Sunday School, April 27, 2025 2 Easter C

 Sunday School, April 27, 2025     2 Easter C

Doubting Thomas Sunday

Question how can we believe in Jesus even though we can’t see him, hear him or touch him?

How does a child know that one’s parents are still present even when they don’t see them?

A child has other evidence that their parents are alive and that their parents still love and care for them even when they don’t see them.

That a child is sleeping in the same house provided by one’s parent means that they know their parents by the provision of a house for them.  They can see everything that a parent provides for them and know that their parents are with them.  They can carry a picture of their parents to remember what their parents look like.

Jesus wanted the early church to know that he was still as much with them as he was with the other disciples.  Jesus said that his disciples could know that he was with them when they experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit, when they lived in peace together, when they practiced forgiveness and when they read about him and his teachings in the Gospel.

All of these features of knowing the presence of Christ are shown to us in the Doubting Thomas Story.  Jesus was showing the church that even though some people got to see and touch Jesus, their experience of him was not superior to those who did not see and talk with Jesus.  Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen me but still believe.”  The fact that the church has kept going for 2000 years is proof that many, many people have not seen Jesus but still believed him and have known his presence through his Spirit, through peace in their hearts and with their church friends, through practice of forgiveness.  And also through the reading of the Gospel.  The Gospel writer of John wrote that he was writing about Jesus so that the readers could know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  And people have been reading about Jesus for 2000 years and through the words they have come to know Jesus as being present in their lives is a real and special way.

Doubting Thomas  Puppet Show

Characters: Fr. Phil, Doubting Thomas, and Jesus

Father Phil:  Today, boys and girls we are going to meet a famous disciple and friend of Jesus.  But he is known for not believing things.  So his name is Doubting Thomas.  O look, I see that he’s here now.  Hello Thomas, how are you?

Thomas:  I’m not sure about how I am?  I just have some doubts about how I am.

Father Phil:  Well you do have a reputation.  Some people call you Doubting Thomas.  Is that true?

Thomas:  I doubt it.

Father Phil: Can you children say hello to doubting Thomas?

Children:  Hello, doubting Thomas.

Thomas: What children?  I don’t see any children.

Father Phil: These children right here.

Thomas:  I doubt it.

Father Phil:  What do you mean you doubt it?  Look at these children here.  Can’t you see them?

Thomas:  I see some little creatures here, but how do I know that these aren’t space aliens?  

How do I know that they aren’t  Sponge Bobs?

Father Phil: Well, you have a serious doubting problem Thomas.  You could ask their parents.  They would tell you that these are their children.

Thomas:  But if you were a space alien parent, you might not tell the truth about your space alien children?

Father Phil:  Thomas, have a really serious problem with doubt.  Is something wrong?

Thomas:  Yes, I am really having some problems with belief.

Father Phil: Why?

Thomas:  Well, you know my best friend Jesus died.  He died a horrible death on the cross.  And his body was placed in a tomb.  And now his body is missing from the tomb.  And I don’t know what this means.

Father Phil:  Well what happened?

Thomas:  Well, my friends went to the tomb and they said they saw an angel and the angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead.  How can anyone believe that?

Father Phil: Well, that is pretty amazing.  Don’t you want to believe it?

Thomas:  My friends have teased me and I think that they are playing a joke on me.  They said that they have seen and talked with Jesus.  How can this be true?  And why would they say this to me?  I don’t think it is a very funny joke.  My best friend Jesus died and now my friends are saying that he lives again and they are saying that they have seen him and talked with him.

Father Phil: Well, what are you going to do?

Thomas:  I told them that I have my doubts.  I don’t believe them.  And I won’t believe them unless I can see Jesus and talk with him.  I want proof.  I want to put my hands in the scars on his body or I will not believe.  How can my friends tease me in this way?

Father Phil:  Well, maybe you should go and talk with your friends.

Thomas:  Well, they are having a meeting in a secret place.  They still are frightened and so they are meeting in secret.  I guess I’ll go and see them but I don’t like this joke they are playing on me.

(Thomas goes and suddenly Jesus appears)

Thomas:  O my goodness.  Is that you Jesus?  It looks like you but are you real?  Am I just dreaming?  Are you a ghost?

Jesus: Thomas, peace be with you.  It is I, Jesus your friend.  Look at my scars.  Put your finger out and touch them and feel. 

Thomas:  My Lord and my God!  It really is you.  I am so sorry that I did not believe.  I am so sorry that I doubted.

Jesus:  Well, now you can believe.  But many people will not be able to see me like you have and those people will still believe.  Look at all of these children here.  They have not seen me like you have but they still believe.

Father Phil:  And now Thomas has lost his name; he no longer is Doubting Thomas.   His name is Believing Thomas.  Don’t you like that name better.

