Pentecost XII

Pentecost XII Proper 14 "Does this offend you?"

Many people in our modern world complain that if God is real he has not given us sufficient evidence to believe in him. The record of Scripture demonstrates that the opposite is true.
The record of scripture is that God once walked with the human race in a very real and visibly present way. It is the understanding of the Church that it was the co-eternal Son of God, the pre incarnate Jesus Christ, who walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Despite the fact of God’s presence and the reality of his friendship, the human race turned from God and chose separation. In this choice humanity abandoned the love and the holiness of God. Humanity rejected God’s offer of a loving relationship with the eternal. Instead, humanity chose the way of knowledge and power.

The angels closed the way to Eden as humanity followed the path of separation, rebellion and death. But, God returned to Earth in person, incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Once again, God was fully present and fully real to people. Once again people rejected him. Only this time, people killed him.

Jesus came with love and compassion and people preferred power and dominance. Jesus came not just to speak a truth about God but as the truth of God. Jesus is truth because Jesus is God.
The soul in a state of separation convinces itself that it creates its own truth. The soul in separation claims the right and the power to define God according to its own needs and desires.
Jesus did not allow people that option. Jesus is the fullness of God in human flesh. If you want to know what God is like, how he thinks, who he is: come to Jesus Christ. Observe. Listen. Question. Wait in silence for the answer.

The thousands of people who met Jesus in person, who witnessed his miracles, who heard his teaching, had that demonstration of fact that modern skeptics claim they require before they will believe. It didn’t satisfy the people in the first century and it will not satisfy the people of the 21st century.

The offense that people experienced as they heard Jesus teach is the universal reaction of the soul in a state of separation. The people in Jesus’ day were looking for the right set of laws, the right set of rituals, the right set of beliefs. Jesus brought them something very different. He brought them the possibility of a new relationship. That relationship brought them the possibility of a new way of living.

This was not what people wanted from God then and it is not what people want from God now. The real offense is not the teaching God brings forth through Jesus Christ. The real offense is the real presence of God in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God defines himself.

When it comes to God, every human being believes they have the right to define God however they wish. We seek to create God in our image and forget that God created us in His image.
The real reason people took offense at Jesus and continue to take offense at him is that Jesus reminds us we are dependent beings created by God for a reason and a purpose. That reason and purpose is love and holiness.

Love does not lie, cheat or steal. It does not insist on its own way. It lives by the question: how may I help? Holiness makes a conscious choice to live in the truth of divine law. It prays: Heavenly Father, your will be done. It seeks out the new life of Christ through the spiritual, psychological, emotional and moral cleansing and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

How many of us do that? How many of us embrace the real presence of Jesus in the Creation? In the United States it is illegal in the arena of the public schools even to suggest that God created the universe and the human race. The teaching that God is the creator is offensive to our civilization.

How many of us embrace the real presence of the eternal living Lord Jesus Christ in the sacrament of Holy Communion? Many of Jesus’ own followers took offense at this truth. They walked away. Many in our generation walk away from who Jesus is and what he offers.
Jesus’ followers had their list of things for God to do for them.

They had their own agenda for Jesus to fulfill. Jesus had a very different list. Jesus had an entirely different agenda.

Jesus’ list had one word in three parts. That one word is love. The three parts are to love God with the entirety of our being, to love others, and to love ourself. It sounds very nice and pleasant unless you really pay attention. Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. All. The fullest expression of love for God manifests in worship. To love God as Jesus invites us to love God is to make worship the priority for our lives. According to Jesus, worship comes first. Everything else is second.

Many people in Jesus’ day were willing to dabble in love. They were willing to set aside an hour or so every so often to tell God what they wanted. They were not willing to immerse them selves in divine love. They were not willing to listen to God. They were not willing to have their minds, hearts and wills transformed by God. This is what Jesus offers when he gives himself to us in the blessed sacrament of the alar.

Jesus loves us as we are. He also wants us to grow and mature and transform. He loves us are we are and invites us to come to him by grace through faith just as we are. But, he doesn’t leave us unchanged.

The change is Jesus’ agenda for the human race. The change Jesus offers is also the offense. Religious people in Jesus’ day used religion to get from God what they wanted most: power, wealth, pleasure. Modern secular people ignore God but expect that God, if he exists, is obligated give us what we want on our terms.

In Jesus Christ, God says to us: I will give you what you need. I will give you eternal holy transforming love.

The offense people take at Jesus Christ is the very essence of our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation. It is the transforming presence of the living Lord Jesus in our midst. It is the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. It is the reality that God defines us, we do not define God.
As we surrender our self will to the divine will in a real choice of love, we re discover our identity, our meaning, our purpose.

How do we do this?

The basic answer is to receive the gift of faith.
Faith comes from hearing. To hear is to pay attention. To hear is to wake up to the word of God speaking to us in the creation, in the Bible, in the Church.

Faith invites us to immerse ourselves in divine love through the waters of baptism. Faith invites us to receive the divine transfusion of love through the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
Faith leads us forward in our walk with Christ one step at a time. Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit to reveal to us where we need to grow and to change. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to transform our desires.

If we live our lives from the place of separation will we live from the place of rebellion that takes offense not only at the teaching of Jesus but at the person of Jesus. The solution Jesus offers to our offense is not blind submission to a religion. The solution Jesus offers is in the personal surrender to love through love. It is the total immersion of our reason, will and emotion in the divine love and compassion God offers all people everywhere in Jesus Christ.

The first step for those who do not accept Jesus Christ is to ask questions. What is real? What is truth? Who is Jesus Christ?

Jesus wants to be found. He is not hiding from us. We are hiding from him. If we can only find a place of genuine desire to seek the truth the Holy Spirit will guide us to find the truth. And we will find the truth in Jesus Christ.

The next step for those who have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ is to ask: where do I take offense at Jesus? Where do I resist the clear and direct teaching of divine truth? Where do I bring to life the demand: my will be done. Where do I fear making changes in my priorities, changes in how I spend my money, changes in my interpersonal relationships?

The offense manifests as resistance to grace. The resistance to grace is the invitation to immerse our souls in the divine love and holiness of the co eternal Son of God.
Jesus’ question to his followers, does this offend you, is the invitation to an experience of faith in a moment of grace.

We need to pay attention to that place in our mind, heart and will where we resist Jesus. It is in that resistance that the Holy Spirit helps us transform fear into faith, and pain into eternal love.
Jesus presents to each of us the fullness of God in human flesh. His teaching is not speculative or even insightful. His teaching is truth itself. Our growth in grace comes when we recognize the place of offense in our own souls. That is why Jesus asks the question not of his enemies but of his followers: does this offend you?