The Lord's Prayer Book

Our Father Who Art In Heaven

The Lord’s Prayer begins with an idea that seems easy enough to understand. Jesus wants to establish God as our heavenly Father, and we as his children. What we often fail to notice though is what Jesus doesn’t say—yet what he leaves out is just as important. What Jesus doesn’t say is that we should pray to God as “My Father.” We are taught to address him... 

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Jesus establishes God as a heavenly father figure, but that’s not enough for most of us. Without a name, he seems lost in abstraction. Try as we might, we simply can’t bring him into view. There is only the vague presence of someone hovering around us—like the adult of a Charlie Brown Peanuts Special, always outside the frame, speaking in a strange indecipherable... 

Thy Kingdom Come

With the second line of The Lord’s Prayer, we arrive at the heart of the matter: God’s kingdom. To understand how Jesus views his Father’s kingdom, we first need to do something that will seem strange. We must take all discussion of “Heaven” off the table. There will be no talk about heaven with a capital “H,” the place we think we’ll go to (if lucky)... 

Thy Will Be Done

In the Book of Luke, there is a curious statement about God. Luke quotes the prophet Isaiah as saying that through Christ (the Lord) all mankind shall see the “salvation of God”. (1) Considering the ham-fisted way that Jesus’s twelve apostles (not to mention the Pharisees and Sadducees) often handled Old Testament scripture, we might be tempted just to pass over... 

In Earth As It Is In Heaven

In the last two chapters, we’ve established that our entrance into the kingdom of heaven depends on our sense of wonder; our ability to think and love; our patience; and our acceptance of will as a matter of choice—a choice shared equally with God, the Father. We’ve also learned that the kingdom is filled with potential, and with treasures that can be experienced... 

Give Us This Day

Give us this day our daily bread… Up to this point in The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus has been laying a foundation—one that establishes our relationship to God and his creation. When we recite the beginning of the prayer, we are thus engaging in an act of grounding, reminding ourselves that at the core of our existence we remain rooted in Christ. (1) With the foundation... 

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SBNR: Daily Motivationals

Carpe Diem, My Captain?

Oh, Captain, My Captain! The film The Dead Poet’s Society inspired a generation of young creatives with its refrain of “Carpe Diem” (seize the day). Robin Williams (aka Professor John Keating) urged his students to make your lives extraordinary while standing memorably before a school photograph of alumni who had long become “worm’s meat”. Yet most of us live decidedly unextraordinary... 

Obama & The Arc of Change

Last week we talked about how President Obama has embraced the old Progressive Christian belief that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Although Obama talked of the long arc in reference to Iran, the growing impression is that he also feels this way with regards to “change” in the United States—which places him at odds with many of the more liberal and... 

Death & The Tao

Spiritual Progressives who have studied some Eastern philosophy are no doubt familiar with Lao Tzu, whose book the Tao Te Ching (The Way of Nature & Its Power) established the religion of Taoism. Not so many though are familiar with the second great teacher of Taoism, Chuang Tzu, who more than anyone preserved Taoism from the encroachments of Confucianism. One of the most memorable stories... 

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SBNR & Progressive Christianity

The Evolution of God: Robert Wright’s Salon.com Interview

In today’s online issue of Salon.com there is an interesting interview with Robert Wright, a well-known American journalist. Wright is the author of a new book “The Evolution of God,” which approaches its subject from the logical standpoint that, more often than not,... 

The Progressive Christian: A Working Definition

Readers of LivingHour.org have noticed that we cast a pretty wide net when talking about Progressive Christianity and the works of Progressive Christians. In our online bookstore, our motivational series, and our video picks we include people who’ve never identified themselves... 

Progressive Christian Sermons

The state of Christian sermons (be they Evangelical sermons, Progressive Christian sermons, or SBNR sermons) has remained pretty constant for centuries now. What state is this? Well, in the words of singer and songwriter Joe Jones (circa 1960): You talk too much, you worry... 

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