A Progressive Christian Wades into the Waters of Baptism
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Category Archives: Evolutionary Christianity
What the Universe Reveals – When God Is Elusive
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Wisdom from Our Spiritual Ancestors: Matthew Fox
I was introduced to the work of Matthew Fox long before I ever entertained the idea of becoming a student of religion. Fox’s groundbreaking book, “Original Blessing” introduced me to the work of the Christian mystics and helped me to see beyond the institutional theology of those who won the long forgotten theological battles of our past. His exploration of the work of those whose theology threatened the agendas of the powers that be and development of “creation spirituality” opened me to a new way of understanding and articulating Christianity.
Holy Miracle by Love Eternal
Being Honest to God: Richard Holloway
He was once the Primate of the Episcopal Church in Scotland but these days Richard Holloway describes himself as an agnostic Christian hungering after transcendency and preaching a gospel of uncertainty. His memoir “Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt” is a favourite of mine. In this video he explores being honest to God and understanding religion as an art form. Holloway’s words both challenge and comfort me as he plumbs the depths of our longing through the poiesis of ultimate meaning.
Bat Col – The Daughter of a Sound: Hearing the Word Utter Our Name
Preparing to Preach on Jesus’ Baptism
Heather Murray Elkins tells her story, “The Secret of Our Baptism” and opens us to a new way of hearing the Bat Col, the Daughter of a Sound, the Voice of the Divine, the Word, who speaks in this Sunday’s Gospel reading. Matthew 3:13-17
The Bat Qol – The Daughter of A Sound – The Still Small Voice
Preparing to Preach on Jesus’ Baptism:
In this coming Sunday’s gospel text (Matthew 3:13-17) we will hear echo’s of the Bat Qol which speaks at Jesus’ baptism as the heavens are torn open. The hebrew “bat qol” (bat cole) is often translated as “the still small voice” but when translated literally it is the “daughter of a sound”. The voice of God speaks to declare love. May you hear yourself named and called by that voice, for you are the daughters and sons of God, beloved of God!
A little music to tune your ears with. Enjoy you beloved daughters and sons of God! Then be the lovers you are created to be.
Don’t Forget the Mystery of Our Faith!
Christ Has Died. Christ Is Risen.
Christ Will Come Again, and Again, and Again, and Again…
A sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas:
Readings: John 1:1-9; Thomas 70; Matthew 2:1-12
Listen to the sermon:
Holy Morn: Tina Malia
The Big Question – Bruce Sanguin
Evolutionary Christian theologian Bruce Sanguin’s current article in the United Church observer tackles “The Big Question” – Is God a Seperate Being ??? For those of us who are struggling to move beyond our limited images of God, Sanguin offers a resting place along the way. Just click on the link below to read the article. I highly recommend it!!! Bruce Sanguin, a minister in the United Church of Canada, is one of the principal contributors to the new Living the Questions interactive DVD series “Painting the Stars”
The Big Question – The United Church Observer.
From Alienation to Belonging – John O’Donohue
These post-celebration days, provide us with an opportunity to find our natural rhythm. Irish mystic, theologian, philosopher John O’Donohue offers wisdom for our journey.
Matthew’s Nativity Story Wrapped in Exodus: John Shelby Spong
For those who are preparing to preach on Matthew 1:1-12 this coming Sunday, Jack Spong provides an important view of the context.
YOU are the Light of the World: an Epiphany sermon
Maybe it’s because I’ve directed too many Christmas pageants, but when I hear the story of the Magi visiting the baby Jesus, I don’t think of three kings at all. No visions of regal visitors decked out in their finest riding atop camels guided by a star for me. Just memories of little boys, decked out in colourful shiny robes that threaten to trip them up, giggling and roughhousing, with their cardboard crowns askew. Of all the little boy kings that I’ve tried to corral one of them stands out from all the rest. Perhaps I remember him so well because he was so little that we couldn’t have him knell at the manger for fear that he would disappear into the hay and our audience would only see two Wise Guys paying homage. Or maybe it was the speed with which he dashed in and out of the gang of shepherds who threatened to trip him up with their crooks. But I really think it was the ingenious way he solved the problem of his lost gold, that makes little, for the purposes of this sermon let’s call him Jay, stand out from all the other little boy kings.
