyone whose life had been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit to create a clean heart where Christ could reside.

Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2019

We are contextual people in that we live, move and speak from our particular contexts.  Somehow many Bible readers will not allow biblical writers to embraces the discursive modes appropriate to their own contexts.

Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2019

People have been taught to read the Bible as if the natural laws did not prevail during biblical times.

Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2019

Many Bible readers assume that the writers were writing in the genre which we want them to be writing in so as to prove our own theological bias.


Aphorism of the Day, December 19, 2019

It is better to look to the prophets as providing the conceptual language to present Jesus Christ for his expositors of the early church.  To try to use the prophets as explicitly predictive of Jesus is to ignore the obvious that the writings of Isaiah are really contextually specific to his own time.

Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2019

St. Paul wrote that Jesus was declared Son of God in his resurrection.  After that declaration then the history of his life is written with this "must have always been" assumption about Jesus.  Before something become apparent it must have had seeds of the miraculous before it become so apparent.

Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2019

One of the unfortunate consequences of the preponderance and success of modern science and the resulting discursive practices has been to set a person against oneself as a discursively schizoidal being.  We have been taught to not regard ourselves as multi-valent and multi-discursive interpretive agents who can walk and chew gum at the same time within the field of discursive habits.  We have assigned superior "truth" value to that which can be empirically verified while diminishing the "truth" value of the modes of aesthetics discourse.  We have encouraged misguided interpretive practice due to setting empirical verification as the sole meaningful truth and so social scientists and religionist have decided to present their "truths" as empirically verifiable in the same way as the "truth" presentations of the natural scientists.  Fundamentalism has been borne from this misguided situation.  It is a violation of human capacity and have set the poetic person against the scientific person to the diminution of both.

Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2019

In the Isaian Hebrew, the word "alma" is translated into the Greek Septuagint as "Parthenos."  "alma" means young woman and "Parthenos" means "virigin," and so one can understand how reading the Septuagint translation of Hebrew Scriptures influenced the presentation of the Virgin Mary.

 Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2019

The Hebrew Scriptures include lots of wishing for utopia.  All sorts of ideal conditions are dreamed about but perhaps in a reductive sense, the very name God implies ultimate utopian Being.  God is no such Person as any of us has every known or seen and yet the connections within the Plenitude bring us to confess One Plenitude which sustains all that we can experience.

Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2019

In the appeal to the community of John the Baptist, the oracle words of Jesus state that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.  This seems like quite a severe assessment.  It indicates that the early church was promoting that the kingdom of heaven paradigm of Jesus was the baptism of the Spirit paradigm and the paradigm of John the Baptist and his community was the baptism in water paradigm.  As much as John the Baptist is praised in the Gospels, there are poignant distinctions made between him and Jesus to convince the followers of John to "move on to Jesus."

Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2019

The reason that there is the continual deferral of meaning often known as "turtles all the way down," is because there is no down when we actually know from outer space, there is only a temporal and contextual "down" depending upon the location of the one who says his head is up and his feet are down but what does that mean when floating in space?  "Turtles all of the way down," refers to the boundless plenitude of word or language within which arise by and through language the appearance of language users who posit that the plenitudinous linguistic universe implies a Great Language User.

Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2019

The Gospel words of Jesus include the permission for his followers to "channel" his words when Jesus is recorded as saying that they can and should speak "in His Name."  St. Paul seem to take equivalence with the thoughts of Jesus when he said that he had the "mind of Christ."  The channeled words of the Risen Christ in the compilation of the Gospels in the situations of the Jesus Movement and the Christ communities indicate an unevenness and apparent inconsistencies, because the applied wisdom of the Risen Christ through the channeling preachers dealt with situations which would have been significantly different than from the actual time of Jesus when the churches did not yet exist.  That channeled words of the Risen Christ attained the status of Holy Scripture is important to understand and appreciate how a living Christ is one whose loving principles find continual occasions of application.  The fact that the "canon of Scripture" is closed does not negate how the infallible applications of the love of Christ in anytime is any less authorative.

