Sunday School, June 7, 2020 Trinity Sunday A

Sunday School, June 7, 2020   Trinity Sunday  A

Theme:

The Holy Trinity

The confession of God, being One God but in three Persons

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Why is the Trinity an important meaning for us?

To understand God, we believe that God has to come in some “bi-lingual” way to us.   Somebody has to speak about the meaning of God in the language of human beings.

The first part of the Bible is called the Hebrew Scriptures.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is written about by prophets, leaders, priests, poets and teachers.  Inspired people wrote about God.  When Jesus appeared, we believe that God became fully manifest as God would appear as a person. 

The appearance of Jesus who understood himself to be the Son of his Father is important because each of us is taught that we are sons and daughters of God.  We are persons and if we are created in the image of God, God has personality too.  And in our relationship with God we can know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

By confessing God as Father, we admit that we did not make ourselves; we came from a great Past and Began with God.

By confessing God as Son, we believe that God became known in human experience as a person who lived in this world.  This means that we accept our human experience as a valid way to know God.

By confessing God as Holy Spirit, we believe that God is invisible like breath and wind, but just as we can see the effects of breath and wind when we blow or when wind blows the leaves on the tree, we believe that we can see the effects of an invisible Holy Spirit everywhere.

We confess the Trinity because we believe it expresses what is honestly true in how people understand God.

Sermon

   When Jesus left this earth, he gave some instruction to his friends.  He told them to make friends with other people, just as he had made friends with them.  And how did Jesus make friends?  He told them about how God loved them like the very best father in the world.  He told them that just as he was a special son of God, that everyone was a special child of God.

  Wouldn’t it be sad to have a wonderful parent but not be able to know it?  If you had a mother and father but if you did not know about your parents, it would be sad.

  Lots of people in this world do not know that they are a member of the great family of God.  Lots of people do not know that they are children of God and that God is their father.

  Jesus came to teach us that even though we have mothers and fathers in our birth families, we also have God as our Father of the greatest family of all, the family of the entire world, the entire universe.

  Jesus came to show us how much God loved us.  And Jesus told his friends, that even though he was leaving and even though they could not seen God, he would still be with them always.  How would Jesus be with them?  He would be with them as the Holy Spirit.  This means that God is a close to us as our breath.   Take a breath.  How close is your breath to you?  Very close.  Well that is how close that God’s Spirit is to us.

  Jesus gave his friends a special job to do. He said that he wanted them to make friends and gather those friends together so they could help each other and help other people in this world to know about God’s love.

  What was the job he gave them to do?  He told them to make friends for God and he told them to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  In doing this they would be celebrating their membership in God’s family.

  Baptism is a celebration of our birth into the family of God and when we baptize, we say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  The family of God begins in heaven and we celebrate on earth that we are members of the family of God.

   We call the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity.  And this is what we celebrate on Trinity Sunday.

  I want you to remember that we believe in the Trinity, because we believe that God loved us so much that God included in God’s family…so we have Jesus as our brother.  But we also have the Holy Spirit and that means God is with us always and very close to us.

  Let us remember the Trinity today.  And let us remember our baptism too.  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

June 7, 2020: Trinity Sunday

Gathering Songs: Holy, Holy, Holy, The King of Glory,  Eat This Bread, Peace Like a River

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:  Holy, Holy, Holy,  (# 362 in blue hymnal)

1-Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!

God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!

2-Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,

Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, 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 Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord.

People: Thanks be to God.

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 8

O LORD our Governor, *how exalted is your Name in all the world!

Out of the mouths of infants and children * your majesty is praised above the heavens.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

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:  The King of Glory Comes, (Renew! # 267)

Chorus: The King of glory comes, the nation rejoices.  Open the gates before him, lift up your voices.

1-Who is the King of Glory; how shall we call him? He is Emmanuel, the promised of ages.

2-In all of Galilee, in city or village, he goes among his people curing their illness.

3-Sing then of David’s son, our savior and brother: in all of Galilee was never another

Doxology

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

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

Prologue to the Eucharist

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

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

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

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All 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:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Eat This Bread, (Renew! # 228)

Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to me and never be hungry. 

Eat this bread, drink this cup, trust in me and you will not thirst.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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

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

I’ve got love…. 

I’ve got joy…

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God! 

Faith without Religion

1

My purpose in this blog thread is to offer some thoughts upon the topic: Faith without Religion.

Why?  So many people are not being engaged by various communities of faith for a variety of reasons.  I thought it might be helpful to some to create a "liminal" space outside of official religion language for persons to reflect upon the impediments that they have experienced in their participation in religious communities or in the observance of members of various communities of faith, particularly the official spokespersons and authorities of faith communities.   Further, can persons in this "liminal" space ponder some "correspondences" with persons of faith and religious communities that might pertain to universal aspirations for justice, love, beauty and ethical and moral practices that might be shared, no matter what one's valued commitments are in life?

