Aphorism of the Day, July 2023

Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2023

In John's Gospel the Christ, according to Paul is "all and in all," is also Word, which is in all that is known, and Christ is Light of the world.  Word is Light or that which allows seeing, and it reiterates the words, "let there be light."  The Bible, like life itself, is being lost in words, and occasionally claiming to be "found in words" with insights or "light."

Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2023

In the kingdom of heaven parables, the words of Jesus encourage the most global type of thinking, namely, we live and move and have our being in the divine environment or realm.  In practice we are forced to think and act locally in our respective lesser realms of nation, states, cities, neighborhoods, parishes, businesses, schools, jobs, and family.  Thinking in such a global way should at the very least be humble contemplation about relative greatness and this is good for negotiating our local commitments.

Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2023

The kingdom or realm of heaven/God referred to in the parables of Jesus are not about Jesus announcing suddenly that the created order is now the location of the divine realm; the realm of God has always been the reality of the oneness of all with the divine image perpetuated in everything.  The parables of Jesus are more about the events of recognizing that we live and move and have our being in God.

Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2023

Language invites continuous rhetorical versatility.  Biblical leaven or yeast is used in contradictory ways.  In one parable of Jesus, it used to connote the hidden divine within nature which swells to recognition and the tastiness of the sublime within the ordinary.

Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2023

The realm of God as a mustard seed and becoming an unimpressive shrub (when compared to other majestic trees) indicates that the divine is mostly invisible and really able to be missed in its ordinariness.  One must ponder how greatness is an accumulation of very small things done and when small kindnesses are ordinary one does not obviously recognize the fact that cumulative kindness is what sustains the world.

Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2023

The parable of the pearl of great value is about the discovery of the superlative around which to organize one's life.  Too often the words used to organize one's life around that which is elusively great become the replacement for the superlative over which one does not have control.  Institutionalized religion seems to pretend to domesticate God's wild presence.  If the great is omni-present in time, then we spend each day re-arranging the furniture of words to revisit what we always must revisit in time.

Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2023

Some parables of Jesus are about sorting out the traces left us from the past.  We cannot help but offer value judgments on what has happened, and different sorters use different criteria in appraising what has happened.  What is the safe criteria? Using the criteria of the words of Jesus, justice for the forgotten, the poor, and the afflicted should be the main criteria, not the dogmatic minutiae of our particular party or church affiliation.

Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2023

The Bible is a dynamic textual event which includes its own undoing and re-doing.  Textual idolaters seems to think that biblical texts not only fix words, but also a self evidential meanings which they as "insiders" know.  But there are many contradictory "insiders" who know differently to debunk the "self evidential meanings" implication of the "there is only one true meaning crowd."  The wisdom scribe is always bringing from textual treasure the syntheses of new and old because application of what is old in the new presents the old as differently new in a fresh setting.

Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2023

Most language product is inner dynamic within people and never reaches the empirically verifiable products of speech, writing, or body language deeds.  One could say that each person as a language user is mostly unpublished.  For every potential sublime literary production not realized, thankfully the most are have gone to be doubly deleted in the interior trash bin.

Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2023 (Anniversary of 11 years of daily aphorisms, 4015 straight days)

We should be humble about holding a final theory or answer for everything and content ourselves to find insights on the journey to share and help others in their journey.  The quest to have the best and right answer for everyone stems from pride.

Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2023

Many have failed to learn the lesson of reading Scripture about reading itself.  Scripture teaches us to read and understand the contrast in the human discursive practices.  Stories which include accounts of violating rules of empirical verification are meant for presenting the kinds of contrast which evoke abstract thinking.  It encourages the reader in a conscious dividing of discursive genres.  Human being are dreamers and day dreamers and create texts of accounts of things which cannot be empirically verified.  Failure to learn this can trap people in crass literalism which gives birth to all sorts of conspiracy theories, i.e. taking the fantastical as literal.

Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2023

Hope that is seen is not hope?  The possible is not yet the actual.  Wanting to know  the future as the present is like the gambler who wants to know the outcome before it occurs.  Hope isn't the guarantee of a specific future, but the evidence now of there always being a future.  Hope is submitting to the reality of time.  Pretending to know the specifics of the future means that one will be disappointed when it arrives.

Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2023

Even as we say that the mixture of stuff in life make it interesting, we would rather not be interested in the bad things which can befall us and so the mixture in life includes our displeasure of things we do not like.  The mixture of life is a continuing compilation of everything including our reactions.

Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2023

The field of probabilities is so diverse with good and bad happening in context specific ways to myriads of parties within that field, to fantasize about the destruction of the whole field would be to sacrifice the good and glorious just to remove their opposites.  The good, the glorious, and the just may be so wonderful as to tolerate their opposites and live in the latest day to retrospectively designate the past evils to their dustbin in history.

Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2023

In the cycles of life, the earlier cycles do not get resolved until a later time.  Many weed survive until harvest when things get sorted out.  The nature of interpretation is the sorting out of what happened earlier at a later time.  The later brings into existence what happened before because the past become known as the past when it is contrasted with the present.  The past is always becoming in the present.  We go forth each day to make our past.

Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2023

We confess randomness because we do not have the capacity to know the casual relationship between everything that was and is.  There is plenty of room to confess that we don't know and with humility.

Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2023

Scientists declare as negligible the causal factors which cannot be observed or measured like the flapping of butterfly wings on weather patterns.  What are the causes of specific beliefs?  The answer to this is presented in the parable of the sower, though the answer is not so precise, it is a rather vague statement about probability: "It depends upon the conditions."

Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2023

The parable of the sower is an insightful allegory about the mystery of the conditions for persuasive message to gain success.  Farmers and gardeners believe that they know the conditions for successful harvest, even as they know that there are enough things outside their control to keep the gardening mystery alive.

Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2023

You shall and you shall not.  This is the law of recommended behaviors, and keeping them all are impossible especially the one regarding coveting.  How does one cease desiring wrongly even if one does not act wrongly?  Biblical jurisprudence seems to link the inevitability of sin with the inevitability o death as the punishment for the sinful condition.  Paul introduces the life or law of Spirit as a way to live forever in a way that also is compatible with our sinful condition with an expire date in time on our bodies.

Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2023

Time means that nothing is ever complete and we ever await completion.  In the meantime we must settle for ever better approximations of what love and justice means in actual life situations.

Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2023

The mystery of how one is persuaded and how one changes one's belief exorcised he early Jesus Movement.  Why did some accept Jesus as Messiah and others did not?  The parable of the sower presents an allegory that does not give final causal answers but does give insights about it happening.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2023

The parable of the sower is an attempt to provide insight about the serendipity of why people come to or arrive at persuasive experience in our lives.  Serendipity remains a mystery and the parable provides insights about it even as it cannot indicate an infallible prediction, but only insightful explanations.

Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2023

For "sleep deprived" people, the words of Jesus promise rest for souls.  The external strife for the people who were part of the early development of the Jesus Movement required a spiritual martial arts practice such as one can find in the Beatitudes and the other rather enigmatic words of Jesus.  Spiritual martial arts was required for survival.

Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2023

John the Baptist's acetic practices did not give him fellowship with the kind of people whom Jesus came to have fellowship.  It is not wise to make one's own lifestyle the norm for everyone else.  Wisdom involves finding the lifestyle proper to oneself with regard to also being winsome with the people to whom one is called.

Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2023

Rest for the soul was the mystical program offered by the early Jesus Movement when their external world was all but restful.

Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2023

Rest for the soul was the promise from words of Jesus.  Interior rest is different from physical rest and if learned is the state of existence to accompany whatever is happening in one's external life.

Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2023

"Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."  Wisdom is in part knowledge plus excellent action and is the kind of truth as pragmatism uniting synchronic knowing (frozen essentialism in words) with diachronic action, ie., truth in motion, truth in time, truth in process of becoming better.

Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2023

People of faith always need to balance their citizenship in the universal family of God with their location and loyalties to their country of citizenship.  The Declaration of Independence locates us in the universal family of humanity and so being an American invites us to be examples of what universal citizenship should mean in seeking justice for all.

Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2023

Some of the sayings of Jesus are so enigmatic as to defy attempts at understanding.  One such is when Jesus purports to withhold knowledge from the wise and reveal it to infants.  No one is more undeveloped and ignorant than a pre-language user baby.  What is the state of wisdom of infanthood?  Unreflective vulnerability without significant agency and left to the total care of caretakers.  Our existence amid vast Plenitude is the wisdom of such vulnerability?  But why should we not value the limited agency which we have?

Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2023

My life is unwittingly censored from the things that I do not yet know, perhaps things both glorious and horrifying.  Even as I accept what I do know now, I must let such be gradually dissolved by the wider concentric circle of what I do not yet know.

Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2023

In the morass of words, we find ourselves located in stories given to us in our contexts.  Many biblicists have come to assume the story of science does not consistently co-exist with the stories of the world's literature including biblical stories.  Balance in life is learning the different discursive purposes of the stories of life in which we are located.

Quiz of the Day, July 2023

Quiz of the Day, July 31, 2023

What might John's Gospel use in place of the Transfiguration?

a. Christ as Word

b. Christ as Resurrection

c. Christ as Light

d. Christ as Shepherd

e. Christ as Vine

Quiz of the Day, July 30, 2023

How many years did Jacob have to work for Laban to receive his daughter Rachel hand in marriage?

a.3

b.4

c.7

d.14

Quiz of the Day, July 29, 2023

Who in the biblical story was intentionally cremated to preserve the dignity of the dead person(s)?

a. Lot's wife

b. the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah

c. King Saul

d. the residents of Jericho

Quiz of the Day, July 28, 2023

Which of following is true about the masses composed by Johann Sebastian Bach?

a. as a Catholic, he composed them for the Catholic liturgy

b. as a Lutheran he composed all for Lutheran liturgical use

c. as a Lutheran and musician, he composed for the mixed Lutheran/Catholic environment

d. as a Lutheran, he forbade the use of his music in Catholic parishes

Quiz of the Day, July 27, 2023

What is the location of Endor known for?

a. the place of a famous battle

b. the place of King Saul's wizard

c. the cave where David visited Saul at night

d. the home of Uriah and Bathsheba

Quiz of the Day, July 26, 2023

What were the names of former husbands of King David's wives?

a. Uriah

b. Nabal

c. Adriel

d. all of the above

e. a and b

f. b and c

Quiz of the Day, July 25, 2023

How many possible Jameses could be referred to in the New Testament?

a. 3

b. 6

c. 4

d. 7

e. 8

Quiz of the Day, July 24, 2023

Which devotional classics has been translated into more languages than all books except the Bible?

a. Pilgrim's Progress

b. The Imitation of Christ

c. The Interior Castle

d. The Practice of the Presence of God

Quiz of the Day, July 23, 2023

The "Song of Moses" might be better called

a. The Song of Aaron

b. The Song of the Red Sea

c. The Song of Miriam

d. The Song Sinking Chariots

Quiz of the Day, July 22, 2023

Of the following, who was the first apostle of the resurrection?

a. Mary Magdalene

b. Peter

c. the disciple whom Jesus loved

d. angelic humanoid figure at the tomb of Jesus

Quiz of the Day, July 21, 2023

Which of the following would be David's chief ritual fault?

a. he used Goliath's sword

b. he danced naked in front of a crowd

c. he married Bathsheba

d. he ate the bread of Presence

Quiz of the Day, July 20, 2023

Of persons on the calendar of Episcopal saints, whom of the following was not at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 which dealt with women's right, abolition, and temperance?

a. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

b. Sojourner Truth

c. Harriet Ross Tubman

d. Amelia Bloomer

e. Frederick Douglass

Quiz of the Day, July 19, 2023

Who did David love as his "own life?"

a. Bathsheba

b. Samuel

c. Jonathan

d. Michal

e. Absalom

f.  Abigail

Quiz of the Day, July 18, 2028

David married the daughter of King Saul whose name was

a. Bathsheba

b. Tamar

c. Michal

d. Abigail

Quiz of the Day, July 17, 2023

Why did Jacob leave his home and travel to Haran?

a. to find a wife

b. to buy some livestock

c. to see angels in a dream

d. to escape his angry brother

Quiz of the Day, July 16, 2023

What ministry of Jesus is not explicit in the Gospel of John?

a. walking on water

b. multiplication of loves

c. casting out demons

d. healing blind person

Quiz of the Day, July 15, 2023

The sling shot wielding shepherd boy David took how many stones to fire at the Philistine Goliath?

a. one

b. two

c. three

d. four

e. five

Quiz of the Day, July 14, 2023

According to Mark's Gospel, what happened to Jesus after his baptism?

a. he began his public ministry

b. he went to Jerusalem

c. he made statements about the destruction of the Temple

d. he was driven to the wilderness to be tempted

Quiz of the Day, July 13, 2023

Which role was not David's for Saul before his battle with Goliath?

