Saturday, November 26, 2022

Prayers for the Season of Pentecost 2022

Saturday after the Last Sunday of Pentecost, November 26, 2022

God, who cannot end and who contains all endings and beginning of all which derives from you and contains you in processive energy; we pray for ending from suffering and pain, and war and disease, and injustice and hatred.  These endings are the apocalypse which we seek.  Amen.

Friday after the Last Sunday of Pentecost, November 25, 2022

God, from our beginning we soon know that we will have an ending of life as it has been for us and we do not know when; give us the motivational grace always to be prepared for our potential ending and let us work to achieved bucket lists of needed love and justice in our world before we end.  Amen.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2022

God of Abundance, how can we be thankful for what we have in the middle of so many who lack so much?  Give us wisdom not to reduce thanksgiving to pride of our own privilege, but as the call to provide conditions of thankfulness for as many people as possible.  Amen.

Wednesday after the Last Sunday of Pentecost, November 23, 2022

God, of whom none greater can be conceive, with such conception of you also come the utopian visions of perfection, even impossible outcomes from us who fail in our free choices.  Keep perfection before us to inform the direction of our life pilgrimage and let us make incremental progress toward the perfection of being loving and just now.  Amen.

Tuesday after the Last Sunday of Pentecost, November 22, 2022

God, who is continuous all-containing reality, we pray for endings in our lives, the end of current war, the end of lying, the end of public rancor against honesty and the common good, the end of gun violence, the end of poverty and hunger.  We also ask for new beginning of peace and the common good of all people.  Amen.

Monday after the Last Sunday of Pentecost, November 21, 2022

Gracious God who is Word, we live and move and know ourselves as having being within Word; teach us to learn the best use of language in what we say, write, and pray, and let our body language deeds speak love and justice always.  Amen.

Last Sunday of Pentecost, The Reign of Christ Sunday, November 20, 2022

God in Jesus Christ you have made kingly sacrificial love and not the power of armies or the trappings of wealth. Give us such spiritual kingliness to love justice and mercy and walk humbly before your true kingliness.  Amen.

Saturday in 23 Pentecost, November 19, 2022

Christ as Eternal Word, you have inspired historically words to speak about you and God; give us grace to reprise what kingly would mean in our time for the leader of the universe in love and justice while respecting the freedom conditions of the world.  Amen.

Friday in 23 Pentecost, November 18, 2022

God the notion of you as a King of freedom is ironic for us because you have the disciplined power to respect everything else to have a degree of freedom.  Help us in the kingdom of freedom to expedite justice, love, and care and to know that you are intervening through us.  Amen.

Thursday in 23 Pentecost, November 17, 2022

God and Jesus, whom we call King; we confess you as All and in All as necessary existence and we use the ancient omni-competent figure of the king to designate the most important being in human society.  Give us grace to exalt the kingly virtues of justice and love to ensure the true kingly reputation of Jesus in our world today.  Amen.

Wednesday in 23 Pentecost, November 16, 2022

God, how can you be our glorious King, if you are not intervening to expedite justice and care for the innocence with immediate haste unless true Kingship involves relative freedom for all subjects?  Teach us as subjects with freedom to expedite care and justice in our world.  Amen.

Tuesday in 23 Pentecost, November 15, 2022

God, we have a tradition to name you as our heavenly King, and Jesus as King of heaven and earth; teach us the true kingliness of the practice of care, love, and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 23 Pentecost, November 14, 2022

God, whose designation as Almighty is implicit in the meaning of the name, God; our response to Jesus has made us revise our meanings in language of what a King would be.  He has come to be designated as the most superlative Person, and thus kingliness incarnate.  Give us grace to be humble and just in like kingly ways.  Amen.

Sunday, 23 Pentecost, November 13, 2022

God of temples and churches to house the gathering of people who pray, give us the wisdom to know that we build holy edifices to commemorate the creation fact of each person being a holy place of dwelling of the divine image.  Amen.

Saturday in 22 Pentecost, November 12, 2022

God of abiding presence, make us fit temples for your presence and as early temples do not last, let your presence within us be evidence of future reconstitution in the afterlife.  Amen.

Friday in 22 Pentecost, November 11, 2022

God of Peace, we hold to the vision of swords being hammered into plowshares, especially on this Veterans Day, and on this day when Ukraine is thwarted from its agricultural mission to defend itself under great threat to their people and their farmlands.  Grant us peace.  Amen.

Thursday in 22 Pentecost, November 10, 2022

O God of our future, you have inspired imaginations about many future outcomes so that is can be revealed to us now how Christ has and is and will come to us again.  Amen.

Wednesday in 22 Pentecost, November 9, 2022

God, who is continuous Life, we confess that we can only process identity in life through continuous differentiation and continuous beginning and endings; let us not elevate ending to a final static state, but give us grace to accept the dynamics of change and bless change with good actions.  Amen.

Tuesday in 22 Pentecost, November 8, 2022

Gracious God, let us not engage in apocalyptic fatalism, when things seem to be irreparable; give us the faith for hard times and accept that we have the responsibility of always living in the latest times which gives us a seniority over the past and requires of us a wisdom to integrate what the goodness of the past can do make the present better.  Amen.

Monday in 22 Pentecost, November 7, 2022

Gracious God of everlasting duration, with you there is no end times or latter days, and for us there is only living in the latest day in our contextual setting.  As Christliness has always been present and experienced as specific coming, let us experience more specific comings of Christliness in our latest times, because the anti-Christly of lies and evil seem to often have their sway.  Amen.

Sunday 22 Pentecost, November 6, 2022

Gracious God, let us become more like the angel nature which are promised about us by Christ in our future reconstituted states.  Let us be angelic by being messengers and actors of hope.  Amen.

Saturday in 21 Pentecost, November 5, 2022

Great God of the living, your life includes all past, present and future and as many have died within your great omnipresence, they and all things continue to be in invisible and yet substantial ways.  We commend the invisible realm to you and ask grace to take good care of the visible realm today, with justice and love.  Amen.

Friday in 21 Pentecost, November 4, 2022

God of the future of everything, let us not misuse the resurrection as a way of rubber stamping our current views with future victory for ourselves; let us uphold an endless future with the hope of special continuity for all things in general and for people in particular in the quest for continuous self surpassability in goodness.  Amen.

Thursday in 21 Pentecost, November 3, 2022

Everliving God, while we comfort ourselves with the hope of subjective immortality in the afterlife, let us not escape there to avoid leaving traces of our continuing objective immortality in the contributions which we will leave in the continuing visible realm toward justice and love.  Let us not replace desire for an afterlife for the hard work in this life to do justice.  Amen.

Wednesday, All Souls' Day, November 2, 2022

God of the living, we commit those who have died to your life which is able to give another kind of life, an afterlife to those we cannot see, touch, or engage with in the kind of accessibility which we desire.  Let our gratitude for the lives of our departed loved ones be for us a consolation for our grief of having lost them for the while.  Amen.

Tuesday, All Saints' Day, November 1, 2022

God of goodness and holiness, you lure and inspire us with the instantiated goodness found in the lives of the saints; help us to promote their goodness by emulating their lives so that we can resist the infamy of evil fame seekers in our age of information.  Amen.

Monday in 21 Pentecost, (All Hallow's Eve) October 31, 2022

Gracious God of the living who retains and reconstitutes everything and everyone in their surpassing even if invisible states; let us not obsess about the afterlife as an excuse for not doing justice, having mercy, and walking humble in this life now.  Amen.

