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What Is Worship?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image by Michael Melgar. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Image by Michael Melgar. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

It is the soul searching for its counterpart.
It is a thirsty land crying out for rain.
It is a candle in the act of being kindled.
It is a drop in quest of the ocean.
It is a person listening through a tornado for the Still Small Voice.
It is the voice in the night calling for help.
It is a sheep lost in the wilderness pleading for rescue by the Good Shepherd.
It is the same sheep nestling in the arms of the Rescuer.
It is the Prodigal Son running to his Father.
It is a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe.
It is a poet enthralled by the beauty of a sunrise.
It is a worker pausing a moment to listen to a strain of music.
It is a hungry heart seeking for love.
It is Time flowing into Eternity.
It is my little self engulfed in the Universal Self.
It is a person climbing the altar stairs to God.

The one who neglects worship, neglects that which separates us from the birds, the animals, the insects, and the fishes.
The unworshipful human is an anthropoid equipped with a highly developed brain.
She may be a paragon of morality, but so are bees and ants.
She may be keenly intelligent, but so are wolves and foxes.
She may provide for her family, but so do hyenas and orangutans.
She may be successful in affairs, but so are beavers and muskrats.
She may be artistic, but so are birds and butterflies.
Worship is the chief concern of highly developed human beings.
Human beings must be graded according to their capacity for Worship.
Worship for people is what song is for a thrush or physical beauty for a tiger or speed for a race horse.
Worship lifts people to their next level of experience and justifies their existence as people.
Worship is a Person expressing his or her entire personality.
To neglect Worship is to accept a low rating as a person.
To neglect Worship is to fail in life’s highest function.
The neglect of Worship is psychical suicide.
Ignorant Worship is better than intelligent non-worship.
Intelligent Worship is the most remarkable achievement of which a human being is capable.

The primary function of a church is to supply an incentive to Worship, and to furnish an atmosphere for Worship.
If one cannot Worship in Church, the Church may be at fault, or the person may be at fault.
If the Church is at fault it will eventually perish unless it remedies the condition.
If the person is at fault, she will dry up and become a spiritual mummy, unless she changes herself.

Adapted from Dwight Bradley in the Inter-Church Hymnal, published in 1946.

The Celestial Thoreau: From Walden Pond to the Sun

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=piuKlpJmjfg%5D

I find it fitting to pair this NASA video of the sun with this passage from Thoreau’s Walden. His line about Olympus, in this case, applies to the universe entire. I don’t think he would mind…

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

Erotic Justice

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French_Kiss

An adequate sexual ethic does more than insist that no harm be done to others.  It strengthens people’s well-being and self-respect.  Good sex is good because it touches our senses powerfully but also because it enhances our self-worth and deepens our desire to connect more justly with others.  The key concerns of this ethic are how power is shared and the quality of caring.  Sex is not something one “does to” another person or “has happen” to oneself.  Rather sexual intimacy is a mutual process of feeling with, connecting to, and sharing as whole persons.  We enhance our sense of self-worth by attending with care to what is happening to the other person as well as to ourselves.  In the midst of sexual pleasuring with a partner, we do not “lose” ourselves as much as we relocate ourselves in the in-betweenness of self and other, as we receive and give affection and energy.

–Dr. Marvin M. Ellison, Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality, p.89

The Immigrant Apostles’ Creed

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized18 Comments
Rio Grande on the USA-Mexico Border. Image by Bob Palin. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Rio Grande on the USA-Mexico Border. Image by Bob Palin. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

This was posted to Facebook by Neal Presa, the current moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  I’m told it was originally written by Rev. Jose Luis Casal.  Fruitful theological food for thought for anyone who cares about USA immigration policies.

Also worth reading on this subject is this sample chapter from Reading the Bible With the Damned by Bob Ekblad:

FOLLOWING JESUS, EL BUEN COYOTE: READING PAUL WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS

And here is the Immigrant Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in Almighty God,
who guided the people in exile and in exodus,
the God of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon,
the God of foreigners and immigrants.

I believe in Jesus Christ, a displaced Galilean,
who was born away from his people and his home, who fled
his country with his parents when his life was in danger.
When he returned to his own country he suffered under the oppression of Pontius Pilate, the servant of a foreign power. Jesus was persecuted, beaten, tortured, and unjustly condemned to death.
But on the third day Jesus rose from the dead,
not as a scorned foreigner but to offer us citizenship in God’s kingdom.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the eternal immigrant from God’s kingdom among us,
who speaks all languages, lives in all countries,
and reunites all races.
I believe that the Church is the secure home
for foreigners and for all believers.
I believe that the communion of saints begins
when we embrace all God’s people in all their diversity.
I believe in forgiveness, which makes us all equal before God,
and in reconciliation, which heals our brokenness.
I believe that in the Resurrection
God will unite us as one people
in which all are distinct and all are alike at the same time.
I believe in life eternal, in which no one will be foreigner
but all will be citizens of the kingdom
where God reigns forever and ever. Amen.

