Trinity Sunday: Taking the Baptismal Covenant to the Streets

Trinity Sunday A   June 7,2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20

Lectionary Link

Video Trinity Sunday
These past days have been hard on us as a human family, because we have shown that we not always a very good family.  The death of George Floyd has exposed some very bad family traits, the traits of both subtle and not so subtle racism.  And experiencing our family at its very worst, we cannot write ourselves off completely, because events of this past show some bad interwoven with lots of peaceful voices marching for justice and change.  Some place have seen looting and tear gas and pushing and shoving and Billy clubbing, and yet there’s been police and protesters dancing, kneeling, and smiling and joining in common cause.  So, let’s not write off the whole human family, all of the time, yet.

And why do we sense our human failure in really bad family behaviors such as injustice and racism, misogyny and many other forms of prejudice?  Why?  Because the ultimate family to which we belong is led by such perfect Persons.

Today is the Day of the Holy Divine Family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And they are perfect.  They were perfectly Three in One, long before we in America could come up with E pluribus unum.  From the many one.  And why do we often fail to act as one in our differences?  In our sin and our group egos, we magnify difference and use the power of group egos to hinder the unity that is best expressed in justice for all.  Justice is not a privilege of people with money and power; justice is the right of everyone, like air, water and food. 

So, what are we going to do when we are faced with this failure of ours to let the unity of justice prevail for all of our many people?

We’re going to repent and return to the Lord God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Why?  Because that is what we promised when we were admitted into the Family of the Father, the Son and the Spirit at our baptism.

We have been baptized, immersed into the nature of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we took vows to this holy, holy family and we’ve confirmed those same vows in the presence of each other many times.  What are two of those vows which we have made and confirmed and reconfirmed in the presence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and each other?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will with God’s help.

This past week calls out to us to repent and return to more truly representing the Holy Trinity, into whom we have been baptized.

The other baptism vow that we have made and confirmed many times is this:

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will with God’s help.

There have been people who have not had equal justice and not been able to have peace and whose dignity has been diminished even unto wrongful death, even murder in the custody of peace and safety officers.  And what has that death spark around the entire world?

A cry for repentance.  A cry to renew our promise to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.

We prefer to whisper these promises in our quiet baptismal liturgies, but this past week people are yelling and crying this same baptismal pledge loud and together.

What we can thank God the Holy Trinity for this: that the Baptismal covenant has hit the streets and all over the world.  It is not a cute little baptism with a young baby boy dressed in the family baptismal garment.  It is shouting marching people in the street saying with God’s help and/or by holding each other accountable we will strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of all.  And yes, you will repent, because I will repent, and we will all be more diligent about holding each other to repentance.

If in the sadness of this past week we can rejoice that the baptismal covenant has come to be loudly confirmed in the streets of our world with blaring publicity, then we can know we have not given up trying to approximate our behaviors in the direction of the Perfect, Holy, Holy Family of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us rejoice that this week we had it made known that we have failed miserably in doing what the Holy Trinity would have us to do in our relationships with each other.

But let us rejoice that we are mourning and lamenting our failures and that at least we have had our consciences rebuked and renewed by the high standard of our baptism when water was poured over us and it was said, “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Why do we do this?  Because we want to keep alive the high and holy standard of the perfect family of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And we want to renew our initiation and we want to plead, "God keep making me a better Christian and let me live out better my baptismal vows and so that my confession of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday might be authentic, even as I endeavor to keep my vows."

In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we renew our endeavor to strive for peace and justice among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.  Amen.

The Personal Politics of the Trinity

Trinity Sunday A   June 7, 2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20


Lectionary Link

Today is Trinity Sunday on our liturgical calendar, and so the topic for the sermon seems to be dictated, even though I might rather talk about justice and health given what is happening to us in our public life today.  But if I got into talking about justice and health, I would be broaching one of the forbidden topics in the Episcopal Church, because we all disagree,  politics.  So, I will talk about the Trinity; surely there can be no politics when speaking about the Trinity?