Sunday, 21 Pentecost, October 30, 2022

Gracious God, without reparations for our wrongs, we have not completed repentance and reconciliation both as individuals and as society.  And when the reparations needed are many and cannot restore what was lost to the people who were defrauded of dignity of life, let us at the very least be humbly willing to live forward in generous ways.  Amen.

Saturday in 20 Pentecost, October 29, 2022

God, Owner of all, we live in a world where a few people have amassed to themselves the ownership of the majority of the world's resources.  We ask for the creative conversion of power and wealth to the common benefit of the people of the world especially those in dire need of assistance.  Amen.

Friday in 20 Pentecost, October 28, 2022

O God of lost causes, it seems as a lost cause for greed and power to be converted for goodness, kindness, generosity, and justice; yet we ask for such conversion in face of such seeming lost causes.  Amen.

Thursday in 20 Pentecost, October 27, 2022

O God, whose Plenitude defines hierarchy shrouded in elusive mystery of being mostly known as negligible unknowable precise effects; give us grace to use the lure of high plenitude to approximate love and justice in our words and behavior within our very limited contexts, and so come closer to approximating what Jesus lived and taught.  Amen.

Wednesday in 20 Pentecost, October 26, 2022

God of all-seeing, who as such gazes upon our presumed privacy.  We assert our privacy to be unique and hidden even while we know that there is nothing that we can do or say which escapes the linguistic universe and partakes of ultimate community classification.  Let us found our presumed private lives in love and justice and bring such private training in love into the public sector, not to be conscious of ourselves as being seen but to make love and justice our natural posture.  Amen.

Tuesday in 20 Pentecost, October 25, 2022

God of perfection, who made us to be perfectible on a path of self-surpassability; keep us from designating others as worse sinners than we are and denying other people the right of moral growth and where we can, let us be examples for others to see the positive results of grace in helping us to be more loving and just.  Amen.

Monday in 20 Pentecost, October 24, 2022

O forgiving God, as we receive forgiveness and practice forgiveness, give us grace as individuals and as a society to complete the work of forgiveness with acts of reparations and so complete the work of forgiveness with restoration for those who have been wronged.  Amen.

Sunday, 20 Pentecost, October 23, 2022

God of Mercy, you do not seem to impute bad motives in our hearts for being who we are, and yet you do not excuse us for failing to be merciful to others who are differently comprises from us in their circumstances.  Amen.

Saturday in 19 Pentecost, October 22, 2022

God of Mercy, let us not presume be think ourselves as not needing as much mercy as other people.  Let us always plead the mercy supplement in regards to what we still lack in attaining the ever elusive target of perfection.  Amen.

Friday in 19 Pentecost, October 21, 2022

God of love, delivery from the temptation of contempt based upon the loss of hope for reconciliation among people in the world.  And where we think we have insights on what is just and loving, let us be winsome in how we live those insights.  Amen.

Thursday in 19 Pentecost, October 20, 2022

God of greatness who made us perfectible; since we are far from perfect let us know and receive the mercy of tolerating our imperfection while on a path of surpassing ourselves in betterment, and let us also live with mercy for those on the same path.  Amen.

Wednesday in 19 Pentecost, October 19, 2022

God who has made a place for all beings, give us grace to transform our seeming latent selfishness, into the esteem of sensing your personal regard, and in this transformation let us be those who enable others to also know the dignity of the divinely latent esteem.  Amen.

Tuesday in 19 Pentecost, October 18, 2022

God of all and in all, forgive us when we act as though you are only a God of us and our views about you and our privileged opinions about ourselves.  Let us regard our lives to be houses of prayer for all people as we truly honor your image on all people.  Amen.

Monday in 19 Pentecost, October 17, 2022

God of all, forgive us when we take for granted our living in majority status in our social settings and become blind to those who are marginalized and without voices of advocacy to bring them dignity and care.  Help to be like Jesus, in emptying ourselves of the presumption of being the "godly favored" so that we can be those who let the favor of God become known to be accessible to all.  Amen.

 Sunday, 19 Pentecost, October 16, 2022

God, beyond all appearance, who is the ground of all becoming even when it seems apparent that injustice and pain are winning; give us persistence in to add to the column of love and justice in our prayers and deeds.  Amen.

Saturday in 18 Pentecost, October 15, 2022

God of women and men, we offer thanks to Teresa Avila who wisely came to have a woman's public voice in times when male authority suppressed the voices and lives of women.  Give us grace to further open up the full expression of the charismatic and winsome authority of women and girls in all societies and especially within the church which you want to be a model of enlightened affirm human society.  Amen.

Friday in 18 Pentecost, October 14, 2022

God of freedom who give us freedom to flood the prayer communication lines with continuous nagging for the success of justice; inspire more prayers for justice which will tip the scales against the delayed and denied justice which exists in our world.  Amen.

Thursday in 18 Pentecost, October 13, 2022

God of Freedom, who is the containing environment for all that does and can happen; we seek to pass the test of liberating freedom by overcoming evil with good and with that goodness foster future goodness.  Amen.

Wednesday in 18 Pentecost, October 12, 2022

God of all praising, we sometimes both blame and give you credit for all things even as we minimize the genuine freedom which is evident in volitional people and in probable conditions of freedom in the interactions of all things in the natural order.  Forgive us for trying to simplify what can count as providence even as we try in faith to merge strategies of justice as we see it with the great mystery of all things interacting all together.  Amen.

Tuesday in 18 Pentecost, October 11, 2022

Gracious God, we come as determined naggers in prayer not because we know the specific details of what is best for us and our world, but to help to add weight pulling the arc of history toward what is just and loving for all people.  Amen.

Monday in 18 Pentecost, October 10, 2022

God, most High, we live in the history of invasions, invaders, and invaded peoples; we have lived by "might makes right" morality even when you as love have given us the freedom to live differently.  As we cannot now repair all evil done by invaders when it occurred, let us use the power of our lives to lift up everyone to dignity and let our only Invader be the Holy Spirit of Love.  Amen.

Sunday, 18 Pentecost, October 9, 2022

God, we are grateful when healing occurs in the times of our lives even though we know that we need death healed to have hope in personal continuity after we have lost all hope of being healthy in this life.  Do not let us run to resurrection life too quickly if it means diminishing our manifold healing efforts in this life and let us uphold the belief that you love the world as it is, as it becomes.  Gracious God we honor you as a world-containing Being and not as a world-denying being.  Amen.

Saturday in 17 Pentecost, October 8, 2022

God of all people, who calls no one foreign; forgives for presuming special favor and treating others as being foreign to your favor and love.  Amen.

Friday in 17 Pentecost, October 7, 2022

Eternal Word, when we try to speak your identity, we end up needing to speak the entire linguistic universe to befit your fullness; help us to humbly accept our efforts at interpreting what love and justice means within the linguistic contexts of our lives in our words and body language deeds.  Amen.

Thursday in 17 Pentecost, October 6, 2022

Eternal Word of God, give us grace to use all of the derivatives forms of Eternal Word as they are fleshed out in the discursive practices of our lives.  Give us wisdom to apply the appropriate discourse to the situations with grace that will foster the practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 17 Pentecost, October 5, 2022

God of Everlastingness who is the future on which we can pin our hope; such hope coaxes us to have a faith today which persuades us to live well now because of the of the always, already Cosmic Self-Surpassability.  Amen.