Thomas:  I do like that name better.

Father Phil: Well, I like that name better too.  And you see all of these children.  They are Believing Children.  And now can you repeat after me, “I believe that Jesus is alive!”  Amen.

Children’s Sermon

  Today we read a story about a man named Thomas.  And Thomas has a nickname.  Do you know what his nickname is?  He’s called “doubting Thomas.”  What does that mean?  Well, it means that he would only believe that Jesus was alive, if he could see him, hear him, and touch him.

  Do any of us see, hear and touch Jesus today?  Do we believe that Jesus is alive?

  Do we only believe things that we can see, touch and hear?  No.  In fact some of the greatest things that we believe, cannot be seen, touched or heard.

  When you are not in the same room as your mom and dad, do they still love you?  Do your parents still love you when you can’t see them, touch them or hear them?  Of course they still love you.  And you can believe in that love.  So when you are at school, do your parents still love you?  Of course they do.

  I had a very special grandmother when I was young.  I just loved to be with her.  She was so much fun and she gave a nice birthday party and she always fixed special favorite food for us.  And she told wonderful stories and she sang songs with us.  And I knew that she loved me.  And my grandmother got old and she died, and it is very sad that I could not hear her, see her or talk to her anymore in the way I used to.  But you know what?  I still feel her love for me.  I still believe in her love, even though I don’t see her, hear her or talk to her.  I still believe in her love.

  After the resurrection of Christ, the disciples could not see, hear or touch Jesus in the same way.  But they continued to know that Jesus loved them.  They still continued to believe that Jesus was still with them in very special ways.  And how could they tell that Jesus was still with them?

   They were used to arguing with each other; but when they live in peace with each other they knew that this peace was because Christ was still with them.  They used to hold grudges against each; but when they forgave each other, they knew that Christ was still with them.

  When I look at you, I can see you, I can hear you and I can touch you.  And you are wonderful to look at.  But you know what?  I can’t really see the very best part of you?  I can’t see what is inside of you.

And what is inside of you is your spirit.  It is your spirit that makes you a wonderful mystery to enjoy.  And that spirit of yours is always going to be young and new and fresh.  Even though I can’t see your spirit, I know it is most important part of you that makes you special.

  The friends of Jesus did not see the Spirit of Jesus; but it was his best part too.  And when they could no longer see his body;  they could still feel his Spirit with them.  And we can feel the Spirit of Jesus with us today.  We can feel it when we have peace and when we forgive each other.

  So remember today; we can believe in things that we don’t see.  The spirit of Christ is with us today.  And that is meaning of the resurrection of Christ.  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

April 27, 2025: The Second Sunday of Easter C

Gathering Songs: Glory Be to God On High; Alleluia, Give Thanks; He is Lord, He Lives!

Liturgist: Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

People: The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.

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

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

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

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Glory Be to God on High (Christian Children Songbook, # 70)

Glory be to God on high, alleluia.  Glory be to God on high, alleluia.

Praise the Father, Spirit, Son, alleluia.  Praise the Godhead, Three in one, alleluia.

Sing we praises unto Thee, alleluia, for the truth that sets us free. Alleluia.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; 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: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles

But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Let us read together from Psalm 150

Praise him with timbrel and dance; * praise him with strings and pipe.

Praise him with resounding cymbals; * praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.

Let everything that has breath * praise the LORD.
Hallelujah!

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."  A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

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

Since God is so great and we are so small,

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

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

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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

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

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

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

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

  

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People:                        And also with you.

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

Song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks, (Blue Hymnal, # 178)

Refrain: Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to the Risen Lord, Alleluia, Alleluia, give thanks to his Name.

1-Jesus is Lord of all the earth.  He is the King of creation.  Refrain

2-Spread the good news o’er all the earth: Jesus has died and has risen. Refrain

3-We have been crucified with Christ.  Now we shall live forever. Refrain

4-Come, let us praise the living God, joyfully sing to our Savior. Refrain

Doxology

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

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

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of 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 by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Breaking of the Bread

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

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia.

Words of Administration

Communion Anthem: He Is Lord (Renew!,  # 29)

1-He is Lord.  He is Lord.  He is risen from the dead and He is Lord.  Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

2-He is King.  He is King.  He will draw all nations to him, He is king.  And the time shall be when the world shall sing that Jesus Christ is King.

3-He is Love.  He is Love.  He has shown us by his life that He is Love.  All his people sing with one voice of joy that Jesus Christ is Love.

4-He is Life.  He is Life.  He has died to set us free and he is Life.  And he calls us now to live evermore, for Jesus Christ is Life.

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: He Lives (Lift Every Voice and Sing # 42).

I serve a risen Savior, He’s in the world to today; I know that He is living, whatever others say;  I see his hand of mercy, I hear his voice of cheer, And just the time I need Him He’s always near.

