Utopian Ideals Need an Advent Police

2 Advent    A     December 8, 2019

Is. 11:1-10         Ps.72        

Rom. 15:4-13    Matt. 3:1-12

Lectionary Link

            Joni Mitchell wrote a very idealistic song about Woodstock, when she missed being able to go to Yasgar's farm, the location of Woodstock.  "We are star dust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden."  Certainly the peace movement, love and over-optimism about new found pharmacology was part of the hippie attempt to get back to the Garden of Eden.  The prophet Isaiah wanted to get back to the Garden of Eden too.  He wanted to turn the clock back to the mythological time before the Fall and having to live under the consequences of knowing good and evil.  Would that the entire world could be the utopian impossible world of no predator-prey relationships.  This is the universal aspiration of everyone, which is more poignantly felt when the world is so weary with pain and loss and injustice.  But it is a world that still is actually experienced by a certain group of our population.  There are people who live in the perfect Garden?  Who and why?  Babies and infants and those in the stage of innocence live in the Garden of Eden because they don't know any different.  Being clueless can be the bliss of Eden and infants and children live there, until they encounter the main word of moral awakening, "NO!"  When infants experience intervention because adults know that all instant gratification of desire is not good, they get kicked out of the Garden of Innocence forever.  As adults, we still use the vision of a perfect innocent state to try to comfort us as we live under the free conditions of the world, which surely include the experiences in various degrees of good and evil.  And no matter what one's situation in life is, one has to live under moral conditions of good and evil, however they come to be defined.
         Why do people inside of religious communities and outside of religious community often resort to the nostalgia and regression of idyllic states of perfect innocence and perfect harmonies where no creatures harm another?  We live under the condition of freedom which permits the experiences of good and evil to occur in unintended random events of systems in conflict and in the intentional acts of free agents.  In the battle of good and evil in the conditions of freedom, things can seem to be so bad, that we might imagine dystopia to be the eventual outcome?  We need the counter visions of utopia to inform the possibilities of goodness prevailing in our future.  St. Paul was worried about strength and power of sin and evil and so he wrote that we have to overcome evil with good.   The vision of utopia and innocence informs our hope that goodness can prevail in the perpetual battle with evil, hatred and injustice.  But goodness is not automatic; goodness needs the training of free agents to make the goodness of heaven actual in our lives on earth.   What do we often need to become successful agents of goodness?
      Let us imagine ourselves being typical Americans; we begin to celebrate Christmas very early in Advent with parties and decorations.  And so we are at a neighborhood Christmas party with a big Christmas tree, lots of lights, party sweets and spiked egg nog.  And suddenly there is a loud knock at the door.  And I answer the door and there is a very strange looking man at the door; he looks homeless.   So, I greet him and ask him what he wants, noting that he does not look like the UPS and Amazon delivery persons.  He growls that he is the Advent Police and he has come to issue our residence a ticket for violating Advent rules.  So, I ask him who he is and by what authority he is issuing the ticket.  And he replied, "I am John the Baptist, and I am the original Advent Police."  And then it all makes sense, the scruffy hair and beard, the camel hair tunic and the big stick.  "Ok, John, you caught us in the act, but times have changed.  Christmas is so big, it needs more days and it really needs an entire quarter of the year to celebrate."  But John said, " You guys have it wrong.  Advent is about the coming end of the world.  You need to be prepared.  Advent is penitential boot camp for the end of the world.  You should not have your tree up.  It should go up on Christmas Eve, and go down on 12th night.  You should not have all of the lights on.  You should be giving up the rich foods and the booze.  "But John, what should we eat in Advent to satisfy you?"  And what does John say, "I'm glad you ask; I have brought a sack of kosher grasshoppers for you to munch on and my own Jordan Valley honey to go with those kosher grasshoppers."    "Well, John you are an Advent Scripture tradition and we have to read about you, but we don't really want a speed bump on our festive race toward Christmas.  Why don't you go visit the Amish; they'll buy your message all year long."
       John the Baptist stands as a figure of interdiction for evil in our world.  If Santa Claus says, "Ho, ho, ho," then John the Baptist says "No, no, no."
       Why does utopia need John the Baptist?   Utopia doesn't need John, but the threat of dystopia needs him badly.  "You guys are going wrong.  The direction of your lives is leading toward disaster.  You guys need major interdiction.  You need a road block.  You need to turn around because you're headed to dystopia chaos.  The Garden of Eden and innocence is the other direction.  Now turn around with some serious impulse control which allows you to share and care for each other and your world."
      You and I, during Advent, need to access our John the Baptist aspect of personality to interdict wrong directions in our lives and in the lives of our society.  Where we are destroying ourselves and our world we need to stop.  Stopping the inertia of bad behaviors is the first step.  What is the chief feature of 12 step programs?  Perpetual fasting.  Perpetual sobriety.  Stop doing what is bad for you and the world.
      Let us channel Advent John the Baptist today as a witness that we need to overcome evil with goodness.  We need to interdict and stop all evil tendency and habits.  We need to turn our directions, we need to renew our minds, we need to repent.  Repentance means turning the direction of our lives towards the utopia of overcoming evil with good in our actual lives today.
       Let us heed the advice of John the Advent Police today, even if we don't want to invite him over for supper.  John the Baptist as a fixture in the season of Advent is a reminder that we need to be at the continuous work of overcoming evil with good.  With the utopia vision of Isaiah we can be inspired in the right direction; and with John the Baptist as our boot camp sergeant, we can receive perhaps the motivation that we need to welcome Jesus at Christmas, and in all of the days of our life.  Amen.

