When Compassion Wakes Up - Sue Monk Kidd

"Faith Without Works Is Awesome," Says Seattle Man - Lark News

After cramming his calendar with volunteer events for the last six years, Al Simpson finally quit all ministry activity and discovered that “doing nothing for the Lord feels way better than I expected.”

Simpson still enjoys daily time with the Lord and Bible reading. But he now refuses to lift a finger for the gospel and says no to every request to serve.

“Faith without works is an amazing lifestyle,” he says. “A little piece of me comes back to life every time I tell someone, ‘No, thanks. Find someone else.’”

The full article is available here

Why Rome Persecuted Early Christians - Brian Zahnd

Was There Really "No Room in the Inn"? - Mario Seiglie

A more authentic cultural understanding enhances the meaning of the story, rather than diminishing it.

We’ve grown up hearing the account that the “inn” in Bethlehem was full, with no “room” available, so Joseph and Mary ended up in a stable, with Jesus Christ born and laid in a manger there.

This image has been used to promote the typical Christmas nativity scene for generations. Yet a careful analysis of the biblical text reveals quite a different story!

This is important, because a more authentic cultural understanding enhances the meaning of the story, rather than diminishing it.

A typical translation of Luke 2:7 says about Mary giving birth to Jesus, “And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” 

The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word translated “inn” here is kataluma. It means a place of rest, usually a guest room. In fact, the same writer Luke uses this very word later where it clearly refers to a guest room and not an inn.

Furthermore, Luke elsewhere in his Gospel uses a different Greek word when he writes about an actual inn. 

While Jesus was conceived of God the Father through the Holy Spirit, his was nonetheless a typical birth for the common man of his day. Though God, he truly came as one of us.

Jesus was rejected at his birth by Herod, but the Bethlehem shepherds welcomed him with great joy, as did the common people in later years. The city of David was true to its own, and the village community provided for him. He was born among them, in the natural setting of the birth of any village boy, surrounded by helping hands and encouraging women's voices.

For centuries Palestinian peasants have been born on the raised terraces of the one-room family homes. The birth of Jesus was no different. His incarnation was authentic. His birth most likely took place in the natural place for a peasant to be born; in a peasant home.

The full article is available here

Chanukah & Christmas As We Approach Trump Presidency - Rabbi Michael Lerner

Peacemaking By God's People - Henri J Nouwen

The True Self - Richard Rohr

Divine Justice = Restoration, Not Retribution - Jacob M. Wright

The Little and Ordinary - Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon

The Bible's Theological Progression - Matthew Distefano

Reflection and Renewal: Not Pursuing or Believing In Peace (based on Isaiah 9:6)

God,

The birth of Jesus is an amazing reminder of how much you celebrate and value the world which you created. Thank you for your endless and all-encompassing love.

The angels who announced Jesus' birth sang of that love, which they proclaimed as a message of "peace on earth and goodwill to all."

But if we're honest, we need to confess that sometimes we don't think much beyond our own narrow interests. We all too easily fall into the trap of looking out for #1 and thinking that your world is one where we need to compete with our neighbor to get ahead.

Instead of taking the posture of sacrificial love - which brings about the kind of peace the angels sang about and Jesus taught - we try to achieve peace for ourselves through strength, power, and status.

Other times, we give up hope that peace and goodwill are even possible.  When we see the need and brokeness around us, we can become despairing and cynical.  We must confess that we often lack faith in your promises and your design for abundant life.

We need your help. Keep us open.  Keep us hoping.  Teach us to rest in you.

Amen.

The Incarnation Isn't About Atonement - Father Richard Rohr

The Song 'Mary Did You Know' Misses What The Magnificat Is About - Jeff Wiersma

Based on the text of the Magnificat, it sure seems like Mary knew, which would render the song 'Mary Did You Know' moot. 

In addition to that, the lyrics of 'Mary Did You Know' glosses over the subversive social message Mary sings of in the Magnificat.  

As Nadia Bolz Weber writes in Preaching The Whole Magnificat:

"Mary's song isn’t a docile picture of obedience singing about how great it is to be pregnant. Mary is singing of nothing less than complete overturning of the social and economic order.