Refrain: He lives.  He lives.  Christ Jesus lives today.  He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.  He lives, He lives salvation to impart!  You ask me how I know He lives.  He lives within my heart.

Rejoice, rejoice, O Christians, lift up your voice and sing.  Eternal hallelujahs to Jesus Christ, the King!  The hope of all who seek Him, the help of all who find, None other is so loving, so good and kind.  Refrain

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God!  Alleluia.  Alleluia

Eternal Hope and Personal Continuity

Easter Sunday  C   April 20, 2025
Isaiah 65:17-25  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26  Luke 24:1-12

Lectionary Link

If time could be given the name of a virtue, an emotion, and a feeling, that name would be Hope.  If we believe in continuous creating sustaining force propelling life in some omni-invisible way within everything at the sub-microscopic level which is always already resulting in the changing surface of things through what we call aging, then we might call Hope, the omnipresent everlastingness of life itself.

To live is to live with the poignant contradiction of hope as the sense of latent everlastingness with what we call aging and changing in time.  On the surface level of the apparent, things change and those changes get categorized with value statements.

And there are profound emotions tied to our value statements about the apparent changes in time.  We get sick, we get older, we lose family and friends to their apparent disappearance in death, and we know that we too will sometime disappear from the world of living with others.

If Hope is the inherent everlastingness of life, we need to know how to bring hopeful values to our lives which begin in birth and which have an apparent visible end in death.

The lesson that we need to learn from hope as the engine of time and change is how to balance a linear notion of time and the cyclical notion of time.  Time is linear in the sense that now is different from yesterday, and tomorrow will be different from today.  Time is cyclical in that there is always a recurring sameness which happens even when things become different.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the good news that came to people who experienced the continuity of the life of Jesus after he had died.   The resurrection of Jesus Christ is about the continuing afterlife of Jesus as he became known as the Risen Christ present to those who came to interpret Christ as the personal embodiment of the latent always already Hope within themselves.

The encounter with the Risen Christ provided the assurance that Hope cannot and does not die in the death of individual people or changing entities in life; rather Hope propels on and on, in everything and everyone forever.

When Hope is given the name of the Risen Christ, who is all and in All, it is understood as the energy of life with at least the superlatives of human personality, and the Christ who is all and in all makes us in Christ, and in Christ we have the revelation of a post-death continuity with ourselves.  So that while our scientific minds perceive all changing matter and energy being dissolved and reintegrated within matter and energy in future states in cyclical ways, what we know to be essential personhood formed by all the language events of our lives will continue to have everlasting continuity as a unified being which had a human history between birth and death.

One can see within the salvation history of the Bible, the play between linear concepts of time and cyclical notions of time.  The cruel suffering of people in time gave rise to the ending of time as a sort of death to our current pain with some apocalyptic end, and perhaps the birth of a perfect messianic age.  But the notion of a final static state of being was a freeze frame notion that cannot be real to either linear or cyclical time.

Would the pleroma, day of the Lord, coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, initiate the end of time into the state of changelessness?  Or as history continued with no ending, did the people of faith come to accept the immanence of Christ as all and in all?

Did they tell the story of the resurrection as John Gospel did when Jesus told his disciples, "I am leaving, and I am going, but I will come to you again.  I will make you an abode, a dwelling place of my Father's house?"

Can we appreciate the Day of the Resurrection as exemplifying the mode of the many comings of the Risen Christ, to people one at a time, and then become known continuous in the presence of the resurrection life of knowing one's most inner being as the presence of God's Spirit?

Let us embrace the Easter Story as the revelation about the rising of latent Hope as the winsome reality of life itself.  And let us accept that this Hope is revealed to us as the Risen Christ whose continuity with Jesus of Nazareth gives us the promise of our future continuity with ourselves and with the others who have passed from this visible world.

Let this Easter hope today give us strength to bear up under the seeming contradiction that hope has with the changes in life, some of which are glaringly painful, evil, and downright cruel.

Let us know today that Easter Hope means that Everlastingness remains after us and that Everlastingness will retain us profoundly in the memory of God.

Easter is our hopeful story in the midst of change and so we shout, "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia!"

The Great Vigil: Salvation History as a Winsome Infectious Goodness

 Easter Vigil     C  April 19, 2025
Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7
Rom.6:3-11         Luke 24:1-12

Lectionary Link

The Easter Vigil properly done, is an intensive crash course in Salvation History.  It includes the lighting of the new fire for the Paschal Candle.  One needs to strap in for a long liturgy with readings across the portions of the Bible with interspersed Psalms Canticles, and Prayers (Collects) and for the motivated congregants with stamina, multiple homilies on each of the various readings from Salvation history.  Properly done, the Great Vigil can last hours, and it is meant to be a final cram sessions for the candidates for baptism to be filled with the full range of the story of salvation so that they can know their spiritual history, and thus take their place as newly initiated in the perpetuation of this same story into the future through their new ministries ordained in their baptisms.  And the Great Vigil finishes with the first Eucharist of Easter during which the newly baptized are welcomed to the Lord Table and thus complete the rite of Christian initiation.