Little Jay’s mother, like all the mothers of all the kings, was responsible for creating a facsimile of the gift her wise son would bestow on the baby Jesus. Unlike some of the feeble efforts that I’ve seen over the years, Jay’s gift of gold was a cut above the rest. Inside an elaborately carved box that his Dad had picked up on his travels to the Middle East, Jay’s mother had placed upon a bed of statin a carefully created block of wood wrapped in golden gift paper. It positively sparkled. It must have impressed Jay, because he was forever opening up his box to show his fellow cast-members his treasure. During the dress rehearsal, Jay’s performance was perfect. Jay positively perfected the art of gazing up at the makeshift star that hung above the altar just east of our makeshift manger. When he arrived at the place where the newborn baby Jesus, who just happened to be a little girl that year, Jay strode right up to her mother Mary and opened the box containing his treasure and proudly announced his gift of gold for the new born king. They, whoever they are, say that if the rehearsal doesn’t go well then the performance will be wonderful. So, I was more than a little worried when our dress rehearsal went off so splendidly because that could mean only one thing, and I wasn’t looking forward to a performance where things went wrong. Sure enough, unbeknownst to me, on the morning of his big performance, somewhere between his home and church, Jay lost his golden treasure. All he had was an empty box when he showed up at his father’s pew wailing because all was lost. Jay had no gold to give to the baby Jesus.
This story reminds me of a story that Joan Chittister tells that I’ve told you before but like all good stories it is worth telling over and over again. It’s the story of a Sufi master who was found scratching through the sand in the middle of the road. “What are you doing?” some pilgrims asked the Sufi as they passed. The old Sufi looked up and said, “I’m looking for my treasure. I’ve lost it.” the old man said. So the pilgrims, good people all dropped to their knees to help. They sifted sand. They dug under stones. They sweat under the waxing midday sun. Until, finally, hungry, soaking wet and exhausted, one of the travellers asked of the Sufi, “Sufi, are you sure you lost your treasure here?” And the old man said, “Oh, no. No, I didn’t loose my treasure here, I lost it over there on the other side of those mountains.” Continue reading
Inner History of a Day: by John O’Donohue
John O’Donohue was an Irish, mystic, philosopher, poet whose way with words opens hearts and minds to eternity.
Do You See What I See?
Do you see the baby?
Some of us have followed the star, we have journeyed to Bethlehem and we have seen the ONE who comes into the world as a child. Now what? Do we see the needs of the child? Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and be about the work of ushering in the Reign of Justice that this child, any child needs in order to live in peace? I wonder?
I still hear the echoes of Rachel’s voice weeping unconsolable in Ramah; weeping for the lost children of Newtown and every town where violence, greed, madness or neglect robs the child of those things that belong to children: playful laughter, safe homes, warmth, nourishment, learning, embraces, peace….a future.
Mystic, poet, philosopher, and theologian Howard Thurman’s poem “The Work of Christmas” comes to me as a challenge for the days, months and year ahead:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
The Herods of this world have had their way for far too long. Let the slaughter of innocents end. We have seen the child and we know the wonders of a star-lit peace-filled night. So, let the work of Christmas begin with all of us seeking justice and making peace so that children everywhere can grow in LOVE. Shalom!
Christmas Happens Every Day, Everywhere!!!
We know that the birth of Christ did not happen the way it is described in the gospels according to Matthew and Luke. But we know that the birth of Christ happens that way each and every day, everywhere!!! Let us always be open to the presence of Christ in all of humanity, on this day and every day!
The Boy: produced by the Reformed Church of Hungary
Tell Us About God. We Have Almost Forgotten: Christmas Eve sermon 2013
Listen to the Christmas Eve sermon
Christmas Eve sermons are a challenge for any preacher who takes the gathering of folk on a dark and holy night seriously. I am indebted to Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Parker Palmer, Michael Morwood, Matthew Fox, and Michael Dowd for much of the inspiration for this sermon.
A Blessing on this Holy Night
John O’Donohue is a poet whose words open me to the Divine who lives and breaths in me. Here his poem “Beannacht” which translates as “blessing” is read as a prelude to a very ordinary rendition of O Holy Night; surely it is in the ordinary that we are met by the Divine. May each of you find your Beannacht in the ordinary stuff of this your Holy Night.
God is here among you. Human is the Word
Straw Against the Chill
Written by Bob Franke and performed by the Short Sisters: Fay Baird, Kate Seeger, and Kim Wallach.
Cheap, Small, and Plastic: a Christmas Eve Sermon for Progressive Christians
I have been asked to post last year’s Christmas Eve sermon. You can listen to it or read a transcript. The progressive version of God Rest Ye Progressive Christians appears in the transcript. I searched without success for its source. If you know who wrote it please let me know.