You see, there’s a reason why the Magnificat is said to have terrified the Russian Czars. Because, the message is that if you find yourself rich and powerful then … watch out! This young little Jewish girl is not singing about a whole lot of good news for you."

Christianity Should Be A Revolutionary Protest Against Violence - Dietrich Bonhoffer

Just Distribution = Moral Obligation - Pope Francis

Responsive Call To Worship: God Is The Creative Spark of All Life (based on Isaiah 6:3)

Reader: God is the creative spark of new life. 

All: We have come seeking God in this new day.

Reader: God, you are the architect of life and wholeness.
All: Open our souls to your stirring.

Reader: Spirit, you are the creator of awe and beauty.
All: Open our eyes to your ever-surrounding presence.

Reader: Jesus, you are the one through whom everything came into existence.
All: Open our hearts to your love.

Reader: Everything that God creates is good.
The entire universe is filled with God’s goodness.
All: For this endless, all-surrounding grace, we rejoice and give thanks.

Benediction: Trusting God's Presence When We God Feels Absent (based on Psalm 13:5)

God, help us not to completely lose hope when we experience those times in life when you seem far away or when our walk through this world is difficult or feels lonely.

Give us grace to trust your indwelling and all-surrounding presence, especially when it feels like you're not there.

Likewise, help us to be the grace of your presence to those around us who aren't feeling you near, who are experiencing difficulty, or who feel all alone.

God Is Not "In Control" - Faith Forward at Patheos

It’s a problematic theology that’s not truly helpful.

To all my fellow Christian who find solace in saying/believing that “God’s in control” .... and try to use that belief to bring comfort to people who are hurting, grieving, and/or suffering people ... I respectfully encourage you to stop.

Stop needing God to be in control. Even if you only mean well in believing and saying it ... it’s a problematic theology that’s not truly helping you or others.

But why? Five reasons come to mind:

• We use this in a theologically inconsistent way. It’s really hard to avoid implying that God causes numerous atrocities while saying God is in control. No matter how many times you defend the sentiment with “God’s ways are not ours” or “we can’t see the whole picture,” you’ve made a theological choice.
• We say it because we’re scared, not because it’s true. We need to listen to our anxiety, not ignore it. “God is in control” is like a drug, distracting us from potentially solvable problems rather than leading us to courageously face them.
• God’s upset by injustice. I have a hard time believing God is cool and calm when violence, hatred, and oppression rear their ugly heads. I think God is pissed. But I also believe God is more like a caring, attentive and responsive parent then a stoic, hard-ass one.
• It’s patriarchal. The notion of a controlling God, where nothing out of God’s will is taking place, sounds like a relic of the days of kings. This is the God of slave-owners and abusive men, not the God of lighthearted but weepy, fiery but gentle, confident but teachable, foot-washing but foot-washed Jesus.
• It creates passivity. The “God is in control” narrative is silencing. It’s the kind of thing the oppressors tell the oppressed to maintain the status quo: just accept your suffering, God has a reason for this. What a horrible lie.

God has graced humans with creativity and passion and a longing for justice. If our theology silences these impulses—as I believe a theology of divine control does—it needs to be rejected, because it is allowing not good but evil to flourish under the guise of “God’s plan.”

The full article is available here

What Do Pipelines have to do with the Doctrine of Discovery? Do Justice

We've forgotten the wisdom of the ancient Hebrews, our ancestors of the faith, who understood that the created world is inherently sacred and pulses with the divine.
 
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI declared that any land not inhabited by Christians was free for the new generation of European explorers to take at will. History would remember this declaration as the third of three papal bulls that make up the Doctrine of Discovery, the legal and ecclesiastical justification for centuries of European theft of Native lands and genocide of Native peoples—imperialism baptized in the language of Christian mission.

The brutality and imperialism sanctioned by the Doctrine of Discovery is papered over in U.S. textbooks, glimpsed only in short units on the Trail of Tears or the massacre at Wounded Knee.