I would like to propose a "negative metaphor" to illustrate the positive mission of Salvation history.  Salvation history is the record of a healthy virus which infects people of this world who in turn infect a new generation of people with this healthy virus.

Each person has the image of God upon their lives and not knowing this can leave them sickly and under-performing in graceful living.  As people we need to be awakened to our original goodness, and the Bible is stories of this healthy virus infecting us and awakening us to our original blessing.

What is the nature of this healthy virus?  It is winsome word about the original goodness and love of God for this world.  At the Vigil we read the infecting and infectious word of God which awaken human purpose and allows the human soul to become the host for this winsome infectious word of God.

This infectious word has been written down and passed on through the words of the Bible within the lives of people in many situations.  It has survived because it has kept being winsome in awakening something within souls who receives this positive infection as beneficial to their health.

As we hear the many words of the goodness being passed through the generations of biblical peoples tonight, let us be grateful that this message of health and salvation has come to us and awaken within us the original goodness for which we have been put on this earth, namely, to love God and love our neighbor as ourself.

As we can be amazed and surprised at the variety of ways in which this winsome word has come to people, and let us know that the winsome word of the health of salvation is not limited to the ways in which the biblical people found it relevant to them.  Let us also be affirmed in the ways which the winsome words of the original goodness of life and our lives has been made known to us.  And knowing this for our own lives, let us arise to mentor and encouraged the newly baptized and each other as we walk in the winsome words of the goodness of the love of God.

And let us celebrate the success of the winsome words of hope for our lives in this first feast of Easter which is remembering of the supreme narrative for hope because of the promise of the preserving continuity of our lives through knowing Christ as resurrection and abundant life within us.

Let us rejoice that we have caught the healthy and infectious virus of the good words of salvation, which have awaken us to our real selves who can now confess to live on in the everlastingness of God.  So, with joy, thanksgiving, and humility we make the Easter shout: "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia!  Amen.

Good Friday; Assessing the Meaning of Providence

Good Friday   April 18, 2025
Gen 22:1-18 Ps 22
Heb.10:1-25 John 18:1-19:37

Lectionary Link

Good Friday is a time to ponder providence.  A central theme of the entire New Testament was to ponder the providence of the death of Jesus.  Why did it happen?  Was it necessary to happen?  How free were the agents in making it happen, if it was absolutely necessary?  Do we name somethings as providential only if there are currently perceived beneficial resulting conditions?  Can the positing of a just heavenly existence make things that happen be beneficial to the one who were victims?

How can we call the horrific genocides providential?  The Rwanda Massacre, Armenian Genocide, Khmer Rouge Killing Fields, The Holocaust, The Stalin Regime mass murders, The Mao Zedong Regime Killings.  And what about all of the so-called justified wars of invading conquerors?  Attila the Hun, Tammerlane, Genghis Khan, the oxymoronic many holy wars?  

Can the promise of heaven ever make those who died when they died freed from their terror and suffering?  Is there a limit to how good resulting providential events can rewrite terrible suffering into something good and necessary?

The Gospel of John, perhaps written in two or three phases over decades of time, has the Passion Gospel used for the Good Friday liturgy.  Being the latest written, it is written in the most providential modes.  In the words of Jesus to Pilate, one gets the impression that Jesus is not saying, "God why have you forsaken me," rather he is saying Pilate, "Sir, you are not in charge.  My angels would come and fight if God wanted them to.  You have no choice but to carry out this terrible deed for God's higher purpose."

The cross of Jesus becomes a proverbial billboard to announce in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, that Jesus is the King of the Jews.  Jesus is the Messiah.

But the writers of John's Gospel are not alone in how they characterized the death of Jesus.  Others saw Jesus and the wounded and killed Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who was an unknown figure known to Isaiah, and whose identity was speculated about by rabbis and scholars, and of course, followers of Jesus who saw this suffering figure as definitive of the life of Jesus.

Might I suggest that the death of Jesus as it came to be reported and understood by the writers of New Testament is definitive of the spiritual process of accessing the meaning of providence.

It is much easier for people who have lives of ease to boldly state that all things are well, and all manner of things will be well.  But what about real time suffering?  Is it not a profound offense against suffering to declare while suffering is happening, that "this is God's will and it is supposed to be?"