Tuesday in 17 Pentecost, October 4, 2022, Feast of St. Francis

Gracious God, would that people like Jesus and Francis were not so uncommon in our world and that we would be tripping over ourselves in poverty trying to make others rich, or at least have enough.  Amen.

Monday in 17 Pentecost, October 3, 2022

God of health and salvation for all, forgive us when we imply in our world and deeds that your offer of health and salvation is not offered to all; give us grace to make the means of healing accessible to everyone in the ways which are compatible to the situations of human need.  Amen.

Sunday 17 Pentecost, October 2, 2022

God of creative action, you require that the truth of faith involves the pragmatic care of creation and people; forgive us when we reduce faith to fantastic shows of religious acts for motives other than the fullness of love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 16 Pentecost, October 1, 2022

Eternal Word, who is God,  you have left us with a record of shocking words of Jesus to impel us to moral and spiritual growth and to help to grow from faith to faith.  Amen.

Friday in 16 Pentecost, September 30, 2022

Jesus Christ our faith exemplar, we ask not for the faith to do fantastic unrealizable things of the imagination; we ask for the strength to do small, mustard seed, reliable acts which can accumulate to become glorious shade trees of refreshment for the weary.  Amen.

Thursday in 16 Pentecost, September 29, 2022

Lord Jesus Christ, we ask not to increase our faith to be able to cast mulberry trees into the sea; we ask to increase our faith exponentially with increasing our capacity and our practices of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 16 Pentecost, September 28, 2022

Word of God, Christ, whose words of Jesus often seem inscrutable; forgive us for thinking that mustard seed faith is about doing imaginary things like throwing mulberry trees into the sea, when faith is just about living toward the highest persuasive goals of love and justice with our words and deeds and doing it without fanfare.  Amen.

Tuesday in 16 Pentecost, September 27, 2022

Gracious Christ, we seek not faith to cast mulberry trees into the sea; we seek faith that can feed the world and bring justice and dignity to all people.  Amen.

Monday in 16 Pentecost, September 26, 2022

O God who presides over all probabilities and possibilities and honors the freedom of not knowing the future as yet actual, give us the grace to cope with the discipline of freedom, learning to co-exist with things seeming very unfavorable to us, and offering gratitude for the overwhelming sustaining goodness which resides in the conditions of Divine Plenitude.  Amen.

Sunday, 16 Pentecost, September 25, 2022

O God of unity, in our alienation from you, we have acted out and created fixed chasms between us and you and between each other.  Give us the grace to repair the chasms of division through creative bridge making and so reconnect with each other by the mutual honoring of the dignity of the divine upon each life.  Amen.

Saturday in 15 Pentecost, September 24, 2022

O God of closeness, you have buried your image within us even while we in our alienation have created a fixed chasm between you and us and have often lived as though the God signal within us does not exist.  Help us to reconnect with the inner GPS of God's directing signaling image within us.  Amen.

Friday in 15 Pentecost, September 23, 2022

God who is the Wealthy Owner of All, but who does not flaunt this wealth in ostentatious ways but in sharing ways with us; let those who pretend to be wealthy measured by their amount of money be pierced with the spear of charity so that they might live in the image of you who has shared all so that all can have enough.  Amen.

Thursday in 15 Pentecost, September 22, 2022

Gracious God whose wand has cast a world of freedom permitting the probability of all that can happen; we wish to ride on this ocean of probability on a raft of protection in being exempt from the unpleasant, and yet we know that the seeming entropy of life force for individual and changing entities such as ourselves include the transition of death, and death's acolytes of suffering and pain, give us hope in how we organize and choose so that we can influence what is probable in the direction of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 15 Pentecost, September 21, 2022

God who owns all and who has shared all; we have been given over to loving money as the our root, instead of seeing you as the Root of our being.  Let money be exposed as the artificial valuing system as the idol to replace what is so completely free in life in the gift of creation to us.  Amen.

Tuesday in 15 Pentecost, September 20, 2022

God who has created the great universe neighborhood with a place for humans to live as neighbors; let us not live and take to our graves a great chasm of separation between us and the people who are our neighbors.  Amen.

Monday in 15 Pentecost, September 19, 2022

God, whose legacy is all that was, is, and will be; we cannot empirically know our legacy after we die in the yet unknown realm of those who are departed; keep us mindful of the empirically verifiable legacies which we can leave in this world through the practice of love and justice in our treatment of others.  Amen.

Sunday, 15 Pentecost, September 18, 2022

Lord Jesus Christ, you have said that we cannot serve God and wealth; give us grace to convert our relationship to wealth to the practice of making sure that all people have enough for the sustenances of their lives.  Amen.

Saturday in 14 Pentecost, September 17, 2022

Heavenly King, we use the language of royalty because human history has provided us with monarchs as being unique and powerful people in society; on the death of a good Queen, we affirm Jesus as the superlative person who exceeds the royalty of any human being, and not by thrones, crowns, palaces, and pomp, but by life giving service.  We thank you Christ for exemplifying what true human royalty means as we indulge in sentimental gratitude for earthy royalty who fulfilled their social roles well.  Amen.

Friday in 14 Pentecost, September 16, 2022

Gracious Christ, forgive us for taking the name Christian, when we refuse to advance in the direction of Christ-likeness in our behaviors and words.  Let the advance in the practice of love and justice prove our identity as Christians and not our proud announcements about our Christian status.  Amen.

Thursday in 14 Pentecost, September 15, 2022

Gracious Jesus, your parabolic words challenge us to use our energy for goodness to counter those who use their energy for evil.  Let us not just match good energy for the bad; let us overcome evil with good with the transformation work of Christ in our lives.  Amen.

Wednesday in 14 Pentecost, September 14, 2022

God of Redemption, we have adopted the cross as a symbol of redemption and transformation, even as we do not see either full redemption or transformation which makes the cruelty of the past any more justified in the future.  Give us grace to hold the Cross of Jesus as a symbol of God bowing to freedom in our world for the worst to happen in order that moral and spiritual significance of real freedom be upheld.  Amen.

Tuesday in 14 Pentecost, September 13, 2022

God of freedom, it often seems that the purveyors of injustice and oppression live by the creed that God helps those who take for themselves exclusively; help us to not be fooled by the success of the wicked but continually in freedom work to overcome evil with good.  Amen.


Monday in 14 Pentecost, September 12, 2022

God who is known in whirlwind, fire, health, safety, silence, and in countless sacramental manifestations; grants us versatile hearing to be able to adjust to the modes of your communication, through Christ our Lord.  Amen,

Sunday, 14 Pentecost, September 11, 2022

God of time and history, we remember events of human infamy in hopes that they will not be repeated and the humanity will reject inhumanity.  We remember the 9/11 victims and responders who perished even as we ask for conditions in our world which will bring peace and an end to all strife.  Amen.

Saturday in 13 Pentecost, September 10, 2022

Gracious God, may be we be found by you and converted to those who become finders of the lost who have been marginalized by the cruelty of life and the people of life.  Make us first responders for the lost.  Amen.

Friday in 13 Pentecost, September 9, 2022

Gracious God, we cannot make the things of the past not to have happened, but we need to have grace to help us make the events of the past serve a better now and better future.  Give us grace to inhabit the continual state of aftermath, well.  Amen.

Thursday in 13 Pentecost, September 8, 2022

God, we are not proud of the lostness of our sinful state, but we are grateful that where sin abounds, your grace surpassingly abounds to make up what is lacking in our states of imperfection as we endeavor to be more made in the likeness of Christ.  Amen.