It's not hard to see this legacy playing itself out today. The exploitation and abuse rubber-stamped by the Doctrine of Discovery and played out in the rampant imperialism of the “Age of Exploration” is alive and well in the hearts and minds of Western economic, cultural, and political institutions today.

The Western imagination has been utterly colonized by the cold calculus of Discovery, convincing us that the earth is nothing more than inert raw material meant to fire our industrial machines and that non-white lives matter only if they can be assimilated into dominant Western culture to fuel ever more exploitation; of ever more “discovery”.

We have forgotten the wisdom of the ancient Hebrews, our ancestors of the faith, who understood that the created world is inherently sacred and pulses with the divine. Dismissed is the spirituality of Indigenous communities who recognize humanity’s place inside of, and dependent upon, the great web of beings.

The full article is available here

What The 2016 Election Revealed - Jeff Wiersma

The church's role in this time will be imperative.  It must contribute to a shared vision which rejects Religious Nationalism, Hate Speech Demagoguery, and Economic Darwinism - showing the way instead to expressions of social justice, compassion, empathy, and radical solidarity.  

The 2016 Election was not your run-of-the-mill Presidential Election.

As Andy Borowitz said, "Trump wasn’t created in a vacuum; he is the inevitable product of a coarsened culture that rewards bullying over kindness, humiliation over respect, hatred over love."

Meanwhile, his opponent was the 2nd member of Clinton Political Machine (preceded by Al Gore in 2000) to run a campaign that only compounded their likability problems and ultimately resulted in the election of an inferior Republican candidate.

Sociologically, this election has revealed the following:

• Technological changes combined with corporate global bottom-feeding, 36 years of voodoo economics, and hyper-capitalist financialization have left working people behind, who feel betrayed, unrecognized, and angry.

• Rhetoric about progressive social policy - policy that aims to help working people recover from the scorched-earth class war being waged against them by the 1% - falls on deaf ears when the Democratic candidate is the ultimate crony capitalist.

• The false lure of a conservative Supreme Court and single-issue voting still holds many Evangelicals hostage. They have voted Republican for this one reason - all the while supporting wars, environmental destruction, the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor - and not gotten one bit closer to overturning Roe v Wade, which was made law by a Republican-nominated Supreme Court. (And even if they did overturn it, abortion wouldn't go away without a culture that supports life).

• The public witness of Evangelical Christianity is now seriously discredited, with its most visible and cacophonous white, male leadership aligned with a political agenda antithetical to the values and life of Jesus. 

• The entrenched attitudes of racial bigotry in American society have been shamelessly exposed. 

• The decades-long pattern of manipulating racial fears, employed by the GOP beginning with their Southern strategy, now boiled over in an ugly political movement driven by resentment of those who are different. That their candidate was manifestly and dangerously unqualified didn't trump the affection that the President-elect's supporters lavished on him because he spewed hate speech at the same "other" that they've been told to hate. 

• Fears and biases have clouded attention to facts. An entire self-reinforcing network of right wing media have captured an audience by playing to fears and biases, all while using the time-tested cult tactic of warning it's adherents that they are the only source of truth and that all other media sources are lying to them and biased. 

• The white, largely male majority which controlled political power since America’s founding is losing its dominant power, provoking anxiety and political desperation among its adherents.

Within this setting, the need for public discernment and a resonant vision is paramount.

The church's role in this time will be imperative. It must contribute to a shared vision which rejects the idolatry of Religious Nationalism, Demagoguery, and Economic Darwinism - showing the way instead to expressions of social justice, compassion, empathy, radical solidarity, mercy, and righteousness "as an ever flowing stream," which is our ancient and future calling.

Benediction: Renewing Our Hearts and Minds (based on Romans 12:2)

Loving God, through the power of your Spirit, renew our hearts and minds ... so that we may give thanks for your life-giving presence and follow the example of Jesus, who served all of your creation - which you called "good" - with love.

Responsive Call To Worship: God's Blessings (based on Psalm 100)

Reader: We gather to celebrate the goodness and love of God.
All: God is faithful and just.

