May 31, 2009 Prayers of the People

Holy Spirit, breath of God, Pentecost fire …
We give thanks for this day of Pentecost reminder …
When you paid your people an extraordinary visit …
And created the church of Jesus Christ …

We pray now, O Holy Spirit, for the church of Jesus Christ, the church you created on Pentecost Day, a church scattered far and wide across the earth, in teeming cities and tiny towns … a church of soaring steeples and thatched roofs … churches, large and churches small; churches old and churches new … your people, O Holy Spirit – to lift up the name of Jesus and hold high the cross on which He died for the sins of the world.

Help your church, O Holy Spirit, to be faithful to Christ all the more.
Fill us anew, we pray, with your breath and anoint us with Pentecost fire.

Help your church, O Holy Spirit,
To boldly go where no one has gone before …
To be venturesome and brave …
Experimental and exciting …
With Christ leading the way.

O Holy Spirit, we are laying the foundation and beginning the work of calling a pastor …
Prepare us, we pray, for a new day:
Fill us with the fragrance and favor of Jesus Christ.
Give us, we pray, a good voice …
A Pentecost voice …
Vibrant with the sounds of love …
A joyful noise to attract a curious world …

O Holy Spirit, work some miracle in our hearts today … some thought, some idea, that can spell the difference between the hour we got here and when we leave for home and work…
Especially, we pray for those harassed by difficulty … souls burdened by distress and sorrow … afflicted with life’s pains and bewilderments …
Give to them, we pray, O Holy Spirit, a vision of blue sky and bright sun, though the clouds be dark and heavy … and take us all gently by the hand; lead us through our dark valleys and bring us to the better day.

Let us leave here, O Spirit of the Living God, with a greater measure of faith, hope and love … a clearer sense of Christ and his purpose, and through him, our purpose, too, and a deeper commitment to honoring your work in our midst!

O Spirit of God, confirm our faith and strengthen our resolve to serve Jesus Christ.

In whose name we pray, saying together, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven …

Sexy Rompers and Christian Faith

On one of my Facebook pages, an add: “The Must-Have Sexy Romper” – Get it now, with a demure model effecting a kind of dangerous innocence.

Amazing …

Should I get it now and give it to my wife?

What will it do?

Will it make life infinitely better? Slightly better? Or not at all? Or will it soon end up in the discard box?

How does advertising like this work? And to what end (other than a vast transfer of wealth, from my pocket to someone else’s)?

Anyway, I’m wondering about the American mind these days.

And the role of “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” – that’s us, if you’re wondering.

I know, I know. Someone will read this and say, “Lighten up Eggebeen. Relax! Smell the roses.”

But I still wonder.

I wonder about American Christianity. And, yes, it is American. Faith, like a flower or vegetable, takes root and grows in a cultural soil, taking on the coloration and odor of the soil in which it grows, absorbing its nutrients (or lack thereof) and any toxins.

There are times when I see church advertising, and I wonder: What’s the difference between selling Jesus, as if he were a commodity to enhance your personal performance, a “savior” who has nothing better to do that concern himself with your hangnails and bad hair, and selling a must-have sexy romper?

I’m reading a new book by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham – wherein Tom says we have to reclaim the great themes of Scripture – not just dive in and pick up a few juicy verses here and there, but learn how to read all of it, carefully, to discern God’s call, God’s purpose, and see within God’s purpose – to renew all of creation - our purpose.

This purpose, initiated in the original call to Abraham and Sarah, sustained through Israel’s long and complicate life, renewed in the voice of the prophets and established in the life, the teaching, the cross, the tomb and the resurrection of Jesus – is unfolding throughout creation as I write, and, by the grace of God, we’re a part of it.

This is a “must-have” reality for each of us. As the ad puts, “get it now.” Or as Jesus said, The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you.

May 24, 2009 - Prayers of the People

God of our mothers and our fathers, we give thanks for those who dreamed of a land of liberty and justice for all … a land where a human being was the equal of a king, and everyone enjoyed the fullness of opportunity – to be all they could be, to dream without limit, to worship without coercion, and to live and believe freely.

We thank you, O God, for this good and great land called America. You have blessed us bountifully, and we are grateful.
We call to mind on this Memorial Day weekend our highest virtues and our best principles … we commemorate our thoughts today to the young women and men who laid down their lives in duty, and those who served beside them – all who wore our nation’s uniform; who served with distinction and valor, who left home and fortune to heed the call of country.

We bless their memory, and we bless those who returned home safely, carrying within them the secret memories of war and its many sorrows.