How indeed do we process history of what has happened to arrive at what we call providential?  And if we call things providential, do we retro-actively say, it had to be so and so all of the agents who caused the suffering are somehow doing God's will?  Do we absolve Judas( which happens in the gnostic Gospel of Judas), and all who caused the death of Jesus because they were just doing things according to the plan of God?

There are those who resort to historical predestination and like Paul understand God to be a potter who makes good vessels and dishonorable vessel.  And woe be to the people who have to fulfill the role of the dishonorable vessels.

Another method of appropriating positive meaning of past is to posit such a brilliant minded God that the divine mind tricks all lesser evil minds into getting them to do things according to the divine plan even when their evil minds think that they are winning.  Paul wrote that if the rulers really knew they were crucifying the king of glory they would not have done it.  In one Passion account, Jesus asks God the Father, to forgive his crucifiers for their ignorance in not knowing what they were doing.

I think that Good Friday, and the many meanings which the Passion of Jesus has been expressed by biblical writers and persons through Christian tradition, behooves us to appraise the kind of acceptance appropriate to understanding the wisdom of Providence.

Providence does not justify evil events as they occurred in their real time happening.  Evil and suffering is not providential.  What can be providential are some of the outcomes of bad events which express the hope and the resilience of people who survive with the resolve to live on in better ways.  Some times the past is too far away and the actual suffering of the event gets minimized by people who did not actually suffer.  And we must forgive ourselves for minimizing the fact that we have benefited by the sacrifice of others who have preceded us and contributed directly to the good of our lives.  That providence can seem to minimize the pain of others in the past bespeaks of the hopeful joy of the current blessing that one enjoys.  We need to forgive the Passion Gospel writers for rewriting the Passion event from their mystical perspective of having benefited from the posthumous reappearances of the Risen Christ in their lives.

And so on Good Friday, we may want to be hopeful like Julian Norwich, in confessing that "All things will be well, and all manner of things shall be well;" but let us not do so in a naive dismissal of the actual and current suffering and pain in the world.  Let not such confession be a fatalistic and passive acceptance of suffering and pain in our world such that we refuse to intervene to stop it or speak out against it in the now.

Good Friday does not mean that evil and suffering are providential when and because they occurred; it does mean that through new experiences after the suffering, there can be providential meanings that arise to assert that evil and suffering are not what is normal in life; rather goodness, love, health, safety, and justice.  Amen.

Prayers for Lent, 2025

Holy Saturday, April 19, 2025

Thy Death, O Jesus, is seen as an end of the pain from the flogging, the pierced hands and feet and side, and but a temporary rest for your body in a sepulcher; we reverence the three day state of your liminality before your many reappearances in becoming known as the Risen Christ as all, and in all.  Amen.

Good Friday, April 18, 2025

God, we require intoxication with Hope to call this day Good; and child-like giddiness to say that all manner of things will be well indeed.  Give us the faith to interweave hope with loving and just actions with the harsh reality of what the oppressive forces and their pawns, even ignorant ones are doing in our world today, and let us not use Hope falsely as an excuse for passive acceptance of tyranny.  Amen.

Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

God, you gave us Jesus as exemplifying human hospitality and service; give us the strength to fulfill the actions of the Maundy Thursday event by embracing service for the feeding and care of those in our world who need it.  Amen.

Wednesday in Holy Week, April 16, 2025

God, the eternal Word, be within us the invisible but actual source of initiation of language products of speech, writing, and body language which result in loving and just outcomes in our lives today.  Amen.

Tuesday in Holy Week, April 15, 2025

God, among all the taxing requirements of living, let us pay the necessary requirement with gratitude what Jesus taught us, namely, love and service for the justice of the people of the world.  Amen.

Monday in Holy Week, April 14, 2025

Give us grace, O God, to ponder this week the converting power of love, to convince people with wealth and power that greed and oppression are bad for their own lives, if not excruciating worse for those who are victims of their knowing and unknowing oppression.  Give us a vision of perfection as the completeness of all knowing profound dignity.  Amen.

Sunday, Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, April 13, 2025

Jesus the Christ, on this day we observe that crowds proclaimed you as a king who did not do preconceived kingly things; another crowd derided you about your non-kingly behavior in dying on the cross; and yet we accept the apparent foolishness of an apparent weak God dying within the freedom gone amuck in this world.  And we must confess that God as shared Freedom is supreme.  Amen.

Saturday in 5 Lent, April 12, 2025

God who encompasses all probabilities; we are subject to the intermittent events of sorrow and joy, sometimes combined in ways which require faith to live with such ambiguity; give us realism about life's ambiguities but let us privilege joy as our ministering task to help those who are brought to events of sorrow.  Amen.

Friday in 5 Lent, April 11, 2025

Jesus, our spiritual poets say that you are God emptied into human experience, even the human experience of death; give us faith to accept that God is with us through everything even in the sustenance for even the conditions of death to occur, but let us know how to be with each other with human comfort in the inevitability of loss.  Amen.