Reader: God's promises stand the test of time.
All: God’s grace and mercy sustain us.

Reader: God is our source of light and life.
All : For all of these blessings and more, let's share our praise and thanksgiving!

Why Many Other Christians and I Are Grieving Trump's Victory - Jeff Wiersma

It feels like our yearning for what Jesus called "shalom," our desire to live out Micah 6:8, and our allegiance to what Jesus taught in the beatitudes has been rejected by 80% of our own faith community. It feels like our core beliefs have been rejected in favor of the pursuit of power by evangelical leaders and a candidate who built his campaign by stoking fear.

I will begin with my standard 2016 election disclaimer: "I didn't vote for Hillary either. In fact, I have never voted for a Clinton."

Ok, now that we got that out of the way ... here is my best attempt to explain - to those of you in my faith community that voted for Trump - why exactly it is that many of your fellow faith community members are feeling discouraged and alienated in the wake of Trump's win.

Many people I know who voted for Trump are people I worship with each week, people whose kids hang out with my kids, people who visited me when I was in the hospital. I know them to be people with good hearts and caring souls on a personal and community level.

So with that understanding ... in the time following election day, I have been determined to keep an open mind to the possibility that many of my friends - who chose to vote in favor of Donald Trump - could have been doing so as much to cast a negative vote against Hillary for ideological reasons as they were wholeheartedly endorsing who Donald Trump is as a person.

As for more specifically political reasons that some who have supported Trump have told me where among their determining factors ...

*  The economy and Washington corruption: The upset that many Trump supporters feel with how the economic policy has played out over the last 36 years - and how crony-capitalism disadvantages 99% of the U.S. populace - is understood and shared by many of us.

* Pro Life: I understand the tenacity with which the abortion issue is reiterated in evangelical church culture and how that is often the lone issue around which many choose which candidate they will support (more on that later, or check out this link).

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But here is what I would like to ask these friends who voted for Trump - can they empathize with those of us who are devastated that Trump won and hear the reasons why? Can they see why we would be discouraged by the fact that a candidate whose values are antithetical to those Jesus lived out and taught - for which the candidate was criticized by many across different political and theological spectrums - will now be our nation's leader?

It's worth nothing that famously conservative publications like Christianity Today and World Magazine made the same critique of Trump's character deficiencies and hateful rhetoric. Conservative church leaders like Russell Moore, Max Lucado, Alan Noble, and R. Albert Mohler Jr did as well, to name but a few.

Please, try to see how it is confounding to many of us that a group of celebrity American preachers actively campaigned for Trump. They weren't merely rooting behind the scenes for "anyone but Hillary." Exasperatingly, the ethical and moral deficiencies of Trump - which they so readily shrugged off - were the very same ones that they had cited as disqualifying factors in previous candidates and presidents.

As a result, many of us feel sold out by the established Church which compromised its moral authority for the promise of power.

In addition, the perpetual insistence by Jesus that we are to "love our neighbors as ourselves" appears to have little effect in chipping away at the evangelical support of a man who degraded women based on their physical appearance and vilified entire ethnicities and faiths.

It is disheartening that a man who advocated for torture and the illegal killing of civilians during his campaign was so overwhelmingly approved of by American Christians.

Along those lines, our fear for the safety of those fellow image-bearers of Christ who comprise the "least of these" has left us shaken.

(Did this statement trigger any of you to ask the valid question, "What about abortion?" If so, I'd urge you to read "Why I'm A Pro-Life Liberal," which can be found here.)

Our fear is valid and reasonable. Trump's candidacy and rhetoric were heartily endorsed by the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, and white supremacists. While it is true that no one can control who supports them, it is also true that those groups have felt moved to support Trump because his rhetoric often echoes and amplifies their message. That these are groups that cause harm would be grounds enough for our apprehension. That these groups do so in the name of our faith tradition is exasperating.

That the president-elect has tapped prominent white supremacist-sympathizer Steve Bannon to be his Chief Of Staff has not helped to allay our fears.

