Tuesday, March 31, 2009

RUMInations of Transformation

RUMInations Lost

Directions! Who needs them.
Just follow the guy out front
fall back ten yards and punt
when in doubt go south or turn right on red and coast don't stop.

So, now I’m lost in the woods.
I trusted the forest but forgot the brambles and bush,
and the pretty rose that grows with a smile and a thorn
and a rush to the clearing out of my one last hope.

Sharp and edgy was not what I expected.
The will to power was not the heroic suffering
but a dull weary pain in the end
when you awaken alone and know you always have been.

Come. Let’s play a different game apart from blame
where the rules are always the same as the name of the Beloved.

Sermon for Lent V Jesus is the Glory of God

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

Jesus had come to earth for one purpose: to die on the cross.
The reason Jesus came to die on the cross is here within the human mind, heart and will. It is here deep within the innermost reality of the human soul.
God the Father created human beings as a gift to God the Son to live as temples of God the Holy Spirit. The essence of that great and wonderful gift is love. God created us all to be the forever friends of the co eternal son. Such friendship, such love, can only manifest in a real choice.
We all know the story. Our first parents delighted in the joys of Eden and in their walk with God in the garden. The time came for them to make that real choice to embrace love, to chose to be the forever friends of the Son. They lived in the real presence of God. They walked with him, talked with him, laughed with him and explored the world together with him. When the choice came, they and through them we, chose knowledge and power over love and holiness.
Humanity walked away from forever friendship, from eternal love, to claim power and dominance. The price was separation. The ultimate expression of separation is death.
Remember, the Father had created us all to be His forever gift of love to the Son, the Beloved. The Beloved did not stop loving us when we chose to walk away from him. The vast panorama of Biblical history is a record of how God slowly, patiently and persistently brought forth His plan to give us all a second chance to make another real choice. That second chance and that second real choice is Jesus Christ.
For thirty years Jesus lived in quiet obscurity experiencing all that it means to be a human being. Jesus was human in every way we are with one exception: he never chose separation from God the Father. He always lived his life as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
There was one last act Jesus needed to take to experience all of what it now means to be human. He needed to experience separation. He did that on the cross. He did it not out of rebellion against God. He did it rather in submission to the Father’s will. He did it not to declare his independence from God and assert his will to power. He did it from the place of love and compassion. He did it for us.
Jesus’ death on the cross invites all people everywhere who see this terrible and tormented image to ponder the Great Mystery of humanity and divinity united in Jesus Christ. The crucifixion invites our questions, our doubts, our fear and anger, our arrogance and despair, but most of all our pain and loneliness.
Jesus is the perfect mirror to the human soul. He knows us better than we know ourselves. His open honest and compassionate life reveals to us where we hide from ourselves. His death on the cross is so striking, so startling, so ghastly that the perfect mirror of his love reflects all of the pain and anguish of our own innermost souls.
From the cross Jesus asks us: where is your pain? Where do you hide from the truth of self responsibility? Where do you deceive yourself and seek to cheat the immutable laws of nature and ethics? Where are you choosing to recycle pain into suffering in order to avoid transformation? It is all there reflected in Jesus as he dies on the cross. It is all there as Jesus reaches back into the past and forward into the future to embrace and hold for one terrible moment in time the fullness of human sin and death for all people who have ever lived and who will ever live.
It was love that led Jesus to the cross. It was love that enabled him to stay on the cross. It was separation that killed Jesus on the cross. And, it was love that overcame and transformed that separation back into eternal life.
As Jesus approached Jerusalem to keep his appointment with sin and death, his heavenly Father sanctified the time and the choice in an audible proclamation of the divine glory. That glory is the fulness of God in human flesh. That glory is the very essence of divinity: steadfast holy love.
Until Jesus returns to this planet in person, the great image of divine love is not the Christmas crib but the hard wood of the cross. Until Jesus returns in person to this planet, the great gift of divine love is the blessed sacrament of holy communion where by Jesus infuses his very life essence, offered for us on the cross, into the darkest depths of our souls to be the light that reveals to us where we are now and the way forward to personal transformation in love and holiness.
The gift of God in Christ’s death on the cross is the call to reunification. It is the call to surrender our self will, fear and pride. It is the call to recognize Jesus embraced the totality of human sin and death, our personal sin and death, on the cross.
The gift is the person through whom, by whom and for whom we were all created. The gift is the eternal self giving outpouring love of God in Jesus Christ who declares for all time and for all people the invitation to hear, to believe and to receive And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.