Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into his intimate life, it became possible for us to share in his infinite compassion.
In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love that holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.
Verse of the day
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
– Philippians 4:8
Voice of the day
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
– Meister Eckhart, translated by Raymond B. Blakney
Prayer of the day
God of justice, transform our thoughts into action.
Our true challenge is to return to the center, to the heart, and to find there the gentle voice that speaks to us and affirms us in a way no human voice ever could. The basis of all ministry is the experience of God’s unlimited and unlimiting acceptance of us as beloved children, an acceptance so full, so total and all-embracing, that it sets us free from our compulsion to be seen, praised, and admired and frees us for Christ, who leads us on the road of service.
This experience of God’s acceptance frees us from our needy self and thus creates new space where we can pay selfless attention to others. This new freedom in Christ allows us to move in the world uninhibited by our compulsions and to act creatively even when we are laughed at and rejected, even when our words and actions lead us to death.
“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. . . . Let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
Life is a gift. Each one of us is unique, known by name, and loved by the One who fashioned us. Unfortunately, there is a very loud, consistent, and powerful message coming to us from our world that leads us to believe that we must prove our belovedness by how we look, by what we have, and by what we can accomplish. We become preoccupied with “making it” in this life, and we are very slow to grasp the liberating truth of our origins and our finality. We need to hear the message announced and the message emboldened over and over again. Only then do we find the courage to claim it and live from it.
Trinity Sunday comes around each year and each year it challenges preachers to consider the riddle that is wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by mystery. The Trinity has challenged theologians and the church since the beginning of the church in the third century, common era. It is one of the more confusing doctrines of the church today as it has been throughout the centuries.
Traditionally it celebrates the one and equal glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Saint Patrick tried to teach the Irish about the Trinity using a shamrock which had three individual leaves and one stem. Other language has been used to attempt to describe the three-in-one aspect of the Trinity. God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer… Creator, Christ, and Spirit. No matter what terminology is used, there is still the same mystery. Just what is the Trinity?
This last Sunday we observed/celebrated Pentecost Sunday where the promised Holy Spirit descended on the disciples and initiated the ministry Jesus had called them to do. They went out into the world to share the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. In the reading for Trinity Sunday from John 16, Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit of truth will come to guide them as they went out into the world.
Yet how does this doctrine or this Sunday in the lectionary speak to us today? How does it challenge us to be Christ-followers? How does it help us to share the love, justice, mercy, and peace of God with a world desperately in need of such gifts? Over the years as I have studied and pondered the “development” of doctrine of the Trinity throughout the ages, it eventually has boiled down to a simple concept. God is best described in relationship with God’s self and with all of creation.
Thomas Merton in his book New Seeds of Contemplation described the Trinity in a very relational and unique way. The One God Who exists only in Three Persons is a circle of relations in which His infinite reality, Love, is ever identical and ever renewed, always perfect and always total, always beginning and never ending, absolute, everlasting and full. Ultimately, God in His Trinity of subsistent relations infinitely transcends every shadow of selfishness.
Love is God’s infinite reality… it is never ending… absolute… everlasting and full. Doesn’t’ that sound like Jesus’ teachings about the Law and the Prophets? Love God with your entire being (heart, mind, soul, and strength) and love your neighbor (every one of them) as you love yourself.
My friend Thom Shuman who is a Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor, writer, and common-sense theologian introduced me to this way of understanding the Trinity. Tom has written many beautiful liturgies and poems (http://lectionaryliturgies.blogspot.com) and has inspired me in my own worship and prayer life. Instead of the traditional trinitarian prayer language (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) Thom uses this phrase: God in Community, Holy in One.
Dear reader, perhaps in these words and these thoughts we might find a way to truly build relationships of love, grace, mercy, and peace in this world. Lord knows all of creation and the world needs a new way to relate and create.
This excellent OpEd speaks to my heart and to why I am still a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister today
I am certain that I am not alone in occasionally wondering whether the whole notion of Protestant denominations is an anachronism; that maybe the elaborate denominational structures and traditions that evolved over the last 500 years or so have served their purpose and should now fade away. An even more disconcerting thought is that maybe trying to hold on to and preserve our denomination actually hinders what the Holy Spirit calls us to do and be.
— Read on pres-outlook.org/2022/06/why-the-pcusa-pastor-editor-and-former-moderator-john-m-buchanan-shares-his-story/
“Listening to Jesus entails complete attention, full commitment, and steadfast devotion. We have to go to the fringe places, to the beat-up people, to the edge of the culture and the world. . . . We can hear Jesus: in all those who differ from us; in human variety with no regard for race, creed, nationality, gender, class, orientation, ability, or age; in the stranger at your door, in the vision of a forgiven, reconciled humanity.”—John Dear, Transfiguration
In true solitude there is an unlimited space for others because we are empty. In this poverty nobody stands over and against us, because our enemy is only our enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we have nothing to hold on to or protect, when we have nothing we consider exclusively ours, then nobody will threaten us. Rather, in the center of our solitude we meet all men and women as brothers and sisters. In true solitude, we stand so naked and so vulnerable before God, and we become so deeply aware of our total dependency on God’s love, that not only our friends but also those who kill, lie, torture, rape, and wage wars become part of our flesh and blood. Yes, in true solitude we are so totally empty and poor that we find our solidarity with brothers and sisters everywhere. Our hearts, full of God and empty of fear and anger, become a welcoming home for God and for our whole human family on earth.
Verse of the day
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
– 1 John 3:18
Voice of the day
Is this how it’s always been? / To exist in the face of suffering and death / And somehow still keep singing
– Florence + the Machine, “Free”
Prayer of the day
May we never grow weary of reaching out to one other.