These are some of the key reasons why our lingering grief and upset is unique to this particular election. We aren't grieving that a preferred political ideology didn't win the day or that we didn't get what he want. We've all had the candidate who we preferred to see win end up losing.

This is different.

It feels like our yearning for what Jesus called "shalom," our desire to live out Micah 6:8, and our allegiance to what Jesus taught in the beatitudes has been rejected by 80% of our own faith community. It feels like our core beliefs have been rejected in favor of the pursuit of power by evangelical leaders and a candidate who built his campaign by stoking fear.

These aren't things we need to "get over" or to "stop being crybabies" about. These are serious questions about the validity of the missional priorities of the American Church and whether there's much saltiness or light left in its public witness.

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In the midst of all of this, the good news is that Jesus is already on the margins. Jesus is already present among the very people that our president-elect degrades as weak and targets with hate-speech. When we stand in solidarity with the despised and the suffering, we're standing where Jesus is already present.

Most importantly, we don't have to abandon Jesus to abandon the unholy marriage (whether of genuine affection or ideological convenience) between Donald Trump and a large segment of the American Church.

Just as we love all of humanity as instructed by our Christian faith, we love Donald Trump. Were he about to step in front of a bus, we'd pull him back to safety, etc. We hope that the light and life that we all possess inherently will come to the surface in his life.

500 Clergy Hold 'Historic' Mass Gathering for Standing Rock - Common Dreams

In a "historic" show of interfaith solidarity, 500 clergy members prayed along the banks of North Dakota's Cannonball River on Thursday in support of Indigenous peoples protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

During the day of prayer on November 03, the clergy members marched to the bridge over the Cannonball River and "ceremonially burned a copy of a 600-year-old document," AP reported. Known as the Doctrine of Discovery, "the document from the 1400s sanctioned the taking of land from Indigenous peoples."

According to the Episcopal News Service, "The interfaith group spent more than 5 hours on site, marching, singing hymns, sharing testimony, and calling others to join them in standing with the more than 200 tribes who have committed their support to the Sioux Nation as they protest the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)."

"It was very moving to be there in solidarity," said Philadelphia-based Bishop Dwayne Royster. "I wanted to be present as an African-American clergy person to let the people at Standing Rock understand that we as African Americans need them to know that we stand with them in their fight."

Similar acts of solidarity, particularly by people of faith, have grown in recent days. On Wednesday, 9 rabbis, rabbinical students, and Jewish community members were arrested in Philadelphia for staging a civil disobedience action at a downtown TD Bank, one of the biggest financiers of the pipeline project. Nearly 300 rabbis have signed a statement in opposition to Dakota Access.

The full article is available here

Care For The Poor Is The Essence Of Christianity - Henri J Nouwen

Following Jesus = Welcoming The Stranger - Scott Bader-Saye

Listening to the Faith of Millennials - The Banner

The importance of living out an authentic faith, one that is rich and full and not tarnished by false claims and advertising slogans, was a theme that the young people spoke about during the discussion held at the Grand Rapids, Mich., office of the CRC.

Sponsored by the Great Lakes Coaching Group of Christian Reformed Home Missions, the panel was held to get a sense of how young people view the church and how the church might be able to serve their needs, said Stanley Koster, coordinator of the coaching group.

Conducted by the Barna Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network, the study found that millennials are highly skeptical of the traditional church and yet are hungry for transcendence.

In addition, according to the study, this group looks for people who live out, instead of simply speak about, their Christianity. In addition, they don’t see church buildings, especially soaring cathedrals, as being central to their faith.

When they do think about church structures, says the study, they like ones that are simple, honor nature, and offer space for reflection and prayer.

The importance of living out an authentic faith, one that is rich and full and not tarnished by false claims and advertising slogans, was a theme that the young people spoke about during the discussion held at the Grand Rapids, Mich., office of the CRC.

The full article is available here

What I Would Change About Our Immigration Conversation - CRC Network

So much of the conversation about immigration during this election season has not been based on facts or on the biblical value of philoxenia.

There has been much talk about immigrants—and not enough listening to immigrants themselves.

How does the immigration conversation need to change?