Well, I'm wrong because one cannot avoid politics even when speaking about the Trinity.  The Trinity became front and center because of that little church convention in the city of Nicaea in 325.  An unbaptized Roman Emperor, Constantine had observed that his Empire was being rapidly populated by Christians.  This is instantiated by the fact that at the beginning of the fourth century Christian were not allowed in the Roman Army and by the end of the Fourth Century, only Christians were allowed in the Roman Army.  What kind of sea change was that!

Constantine observed that Christians weren't unified; they were divided over their beliefs about God and the nature of Jesus Christ.  Bishops with different beliefs had sponsoring and protecting local governors and this was a potential political problem for the overall unity of the Roman Empire.

Constantine, in effect said to the bishops, "get thee to Nicaea and standardize your faith because I don't want fighting among Christians to divide my Empire."  So the bishops gathered in Nicaea to develop a creed of belief and a canon of church laws to promulgate and enforce the official statements of the Council.  So the result of the council of Nicaea was immediate church unity?  Wrong.  The pronouncements of this Council resulted in the excommunication of more than half of the Christians in the Empire, even though the canonical effect was not immediate since Bishops who lost at the Council still had supporting governors and political authorities to protect them and their continued practice of post-Nicaean heresy.  They went to Nicaea thinking they were "orthodox" and good people of faith; and many bishops left being designated as heretics.

So how can we avoid politics when speaking about the Trinity?  At Nicaea most of the vocabulary for speaking about the nature of God came from Greek Philosophy.  This too was quite a change since the biblical writings came from grounding in Hebraic and Semitic words and thoughts and thinking.  The Nicaean Council is proof about how Gentile the Christian faith had become since the scholarly bishops used their background in the language of hellenistic philosophies to speak about the notions which arose from the more Hebraic context of Jesus of Nazareth.

Most Christians in the world have tacitly accepted the results of the Council of Nicaea and it is almost for the Christian world, a "ho hum;" it goes without saying that God is One God in Trinity of Equal Persons.

How can you and I be embraced by a Trinitarian understanding of God in a way that has a direct message for us today, in a divided country today?

The most obvious reason that we are Trinitarian is because of the way that we understand the life of Jesus presented to us in the Gospel and particularly the Gospel of John.

How is Jesus presented?  He is presented as the very ground of knowing anything at all.  In his pre-existence he is called the Word who was with God and who was God.  To know anything at all, we first assume that we live on the ground of Word and having language.  Knowing existence is mediated through us having language.

Having language means that we live in a personal universe.  Naming everything means that we live in a personal language.  Language is the essence of relationship and relationship is personal.

In the biblical traditional, what happened because we have language?  Everything  and everyone gets named.  And so did God.  God came to have many names.  There are over one hundred names for God in the Bible and these names seek to cover the vast ways in which people believed God to be involved and related to their lives.  All of the names of God indicate the belief in personal relationship.

In the life of Jesus, we came to find all of the names of God for human and personal relationship with God arrive at very specific Persons of God.  We cannot avoid that we live in a personal universe because we have words and language.  And Jesus really simplified an understanding of God.  In Jesus, we found one so superlative that we came to know and confess Jesus as one who was completely bilingual in God-language and human language.  And Jesus made God known in the most accessible human way to reveal that God has accepted human experience as a valid way to know God and to be in relationship with God.  In the understanding of God, God went from such general Personality with many names of the divine attributes, to the unveiling of God in distinctly three Persons, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not because any human language can control or limit the greatness of God, but because we need to know particular personal relationship with God.  We need to know that we have permission to assume a relationship with God.  And that is what Jesus Christ did for us in such a poignant way.  He gave us permission to accept ourselves a sons and daughters of God, with him as the sibling to lead to our membership in God's family.

We know the difficulty in living within the one human family.  We're one human family but prone to let our many differences keep us from expressing our unity.

And this is where we arrive at the pure politics of the Holy Trinity for us today.  God as One God and in three distinct different Persons is the perfect model for us today.  Unity in Difference.  E pluribus unum is not unique to our Country.  Knowing God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we can know three Persons who are One in unity.