Why use the word "faith" without religion instead of the more popular "spirituality" instead of religion?  ("I'm spiritual, not religious movement")  I choose the word "faith" because it seems to me to be less metaphorically removed from actual human practice.  How so? Spiritual deriving from "spirit" involves the metaphor of breath or wind to describe an inner invisible essence of the human interior.  Since no one can see "spirit" but place a metaphor in place of the invisible it seems to me a bit more removed from accessible grasp for broader communication. Spirit and spirituality can imply many preconceived notions of the geography of the human interior life.  My perception of the "I'm spiritual" movement tends to be heavy upon individualism and embraced as a deliberate way to avoid community participation and it is easier to be a "quietist" politically if one is spending a good portion of personal time "contemplating" one's navel (to exaggerate a tendency to see spirituality as a result of disillusionment with other people because of contacts in churches and other group projects).

I find faith to be reflective of more accessible human practice.  But I use faith as it found in the Greek word usage for pistos in Aristotle's Rhetoric.  pistos is also the New Testament Greek word for "faith" or "belief," and while its usage in koine Greek of the New Testament drifted from the functional use of pistos in Aristotle's Rhetoric, there is a kernel of meaning which connects both its use in Aristotle and in the New Testament.  What is the goal of rhetoric in Aristotle's title of the same?  pistos.  And what does pistos mean in Aristotle's rhetoric?  Persuasion.  The goal of rhetoric is persuasion.  Persuasion involves being volitionally committed to something such that it drives one's life actions.  And how is this reflective of the New Testament pistos?  To have faith in Christ, to believe in Christ is to have come to a place of persuasion about Christ.

I find the notion of persuasion to be more accessible to a greater number of people than the notion of "spirit" or "spirituality," because no one in life escapes the situation of being persuaded by privileged values which motivates one's life actions.  One may be passively persuaded by mob and herd participation and not conscious of how one has reached persuasion to be expressed in one's action, but it would seem that no one escapes being a "persuaded person" of some sort.  The questions remain are how is one persuaded and about what is one persuaded and what are the ethical consequences of living out those values about which one is persuaded.

So, I find it more useful to say that everyone lives a "persuaded" life in some way than to say everyone is "spiritual" or everyone has a spirit, since the latter assumes a certain essential inner psychological mapping that may not be embraced by everyone.

I hope you can see how I would make the case for all persons having "faith" without religion and this can lead to the inter-dialogue between the relative adequacy of the many different "faith" perspectives.  Can one make the case about the adequacy of what one regards to be worthy of being persuaded.

2

Many people have come to think that they can live without religion, without active participation in a religious faith community.  However, people cannot live without faith, faith as I defined it using the definition of Aristotle in his use of the same Greek word for "faith" as is used in the New Testament.  Faith is that which one is persuaded about and no one lives without persuasion about what motivates the acting and thinking and speaking of one's life.  One may be more intentionally connected with what one regards to be one's persuasion or one may live in passive unreflecting ways about the outcomes of one's persuasion in one's behaviors, actions, thinking and speaking.

Some people live just ignoring religion in their lives; others are so distressed by religion that they become persuaded to be become evangelical about resisting or erasing the effects of religion in society.  They in fact live, persuaded by the need to resist what they regard to be detrimental to their vision of an enlightened humanity; they are driven to resist religion and its effect.

For the resisters to religions and their effects, resisting instantiate the power of religion in the lives of the resisters.  It is almost like having one's life center around a negative, like a terminable disease.  One begins to define one's life by the negative toward what one is resisting rather than celebrating a lost enlightened positive because one's image is formed by being in a "war" against an enemy.  Chesterton said, "If there were no God, there could be no atheists."  This highlights the sea change which has to occur in language, since in the normal use of the word God, the word approximates how Anselm defined God, as "the one than which no greater can be conceived."  An atheist, has to grieve the entrance of the word God into the human vocabulary as a meaningless concept and use logic to show the inconsistency with which the word as been hypocritically used by persons to profess religious faith.

But are other "God-oid" words functioning in a meaningfully significant ways for people who have faith but not religion?  We use the word "universe" as a meaningful notion but we cannot prove that there is "one world," since we cannot prove a world outside of our own anthropocentric musings.  We use the word infinity as though it was meaningful and when we add the notion of time, then infinity would include the not yet, or the dot, dot,dot,dot........, the "to be continued" sense of everything.

It could be that people of "secular" faith, i.e., alternate persuasions to religious faith, are perturbed that people of religious faith live and hold traditions that have come to language and culture and societies which claim to have a precise knowledge about things which cannot be proven by the methods which have come to predominate in scientific inquiry.  And instead of being "humble" about their "revelations," people of religious faith come to take pride in the obvious violation of their revelations to the most brilliant way to actuarial probability living, namely, the methods of science.  The methods of science fleshed out what once was just regarded to be "common sense" and "naive realism" in very systematic ways so that replication of experience and predictability could be enhanced in actual planning one's life for the future.

Just as secular people of faith have come to have their lives dominated by their resistance to people of religious faith in living out degrees of obsession to rid this world of religions and religious influences, so too religious people of faith have come to have their lives dominated by secular skeptics of religious faith.  One might even say that the threat of secular faith, especially the scientific method in becoming definitive of what "pragmatic truth" is, has made religious people take on an inferiority complex.  Science and modernity have challenged the precision of "revelation" knowledge of religious people.  People in the Middle Age were given precise knowledge about the afterlife of purgatory even while they did not know the actual existence of Tokyo.  But as Enlightenment and world travel became actual empirical experience, suddenly people from Europe could know and get to Tokyo, even while there began to grow a skepticism about any precise knowledge of an afterlife place of purgatory.