Wednesday in 13 Pentecost, September 7, 2022

Gracious God, guide and finder of those who are lost, help us know ourselves as being found and restored in knowing the divine image on our lives, and let the world be a new environment for us as we recognize the divine presence everywhere because we have been restored in seeing aright.  Amen.

Tuesday in 13 Pentecost, September 6, 2022

Holy God, the very ideal of you means that everyone is a sinner; give us the humility not to make people more sinful than others for segregation practices, and give wisdom in discerning how to prevent the harm that we can do do each other in our sinful states.  Help us to balance love, forgiveness, justice and juridical practices for the common good.  Amen.

Monday in 13 Pentecost, September 5, 2022 (U.S. Labor Day)

God, whose labor is creating, always, already, bless the creative labors of humanity as we seek to develop our gifts for the common good of people and creation.  Give us punctuating sabbath rest amid our labor and let the justice of sustaining wages be given to all who work so that plenty can be their reward.  Amen.

Sunday 13 Pentecost, September 4, 2022

God you have given the literature of church traditions with Gospel words of Jesus so full of irony that we cannot take them literally without committing hatred; help us to discern the spiritual important of the hard sayings of Jesus and so shock us from natural thinking to spiritual insight.  Amen.

Saturday in 12 Pentecost, September 3, 2022

Heavenly Parent, we often like to presume in our sense of favor that our local family affinities are somehow the final affinities of you and we can treat others as though they have been excommunicated from the family of God.  Give us grace to grow in the largesse of the heart of love which defines your very Being.  Amen.

Friday in 12 Pentecost, September 2, 2022

God who is All, we reduce your All to linguistic bite-sized abbreviations of All and how we perceive our living and having being within All that is.  As we swim in the ocean of All, we can only know what surrounds our very limited perceptual raft upon the Ocean of All.  Give us humility to accept our limited views, but faith to know grace in our specifics to be able to project the fullness of grace upon you as the All.  Amen.

Thursday in 12 Pentecost, September 1, 2022

God and owner of all, how can we claim to possess what we did not originate and cannot maintain with final duration?  Give grace for our temporary stewardship with the generous provision of the beauty and supply for our daily needs and give us wisdom to learn to share so that everyone can have enough.  Amen.

Wednesday in 12 Pentecost, August 31, 2022

God of the future, including the events which include discord, suffering, and death; give us faith in our probability planning for what may happen to us and to our world and let us find a way to integrate the events of our lives with volitional wisdom even in the face of our limited perspectives.  Amen.

Tuesday in 12 Pentecost, August 30, 2022

Creator God of infinite diversity who also is great enough to tolerate such diversity; get us who do not handle differences with peace, tolerance, and the appreciation of how variety can make us better fitted to meet the complexities of life's situation.  Give us the wisdom and largesse of hearts to tolerate differences with demonizing those with whom we disagree.  Amen.

Monday in 12 Pentecost, August 29, 2022

God of Wisdom, our wisdom and intelligences is never final or complete; give us grace to leave thought idols which have kept us from new insights and give us the the ability to embrace the freedom to grow in our knowledge and wisdom and accept the inadequacy of old ways of thinking and acting.  Amen.

Sunday, 12 Pentecost, August 28, 2022

God, our creator, you have had open communion with all creation from the beginning even while sin has been the willful and ignorant self-excommunication of us from God.  Give us the grace to restore Holy Communion as a chief icon for the eternal Communion of God with all.  Amen.

Saturday in 11 Pentecost, August 27, 2022

God of love, you have called us to mutual love and to hospitality through the sharing of the things in life which gives us refreshment, aid, and comfort.  Teach us to extend our circles of hospitality so that the artificial lines of segregation might be removed which hinder the friendship with all.  Amen.

Friday in 11 Pentecost, August 26, 2022

God who is the location Container of all things, places, and people; you have made the place and the locations of our lives good; let us not ruin our places and location through the segregatory practices used to divide people into those who can live in the "good" places, and those who live in the "bad" places.  Let the holy ground on which we live bring us to sanctify all the places and people in our lives as we live out holiness with the practice of love and justice.  Amen,

Thursday in 11 Pentecost, August 25, 2022

God of hospitality, you have no peerage, yet you became incognito in Jesus and in the hidden divine image within creation to inspire hospitality as a way of life for people to help each other, especially those who need it the most.  Give us grace to practice hospitality beyond our peer groups and so practice the hospitality of Christ.  Amen.

Wednesday in 11 Pentecost, August 24, 2022

God, we cannot but remain all too human even in our knowledge of you who are more than human; yet you showed us in Jesus that our anthropomorphisms about you are valid ways to awaken the sublime sides of our beings which know the transcendent indwelling of the mystery which always surpasses what we can know or hold in our consciousness.  We thank you for being emptied and funneled into anthropomorphic understanding as the eternal Word which gets rendered in the many temporal words of our lives.  Amen.

 Tuesday in 11 Pentecost, August 23, 2022

God, as we look on the suffering of others, our looking on it even with empathy does not make that suffering our own and we feel locked out of the suffering and unable to bear it with them.  Give us grace to admit the aloneness which suffering creates and that aloneness partakes of the "forsakenness" felt by your Son Jesus on the Cross.  Give us faith to believe that as your forsakenness was redeemed, we too might partake of some surpassing redemption of the sufferings of this world.  Amen.

Monday in 11 Pentecost, August 22, 2022

God, who is at the top of the hierarchy of values, forgive us for our social hierarchies which segregate us from each other because of wealth, education, race and any other standards of artificial division among people.  You have made all people and places well and we ask for grace to do justice to the people and places of our lives.  Amen.

Sunday, 11 Pentecost, August 21, 2022

God of the Sabbath, who rested from creating on a special day; you set for us the day of rest to help us to balance our active lives with rejuvenating silent action of contemplative worship but not to be hindered from doing the saving and healing work of love and justice, even on the sabbath.  Let us be ever ready to do the healing work on the sabbath or at the times when exigent illness arises to face us.  Amen.

Saturday in 10 Pentecost, August 20, 2022

God of the Sabbath, what works can we do to honor the holiness of this day?  Let our works of justice, love, and healing be acceptable oblationary prayers on the Sabbath and on every day.  Amen.

Friday in 10 Pentecost, August 19, 2022

God, we are faced often with exigent needs of others in seeming mistiming with our own schedules so as to be inconvenient.  But in love, you ask us to make the service of care a precedence in how we live together as people.  Deliver us from the "my life is more important than yours" syndrome.  Amen.

Thursday in 10 Pentecost, August 18, 2022

God, whose Being does not conflict with Time, in that as an Omni-becoming Being without a Rival except the Divine Self in a future state, let us accept the newness of what enfolds in time as the new alters all patterns and traces of what has happened and so continuously recreates an environment of new becoming which deconstructs what we once thought held permanence.  Let our becoming with you partake of a degree of the excellence of your becoming lure towards love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 10 Pentecost, August 17, 2022

God of time, you inspire us to be good stewards of the times of our lives and set schedules, calendars, holy time; help us to be flexible in our calendars as it is always divine timing for healing and for love and justice to be actualized.  Amen.

Tuesday in 10 Pentecost, August 16, 2022

Gracious God, who presides over the becoming of all things; the freedom in the world does not conform to our scheduling calendars and we ask for the grace of flexibility to respond to the inconvenience of harm, sickness, and emergency even when they do not occur convenient with our holy days of rest.  Amen.