a. shepherd for Saul's flock

b. armor bearer

c. musician

d. being one in Saul's good favor

Quiz of the Day, July 12, 2023

What was the position of Cornelius?

a. Prefect

b. Centurion

c. Captain

d. Publican

Quiz of the Day, July 11, 2023

Benedict's Rule was most influenced by

a. the Psalms

b. St. Antony of the Desert

c. Athanasius

d. The Rule of the Master

Quiz of the Day, July 10, 2023

Which of the following is not true?

a. Saul was God's messiah for Israel

b. Saul was rejected as God's for Israel

c. Saul's son became the second king of Israel

d. Saul's son Jonathan supported David's kingship

Quiz of the Day, July 9, 2023

Where does the phrase "weeping and gnashing of teeth" occur in the Bible?

a. Genesis

b. Revelation

c. Psalms

d. the parables of Jesus

Quiz of the Day, July 8, 2023

For eating what was Jonathan under the curse of his father Saul?

a. grasshoppers

b. honey

c. Philistine lamb

d. figs from Philistine

Quiz of the Day, July 7, 2023

Who was David's best friend?

a. Samuel

b. Bathsheba

c. Abigail

d. Jonathan

Quiz of the Day, July 6, 2023

Rebekah was the wife of 

a. Moses

b. Isaac

c. Jacob

d. Joseph

Quiz of the Day, July 5, 2023

Which of the following is not true regarding the The Song of Solomon, aka Song of Songs, or the Canticles?

a. it is an erotic love poem

b. it includes the name of God

c. it does not mention God

d. it is read as an allegory by both Jewish and Christian commentators

Quiz of the Day, July 4, 2023

Isaac married

a. his first cousin

b. his first cousin, once removed

c. his first cousin, twice removed

d. his first cousin, thrice removed

Quiz of the Day, July 3, 2023

Who wrote the laws and duties of kingship for Israel?

a. Moses

b. Solomon

c. David

d. Samuel

Quiz of the Day, July 2, 2023

The root meaning of messiah comes from

a. presenting of mace to the king

b. pouring of oil

c. ritual water purification

d. the divine rights of the king

Quiz of the Day, July 1, 2023

What Episcopal priest did ground breaking legal work that was used by Thurgood Marshall in his judicial rulings?

a. William Porcher DuBose
b. Pauli Murray
c. John E. Hines
d. Absalom Jones

Wisdom Writing about the Realm of Heaven

9 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 12, July 23, 2023
1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Lectionary Link

The punchline of today's Gospel may be a clue about the author of Matthew, and perhaps a shameless promotion of the writer's craft: ".. every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

The Gospel of Matthew involves a writer who perhaps is referring to the writing craft, called in those day, the work of a scribe.  A scribe was one who was involved with language, and in particular, with text, and with reading and writing.  The scribe was to be a wise reader of the many written texts and the texts found on the pages of reality, but not just read, but also bring to written word wise observations about what the wisdom scribe has read.

We 

An important insight of the wisdom scribe is the acknowledgement of the reality of time.  The wisdom scribe is one who believes that one has to be rightly related to the reality of time.  With the use of two qualifying adjectives, the wisdom scribe acknowledges the reality of time.  Time means before and after; it means old and new.

People can be wrongly related to what is old and to what is new.  People wrongly related to the past can be called conservatives or traditionalists or originalists.  They can believe that meanings were fixed in the past and that those same fixed meanings can be transplanted into the present without any different meaning than what they meant in the past.  Some people believe that the words of Holy Scripture fix both the words and their meaning forever as if the present could not contribute anything new in terms of important insights about living.  People wrongly related to the present can think that relevance is only what happens in the present, and the past is to discarded like old food whose shelf life has expired.

The wisdom scribe of the Gospel of Matthew knows that it is not either old or new, but rather old and new united in the new scribal commentary about what is truly applied meaning in the current situation.  This scribe did not invent this notion; he inherited from the long tradition of scribes who read the apparent "fixed words of the Torah and the sacred writings" and offered living commentary in making these old words have a current applied relevance within the life of the community.  Treasures then, are both new and old as the scribe offers wisdom commentary of the wedding of the past and the present.  Certainly, this was part of the rabbinical textual practice of the scribe's time.