What came to be questioned was the credibility of Holy Books and their contents.  And if the scientific method became the very model of what really is pragmatically true, then what happens to the "revealed truths" of Holy Books?

Faced with an inferiority complex due to the success of the scientific method, many religionists came to accept the truth of science, which is in effect, the truth of empirical verification.  Something is only meaningfully truth, if and only if it can be empirically verified.  So, religionists began to argue that all things Scriptural were true because they "could have been empirically verified," even though most of the incidences that they held could have been and were verified (according to witnesses in Holy Book accounts) had to be relegated to "unique, one time occurrences.  This eludes the empirical practice of something being able to be repeated and replicated, given similar conditions. 

Religionists in awe of the truth and the pragmatic industrial outcomes of science, which they integrated into their everyday lives for ease of living through machines and technology, began to defend the Bible and its stories as though they were "scientific, empirically verifiable" events and this gave rise to what has come to be "biblical fundamentalism," or sometimes just called "biblical literalism."  The fundamentals had to do with making Christian poetry into science.  The efficacy of the actual blood of Jesus cleansing from sins.  The biological empirically verifiable Virgin birth.  The treating of the words of the Bible as inerrant and directly inspired, almost to the degree of believing that the words of the Bible caused the world to be as we know it to be, in a causatively  absolute way.  In an ironic way, fundamentalists believe the Bible in a similar way as do Muslims about the Qur'an, namely, the Bible is regarded to be the "uncreated" Word of God, presuming it did not get filtered or anthropomorphically altered by being delivered through imperfect human beings.  What fundamentalism denies is that interpretation happened in the coming to language of the biblical words.  They assume that there is one singular correct interpretation of those same biblical words and presume to have the insider knowledge of one correct interpretation,  (wink, wink, I have the Spirit and you don't so I know that true and singular meaning of the Bible).  There is a very naive belief that the meaning of biblical words are magically "self evidential" to those who really have the Spirit.  Ironically, there are myriads of "fundamentalist" groups to disprove the exact and precise self-evidentiality of biblical words, and so one must assume a very oxymoronic notion of there being many "Spirits" of fundamentalism who are leading to variety of interpretations of the the Bible.  Another tenet of fundamentalism is that the apocalyptic words of the Bible refer to an exact predicted future and lots of fundamentalism today is really an apocalyptic fatalism in wishing for a quick end of the world when Jesus will return and establish "them" as the true good guys who knew and were elect and had it correct all the while.  It is a kind of prideful spiritual elitism of knowing more and better than anyone else.  The apocalyptic fatalism of fundamentalism results in behaviors of abhorring this world:  God doesn't really love the "fallen world" of our beautiful environment since this earth ship is going to be abandoned in favor of a new heaven and earth.  There is no reason for environmental stewardship in the apocalyptic fatalism of fundamentalism; only domination and exploitive use while we wait for this earthly ship to be abandoned.

The public dominance of "fundamentalism" of religions in thinking and in practice has come to be the "faith" and the "belief" in God that most agnostic and skeptics of religious faith cite as the reason for their non-belief, atheism and general skepticism of all religion.  Most atheism which comes to writing consists of cataloging the bad behaviors and the bad thinking of people who calls themselves people of religious faith and belief in God.

To explore the divide between people of religious faith and people of secular faith we will next explore some of the many examples cited regarding the bad behaviors and bad thinking of religious people, which includes their own inconsistencies within their own traditions particularly regarding significant "scientific" innovations like the switch from flat earth to round earth and  "social innovations" of the modern world regarding issues like slavery and the subjugation of women.

Prayer for a Day of Mourning

Prayer for a day of mourning

Gracious God, we mourn today the events of the pandemic, over which we had no control of its origin. The freedom in nature has thrown a challenge and we mourn our lack of early acceptance of its severe threat to us. We mourn the loss of so many precious lives and we don't accept a fatalistic "it was just their time" diminishing of what their future with us could have been. We thank you God for all of the heroic service which has arisen and the sense of social responsibility which so many have embraced in practicing the necessary precautions.


Today, God of freedom, we mourn the failure of our country to fully practice the enlightened freedom of "justice for all under the law." We ask for grace to resist condemning in sweeping generalizations, even while we ask for genuine repentance in the failure to love our neighbors. We ask for the wisdom to invest in the lives of all our people so that each person can walk, work and live with affirming public dignity. We ask for a free market and free society based upon the creative and free investment in the common welfare of all.

And because we know of our tendency to sin and failure to practice love, we ask that all who are called to be peace officers for the safety of everyone to have the wisdom of restraint. We ask that the gift of Jesus as a people whisperer be given to the leaders in our lives.

God of transforming grace, we mourn the wasted profound energy of discontent and violence. We wished that we could have "gotten the message" in ways less disruptive of our normal patterns. Transform anger and violence and fear into defiant stands for the dignity of everyone. Transform fear based on unwillingness to know and appreciate each other in our differences, into faithful and mutual appreciative engagement.