Sunday School, December 8, 2019 2 Advent, Year A

Sunday School, December 8, 2019          2 Advent, Year A

Sunday School Theme

A shoot shall come out of the Stump of Jesse

Is a stump dead or alive?

If it is alive why is it still alive?

Answer:  Because of the hidden and underground root system.

Imagine God as the underground and hidden root system of life.  You can’t see God but you know God gives life to everything.

Roots grow plants and trees.  Plants and trees have life cycles.  People are like trees that have grown from God’s creation.  We have life cycles too.  Sometimes what we do is big and beautiful like a marvelous oak tree but fall comes and the leaves change.  People and what we do often change.  God inspired people to do some wonderful things.  Patriarchs like Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Leaders and Law Givers like Moses, Joshua, Deborah and Samuel.  Kings like David and Solomon.  Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elijah and Elisha.  As God’s people faced new things in their lives, their lives changed.  Sometimes their lives changed so much they seemed to be just like a stump leftover after a tree was cut down because of being used for lumber or because of drought or plant disease.  But new life could always come out of the stump again because of the roots.  God is the hidden roots of life; the appearance of the tree can change and the tree can even be chopped down but a branch or shoot can still grow from the stump because of the roots.  Many bad things happened to the people of Israel.  They were conquered by foreign armies.  They were made slaves and taken to another country.  Jerusalem was destroyed and so was the Temple in Jerusalem.  So, at times it seemed as though the tree of Israel was cut down and it seemed as though only a stump remained.  But the prophets knew that the hidden roots of God’s presence remained even if there seem to be only a stump left.

Out of the Stump of Jesse, Zachariah and Elizabeth came, Mary and Joseph came, and they gave birth to two special sons, John the Baptist and Jesus.  There two special sons gave new life to the “stump of Jesse.”  From Jesus, the church became a new tree out of the stump of Jesse. 

We need to remember today that no matter how much things change on the outside, even when things look like a dead stump, the Invisible Root of God in life can make new things to happen in our human lives, in our personal lives, in our families, in our parish, in our city, in our country and in our world.

A Stump and the Tree are the same because the hidden roots are the source for both.

Let us have faith to remember that God is the hidden root of our lives.  Let us remember that Jesus made the cross a tree of life for us to learn how we can allow God’s life within us to grow and make us a beautiful tree for God.

Sermon on the Jesse Tree

Do you know what a family tree is?  Have you ever made a family tree for a school assignment?  What do you try to do with a family tree?  You try to list everyone who has been in your family in the past.  So, a family looks like an upside down pyramid.  First there is you, your mom and dad, then your grand parents, and your great grand parents, and your great great grand parents, and then you just have to keep adding the greats….and on the side branches of your family tree you have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins.  Why do we make a family tree?  We want to know something about the people who came before us in our family because we think that we can understand ourselves better if we understand our past family.  We want to be able to tell our story better so we learn about our family of the past.  During the season of Advent, we study our Christian family tree.  Only we call it a Jesse Tree.  Jesse was the father of King David.  And the writer of the book of Isaiah said a famous person would come from the Stump of Jesse or the Tree of Jesse.  And who was that famous person?  It was Jesus Christ.

