Friday: Who or What?

Honestly, I seldom or never know how to start these things, just as I seldom or never have anything in mind to write about when I sit down and log on. It is not that some inspiration comes to me - - that practically never happens, it's simply that writing, the brain exercise that goes into it, is part of my formula for keeping the mind alive. As I keep saying, when you get here, as I pray you do, you'll understand.

It's mental exercise. Linda does crossword puzzles, which I cannot. I write, read - - another book arrived yesterday, "Galileo's Daughter", play solitaire card games on computer screen, do a sudoku if I have the time and focus it takes, they're totally a puzzle of elimination: "can't be, can't be, can't be, can't be, has to be". Still do some things as retired helper priest at church. No driving out of town any longer, nor driving after dark. 'Life catching up to', so to put it.

What then? Look at the news and this thought wafts through, that if I were choosing I would not choose to live in this Time, what we've done to Earth's climate, a pandemic, what we are doing to ourselves and especially others by our political and social choices and certainties, a war of brutal cruelty for no reason whatsoever, ... . When might I choose to have lived, then? Has there been or will there be a true Pax? Not like Pax Romana, when relative peace for some was laid on by force that is not Pax; but a godly Pax. If so, it won't be until that television series "Life After People", a century or a thousand years into that. Seminary again, my theology professor expressing it, "How does God stand us?"

From an earlier blogpost about the Peace of God: it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.

Enough.

The slight mental exercise that's the "theological discourse" of glaring at a Collect for the Day, perceiving what it asserts about God and my response to that.

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Friday in Easter Week

Almighty Father, who gave your only Son to die for our sins and to rise for our justification: Give us grace so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Composed for Cranmer's first (1549) Book of Common Prayer (Hatchett p.181), and used here and there in the Easter Season ever since. With it's poetically flowing lyrics, it reminds me of a favorite opening prayer that was dropped from the current BCP:

Oh almighty Lord and everlasting God, vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to direct, sanctify, and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of thy law and in the works of thy commandments; that, through thy most mighty protection both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But today's collect: its theology of God the Father's intentionally sending God the Son to a sacrificial death for the satisfaction theory of atonement for human sins, leaves a ghastly image of God as not omnipotence and grace, but unable and/or unwilling to deal without punishment, exacting man's concept of absolute justice.

As well: do you really believe that Pantokrator is obsessed with our human sins? Have you gazed out into the Universe through a telescope? Or even browsed through a catalog of NASA's photographs of distant space?

I'm back to Jenson: Who or What is God? and theologically I do not prefer Cranmer's answer, or Anselm's.

RSF&PTL