And may the Spirit of God in this season of Pentecost move over the void, abyss and chaos of purposeless energies and bring us the kind of peace that affirms dignity of everyone to have significant life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

We Need an Apparent Holy Spirit

Day of Pentecost  A May 31, 2020

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

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

At 13:16 mark of video. 

Come Holy Spirit.  Veni Sancte Spiritus. Ven Espiritu Santo,Viens Esprit Saint, Komm Heiliger Geist, Ruh al'qdos Biya, 

Pentecost is the event of finding harmony in difference.  It is the day of affirming that people who speak different languages and have drastically different world experience and conditions can come to harmony and peace together.

And so we say in every language today, "Come Holy Spirit," even though we know that the Spirit came in creation and has never left the world.  The Spirit creates the divine environment and so we can know ourselves to live and move and have our being in God.  If the Spirit has always been, why to do pray, Come Holy Spirit? We do so, because it isn't always enough to know that there is a wind; we need to see the leaves move in the tree.  We need to see the Holy Spirit as apparent in human community.

And how we need the peaceful Holy Spirit to become apparent in our human communities today.   On Pentecost, we have been literally "pent" up, sheltering in our homes for longer than the Easter season.  We have been "pent" up in anxiety about the pandemic and its many drastic effects upon human life on every level.  And now the injustice inflicted upon the life of a black man in Minneapolis seems to put us over the top of what we can actually bear without the acting out of frustration about long denied justice and the practice of uneven justice in our society.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  Be made apparent even as a peace dove calming our hearts.  Today, we need more than our belief in the Holy Spirit; we need the Apparent Effects of the Holy Spirit to be realized in significant ways.

The Holy Spirit can become apparent, if the Spirit has the leader who can unite.  And Jesus Christ was the one who could unite hearts with voices which spoke different languages.

The Holy Spirit is looking today for worthy leaders who can unite in the midst of differences. The Holy Spirit of Peace is looking for us to be the leading channels or instruments of peace as goes the prayer attributed to St. Francis.

There are other spirits besides the Holy Spirit and the spirits of peace that the Holy Spirit inspires.

"Spirits" are the constellation of the energies of group identities which motivate group actions, some are destructive and evil, some are entertaining, benign and beneficial, and some become the vehicle for God's Holy Spirit to be peaceful, loving unifying justice in our world, not just in ideal, but in actual practice.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

Think about all of the group identities which are the "esprit de corps" rallying what people do when they come together.  Think about all of the footage of horrifying dictators who have flamed unities of hatred and bias.  The mob spirit found in our history books and in our world today are truly anti-Christ, because they don't end in inspiring peace, truth and unity.

There are other manifestation of group spirit which are benign and even beneficial.  Colleges, sports teams, school spirit, city pride, hometown spirit are manifestations of esprit de corps in very benign ways.  An esprit de corps which raises money to fight cancer and every sort of illness or malaise can true be a beneficial "mob" spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  And help us discern what you truly inspire.  And how is Holy Spirit distinguished from the other manifestations of "esprit de corps" in our world?

First, Holy Spirit is permanent.  It is the ground of the omnipresence of God within whom we live and move and have our being.

Second, it is Personal.  We acknowledge on Pentecost the rising in human understanding of the Holy Spirit as a Person of the Godhead.  The reason that we can project Personality upon the omnipresent Spirit is because we as humans are personal, meaning we are connected and related to all that is.  Personality is our highest attribute and if we confess someone greater than we are, that Someone also is at the very least a very exalted Person.

Come, Personal Holy Spirit.  We need you.

The Holy Spirit has had a general permanency since forever, but the Holy Spirit also has "coming out" parties and events.  Pentecost was the chief coming out party of the Holy Spirit.  There needs to be particular manifestation so that we can be renewed in knowing the Great Friend of the universe.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  Wind, I need to see the leaves move on the tree to reassure me that you are still here.

So we need both the general and the particular apparent experiences of the Holy Spirit to reinforce the belief in the unseen in the middle of all that we do see, touch, feel, and hurt and cry about.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

The Holy Spirit is not just enlightened esprit de corps; the enlightened identity attained by people who want to let the Christ nature become evident in them.  The Holy Spirit is also individual and personal.  The Holy Spirit can be known within each of us as the Clean Heart which the Psalmist prayed for.  We need the Holy Spirit as our Clean Heart because we need the highest authority for our consciences and motives.

We need the Holy Spirit as the experience of deep calm and peace within us, because we know that things on layers above the Holy Spirit can be turbulent and unsettled and even frightening.  We need an internal place of retreat and refuge, not to escape our world but to have an anchor within the tossing waves of the world.

And we need the Holy Spirit as proof of our longevity in Hope.  Hope has made me want more than can ever be delivered in my lifetime.  Is my Hope a taunting God who wants good things that will never fully be my experience?  Or is that Hope the very presence of the eternal Spirit who is saying that I will ride the eternal Spirit, eternally?