Aphorism of the Day, December 11, 2019

Since Irenaeus recommended the "plain reading" of the Gospel as the "preferred" reading, we realize that the most assessible and easiest and perhaps the "laziest" way to read the Gospels is in the mode of what Ricoeur called the mode of "primary naivete."  To do the rigorous scholarly works about the original languages, context and provenance of a writing requires abilities not easily attained.  Most reader can be "forgiven" for being readers in the primary naivete mode for personal devotional value.  But it does remain that scholarship has to be rigorous and honest regarding all Scriptures and its compilation.  This would include an appreciation that people of the past knew how to be users of poetic and mystical discourse and the use of the physical to be metaphorical of the spiritual.  To assume that ancient people did not have a functional appreciation of what much later became known as "the law of gravity," is to diminish their contact with reality.  The primary purpose of Scriptures would be more of a spiritual manual and literature to inculcate community identities rather than to be eye witness journalistic accounts of events or a scientific treatise.  To make certain genres of the Scripture be literary genre which it they not, is to read them wrongly.

Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2019

The Scriptures include accounts of utopian, impossible conditions which represents the child-like hope of people who are world weary.  The world needed a utopian person and for the early Christians, they believed that Jesus was this utopian person who qualified as newly defining what a Messiah should be.  Jesus as a utopian person seemed to be humanly impossible in how he stood out in what he did and how he was experienced by people.  How is it that so many people could re-experience Jesus after he had been dead?  Surely this utopian impossible person had to be the new standard for how a Messiah or specially "anointed" extra-human person should be defined.

Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2019

The words of Jesus regarding John the Baptist and the least in the kingdom of heaven being greater than he, seems rather harsh.  Intuitively, this makes more sense as an oracle of the Risen Christ in the early churches which were making an appeal to the members of the community of John the Baptist to make the transition to become followers of Jesus.  This is consistent with the contrast between baptism with water and baptism with the Holy Spirit.  The contrast is between natural birth and spiritual birth and the early church believed in the surpassing value of the spiritual birth which was the hallmark of the Jesus Movement.

Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2019

Religious and biblical discourse includes lots of "wish fulfillment," what we wish things were but are not yet.  Hope is all about what is not yet.  The discourse of hope is different from the discourse of science.  Science is founded upon the dependence of the recurrence of things in predictable ways.  In the realm of personal transformation on individual paths, we hope for things that are not yet even as we know the prediction of the same is not certain.  The uncertainty of hope's objects mean that a different kind of discourse is rendered than the discourse of actuarial predictions of science.

Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2019

In the free conditions of the world, good and bad things occur since such are defined based upon what is happen to people in various contexts.  Good for me, bad for them, good for them, bad for me.  Utopia is trying to imagine a world where the knowledge of good and evil is gone and only the good is known.  Universal good of course would be a robotic, machine of perfect innocence, all of the time, which would violate what makes morality and ethics, namely, freedom.  So why posit impossible utopias of goodness and innocence when they would rob the world of moral significance?  The image of goodness prevailing is the discursive lure for people to overcome evil with good.   This is to counter the narrative of a dystopia where evil and chaos seem to win and would favor the belief in a fatalism where evil in fact overcomes good.

Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2019

The utopian is an impossible place except in language.  Utopia does not have a correspondence in actuality, nor can it.  So how does utopia function as discursive practice?  It functions as a lure to influence all free agents within the conditions of freedom to seek the higher values of harmony of differences without harm being caused.  Within the human conditions of freedom, the utopian vision is the discourse to inspire what Paul said to do, "over come evil with good."   Why do that?  Paul wrote that if we don't we could be overcome with evil.  The utopian is the ideal and impossible which implies there is a totality beyond good or evil which is "only good and perfect."  One might say that there is the total unity of being encompassed by everything that can come to language and such an all inclusive expanding language use universe is good and perfect to include everything, even while anything less than the all comprehending expanding totality must participate in the struggle of what good and evil means in each moment and situation for moral agents of all degrees of agency.

Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2019

"The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp."  Isaian visionary writing is utopian, like much of biblical literature in the people who are opining about why the world is often so bad, painful and unfair.  Although utopian is not a genre usually assigned to biblical writing, it should be.  A mythical Eden of total harmonic innocence lost and then longed for again in the Isaian utopian vision of perfect non-predatory relationships in the world.  Utopia is no such place; but we use utopia as an analgesic discourse to survive the conditions of freedom which involve harm, aging, loss, war, injustice and death.  We would in the moments of harshness sacrifice all of the conditions of freedom for the utopian totalitarian remake of the world to be a machine of non-predatory goodness.  In a more practical sense, we long for the loss of infant/child innocence, a state that can never characterize the adult world that has come to live with the knowledge and experience of good and evil.  The Gospel invitation of Jesus to be like a "child" to perceive God's kingdom, means that we can mystically access the original innocence of our births and channel it into the harsh real world of good and evil to beat our lives into an adult counter-part of innocence, holiness.

Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2019

A discussion provoked by some biblical language is about time and whether the notion of "eternity" is "timelessness" or whether it is the infinite duration of time as everlastingness. Is eternity a synonym for everlasting?  Do interior events or essences like dreams and "spirit" and soul refer to a timeless realm or can such only be reported or acknowledged by the prior assumption of time?  Utopian or impossible worlds or perpetually "not yet" worlds might be tautological or definitional or mathematical equational certainty presumably open to falsification since the future in time would always mean that everything is open to future falsification.  But if eternity is "timelessness" how is eternity open to falsification in everlastingness?

Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2019

The fallacy of utopian view is the sheer escapism and the denial of what the conditions of freedom imply.  To imagine utopia is to imagine a world without moral significance because things could not be but innocent.  This is why the Garden of Eden story needed to include the insight of humanity attaining moral significance through the entrance of dealing with good and evil.  The implying that the loss of innocence through making an ignorant decision based upon being tricked by a superior serpent and the loss of an innocent perfect world of perfect harmony is an attempt to attach precise causality to a mystery.  Fundamentalists regard this the "fall" to be precisely causative of evil, whereas more sanguine interpreters regard this to be an insightful appreciation of the mystery which is a major question in the moral experience of humanity.   In Advent the themes of a better and more innocent word return and yet we know that we cannot return to the innocence of childhood, we can only aspire to the holiness of successful repentance with the help in part of drill sergeants like John the Baptist.

Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2019

The pain of people, animals and systems in conflict is the situation for the imaginations of impossible conditions of harmony.  Wouldn't it be nice if all animals were vegetarians and the predator-prey relationships non-existent.  Eden must have been and we lost it and surely there is a power that could restore Edenic conditions.  Can total innocence and freedom co-exist?  Can human being always already choose to be angels without being innocent robots, bereft of moral significance?  It could be that with imagination we dream impossible perfect worlds, "ou-topos," utopia or no such places, as a way to direct the freedom conditions of good and evil and systemic oppositions toward good as being the preferred outcome of freedom and evil be seen as the deprivation of the normalcy of goodness.  To conceive of an impossible world where freedom does not exist because of a pre-programming to be "only good,"  is the entertainment analgesic discourse to provide coping and survival technique in face of the fact that for the most part the strong are taking advantage of the weak.

Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2019

How could Jesus on the cross be a Messiah?  How could the Messiah only be known to those who had an epiphany of the Risen Lord?  Why wasn't Jesus a Messiah like David who would at least give Israel control of her own borders?  The Advent or Parousia was the "theological correction" completing the notion of the Messiah for those who could not see the Suffering Servant model of the Messiah as being adequate to all of the triumphant imagery for the Messiah.  A delayed second coming was the answer proving that the future is open to falsifying almost any held view about what has happened in the past.  Openness of the future inspires imaginations.

Quiz of the Day, December 2019

Quiz of the Day, December 31, 2019

Frances Joseph Gaudet is best know for what?

a. hymnody
b. prison reform
c. mission work with Native Americans
d. ministry to the deaf

Quiz of the Day, December 30, 2019

Which prophet resuscitated life of a young boy?

a. Jeremiah
b. Amos
c. Elijah
d. Joel

Quiz of the Day December 29, 2019

Samuel was not

a. a nazirite
b. son of Hannah
c. anointer of Saul
d. anointer of David
e. a Judge of Israel
f.  a member of the tribe of Dan

Quiz of the Day, December 28, 2019

The event of the Holy Innocents puts Jesus in direct contrast with whom?

a. David
b. Elijah
c. Moses
d. Abel

Quiz of the Day, December 27, 2019

Of the following book of the New Testament, which has a self-identifying author with the name of John?

a. 1 John
b. 2 John
c. 3 John
d. John
e. Revelations


Quiz of the Day, December 26, 2019

The Infancy Narratives of Jesus are found in which Gospels?

a. Luke and Matthew
b. Mark and Luke
c. John and Matthew
d. Matthew and Mark
e. Luke and John
f. Mark and John