Four immigrants will speak up from their experience this month on Do Justice. Sign up to receive the posts in your inbox here.

Let’s change the conversation about immigrants. #BlessingNotBurden

Check out the posts that have gone up so far:

Diversity is Our Greatest Strength: Sarahi

Immigrants come with Skills, Drives, and Passion: Berniz

Original Goodness - Richard Rohr

Original Sin Biblically Refuted - from Dividing The Word

A Fork in the Road: Civil Religion or Christianity? Nate Pyle

Civil religion offers a seductive religious counterfeit to Christianity.

I believe we are coming to a fork in the road where the Civil Religion of America will distinguish itself from biblical Christianity. In one direction it will be Country and god; in the other Jesus and Church.

With the Constitution as the sacred text, the founding fathers its saints, and common sense individualism its sanctified goal for humanity, our civil religion offers a seductive religious counterfeit to Christianity. When it comes to American politics, one needs an immense amount of discernment to distinguish between religious sounding talk and actual Christian talk.

This is why Jerry Falwell Jr, in December 2015, saying, “If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them," is so concerning.

Notice, his statement talks of preemptive violence that “ends those Muslims before they walked in.” Let’s be clear, this is not the way of Jesus. In the Kingdom of God, violence does not defeat violence. The cross of Jesus unmasks the false power of violence to bring about peace by defeating evil in a show of weakness. We may be allured by the promises of power; hopeful in the force of military general. But do not be mistaken, this is not Christianity.

If it was just one instance where one person said one wacky thing, then okay. But Falwell’s statement was met with cheers!

Not only that, but we have Donald Trump, who says his favorite book is the Bible, saying we should discriminate against Muslims, keep them out of the country whose First Amendment is the freedom of religion, and give them special I.D.’s. It’d be nice to chalk those comments up to a xenophobic outlier, but it’s hard to make the case that he’s an outlier when he is the GOP's presidential candidate. Thousands upon thousands of people support him, meaning they believe Trump is speaking for them. He is saying what they believe. That should frighten the hell out of us!

But again, we don’t just have the glorification of guns, and we don’t just have a crotchety old man spouting off hatred for a major religion. We also have the active demonization of a people who are fleeing terrorism. Governors across the nation have worked to block refugees from coming to their states out of fear. As Christians called to help the widow and orphan, to welcome the stranger, and to love our neighbor as ourself, blocking refugees in the name of security isn’t a cut and dry answer. We cannot simply abandon these clear teachings of Jesus because we are scared.

Civil religion is not interested in the stranger. It is not interested in love of neighbor. Civil religion is interested only in love of country; which, as a utilitarian faith, must serve the individual. Christianity seeks to love the world, and in doing so, point to the one who so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

I do not want to stand idly by as the lines between civil religion and Christianity are blurred. I believe we are in a moment where Christians have to stand and proclaim with whole-hearted conviction that Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar.

The full article is available here

Responsive Call To Worship: Lives Of Service (based on 2 Corinthians 5:20)

based on Worship Connection
by Nancy C Townley

Reader: God, guide our lives in service to your world.
All: Make us ambassadors of hope and promise.

Reader: God, open our eyes.
All: Help us to see your world as you see it.

Reader: Open our hearts and our spirits to follow your path.
All: Help us to be people who bring good news to those bound by the chains of injustice.

Reader: Come, let us worship God, who sets things right; who makes all things new.
All: Let us praise God with joyful hearts.

Christians Need To Be Honest About Bible's Contradictions - Chuck Queen in Patheos

We must always give first priority and more authority to those texts that teach us about Jesus and what Jesus taught, believed, and did, than other scriptures.

Christian leaders and churches need to admit that we have done a poor job in teaching parishioners how to read biblical texts critically. Perhaps Christians wouldn’t believe and do such silly things if they had been taught to read the Bible critically before trying to appropriate it spiritually.

The only constructive way forward is to be honest with the text and admit that the Bible gives different portrayals and images of God that cannot simply be ignored or rationalized away. When you get right down to it, no Christian, even the most conservative Christian, believes the Bible equally. Some parts of the Bible are focused on, and other parts of the Bible are ignored or dismissed in some way.