Come, Holy Spirit Come, and come in apparent and particular ways for us today.  Inspire and activate manifold creativity to bring an end to this world pandemic.  Inspire and convert leaders who will promote social harmony.  Bring police and minority communities together for the common good of actual justice.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come, even to us the people of St. Mary's-in-the-Valley in specific ways.  Let us discern your manifestations today.  Amen.

Aphorism of the Day, May 2020

Aphorism of the Day, May 31, 2020

Can we be a part of "esprit de corps" today which also has the peaceful, just and loving imprimatur of the Holy Spirit today?

Aphorism of the Day, May 30, 2020

Revelation is an unveiling, of what always was.  The "unveiling" of God as Holy Spirit on Pentecost does not mean that such a metaphor for omnipresence did not exist before.  It is just that the Spirit came into understanding of people as being a Personality of God.

Aphorism of the Day, May 29, 2020

One cannot avoid the miscarriage of and the uneven practice of justice when the standards of meted arrest and punishment are radically different for people of different race and social status.  White collar crimes account for the massive theft of public and personal resources and such criminal are often shielded and protected by a bevy of attorneys who know how to keep their clients image from suffering any loss of dignity.  Meanwhile in a local store, an event involving but pennies in comparison results in an "arrest, punishment and accidental "execution" of a citizen who was respected in his community.  Jesus of Nazareth was aware that the way law was practiced did not benefit many in the class of people whom he called to his movement.  If law does not approximate the practice of justice then the practitioners can become fearful tyrants.  Jesus "fought the law" and the law won by putting him on the cross.  What does the afterlife of a dead person evoke in a community?  What is the aftermath of a dead person wrongly killed by law officers in a country which says justice is its main principle?

Aphorism of the Day, May 28, 2020

"spirit" can refer to both enduring character of group identity but also exigent manifestation and temporary "out burst" of "spirit" group behaviors.  The recent unjust death of a black man by over-zealous policing angered people to the point of unifying a "mob spirit" resulting in a wide ranges of behaviors, some peaceful protest and others revengeful acts as expressions of helplessness against such unchecked racism.  One can "blame" the spirit of the mob for good and bad results but such a "spiritual" phenomenon highlights the energy which impels counter-action and the more enduring "spirit" of justice which can have very imperfect and fragile practitioners in humanity.  Holy Spirit of Pentecost fame involves the understanding of an invisible, personal, omni-present God who can get activated in community events of people arriving at group identities for godly purposes and such events of effervescence can be misunderstood as "drunken" behaviors, being ecstatically joyful or inspired by the co-experience of the mystery of God.


Aphorism of the Day, May 27, 2020

Language becomes "tautological" when a community for inter-communication accept meanings for words, much as in an equation which implies for the purposes of this equation x=2.  In theology, communities attain prior commitment to meanings so for the purposes of our theology and community and biblical interpretation, God mean this, Son means this and Holy Spirit means this and sacrament means this. et al.  Whether definition is set by council and creed or other means, there is sufficient agreement on terms to keep the community in practical group identity.  Communities are organized around their commitments to agreed upon meanings of terms, which is in effect a paradigm.

Aphorism of the Day, May 26, 2020

When does a signifier lose its exact identity with what it signifies?  When is a metaphor no longer regarded as the "thing in itself," but rather a pointing sign?  Take the word "spirit;"  comes from words meaning wind or breath, or invisible things which we really believe in because we see their effects without seeing them.  So, wind or breath or spirit seem to be adequate metaphors for the Spirit, even though one cannot equate what we mean by wind or breath with the Signified Spirit.  Signifiers are metaphors/similes which with long usage and community habit become totally identified with what is Signified.  We can make a museum display of Spirit in this way; we place a closed bottle on display with the title of "air."  Even though the unseen air is trapped inside of the bottle; people become to think that the bottle is the air, even when it is a bottle of air.  The bottle and the air go together and without the air it is just a bottle.  We might say that the world in a like manner is a world of Spirit even as Spirit is a word in the world which designates some mystery that it is not.

Aphorism of the Day, May 25, 2020

What does Pentecost mean?  It refers to a privileged group Apparent Effervescence.  Personal and individual effervescent occurs which are events of inner insight and enlightenment.   Public events of apparent effervescence can be analyzed and classified on a continuum of goodness.  On one end is the "apparent effervescence" which occurs in an angry, hateful, bigoted mob of people, but what kind of "spirit" or effervescence is this which "unifies" people in hatred?  There are more benign occasion of public effervescence like patriotic rallies or sporting events where "public" spirit is palpable.  Pentecost is regarded to be on the Holy side of Apparent Effervescence since it unites around the experience of one's "Christ nature" which results in love and justice and Gospel "good news" behaviors.

  Aphorism of the Day, May 24, 2020

Does God the Father answer the prayers of Jesus?  Apparently not when it involves the free will of men and women.  If Jesus prayed that his disciples might be "one," then such has not really generally happened in churches throughout the ages.  But the prayer may be answer as individuals have come into their oneness with God as their heavenly parent.

