Tag: Holy Spirit
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Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Call to Worship Here we are gathered togetherIn the Spirit of love, joy, peace;In the Spirit of power and love;In the Spirit of faith, hope, and love;In the Spirit of love and of life;In the Spirit of prayer and praise;In the Spirit of GodLet us worship God! Image: “A Flemish Fair,” [detail] Jan Breughel the […]
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Trinity Sunday
Call to Worship [Based on Psalm 29] Glory! Glory! Glory!The Glory of God fills Creation;the Glory of God fills Creation with life;the Glory of God fills time and space;floods the world with beauty;floods all things now living with meaning;floods time with purpose;the voice of God shouts and whispers in it all.In this place and timemade […]
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Pentecost (B)
Call to Worship [Based on Ezekiel 37] Come, Holy Spirit! Giver of Life!Wake the dead.Let us worship God! And you shall know that I am the HOLY ONE, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. Ezekiel 37:13 Image: Fresco in the monastery at Zica, Serbia, photo by […]
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Shaking Things Up
People can get stuck thinking they have understood God, but the Holy Spirit shakes things up. Fortunately, since we seem to need shaking up. We seem to have a tendency to get comfortable with the wrong things. Our pastor pointed out on Sunday that the lectionary reading for the Sixth Sunday of Easter this year […]
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Reframing
Maybe not everyone gets stuck seeing things just one way, but many of us do. Because of that, hearing from other people, comparing readings, seeing texts and situations “through other eyes,” unlocks new meanings. I might have a hard time imagining your perspective, and you may have a hard time imagining mine, but if we […]
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Fifth Sunday of Easter
Some days at church are like this: The day is already good, even wonderful – and then it gets better. Some days at church are like this: I didn’t even know how much I needed to hear someone to say this, from the pulpit, even after all this time. Our class is always good, wonderful, […]
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Second Sunday in Advent
I learned a few things this morning. That the word “comfort” originates in the word for “strengthen.” That in the Bible verse “I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil” (Jeremiah 29:11) which is quoted everywhere and shows up that way in about 1,000 memes, the word translated […]
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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
[A sermon on Acts 8:26-40, the Uniform Series text for Sunday, August 13, 2017.] What in the world are we supposed to make of this story? This peculiar story about a meeting, as it turns out, an appointment, arranged by the Holy Spirit no less, so that from one side at least it looks for […]
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Christian Doctrine (15)
Summary notes on Christian Doctrine1 Chapter 15, “What’s New? The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit”: Moving on to the next paragraph in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” The identity of the Holy Spirit is one issue. The Holy Spirit is personal – so, not something, but someone. There are also good […]
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Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
A sermon on the Uniform Series text for Sunday, February 19, 2017, Galatians 5:1-18. The focus statement provided to Sunday school teachers has this to say about the text: “Rigorous self-discipline is appealing to some because it seems to promise mastery over temptation. What is the key to living a morally acceptable life? Paul urges […]
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Luke’s Charismatic Theology, Pt. 4
Notes on Chapter 4 of Roger Stronstad’s The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke, “the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – the Charismatic Community” – the Pentecost narrative has the same function in Acts as the infancy-inauguration narrative has in the gospel of Luke; it is the initiation narrative. Jesus, who was the bearer of the Spirit, […]
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Luke’s Charismatic Theology, Pt. 3
Chapter 3 of Roger Stronstad’s Charismatic Theology of St. Luke focuses on highlighting Luke’s treatment of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of Luke, and how that positions Jesus as a charismatically-empowered figure, who will then charismatically empower the church. Stronstad sees the gospel as, in essence, the indispensable background to Luke’s account of the […]
Matters of Interpretation 