  So you can make a Jesse tree.  And what do you put on a Jesse Tree?  You put pictures of famous events and people that were written about in the Bible.  So  you might want to makes some stars and put on your tree to remember that God created the heavens and the earth.  You might want to put an apple on your tree, to remember Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  You might want to make a picture of a famous boat?  What is the famous boat called?  Noah’s ark.  And there was also a famous ladder in the Bible.  There was a famous man who had a dream about a ladder between heaven and earth.  Who was this famous dreamer?   And there was a man who ran away from Egypt but God called him back to Egypt and God used a burning bush to talk to this man.  Who was this man?   And in our Jesse Tree, we would want to include the most famous laws that were given to Moses.  What are those laws?  The Ten Commandments.  And you might want to put a crown on your tree to remember the most famous King in the Bible.  King David.  And you might want to put a picture of Stable.  Why?  Who was born in a stable.  And you might want to put a picture of Mary and the baby Jesus on your Jesse tree.

  So you can make a Jesse tree with symbols and pictures of all of stories in the Bible.  And why do we want to know the stories about people in the Bible?  Because we want to know where we came from.  And we want to be able to tell our story about how God loves us.  And we want to be able to tell others about God’s love too.  If you want to do a project at home.  Make a Jesse tree.  And ask your parents to read you some Bible stories.  And you will learn to tell the story of Christ. 

Intergenerational Holy Eucharist

December 8, 2019: The Second Sunday of Advent

Gathering Songs: We Light the Advent Candles, I’ve Got Peace Like a River, Jesus, Name Above All Names, Awesome God

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever.  Amen.

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

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

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

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song:  We Light the Advent Candles (While lighting the first two purple candles)

We light the Advent candles against the winter night, to welcome our Lord Jesus who is the world’s True Light, to welcome our Lord Jesus who is the World’s True Light.

We light the Second candle, and hear God’s holy Word, it tells us, cling to Jesus, prepare to meet your Lord, it tells us, cling to Jesus, prepare to meet your Lord.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

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

Litany of Praise: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Prophet Isaiah

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 72

Give the King your justice, O God, * and your righteousness to the King's Son;

That he may rule your people righteously * and the poor with justice;

That the mountains may bring prosperity to the people, * and the little hills bring righteousness.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God!

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke then he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness; `Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

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

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

2-I’ve got love….  3-I’ve got joy……

Doxology

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

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

Prologue to the Eucharist

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

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

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

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

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

You have made us in your image

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

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

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

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

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat the bread and drink the wine, we can know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as this food and drink that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

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

Breaking of the Bread

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

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia.

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  Jesus Name above all Names (Renew! # 26)

Jesus, name above all names, beautiful Savior, glorious Lord.  Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, Living Word.

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: 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)

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God! 

Advent: A Time to Uphold the Normalcy of Justice

1 Advent A      December 1, 2019
Is. 2:1-5      Psalms 122
Rom. 13:8-14   Matt. 24:37-44


 Lectionary Link 

  Today is the First Sunday of Advent and that means it is first day of the New Year, the Christian New Year, so Happy New Year!  Did you party hearty last night to bring in the New Year?  Or did you forget about the Christian New Year, again?    So, why do we have a church calendar?  Why do we have calendars and watches and all measures and qualifications of time?  One of the tasks of life is to influence our orientation to time.  We are born to organize time.  So, we have clocks and calendars.  Today, the church calendar has many competing calendars.  We have many orientations for the times of our lives.  We have fiscal calendars, we have school calendars, entertainment calendars, concert calendars, we have agricultural calendars, we have commercial calendars, (the know, the one where Christmas begins the day after Halloween), we have personal family calendars built around the birthdays and anniversaries of family members, political calendars, work and job calendars, we have sports calendars galore for every sport on every level.  Every calendar that we follow provides specific orientation toward directing our activities in time.