 Aphorism of the Day, May 23, 2020

If Word is God from the beginning then worded human beings best bear the image of God in the quality of their word life.  And what is the best use of our word life?  Prayer, but not just ritualized, formulaic prayer; rather prayer as the total response of being intentionally committed to God when one's body language has become continuous oblationary prayer in one's offered deeds of love and justice.

Aphorism of the Day, May 22, 2020

In the long prayer of Jesus in John, Jesus curiously says, "I am no longer in the world..."  Is the writer channeling the oracle of the Ascended and absent Jesus?  Jesus also said in his prayer, "I gave them the words that you gave me."  Word is with God and is God from the beginning.  The words that Jesus spoke are spirit and life. Jesus is praying "words" to his Father, and so word is the currency of life itself.  The question is how do we use word in speaking and in body language acts.  One could say that for John's Gospel, Word is the currency of life itself and it is creative, but because it is subject to time and freedom it can also be abuse=used wrongly.

Aphorism of the Day, May 21, 2020

"Glorify me with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed."  What was the glory of Christ before the world existed according to the Gospel of John?  Christ was Word, the entire discursive universe which attained a definitive particularity in Jesus of Nazareth but Jesus in his Ascension was to be removed from the particular and be subsumed back into the entire generality of the discourse of Word from which all things that can be known are "created" or have knowable "being."   This is similar to the poetics of St. Paul who calls the Risen/Ascended Christ as All and in All.   Word and Word's reflexivity , i.e. about Itself in all discursive manifestation is the most accessible metaphysics.  John's Gospel provides the basis for a post-modern Word mysticism.

Aphorism of the Day, May 20, 2020

The prayer of Jesus in John 17 seems to be an oracle of the Risen Christ since Jesus refers to himself in the third person and his work in the past tense.  He is acting "ascended" even when the Johannine chronology does not indicate that such has happened.  Such writing seems to be mystagogy of the early church trying to train mystics.

Aphorism of the Day, May 19, 2020

The Ascension solves a mystery of the absence of Jesus of Nazareth and the post-resurrection appearing of the Risen Christ.  Why doesn't Jesus or the Risen Christ come in such "apparent" ways to those who would like him to?  He's ascended; he has evaporated from eyesight to another realm.

Aphorism of the Day, May 18, 2020

The mysticism of John's Gospel is expressed in the oracle prayer of Jesus who prays to the heavenly Parent, "that they may be one as we are one."  This has often been used to indicate a concern for "church unity," but in Johannine mysticism it more likely refers to coming into the "power/authority" to be a child of God and so bear in the most complete way the "familial" image of God on one's life.  John's Gospel is so concerned about God as Father because the mystical path leads to the recovery of what it means to be made in the divine image and know that the spiritual genetics of the heavenly Parent is manifest in oneself.


Aphorism of the Day, May 17, 2020

If we live and move and have our being in God, as Paul confirmed in his Mars Hill discourse, then we and all are contained by the ultimate Container.  There can be nothing outside the Container, except that Container as it grows and accrues further occasions of Becoming the Ultimate Container.  Nothing affects the Container from outside, but everything from inside does because everything inside shares degrees of the freedom of becoming.  The Container is the parent of all and human beings share the highest qualities of the Parent Container and so they have the authority to be children of God, following the One who Uniquely bore divine Childhood status, Jesus.  And within the great Container we have the freedom to experience love as the connecting force and to know that we have an inner Advocate to make the case for our purposeful being.

Aphorism of the Day, May 16, 2020

The Gospel of John is about the experience of a family relationship with the divine as being a child of God.  The Advocate, the Holy Spirit is to give one the authoritative sense of being in God's family and to realize this, one can be freed from the sense of being psychologically determine by one's nurture or one's nature and experience another kind of primary determination which derives from having this mystical birth experience.

Aphorism of the Day, May 15, 2020

The account of St. Paul in Athens, agreeing with the poets who said, "we are divine offsprings," indicates that Paul saw a rapproachment between he Gospel and the "pagan" pre-Christian poets.  The Gospel is about people realizing that they are children of God.  The Gospel is about Jesus showing us how we are really made to be the better "angels" and how to realize/activate/be empowered/come into the authority of the image of God upon our lives.

Aphorism of the Day, May 14, 2020

If we live and move and have our being in God, then God is the great Container and God does not have environment because God is the Environment.  Someone who does not have "environment" cannot be relative except to a Future Self.

Aphorism of the Day, May 13, 2020

In the internal symbolic order of the writer of John, persons are given power to become children of God, not born of the will of the flesh but of God.  As a follow up, the oracles words of Jesus in the Johannine church reiterate that the disciples would not be left orphans.  If John's Gospel is about living in the parallel kingdom of God; it is also about living in the parallel family of God and this Gospel goes at great length to establish the heavenly parent who was revealed by Jesus who was the Holy Sibling who gave everyone coat tails to be received into God's family.

Aphorism of the Day, May 12, 2020 

t is interesting that Jesus promised to send an "advocate" to be with his disciple-friends.  An advocate is like a lawyer working on one's behalf affirming one's standing.   Satan means "accuser" so the Advocate Holy Spirit is the discovery of one's own "Defense Attorney" against the "accuser."

