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.

The full article is available here

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.