Sunday School, August 10, 2025 9 Pentecost C proper 14

  Sunday School, August 10, 2025   9 Pentecost  C proper 14

Themes

The Gospel reading is about Jesus telling his followers that they needed to always be ready.  One of the reason we go to school and learn things is so that we can be ready for the many things which are going to face in life.  We might live in fear if we are not prepared for some very challenging situations.

Why do we do our math problems?  Yes, so we can pass a test, but also so we know how to take care of our money or use math to build a new kind of airplane in the future.

What is the best way to be ready and be prepared to live our lives in the very best way with God and with each other?

The answer is to live by faith

Hebrews chapter is call the “faith” chapter.  It defines faith and then gives the examples from the lives of many Bible heroes of faith, people like Abraham, Noah, David and others.

How is faith defined?  Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.

What does that mean?

Hope is about the future and the future has not yet happened.  And because it has not happened we can be fearful about what might happen.  If we are fearful about might happen, we might just try to hide in our rooms and not do anything.

Faith is not fear; it is a different way of living toward the future.  With faith, we get up and do good and wonderful things which are aimed toward future good goals and targets.

Faith is acting because we are aim our lives toward very good goals and targets.

We study and we practice now not because we are afraid of the future but to prepare ourselves to be better at the good things which we want to do.

So, remember Jesus wants us to be ready and prepared for the future.  And we do this by living with faith.  Faith is living in a positive way with positive goals.

A sermon

Do you know what a wish is?

 What are some things we might wish for?

 Do you wish have a certain toy?

 Do you wish to be a good soccer player?

There was a boy who once saw a beautiful bicycle and he wanted this bicycle a lot.  So he asked his parents to buy him this bike, since he did not have much money and the bike was very expensive.

  His parents said he could have the bike but first he had to complete some chores and some projects.  They said if you finish these projects then we will get you bike.

 Some of the chores were easy, but some of the chores were harder.  He had to make his bed every day.  He had to keep his room clean.  He had to help watch his younger brother when they played in the back yard.  And sometimes the boy did not do his chores and his parents reminded him about the bike and his promises.  So he kept doing his chores, though he was getting very impatient.

  One day, day his dad told him to go into the garage and get a hammer.  And when the boy went into the garage, he saw the new bike.  Of course he was excited.  But then he asked his parents, “Why did you make me work for this bike?”

  And his parents said, “We wanted you to have faith.”

  We wanted you to believe us that we would get you the bike.  But we also wanted to teach you a lesson about wishing and dreaming and hope and faith.

  When you are young you can wish for something and think that because mom and dad gives it to you right away…you can think that everything in life is very easy.

  But not everything in life is easy.  Sometimes you have to work and you have to work hard to get something.

  Like if you want to be good in soccer or baseball, you just can’t wish to be good, you also have to work hard and practice, practice, practice.

  Faith is important because when you see what you want to do, you need to have faith to work hard to do what you really wish for in life.

  So faith is when we see what God wants us do and we work to do it, even if it very hard and difficult.  When we have faith, it means that we do not give up working for some very important things.

  So faith is very important in life, because everything does not just happen with magic in life.  Your parents are trying to teach you to have faith, when they encourage you to work for the good things in your life.  And if it seems hard, just remember you are learning to live with faith and you are building faith muscles to do lots of great things.  Amen.

Eucharistic Liturgy for Intergeneration Worship, including young children
  using the option on page 400 of the Book of Common Prayer for non-principal Eucharists

Gathering Songs: Awesome God, My Jesus I Love Thee, Let All That Is Within Me,  Lord Bid Your Servant

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: Awesome God,  (Renew!, # 245)

Our God is an awesome God.  He reigns from heaven above.  With wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God.

(Sing three times, repeat ending on third verse)

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Liturgy Leader: In our prayers we first praise God, chanting the praise word: Alleluia

Litany of Praise: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Letter to the Hebrews

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. .By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 33

Our soul waits for the LORD; *he is our help and our shield.

Indeed, our heart rejoices in him, *for in his holy Name we put our trust.