And how we need to resort to this perfect model of the three in One today in our country, more than ever as we face the constant challenge of a dignified unity honoring the differences of each one.

Today, let us not try to over-intellectualize the Holy Trinity, let us accept that we live in a personal universe because we live in the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning.  And living in a personal world means that relationship is unavoidable.  And if relationship is unavoidable, let relationship be known as the the unity of Peace, as is best expressed in the practice of love and justice.

We accept the Holy Trinity as the impossible and unattainable Unity in Diversity Model for us in actual practice, but we accept it as defining the direction which we want to be headed towards in good human living.

In our baptismal association with the Holy Trinity, we believe God is associated with us, in spite of ourselves, and we are always challenged to live up to being associated with the Trinitarian family of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us set the direction of our lives toward the Unity and Diversity of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Language as the Personal Field for Knowing God as Trinity

Trinity Sunday A   June 7,2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20      

Lectionary Link

Today on Trinity Sunday, we might stop to ponder why we as Christians have come to confess God as One God in Trinity of Persons.

First the only way in which we can know anything at all is to know it as it is mediated in the field of language.  To have language, to use words in speaking and in writing and in body language deeds is the manifestation of the very medium of personality.  To have language means we are by basic nature personal because language implies being in relationship and relationship is how personality comes to be known and manifested.

As language users, we assign value within human experience.   We come to assign some values as being values which are literally out of our reach, beyond our "pay grade" because we know that individually and collectively we cannot comprehend the vastness of the existence which confronts us.  And so we posit some experiencing being who has the capacity to comprehend the vastness of all, and we conceive of a greatest one who came long before us and will be long after we are gone.

But does the conception of such a great One who experiences all, imply a personality?  Albert Einstein once wrote that an important question in life is whether the universe is a friendly place.

Should you and I take all of the events of freedom in this vast cosmos personally?  We cannot help but do other since we are prisoners of human personhood and having language is the essence of personhood.  To use language in all forms is to be a person.  When we interact with non-human life, we do so as persons.  The attributing of human like characteristics to non-human life is called anthropomorphic projection.  Such is unavoidable.  An astronomer in the study of the stars might want to forget his or her humanity in being some impartial, non-human observer of the stars, but there is no way to escape being human being seeing human versions of the non-human worlds.  So, we cannot help but project our human personality because we are using language in our observation and interactions.

Do you assume that pets and plants have human-like mutually responsive features?  People talk to their plants as though they can understand and interact in human-like ways.  And even if you think this is silly, do you think that regarding such projection is a valid human poetry celebrating our intimate connection with important non-human being?  The Psalmist wrote the heavens declare the glory of God.  The Psalmist was projecting a deliberate vocation of the stars with regard to God.  Also ancient astrologers, projected upon the stars a personal relationship between the constellation of the stars and the life situation of people.  Astrology is the ancient poetic projection of the universe having all kinds of personality which was accessible to the chief persons, human beings.

If we can understand our pets as being "like" people enough for significant mutual beneficial behaviors, it is not a great leap for us to understand the poetry of the great One from whom all derive as embracing the personality of God as heavenly parent and Father of the Plenitude and us.  In confessing God to be a Trinity of Persons, we do not confess God as Father and Holy Spirit to be the exact kind of embodied persons as we are.  We would say they are "hyper-Persons, super-Persons," in fact so super that to attain clarity on how we might address them as distinct persons, we would need One who had bi-lingual experience between the divine and the human.  And in the Person of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God as Trinity becomes manifest.  We found Jesus of Nazareth to be so perfectly human, literally, out of our league so that we confess him to be God's unique Child.

Let's be honest; we confess God as Trinity of Persons, because we first came to confess Jesus as God's unique Son who shows us how we in human terms could understand the personal dynamic of the divine.

The standard of believing in the Trinity comes from accepting the presentation of the witness of Jesus Christ and his relationship with divinity.

For Christians, the main access to the Trinity is through Jesus because he is the One who is known to be bi-lingual with God and humanity so that the divine could be translated to human terms.  And Jesus translated the divine in the familial terms of the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is highly intuitive poetry to say the very least and so it resonates with us.