Aphorism of the Day, May 11,2020

One might say that the "fatherization" of God is most pronounced in John's Gospel.  If the forced weaning from earthly parents was a common experience for many followers of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus was an experience of another kind of parentage.  Jesus said, "I won't leave you as orphans," as parentless people without heritage.  The image of the heavenly parent was on Jesus and he promised identity with the image of the heavenly parent on all who wanted to know this heavenly identity.

Aphorism of the Day, May 10, 2020

In the oracle words of Jesus, he is the way, the truth and the life.  We have in our Greek philosophical ways reduced "truth" to propositional syllogistic consistent, coherent and comprehensive adequacy.  Truth perhaps should be seen more as "honest" coherence with the life purpose of love and justice=God's will, rather than philosophical arguments about how to best defend the reality of Jesus of Nazareth.

Aphorism of the Day, May 9, 2020

How many New Testament "lives" are there?  At least three: bios, pseuche, and zoe.  They are parallel lives in the Gospels.  Physical life, soul life and "abundant life."  Jesus promised "abundant" life, or a kind of Life in life that pertained the experience of eternality within oneself, which in St. Paul was the evidence or the downpayment on ones afterlife.

Aphorism of the Day, May 8, 2020

"Show us the Father and we will be satisfied." And Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."  We cannot see our "eyeball" because our eyeball is being seen through.   The familial image of God on humanity is like eyeball, not seen but being seen through.  Jesus was the one who totally was given over to being seen through by God and so his familial likeness with God was complete. He invited everyone to realize one's divine likeness by being seen through.  Surrender to being seen through.

Aphorism of the Day, May 7, 2020

As Stephen was being stoned and watched by Saul, Stephen asked that "their sin not be held against them."  Saul, breaking that important commandment about not killing, must of had his conscience buried in tons of rationalization, only to resurface in such a personality snap when he became confronted on the road to Damascus.  "How did I ever justify murder as being my religious duty?"  He spent the rest of his life trying to make amends, and amend he did.

Aphorism of the Day, May 6, 2020

Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you've seen the Father."  This means that Jesus uniquely realized the image of God upon him in such a profound away and he could not see himself separated in any way.  Bring to surface and consciousness the God-image upon ones life is our lifetime vocation.  And Jesus did it best as an example for us.

Aphorism of the Day, May 5, 2020

One of the features of "apocalyptic" Christianity is more concern about the afterlife than this life.  Jesus told his disciples via the oracle of John's Gospel, "I go to prepare a place for you because my Father's house has many dwelling places."  It's like he was saying, "Hey, guys don't worry about the afterlife, we've got it covered."  One way to mirror the dwelling place in the afterlife is to work to make sure everyone has a dwelling place in this life.

Aphorism of the Day, May 4, 2020

In John's Gospel, Jesus is either a real estate agent or in charge of housing assignment: "In my Father's house, there are many dwelling places."  KJV used "many mansions," which sounds a bit more Downton Abbey upscale.

Aphorism of the Day, May 3, 2020

The discourse on the Good Shepherd in John's Gospel, is a teaching oracle of the early church on the characteristics of leadership and how Jesus modeled the sacrificial qualities needed to respond with empathy for persons in need.  One can note that many leaders today prefer to be "served" rather than "serve."

Aphorism of the Day, May 2, 2020

The metaphor of Jesus as the "Good Shepherd" is essentially the incarnation of the "Lord is my Shepherd" of Psalm 23.  If God were a visible Shepherd of people, what would God look like in human form?  Jesus.  Is Jesus so much an emptying of God into human form or is he the truthful embrace of accepting anthropomorphism as a valid way to speak about the non-human divine?

Aphorism of the Day, May 1, 2020

A good shepherd is one who uses power, knowledge and wealth to help "sheep," or those who are vulnerably in need.  The opposite of a good shepherd is the exploiter who uses power, wealth and knowledge to take advantage of the weak, the poor and ignorant.

Quiz of the Day, May 2020

Quiz of the Day, May 31, 2020

What is the Jewish Feast of Pentecost?

a. Yom Kippur
b. Purim
c. Shavuot
d. Sukkot

Quiz of the Day, May 30, 2020

Which prophet heard God say, "I will put my spirit within you?"

a. Amos
b. Obadiah
c. Ezekiel
d. Isaiah

Quiz of the Day, May 29, 2020

Pentecost means

a. fifty
b. Holy Spirit
c. speaking in unknown tongues
d. a type of church worship

Quiz of the Day, May 28, 2020

Which of the following would you not associate with Zerubbabel?

a. Second Temple
b. Cyrus
c. Achaemenid Empire
d. Jeremiah
e. Zechariah
f.  Nehemiah

Quiz of the Day, May 27, 2020

On the Day of Pentecost, who heard the news about spoke in their own languages?

a.Hebrew speakers in the Diaspora
b.Jews in the Diaspora in Jerusalem for a visit
c. all foreign language speakers who resided in Jerusalem
d. Asia Minor Jews

Quiz of the Day, May 26, 2020

To whom did God say, "mortals look at outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart?"

a. Paul
b. David
c. Moses
d. Samuel

 Quiz of the Day, May 25, 2020

Who succeeded Moses as leader of the people of Israel?