Thursday in 5 Lent, April 10, 2025

God, we have made the death of Jesus the greatest death to promote his afterlife as the invitation to the greatest afterlife; give us grace and humility to live with the knowledge of death and afterlife, not presuming to know too much, but simply embrace that we are all together in life and death.  Amen.

Wednesday in 5 Lent, April 9, 2025

God of Life who encompasses in time our lives and deaths, we posit you as more than than our lives and deaths because your Plenitude precedes and follows the duration of our lives; if birth and death are the bookends of our stories, let us cherish them with qualitative living that is known in practice as love and justice.  Amen.

Tuesday in 5 Lent, April 8, 2025

God of Life which includes death, including the death of Jesus which defied actuarial life expectancy logic; cruel oppression which creates untimely deaths is part of the mystery of evil that we are forced to adjust to and even resurrection as acceptance of death does not erase the events of losses which we have felt as we cling in faith to a future which will convince us that everything in the past has been meaningful and purposeful in having fulfilled its unique contribution to a better future.  And yet we ask how can a better future actually remove the extreme pain of the past loss except that it is ended and over?  But will memories ever be healed?  Is it enough to say that because I felt hurt, it let me know that I was truly alive?  Amen.

Monday in 5 Lent, April 7,2025

God, we live with the apocalypse of death to come to each of us; and death has as many meanings as there are people and moments in time; we thank you that you are Life which encompasses deaths in time and within your great Life we look for continual meanings of everything which ends.  Amen.

Sunday, 5 Lent, April 6, 2025

Great plenitudinous Container of All, we are born within you to live as perpetually baffled ones because of our smallness; in pride we often conflate the analogies from our circumstances to be true of the whole and yet we accept our tropes of language to be meaningful within the meaning of the entire linguistic universe which perpetually deconstructs our words which ripple to the edge of all that have been said and done.  We offer you today humility because we have no other truthful status.  Amen.

Saturday in 4 Lent, April 5, 2025

Everlasting Word of God, give repetition to the words which help to script the lives of all to instantiate Christ-likeness with speaking, writing, and acted out body language deeds of love and justice.  Let the words of the propaganda of evil greed be thwarted by reconstituting words of goodness.  Amen.

Friday in 4 Lent, April 4, 2025 (The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) 

God, our minds play a what if game today, in asking what if Martin Luther King, Jr., who died on this day at the age of 39, had lived to a normal life expectancy?  We thank you God for what Dr. King has inspired even as we mourn the conditions which brought his early death and the conditions which persist in our world of not yet living up to our ideals of equal justice under the law.  Give us courage not to compromise the ideals of justice that define our better angels.  Amen.

Thursday in 4 Lent, April 3, 2025

Everlasting Word in space and time, writing needs space, speaking needs time, body language needs sequences of before and after; the potential linguistic universe will never be fully uttered, acted, or written; let us make the words in our time fill the script of times with words and deeds of love and kindness.  Amen.

Wednesday, Wednesday in 4 Lent, April 2, 2025

God who encompasses the total community of everything; keep us from the mob esprit d'corp of being united to do wrong things as a group and falsely absolving us as individuals for that wrong; give us a group spirit for love and justice to do the very best for the greatest number of people.  Amen.

Tuesday in 4 Lent, April 1, 2025

God, give us the humility to not presume perfection today, and not to let perfectionism falsely accuse us for what we can't be; but give us the courage to affirm our perfectability as we are ever repenting toward being better today than yesterday.  Amen.

Monday in 4 Lent, March 31, 2025

God whose love is excessive in magnifying seeming endless differences in the play of freedom in time; give us wisdom to apply excessive love in the works of love, mercy, and justice, toward the Christ who is buried within those who direly need love, mercy, and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, 4 Lent, March 30, 2025 (Sunday of the Parable of the Prodigal Son)

God, forgive our prodigal ways in being alienated from the divine image upon us, and forgive our judging ways when we think that we're your exclusive children and others are not.  Amen.

Saturday in 3 Lent, March 29, 2025

God, of reconciliation, how can we hope and believe in ultimate reconciliation without minimizing the excruciating pain and suffering that occurs in individual events?  Is the sum total of all occasions passive reconciliation by being a sheer quantity of events within a great Container?  Can love accept that all pain and suffering have a surpassing future value?  Give us faith to live in the seeming unreconciled events of this world.  Amen.

Friday in 3 Lent, March 28, 2025

God, whose version of life we assume is all encompassing; let our limited versions of life be offered in humility for their obvious partial scope, but let them in small ways be part of the scaffold of love and justice in our world.  Amen.

Thursday in 3 Lent, March 27, 2025

God, we often doubt that in our world of freedom with conflicting outcomes that reconciliation is even possible; yet we ask for the grace for insights into words and deeds of reconciliation which can promote the peace of living together well for the common good.  Amen.