LORD God Almighty, save our nation from the worst instincts of nationalism …
The love of power and the rattling of sabers …
Help us be strong, and to practice the gentleness of strength …
Give us an understanding of other peoples and nations …
A wise sympathy for other points of view …
Help us, we pray, to take our place in the family of nations …
Remind us, O God, that to such nations who have received so much, much more is required …
Judge us according to our wealth, O God.
Judge us according to actions, O God.
Judge us according to the freedom we grant to the stranger within our land.
Judge us with a firm hand, that we might take these occasions to reflect on our character, our vision, our loyalties, our dreams – and rise to the highest and the best in our American character.

Now bless us, we pray, in the remains of the day … fill our worship with your Holy Spirit and endow our hearts with the fullness of Christ.

And with gratitude and peace, we pray together the prayer Jesus taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done …

May 3, 2009 - Prayers of the People

O LORD our God, great is your name and greatly are you to be praised … you and the Lamb beside the throne … who is worthy to break the seven seals and unroll the scroll … worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.

We join our hearts and minds today with your people around the world …
We lift our voices and confess our faith in Jesus Christ our LORD.

We renew our promises and we start all over again - on this, the first day of the week, when we remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead … the victory of life over death, and hope over despair … when the stone was rolled away, because nothing can stand in the way of love.

In these moments of worship, O God, help us, we pray,
To set our lives upon Christ,
To embrace his love and to seek his guidance …
To heed anew his invitation , and follow him with all that we are … and all that we hope to be …
To leave here prepared …
To face the week ahead of us …
To live in faith …
To be gracious in our ways and kindly in our thoughts.

Save us, we pray, from
The crudeness of materialism,
The rudeness of impatience,
Help us, we pray, to think upon the best and noblest things of life …
To be united with Christ …
Having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.
Looking not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Conform us, we pray to the image of Christ … and transform us, we pray, by the renewing of our minds …

We pray, O God, for those near and dear to us …
Our children and grandchildren,
Our parents and grandparents …
Our friends and our neighbors.

We pray for those with whom we work …
We pray for those who serve us the burgers and check us out at the store …
We pray for the man at the street corner, deeply tanned from too many days in the sun … holding a sign that he’s homeless and hungry …
Give us the eyes, we pray, to really see the people around us … to see how real they are … how they fret and fuss just like we do, how they want a chance at life, just like we do; how they love and cry, how they laugh and grieve, just like we do …

We pray for our governor and for our mayor …
We pray our legislators and for our judges …
And we pray for the President and his wife and their children …

We pray for Christians around the world …
And we pray for people of faith everywhere …

We pray for soldiers in every army …
Everyone who has taken up arms …
And we pray that the political forces behind armed conflict
Will find better ways of managing this world …
That soldiers will no longer have to take up arms …
That the sound of guns will cease and the laughter of children will prevail.
We are not fools, LORD.
We know the world in which we live.
And we know ourselves – our own instincts, sometimes so dark.
But we are faithful to Christ, the prince of peace.
And by his grace, we strive to be peacemakers.

Bless us, we pray, in the remains of the day.
Give us some rest and set us upon the paths of righteousness, for your name’s sake.
Help us to catch our breath and renew our vows …
We have a lot to do this week …
And you’ll be there at our side, and for that we thank you.

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven …

A Non-Violent Atonement???

A Palm Sunday Message (2009) by the Rev. Frank Stricklen, a Pittsburgh Presbyterian pastor and musician whom I met on Facebook.

The hopes of a nation were riding with Jesus on the original Palm Sunday. Could this be the Messiah? He certainly had the pedigree. The two genealogies in the New Testament attest to the fact that he came both from the line of David and from that of the Levites. Messiah was to be both King and Priest and Jesus could be both. So every eye was on him as he made his way down the parade route.

Now this was no lavish parade. No grand spectacle. This was a spontaneous celebration by an oppressed people expressing what hope they could muster with whatever they had on hand. Not the lavish pageants of roman excess but the meager and paltry celebration with rags and leaves and whatever could be found by people under the boot of Rome who had little to celebrate and less to celebrate with. Jesus even rode in on a borrowed animal. Still. Every eye was one him as he entered the city and approached the temple. All eyes watched as Jesus walked in and looked around before deciding it was too late in the day to do anything and left. Still the people watched, and waited, and hung on every word. But gradually their patience wore thin and inside a week, as Jesus failed to live up their expectations, he was carrying a cross through the same streets as the now jeering crowd trampled the dried up palms into the dust.

Dust. Less than 40 days ago, we were reminded that we are but dust and to dust we shall return. Indeed, the Creation account reminds us we are made from dust, from the same substance as the earth. (Perhaps so we would value the earth and take care of it. There’s the green commercial for the day.) The Hebrew word for Earth is Adamah and the name of the first man is Adam which literally translates as earthling. We are a people of dust. But what gave us life was the spirit of God. Spirit and Breath are pretty much the same word in Hebrew. So God breathed us full of spirit and gave us life in hopes that we would remain in fellowship with God.

