Sermon with Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines

This presentation is a celebration of the cosmos and its processes. Why? We are living in a time not only of the meltdown of glaciers but also of ideological systems.

I fully support regular church attendance but not to worship. I go to give thanks to my ancient ancestors who strove so hard against violence and kept humanity progressing. I've written a sample service for updating Christianity to today's reality.

Wise and successful people tell us we learn through making mistakes and trying again. Entrepreneurs, musicians, social workers, philanthropists, artists all gave it a go and, after years of trial and error and disasters, with lots of luck, they succeeded.

Black Lives Matter. It’s a vibrant, grassroots movement in the United States that grew out of the unspeakable killings of black men, women, children, genderqueer folk, by state and government sanctioned police officers. Black people—and people of colour—gathering to say, “Enough! Don’t kill us. We matter too.”

Against or Through? With or For? But or And? Skits for worship

This service is appropriate for a small congregation of 20-60 people. The service is conducted in two settings:

Behind the words the actions, behind the actions the mystery. The Eucharist is a prism through which we can view the painful and joyful realities of life.

Before we start, we all will exit outside to the labyrinth and begin our silence. Walk the labyrinth to the center and back out while meditating on quieting and listening to the Divine within.

Pastor: Following the tradition of Jesus, who welcomed children into his community, we celebrate the presence of children within this community of faith and offer them the sacrament of baptism.

Lover Spirit, intuition in the center of our souls, In your love we find relation. All connected, we are whole. Timeless mystery, quiet conscience, deepest values, voice inside. With the drum and with the cauldron, this we ask you: be our guide.

The events of Holy Week reveal the complexity of human nature - of how loyalty and treachery, callousness and tenderness can live side by side in people's hearts.

THEME The Connecting Solitude THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION The spiritual desert is not a foe to be conquered but an emptiness to be affirmed: for when we are full, we perceive nothing, but when we are empty we can receive everything.

How do you account for / explain the different versions of the same event? To what extent does it matter in your understanding and experience of Jesus that the details that describe such a fundamental event in his life are not an agreed Gospel record across Mark, Matthew and Luke? Why did John ignore all the details of the baptism of Jesus?

The butterfly lives in a seamless realm, a matrix, poetically in the palm of God/dess’s hand, not alien or estranged. Is it possible for us to find that kind of confidence, or trust in the nature of the Universe itself? Let’s take a moment or two to think about Wisdom, and our place in the Universe. What kind of liturgy, or worship experience, would celebrate the kind of inclusive, nurturing community the butterfly knows without thinking about it?

Welcome to you all, to this time of remembrance and thanksgiving – and a time of sadness and tears too.

The Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the calendar year. This liturgy invites participants into a time of rest and reflection that counters the frenetic pace of the secular Christmas season.

Christmas is a time to move into the world of images and dreams, a time to allow the 'make believe' happen. Let us be still and reflective.

Theme: Dreamtime Reality -- Season of Hope Thoughts for Reflection To travel hopefully is the mark of a pilgrim. To believe one has arrived is the mark of the insecure.

This past year, at my congregation on Cape Cod, we began to celebrate the seasons of the year as part of our affirmation

Part 3 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the downloadable Powerpoint slides that illustrate the various parts of the mass.

Part 2 of Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) contains the complete text of the mass

The mass in a form that you can interact with. Each individual musical segment has both an audio file (mp3) and a musical score (pdf).

Each birth causes us to wonder where the spark of life comes from. Every death makes us wonder what of that life survives. What we have done, and who we have been, remains part of the wider universe long after we are gone. None of us knows the whole truth about what lies beyond death. Christians believe that as we journey between life and death, we are safe in the hands of an infinitely gracious God. What we do know and believe is that every human life, with a mind to think and a heart to love, is an expression of the creative spirit of God.

Mary, we did not know you. Kept hidden for centuries you were despised, A Queen not seen, under harlot’s disguise. Mary, we did not know you.

We are here to praise and enjoy God with body and soul, mind and heart, with song and word, with hands and feet. We are here to give because of the abundance God has given us, to share with each other, and to receive, because God has created us to depend on each other. We are here to celebrate the differences that otherwise might divide us: differences of age, of body, of culture, of opinion, of ability, of religious conviction. We are here to put things in perspective: to celebrate what matters, to laugh about things we take too seriously, to cry about things that truly touch our hearts. So may it be this morning: Amen!

My understanding of the flow of worship is that it is a four act drama beginning with a “gathering” and ending with a “send-out”. The four acts of worship between the gathering and send-out are: 1) CONFESSION; 2) PRAISE; 3) DEDICATION; and 4) COMMITMENT.

The dry bones raised by Ezekiel are a metaphor for those who died in the service of God’s justice: those who died working to restore God’s distributive justice-compassion to God’s Earth, and who themselves never saw the transformation. The army of dry bones is an army exiled from justice. Fairness demands that if Jesus was resurrected into an Earth transformed into God’s realm of justice-compassion, then all the other martyrs who died too soon should also be raised with him. “But in fact,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” It is the Christ – the transformed and transfigured post-Easter Jesus – who has started that general resurrection, which restores justice-compassion to a transformed Earth. The transformation has begun with Jesus, and continues with you and me – IF we sign on to the program.

Mother of all life, soul of our being, center of all our longing, who shines for all and flows through all, Be with us, guide us, now and always.

A growing number of progressive Christians, for a decade or more, have seen themselves less and less of being a theist, that is as one who believes in a 'God out there' who intervenes with and over rules the laws of nature. Yet many of these are still very happy to use the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Trinitarian descriptor expresses the way in which Christians may encounter or interpret our 'God', but 'God' is much more. For many progressive Christians, the Trinity is an expression of different people and communities living in perfect harmony. Now that really is heaven on earth!