In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, (Matthew 3:1)
Holy Spirit, raise up your witnesses who will speak to the wilderness areas of our lives.
and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2)
Holy Father, help us hearken to your call to repentance.
For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; Make His paths straight.’” (Matthew 3:3)
Jesus, please help us heed those solitary voices that speak your word rather the voice of the crowd which leads us to destruction.
Now John himself was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. (Matthew 3:4-6)
Father, help us come to you, confessing our sins and restore us to a right relationship with you.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7)
Holy Scriptures, move the hearts of the leaders and teachers of the Episcopal Church to hear this voice and take it to heart.
“Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance,” (Matthew 3:8 )
Jesus, help us all bear the fruit of your Holy Scriptures — fruit worthy of repentance.
“and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” (Matthew 3:9)
Holy Spirit, set us free from all false notions of righteousness.
“And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:10)
Lord, the ax is laid to the root of the tree and much that seems solid is being cut down; but let your new life spring forth out of what appears to be dead.
“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:11-12)
Jesus, fill us anew with the living fire of your Holy Spirit. Thank you.
Praying The Nicene Creed
And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;
Holy Spirit, I believe that apostolic teaching which has been taught in all places and in all times. Thank you for the faith that you delivered to the saints. Help us to keep steady in your teaching and grace. Thank you.
A Collect for Peace
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Prayer of St. Chrysostom
Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication unto thee, and hast promised through thy well beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name thou wilt be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.
Friday: 40, 54 * 51; 1 Kings 18:20-40 Phil. 3:1-16 Matthew 3:1-12
Saturday: 55 * 138,139:1-17(18-23); 1 Kings 18:41-19:8 Phil. 3:17-4:7 Matthew 3:13-17
A word received: Keep looking to me.
Notes from the Front Line
Diocesan Intercessions: September 9 For the Primates of the Anglican Communion
***** Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2011 07:36:57 -0400
From: Deacon Faye VanDermark
Subject: WE NEED PRAYER
Torre and Jean,
We in the Susquehanna Deanery our under a State of Emergency. We have been told the flooding is as bad as it was in 2006. Pray for safety, also for the Emergence personal.
God Bless Faye
***** Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2011
From: Bill and Sally Ireland [Belfast, Northern Ireland]
Subject: Thinking and Praying for All of You
Hi Torre and Jean, we are thinking and praying for all of you, at this 10th anniversary of Ground Zero. We pray for the Lord’s continued grace, presence and perfect peace to be with all of those, who have been affected by the events of that sorrowful day. All our love and God’s abundant blessings, be with all of you,Sally&Bill. xxx.
All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us.He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
2 Corinthians 1v3-4. NLT.
***** Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2011
From: +Mike and Linda Chapman [in Peru]
Subject: Re: WE NEED PRAYER: [We in the Susquehanna Deanery re under a State of Emergency...]
We are praying in Peru
+Mike and Linda Chapman
Albany Intercessor
If God is Love, then there must be both a Divine Lover and a Divine Beloved, since love is essentially relational. A Divine/human love relationship is not sufficient, since then God would need man/creation to actualize His/Her potential to become Love and would be less than Perfect/Complete which leaves us with a finite God Who is not *big enough* to satisfy the human longing for Perfection/Completeness.
“The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that
one is loved”.
–Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Carol
Multiplicity which is not reduced to unity is confusion.
Unity which does not depend on multiplicity is tyranny. –Blaise Pascal
TRINITY
Christian tradition has defined God as “Trinity,” or mutual vulnerability, communion, relationship itself. It resolves the old philosophical problem of “the One and the many.” God is much more a verb than a noun by our definition.
Yet we pulled Jesus out of the Trinity and thus ceased to really understand the dynamism and the core Gospel: “I came from God, you are in me, and I am taking you back with me” is the nonstop message in most of John 14-17. How could we miss that?
It was too good to be true, so we decided it was not true, and made it into a worthiness contest, at which almost no one won. A Trinitarian notion of God leaves room for all, invites all, and includes all. God, that’s good!
Adapted from Near Occasions of Grace, p. 50
Starter Prayer:
Holy Trinity,
create in me
a new heart.
http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/02/ten-propositions-on-trinity.html
Ten propositions on the Trinity
1. The Trinity is not an optional doctrine, it is essential. God’s unity is not behind God’s threeness, God’s unity is in God’s threeness. This is not speculative mathematics, it is a descriptive theology of revelation.
2. The Trinity is not an academic doctrine thought up by clever scholars, rather it grew out of the Christian experience of worship, i.e. it expressed the early church’s pattern of prayer to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
3. The driving force of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity was Christological and soteriological, i.e. it served to articulate the Christian experience of salvation in Christ. The first Christians already knew God; through Jesus they came to know God as Jesus’ Father and Jesus as God’s Son; while in the Spirit Jesus continued to be present to them, forming a family of prayer to the Father and building a community of witness to Christ.
4. The church’s thinking was this: As God discloses himself in worship and salvation, so God must be in Godself. In the technical language of (Karl) Rahner’s Rule: the “economic” Trinity is the “immanent” Trinity, and the “immanent” Trinity is the “economic” Trinity. What you see is what you get, and what you get is what there is.
5. At the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity is God’s being-as-communion. God’s unity is not monadic, it is relational. The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s exegesis of I John 4:8b: “God is love.” Father, Son and Spirit indwell each other in love, giving, receiving and returning love in an eternal dynamic of gift-exchange.
6. If God is Trinity, do Jews—and Muslims—know nothing of God? Not at all. God can be known without being fully identified. In fact, “the church’s identification of the one true God as the Trinity does not preclude, but rather requires, that Abraham and his children know how to refer to this God, and so are able to worship him” (Bruce Marshall). Indeed the activity of the Spirit in the world encourages the church to be open and attentive to the presence of God in all the major religions.
7. Is the language of the Trinity sexist? Not at all. No responsible theologian has ever thought of the Father and the Son as male, nor of the Spirit (as is currently fashionable) as female. The issue is not gender but personhood. In fact, it is a strictly monotheistic God, not the Trinity, that is patriarchal—and oppressive.
8. Father, Son and Spirit are constituted by their mutuality, i.e. they are who they are only in their inter-relationships. So too human beings, made in the image of God: we are who we are only in relationship with others. Margaret Thatcher said that there is no such thing as society; on the contrary, there is no such thing as an individual: there are only persons-in-relationship.
9. Clearly the Trinity is not an irrelevant doctrine, it has very practical—indeed political—implications. That God is essentially and eternally God-in-relationship of equality and mutual fellowship—could there be a more cogent critique of hierarchies of domination and exclusion, or of an economics of greed and exploitation?
10. Finally, that God is Trinity means that God is mystery—but a mystery not to be explained but entered. God calls us to participate in his very being, joining in the divine dance that issues in creation and concludes in redemption. In Rublev’s great icon of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit are seated around three sides of a (eucharistic) table. The fourth side awaits a guest.
By Kim Fabricius