The wisdom scribe was writing about the newness of Rabbi Jesus within the oldness of the inherited traditions of Judaism.  This wisdom scribe perhaps honored the custom of venerating the name of the divine by referring to the kingdom of heaven, rather than the kingdom of the unpronounceable Holy One.

The scribe understood the apparent innovation of Rabbi Jesus to be about the realm of heaven, the kingdom of heaven.  Everyone in the reading audience knew about three kingdoms.  They knew about the kingdom of Israel whose climax had been reached perhaps in the reign of King David.  They knew about the kingdom of the Caesar, who had followed the kingdoms of the generals of Alexander the Great, who had conquered the Persians, who had conquered the Babylonians.  Each of these "foreign" kingdoms had taken control of the former kingdom of David.  The third kingdom known by the reading audience of Matthew was the future kingdom of someone like David who they hoped would bring rescue and deliverance.

The scribal writer of Matthew was trying present how the new kingdom words of Jesus fit in with the existing and older kingdom thinking of the reading audience.

The scribe of Matthew's Gospel understood Jesus to be the herald of this kingdom message: "If we're going to use the metaphor of king and kingdom, then let's be sure that the tradition from ancient time acknowledges that the world is God's and therefore we always already live within the realm of God."

So, what is the problem?  The problem is recognition of the kingdom of heaven.  We are so involved in the pain and hurt, and the winning and the losing within the realms of human power structures that we miss the big and obvious picture.

The kingdom parables are crafted to evoke insights about the always already kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of the divine.

One insight is that we trip over the small and insignificant and miss the very causation of the great and the large.  Where did the large shrub come from?  The tiniest of seeds, the mustard seed.  Where did the swelling and tasty bread come from?  From the tiny leaven or yeast that had been hidden within the dough.

The wisdom scribe presented Jesus as saying, "everything that seems big and obvious now, derived from the small and trivial event of divine sustenance accumulating in time."  Big things don't just happen and self-generate; they are the result of living and moving and having being within the sustaining realm of God. Realize it and don't forget it."  When our earthly moments have come and gone, then the surviving world witnesses to our momentary smallness.  But don't forget the small; the momentary accumulates into what is great and obvious.

Jesus also said that the kingdom is like a stock market no-no:  It's like the delicious secret of "insider trading."  It is investing in front of people who do not know the value of what they already have.  Rabbi Jesus said, if you know you live in the realm of the divine, then you have incredible insider information.  And that sounds unfair, but it isn't because everyone can be an insider.  The knowledge is open to everyone.

The wisdom scribe of Matthew also believed that Jesus prescribed organizing one's life values around the worth of the highest value, namely knowing that one lives and moves and has being within the realm of God.  Once one knows this, it devalues everything else in comparison so one sells things of lesser value to devote one's attention to acquiring the chief value of living, namely, knowing one's living and being within the realm of the divine.

Finally, the wisdom scribe understood Jesus to promote wisdom living as the continuous retroactive sorting of what has gone before and assigning and applying new values now. Being a wisdom scribe means continual reassessment of what has happened so that one can craft new and fresh actions of love and justice in the present.  The wisdom scribes can look at biblical cultures which were permissive and supporting of slavery, subjugation of women, and other tacit practices of ancient cultures, and the wisdom scribe can sort these things out as truly being bad for our time in how we have newly come to understand what love and justice means in truly being kind and welcoming to people.  The wisdom scribe is to always be re-appraising the past so that new and creative justice and love can happen in our lives today.

Today, you and I are invited to be wisdom scribes.  No, we don't have to be writers; but if we allow our minds to be written with the insights of what it means to live well in the realm of the divine, then perhaps we will let the words distill into the body language of our lives which will speak through actions the love and justice of Christ who invited us to know that we live and move and have our being within this exalted realm of heaven.  Amen.

Sunday School, July 30, 2023 9 Pentecost, A proper 12

 Sunday School, July 30, 2023   9 Pentecost, A proper 12

Theme:

Citizen in the Kingdom of heaven

How does one know that one is an American citizen?  When a baby is born, does a baby know if he or she is an American citizen?  No, but as a baby grows up, a baby is taught what it means to be an American citizen.

What are signs of living in the American Nation?  Government, Flag, National Anthem, A President, a Congress, a voting democracy, a land with borders, a history of origin and many other things.

Jesus said that there is a citizenship which is bigger than being an American citizen, or a citizen of Israel or a citizen of the Caesar’s Roman Empire.