Listen to the sermon
Last night, while suffering from a serious case of writers’ block, panic set in as I desperately struggled to figure out what to say to you all this evening. I’d spent most of the afternoon in my office, reading and re-reading chapters, articles and sermons, searching for a way to express the inexpressible. Christmas Eve is a challenge for a preacher. You all know the story so well that there’s nothing new that I can say. Then there’s the fact that many of you don’t make it to church all that often, so we preachers kinda want to make our Christmas Eve sermons something special, in the hope that we might just inspire you to come back some Sunday morning. Add to that the fact that we at Holy Cross fall in to a category of Christianity that has been called “progressive” which means that we’re pretty clear on the fact that the Christmas stories in the New Testament are full of metaphors and symbols that point to various truths about the nature of the MYSTERY we call God, as well as truths about ourselves and our life in the world.
As Progressive Christians living in the 21st century, we are fond of using the best scholarship available as we study the scriptures and so we know that the New Testament stories about the birth of Jesus are not actual historical accounts of the events of Jesus’ birth. So, last night as the panic began to get the better of me, I did what writers do when we are in the midst of a serious block, under the threat of a looming dead-line, I looked for a way to distract myself in the hope that if I gave my brain a rest, something might occur to me. Well by the time I made it back to my computer, I was determined that I’d throw caution to the wind and write a very informative, scholarly sermon which would give you all a progressive Christian view of the nativity. But you can all relax because, thanks to the arrival of an email, you have all been saved from Satan’s power. The email was from a colleague in Australia for whom the Christmas Eve deadline had already come and gone, so he was feeling more than a little smug about having finished his sermon. His message to me came in the lyric of a song, which I’d love to sing for you. But most of you know that with my singing voice it is better that I just read to you what he wrote:
“God rest ye Progressive Christians, let nothing you dismay.
Remember there’s no evidence that there was a Christmas day.
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say.
Good tidings of reason and fact; reason and fact;
Good tidings of rea-son and fact.
There was no star of Bethlehem; there was no angel song.
There could have been no wise men for the journey was too long.
The stories in the Bible are historical-ly wrong.
Good tidings of reason and fact; reason and fact;
Good tidings of rea-son and fact.
Much of our Christmas custom comes from Persia and from Greece.
From solstice celebrations of the ancient Middle East.
We know this so-called holiday is but a pagan feast.
Good tidings of reason and fact; reason and fact;
Good tidings of rea-son and fact.”
Well after singing that over to myself, I shut down my computer and went to bed. I went to sleep longing for the good old simpler days, when my brother Alan and I could enjoy our very own Christmas Eve tradition of watching the old black and white version of A Christmas Carol; the one were Alistair Sim plays Scrooge. I told myself that if I just went to sleep, something would come to me and I’d wake up knowing just what to say to you all on this night of nights. So, I dozed off with Alistair Sim’s Scrooge dancing in my head and singing, “I don’t know anything. I never did know anything. But now I know that I don’t know. All on a Christmas morning.”
It may not have been the ghost of Christmas past who visited me last night, but it certainly was a Christmas from my past. I must have caught a glimpse of it earlier in the day, when the box of Christmas decorations was hauled upstairs. It’s a small thing really. Something I bought to adorn my very first apartment. You see, my first apartment was just a small studio, everything in one little room, so there was no room for a Christmas tree. So, I decided that if I couldn’t fit a tree in there, I might just be able to manage a nativity set. But I didn’t have much money to spare and all the nativity sets I liked were outrageously expensive and then one day I saw it on a store-shelf, a tiny little nativity that I could actually afford. It had been marked down, from $16 to $12.95. From where I was standing it looked like it had been carved out of the finest wood. I knew that I just had to have it. When I reached out to take it off the shelf, I realized that it was actually made of plastic and suddenly the $12.95 price tag seemed way too much to pay for this mass-produced piece of plastic. But the longer I looked at it the more I knew that my little apartment needed it. Would you like to see it?
It may be small. It may just be a cheap imitation, but when I look at it I see all the hopes and dreams of all the years as they are told in the story of stories. No more ghosts visited me in the night, but just like Ebenezer Scrooge, I woke up knowing just what I had to do. You see Scrooge wasn’t the only movie that my brother and I used to watch. Alan was particularly fond of science-fiction movies. Sometimes, when he would manage to convince me to watch one of this movies with him, I would complain after just a few minutes in, that the premise was just too unbelievable; I mean really nothing like that could ever actually happen. Alan would remind me that you don’t have to believe them; you just have to watch them, go with the story, see where it takes you. When you really think about it, many of our best-loved stories never actually happened the way we tell them. Take Scrooge for example; does any one of us actually believe that Ebenezer was really visited by three ghosts? We know that it is a story that never actually happened the way it has been told to us; and yet it has the power to take us somewhere, to move us as we watch the incredible transformation of old Scrooge and we too are moved to keep Christmas well. Continue reading
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