Quiz of the Day, December 25, 2019

Which mystic said that we needed to be mothers of God in our world?

a. John of the Cross
b. Meister Eckhart
c. Teresa of Avila
d. Julian of Norwich

Quiz of the Day, December 24, 2019

To whom was the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles written?

a. to the Gentile churches
b. to Theophilus
c. to synagogue members in Asia Minor
d. to the Pauline churches

Quiz of the Day, December 23, 2019

What is the priestly order of Abijah?

a. a division of priests set by King David
b. one of 24 divisions of priests from the time of David
c. an order of priest from Abijah, a descendent of Eleazar, son of Aaron
d. the order of priest of the father of John the Baptist
e. all of the above

 Quiz of the Day, December 22, 2019

Who is the biblical dragon slayer?

a. St. George
b. Gabriel
c. Raphael
d. Michael

Quiz of the Day, December 21, 2019

Which apostle was referred to as "the twin?"

a. Nathaniel
b. Thaddaeus
c. Thomas
d. Matthias

Quiz of the Day, December 20, 2019

Who was Martin Luther's wife?

a. he was an Augustinian monk and not married
b. a former nun
c. a member of the minor nobility
d. Katharina von Bora
e. b, c, and d
f. b and d

Quiz of the Day, December 19, 2019

Where is the reference to the Lion of Judah found in the Bible?

a. Genesis
b. The Psalms
c. Daniel
d. Revelations
e. a and b
f. a and c
g. a and d

Quiz of the Day, December 18, 2019

Which of the following is not one of the four living creatures of the Book of Revelations?

a. horse
b. ox
c. lion
d. eagle
e. man

Quiz of the Day, December 17, 2019 

The desolating sacrilege mentions in the Gospel words of Jesus have their precedence in which book of Hebrew Scriptures?

a. The Psalms
b. Zechariah
c. Daniel
d. Haggai


Quiz of the Day, December 16, 2019

Which architect designed churches which came to be dubbed as "carpenter Gothic?"

a. Frank Lloyd Wright
b. Richard Upjohn
c. Louis Sullivan
d. E. Fay Jones Quiz of the Day, December 15, 2019

Gaudete is

a. Latin for "rejoice"
b. An Advent Carol
c. Third Sunday of Advent
d. All of the above

Quiz of the Day, December 14, 2019

The "Dark Night of the Soul," is spiritual metaphor which derives from whom?

a. Walter Hilton
b. Jacob Boehme
c. John of the Cross
d. Author of "The Cloud of Unknowing"

Quiz of the Day, December 13, 2019

Which of the following is not one of seven churches referred to in the Book of Revelations?

a. Thyatira
b. Smyrna
c. Rome
d. Laodicea
e. Philadelphia
f. Pergamum

Quiz of the Day, December 12, 2019

Who is St. Juan Diego?

a. a disciple of St. Juan de la Cruz
b. a second generation Jesuit
c. a recipient of a Marian apparition in Mexico
d. a Spanish mystic from the 15th century

Quiz of the Day, December 11, 2019

Which theologian is called the architect of "neo-orthodoxy?"

a. Paul Tillich
b. Karl Barth
c. Richard Niebuhr
d. J.A.T. Robinson

Quiz of the Day, December 10, 2019

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk.  Of what order were the Trappists?

a. Jesuit
b. Dominican
c. Benedictine
d. Cistercian


Quiz of the Day, December 9, 2019

The  Nunc dimittis, Benedictus and Magnificat are found in which Gospel?

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John

Quiz of the Day, December 8, 2019

Zechariah gave his son the name John?  From what language did this name derive?

a. Hebrew
b. Classical Greek
c. koine Greek
d. Aramaic

Quiz of the Day, December 7, 2019

Which of the following is not true about St. Ambrose?

a. he was a governor when he was asked to be bishop of Milan
b. he was not baptized when he was asked to be bishop of Milan
c. he had not been a priest or deacon when asked to be bishop of Milan
d. he was member of the Arian doctrinal party
e. he ran away and hid when he was asked to be bishop
f. he had to be baptized before being made a bishop

Quiz of the Day, December 6, 2019

Which of the following did not derive from St. Nicolas of Myra?

a. Sinter Claus
b. Baba Noel
c. Kris Kringle
d. Santa Claus
e. Père Noël
f.  San Myra

