Canine Social Theology

11 Pentecost, A p15, August 16, 2020
Isaiah 56:1,6-8  Psalm 67   
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Lectionary Link

From today's appointed Gospel, I feel inclined to present a Canine Social Theology.  Sometimes animal metaphors are used to denigrate both humans and animals.  Some politicians refer to perceived enemies as dogs, using the ancient negative connotation of dogs, that derives in part from biblical and holy book traditions, even while in our society, dogs and other pets have achieved near sainthood status.   Our pets love us and are highly dependent upon us to feed them and take care of them and they bring us joy, support and companionship.

Dogs have not always and are not always held in such esteem.  I lived in a Middle Eastern Country for four years.  I witnessed children stoning young stray puppies in the river bed without conscience.  One had to be afraid of packs of wild dogs late at night on the city streets.  They scavenged the garbage left from the day.  I wondered where all of the dogs went in the day; and on a mountain hike above the city, I happened upon an entire pack of sleeping dogs.  Needless to say, I exited quickly, honoring that old cliche, "let sleeping dogs lie."  To curse at one's enemies one would issue a supreme insult, "Your father is a dog."  I guess that at least the female mother dog designation was not used, like it is so often used in our world today.  Can you tell me what is so bad about motherhood, that it is derogatory for a mother dog? Some dogs were prized in the Middle East.  I did find herd dogs when I visited and stayed with a nomadic tribe.  Those dogs were very useful and therefore given better status.

Biblical dogs were generally regarded to be like walking mammal vultures; they were scavengers, more like a pack of wolves rather than domesticated pets.  They, like the pig were designated as unclean and impure, not to be touched or eaten, and certainly that was their only good fortune.  Too unclean to eat.

The fact that dogs could be at a master's table during the time of Jesus, probably means that dogs had attained a semi-domesticated status.  Perhaps, they were good at keeping the rodents and other pesty animals away.  And they could be janitorial vacuum cleaners after a meal to clean up the floor, for scraps and the food that didn't pass the five-second rule.

With our modern day sensitivities and political correctness, we could take offense at the exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  "Jesus, please help my tormented daughter!"  "Ma'am, you know the the public stereotypes.  You're crossing boundaries.  Your people are regarded to be dogs, outsiders, scavengers  by my people.  Why are you presuming to cross those boundaries?"  "Jesus, as an outsider, a dog, I am happy to scavenge at the table for scraps to get my daughter healed."  "Woman, your faith has torn down the wall of separation and has given you access to health and healing for your daughter."

For the Isaian prophet, the Temple was to be a House of Prayer for all people.  What was the original intention of God the creator?  Each person created in God's image was to be a temple of God.  Each person had within the interior life a holiest of holy, a meeting place with God.  Such an interior temple had to be exteriorize into a Building Temple in Jerusalem within a certain people, as a strategy of the rehabilitation of all humanity, to once again realize each person's as a Temple of the Holy Spirit.

Israel and the Temple became a particular people and sacred building as a strategy for all of humanity to realize that each person could be God's holy nomadic tabernacle and dwelling for God's Spirit.

The early Christian leaders who came the heritage of the Hebrew Scriptures, believed that their Judaism could not become universally accessible as it was being practiced.   As it was being practice, God's message was cloistered within a single group of people living isolated lives from the people of the Roman Empire.

Very few of the dogs were getting scraps from the table.  There were too many outsiders?  Too many dogs who did not have access even to the crumbs of the Torah.  How can a God be known to be universal, if God is not universally accessible?  How can a pathway to God be locked off and not have the majority of the people of the world be invited?

If we appreciate this dilemma, we might understand Jesus of Nazareth and the early Jesus Movement resulted in a great great surprise.  What was the great surprise?  The mystical and spontaneous experience of the Holy Spirit began to happen in ways in which the religious leaders could not contain.  St. Paul, Peter, and the disciples  as Jews, found the Holy Spirit wildfire could not be contained within the existing religious structures of their upbringing.  What did they do?  They went with the flow, the flow of the Spirit.

The faith of Christ broke down boundaries and borders and would not let there be outsiders.  St. Paul wrote that in Christ, there is no Jews, Gentiles, males, females, but a new creation.

The dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is an origin discourse for the ultimate success of the Jesus Movement beyond the boundaries of Judaism in the Gentile peoples of the Roman Empire.

The Gospel for us is that through faith we can over come boundaries to the experience of God's favor and love.  

The dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman shows us that Jesus is one who pushes us to have faith and stand up with it.  The use of the word "dog" as the pejorative for outsider is revealing.  The Canaanite woman had faith to challenge whether ethnic and religious barriers should keep us from the health and salvation of God.  This story illustrates how bias and bigotry turn people against themselves.  The woman was willing to accept the designation as an "outsider dog" just so that she might have the crumb of the grace of God from the Master's table, from God's table.  Jesus used the stereotypical "dog" word, to cajole the woman to get beyond her own self image as an outsider to God.  And it was her faith which helped her leap over the barrier.

For us, we need to have faith no to let anyone or anything separate us or anyone else from the love of God in Christ and God's salvation for us.  If St. Paul were here today, he would be writing, "In Christ, there is no East or West, North or South, Black, White, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ....we are all one in Christ.  No one can excommunicate anyone else from the equal love of God.  Period.

May the witness to faith in the Gospel, inspire us not to misrepresent God and God's love and access to everyone.  And may we not let the history of our own victimhood, make us think that we have to grovel to another group of people for grace.  And may, we also redeem the use of the metaphor of the word "dog" and the degrading female term for dog that comes so easily to people's mouths today.

If we have come to have regard for animals to be our pets and friends, and there is a gap between the human and animal kingdoms, can we come to appreciate that God invites everyone to be God's favorite pets in the kingdom of heaven.

This is the secret of the Kingdom of heaven.  God is whispering into everyone's ear: "you are my favorite pet human child, and my grace gives you more than crumbs.  My grace is an invitation to the main table.  Amen.

Jesus As a Surfing Dude?

10  Pentecost, A p 14, August 9, 2020
1 Kings 19:9-18 Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15,  Matthew 14:22-33

Lectionary Link

The Bible gives us clues about how to read it.  And we should follow the invitation to read it as spiritual poetry.  We have been intimidated by modern science, modern historical writing and modern eyewitness journalism.   Modern scholarly practice have caused many biblical interpreters to fall in the trap of reading the Bible as though it is modern accurate journalistic reporting with the scientific standard of empirically verifiable events.

The Gospel writers took up the symbolic poetic order of the Hebrew Scriptures and used the metaphors as ways to present in narrative form the spiritual and mystical meaning of Jesus Christ.  Why?  People were having Holy Spirit mystical experiences.  They had sublime experiences and they needed to know how these experiences were connected to this special person Jesus.

How do we understand this sublime?  And how is it connected with an incarnation of God in the person of Jesus who became inseparable from these post-death and resurrection experiences of the Risen Christ?

How do we understand these sublime experiences and teach their meaning?  And how do we teach a program of orientation into the mysteries of the sublime experience of the Holy Spirit?

To be born of water and the Holy Spirit, means that there exists a parallel realm within each initiate through which one interprets the exterior and landscape events of life.

Narratives of the landscapes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth were presented in the Gospels to illustrate the meaning of the Risen Christ found within each Christian.

Where can we find the Risen Christ to accompany us in our lives?  According to the Gospels:  Everywhere.  The Gospels present some material situations where the Risen Christ can be found to accompany us.

What has always been some of the greatest conflicts for human life?  They have occurred with events of Nature.  Why the conflicts?  Human schedules and Nature's schedules are sometimes in conflict.   A great storm on the Sea of Galilee would be just plain impressive, unless the schedule of fishermen conflict with the schedule of Nature to put the fishermen in harm's way.

As organisms with the prolific abilities to grow and become parasitic on other life, like cancer and Covid-19 and a large hosts of bacteria and viruses are very impressive.  And if their life and growth could be totally isolated from human interaction, we could be awed observers.

But these living organisms in nature interact with human schedules in time  in our bodily lives and they frighten and they reek havoc, because they cause sickness, suffering and death.

God who is perfect freedom, presides within a world which shares in this freedom.  And because of our love of science to make every an external observable event, we have been tempted to exteriorize the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel.  The Jesus of the Gospel is written to illustrate in a graphic way the profound interior rising of the Risen Christ who can co-exist with all of the freedom which we face in our lives.  And in faith, we need to realize that we are never exempt from the conditions of freedom.

And because we are not exempt from the conditions of freedom, we use probability theory to anticipate and predict.  We want to negotiate our lives in the safest way through the conditions of freedom.  Sometimes we are safe because of wise behaviors that we can learn from science and our biblical tradition.  But in many other things, we find we are not exempt from an entire array of events, sublime, marvelous, good, ordinary, bad, horrendous and evil.  In life's conditions of freedom, we are not exempt from a continuum of events of what might happen to us.

So what is the Gospel for us? If God and Jesus honor freedom and we know that they are not exempt from the array of freedom, how should we live?  We can either live by faith or by fear.  We can be Murphy Law devotees, fearing more of what can go wrong, than enjoying and savoring the vast amount of goodness.  

The ancient God moved by the Spirit on the deep waters of chaos to created through God's Word.  For Elijah, God was not in the earthquake, wind and the fire; God was in the peaceful stillness which co-existed with wind and the fire.