Monday in 10 Pentecost, August 15, 2022, St. Mary the Virgin

Blessed Mary, full of grace to draw to yourself so many intercessions and become a touching message deliverer to your Beloved Son Jesus.  In your union with your Son, we do not separate you; you and Jesus are one, as we seek to be one with Christ as children of God, and as your children in the community of your Son.  We beseech you to deliver our urgent prayers for the health of our world whom you and your Son love.  Amen.

Sunday, 10 Pentecost, August 14, 2022

God of mercy, we desire Mercy's salve for the wounds of conflict of leaving familiar places and people for the call of our future in better articulated practice of intelligence, justice, and kindness of more people in telling and appropriate ways.  Amen.

Saturday in 9 Pentecost, August 13, 2022

God, who is the Profound Language undergirding the world as The Word; you give us the task to read and interpret all the projected words upon human experience and you ask us to read and upon ourselves and language users, and you have provide in Jesus the interpretive key to read and interpret with accents of love and justice.  Amen.

Friday in 9 Pentecost, August 12, 2022

God who has always already synchronicity with all things; have mercy on us as we receive and process the occasions of our lives with linear before and after occasions and stumble in our mislabeling of the causations of the events of our lives.  In our linear reductions of all surrounding synchronicity, let us receive with grace the piecemeal portions to sustain love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday in 9 Pentecost, August 11, 2022

God who can integrate all past with the now with seamless continuity in time; help us who experience continuity as brash discontinuity in our yet lack of synchronic ability to reconcile all things in real time.  Amen.

Wednesday in 9 Pentecost, August 10, 2022

Gracious God, let our past persuasions of love and justice provide for us the orientation for the rising occasions for new manifestations of justice in the real times of our lives.  Amen.

Tuesday in 9 Pentecost, August 9, 2022

God of our faith, we seek to become more faithful as our persuasions are more clearly illuminated by the insights of love and justice, newly arriving in our convictions of our of what has not been loving and just in our lives.  Amen.

Monday in 9 Pentecost, August 8, 2022

God of Peace, your peace is not incompatible with dynamic grow of societies and persons in love and justice; let us leave what is not yet finished in love's goals even if such departures are painful, so that we attain a higher plateau of peace.  Amen.

Sunday, 9 Pentecost, August 7, 2022

Everliving God, everyone dies without the benefit of knowing everything that came before and everything that will succeed.  Let us co-exist with joyful dance things which came before us and things which will come after us.  And let us dwell in peace of the liminal state between.  Amen.

Saturday in 8 Pentecost, August 6, 2022

God, the evidence of you as the Big Bang on the edge of becoming provides us the sense of being contained from the beginning even as we have been constituted by the prevailing Winds of the Omni-becoming of all, together.  Amen.

Friday in 8 Pentecost, August 5, 2022

God who is always the beckoning field of possibilism, let our lives make actual today what is ideally possible in our visionary field.  Amen.

Thursday in 8 Pentecost, August 4, 2022

God of the authenticity of agreement in saying and doing, let the deeds of my life be so trained in justice as to be always, already oblationary prayers to you.  Amen.

Wednesday in 8 Pentecost, August 3, 2002

God, please overhear me when I continually talk to myself and edit the phrases that occur which count as being worthy of communication with you.  Amen.

Tuesday in 8 Pentecost, August 2, 2022

God, whose favor does not always seem apparent, even as you don't always seem to be our favorite until emergency needs; let us connect whether in non-apparency or states of apparency and so prove the equality of total blessing at work at all times.  Amen.

Monday in 8 Pentecost, August 1, 2022

Gracious God, we accept deadlines in time for things which seem pressed upon us to need to happen and though these deadlines seem very humanly arbitrary, we ask for the deadlines of love's strategy today.  Give us the strategies of love today and with deadlines for fulfillment.  Amen.

Sunday, 8 Pentecost, July 31, 2022

God who is awesome, shock us from the vanity of thinking that our moments of addicting pleasures are final, and give us an appreciation of you as the enduring owner of our lives who outlives us but contains us now and into our afterlives.  Amen.

Saturday in 7 Pentecost, July 30, 2022

God, you have made us with a life-force engine of life, even as people who always already are engaged with our world as desiring people.  We ask that the force of desire might be transformed into the good enjoyment of life and that we be given the grace of self-control to sanctify desire by love.  Amen.

Friday in 7 Pentecost, July 29, 2022

God, you have given us a blessed world to enjoy with many things for our sustenance; give us your Holy Spirit to direct the energy desire of our lives in worship of you and let the desire of our lives not be short-circuited by lingering in addictive and idolatrous behaviors which cause the misuse of good things.  Let the Spirit fruit of self control be our guiding attribute.  Amen.

 Thursday in 7 Pentecost, July 28, 2022

God, you are the owner of all and seemingly unseen because it is hard to focus upon All with our limited capacity; give us grace within your All to be stewards of the portions of our provenance and deliver us from the vanity of pretending that we own our lives and the things of our lives.  Amen.

Wednesday, in 7 Pentecost, July 27, 2022

Lord God, Ruler of the universe, we have tried to usurp ownership of this world an and we have not taken good care of it; restore us in rightful stewardship roles so that we might treat each other with dignity  and care, and that we might keep our environment sustaining for those who come after us.  Amen.

Tuesday in 7 Pentecost, July 26, 2022

Gracious God, maker, owner, and sustainer of the universe, in your incognito presence, you allow the free conditions and people of greed to usurp your ownership rights and amass much more than they need, and many without knowledge, wealth, or power, suffer from lack.  Let your love beckon us to sharing and when people suffer lack, let laws of redistribution be implemented to represent the care which you desire for everyone.  Amen.

Monday in 7 Pentecost, July 25, 2022

Gracious God, help us to learn that care for everyone is the chief task of what it means to be creative; and deliver us from the paths of using creativity for destructive, greedy, and selfish ends.  Amen.

Sunday, 7 Pentecost, July 24, 2022

God of Time and Freedom, you are always the Plentitude which is expanding and remaking what has happened and another creation is always inevitable; you have given us a degree of freedom to be volitional co-creators in helping what is to become in this world.  We ask for grace to help this world to become more just and loving in our specific contexts and so influence in expanding and collateral ways the surrounding contexts toward love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 6 Pentecost, July 23, 2022

Loving God, you have made us accountable to perfection so as to give us a direction for living, even as you offer us continual forgiveness for being "not yet" perfect; give us grace to forgive as we are forgiven and let us not use forgiveness wrongly as a "carte blanche" to resist accountability in the direction of what is better for us.  Amen.

Friday in 6 Pentecost, July 22, 2022

Jesus in your teaching you taught to address God as our Father, to ask for enough food, to ask for forgiveness and its reciprocal practice in our communities, being spared trials and so as the "corporate us," we offer these petitions again for all of God's children who can know God as "our" Father.  Amen.

Thursday in 6 Pentecost, July 21, 2022

God of the everlasting, endless future, endless creative evolution; in your timelessness you give creation a chance to get things right in how we co-exist with each other and the past of each thing which seems to determine us now; help us to use our limited determining freedom to pass on to the next moment as better past than the one we received.  Amen.

Wednesday in 6 Pentecost, July 20, 2022

Our Father, is my confession of familial relationship with the one whose image I bear, and often fail to live up.  Give us grace not to abuse your tolerant love as we seek to creatively experiment with the paths which we believe to be informed by hope.  And let our quest for hope be know in acts of love and justice today as we treat each person as one of the Family.  Amen.