Jesus preached about the kingdom or nation of heaven.  Where is the land for the nation of God?  The entire earth.  Who are the people of the nation of God?  All people, because every person is made in God’s image even if they don’t recognize it.  What are the signs of the kingdom of heaven?  Hidden and silent success.  Just as a tiny mustard seed grows to become a tree, so the small deeds of love and faith grow to support and sustain this world.  The kingdom heaven grows in a hidden way, just like when yeast is added to dough and makes the dough rise.  The kingdom of God is like a jeweler who finds the very best pearl and sells everything to purchase the very best pearls.  When people understand that they are children of God, they give up the importance of everything else to fully explore what is means to be in God’s kingdom.  We know the kingdom of heaven when we know how to sort out what is good and bad in our lives, just like the fishers sort out the catch in their net.  They sort out what to keep and what to throw away.  The kingdom of heaven is known when we can take the old but good things written in the past and make them good once again in our lives now.  In the Bible we read about love, faith and justice in ancient times; it inspires us to speak, write and live what love, faith and justice means in our time and in our world.

Thank God today for knowing that we live in the kingdom heaven. 

Sermon

  We all like super heroes don’t we?   And we like important and famous people…. Right.  We like to be the people who get lots of attention for doing better than anyone else.  We like to get the best grades, we like to run the fastest, we like to hit the baseball the longest distance, and we like to win games.

  And sometimes it makes us think that only winners are important in life.  Only heroes are important in life.   Only the people who get the most attention in life are important.

  And when we think like this, we sometimes get sad because sometimes we don’t feel very important, because we’re always comparing ourselves with someone whom we think is better or more popular than we are.

  Jesus came and told stories about the kingdom of heaven.  Now everyone thought that the kingdom of the Caesar was the most important kingdom.  The people in Israel thought that the kingdom of David was most important, and they wanted another strong king like David to come and be their heroes.

  But Jesus came and told us about the kingdom of heaven.

  Since God created us, this world belongs to God and this world is God’s kingdom.  But many people did not recognize it.  They thought that this world was the kingdom of the Caesar, the Emperor of Rome.  We think that this world is the government of the United States, because that’s where we live.

  Jesus taught us to see this world as the kingdom of heaven, and he taught us that the small things are very important.

  The mustard seed was such a tiny seed you could barely see it with your eyes.  But the wind blew the seed everywhere and it would grow and take over the entire countryside.

  Why does bread dough puff up before it is put in the oven?  Because of Yeast.  Yeast is something that looks like a tiny amount of powder but when you put it bread dough, it makes it grow very big.

   Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is about doing all of the little things, because when you add up all of the little acts of kindness in this world, they preserve and keep our world going.

  So let’s remember, it is all of the little things in life that we do that are important.  Working at home, being kind to each person you meet, helping your friends, do your home work for school…although they don’t seem important,  Jesus reminds us that it the little things that add up and when they all are added up, we can see how they save our world.

  So let us not forget the importance of the little things that we do in our lives. If you understand the importance of small deeds of kindness, then you understand the kingdom of heaven.  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

July 30, 2020: The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Gathering Songs: Seek Ye First, If You’re Happy, Let the Hungry Come to Me, Oh When the Saints

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:  Seek Ye First (Blue Hymnal, # 711)

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness.  And all these things will be added unto you.  Allelu, alleluia.  Refrain: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, allelu, alleluia.

Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find.  Knock and the door will be opened unto you, Allelu, alleluia.  Refrain

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 105

Give thanks to the LORD and call upon his Name; * make known his deeds among the peoples.

Sing to him, sing praises to him, * and speak of all his marvelous works.

Birthdays:    Drew Giba, Laura Gibson, Heather Oliver, Luis Cardenas

Anniversaries:  Chris and Mary Lyngstad

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."   "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.  "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.  "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

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. (chanted)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People:            And also with you.

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

Offertory Song: If You’re Happy (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, then your face should surely show it.  If you’re happy and you know, clap your hands.

If you’re happy and you know it, make a high five….

If you’re happy and you know it, make a low five….

If you’re happy and you know it, 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 heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

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

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

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

You have made us in your image

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

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

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

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

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

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

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us 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: Let the Hungry Come to Me (Renew!  # 220)

Let the hungry come to me, let the poor be fed.  Let the thirsty come and drin, share my wine and bread.  Though you have no money, come to me and eat. Drink the cup I offer, feed on finest wheat.

