5.28.23 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

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Eternal God:

We give thanks for this Pentecost day … for your love at work in all things … in all things bright and beautiful, in all things sad and broken … your everlasting work, your Holy Spirit work - to create and recreate the world.

It’s Memorial Day, O LORD, for our nation … we remember the dead and the maimed, the victims of human folly, that humankind remains suspicious and given to armed conflict … 

We confess our penchant for war, our wars and rumors of war, our failures to live with one another … Cain killed his brother, and we’re still doing it, O LORD … violence on our streets and in our schools, wholesale death in Ukraine and Sudan and Palestine … and other places on the face of your beautiful earth, churned and burned in our madness, our fear, our failure to live well.

Yet on this Memorial Day, we breath a sigh of thanksgiving for the soldiers who marched out to defend their land against the fascists and dictators of the world. Our policies, O God, haven’t always been the best, but our Constitution, dear God, our Statue of Liberty, our hopes and our dreams, have the ring of truth about them and the bright light of decency. Help us, we pray, to live up to our best intentions, our highest ambitions, our finest words of life and justice for all.

O God, help people of faith to be faithful to the best and to the highest found in every faith and philosophy worth their salt … Muslims and Jews, Sikhs and Christians, Buddhists and Hindus … philosophers and humanists, artists and writers, the story tellers and the dreamers, the scientists who search the heavens, and probe the human body; the engineers who build the machines of the future … versions and variants of the human dream, reflections of your dream, dear God … your dream, for a world safe and sound, healthy and whole - for all your creatures, great and small.

Bless our friends, O God … I pray today for Ann Marie and Stan - for the love of Christ in their lives; the peace of the Holy Spirit.

We pray for one another here in our pews, and those by their computers and TVs … to one, and to all, dear God, grant the assurance of your Holy Spirit, the joy and goodness of Pentecost.

Help us all, dear God, to make the faithful journey … to set our sights upon the glory of Christ … heed his call to follow him where e’re he lead … to know how fully we’ve been accepted; how powerfully we are love … and to set aside of some of ourselves, that we might have more of Christ. 

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen. 

Sometimes We Get Along, Sometimes Not

It doesn't take long in the #PCUSA to see what a diverse group we are. Much of the time, we manage to get along; some of the time, we don't.

Diversity pushes and pulls us, and sometimes pushes or pulls us beyond where we're comfortable ... and sometimes challenges us to rethink, to reconsider, review those things we deem "essentials."

We love to quote authorities, and, of course, THE Authority, Scripture, but even that seems to fail us finally, leaving us without resolve, and all those pesky Bible verses that refuse to fit into our otherwise neat and tidy systems.

If we take sin seriously (as Presbyterians, we have too!), then we're stuck with a curious kind of humility toward one another, and toward those views that either challenge us or strike us as even heretical.

We'd all like to claim that "our system, our version of things, our take on God and the Gospel, are bigger, brighter and better" than all the other competing versions.

But history refuses us such a claim.

All we can do, and humbly do, is put forth our view of things, and try to apply the best tools of scholarship and science, engaging in steady prayer and the practices of humility (often saying, "I don't know" or "I'm not sure"), bringing to bear upon our ideas the best of Christian scholarship, the vast and often contradictory traditions of the church, including hymnody, social justice practices over the centuries and the day-to-day learning from one another - in other words, all that God provides us in and through the church and the larger world.

In reality, we're mostly on target, and sometimes not.

Who can contain the whole counsel of God in any system of thought?

Who dares to say they comprehend the will and character and purpose of God throughout the ages?

If any of us muster the "telling Bible verse," someone else offers another verse.

So we serve one another best of all when we raise critical questions for one another, and provide ample room and time for one another to express his or her views.

If we come to the #PCUSA or to a particular congregation to have all of our a priori notions confirmed, we may well find a congregation that suits us perfectly, but not likely the entire denomination ... which is why some are so eager for schism - as if the balkanization of the church could lead to greater purity of thought. It never does, and never will. To seek purity at the expense of fellowship is to sacrifice the very purity so eagerly sought.

Anyway, much of the discussion here is thoughtful and kind ... God be praised.

Perhaps we might take Jesus at his word in John: "I am the way, the truth and the life" ... not Calvin or Knox or Kuyper, not the Book of Confessions or the Book of Order, neither Aquinas nor Barth, certainly not Jerry Falwell (God rest his soul) or James Dobson, nor Rob Bell or Max Lucado. But from all of them, we learn about Jesus, yet Jesus does us the favor of "walking through our midst," lest we crown him(John 6.15) or try to kill him (Luke 4.29).

Our systems are all approximations ... and we humbly bow down before the LORD of all ... honoring the Holy Spirit in each and every believer who utters the name of Jesus in faith, hope and love, fragmented as every heart is, with but a fragmentary grasp of Jesus, whose grasp upon us is sure and certain, unto the end of the age, and then some.

What Would Jesus Say? ... by Bob Orr

From my good friend and fine writer, Bob Orr ... written in reflection on the possible burning of a Quran at a Florida Church.

What Would Jesus Say?

The Jesus I know from the Gospels was a friend to all and demonstrated in his actions God's love and forgiveness to men and women especially the ones we would condemn and count as unworthy.   This Jesus calls us to live in community with one another.  Jesus was a Jew and his disciples were Jews.  As a  man of his time Jesus would have spoken  and understood Hebrew, Aramaic, and probably Greek.  Where he was born, grew to manhood and conducted his ministry  was a cultural stew and a cross roads of trade and beliefs. 

 The United States is a pluralistic nation made up of many religions - Christianity is one of them.  We pride ourselves in the freedom of worship.  It's one of our cherished values.   Just last week in my home town of Canton, MI we joined a Hindu community in celebrating the dedication of their new temple.  Their center can accommodate a thousand worshipers.  Down the road from where I live  is a Sikh temple where we visited a few months ago to better know our neighbors.  Dearborn, MI  (just 15 miles to our east) is home to the largest Arab community outside of the Mid East.  Islam is their religion.  We're all citizens of the United States, we're all neighbors and we all fly the same flag.  I don't appreciate hate speech, fear tactics, or race baiting.  When times are rough like they are now  we search for someone to blame.  This divides us and drives us apart.  We're weaker as a country as a result.  

What would Jesus say?  I think Jesus would cry over our fearful bickering with one another.  Jesus would meet hate with love.  Jesus would meet ignorance with knowledge.  Jesus would extend an open hand to the neighbor and not a clinched fist.  Jesus would speak a kind word and offer a generous embrace to the stranger and the different among us.  That's what I think Jesus would do.  --Bob Orr

The Church of Jesus Christ

We compliment one another …

Some can sing and some can pray with a special gift that blesses someone else.

Some can teach and some can preach.

Some have a way with dollars and cents.

Some can plan and organize.

Some have an extraordinary sensitivity and compassion.

Some are visionary.

Some are filled with the passions of justice and social reform.

Some dream dreams and see visions of God.

Some are quiet and some are loud.

Some are hard and some are soft.

Some are heaven-drawn.

Some are earth-anchored.

Some love the past.

Some love the future.

But take all the someones, and we have

The sum of it.

We all add up to the church of Jesus Christ.

And he loves us all.

And needs us all.

To finish his work!