The “Conclusion” to Egan Harvey’s book Karl Rahner: The Mystic of Everyday Life brings to mind at least two thoughts:

(1) I may be attending a Presbyterian Seminary, but there is a Roman Catholic or two influencing the curriculum (not that there’s anything wrong with that...in fact, it's encouraged) and

(2) I am reminded of a Transfiguration Day sermon I once thought about a preaching tentatively-titled “Do You Worship Jesus?”

Ultimately, what is most important for me is the way of Jesus. What some have called following Jesus’ religion (the religion Jesus practiced that gave precedence to loving God and loving neighbor) – as opposed to a religion about Jesus (where Jesus himself is worshipped instead of imitating the way that Jesus lived). Or, put another way, “Christianity not about 20 impossible things to believe before breakfast”; it is set of practices (love, mercy, forgiveness, truth-telling, etc.) that form a community called the church that witnesses to the way of God as revealed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Put yet another way, followers of Jesus are challenged to incarnate the way of God (the reign of God, the kingdom of God) in their time and place, just as Jesus incarnated the way of God in first-century Galilee.

There have, of course, always been minority reports to orthodox Christianity, even back when orthodoxy was proto-orthodoxy (just one more group in the 2nd century competing for the right to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ life and teachings). For more on that, see Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

Nevertheless, the Trinity (which presumably implies some sort of Jesus-worship) is a powerful was to understand the inner life of God as community (see Eastern Orthodoxy’s understanding of perichorisis). But I am not locked into the traditional names of Father, Son, Holy Spirit by any means.

Some of the best I’ve heard are “Lover, Beloved, Bond of Love” and (from the Presbyterian Church!) “Mother, Child, Womb.”

So, yes, I do worship Jesus – or, better, I pray to Christ. (As some have said, “One Jesus, Many Christs"). Then again, I also pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus:

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.
Amen.