Tuesday in 6 Pentecost, July 19, 2022

Gracious God, let this prayer and all prayers be votes for the majority rule of love and justice in a free world where forces not so interested in love or justice are casting their votes of evil.  Give us persistence in flooding the interior world with requests of the divine Spirit to persuasively lure us away from the folly of hatred and greed, and into the ways of love and justice.  Amen.

Monday in 6 Pentecost, July 18, 2022

Lord Jesus Christ, your words impel us to be persistent in prayers; and we seek wisdom in being persistent about wanting good things for our world for its health and healing and we seek such persistent so that our character is formed to be the active answer toward many of the outcomes we desire.  Amen.

Sunday, 6 Pentecost, July 17, 2022

God, who has given us the goal of perfection, help us not to dwell in guilt on today's failure or today's success on our path to betterment.  Let us integrate our past and our present as preparation for a better tomorrow especially as we embrace the path of perfection not as individual achievement but as the completeness of common good of all people.  Amen.

Saturday in 5 Pentecost, July 16, 2022

Gracious God, we are in your presence as recovering hypocrites because the perfection we aspire for and preach is not what we've yet achieved; but we're recovering because we haven't given up on the direction of surpassing ourselves in excellence.  Give us patience for ourselves and others as we never cease to quit the path of perfectability.  Amen.

Friday in 5 Pentecost, July 15, 2022

God, whose Being has come to languages by language users to mean the superlative horizons in human analogies; we seek today to instantiate greatness in the funneling through action and words of the values of love and justice which we proclaim to best represent the divine greatness.  Amen.

Thursday in 5 Pentecost, July 14, 2022

God, whose Plenitude, overloads our cognitive limitations and whose light blinds us; give us wisdom adequate to the tasks of love and justice before us and let our spiritual eyesight progressively adopt to be able to see things clearly in the light of pragmatic insights for active love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 5 Pentecost, July 13, 2022

Gracious God who is the supreme projection of Totality by humans who have languages with the word, "ALL."  We confess you as ALL and qualify your ALL-ness with words of perfection like ALL-loving and ALL-kind, even though we know such traits do not have coercive sway among us because of the divine quality of being the ALL-FREE One who shares degrees of that freedom with all.  Give us grace to use our freedom to make love and kindness the way in which we channel the divine into our lives today.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Pentecost, July 12, 2022

Risen Christ, you are confessed to be the icon of God within our human experience. As this unique icon, you invite us to orient ourselves toward the horizon of continually surpassing ourselves in excellence, especially the excellences of love and justice in our specific contexts.  Give us grace not to be overwhelmed and discouraged by the "not yet" imperfect; but let us keep our eyes upon future self-passability lest we fall into heading in the wrong direction.  Amen.

Monday in 5 Pentecost, July 11, 2022

Gracious God, you have made us as both contemplative and active beings; give us grace to prove the pragmatic truth of our contemplation through active works of love and justice.  And help us to receive the energy for active love and justice through tapping into the reservoir of contemplative peace.  Amen.

Sunday, 5 Pentecost, July 10, 2022

Gracious Christ, you taught us about a Good Samaritan in a wisdom story; help each of us qualify our lives with a designation as a good person when we apply ourselves to being neighborly to all who are put in our way.  Amen.

Saturday in 4 Pentecost, July 9, 2022

Lord Jesus, friend of the world, you espoused befriending behaviors in proclaiming the entire world as a neighborhood of God's love; give us grace to befriend and offer care beyond our comfortable circle of acquaintances and so follow you as the friend of all.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Pentecost, July 8, 2022

Jesus Christ, you came to teach about the neighborhood of all creation and the importance of continuous reconciling reciprocity among the creatures of the neighborhood to be known as love, justice, kindness, and care.  You have placed us as volitional sentient beings in crucial regulatory roles; give us wisdom to use our knowledge, wealth, and power for the perpetual care of your lovely  neighborhood.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Pentecost, July 7, 2022

God, without partiality, you bestowed your image upon all people thus making us all neighbors in your grand neighborhood.  You endlessly lure us to neighborly care of each other and our total environment and in our failures we have put your neighborhood in danger.  Give us heart ears to hear your luring calls of love to set us on the path of reconciling our neighborhoods with you and each other.  Amen.

Wednesday in 4 Pentecost, July 6, 2022

Gracious God, we live in your neighborhood, and you ask of us to accept communion with the entire universe as this communion is dispensed and received with loving acceptance but also with the wise regulation which fosters the harmonious, beautiful optimal care of all.  Amen

Tuesday in 4 Pentecost, July 5, 2022

Creator God, you created everyone to be neighborly neighbors.  Teach us to grow in the neighborly values of love, justice, care, and kindness and let us not use inconvenience as an excuse to avoid caring behaviors.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Pentecost, July 4, 2022, Independence Day

Gracious God of Freedom, you inspired people of wise observation to craft a new social order with the hopes of eliminating classism and the ills which beset forms of government which neglected the common good; keep the people of this land diligent to seek the common good and continually practice a discipline resist the selfishness of minority and individual interest which encroaches upon what is just for all.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Pentecost, July 3, 2022

Jesus Christ, Lord of the harvest, the alienation of people from the obviousness of the plenitude of God's realm with its love dynamic makes the occasions for enlightenment in love and justice abundant.  Give us grace to enable and promote the cause for people to overcome alienation and become converted to love's way of justice and dignity for everyone, because we are called to live together well.  Help us learn to live together well.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Pentecost, July 2, 2022

God of Time, bring to a transitional end the wars in our world, especially the ones which are taking precious lives each day; expose the complete waste of cruelty and raise up the creativity of love and justice in people everywhere.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Pentecost, July 1, 2022

Gracious God of love, your invitation to love opens us to exploring the endless growth capacity in time to keep finding new occasions to be loving and kind.  Give us grace always to be expanding our occasions of loving behaviors to build our resume to promote loving tendencies forever.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Pentecost, June 30, 2022

Everlasting God, you are One who gives us everlasting chances to be reconciled to your love and with each other; grant as many as possible the early acceptance of your reconciling love so that we can know significant harmony and healing.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Pentecost, June 29, 2022

God of love, forgive us for making our discovery of your love as the cause of such love.  We thank you for the joy of the seeming originality of such discoveries even as we confess that you have always, already been Love.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Pentecost, June 28, 2022

Gracious One, in whose realm we live and have our being; help us to realize the Ground of Being on which we live and free us from the alienation of acting and speaking as though you as All in All does not always exist.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Pentecost, June 27, 2022

Gracious God, let us be ripe to want to be know ourselves as children of God today who are loved by you so that we can love one another.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Pentecost, June 26, 2022

Holy Spirit, help us respond to the power to effect patience and self-control in our lives today so that we might learn perfect timing for doing and saying what is appropriate to each situation in our lives.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Pentecost, June 25, 2022

Holy Spirit of kindness and gentleness; such traits do not always seem to be winsome in the times of discord and war.  Give us tough and messy kindness and gentleness in times of polarizing anger among people, so that people might be won to the love of God and act differently.  Amen.