The Gospel writers believed the experience of the Risen Christ was graphically presented in Jesus walking on the stormy waters faced by his friends.  How does one walk in the middle of the stormy sea?  With faith?  Yes and according to gravity, one sinks into the waters.  And who is with us as we sink?  The hand of the Risen Christ.

And when we sink into the ocean of our eventual death because Time and freedom govern our bodily lives, who will be there?  The hand of the Risen Christ to lift us up.

Let us practice knowing the still peace of God within us and the ever rescuing hand of the Risen Christ who truly walks in the storms of Nature with us.    When some of us see the crashing ocean waves, we think awesome frightening power.  But what does the surfer see?  Heavy waves, now that's a challenge.  Jesus is the model for us of a life surfer.  He sees the waves and says, "Heavy waves Dude! now jump on my board!"  Amen.

Bible As Virtual Reality

 Because science has become so prominent in modern life, it has attained a very pragmatic and functional truth status for everything that we do today.  We live and move and have our modern being in the results of the scientific method which was industrialized and commercialized into all of the products which govern our lives.  It has so vastly governed our lives that the latest generation seem to prefer a completely virtual life to actually being present.  And even when people go to big box churches and stadiums, they watch the contest or the preacher on a big screen.

Perhaps Covid-19 will help us appreciate actual presence again when virtuality is forced upon us as the main way to relate with each other because with actual presence we could infect each other.

Lest we despise the virtual too much let us admit that the Bible is virtual.  Written text was a technology of memory which stood in the place of "not being there."  A biblical text did not permit and actual give and take with the actual writer, so it is a virtual communication.  The author of the text becomes very weak; he or she cannot defend or specify or determine a certain meaning of the words written.  The author is weak because the words come to depend upon those who are interpreting.  When it comes to biblical words, traditions of how to interpret the words have arisen and differences in interpretation account for the different communities within Christianity and in Judaism.

Sunday School, August 9, 2020 10 Pentecost, A proper 14

Sunday School, August 9, 2020   10 Pentecost,  A proper 14

Theme:

Water and Wind Stories in the Bible

Water and Wind, when combined can be wild and dangerous.

The disciples took a night boat trip and experienced a storm on the water.

They were frightened until they saw Christ appear to them in the storm.

On a normal day, water on the lake and wind in the sails of the boat would be great and wonderful.

But darkness, storm and bumpy waves means that water and wind can be dangerous.

We know that good and wonderful things in life can be dangerous if we have the wrong experience with them or if we are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When we are sailing on the lake on a nice breezy day we are grateful and we can feel safe and we might find it easy to have faith in God.

If we are on the lake in a boat during a storm we can experience fear and when we have fear it might be very difficult to have faith in God.

Baptism is about water and wind.  How so?

We are baptized in water and we believe that we remember that in the end we survive death and fear of death because we are raised with Christ in the resurrection.

Baptism is about Wind.  Wind or Breath is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.  In our lives we can become aware of the Holy Spirit as like God breathing in and through us.

When Peter tried to walk to Jesus on top of the water, he fell into water.  Jesus grabbed his hand and lifted him up.

This is what we celebrate in baptism.  We are “buried” with Christ in baptism but we are raised with Christ when we come up out of the water of baptism.

Our life can be like sailing on a breezy lake or life can be like being in a boat on a stormy lake.

When life is easy, we need to have faith.  When life is stormy we need to have faith and look to find the presence of Christ with us to help us through the stormy or difficult times of life.

We are baptized because we believe that God can tame the water and the wind in our life experience by giving the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Sermon:

Has anyone ever had a dream?  Do you remember any of your dreams?  Have any of you ever had a water dream?  Or a dream about   a storm?  Some people think that water dreams are about us being fearful and anxious in life.

  We worry about things in our life.  We worry about little things like scoring goals in soccer.  We worry about big things like earthquakes.  The story of Peter and Jesus on the lake during a big storm is a story about fear and faith.

   We are born with ability to have fear or have faith.  And if too many sad things happen to us we can begin to be fearful.  We can let our imaginations make us think that only bad things are going to happen and we can begin to begin to be fearful.  In baseball, if I strike out once.  I can get sad and think that I am going to strike out next time and every time.

  Peter was in a boat on a very stormy.  He was fearful.  He did not think he would survive but he saw Jesus walking on the water.  And suddenly he had hope.  And he decided he wanted to walk towards Jesus.  And he did but then he looked at the frightening water.  And he fell into the water.  But Jesus rescued him and told him not to fear but to have faith.

   The storms of our lives are all the things that can go wrong.  The storms of life are the bad things that can happen to us.  And these things can make us worry.  These things can make us fearful.