Alas, we chose otherwise. We chose to exercise our free will and go our own way. We sought to recreate God in our image and to act as if we were masters of the universe and as if all of Creation was our plaything to do with as we pleased. In short, we fell. And fell hard. And what God had said would happen did happen. We began to die. Maybe death was a punishment for sin. But more likely it was just a consequence. Perhaps we cut ourselves off from life and breath when we distanced ourselves from the spirit of God that was our breath. Maybe, without God, we are nothing more than dust and when we’ve been apart from God long enough, that breath, that spirit just ceases to be in us and we die. Like it or not, this story and the grisly events of this week remind us of our sin and the resulting death and that we had nowhere to go and no recourse for ending that cycle.

So we needed a saviour. A messiah. A universal king who could reconcile us to the One who gave us breath. Someone who could atone for us. Set things right. Wipe the slate clean. Give us a do over.

And that is what happens in this week as the palms of Sunday give way to the passion of Friday. But today of all days, as Pittsburghers reel from the senseless death of three policemen who answered a call and lost their lives in an instant, how are we to reconcile God’s desire to love us and be in relationship with us to the grisly death of Jesus on the cross? Read St. Anselm and you’ll hear that it is God who demands death and sacrifice.
We crossed God and now God is going to cross us back. We dishonored God so someone has to pay with their life. Since a human besmirched God’s honor, then a human must pay the debt. And since no human can do that, God lovingly gives the only begotten Son as a scapegoat--human enough to pay the debt owed by humans but divine so as to be able to do what humans cannot. That is, live a perfect and spotless life so that the sacrificial lamb is unblemished and without spot. We made a debit by rejecting God and now Jesus will offer his life as a credit to wipe out our debt. Done. Finis. Mission accomplished. His death pays our debt. Sound familiar? You’ve probably heard it all your life.

But another church father, Athanasius says “Hey, wait. Hold on a minute. Don’t you think that Jesus’ life was also redemptive and not just his death? Didn’t Jesus’ entering into our flesh through incarnation redeem humanity? Wasn’t his life and his teaching and his healing and his preaching and his obedience and his relationship to God also redeeming our fallen nature as he lived in our flesh the life that God had hoped for us all along? And sure, God used the cross and death for redemption. But wasn’t the resurrection redemptive and also the ascension where Jesus carried our flesh into heaven making it possible once again for humanity to live in and relate to God? So then a question comes to mind. If all of Jesus’ actions in our flesh helped redeem us, and it wasn’t just about death and punishment, then who demanded a bloody cross? Was it God or us?

Some modern theologians are beginning to talk about the fact that, rather than demanding the cross, God may have used it, a la Romans 8, to make good out of a horrible tragedy. Perhaps it was we, uncomfortable with having the divine so close and coming up short in comparison to his perfection, who decided we needed to get rid of this guy. Perhaps he was monkeying with our perceptions of religion so that we could no longer act as if we were good enough to earn God’s favor. Rather than admit that we are utterly dependent on grace and give up the illusion of being “good people,” maybe we religious types did Jesus in so he’d quit blowing the curve for the rest of us. Perhaps it was just our sin that nailed Jesus to the cross and God used that for our redemption, making all things-even this horrific and grisly death-work together for good.

But let’s go even further. The scripture today says that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies,” there can be no new life, no rebirth. Maybe death, rather than being the punishment we’ve come to associate with the Fall is actually just God’s intervention on our behalf. Perhaps, when God created the world and humanity in the eternal possibility of life and relationship with Godself, all of Creation was in a state of eternal springtime, ever vibrant, ever alive, ever drawing from God’s restorative love and power, with no need for rejuvenation. Perhaps, as God created us, in full knowledge of the depths to which we would sink, God foresaw how we would fall so far short of God’s hopes for us and demand Jesus’ death and how God would use it to redeem us. And maybe, at that time, God introduced the seasons to help us understand God’s ability to snatch victory out of the hands of seeming defeat by making the power of death moot, just a winter, a temporary season of rest from our fallenness and our wanderings so that we and the earth could be reborn into an eternal springtime of love and justice and restored relationship with God. Perhaps the seasons that we have come to know so well are God’s way of letting us know that death is temporary. That through Christ we will one day enter into God’s eternal season of love where death, pain, sickness, sin and harm will no longer be permitted or remembered. As we emerge from the season of winter, we can take comfort in knowing that the seeds and, indeed, the seeds of faith, planted in hope but seemingly lifeless, will spring forth into new life, a colorful testimony to the love and power of God. The sheaf of wheat and cluster of grapes on the piano today, reminding us that one of our own has gone to be with God, point to the fact that those who go before us to God, those who die and are planted in the ground in hope, rise to be with God in a new season we can only long for as we continue to live in the Kingdom dimly seen and not fully come.

That is the promise that we carry with us as we move through the darker days of Holy Week toward that dawn of light and life that is Easter. Thanks be to God. Amen.


You can visit Frank's website HERE.