Friday in 2 Pentecost, June 24, 2022

Gracious Holy Spirit, please increase the inevitability of wisdom in the lives of all people that we might be inspired beyond the ignorance of our herd identity which has robbed us of our freedom to be formed toward enlightened behaviors.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Pentecost, June 23, 2022

Holy Spirit of God who gives the fruit of patience; let us have the tolerance for all who are in the process of surpassing themselves in future states, and as we are always not yet perfect, let the hope of the future perfect inspire patience.  But let us not call patience tolerance for the things that we can change.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Pentecost, June 22, 2022

Holy Spirit, source of love, joy, and peace.  Give us the grit of the hard love of justice. Help us to access the joy beyond happiness or sadness.  Let your peace reside deeply within us to calm all the surfaces of emotion, will, thought, and action.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Pentecost, June 21, 2022

Holy Spirit, you are the source of wonderful fruits which are the expression of the best possible human virtue.  Let your fruits be the transformation of energies which have been used for counter-virtue behaviors so that we might might fulfill our highest human calling.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Pentecost, June 20, 2022 (Juneteenth holiday)

God of Justice and Love, the practice of equal justice for all has been too late to arrive to all people in our country and world; let the gravity of your love continue to bend the arc of justice toward each person coming to know their full dignity as a child of God within their specific communities of people.  Amen.

Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 19, 2022

God our Father, on father's day, you have given us your Son Jesus as a way of realizing that being in Christ, we have come to return to you as the Father creator of us and as our parent you lure and coax us to share love and care within the totality of your creation.  Give us grace to be good family members of all creation.  Amen.

Saturday after Trinity Sunday, June 18, 2022

Gracious God, help us to seek the common good in the lives of everyone in our word; restrain and interdict in consequential ways the tyrants of harm and greed so that all may have enough of the common blessings of life and health.  Amen.

Friday after Trinity Sunday, June 17, 2022

Holy Spirit, draw us into being "in-Christ," where we can live beyond the biases and the prejudices which constitute our specific locations.  Amen.

Thursday after Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2022

Holy Spirit, create an expanding clean heart to the universe and lure all free agents to the brilliance of love.  Amen.

 Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2022

God of Plenitude, I cannot avoid continuous events of particularity with very limited fields of insight within the immensity which seems to blur the significance of occasion.  Give me grace to value the moment as a nano-drop on the ocean of ultimate reality and let enough goodness be joined together to influence the entire direction of the freedom of life toward the goodness of love and justice.  And let our world know significant healing today.  Amen.

Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, June 14, 2022

God, Friend of life which is the gift of all being, we seek your guidance in navigating through endless diversity with the grace of harmony to balance diversity for the experience of beauty without harm.  Amen.


Monday after Trinity Sunday, June 13, 2022

God of our faith, we have come to persuasion, and are coming to unfolding persuasion about you as we endeavor to grow in the wisdom to clarify continually the nature of our persuasion.  We ask for greater adequacy in linking our persuasion with more enlightened wisdom and with the performance of words and deeds of love and justice.  Amen.


Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how shall we say that we know unless we submit to your Love to be loving in what we do?  Nothing but your love will convince people of your dynamic Reality and we ask for grace to be bearers of this dynamic relational love to our world today.  Amen.


Saturday after the Day of Pentecost, June 11, 2022

Gracious God, the understanding of you has continuously come to new insights based upon the updating of what loving justice means in the situations of our lives.  Give the people who claim the Holy Book as source of their actions, the ability to do the faithful work of finding the current correspondences for what love and justice means for all people.  Amen.


Friday after the Day of Pentecost, June 10, 2022

Holy Trinity, we cannot prove you, and yet we can be inspired in meaningful ways to manifest the behaviors of love and justice in our lives.  Give us grace to do the evidence of the Trinity in our practice of love and justice.  Amen.

Thursday after the Day of Pentecost, June 9, 2022

Eternal Word of God, from whom we know ourselves primarily to be language users; you brought to us within the discursive field an understanding of the Divine in personal modes indicating that loving divine relationship is the origin of a relationships within the created order.  Let the energy of the Trinitarian love draw us and motivate us in our actions today.  Amen.


Wednesday after the Day of Pentecost, June 8, 2022

God, we understand you to be personal since analogically we believe that using language makes everything personal.  We understand Word to be God and Word is the essence of relationship and relationship makes everything personal.  We are grateful for the insight that the personal understanding of you as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit establishes dynamic loving relationship as the creative center of all Being.  Amen.


Tuesday after the Day of Pentecost, June 7, 2022

Holy Spirit, we have come to name you because we believe in an omnipresence which is the connection experience of conscious and sentient beings able to know that we are not alone and that we experience reciprocity with all other beings.  Give us grace to move from "that we are connected" with all, to "how we are connected" to all with love and justice and mutual care.  Amen.


Monday, after the Day of Pentecost, June 6, 2022

God, you baffle us with the impossible when Jesus said he was One with the Father and when he said he would send the Spirit to relate his words to us.  We confess that a doctrine of the Trinity does not do justice to mystery of all beings all together being one and the Trinity being an instructive intensification of the Oneness of All.  Help us to avoid fragmentation and let the central pull of the inertia of the Trinity draw us toward essential Oneness.  Amen.


Sunday, The Day of Pentecost, June 5, 2022


God of all and in all, we look for what is most interior about our interiors.  In vain we look for precise causation since it rests upon so many unknowable precedences and we feel limited to the surfaces which language creates by naming.  As we flit from words referring to other words, help us to accept our lives as language art lived before the Holy Spirit whom we presume to be beneath the surface of every word.  Amen.

Monday, November 21, 2022

Sunday School, November 27, 2022 1 Advent Cycle A

 Sunday School, November 27, 2022     1 Advent Cycle A


Themes:

The Beginning of Christian New Year
Review the calendars in our lives.  The Gregorian Calendar that we use.  School calendars, Sports Calendars, Work Calendar, Concert Season Calendars.  The Country’s Patriotic Time and Official Holidays.

Have children list the number of calendars in their lives.  Calendars are used to measure time.  Different calendars measure time in different ways depending upon the human events which are occurring at different times.

The Church Calendar
Why do we have one?  Because we want to schedule that time that we give to God, through learning throughout the year about the meaning of God for our lives.

How does the Church Calendar work?  It works like a school curriculum.  The church takes the Christian program of learning and divides it into a yearly cycle to presentation.  The year is divided into six seasons.  These seasons give us the opportunity to review each year different teachings about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the life of the church.

What are the seasons?  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost

What does Advent mean?  It means “Coming.”  It refers to the first coming of Christ when he came as the baby Jesus at Christmas.  So the season of Advent is a time to prepare for Christmas.  It also refers to the future comings of Christ in our lives and the life of the world.  We believe that Christ will come to our future and this gives us hope that the future can be better no matter what seems to be happening in our lives or in our world.

What do we read during Advent from the Bible?  We read about John the Baptist and how he helped prepared the way for Jesus.  We also read about the future and how God will establish fairness and justice and how the promise of fairness in the future can help us survive now when we realize that our lives are not perfect and some harmful things are happening now even to good people.  During Advent, we believe that a future perfect world is still calling us as a model for how we can become better.

What is an important word during Advent?  Repent.  Repent means to Educate ourselves to keep changing our minds with better knowledge and wisdom, not just to know more, but to change our behavior as a way of preparing to greet Jesus as our friend.