However, we must always give preference to the Gospels – to the stories about Jesus and the stories Jesus told. We must always give first priority and more authority to those texts that teach us about Jesus and what Jesus taught, believed, and did, than other scriptures.

Of course we also have to read the Gospel texts critically as well. That means acknowledging that the Gospel writers sometimes embellished and altered the stories that were passed down to them. And undoubtedly the oral stories were altered and changed as they were passed along decades before they were ever written down, collected, and utilized as a source for the composition of our canonical Gospels.

Reading the Bible honestly and critically helps us to realize that the Bible didn’t float down from heaven on the wings of angels. The Bible came to us through a very human and fallible process. It also provides some boundaries and parameters for making spiritual application of these texts to our lives and faith communities.

The full article is available here

Stages of Faith - Dr James Fowler

"Although the growing understanding of God can be traced through the Bible, some remain fixated on certain aspects of God. This is because they never progress beyond certain stages."

- Dr James Fowler, Stages of Faith Development

Real Worship - The Rev. J. Gary Brinn in Constructive Faith

What we do in our faith community only matters if it changes what we do everywhere else. Mouths without hands is empty praise.

God is a powerful force of creativity, compassion, and love in the universe. Our praise or worship is an attempt to align ourselves with that powerful force because it is both our source and our end.

This is all well and good as an abstraction, but what does that look like in our lives? Is it only about interior faith and exterior avoidance of sin? Or is there something more?

For those of us in the Christian tradition, the construct of a God with agency and a passive creation changed radically with the arrival of Jesus, the Hebrew prophet and teacher. We Christians believe that, - in Jesus - the world had a direct experience of the divine.  God was in fact instead a force for healing and justice rather than being other-worldly or a warrior-king. 

If our purpose in praising and worshiping God is to align ourselves with the original force of creativity and compassion - of love and growth, of the ordinary miracles of today - then we should know that this is neither interior and nor static. It is not “give my heart to Jesus.” God does not only need your heart. God needs your hands.

The trajectory of our faith - our growing understanding of God and the event of God’s anointed in the person of Jesus - demands that we no longer be passive lumps waiting for divine intervention. We are the divine intervention. This is how God chose to act in the world, through the beautifully imperfect flesh and blood of humanity. That is how God acted in Jesus. It is how God acts today.

What we do in our faith community only matters if it changes what we do everywhere else. Mouths without hands is empty praise.

The full article is available here

Reflection and Renewal: Be Willing To Be Continually Made New (based on 1 Corinthians 10:13)

based on "Prayer of Confession" by Beth Merrill Neel 

God, we don’t always live out what we claim to believe. We turn away from you, from our neighbors, and from our true selves. We dim your light within us with our pride, our self-righteousness, and our need for control.

Forgive us.

Help us to remember that your love for us is endless, and that you've told us to love others in that same manner.

Help us to have open ears, eyes, and hearts to notice how you call us - again and again - back to love, back to grace, back to your light.

Give us the courage to be willing to be continually made new so that we can fully love you and all of your creation.

Healty, Liberating Religion - Chuck Queen

The Trinity: The Power Of Love - Richard Rohr

Circles are much more threatening than pyramids are, at least to empires, the wealthy, or any patriarchal system.

I think it’s foolish to presume we can understand Jesus if we don’t first of all understand Trinity. We will continually misinterpret and misuse Jesus if we don’t first participate in the circle dance of mutuality and communion within which he participated. We instead make Jesus into “Christ the King,” a title he rejected in his lifetime (John 18:37).

Humans are more comfortable with a divine monarch at the top of pyramidal reality. Circles are much more threatening than pyramids are, at least to empires, the wealthy, or any patriarchal system. So we quickly made the one who described himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29) into an imperial God, both in western Rome and eastern Constantinople.

What if we actually surrendered to the inner Trinitarian flow and let it be our primary teacher? Even our notion of society, politics, and authority—which is still top-down and outside-in—would utterly change. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:13) should be our circular and all-inclusive ecology. From the very beginning of creation we see this pattern: God the Father, Christ the Word, and the Holy Spirit as a mighty wind (see Genesis 1:1-3).