Prayers For Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Pour In After Arrest

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Re-blogged from Huffington Post:

As 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the remaining man suspected in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings and Thursday night’s shootout with police was arrested Friday, cheers erupted on Boston streets and on television broadcasts. It wasn’t uncommon to see Boston residents give thanks to God, and similar sentiments echoed across social media.

But prayers of another kind also poured out online: those for Tsarnaev.

Click here to read the full article…

Here is my prayer for Dzhokhar:

God, who ignites the spark of creativity in every being and event in this universe: We hold before you in love and anger the pain of grief, the ashes of destruction, and the wasted potential of your son, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, asking that the inspiration of your Holy Spirit might open our hearts to bring light out of darkness, order out of chaos, and new life out of death; through Jesus Christ our Lord who came, full of grace and truth, that we might have life in abundance.  Amen.

Religionless Christianity: Commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Rev. Dawn Hutchings's avatarpastordawn

Reposted today as the Church commemorates the life and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

When I was just a teenager, I was introduced to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by a wise Lutheran Pastor. I remember devouring Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” and “Letters and Papers from Prison”. To this day, I credit Bonhoeffer for making me a Lutheran.  While a great deal of water has flowed under a good many bridges since I was first enamoured of Lutheran theology, to this day I am grateful to that wise old Lutheran pastor who gave me my first taste of Bonhoeffer.   Of late, there has been much ado about a little phrase that has been extracted from Bonhoeffer’s work: “religionless Christianity”.

(click here for full quotations from Letter and Papers from Prison)

“It is not for us to prophecy the day when men will once more ask God that the world be…

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Grafting the Olive Tree

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

oget

I’ve been asked to share this profile for a couple seeking to adopt.

Margaret Aymer Oget and I have become online friends.  She is a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor.

How I admire her teaching and ministry!  I pray that I will one day have the opportunity to meet her in person.

If you or anyone you know is interested in entering into an open adoption arrangement, please contact them via the information on the linked website.

I have no doubt that Margaret and Laurence will make wonderful parents!

Here is the link:

http://www.iheartadoption.org/users/oget

Forgiving God

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve been invited by my friend Jodi Haier, a Methodist pastor, to contribute a column to a soon-to-be published group study book on Forgiveness.  I have permission to publish my contribution here as a foretaste of the upcoming book.  I’ll let you know when the whole study comes out.  Thanks!

I’ve been asked to write this meditation on the subject of Forgiving God.

I have until the end of the month to finish it, but I want to get it done today, not because I’m efficient like that, but because today is April 16, 2013, the day after the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

The main religious question that arises in times like this is: How could a loving, all-powerful God allow something like this to happen?  On days like today, it seems that God owes us an explanation (if not an outright apology) for standing by, silently, while some person(s) blew up the Boston Marathon.

As bizarre as it may sound, I’m going to argue that what we need to do in this moment is forgive God.  What I mean by this is that we need to adjust some of our ideas about who God is and how God works if we’re going to make sense of situations like the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

Now, it just so happens that I am both a pastor and a philosophy professor, so I’ll construct my argument from both of those perspectives.

Philosophically speaking, we’re dealing with the Problem of Evil, which says, “Any two of the following statements can be true at the same time, but not all three: (1) God is all-powerful.  (2) God is good.  (3) Evil exists.”  While many wise believers have tried to solve this problem over the years, none have fully succeeded.  Personally, I choose to remove the first statement: “God is all-powerful.”

I believe God ceased to be all-powerful when free will was created.  God could have made us like robots that always do what they are told, but God chose instead to make conscious beings that can freely choose to love.  It is a logical necessity that, if one can freely choose good, then the capacity for choosing evil must also exist.  God gave us freedom because God wanted love in this world, and there is no love without freedom.

Hence, God’s power is limited.  God is not able to create a free world where the bombing of the Boston Marathon cannot happen.  We have to create that world.  It’s up to us.  We are co-creators with God.

Honestly, I’m not sure that we’ll ever evolve to the point where we have a perfect society.  Something will probably always be wrong.  We cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond.  Will we use our God-given freedom to bring more love or more darkness into the world?  Will our unjust suffering embitter or ennoble us?  Will we stand together or fall apart?

I think we can (and should) forgive God for what happened yesterday by letting go of our idea of an all-powerful deity who controls everything that happens.  That God doesn’t exist.  What we have instead is a loving God who gives us freedom and invites us to be partners in the ongoing creation of the world.

Mr. Rogers Does Pastoral Care for Boston Bombing

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

boston bombingWhat can I say?  Today has just turned into a Mister Rogers kind of day.

Here are his best-known words of wisdom for getting through days like today:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

-Rev. Fred Rogers

He also had this advice for parents:

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZbXM3Kzd7o%5D

Finally, here is an article with some practical advice for you in responding to this current atrocity:

Boston bombing aftermath: How you can help

May God be with you tonight.