Quiz of the Day, December 5, 2019

Which of the following is not regarded in the scholarly analysis of biblical genre?

a. Law
b. Prophecy
c. Apocalyptic
d. Narrative
e. Wisdom
f.  Poetry
g. Fiction

Quiz of the Day, December 4, 2019

Of the following which is not true of John of Damascus?

a. he worked as a civil servant of a Muslim Caliph
b. he was an iconoclast
c. he defended the validity of icons
d. he was a musician

Quiz of the Day, December 3, 2019

Francis Xavier was the sole founder of which order?

a. The Society of Jesus
b. The Jesuits
c. The Society of St. Mary
d. none of the above

Quiz of the Day, December 2, 2019

Who of the following regarded Jesus to be primarily prophet proclaiming an imminent apocalypse?

a. Bart Ehrman
b. Albert Schweitzer
c. Marcus Borg
d. The Jesus Seminar
e.  a and b
f. b and c

 Quiz of the Day, December 1, 2019

Advent comes from "adventus," and was a translation of what Greek word referring to the Second Coming of Christ?

a. epiphania
b. maranatha
c. parousia
d. apocalupsis

Having a Word Transplant

1 Christmas  A     December 29, 2019

Is.61:10-62:3     Ps. 147:13-21

Gal. 3:23-25,4:4-7  John 1:1-18

Lectionary Link

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.  All thing came into being through Him.  In him was life and the life of the light of all people.

This revisit of the creation story has always made me think of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, the so called "Miracle Worker."

Helen was unable to see, to hear or speak.  She despite her impairments was a very capable person, but she was locked off from discovering her capacities.  She thrashed around being organized and domesticated by people who had their full language ability.  Her life was an interior chaos.  What could move over the deep of her chaos?

One day after repeated efforts of her teacher to sign into her hand; the association of water running over her hand and w-a-t-e-r being signed into her hand suddenly created her life.  She suddenly became a word fanatic; she wanted to know every word.  She wanted the full creation of her life.  In the word is life or John's Gospel says "zoe."  Helen Keller had life, she since birth had had "bios" or biological life; but she needed "zoe" life or abundant, creative, telling, spirit-life.  It is Word which create human life and makes us different among the other biological life.

I have come to believe that you and I are constituted by the words of our lives.  How we have taken on the words of our lives forms the character in that they have become the repetitive scripts of our lives that we live out.

We are at the end of our year and we might be pondering some New Year resolutions, in hopes of making some change.  How can we change some to the repetitive scripts that we have been living out?  The one's that we or others have come to call losing scripts, scripts which are not good for our physical, psychological, social or spiritual health.

Words are life.  Words are spirit.  Words are the driving scripts of our lives.  In John's Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying, "My words are spirit and they are life."

So if we are going to be involved in changing our lives, we are going to have to have a "word transplant" in our lives.  We are going to have to dissolve existing word conditions which are losing scripts.  How do come into word transplants in our lives toward the positive change of repentance?  Through words.  We expose ourselves to new words.  We read, we look for new models and mentors who can give us new direction.  We practice new words in doing things different with our body language.  We change our dance choreography; we change the choreography of our body behavior toward health, love and justice.

Here we are; we are comprised of language, life scripts that we cannot help but live out.  And yet we still want something more; we want "zoe" creative, abundant life, beyond our biological existence.  We want to be explorative, even like Helen Keller who discovered that words were the creation of her life, and she really ended up having her life created very well by words.

Please make the year 2020 a Word year for yourselves.  Discover how your life and your behaviors are constituted by the ways in which you have taken on language even into the programming of your body behaviors.  Journal, write, speak, pray, read, learn, get in touch with the words that you have and how they use you for good and bad in your life.

How do you and I change our lives?  The best way is to have our socks knocked off by some new insights, new awareness when we come to say, "Wow, I'm never going to be the same."

This is what I hope for each of us in our Word life in 2020: That we will come to some very insightful "Wow!" experiences which will make life changes exciting and not drudgery.

In our beginning of significant human life has been the Word.  The Word was with God.  The Word was God.  The Word is our life.  The Word is our Light.  The Word is being made flesh in us.  The Word is trying to take over our body language toward love, kindness and mutual regard.

We see so much of dark human words and behaviors on display today in our media.  We truly need Christ as the Enlightened and Creative Spirit Word in our lives today.  Amen.