Frankly, our acceptance of Jesus as the the truly God-human bi-lingual being is the honest acceptance of the validity of human experience as the only way in which human beings can come into the highest values of living.

In Jesus, we have come to accept the Trinity as intuitively sound, because we have in him the acceptance of the validity of our lives as a way of "knowing" God.

And in accepting the understanding of the Trinity today as best presented by Jesus Christ, we know the deep Gospel love of God accepting us, as human beings, mere human beings, but truly loved.  Amen.

Sunday School, June 7, 2020 Trinity Sunday A

Sunday School, June 7, 2020   Trinity Sunday  A

Theme:

The Holy Trinity

The confession of God, being One God but in three Persons

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Why is the Trinity an important meaning for us?

To understand God, we believe that God has to come in some “bi-lingual” way to us.   Somebody has to speak about the meaning of God in the language of human beings.

The first part of the Bible is called the Hebrew Scriptures.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is written about by prophets, leaders, priests, poets and teachers.  Inspired people wrote about God.  When Jesus appeared, we believe that God became fully manifest as God would appear as a person. 

The appearance of Jesus who understood himself to be the Son of his Father is important because each of us is taught that we are sons and daughters of God.  We are persons and if we are created in the image of God, God has personality too.  And in our relationship with God we can know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

By confessing God as Father, we admit that we did not make ourselves; we came from a great Past and Began with God.

By confessing God as Son, we believe that God became known in human experience as a person who lived in this world.  This means that we accept our human experience as a valid way to know God.

By confessing God as Holy Spirit, we believe that God is invisible like breath and wind, but just as we can see the effects of breath and wind when we blow or when wind blows the leaves on the tree, we believe that we can see the effects of an invisible Holy Spirit everywhere.

We confess the Trinity because we believe it expresses what is honestly true in how people understand God.

Sermon

   When Jesus left this earth, he gave some instruction to his friends.  He told them to make friends with other people, just as he had made friends with them.  And how did Jesus make friends?  He told them about how God loved them like the very best father in the world.  He told them that just as he was a special son of God, that everyone was a special child of God.

  Wouldn’t it be sad to have a wonderful parent but not be able to know it?  If you had a mother and father but if you did not know about your parents, it would be sad.

  Lots of people in this world do not know that they are a member of the great family of God.  Lots of people do not know that they are children of God and that God is their father.

  Jesus came to teach us that even though we have mothers and fathers in our birth families, we also have God as our Father of the greatest family of all, the family of the entire world, the entire universe.

  Jesus came to show us how much God loved us.  And Jesus told his friends, that even though he was leaving and even though they could not seen God, he would still be with them always.  How would Jesus be with them?  He would be with them as the Holy Spirit.  This means that God is a close to us as our breath.   Take a breath.  How close is your breath to you?  Very close.  Well that is how close that God’s Spirit is to us.

  Jesus gave his friends a special job to do. He said that he wanted them to make friends and gather those friends together so they could help each other and help other people in this world to know about God’s love.

  What was the job he gave them to do?  He told them to make friends for God and he told them to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  In doing this they would be celebrating their membership in God’s family.

  Baptism is a celebration of our birth into the family of God and when we baptize, we say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  The family of God begins in heaven and we celebrate on earth that we are members of the family of God.

   We call the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity.  And this is what we celebrate on Trinity Sunday.

  I want you to remember that we believe in the Trinity, because we believe that God loved us so much that God included in God’s family…so we have Jesus as our brother.  But we also have the Holy Spirit and that means God is with us always and very close to us.

  Let us remember the Trinity today.  And let us remember our baptism too.  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

June 7, 2020: Trinity Sunday

Gathering Songs: Holy, Holy, Holy, The King of Glory,  Eat This Bread, Peace Like a River

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:  Holy, Holy, Holy,  (# 362 in blue hymnal)

1-Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!

God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!

2-Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,

Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Chant: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord.

People: Thanks be to God.

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 8

O LORD our Governor, *how exalted is your Name in all the world!