I myself and living bread; feed on me and live.  In this cup my blood for you; drink the wine I give.  All who eat my body, all who drink my blood, shall have joy forever, share the life of God.

Here among you shall I dwell; making all things new.   You shall be my very own, I, your God with you.  Bless’d are you invited to my wedding feast.  You shall live forever, all your joys increased.

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: When the Saints (Christian Children’s Songbook,  # 248)

Oh when the saints, go marching in.  Oh when the saints go marching in.  Lord, I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.

When the boys go marching in…..

When the girls go marching in…

Dismissal:   

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

People:      Thanks be to God! 

The Latest Is the First

8 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 23, 2023

Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Lectionary Link

In the enigmatic words of Jesus, "the last shall be first."  I think that this might be appropriately understood as the "latest shall be first." Why?  Because it is hard to conceive of an existence without time, an existence when there is no longer a before and after.  What might be called an ending is only the transition to a beginning of a different sort.

There is great temporal provincialism in the notion of the "latest is the first."  Why?  The latest is the now that we always live in and we can so privilege the now in a time egotism that we over-value our judgments of the current moment.  But how is the latest the first?  God, as the omni-becoming greatest with no rival is always the most supreme Latest who comprises the greatest possible synthesis of everything that has been, is, and might be.

We, who live in the now, share with God as sharing a very small portion of what it means to be the latest, and we become first in having the last say upon everything that we know which has come before.  We are the retroactive sorters of the traces of what we call the time before, the past events of our lives.

We become first by the accident of being the latest; those who have privilege to be like the wise scribes who bring forth new treasures as well as wisdom from what is old.  Being the latest is first but also a daunting privilege because we are heirs of what has happened and must cull the past and analyze the past and learn from it to bring forth what is new and best in our lives now.

And in being the latest in our particular time in our existence on earth, what do we discover about the life that has gone before us?  We find that everything that has happened before us is mixtures of lots of experiences, including some very good things and very bad things.  People have been very good and they have been very bad.  We ourselves, have known various states of goodness and badness in our own existence.

The parable of the weeds and the wheat is about the human condition of the great mixture in the diversity of occasions.  The wisdom of the words of Jesus is this:  It is impossible and unthinkable to think that we can weed and undo the past without destroying everything else in the field of existing beings.

So what is the chief task of us, who are the latest and who are now first in interpreting all of what has previously happened?  The chief task for us know is the hard task of patience.  "Oh, Drats!  Everything has not been perfect, and I have not been perfect.  Everything should be fixed now, immediately." Patience means that we are not and cannot be like action movie heroes and suddenly and quickly remove all the bad and evil people and circumstances which have faced people in the past and which face us now.

Patience is the preservation of the chief value of freedom which is what makes moral and spiritual choice truly valuable.  And what can be the result of being patient with what has heretofore happened?

Patience can result in inspired judgments about how things close to us need to be different going forward, especially  in better approximations of love and justice in the lives of more people.  And from the inspired judgments of how things can be better can flow the actions to make things better than they would be if we did not take the agency of patient wisdom to make judgments and actions in the direction of the better practice of love and justice

And how can we have patience when we are challenged by the teeming mixtures of so many things happening at once in our lives?  Like Jacob of old, we can ponder our mistake of forgetting or not knowing God as the divine ground of our lives.  Jacob about his past event realized, "God was there and I did not know it.  I did not live in the realization of living and moving and having my being in God."

Unfortunately, and fortunately, we mostly come to realize providence after the fact.  If we have enough after the fact realizations of providence, we may eventually learn to accept the always already divine presence, even when it does not seem to present itself as apparent present goodness for us in our lives.

In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, the situation gets resolved at the "end of the ages."  Since time means that there is no final end of ages, only continual births of new ages, the parable bespeaks of insightful moments when we attain wisdom events of putting together understanding of past and present with enlightened words and acts of love and justice in our lives now.

We pray for the end of ages of ignorance when good and evil can be sorted out and used as fertilizing energy for more fruitful love and justice in our lives today.

Let us accept the daunting task of being first, because we are the latest.  And this small latest in time of our lives, resides upon the greatest Latest of the divine, who comprehends all for the further sustenance of all.

We ask today for patience to bear with what is, not in resignation to what is evil, bad, and as yet unhealed; we ask for patience to come to wise judgments and actions for a better now and future.  Amen.