Let your loving-kindness, O LORD, be upon us, * as we have put our trust in you.

 Liturgist: Before we offer our thanksgiving, is there anything special you are thankful about today?

As we thank God, let us chant, “Thanks be to God.”

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God!

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said to his disciples, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – 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.

Liturgist: As we offer our prayers for people in need, let us chant: “Christ, have mercy.”

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People:                        And also with you.

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

Offertory Song:           My Jesus, I Love Thee, (Renew!  # 275)

My Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine.  For thee all the follies of sin I resign.  My gracious redeemer, my savior art thou.  If ever I loved thee, my Jesus tis now.

I love thee because thou has first loved me.  And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree;  I love thee for wearing the thorn on thy brow, if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.

Doxology

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

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

Prologue to the Eucharist

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

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

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

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

( All may gather around the altar)

Liturgist continues:

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

You have made us in your image

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

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

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

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

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

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

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, when we will bring you the gifts of bread and wine. We will ask you to 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:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Let All That Is Within Me, (Renew! # 269)

1-Let all that is within cry holy.  Let all that is within me cry holy.  Holy, holy, holy is the Lamb that was slain.

2-Glory   3-Jesus

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: Lord, Bid Your Servant Go In Peace, (Renew! # 295)

1-Lord bid your servant go in peace; your word is now fulfilled.  These eyes have seen salvation’s dawn, this child so long foretold.

2-This is the Savior of the world, the Gentiles’ promised light, God’s glory dwelling in our midst, the joy of Israel.

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God! 

Greed Has an Alternative

8 Pentecost, Cp13 August 3, 2025
Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9,43
Col. 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21

Lectionary Link

From the words of Jesus, "Take care!  Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

In Luke's Gospel, one can find the use of three kinds of life, often presented in contrast: bios for physical life, psyche for soul life of emotions, intellect, and volition, and zoe for divine life. 

The words of Jesus refer to the divine life of a person, whose origin is believed to be the divine image upon a person's life.  In such a human constitutional make-up, there is a hierarchy of the preferred derivation of values for ordering one's life.  From the image of the divine within oneself, one is to flood the mind, emotions and wills with the values of the kingdom of heaven, which then guide the agency for what happens in one's bodily life.

Greed is the result of a reversal in the hierarchy of values.  From noting that one's body is located in an outer and physical world, one can come to the conclusion that accruing other environment matter to enhance the physical life of the body can become the chief value in life.

The result is that the possessing of more physical things for the sole benefit of one's physical life becomes the chief and driving goal of one's life.  One's external treasures becomes the chief value of one's life.  My life is valuable because of what I own.  I am worth something because of what I have accrued.  And if I am on the Forbes list of wealthiest people, then I am the most worthy person in the world.  My abundance of possession is the essence of my life.

The assessment of such a view by Jesus is a reality of check of time.  Time ages and ends all things physical, the human body, and the ability of a person to enjoys one's possessions beyond one's death.  All physical things have a shelf life and they end.  Something which ends can only be a temporary treasure.

The way of Jesus and the way of every higher ethical system offers an alternate to the life of greed.

In Pauline epistle writing, greed is classified as idolatry, which is in fact a sin against the commandment of not making replacements for God and trying to act as though human possessions could actually functions as one's high God.

What the continual amassing of material possessions proves is that wealth and stuff can never be God, because discontent with what one now has, only makes one want to have more.  It is an endless cycle of discontent.  One's amassing of stuff leads one away from accessing the divine that one already has from the image of the divine that is always already upon one's life.

The divine image upon oneself activated is the zoe or the abundant and eternal life quality which Jesus and the attending spiritual tradition refer to.  And when we attend to the zoe of the divine image, what kind of treasure do we find?   We find the life of the virtues, for they are heavenly treasures which can descend into the life of our minds, emotions, and volition, and become the organizing principle for our bodily lives.

And if we find the heavenly treasure, the treasure of the virtues, what becomes the alternative to greed?  Generosity.

The world greatly needs the treasure of generosity to overcome the material distortions of the greedy who are so fat with wealth that the blubber of their weight destroys and hurts those who suffer in dire need beneath them.