Out of the mouths of infants and children * your majesty is praised above the heavens.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

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

Offertory Song:  The King of Glory Comes, (Renew! # 267)

Chorus: The King of glory comes, the nation rejoices.  Open the gates before him, lift up your voices.

1-Who is the King of Glory; how shall we call him? He is Emmanuel, the promised of ages.

2-In all of Galilee, in city or village, he goes among his people curing their illness.

3-Sing then of David’s son, our savior and brother: in all of Galilee was never another

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 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:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Eat This Bread, (Renew! # 228)

Eat this bread, drink this cup, come to me and never be hungry. 

Eat this bread, drink this cup, trust in me and you will not thirst.

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

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.

I’ve got love…. 

I’ve got joy…

Dismissal:   

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

People: Thanks be to God! 

Faith without Religion

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My purpose in this blog thread is to offer some thoughts upon the topic: Faith without Religion.

Why?  So many people are not being engaged by various communities of faith for a variety of reasons.  I thought it might be helpful to some to create a "liminal" space outside of official religion language for persons to reflect upon the impediments that they have experienced in their participation in religious communities or in the observance of members of various communities of faith, particularly the official spokespersons and authorities of faith communities.   Further, can persons in this "liminal" space ponder some "correspondences" with persons of faith and religious communities that might pertain to universal aspirations for justice, love, beauty and ethical and moral practices that might be shared, no matter what one's valued commitments are in life?

Why use the word "faith" without religion instead of the more popular "spirituality" instead of religion?  ("I'm spiritual, not religious movement")  I choose the word "faith" because it seems to me to be less metaphorically removed from actual human practice.  How so? Spiritual deriving from "spirit" involves the metaphor of breath or wind to describe an inner invisible essence of the human interior.  Since no one can see "spirit" but place a metaphor in place of the invisible it seems to me a bit more removed from accessible grasp for broader communication. Spirit and spirituality can imply many preconceived notions of the geography of the human interior life.  My perception of the "I'm spiritual" movement tends to be heavy upon individualism and embraced as a deliberate way to avoid community participation and it is easier to be a "quietist" politically if one is spending a good portion of personal time "contemplating" one's navel (to exaggerate a tendency to see spirituality as a result of disillusionment with other people because of contacts in churches and other group projects).

I find faith to be reflective of more accessible human practice.  But I use faith as it found in the Greek word usage for pistos in Aristotle's Rhetoric.  pistos is also the New Testament Greek word for "faith" or "belief," and while its usage in koine Greek of the New Testament drifted from the functional use of pistos in Aristotle's Rhetoric, there is a kernel of meaning which connects both its use in Aristotle and in the New Testament.  What is the goal of rhetoric in Aristotle's title of the same?  pistos.  And what does pistos mean in Aristotle's rhetoric?  Persuasion.  The goal of rhetoric is persuasion.  Persuasion involves being volitionally committed to something such that it drives one's life actions.  And how is this reflective of the New Testament pistos?  To have faith in Christ, to believe in Christ is to have come to a place of persuasion about Christ.

I find the notion of persuasion to be more accessible to a greater number of people than the notion of "spirit" or "spirituality," because no one in life escapes the situation of being persuaded by privileged values which motivates one's life actions.  One may be passively persuaded by mob and herd participation and not conscious of how one has reached persuasion to be expressed in one's action, but it would seem that no one escapes being a "persuaded person" of some sort.  The questions remain are how is one persuaded and about what is one persuaded and what are the ethical consequences of living out those values about which one is persuaded.

So, I find it more useful to say that everyone lives a "persuaded" life in some way than to say everyone is "spiritual" or everyone has a spirit, since the latter assumes a certain essential inner psychological mapping that may not be embraced by everyone.

I hope you can see how I would make the case for all persons having "faith" without religion and this can lead to the inter-dialogue between the relative adequacy of the many different "faith" perspectives.  Can one make the case about the adequacy of what one regards to be worthy of being persuaded.