        The church calendar did not always have so many competing calendars.  The modern era has created so many social occasions in life requiring many calendars to organize alternative participation to church life.

        So, what is the church calendar and its purpose?  And what is the meaning of the season of Advent?  When we try to study history, we can't study it all at once.  We break it up into time periods and location of people.  We establish curricula to study the entire body of knowledge in bits and pieces.

         The church calendar is an annual cycle of the presentation of the full body of Christian knowledge.  In short, the church calendar is a curriculum of Christian knowledge.  It is a method of progressive learning and repetitive review of themes in our faith based upon the events in the life of Jesus and the theology of that these events came to have in the early church and church history.

          So, what are the themes of Advent?  Advent means coming.  Advent is a season of two comings.  If the Messiah came first as a babe in Bethlehem but then died as the Suffering Servant Messiah, there had to be a second coming to be a theological corrective to fulfill the definition of the Messiah by many Jews.  For the followers of Jesus, there were other comings of Christ between the first coming and a future great coming.  Jesus came again from the dead in his post-resurrection appearances.  In the theology of the early church Jesus left in the Ascension, only to return in the experience of Pentecost in the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is also the Spirt of Christ.  Still Jewish Messianic theology required a conquering kingly Messiah, and so there arose the theology of the big Second Coming of Christ as a future figure of corrective justice for a suffering world.  The big second coming and return of Christ was what the early church needed as way to answer the Jewish belief that Jesus of Nazareth did not qualify for the full definition of a Davidic, kingly Messiah.  The Second Coming theology fulfilled the fuller definition of what the Messiah should be.

     Advent is a season about anticipating a big second coming of Christ.  Why do we need such a discourse of the second coming?  We need the Second Coming, because we need to continue to believe in the normalcy of justice.  We need to believe in fairness.  We need to believe that eventually in some ways, all accounts will be settled.  We need to believe in the normalcy of agricultural complex for feeding the people of the world, over the industrial military complexes of the world which have been the lifestyle of humanity at war.  (We wish the resources of the world could be used to feed and care for people, rather than be dominated by swords and the weapons of warfare). 

         The oracle words of Risen Christ given in the Gospel words were to prepare the Christians for the uneven events of what can arise in the free conditions of the world.  Like in the days of Noah a flood can arise and wipe out lots of people.  In the time of the early church, Jerusalem would be destroyed; there would be uneven persecutions and martyrdoms.  Like in the days of Noah, some were taken away in the death,  while others are left behind to survive and keep the church alive and well.

     In the modern era, many have let themselves be dismissive of Advent and the Second Coming of Christ discourse.  Why?  The fundamentalists have literalized them as exactly predicative of specific futures, and 1000's of apocalyptic preachers have tried to predict the exact dates of the end of the world, even though they were told by Jesus that no one knows the end, but only the eternal father.  And if only the Father knows, who is everlasting, it means there is no end day, there is only the latest day.  Time means that there will only always be the latest day.  Life is continuous, but we live by the unit of the story with beginnings and endings; we need book ends for stories even while we know that arbitrary beginning and endings of stories cannot limit the continuity of time.  Our entertainment life is full of stories of endings and the exacting of justice by the good guys over the bad guys.  If people have left the church and the stories of Advent justice, they still embrace the Advent themes in their novels, science fiction and cinema.

      During this season of Advent, let us be comfortable with the normalcy of justice and when we know poignantly, that we don't live in a fair and just world, we still do not give up the ideals of justice.  We continue to make an Advent station at the story of the second coming of Christ as our belief in eternal justice and our hope that a God-human being can persuade all this cosmos into a harmonic unity.

       We will keep forever, the Advent second coming tradition, because in the worst of times, our entire being recoils against injustice.  And in Advent, we profess that we live toward justice as what we believe should finally win in this world.

        Let us not be uncomfortable with the language of the Second Coming of Christ; if we deny it in our faith, we will find it in the secular culture where many people have gone to find the story forms for belief in justice.  But let us not be so proud in our rightness, that we think God will and should intervene to prove that our particular view and lifestyle is better than anyone else's.  The fundamentalists essentially believe in the Second Coming of Christ as way to say that God is going to come and prove them right.  Let us not use the stories of the second coming of Christ to trivialize God in such way; but let us seek solace in the stories which proclaim the justice of a loving, winsome, Christ, forever.  Amen.