Wednesday in 3 Lent, March 26, 2025

Loving God, we seek to emulate you in being loving ourselves, even as we can be prodigal in wasting the gifts of life for ourselves and other, or we can proud that we are better than those we consider to be prodigal; give us willing hearts to respond to your love that our prodigal states of waste and our prideful judgments of others might end as we are converted to loving behaviors.  Amen.

Tuesday in 3 Lent, The Annunciation, March 25, 2025

God of Angels, personified messages and messengers; we name in story the high message to Mary to impart the importance of how we regard the impending birth of Christ into the world and into our inward lives; clarify freshly to us what the best mystery of our inward beings is as we continuously say, let it be, to the birthing of Christ in us.  Amen.

Monday in 3 Lent, March 24, 2025

God, who being the Container of All means that we're all in this together; help us seek the harmony of reconciliation to be our goal in the constant work of taking what has been and making from it what can be more loving and just.  Amen.

Sunday, 3 Lent, March 23, 2025

God, who is creative freedom, and who shares true freedom with everyone and everything in the world as a field of probabilities in play; help us to honor the gift of freedom in the degree that we have it with choices which influence the future field of probability toward love and justice.  Amen.

Saturday in 2 Lent, March 22, 2025

God, whom we confess to be comprehending everything, everywhere, all at once, we only confess your Totality because we assume our particulars exist in a plethora of unknowable differences; give us humility to accept the minuscule partial perspectives which we parse in time sequences but let us not minimize our efforts to reflect what love and justice mean in action.  Amen.

  Friday in 2 Lent, March 21, 2025

God of Becoming in Time, let us regard our time as your loving patience to give us more opportunity to become our better selves particular in loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen.

Thursday in 2 Lent, March 20, 2025

Eternal Word, in doing and becoming, we presume a birth into knowing and consciousness in having language; as we are thankful for having language as our image of the Eternal Word within us, give us grace to be so constituted by the language use in our lives that we may become words and body language deeds of love and justice.  Amen.

Wednesday in 2 Lent, March 19, 2025

God of Time and in Time, we experience and process time in many ways, in cycles or spirals of repeating patterns, in seemingly simple linear cause and effect, in expansive webs of interrelating events, in branches of of different probabilities; and we can be so overly mystified by causality that we are tempted to passive fatalism; give us insight and courage to do the immediate acts of seeming justice and love before us and the grace of forgiveness if our motive for love and justice do not always result in the same.  Amen.

Tuesday in 2 Lent, March 18, 2025

Divine Patient One, you outlast everyone even while in omnipresence you bear the elasticity of becoming in time; we are becoming having our own eternality of being born from everything that pre-existed the phases of us and after our recognizable phases which come to language leave any state of recognition or memory, we submit to the mysterious kind of preservation that  we can only have in your everlastingness.  Amen.

Monday in 2 Lent, March 17, 2025

God, grant us humility to be honest about what we do not know about causality but give us courage and clarity to change the things at hand which foster the outcomes of love and justice.  Amen.

Sunday, The Second Sunday in Lent, March 16, 2025

Jesus you lamented over the conditions of the Holy City and inspire us to lament over the needless killing which happens in our towns and cities throughout the world because of oppression and the greed which hinders us from practicing safety regarding the proliferation of harmful weapons on our streets.  Give our lawmakers wisdom and courage to enact the policies of salvation known as best safe practices.  Amen.

Saturday in 1 Lent, March 15, 2025

God, we somethings regard ourselves and our places to be so special as proof of your divine protection with us, and then we remember Jerusalem which has risen and fallen, risen and fallen; we ponder the religious justification for evil in public office as we are baffled by the probabilities of what can happen in the true freedom which allows the strong to trample the weak; we are ever seeking aftermaths when evils collide and allow goodness and kindness to squeeze through as the grout and mortar which preserves us into the future.  Let us today be the  mortar of sustaining goodness today, even if but barely visible.  Amen.

Friday in 1 Lent, March 14, 2025

Great God, humanity is often like scattered chicks under attack by the preying foxes of life; provide us with mothering hen grace to shield and protect the vulnerable from the greedy and powerful forces of oppression of those who proclaim empathy as a fatal human fault.  Amen.

Thursday in 1 Lent, March 13, 2025

God who is everlastingness, we humans often think that things seems to be so bad as to portend an end to sort out a final justice, are also those who know that joy can arrive in the morning when we don't expect it.  Give us grace to continue to hope for an end to injustice, and the experience of joy in the morning for those who have suffered.  Amen.

