God has no gender. And the Lord? There’s not much Lord in this church service.
At Tucson’s largest Episcopal church, St. Philip’s in the Hills, the creators of an alternative worship service called Come & See are bucking tradition by rewriting what have become prescribed ways of worship.
For the faithful, that means God isn’t referred to as “him,” and references to “the Lord” are rare.
“Lord” has become a loaded word conveying hierarchical power over things, “which in what we have recorded in our sacred texts, is not who Jesus understood himself to be,” St. Philip’s associate rector Susan Anderson-Smith said.
Yes and no. Jesus did say that “whoever wants to be greatest must be the servant of all”, but He also said that “whoever loves me OBEYS my commandments.” That sound hierarchical to me.
I think “Lord” should be replaced by “Leader” because the word is antiquated. No one has a “lord” that they obey anymore. We all have (or should have) leaders to follow.
Paul