Aphorism of the Day, November 2019

Aphorism of the Day, November 30, 2019

The "Left Behind" novels and movies derived from the interpretive apocalyptic "cults" within certain Christians group who hold that biblical writings are specifically predicative of future events, rather than appreciating that in the field of universal evente, there are repetitions of the eternal return of the same and there are discourses which engage the imagination for people who need comfort.  In the Gospel proclaiming those who would be left behind, there is the contrast with those who were left behind in the days of Noah, i.e., Noah and his family and his menagerie of animals.  So it is good to be left behind because one is not punished by death in a catastrophic event.  Ironic that the "left behind" cult, regard it to be punishment while the "taken" crowd are regarded to be the mass assumption of people in the Rapture.  Interesting how dueling interpreters can get so exorcised over things about which they have no control so it smacks with how people use religious discourse to entertain themselves for their own comfort within their very small hermeneutical circles.

Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2019

Having the last word means that one often presumes to place a final editorial meaning on everything that has come before.  We are often those who proclaim the last word as our attempt to control what has already happened; as a way to pronounce our ego-centric or ethno-centric or temporo-centric providence on how the past really affirm us in our lives now.  It is too natural to assume that history revolves around "me" since I am the only one at the center of my perceptual universe.  Jesus warned about too many final last word prophets when he knew that the Father of all freedom and everlasting time always knows that there is always some more latest words to feebly try to sum up what has happened before.  It could be that the "Father" knows that the future always has to stay "open" in the conditions of freedom and time.

Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2019

Sometimes we use the biblical apocalyptic term "Last Day," to refer to an end, even when it is based upon another kind of beginning.  Perhaps given our embrace of science and time, we should just use the term, "latest day," and only the "Father" knows the "Latest Day," since only Plenitude comprehends total synchronicity of all things so as to be able to understand all causal connections and the latest meaning of all things.

 Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2019

 "No one knows the hour and the day of "that day."  "That day" refers vaguely to some sort of end of the life of the people of the world as we know it.  Jesus said that no one knows except the Father.  Yet for 2000 years, Christians have been speculating and some even presuming to tie down specific days or times.  In our scientific era, we might be able to conceive of life without humanity since we would assume the universe would continue even if humanity wasn't around to witness such continuity.  (if someone didn't witness the tree falling in the forest, did it really fall?)  Apocalyptic and catastrophic ending of all is perhaps the projection upon "social existence" what we know will happen for the personal apocalypse of each person, namely death itself.  Why do people speculate about a Future beyond the future?  We have science fiction stories of the new life of cyborgs and time travel which provide us the genres to deal with the questions about the future for which we have no experience.  We cannot experience the future so we have to make it up for ourselves now as a way to live now with the comfort of creating anthropocentric privilege, as if, we've lived so well that we deserve being propagated as the chief value of all things.  The belief in God is that there is an expanding horizon which always deconstructs "anthropocentricism" as the final value of all things.  God is the proclamation of the impossibility of escaping the anthropocentric and yet that impossibility evokes human imagination.


Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2019

The consciousness of ourselves as worded-beings happens because we have words themselves and in the field of words which comprise us we use language in diverse discursive ways.  The Bible is full of the various discursive ways of using language and all discursive ways are not equal, and that does not discount the fact that are uses of language are meaningfully true in how each discourse is wielded for its own functional purpose.  Naïve realism or commonsense discourse found in the Bible corresponds to the discourse of modern science and modern journalistic writing.  Modern science has attain the status of a "higher truth" since in being effective for the matters of statistical approximation, its pragmatic truth feature is unparalleled.  The inferiority complex of those who use more aesthetically inclined discourses when compared with the "superior" pragmatic truth status of science, resulted in fundamentalists claiming that most of biblical discourse is like scientific truth and journalistic writing, and therefore shared in the same "truth" status as science.  Even if science can "reduce" love to dopamine and chemistry, it does not change the true meaningful status of all sorts of love discourses.

Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2019

Word is true, in that we understand ourselves as first language users before and within the worded-creation of the world of word-mediated reality, including reality as being word-mediated.  As worded being we express the truths of wordedness in lots of different discourses and lots of literary genres.  We would criticize someone for saying that a mythopoeia writing was journalistic writing.  Why?  They would violate both the truth of the mythopoeia and journalism.  So too, lots of non-fundamentalists have left the biblical religion because fundamentalism has taken over the hegemony to define "true" religion, by implying that all biblical literature is "exact journalistic" literature, fully verifiable under journalistic standards.  And people who say that one can only read the Bible as journalistic writing cause many to discount the Bible as "crazy" and not a book of a variety of discourses and genres of writings which comport to the ways in which we are human in our language.

Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2019

One of the misinterpretation issues of doctrine and creed is that they come to language to try to convert poetry to didactic discourse and so they attain administrative and juridical and canonical status for determining "official" belief and so people are divided into orthodox and heterodox and what is lost is the original poetry of love for Christ in the midst of people fighting about who is right.

Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2019

The billboard on the cross of Jesus read, "The King of the Jews."  Jesus was on the cross for six hours and how literate would the crowd have been on Golgotha for those six hours?  What kind of effective messaging would that have been compared with the proclaiming of this ironic message through the Gospels for the rest of history.  The literary effect of recounting this very short "messaging event" was to propel the irony of the Messiah on the cross forever.

Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2019

How can Christ be a king from the cross?  In the mysticism of the early church, identity with the death of Christ on the cross is seen as power to die to what is unworthy in oneself, even as identity with the resurrection of Christ is the power to manifest transformed behaviors.  So to make the death of Christ into his voluntary death is to transform it as an event of powerlessness into an event of "kingly" power.

Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2019

The recounting of the written inscription upon the cross of Jesus is sheer literary irony on the nexus between Jesus as Suffering Servant/Conquering King.  Certainly the readers would understand the irony of the billboard of the crucifixion.  It is a billboard to proclaim the irony of views of Jesus, i.e., the views of those who had experience of the Risen Christ, the views of those who thought the Messiah to be a conquering deliverer of Israel and the Roman people of power who mocked these oppressed people even using a language of kingship about one of their own.  A king on a cross?  How absurd!

Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2019

An early paradigm shift in the Judaeo-Christian Jesus Movement was the admission of the Gentiles to the community of faith without the requirement of significant ritual observance.  An earlier paradigm shift was the privileging of the "Suffering Servant" Messiah paradigm over the paradigm of the Messiah being limited to a Davidic kingly figure who would bring liberation for the people of Israel.

Aphorism of the Day, November 19,2019

It would be difficult for a member of the synagogue in the post-Jesus era to acknowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, given the specific Davidic notion of the Messiah, and given the fact that the same member did not have a post-resurrection experience of the Risen Christ and if the same member did not have what the members of the Jesus Movement called the "baptism" of the Spirit.

Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2019

The afterlife of Jesus of Nazareth in the modes of his reappearances forced a redefinition of the Messiah.  Was the Messiah another King David or was he a suffering servant?  The Passion of Jesus forced the attention to the suffering servant model for defining the Messiah and to those in the synagogue who did not experience significant spiritual effects of the Risen Christ, Jesus could not be a Messiah in the kingly tradition of David.

Aphorism of the Day, November 17, 2019

The Bible might be regarded as the classics, a book to be displayed in an impressive leather bound cover in a book case to show people how classy one is, but the book is for display only and not to be read.  Many classics are regarded that way and it does not mean that they are not important; what it means is that what has been derived from the Bible in the endless numbers of correspondences which have inundated all subsequent literature has overwhelmed the original because the applications of the original themes in new settings often has meant that the application has become unmoored from it connection with the original.  We revere the classic even as we forget what derived from them and we elevate the contemporary as more original than the original and in temporal provincialism we proclaim the new as the only thing that can be.  As Whitehead said that Western philosophy is a footnote on Plato and Aristotle, one could say that much of modern language use is but a footnote on the Bible.

Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2019

The utopian and the apocalyptic words of the Bible juxtapose the eutopian with the dystopian.  In a system of freedom eutopian and dystopian are extremes on a continuum of the disharmony of differences and the harmony of differences.  What transcends both dystopia or eutopia?  Freedom.  Freedom prevails no matter what conditions manifest itself affecting any particular agent which lives and moves and has being with Freedom.

Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2019

Does a system of freedom ever permit a "eutopia" a good place for everyone and everything?  Is a free system made for the evolving of the fittest surviving at the expense of the "unfit" weak?  Are the fittest eventually the unsuspecting, e.g., cockroaches survive but not the imposing T-Rex?  Is the system of freedom one which is based upon the passing of time and the end of any temporary fit "apparent" winner who only has a "season" of apparent "success?"  The ultimate utopia or "no such place" in a free system is the words of Jesus when he said, "the meek shall inherit the earth."

Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2019

Utopia is pronounced like Eu-topia, which would mean good place and we often think that Utopia refers to a heavenly good place, so that they might seem to be synonymous.  Utopia is not a word found in the Bible even though one might find visionary scenarios in the Bible to qualify as "utopia."  The word from the Greek is "Ou-topos" which which would be a negative, probably meaning, "no such place."  We might ponder how "no such place" functions in a system of such competitive freedom and whether any free system could actually exist without competition and conflict between entities and system is overcome by a totally free harmony of differences.

Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2019

John Lennon's "Imagine" song was one might say "naively" utopian.  But all utopian vision are naïve since they wish the cessation of the conditions of freedom.   They express a desire for a synchronic harmony of differences among all of the infinite number of things which comprise the universe, but more specifically the differences between all people and animal life in general.  The desire for peace is contextually constituted in that those on the losing side of oppression want the oppression to cease.  The powerful ones who oppressed want a continuance of a peace that is forced through the subjugation of sectors in society.  In a system of freedom where the "fittist survive" one can desire an end of all preditor-prey relationships where harm of any is eliminated as the expression of what substantial peace would mean.  One can find the validity of the aspiration of such systemic peace even while one also would need to posit the presence of a great persuasive force which could persuade a system-wide synchronic harmony of differences without the harm of any individual.  How does one posit genuine freedom while hoping for the conditions when all individuals have angelic goodness to "choose" harmony in the conditions of difference?  It would seem impossible to posit a true meaning of freedom and the conditions where there would be a "forced" or "robotic angelic" harmony.  One might conclude that individual wish for the peace of absence of conflict for personal life is valid even while it is impossible for it to be actually realized as a categorical imperative of the same.  How does one aspire for universal peace without violating any coherent notion of freedom?

Aphorism of the Day, November 12, 2019

Utopian visions are visions of the impossible, given the conditions of freedom.  How can one have a total system of free agents, both sentient and non-sentient, and have perpetual harmony where no harm is caused by competing perfectly timed agents.  How can freedom and utopia co-exist without the system being completely robotic.  I don't think the Bible resolves the issue of freedom and the utopic.

Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2019

The conditions of freedom means that all entities which share a degree of freedom both individually and in solidarities render a wide range of situations.  We have the possibility for harmony of differences which create the vision of "utopia" supposing that all differences could be coordinated without causing individual harm.  We also know that freedom does not allow such universal harmony because some entity is always on the receiving end of pain or deprivation.  While it might be great that the preditor's hunger is satisfied; at the same time the prey's well-being is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the more powerful.  The biblical visions of utopia are given to inform us toward the ideal harmonies towards which we should live in the never ending quest for justice, which means everyone and everything receives its appropriate due.  The conditions of freedom are always deconstructed by the future, not yet, utopia.

Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2019

A nuance of the Redeemer referred to in the book of Job is a lawyer or advocate for one's life, especially all of the events which occur over which one does not have direct control and yet give cause for others to make one a victim of the unforeseen.  One cannot be so powerful as to make really, really bad or good things happen to oneself so as to be accorded such status by other who want to make one into such a powerful victim for causing the bad thing to happen.  At the last day, one hope for the Advocate of the 20/20 hindsight who can declare one's history as providence.

Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2019

The afterlife, what is it like?  What kind of personal and social continuity happens after we die?  Do we retain friendships and marriage relationships?  Does it matter?  Are we a new creation then?  Are we raised as “spiritual bodies” as Paul indicated?  Will we become like angels, as Jesus indicated, and as angelic beings not need to be married or given in marriage.  The truth of resurrection thinking is that we carry pre-resurrection categories of thinking about an experience that we have not yet had.  We are troubled about a future about which we don’t have the ability to extrapolate since we can only think about a future in continuity with the norm of our current conscious life.

Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2019

If I don't believe in the resurrection, perhaps I can tease my friend who does by posing hypothetical scenarios regarding his belief.  A levirate marriage required a brother to marry his brothers widow so that the deceased brother could be objectively immortalized in having posthumous children (really his brother's).  So a widow seven times with seven brothers dies after out-living all the brothers, to whom is the woman married when she enters the afterlife?  Remember that you only believe the afterlife for the seven brothers is to be found in the children borne by this one woman.  This would be a family with children who were siblings and first cousins at the same time.  Since Jesus regarded God as the ever-Becoming, God encompassed everyone who had become as still living since God was a creating, becoming, everliving all-inclusive Being.

 Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2019

The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus helped to answers questions of the afterlife that were evident in the theological discussion of the era. Jesus proved timely for the times.

Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2019

The presentation of the dialogue about the resurrection and levirate marriage was instigated by religious leaders who believed in the objective immortality of a person in their offspring.  The purpose of levirate marriage was to give children to a dead brother so he could have objective immortality (only designated immortality, not real genetic objective immortality).  Jesus suggested that personal identity in the afterlife would be like the "ungendered" angels who did not get married.  Remember the first Adam had to be split in two, into male and female because he was not supposed to be "alone."  Jesus was perhaps indicating that in the afterlife one became re-constituted in a balancing contra-sexual fullness that had marriage as the pre-afterlife program.

Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2019

If God is ultimate Plenitude then it would be an oxymoron to say that something was missing from Plenitude.  Take away anything from Plenitude and it would cease to be Plentitude.  Jesus said that God was God of the living and the living for God included those who had experienced the past tense state of death in this life.

Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2019

During the early first century in Palestine, resurrection was a topic which needed some specificity.  Some thought that the prophets and other writings (ketavim) of the Hebrew Scriptures presented resurrection as justice verifier.  Others thought that the Torah had no words of reference for believing it.  Resurrection enters the discussion about how immortal the past is in the present and the future.  How is the past immortal in what it contributes to the present? How is the past "identities" distinguished or identified in the present?  How will the past and present "identity entities" be retained in the future that is unseen from the present?  Using the computer analogy, can the mega-Memory of God ever delete any file that came to identity in time?  Can the file of the past be re-opened and can God's grace mean that a very "personal file" have the "edit enable" function "clicked on" to allow it to be made suitable for a new future context?

Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2019

It is interesting that in just four Gospels, tax-collector is mentioned around twenty times.  With such a Gospel "representation" one would think that tax-collector was a significant group of people in Palestine during the time of Jesus.  We know that Jesus ate with them and called them, as in the case of perhaps Matthew/Levi and Zacchaeus.  It could be that they were non-observant Jews because of their position and they lived between Roman authorities and their countrymen and were despised by both.   Jesus gave them community status in his Movement and it could be that they helped "finance" the Jesus Movement.

Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2019

All Souls' Day is for those who didn't make it into any official Christian "Hall of Fame."  It is human to ponder whether we retain personal identity after we are dead.  And if one believes in continuing personal identity after one dies, it is human to speculate about what sort of continuing personal identity that one might have.   One prayer for the faithful departed posits the continuing growth in faith in the afterlife based upon the assumption that personal identity is not static but still participates in dynamic growth.  We project upon the afterlife much of the dynamic conditions of the before-afterlife and the imaginative faith about the hereafter is an expression about having faith that creative, dynamic freedom will always be a life condition including the state of death in Life, Eternal Life.

Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2019

How do people get into all of the various halls of fame of human excellence?  People get recognized because their excellence stands out to be remembered and stand as value-setting behaviors for all.  While all are "merely" human, human excellence in manifold way gets recognize.  So too, the Christian "hall of fame" of saints is a group of "merely human" people who for various reason came to be remember for excellence in faith and faithful behaviors and were remembered beyond their locale and era in time as examples to call us all to the particular paths of excellence which await all who seek to tread this path.