The Gospel of Jesus for us is this: Let our lives consist in the abundance of the generosity of God who has given us everything, and who asks us to emulate divine generosity by practicing distributing care with equity to all, especially to those who lack and need to be brought to healthy subsistence.  Amen.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2025

Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2025

Biblical justice often seems to be justice delayed into the afterlife, because rarely while they live the mighty are not cast from their thrones, and the rich are not sent away empty, unless one is referring to what happens at death or one spiritualizes the superiority of the thrones of "virtue" and the treasures of the "heart."  Perhaps the Bible is mainly about revaluing the spiritual over the physical as a way of saying the poor truly can have an advantage?

Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2025

Ever notice that the people of the Bible and people of most of history is about the tyranny of the greedy powerful wealthy dominating in various ways the poorer general populace.  Democracies are supposed to be systems where the populace at least through representative governments have power to exact some controls on behalf of the common good, but increasingly oligarchs have been able to pay off the "elective" representatives to their own advantage and to the diminished services for the masses.

Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2025

The words attributed to Jesus, "Be on your guards against all kinds of greed..." Avarice has been designated as one of the deadly sins.  In the economic system of capitalism, greed would be the pejorative for self-interest, which is regarded to be a positive driver of economic healthiness for a "free" market.  It is based upon a idealistic reciprocity of suppliers and those who buy.  In operation though, the self-interest of a few get magnified over the self-interest of the many and when a few own the majority of the world wealth capitalism becomes oligarchy.

Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2025

For skeptics and fundamentalists, what is the purpose of taking modern historical methodology and scientific thinking and applying them to the Bible as though they were relevant modes of epistemology during ancient times.  They end up supporting or criticizing Bible based upon their anachronistic importing of modernity into antiquity.  Historical evidence shows that the Bible is a collection of writings which evolved in its compilation over many years within many different communities.  The Bible is a written language tradition which has been interpreted in many ways and in many times by many different communities, and it has been interpreted differently even with contradictions in assumed meanings.  It has divided readers and united readers because written texts do not have self evidential meanings automatically agreed upon by everyone.  It has and can be used as origin discourse for wide varieties of communal beliefs and practices, and the practices of ancient communities regarding polygamy, subjugation of women, and slavery are now judged by "modern" standards as unjust, unloving and demeaning human behaviors.  As the official "textbook" designation as the "Word of God," such does not mean that we believe God upholds slavery, or other ancient practices regarded now  to be unjust; "Word of God" means more that the ultimate nature of God as love and justice is always looking for a hearing within human community and the Bible is a collection of writing of previous attempts of people to bring these attempts and in their imperfect human contexts to written text.  We in our imperfect efforts attempt to bring words of God as love and justice into our lives and we are doing it with varying levels of success while being plagued with our own failures, just as biblical people were.  The Bible is proof that the "word of God" was not fully successful in making love and justice a reality for biblical people, and the "Word of God" awaits further events instantiation in our own time.  The Bible is proof that people are forever "unfinished," even in their understandings of God.

Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2025

The presumption that any society today can limit itself to biblical insights with the assumption that biblical knowledge is omni-competent to all questions for all times is both naive and untrue.  However, universal insights about the need for love and justice, found in biblical writing,  to be continually reapplied in new life circumstances will always be relevant.  Using relevant biblical insights in relevant applicable ways is the issue.  So, Paul's exhortation for slaves to be content with their circumstances, is not relevant today, but repugnant.

Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2025

AI is the vacuuming of all human data and being re-cycled with new digital outputs for new situations making all traces of the past mostly anonymous or lacking current attribution.

Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2025

Prayer is the acknowledgment of life as relational; we live and move and have being within everything that has been and is as preparation to what will be.  Coming to language the relational aspect of life is prayer in its various forms in spoken and written language, in it corporate and private closet settings, and in its telling validation in the oblationary body language of deeds living out our highest values of love and justice in and toward life itself.

Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2025

Living is about leaning how to survive within a sea of probable happenings by observing consistent repetitions and building one's own repetitions to deal with the repetitions which one observes happening to oneself.  Within the dynamics of my repetitions encountering how I interpret how I understand external repetitions confronting me, the new can arise with the possibility neo-logical invention combining past traces with something new, which at first might seem as something as a Pan, goat-man new species until it became a culturally integrated staple that has lost its new weirdness. 

Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2025 

God's "weakness" is our weakness in that God's very nature of being creative freedom with a degree of that freedom shared within everything, means that to honor that freedom, it is not over-ridden by the divine as a monolithic coercive intervener.  God must within omnipresence be an internal lure toward the highest moral and spiritual expressions of freedom, namely, acting in love and justice.   We as limited agents of freedom are confronted with our own weakness when challenged by the freedom of environment and interior forces to confront us with agents which are often impersonally or randomly bad or personally evil.  With God, we must freely choose to overcome evil and badness with good choices.

Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2025

What has arisen in language traditions, whether regarded as science, mathematics, religion, or art, is the manifold human effort to deal with the universe as a generating system of probabilities, requiring human agents to generate new probabilities within all other agents of probabilities which share a proportionately lesser freedom compared to the all-inclusive freedom of this great generator of all probabilities, always on its way to throw and land the dice of actual happenings, with slight but significant help from the dice themselves.

Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2025

Prayer is more relational than transactional.  A transaction is "I ask God for what I think I need and want, and it does or does not happen."  Relational prayer is more about preparational comportment of oneself to way that things are for oneself in one's situation so as to be able to be insightful about how to be an interactional agent in one's circumstance to promote the highest of love and justice required by a most high Being whose nature respects the freedom of all kinds of agencies in the field of probabilities which comprises a universe in process at any moment.

Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2025

To live in a child like way in returning to the mode of wonder as an adult means the ability for realizing every moment is new, and one can leave the boredom of the redundant of what is habitual and seemingly programmed and be thankful that an integrated past prepares one to take on the new, to make the serendipitous unserendipitously common.

Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2025

Deconstruction of any proposition resides in the constant dissolving of meaning which occurs within concentric circles of the viewing contexts.  Another reading from another context changes the meaning of any proposition, or at least destabilizes any fixed meaning even while for pragmatic functions of meaning within certain communal use a proposition retains a degree of communal objectivity since the community using the terms of the proposition are pre-coded with tacit meaning which has them seemingly agreeing on surface functional meaning.  Perceptually for many years the sun seemed to rise and set on a "flat earth," and the flat earth was deconstructed with knowledge which put in question the mere perception of a flat earth.

Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2025

New Testament writers represent their readings of the Hebrew Scriptures mostly from the Greek translation of it, as insightful in presenting comparative presentations of the figure of Jesus and the mission of the early followers of Jesus.  To say that history repeats itself or that past characterizations of events predict in exact ways the future events are historical interpretations and are consistent with how we line up and compare present events with the record of past events, but the methods are arbitrary even with a method of saying "this current events looks like or contains some of the same elements as the past recorded events."  That Babe Ruth set a home run record did not predict that Hank Aaron would break it; it only changed the definition of record to be possibly broken in the future.  The sameness in "subject matter" of past recorded events do not share specific causal relationship with present events except the general observation that all the past has caused all of the present and we cannot align exactly all correspondence with events of the past with events of the present in precisely cause and effect connected ways.

Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2025

The writings of the Bible in a collection juxtapose so much human experience data over such a long period of time that it is a disservice to force upon it false unities and harmonies which are obviously not there at the time when the writers are writing, even if one takes the view that the last writer is first or primary in having the latest interpretive perspective on previous writings.  One should be honest that one is using a particular interpretation for the dogmatic concerns of one's own confessional community.  One's prior commitments to one's own community values is the telling feature of biblical interpretation, even for secular historians who follows their persuasion about the "science" of historical studies.

Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2025

Every event in time is a "unique" occasions even as each events is characterized as similar or different from the traces of what has happened before.  Christian apologists resort to making the events in the life of Jesus which would defy the principle of natural causes as exemplary of the naturally impossible unique occasion which supports the supernatural nature of Jesus.  In doing so they are upholding the naturalness/normality of the scientific view of common sense reality.  That Jesus performed uncommon reality is what makes him unique. Mythicists such as Joseph Campbell would find such discourse as totally in keeping with similar literature about heroes and the gods/goddesses.  Mythicists would oppose trying to force mythical truth into the discourse of empirical verification.  One could say that in the secular realm cinema and hypertextual computer generated imagery has taken over the former functions of the hero/gods discourse including even the apocalyptic genre which was so evident in peoples with vision of world doom because of profound immanent and local suffering.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2025

Science has brought about the reduction of the vague general use of head and mind as the location of thinking to the physical source of thinking in the body organ, the brain.  It is interesting that feeling has been said to reside in the heart even while to manipulate feelings we use drugs to trigger places within the brain to make us "feel" better.  A question might arise though: Is mind and thinking mysteriously decentralized in functional degrees throughout the entire body?  I don't think anyone but a wacky poet would say, "I think with my toes."  Can total life within the body really be divided up into but "partial" functions, like thinking, or is life in the human body so interconnected that life is "everything within the body, all at once?"  We fragment for analytical purposes, even for healing purposes of seemingly localized parts, even while the totality of life within the human body remains total.

Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2025

Everyday tasks are necessary for the maintenance of our lives, for eating, for taking care of the required hospitality for people in our lives.  We still need insight as to when to break our schedules for receiving the next creative advance in our lives.  Taking the time for contemplation may interrupt a cherished schedule but resisting can be a choice not to move on to the next paradigm shift in the understanding of our lives.

Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2025

Language ability is like a virus we are infected with because our human bodies include the perfect environment for language virus to live and grow and take over our lives with the results of language traditions which program us to our connection with our outer environments.  We live and move in our language traditions which re-infect new language users even as language traditions evolve and change with new paradigms with new meanings in new times.  With language, we are always developing new ways to interact with our world.  With language, the language-oid also occurs like the paralinguistic phenomena of music, mathematics, and myth-making which merges the dream world with the language of the outer world.

Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2025

Parables are like every metaphor; they give flashing perspectival insights based upon some common shared perspectives even biases.  The parable of the Good Samaritan does not mean that all Samaritans are good neighbors or that all priests and Levites are bad neighbors.  It means sometimes those we expect to be good neighbors aren't and those whom we don't expect to be good neighbors are.

Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2025

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a provocative wisdom story requiring the redefinition of the term neighbor as both a person encountered but more importantly the active person in performing deeds of love, mercy, and justice.

 Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2025

Fear of the other with "differences" can be the motivation for people to act in unneighborly ways.  Strategies of exposure to and appreciation of differences are needed to promote mutual neighborliness.

Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2025

The communal study of the Bible requires the use of massive reductive abbreviations, like using names for the Gospels.  There are no autographs of the Gospel with internal attributions of authorship, so for communication purposes we use traditional titles like, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when what we really mean is a title for a piece of writing of which the earliest full copy of such writing is only in the fourth century.  Sometimes we can act as though the titles actually designate a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke, and a John with stylus in hand.  We think that we can be more certain about the letters of Paul but we cannot know precisely what editing and redacting took place in communities before we have the "canonical copies."  For example, we have reconstructions of Marcion's Paul in around 140 C.E. which is quite different from the canonical Pauline letters.

Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2025

With the growth of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, becoming like a masked secret police, we can wonder whether we are entering the banality of evil phase in the normalization of not loving our neighbor as ourselves because we allow people in power to designate certain people so "other" than us that they don't deserve to be worthy to be a neighbor to love.

Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2025

The message of rebuke in the parable of the Good Samaritan is that we can find good religious reasons and arguments of inconvenience for not being good active neighbors.  Living, moving, and having being within God means that a priori we are all geographically passive neighbors and the moral question is are we acting with neighborly care?

Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2025

Human being can act and present outer feelings and empathy when inside they might feel the opposite.  AI deep fakes allow such acting something like emotional ventriloquism, but with a much more verisimilitude than the proverbial ventriloquist manipulating a lever up the back side of a less than life like puppet moving the "dummy's" lips.  AI deep fake dummies has appearances so precise as to fool the beholder.

Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2025

Everything said and written is like the foreground which rest upon the background of what is not said and written.  Motives and intentions motive the foregrounding of somethings and not others.

Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2025

The prophets were those who rebuked the nation for leaving or not performing their best founding principles.  America needs prophets who rebuke us for leaving our better angels when greed, grift, and corruption in high places for the benefit of the few is rampant.

Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2025

Our lives today are data-ized.  We are categorized by collected information about us so that we can be citizen with proclivities for political ideologies and consumers for products.  We work for people who use statistics for business efficiency and we make data out of other people even as we ourselves are data.  The truth of our data culture is that we allow actuarial wisdom to be betrayed and not followed if it counters higher profits in certain sectors, e.g., fossil fuels and climate change, proliferation of guns and death statistics, lack of universal health care and poor health outcomes.  The end result of data control seems to be for the extreme profit of the few.  Would that in our data-ization we actually implemented true actuarial wisdom.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2025

Religion purport to be holistic systems of health.  In time the meaning of "holistic" has changed as when modern medicine has resulted in a a different understand between mind and body.  Any religious perspective which claims to be holistic needs to integrate what is continuously happening in science without pitting religious "art of living" language with the scientific method.  

Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2025

If Jesus had 70 or 72 evangelists and 12 disciples in just three years of ministry, he must have been quite a busy teacher.  That would be quite a "crash" course of theology.  No dissertations to read but lots of oral exams.

Quiz of the Day, July 2025

Quiz of the Day, July 31, 2025

Which founder of the Jesuits had a method of prayer named after him?

a. Peter Faber

b. Francis Xavier

c. Leynez

d. Salmeron

e. Ignatius of Loyola

Quiz of the Day, July 30, 2025

William Wilberforce, John Newton, Hannah More, and Beilby Porteus were Anglicans united by what cause?

a. 39 articles of Religion

b. American Revolution

c. Abolition of Slavery

d. Eucharistic controversy

Quiz of the Day, July 29, 2025

Which wife of David was taken from him and remarried, and then brought back to David?

a. Bathsheba

b. Abigail

c. Michal

d. Eglah

e. Maachah

Quiz of the Day, July 28, 2025

Who anointed David King?

a. God, came and poured the oil of anointing in David's dream

b. Samuel anointed David King of Israel

c. Men of Judah anointed David, King of Judah

d. Jonathan anointed David, King of Hebron

e. a, b, and c

f. b and c

Quiz of the Day, July 27, 2025

David expressed a love, passing the love of women, for whom or what?

a. God

b. singing to God

c. Samuel

d. Jonathan

Quiz of the Day, July 26, 2025

Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Virgin Mary are listed where?

a. Matthew, in an early codex

b. Luke, in a variant codex from the canonical Luke

c. In the Protoevangelium of James from the Second Century

d. In the apocryphal Gospel of Mary

Quiz of the Day, July 25, 2025

Who is St. James the Great?

a. the supposed writer of the Epistle of James

b. the half-brother of Jesus

c. the son of Zebedee

d. the son of Alphaeus

Quiz of the Day, July 24, 2025

Which of the following might be associated with the biblical location of Endor?

a. a famous battle

b. necromancy

c. false idols

d. David's harp

Quiz of the Day, July 23, 2025

To assist David, Abigail had to contradict whom?

a. King Saul

b. Nabal, her husband

c. David's warriors

d. Jonathan

Quiz of the Day, July 22, 2025

Who were the first women recorded to witness the empty tomb of Jesus?

a. Mary, mother of Jesus

b. Mary, mother of James

c. Salome

d. Mary Magdalene

e. Mary of Bethany

f. Martha of Bethany

g. b,c, and d

h. a,c, and d

Quiz of the Day, July 21, 2025

In stead of killing King Saul what did David do?

a. cut off a lock of hair while he was sleeping

b. cut off a corner of sleeping Saul's cloak

c. stole Saul's sword while he slept

d. stole Saul's spear while he slept

Quiz of the Day, July 20, 2025

In the reported words of Jesus, what is the "unforgivable" sin?

