Here is this week's litany from 2018: Litany for Unclean Spirits, which focuses on the text from Mark 1 in which Christ casts out the unclean spirit in Capernaum.

This time around, I'm dealing primarily with the text of 1 Corinthians 8, in which Saint Paul discusses what was apparently an issue: whether or not to eat food sacrificed to idols. He points out that all things have their existence in God as represented by Christ: “through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” Rather than splitting hairs about doctrine and correctness, he invites the Corinthian church to see all their decisions and actions first through a lens of love for others, urging them to “ take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

We too are invited into this tension: we live in liberation from dogma, yet we can choose to center our right action in Love for Neighbor. This litany leans into those themes.

God, you have given all things to us,
Things in heaven and things on earth;
Placed the land under our stewardship,
And the people under one another’s mutual care.

We are meant to dwell in freedom (1)
From dogma,
From shame,
From retribution,
From falsehood,
From ego dominance.

Yet we find that in our freedom we still bear responsibility
To one another,
To the land we steward,
To the work of healing,
To transformation,
To embody the love of Christ in this world….

Christ, through whom are all things,
And through whom we exist;
All of us, bound up in God’s kindness,
Witnesses, if we are paying attention, to Love. 

Help us, oh God, as we walk upon the earth,
To live in freedom,
But also in love;
To care for one another,
To bear one another’s burdens,
To practice generosity,
To participate in healing,
To perceive the true, beloved Self inside every person.

Amen

1. 1 Corinthians 8:9