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Many people have come to think that they can live without religion, without active participation in a religious faith community.  However, people cannot live without faith, faith as I defined it using the definition of Aristotle in his use of the same Greek word for "faith" as is used in the New Testament.  Faith is that which one is persuaded about and no one lives without persuasion about what motivates the acting and thinking and speaking of one's life.  One may be more intentionally connected with what one regards to be one's persuasion or one may live in passive unreflecting ways about the outcomes of one's persuasion in one's behaviors, actions, thinking and speaking.

Some people live just ignoring religion in their lives; others are so distressed by religion that they become persuaded to be become evangelical about resisting or erasing the effects of religion in society.  They in fact live, persuaded by the need to resist what they regard to be detrimental to their vision of an enlightened humanity; they are driven to resist religion and its effect.

For the resisters to religions and their effects, resisting instantiate the power of religion in the lives of the resisters.  It is almost like having one's life center around a negative, like a terminable disease.  One begins to define one's life by the negative toward what one is resisting rather than celebrating a lost enlightened positive because one's image is formed by being in a "war" against an enemy.  Chesterton said, "If there were no God, there could be no atheists."  This highlights the sea change which has to occur in language, since in the normal use of the word God, the word approximates how Anselm defined God, as "the one than which no greater can be conceived."  An atheist, has to grieve the entrance of the word God into the human vocabulary as a meaningless concept and use logic to show the inconsistency with which the word as been hypocritically used by persons to profess religious faith.

But are other "God-oid" words functioning in a meaningfully significant ways for people who have faith but not religion?  We use the word "universe" as a meaningful notion but we cannot prove that there is "one world," since we cannot prove a world outside of our own anthropocentric musings.  We use the word infinity as though it was meaningful and when we add the notion of time, then infinity would include the not yet, or the dot, dot,dot,dot........, the "to be continued" sense of everything.

It could be that people of "secular" faith, i.e., alternate persuasions to religious faith, are perturbed that people of religious faith live and hold traditions that have come to language and culture and societies which claim to have a precise knowledge about things which cannot be proven by the methods which have come to predominate in scientific inquiry.  And instead of being "humble" about their "revelations," people of religious faith come to take pride in the obvious violation of their revelations to the most brilliant way to actuarial probability living, namely, the methods of science.  The methods of science fleshed out what once was just regarded to be "common sense" and "naive realism" in very systematic ways so that replication of experience and predictability could be enhanced in actual planning one's life for the future.

Just as secular people of faith have come to have their lives dominated by their resistance to people of religious faith in living out degrees of obsession to rid this world of religions and religious influences, so too religious people of faith have come to have their lives dominated by secular skeptics of religious faith.  One might even say that the threat of secular faith, especially the scientific method in becoming definitive of what "pragmatic truth" is, has made religious people take on an inferiority complex.  Science and modernity have challenged the precision of "revelation" knowledge of religious people.  People in the Middle Age were given precise knowledge about the afterlife of purgatory even while they did not know the actual existence of Tokyo.  But as Enlightenment and world travel became actual empirical experience, suddenly people from Europe could know and get to Tokyo, even while there began to grow a skepticism about any precise knowledge of an afterlife place of purgatory.

What came to be questioned was the credibility of Holy Books and their contents.  And if the scientific method became the very model of what really is pragmatically true, then what happens to the "revealed truths" of Holy Books?

Faced with an inferiority complex due to the success of the scientific method, many religionists came to accept the truth of science, which is in effect, the truth of empirical verification.  Something is only meaningfully truth, if and only if it can be empirically verified.  So, religionists began to argue that all things Scriptural were true because they "could have been empirically verified," even though most of the incidences that they held could have been and were verified (according to witnesses in Holy Book accounts) had to be relegated to "unique, one time occurrences.  This eludes the empirical practice of something being able to be repeated and replicated, given similar conditions. 