Trinitarian theology says that spiritual power is more circular or spiral, and not so much hierarchical. It’s here; it’s within us. It’s shared and shareable; it’s already entirely for us and grounded within us. God’s Spirit is planted within each of us and operating as each of us! Let’s not keep looking to the top of the pyramid.

The Trinity shows that God’s power is not domination, threat, or coercion.  There’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power and the letting go of autonomous power.

There’s no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinity of trust and mutuality. This should have changed all Christian relationships: in marriage, in culture, and even in international relations.

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Already In The Presence Of God - Richard Rohr

Trinitarian Revolution - Richard Rohr

God Is The Unity - Barbara Brown Taylor

The True Source of Joy Is Love - Irma Zaleski

God Is A Verb - Bishop John Shelby Spong

Responsive Call To Worship: God Invites Us To Connection (based on Matthew 6:33)

Reader: Our good and gracious God invites us to come and find connection ...
All: ... may our hearts be open.

Reader: Lord, as we gather now ...
All: ... let us seek you.

Reader: As you knock ...
All: ... may we open the door to you.

Reader: As you make yourself known to us ...
All: ... may we praise you.

Reflection and Renewal: Help Us To Be Tuned In (based on Matthew 6:6)

God, even though we want to have connection with you, the idea of praying can seem weird and uncomfortable a lot of the time.

Sometimes we feel guilty because we don’t think we’re good enough at praying or we don’t it as often as we think we should.  Our understanding of prayer remains limited and we remain stuck.

And sometimes when we pray, we are shallow; treating you like some kind of a vending machine. We can be quick to ask for all kinds of thing, but not nearly as quick to utilize prayer as a time of listening and reflection; as a way to reorient ourselves towards how you’ve asked us to live; loving you and loving others.

And sometimes, we can be so focused on asking for what we want that we miss opportunities to be the answer to other’s prayers.

So God, help us to appreciate the fullness of your love and to remain aware of how you continually move around us, within us, and through us to your world.

Help our eyes to see and our eyes to hear.

Amen

Responsive Benediction: Being The Hands and Feet of God To The World (based on 1 Corinthians 12:27)

Reader: As we go now, to be God's presence in the world ...
All: We will open our minds to understand the needs around us.

Reader: As we go now, to be Christ's servants in the world ...
All: We will open our hands to share with all.

Reader: As we go now, to be the Spirit's hope for the world ...
All: We will open our hearts to welcome those who have no one to care for them.

Benediction: God Continues To Create, Speak, Guide, and Breathe New Life (based on Genesis 2:9)

We believe that God continues to create, so may we continue to be made new. We believe that God continues to speak, so may we listen carefully.

We believe that God continues to guide, so may we walk in God’s way. We believe that God continues to breathe new life into being, so may we be light and life to God’s world.

Responsive Call To Worship: God The Creative Spark (based on Genesis 1:31)

Reader: God is the creative spark of new life.
All: We will seek God in this new day.

Reader: What God creates is good.
All: We will rejoice and be glad.

Reader: God, architect of life and wholeness ...
All: ... open our eyes to your ever-surrounding presence.

Reader: Spirit, creator of awe and beauty ...
All: ... open our souls to your stirring.

Reader: Jesus, through whom everything came into existence ...
All: ... open our hearts to your grace and love.

Richard Rohr - The Divine Dance

Father Richard Rohr on embracing Perichoresis instead of "Mere Monotheism."

Call To Worship: Communion Service (based on Isaiah 40:3)

From far out in the wasteland that we find ourselves in, we cry to you God.  We hunger for Jesus, the bread of life, and we thirst for God's Spirit.

God please hear us! Pay attention to our cries for help! Help us to remember that even though we may feel lost and far from home, there is mercy and grace with you.

Our trust in you is the hope that we're hanging on to and we're taking you at your word God. So we're waiting on you God, seeking.

Full Incarnation - Richard Rohr