  But we need to remember that hope is greater than fear.  We need to look for the people who give us hope.  When we have hope we let our mind think about good things happening to us.  We let our mind think about keep trying hard to do our very best because with practice we can always get better.

  When we have hope we can change our fear and worry to faith.  Faith means that we just keep trying to do our very best no matter what happens, whether it is stormy or sunny, we just keep doing our best.

  Jesus is the one who can inspire us to keep trying, even when we are faced with difficult things in our life.

  Jesus is like a magician who can help us convert our energy of worry and fear into the energy of faith.

  And with faith we can become our own heroes.  We can become our own heroes when we do not quit but just keep trying to do our very best.

  Remember Jesus is the one who walks in the middle of the storms of life.  And he inspires us to convert our energy of fear into the energy of faith.

  Let me see your faith muscles.

  Say, “I am strong.  I have converted the energy of fear into the muscles of faith.”  Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

August 9, 2020: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Gathering Songs: Hallelu, Hallelujah, This Little Light, Alleluia, When the Saints Go Marching In

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:  Hallelu, Hallelujah  (Christian Children’s Songbook,  # 84)

Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Prasie ye the Lord. 

Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord. 

Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye, the Lord, Hallelujah. 

Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah!  Praise ye the Lord!

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

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

First Litany of Praise: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

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

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

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

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

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

A reading from the Letter to the Romans

If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 105

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

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

Glory in his holy Name; * let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

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

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

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

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

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

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

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

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

   Thanks be to God!

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

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."  Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

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

Since God is so great and we are so small,

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

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

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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

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

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

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

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

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People:            And also with you.

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

Offertory Song: This Little Light of Mine (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 234)

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.  This little light of mine, I’m going let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel, No!  I’m going to let it shine.  Hide it under a bushel, No!  I am going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Don’t let anyone blow it out, I’m going to let it shine.  Don’t let anyone blow it out.  I’m going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let is shine.

Shine all over my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine.  Shine all over my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Doxology

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

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

Prologue to the Eucharist

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

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

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

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

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

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

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

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

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

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

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

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

You have made us in your image

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

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

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

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

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

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

 this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Alleluia (Renew!  # 136)

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

He’s my savior, alleluia.  He’s my savior, alleluia.  He’s my savior, alleluia.  He’s my savior, alleluia.

He is worthy, alleluia.  He is worthy, alleluia.  He is worthy alleluia, he is worthy, alleluia.

I will praise him, alleluia.  I will praise him, alleluia.  I will praise him alleluia.  I will praise him, alleluia

Maranatha, alleluia.  Maranatha, alleluia.  Maranatha, Alleluia, Maranatha, Alleluia.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: When the Saints Go Marching in (O When the Saints # 248)

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

O when the boys go marching in.  Ho when the boys go marching in.  Lord I want to be in that number, when the boys go marching in.

O when the girls go marching in.  O when the girls go marching in.  Lord I want to be in that number, when the girls go marching in.

Dismissal:   

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

People:      Thanks be to God! 

Leftovers Anyone?

8 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 13, August 2, 2020

Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 17: 1-7, 16

Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

Lectionary Link

One of the best things, the day after a meal is leftovers.  I've said hundreds of time, "wow, this soup or sauce tastes better today than when I served it last night."  And so the obvious question is why don't I have the discipline to serve things a day late so that the flavors can marinade longer and taste better?  Well, I'm not that disciplined and also not everything tastes good as a leftover, like a soggy salad.

 

I'm fascinated with the accounts of the multiplication of loaves stories in the Gospels.  They all include leftovers.  Why do all of the authors make sure to report leftovers but they never write about what is done with the leftovers?  Are the leftovers recorded to imply the abundance of God's blessing?  Are the leftovers recorded to indicate that the work of distribution remains for the disciples to feed people who were not present for the original meal?

 

Is the multiplication of loaves story the cryptic insertion of the Eucharistic practice of the early churches with the invitation that the leftover bread is the renewal supply of God's holy bread for the people of this world?  If MacDonald's have served billions of burgers, how many billions of people have been fed with the continual leftovers from the Table of the Lord in the history of the church?

 

The leftovers reported at the multiplication of loaves event is an indication that the feeding of people with bread and the word of God is still not finished.  It is a reminder to us that we cannot divorce Eucharist as an event of Word and Sacrament from the needs of the hungry people of the world.  We are challenged to devise creative economies to get the leftovers from the abundance of God to us to those who need food and the things for necessary subsistence.

 

Let us look at a theology of leftovers in the story of salvation.  One might say that the intent of God was to bless all with abundance and have the leftovers of abundance be continually shared to new and more people.  The leftovers are the evangelism, the invitation to join the main table of blessing which God desires for everyone.