Religionists in awe of the truth and the pragmatic industrial outcomes of science, which they integrated into their everyday lives for ease of living through machines and technology, began to defend the Bible and its stories as though they were "scientific, empirically verifiable" events and this gave rise to what has come to be "biblical fundamentalism," or sometimes just called "biblical literalism."  The fundamentals had to do with making Christian poetry into science.  The efficacy of the actual blood of Jesus cleansing from sins.  The biological empirically verifiable Virgin birth.  The treating of the words of the Bible as inerrant and directly inspired, almost to the degree of believing that the words of the Bible caused the world to be as we know it to be, in a causatively  absolute way.  In an ironic way, fundamentalists believe the Bible in a similar way as do Muslims about the Qur'an, namely, the Bible is regarded to be the "uncreated" Word of God, presuming it did not get filtered or anthropomorphically altered by being delivered through imperfect human beings.  What fundamentalism denies is that interpretation happened in the coming to language of the biblical words.  They assume that there is one singular correct interpretation of those same biblical words and presume to have the insider knowledge of one correct interpretation,  (wink, wink, I have the Spirit and you don't so I know that true and singular meaning of the Bible).  There is a very naive belief that the meaning of biblical words are magically "self evidential" to those who really have the Spirit.  Ironically, there are myriads of "fundamentalist" groups to disprove the exact and precise self-evidentiality of biblical words, and so one must assume a very oxymoronic notion of there being many "Spirits" of fundamentalism who are leading to variety of interpretations of the the Bible.  Another tenet of fundamentalism is that the apocalyptic words of the Bible refer to an exact predicted future and lots of fundamentalism today is really an apocalyptic fatalism in wishing for a quick end of the world when Jesus will return and establish "them" as the true good guys who knew and were elect and had it correct all the while.  It is a kind of prideful spiritual elitism of knowing more and better than anyone else.  The apocalyptic fatalism of fundamentalism results in behaviors of abhorring this world:  God doesn't really love the "fallen world" of our beautiful environment since this earth ship is going to be abandoned in favor of a new heaven and earth.  There is no reason for environmental stewardship in the apocalyptic fatalism of fundamentalism; only domination and exploitive use while we wait for this earthly ship to be abandoned.

The public dominance of "fundamentalism" of religions in thinking and in practice has come to be the "faith" and the "belief" in God that most agnostic and skeptics of religious faith cite as the reason for their non-belief, atheism and general skepticism of all religion.  Most atheism which comes to writing consists of cataloging the bad behaviors and the bad thinking of people who calls themselves people of religious faith and belief in God.

To explore the divide between people of religious faith and people of secular faith we will next explore some of the many examples cited regarding the bad behaviors and bad thinking of religious people, which includes their own inconsistencies within their own traditions particularly regarding significant "scientific" innovations like the switch from flat earth to round earth and  "social innovations" of the modern world regarding issues like slavery and the subjugation of women.

Prayer for a Day of Mourning

Prayer for a day of mourning

Gracious God, we mourn today the events of the pandemic, over which we had no control of its origin. The freedom in nature has thrown a challenge and we mourn our lack of early acceptance of its severe threat to us. We mourn the loss of so many precious lives and we don't accept a fatalistic "it was just their time" diminishing of what their future with us could have been. We thank you God for all of the heroic service which has arisen and the sense of social responsibility which so many have embraced in practicing the necessary precautions.


Today, God of freedom, we mourn the failure of our country to fully practice the enlightened freedom of "justice for all under the law." We ask for grace to resist condemning in sweeping generalizations, even while we ask for genuine repentance in the failure to love our neighbors. We ask for the wisdom to invest in the lives of all our people so that each person can walk, work and live with affirming public dignity. We ask for a free market and free society based upon the creative and free investment in the common welfare of all.

And because we know of our tendency to sin and failure to practice love, we ask that all who are called to be peace officers for the safety of everyone to have the wisdom of restraint. We ask that the gift of Jesus as a people whisperer be given to the leaders in our lives.

God of transforming grace, we mourn the wasted profound energy of discontent and violence. We wished that we could have "gotten the message" in ways less disruptive of our normal patterns. Transform anger and violence and fear into defiant stands for the dignity of everyone. Transform fear based on unwillingness to know and appreciate each other in our differences, into faithful and mutual appreciative engagement.

And may the Spirit of God in this season of Pentecost move over the void, abyss and chaos of purposeless energies and bring us the kind of peace that affirms dignity of everyone to have significant life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.