Still Speaking God, you spoke the Word of creation, and being was. We see your wonders encoded in DNA, supernovas, sleeping infants. And as you spoke us into being, so we seek to speak of you, in praise and joy, using words, some ancient, some new. Forgive our sometimes stuttering attempts at praise, our clumsy language of love. Remind us always that we are a people of story, words shaping our praise, words shaped by our tradition. Bless our words, and move us beyond them, beyond the book we love, beyond our meetings and votes, move us into the still silence with which you speak us. Amen.
In or Of?
I can’t even imagine. One minute you’re doing what folks in Galilee, that remote outpost of the equally remote province at the edge of the empire, you’re doing what you do, which is just barely scraping by, and the next you’re following a man so charismatic that he is able to pull you away from everything you know with crazy promises. I can show you life in full. God’s just and caring realm is here. I will make you a fisher of people. And they did it, at least some did. Sure, some listened to him preach and then went back to serving the Romans, struggling to eat. But a small few made a decision to lead a radical itinerant lifestyle of preaching and healing. And that was exactly where things were when, suddenly, the charismatic man was gone, executed, and yet present, and then gone again, and he had given you no real clue how you were supposed to live in the world after he was gone. As much as they believed, and they did believe, the followers of Jesus must have been simply terrified in those first years. Jesus called them out of normal life, asked them to form a radical new community, and then, Holy Spirit or not, he left them in a world that didn’t work quite the way he asked them to live. Continue reading “In or Of?”
Prayer for Mercy
You are an awesome God
and there is power in this place.
Remind us of the perilous task we undertake
like the ancient priests
entering before holiness
drowning in blessing.
Remind us of the passion of that night in Jerusalem
terror and love co-mingling
at table
in a garden
during a trial.
Remind us of the dancing flames
of Pentecost ablaze
of prophecy and tongues.
We confess that we have made a routine of your work
have beat it into a familiar shape
sometimes dull.
Forgive us, renew us, transform us.
Amen.
Alchemy
Two weeks ago, at the start of our current sermon series, we attempted to speak of God the Creator, or more properly to un-speak of God, for we had to admit that we are at one end of three thousand years of God-talk going back at least to the earliest psalms, and that we humans have always struggled, when we try to make God accessible, with the risk of turning God into a false God, a version of ourselves writ cosmic, but at least we can locate ourselves on a theological trajectory, there is an ample body of scripture and tradition we can use to frame the conversation. Continue reading “Alchemy”