 

The biblical story of salvation is that God wanted to deliver the blessing of abundant living to all people in this world.  As God's creation, God wanted the human creatures to have an "owner's manual" on how to best operate human living and how to troubleshoot if problems arose.

 

The delivery system was the selection of a people who would build a house of prayer for all people to be invited into the ownership manual for best behaviors and living.

 

We have read today, the story of the transformation of a single family man into the corporate personality.  Jacob wrestled with God and he, died as the last Patriarch, but he received a new Corporate Name, the name of Israel.  In this name, a people would be readied as a divine strategy to deliver the owner's manual for human beings to this world.  Israel became the corporate name for a people with a divine mission.  And the mission had some successes and some failures.

 

The mission was successful in forging a continuing identity for the Jewish people by rules which segregated them from the other people of the world.  Everyone can theoretically become a member of an Amish Community, but the rules are so inaccessible from the normal practices of modern people as to make Amish practice an impossible universal practice.  What became obvious in the time of Jesus and Paul is that Judaism as it had come to be practiced was not adaptable to the conditions in Palestine and to the majority people in the cities of the Roman Empire.  Even though Judaism permitted proselytes to convert, one could say that evangelism was not a major mission of the Judaism which was practiced at the time of Jesus and Paul.  The most effective way of Jewish evangelism was birth of a child within a Jewish family.

 

In the letter of Paul to Romans, Paul, a Jew, mourned the fact that his Jewish faith community did not have evangelical wisdom.  How could the people of the world know that God's blessing was intended for all if there was no strategy for sharing.  Paul believed that the blessing of God to the Jews had plenty of leftovers.  The offering of these leftovers to the Gentiles people was the evangelism of the Jesus Movement within the Roman Empire.  The earliest churches derived from the synagogues and were a Christ-centered Judaism to the people in the Roman Empire.  And to be more accessible, the Jesus Movement were led by the Spirit to dispense with the ritual purity requirements of Judaism to reach the Gentile peoples.  And this caused a painful separation of the Jesus Movement from the synagogue.  Evangelism of the Jesus Movement believed that one was not distinguished by ritual purity, as important as it might be, one was distinguished by the inner presence of the Holy Spirit to change one's life toward the moral perfection of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, self-control and faith.

 

Leftovers might seem to be like second-hand clothing that we give to the thrift store.   But when it comes to food, leftovers can be the better tasting food due to mature marinating.  And that is what evangelism is in the Jesus Movement; it is the leftovers of the blessing of the main meal which has marinated our faith lives in maturity so that we can make a more tasty presentations of our good news to the people in our lives.  Why?  Because we want everyone invited to the main table of God's love and blessing.

 

May God give us wisdom to distribute the wonderful leftovers of God's blessing in our lives, so that more people can know that they are invited to God's main table, God's welcoming feast of life.  Amen.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2020

Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2020

The Eucharistic church presented the multiplication of loaves event with lots of left over food.  The implication would be that it was available for those who were not at the original feeding event and so it was food looking for more hungry people.  The abundance of leftovers in our world in the supply chain indicates that there is plenty of food for everyone.  The moral issue is having the motivation to implement strategies of delivery to see that the abundant leftovers get to those who need it.  The frightening alternate is more often the case: spoilage.  Lots of leftover food never finds the hungry and that is an indictment of human creativity in our delivery system.

Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2020

The multiplication of the loaves stories in the Gospel should be a reminder that the Eucharist as a multiplication of the events of Christ-Presence through history should not be divorced from making sure that everyone gets enough food.  To make Eucharist a disconnected liturgical spiritual event from the hunger of the world is to not understand the intent of Jesus who saw a multitude and said, "You give them something to eat."

Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2020

St. Paul says he wished that he was accursed (could go to hell) if only the Jews who couldn't go along with the message of Jesus as the Messiah would change their minds.  When we wish to share what has been insightful for us with people who do not and cannot appreciate the insights in the ways in which we do, we can bemoan the lost fellowship, even while those who have previous and other insights might mourn the loss of our departure from a previous paradigm.  Paradigm change results in a whole range of reactions, some emotional and deeply personal.  People in different faith paradigms need to remember the winsome ways in which they came to insights and new persuasion and appreciate that one's insights cannot be forced on others.

Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2020

The disciples wanted to send the hungry crowd away.  Jesus said to them, "Give them something to eat."  This is still the divine command to everyone who has an abundance, "Give them something to eat."

Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2020

Ever notice how people like to be conservative and progressive at the same time.  St. Paul had progressed with his new experience of God in Christ, yet he wanted to "conserve" the Hebrew Scripture tradition as belonging to him in an enlightened way and he wrote that he was very sad that many of his fellow Jews could not get with the new program.  Being a progressive conservative in the Christo-centric Judaism of Paul meant retaining the Hebrew Scriptures, whereas more "progressive" Christians who expressed Christ traditions with more Hellenistic influence later came to be called heretics and gnostics.  "Orthodox" Christianity considered itself moored in the Hebrew Scriptures tradition while those who continued in the synagogue believed the church had "innovated" itself completely out of the Hebrew Scripture tradition.  It is easy to see how one's image is "deconstructed" by someone living in a different paradigm with a different hermeneutic circle of meanings for shared words.

Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2020

How can Paul writer, "all things work together for good for those who love the Lord?"  He suffered incredible hardship and eventually was martyred.  He like everyone resorted to a rhetoric of "totality" not because he could actually know totality as totality, but because he believed that he was a pebble in a pond rippling endlessly, always, already and he expressed the attitude of faith in thinking that everything would eventually have it place in the community of all occasions happening.  He had in interior experience which allowed him to be an optimist without being a masochist.  It is good to arrive at the sense of goodness of existence itself.

Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2020

The writer of John's Gospel was a scribe of the kingdom of heaven and was as such a grammatologist in that he declared WORD as co-extensively equal with every thing that has come to being and with the divine Being.  The grammatologist of John was saying that one cannot know anything, including knowing itself without the positing of the prior condition of "having words."

Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2020

One might find some correspondence in Derrida's deconstructive grammatologist and the scribe of kingdom of heaven spoken of by Jesus in Matthew.  Such a scribe was like the owner of an estate who would bring forth treasure (insightful meanings) from the old and the new.  The old is always presented as new because time always keeps us completely current, living not in the latter days, but in the latest days.  Deconstruction of so called "stable" meanings which written texts seem to "fix" happens because of the interplay of what is called old and what is called new.  The new always reinvents the old because the old as old does not exist until the new arrives to create the contrast and the new identity of the old.  Such is the process of deconstruction for all who embrace being a scribe of the kingdom of heaven.

Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2020

The meanings of the Torah were not "closed" in the sense of their being a final interpretation.  The Torah was a living document and the commentaries were evidence of the Torah living into new situations of application.  Jesus said that a scribe of the kingdom of heaven was able to be like a master who brings out treasure, old and new.  This image befits the notion of Word of God as creating living word products in a never ending stream of new applicable meaning in the new life situations the stream of life.  

Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2020

The kingdom of heaven includes the sequence of events in the discovery of what is valued and worshipful such that one reorganizes one's entire life to serve the supreme value discovered.  It is the discovery of the One, who can allow one to leave competitors behind because one is won over.

Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2020

Kingdom of heaven parables indicate that God as unseen is uncanny in how the divine becomes known.  Small and almost unnoticeable like a mustard seed or yeast and yet becomes manifests in the lives of people in significant ways.  Yeast or leaven was regarded in its time to be a negative; Jesus used a negative to illustrate the hidden way of the Spirit in propagating the Gospel kingdom.  If Jesus was here today, he would probably said, the kingdom of heaven is "like the Covid-19 virus."  Really invisible but the disease can really spread.  We can hope that the kingdom values of love and justice for all will be spreading like the Covid-19 virus.

Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2020

A scribe of the kingdom brings out of one's treasure, that which is old and new.  A writer is imbued with the "oldness" of language but also with the new occasion of language in the writing event.  Time means that the traces of the old morph into new traces-to-be as language co-exists with the being of Time.

Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2020

In the presentation of the parables, there is a parable and then an "insider" interpretation for the disciples.  A difference between the parable and the immediate interpretation is that the parable lives time as open and cyclical whereas the interpretation seems to indicate that time as we know it will end.  I'm sure time as I know will end at death even as my death and the deathly me will still be subject to the time.  Apocalyptic people seem to posit the end of time without really being able to think about a situation of not ever being a continuous before and after.  

Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2020

Much of biblical writing was written under the conditions of general oppression or suppression of the communities for whom the writings were intended.  They are kind of like a "faith martial" arts for surviving tough times.  For people of faith who have always lived with the privilege of social power, it is hard to identify truly with the "biblical situations of oppression."  It is easy to salve our consciences with "bandaid charity," while systemic poverty and racism happen around us.  Many people of faith use the injunction, "Come out and be separate," as a way to practice segregation from the harsh realities which are faced by so many people.

Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2020

St. Paul called the conditions of freedom, being subjected to futility.  What is the futility?  Lots of time it seems like evil is winning.  It's obvious that death seems to be winning, eventually for everyone.  The sense of futility occurs because St. Paul partook of hope which gave him the imagination of not dying even while he was dying.  Hope gave him the vision of things which were "utopian," no such place.  The experience of time and hope means that the future is always before us as the "not yet" escape from the play of good and evil conditions in the field of freedom.

Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2020

Patience involves the kind of faith to live with the co-existing conditions of wheat and weed, pleasure and pain, agony and ecstasy, light and darkness, wellness and sickness, and good and evil.  One lives with faith in asserting the normalcy of the favored while accepting the deprivation of the opposition as having a time and season under the sun because freedom is what assures us that we are not pre-determined robots, as mere play things for the divine.

Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2020

Weeds in the Bible are symbols of Nature working against our agricultural efforts in the post-Edenic world of lost innocence.  Weeds might be useful to prevent erosion on the hillside and even produce some lovely "wild flowers," but when they compete with the deliberate gardening efforts they are considered to be an enemy.  When weeds and wheat grow together, one hopes the preponderance of wheat will rival the weeds and not result in a significantly diminished wheat harvest.  The parable of the wheat and the weed is an allegory about the permission of freedom in the world where good and evil co-exist and are so interwined because relative perspectives pit my good against your evil.  The rain that hinders my baseball game is the rain that waters your crops.  Lots of things in Nature are good or evil simply based upon relative timing of events and the resulting competition of systems.  God is seen as the one who is Patient because of the greater Good and in knowing God's kingdom as a result of living in the faith realm is to also receive the fruit of patience.  But such patience does not keep us from doing lots of weeding in our garden in the meantime, since we must try to remove the weeds of hatred and injustice always.  Such weeding is always context specific because one cannot take the entire system of Freedom away.

Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2020

Life as it has been and is, is permissive of all that has been and is and one cannot surgically remove what has been or is or smart bomb out of existence what has been and is.  Permissive endurance of the order of all things might attain the designation as the fruit of patience.  We with our "smart bombing" impulse to rid the world of what we think is evil and bad are trying to do something that Permissive Plenitude is not.  How do we "smart bomb" what we think is evil in the world?  How do we overcome evil with good without the "goodness" partaking of the destructive cruelty of evil.  The parable of the weed and the wheat provides some insights upon the patience that is needed to tolerate evil as the deprivation of good within the order of things.  And each as a microcosm of all can know how one is a mixture of good and evil such that to try to completely remove the engine which generates one's evil, would be to remove the engine which empowers good as well.  Can we have faith to live with extremes of good and evil without committing a wicked rage of the cure being worse than the disease?

 Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2020

One can note that in the editorial process of the parables in the Gospels, that they editors are not comfortable with the mysteries that are not resolved by the actual parable and so specific application have to be tagged on.  Many people are uncomfortable to admit that we will always live in the condition of the mystery of not having everything accessible to us.

Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2020

To be free is the freedom to evolve and surpass oneself in a future state.  One of the ways in which some biblical interpreters use the Bible is to use the biblical text to "as it were" fix something in time and presume that time and evolving should not occur especially in the realm of thought and interpretation.  So those who say one cannot change in how one interprets and applies the words of the Bible, is patently false, if one has in practiced overturned many of the ancient practices of biblical people, e.g., slavery et. al.  The Spirit is "against" the letter if better approximation of love and justice are shown to us for more people, than what was actually practiced in the biblical witness.  The great principles of love and justice are always in need of better application for more people.

Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2020

A parable is like a cluster metaphor; one can violate the parable by presuming to make it solve mysteries rather than to provide some insights about how to live with mysteries.  Parables bring us to the liminal place of what we cannot know because so much of the universe is out of our reach and such liminal space is a threshold from the quantifiable stuff which we think we do know.  Poetry and faith discourse partakes of this liminal realm and so does the parable.

Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2020

The parable of the sower give a very imprecise reason for the success and failure of the Gospel message in a person's life: The conditions have to be right.  Well, duh.  What one can appreciate in this answer is the realization that conversion to a paradigm is governed by things that one can recognize but also by many mysterious negligibles, many flapping butterfly wings affecting weather patterns around the globe, i.e., the mystery of the collateral effects of everything we don't and can't know.   In our probability thinking it is enough for us to measure what is relative to our immediate perceptual environments but we should not be over confident about any conclusions be the final word about anything.

Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2020

For gardening and farming, one wants to control the conditions which will guarantee maximum yield.  The parable of the sower is not about highly controlled farming methods.  One can have a hybrid seed but if the location of planting is not ideal, the hybrid seed cannot produce.  The parable of sower is a "market" assessment about the success of the Gospel and the answer is the vagueness of the mystery of the mix of free conditions: Success depends upon the conditions.  The Gospel occurs within sociological and psychological conditions of people and so interior and exterior factors influence how and when the Gospel is successful in becoming the motivating idea of one's life.

Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2020

The parable of the sower is an effort to account for the obviousness of difference of people in what and how they believe.  Why isn't the way in which I believe universally irresistible?  Differences are contextually specific to the situation of each person's life experience and the freedom of difference due to change as a product of time, means that people are not robots in lock step with one exact belief system and expressions of the same at any given time.  If one is universally irrelevant, one is pretty lonely; if one is omni-relevant, such could only come with totalitarian control.  A seed is planted and is subject to all of the exigent factors which affect the success of the eventual fruit produced or its failure.  The parable is an exercise in probability thinking about the success of the Gospel.  The parable presents the mystery of outcomes due to the freedom of what may happen.

Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2020

The parable process in the Gospel writings often involve the presented parable and a follow up interpretation for the "insiders."  The interpretation presumes to direct specific meaning to the items in the allegory in real life.  And yet a parable resists specific interpretation since the purpose of a parable is to be an engine of continuing insights about Mystery which cannot be put in a bottle and corked off, as if one could control the meaning of Mystery.

Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2020

In the art of persuasion, there is an interest in the anatomy of why things seem rhetorically successful in the response gained from the various audiences.  Advertisers and political analysts are interesting in why things, ides, products are successful.  The Gospel communities were interested to know why Jesus Christ was not universally irresistible.  Why do some people just don't "get" Jesus Christ and his obvious genius, the way in which we do?  The parable of the sower is an analysis of why persuasion happened for some and not for others.  Why are some persuaded by the paradigm and get fully into the logic of the hermeneutical circle of the Jesus Movement?  The parable of the sower concedes that it is the element of organic randomness and freedom as to why some are at the psychological and sociological state of receptivity to be fully persuaded.  Remember, "pistos" or koine (NT) Greek for faith or belief, means persuasion in the Greek of Aristotle.  How does one become so persuaded about something that it becomes what one believes or has faith in?

Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2020

Cryptic quote of Jesus channelled within the Jesus Movement and coming to text in the Gospel:" I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. "  This is consistent with the hyper child motif for spiritual break through: being "born again, anew, from above."  But such an event may actually be the psycho-depth access of one's only birth into the world unshackled by the hyper-coding of the language of one's culture.  Such first event of birth is in our memories and yet one has no conscious access to it even while we can see that in the depth psychology of Jesus/his Movement, they had come to believe that awareness of inner life aka one's spirituality, gave one a different view of one's life.  We need to continually appraise the outcome in thinking and behaviors which such psycho-depth experiences produce within the communities which provide the hermeneutical framework to specify what the valid behaviors and thinking attend such psycho-depth experience.

Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2020

"Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."  This is another way of say the best way that Word is made flesh is when love and justice and kindness are made body acts within human community.

Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2020

It is always good to review what is proclaimed in our name as "self evident" truths.  The Black Lives Matter Movement is provoking Americans to ponder whether the "self evident" truths of the Declaration of Independence are evident in social practice for everyone equally.  It is a good day to reflect upon the "self evident," the tacit, the background beliefs of our lives to see if we are really "foregrounding" the self evident with integrity and congruence.  We may need to consciously work on "trueing up" our background self evident with our foreground behaviors.

Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2020

Jesus said that things had been hidden from the wise and intelligent but revealed to infants.  This is kind of like the Arab proverb regarding the hundred names of God but only 99 of the names are known to human beings.  So why does the camel have the silly grin?  He knows the 100th name of God but he is not telling.  A babe lives close to the original blessing of birth and is not yet "polluted" by language use that has to place names as mediation with Immediacy, so the inability to use any signifiers for the Signified is a blessed state and remains as always already but as adults we are condemned to have it die the death of a thousand qualifications with a never ending stream of signifiers about signifiers hoping to feign identity with the Signified.

Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2020

The words of the Bible can sometimes be so inscrutable that one ends up projecting the words derived from one's own word tradition to create a dialogue with a range of possible meanings.  Part of the inscrutable experience is due the fact that we weren't there and there is not an unbroken continuously specific chain of interpretation to specify the intended meaning of the agents and speakers in the original contexts of derivation.  One can be stuck within a "tradition" of interpretation such that anyone outside of that tradition is a godless heretic or one can accept the play of the clash of hermeneutic circles as contributing to the continuous deconstructions of meanings, and in this play there occurs "aha" insights which catch one's attentions and which please.  But rather than try to hammer one's insight into syllogistic logic of a final propositional truth, one simply lets the insights go as a flickering aesthetic moment which inspires one in significant ways, even to the point of sharing the insight with others to see if the insight works for  or is pleasing to others too.  The vast field of the universe of all discourse should make us very humble about or very limited participation is the small personal linguistic field of our insights.