A Sermon:


Happy New Year!  Did you have a big New Year Eve’s party last night?  Did you know that today is the first day of the new Christian Year.  Today is the First Sunday of Advent.  Let us renew our Seasons of the Christian Year.  Repeat after me.  Advent.  Christmas. Epiphany.  Lent East and Pentecost.  Now what is the color for the Season of Advent?  Purple.  And what kind of season is Advent?  Is it a celebrating season like Christmas and Easter?  No, it is a serious season.  A season of training and preparation.  Sometimes with all of the early Christmas parties, Advent is just seen as a speed bump in the road as people are racing to a Christmas celebration.
  Advent is a time for us to pray just a little bit more.  To give just a little bit more to those who are needy.  And to take good care of our selves.  Take good care of our bodies.  We see all of the Christmas sweets coming out early, but remember Advent is a time to prepare and take care of ourselves.  And why should we take care of our selves and our world?
  Because Advent means: Coming.  We are preparing for the coming of someone very important.  When someone special is coming to your house, what do you do?  You rush around and clean up the house.  You fix some special food because you want everything just right for the coming of the special people in your life.
  During Advent, we prepare our selves for the coming of Jesus Christ.  And Christ comes to us in many ways.  Christ came to us as the Baby Jesus in the manger, and that is what we celebrate at Christmas.  Christ comes to us each day in special way through the love and care of our family and friends.  Christ comes to us as we gather to bless the bread and the wine and receive the presence of Christ into our hearts and as we know that Christ is as near to us as the bread and wine become after we eat and drink.  We also believe that Christ will come in our future in many special ways.
  So, Advent is a season of preparation, when we make our selves always ready for the special coming of Christ in our lives.
  So before we rush to Christmas celebrations, let us remember that we are in the season of Advent.  And Advent is a special season of preparation for the coming of Christ.  Is Christ welcome in your home?  Is Christ welcome in your life?  Of course he is.  Advent is season when we practice for the welcoming of Christ into our lives.  Amen.



An Intergenerational Holy Eucharist
November 27, 2022  The First Sunday of Advent, A

Gathering Songs: We Light the Advent Candles, If You’re Happy and You Know It,  Father, I Adore You,  Soon and Very Soon

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 Light the Advent Candles (While lighting the first purple candle)
We light the Advent candles against the winter night, to welcome our Lord Jesus who is the world’s True Light, to welcome our Lord Jesus who is the World’s True Light.
The first one will remind us that Christ will soon return.  We light it in the darkness and watch it gleam and burn.  We light it in the darkness and watch it gleam and burn.

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

Liturgist:  Let us pray
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Alleluia
O God, you are Great!  Alleluia
O God, you have made us! Alleluia
O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia
O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia
O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia
O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia
O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the Prophet Isaiah

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord
People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 122

Peace be within your walls *and quietness within your towers.
For my brethren and companions' sake, * I pray for your prosperity.
Because of the house of the LORD our God, * I will seek to do you good."


Litany Phrase: 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.

Jesus said to the disciples, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

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
Song: If You’re Happy and You Know It (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 124)
If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re happy and you know it, then your face should surely show it.  If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.
…Make a high five…. 
…shout Amen!….

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


Breaking of the Bread
Celebrant:       Alleluia, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia.

Words of Administration



Communion Song:   Father, I Adore You (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 56)
1          Father, I adore you, lay my life before you, how I love you.
2          Jesus….
3          Spirit…

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: Soon and Very Soon (Renew! # 276)
1-Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King; soon and very soon we are going to see the King.  Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King.  Alleluia, alleluia, we are going to see the King.
2-No more dying there, we are going to see the King.  No more dying there, we are going to see the King.  No more dying there we are going to see the King.  Alleluia, alleluia, we are going to see the King.

3.  Repeat verse 1

Dismissal:   

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



Sunday School, November 27, 2016      1 Advent Cycle A

Saturday, November 19, 2022

What Does Kingly Mean in Our Time?

Last Sunday after Pentecost, Cp29, November 20, 2022 Christ the King
Jeremiah 23:1-6 Ps. 46
Col. 1:11-20 Luke 23:23-33

Lectionary Link

Since we are human and prisoners of being merely human, we can only anthropomorphize about all non-human life, like the lives of animals, plants, and God.  We speak human languages and can only see and understand in human terms, so when we speak about God we use analogies.

In human history, for various reasons, kings were important people, exalted people, and privileged people in human society.  They were at the top of human hierarchy.

So, the human notion of kingship became used as a analogy for God.  God was presented as a king; and not like human kings who had many faults and imperfections.  God was presented as idealized king.

Human kings were very imperfect; they were often greedy, ruthless, kleptocrats, who took a disproportionate amount of the human resources of a society for their own pleasure and use.  In fact, in pre-kingdom times in Israel, we are told that Samuel warned the people of Israel about wanting a king like the other nations had.  He warned that they would conscript their son for the army and they would be high maintenance for their lavish style of living.  But God and Samuel gave them their wish and the first king of Israel, Saul, indeed,  was a disappointment.  He was so disappointing that his lineage was rejected, and God through Samuel had the shepherd boy David anointed as the second King of Israel.  David was not perfect either, but he was successful enough to create the desire for some future mythical king who would be like David but an even more perfect king.  This future mythical king was called, after David, the messiah.

The scene of Jesus hanging on the cross with the written declaration, "This is the King of the Jews," is completely ironic.  Kings, real kings like David do not die on a cross if they are successful kings.  The Romans wrote the script mocking Jesus as quixotic pretend king.

This crucifixion account is being written and read by people who had come to believe that Jesus was not only King of the Jews but of the Gentiles as well, but not in the way David or Caesar were kings.  The Risen Christ was an interior Spiritual and winsome force who gained followers by interior spiritual experience.  He was a king in a parallel world and the way that Risen Christ, the Risen Messiah, the Risen King interacted with the visible realm was within the lives of those who freely and willing came under his influence to become people of goodness, love, and justice.

As such a Risen King, the earthly notion of kingship is completely deconstructed.  Strangely the Risen king does intervene in the world.  In fact, the followers of the Risen King may end up persecuted and mistreated.  What kind of king does not intervene for all of the innocent sufferers in this world?

This contradiction requires us to ponder how and what is kingly in our world today in a way that is completely adequate to common sense, reason, and a sense of propriety.

The Risen Christ King, like God is not one who intervenes to overthrow the genuine freedom that is in the world.  God who is all and in all, is negatively represented when people who are made in the image of God do bad things.  So why does not God intervene to interdict people being bad and harmful?

What is truly kingly in our world is the Reign of Christ as one who has the power to permit true freedom because only in true freedom is there valid moral and spiritual authenticity.

The truly kingly one today is the one who lures and coaxes for people to love one another and act justly with one another.   The truly kingly does not come with the force of weapons and armies and mind police to force an agenda.

We may not really like the kingly Risen Christ, because we find him too tolerant of what might and does happen in our world.  We wish that people whom we thought were evil, greedy, cruel tyrants could be stopped in their tracks when we want it.

Earthy kings intervene in earthly physical ways to get what they want for the peace of their realms and for their own power and wealth.

Our encounter with the Risen Christ requires that we change what we think is kingly.  The Risen Christ is kingly power of restraint; he will not force anyone to do anything.  He works with the lure of love and justice wanting us to freely choose to love God, love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Let us adopt the reality of what is truly kingly today, as we have in the witness of the Risen Christ.  By his Spirit, we are invited to become kingly ourselves in living lives of love and justice and committing ourselves to influence others through the persuasion of example.

May God give us grace to counter the harsh kingdoms of this world with the gentle, loving, and kind kingdom of a truly kingly Christ.  Amen.


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