Wednesday in 1 Lent, March 12, 2025

God, you have sent prophets to give us correction for behaviors of greed and oppression of the poor and greedy and oppressive people often kill them or their messages; do not let the mothering care for the vulnerable of this world be eliminated and let the conviction of to whom much is given, much is required become the practice for the common good.  Amen.

Tuesday in 1 Lent, March 11, 2025

Christ, you are presented under the metaphor of a mothering hen who wishes to shield and protect the weak, dependent, and vulnerable; give us such a mothering ministry in our world to nurture the vulnerable even into their own eventual mothering strength.  Amen.

Monday in 1 Lent, March 10, 2025

God you are Duration Itself even as all that is not durable passes through phases of becoming and transforming in appearances at variable rates; give us courage to perform the durable deeds of love and justice which can replicate themselves in new forms in future events so that God as Love will know continuing manifestations.  Amen.

Sunday, First Sunday in Lent, March 9, 2025

Strengthens us O God, as we resist the great inward accuser who would challenge that the image of God is upon us as children of God; give us wisdom to discern the diversion tactics that arise to delay or impede our growth into the maturity as people of love and justice.  Amen.

First Saturday in Lent, March 8, 2025

Eternal Word of God, whose reservoir of words we have come to have access to in our interior lives; give us wise inner constitution of our words so that as we see through them we can organize our lives with the best timing in our lives to perform the works of love and justice for the common good.  Amen.

First Friday in Lent, March 7, 2025

God whom we conceive of as the Omni-heroic; we confess our need for exemplary  heroes who can help us find correct timing in our lives amid the maze of probable outcomes; we thank you for the heroic Jesus who exemplified apt timing in doing the right things in the right way and in the right motive for the love of the people of the world.  Amen.

 First Thursday in Lent, March 6, 2025

Jesus, we turn to you as the Christ in our interior wilderness who confronts the accuser and trickster within us who would have us mistime the goodness of life by doing things in the wrong way at the wrong time.  Give us insights to resist the falsehoods which tempt us to call evil good, and good evil.  Amen.

Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025

God of life which includes the demise event of death; we bear the ashes of remembrance of the passing of the remnants of bodies in their state before integrating with their environment even as we celebrate the invisible sustaining and recreating force which preserves with the accrual of an everlasting age all that has gone before.  Let us cherish and steward life as we see and know it so that what is born from what is now will be enriched with the wise stewardship of our lives now.  Amen.

Not Missing the Point of Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025
Ex. 12:1-14a Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25
1 Cor 11:23-32 John 13:1-15

Lectionary Link

What is the Maundy Thursday liturgy?  It is in Holy Week, a part of the Triduum.  Sometimes we make the readings from Scriptures mainly about our religious practices.  We need to have origin explanations to certify and legitimize why we practice religion in the way that we do.

The Bible can be a book about religion and about why we do religion the way that we do religion.  And when we make God and the Bible mainly about our group identity in our religious setting, we can miss the connection with the big issues of life.

Is the Passover meal just to be an annual family meal to renew Jewish community identity, or is it to be a universal message about the degradation of slavery, and how every person who gains freedom from any kind of slavery is worth a celebration?

Is Maundy Thursday about the origin of the Christian community meal that we call the Eucharist.  It quite amazing that the Eucharist has become quite a legislative event about who can or who cannot participates, even to create the oxymoron, "closed communion."

Some groups suggest that foot-washing like the Eucharist should be a regular community religious practice, as if foot washing today is still connected with ordinary hygienic practice of people today who have regular means of keeping their feet clean.

What are the big issues of Maundy Thursday, which should relate it to the entire world?

Everyone needs to eat, and the survival of community requires service.  If we divorce Eucharist and foot-washing on Maundy Thursday from world hunger and the requirement of service for the survival of the world, then we are but a church of clanging brass, announcing that we are here but with unneeded noise.

Maundy Thursday should remind us that everyone needs to eat.  Eucharist is a strategy of open eating because in the gathering, we are to verify that everyone has enough to eat.  If we lose this connection between the Eucharist as a meal and the need for the hungry to eat, then we remove the important sign values of Maundy Thursday.

The foot-washing of Jesus exemplified service as the mode of expressing the power of our lives.  Basic service in our world includes making sure that everyone has enough to eat, wear, and a place to live.  And if that is not happening within families, there has to be people who are accountable to make those things happen.

Eucharist and foot-washing has not yet successfully converted our world, since there remains so many people still in need.  

Let us not get so hung up on just doing the liturgy and forget its connection with the great mission in our world to see that everyone has enough to eat and that we embrace the service mission to make that happen.

Let us be reminded again tonight about the mission requirements of the Maundy Thursday liturgy; feeding the people of the world through service.  Without this connection, we become but a cloistered private club with arcane and esoteric ceremonies.

Let us go forth to advocate for feeding the world through service for the truly common good.  Is there anything more Christ-like?  Amen.