a. murder

b. blasphemy of the one God

c. idolatry

d. blaspheming the Holy Spirit

Quiz of the Day, July 19, 2025

What is Doeg the Edomite known for?

a. stealing Goliath's sword

b. being the armor bearer for David

c. killing 85 priests

d. betraying Saul

Quiz of the Day, July 18, 2025

What is David on the lam from Saul receive from the priest Ahimelech?

a. Goliath's sword

b. honey

c. holy bread to eat

d. Aaron's budding rod

e. a message from Jonathan

f. a and e

g. a and c

Quiz of the Day, July 17, 2025

William White, the first Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, was from what state?

a. New York

b. Connecticut

c. Maryland

d. Pennsylvania

Quiz of the Day, July 16, 2025

What mode of communication did Jonathan use with David to signal Saul's intent toward David?

a. messenger servant

b. shot arrows

c. falcon delivery

d. sounding a ram's horn in the forest

Quiz of the Day, July 15, 2025

What was the battle trophies presented by David as proof of his success?

a. the heads of his foes

b. the gold and possessions of his foes

c. the foreskins of his foes

d. the women and children of his foes

Quiz of the Day, July 14, 2025

Saul did not

a. give his daughter Michal to David to wed

b. throw a spear at David

c. ask David to play his harp for him

d. want David to be the next king

e. have an evil spirit

Quiz of the Day, July 13, 2025

Who was said to have loved David even as he loved his own soul?

a. Samuel

b. Saul

c. Jonathan

d. Uriah

e. Abner

Quiz of the Day, July 12, 2025

Which Church Council dealt with food eating customs regarding Gentiles?

a. Nicaea

b. Constantinople

c. Chalcedon

d. Jerusalem

Quiz of the Day, July 11, 2025

Who was Scholastica's twin?

a. Thomas Aquinas

b. Dominic

c. Benedict

d. Bernard

Quiz of the Day, July 10, 2025

How did King Saul use David?

a. to tend to his herd of sheep

b. to blow the shofar

c. to play on his harp to calm his nerves

d. to serve as an armor bearer

e. b and c

f. c and d

Quiz of the Day, July 9, 2025

Who immediately succeeded Saul as King of Israel?

a. David

b. Ish-Bosheth

c. Jonathan

d. no one for months

 Quiz of the Day, July 8, 2025

Which Apostle is Dorcas associated with?

a. Paul

b. Peter

c. Barnabas

d. Philip

Quiz of the Day, July 7, 2025

Who said, "I regret making Saul the king of Israel?"

a. God

b. Samuel

c. Samuel and God

d. Samuel's acolyte who poured the oil of anointing

Quiz of the Day, July 6, 2025

If Mary sang a "mother's song" recorded in the Gospel, who sang a "father's song?"

a. Simeon

b. David

c. Zechariah

d. Jesus

Quiz of the Day, July 5, 2025

Why did Saul curse his own son Jonathan?

a. because he teamed up with David

b. Jonathan was a weak soldier

c. Jonathan ate some honey and did not know his father's food ban

d. Jonathan's mother was not Saul favorite spouse

Quiz of the Day, July 4, 2025

Which church had the largest number of signers of the Declaration of Independence?

a. Congregationalists

b. Presbyterian

c. Anglican/Episcopal

d. Roman Catholic

e. Quaker

f. Unitarian

e. Deists

Quiz of the Day, July 3, 2025

Jerusalem was not

a. ruled by Saul

b. captured by David

c. a Jebusite controlled city

d. the initial seat of David's power

Quiz of the Day, July 2, 2025

When Saul was anointed King of Israel, what form of rule ended?

a. rule by the chief priest

b. rule by prophets

c. rule by judges

d. rule by community vote

Quiz of the Day, July 1, 2025

What legal scholar on issues of civil rights and women's rights, collaborated with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, went on to be ordained as an Episcopal priest?

a. Andrew Young

b. Jesse Jackson

c. Pauli Murray

d. Kelly Brown Douglas