a. Aaron
b. Joshua
c.  Samuel
d.  David

Quiz of the Day, May 24, 2020

Which two biblical mountains are considered the same?

a. Tabor and Gerizim
b. Tabor and Hermon
c. Sinai and Tabor
d. Sinai and Horeb
e. Horeb and Hermon

Quiz of the Day, May 23, 2020

Who complained to Moses when Eldad and Medad began to prophesy?

a. Aaron
b. Miriam
c. Joshua
d. Caleb

Quiz of the Day, May 22, 2020

St. Helena was responsible for finding preserving the holy places in Jerusalem.  Who was her famous son?

a. Augustine
b. Constantine
c. Jerome
d. Justin Martyr

Quiz of the Day, May 21, 2020

Which Gospel has the account of the Ascension of Jesus?

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

Quiz of the Day, May 20, 2020

Alcuin was not

a. an educator
b. a deacon
c. an abbot
d. a priest


Quiz of the Day, May 19, 2020

Why did Jesus speak in parables?

a. so only insiders could know the secrets
b. the Psalmist wrote that this is how the Messiah would speak
c. Jesus copied the wisdom method of the book of Proverbs
d. to reach the people of the Johannine community

Quiz of the Day, May 18, 2020

Which of the following does not pertain to Rogation Day?

a. beating the bounds
b. blessing the gardens and fields
c. giving ministerial account to one's bishop
d. blessing shops

Quiz of the Day, May 17, 2020

What is a Jubilee?

a. a special 50 year observance

b. a year of no reaping

c. a year of no sowing

d. a year of liberty for all inhabitants of the land

e. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, May 16, 2020

Which is not true about the Hebrew "Feast of Booths?"

a. call Sukkot
b. last seven days
c. commemorates temporary dwellings of the wilderness sojourn
d. place where Jacob had the Jacob's Ladder dream
e. named after a place on the wilderness sojourn

Quiz of the Day, May 15, 2020

Which of the following is true?

a. an ephah is an ancient Hebrew unit of dry measurement
b. a hin is an ancient Hebrew unit of liquid measurement
c. an ephah is an ancient Hebrew unit of liquid measurement
d. a win is an ancient Hebrew unit of dry measurement
e. a and b
f. c and d

Quiz of the Day, May 14, 2020

Which of the following is prohibited under Levitical Laws?

a. eating all red meat
b. tattoos
c. colored wool garments
d. eating grasshoppers

Quiz of the Day, May 13, 2020

Where would have Jesus found the phrase, "love your neighbor as yourself?"

a. Genesis
b. Psalm
c. Proverbs
d. Leviticus

Quiz of the Day, May 12, 2020

Which portion of the "our Father" is not in some manuscripts?

a. deliver us from evil

b. forgive us our debts

c. thine is kingdom....

d. lead us not into temptation

Quiz of the Day, May 11, 2020

Which of the following derived from Azazel?

a. the sacrifice of goats
b. the notion of "scapegoating"
c. the Aaronic investiture
d. sacrifices in the tabernacle

Quiz of the Day, May 10, 2020

Who of the following is a mom who did not experience a marvelous or miraculous birth?

a. Hannah
b. Sarah
c. Ruth
d. Mary
e. Elizabeth

Quiz of the Day, May 9, 2020

What was the porto-type for the Temple in Jerusalem?

a. shrine at Shiloh
b. Phoenician temples
c. the Tabernacle
d. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, May 8, 2020

Whom of the following used the metaphor of mother for Jesus?

a. Aquinas
b. Julian of Norwich
c. Thomas Traherne
d. John of the Cross

Quiz of the Day, May 7, 2020

Jealous, in the Hebrew Scripture is

a. a name for God
b. is listed as what to avoid in one of the commandments
c. is a characteristic describing God's people
d. is an attitude that one is supposed to avoid according to Jeremiah

Quiz of the Day, May 6, 2020

What "part" of God was Moses allowed to see?

a. his presence in the pillar of fire
b. his presence in the pillar of cloud
c. his face
d. his back

Quiz of the Day, May 5, 2020

When Moses in anger cast the tablets of the commandments to the ground and "broke" them, what "broken" ironies occurred?

a. thou shall not have idols
b. thou shall not kill 3000
c. honor your parents
d. a and b

Quiz of the Day, May 4, 2020

What is the origin of the "golden calf?"

a. an idol constructed while Moses was on Mt. Sinai
b. an idol made at the direction of Aaron
c. an idol that led to the smashing of the first set of commandments
d. all of the above

Quiz of the Day, May 3, 2020

Which of the following is not true?

a. all Levites are priests
b. some Levites, descendants of Aaron are priests
c. kohan was a Hebrew word also used for non-Hebrew priests
d. Aaron was the first High Priest

Quiz of the Day, May 2, 2020

What was most holy in the tabernacle?

a. tablets of the commandments
b. two golden cherubim
c. the Ark of the Covenant
d. Aaron's budding staff

Quiz of the Day, May 1, 2020

Who is most known in Hebrew Scriptures for suffering?

a. Joseph
b. Job
c. Jeremiah
d. David