Christmas II

Christmas II (Matthew 2: 13-15; 19-23)
Out of Egypt have I called my Son. (Hosea 11:1)
Not all paths lead to God. But God can turn all paths back to him.

Jacob and his large family understood this when they left the promised land and settled in Egypt. At first it seemed to be their salvation from starvation, suffering and death. In a very few years it became a trap. The trap was the spiritual slavery to the false gods and goddesses of Egypt. That idolatry led to the economic slavery of forced labor to build the temples and tombs dedicated to those idols.

Through Moses, God called the descendants of Jacob, whose other name was Israel, out of spiritual and economic slavery into the new life and new way of living God offered them. It was a way of freedom and responsibility. It was a way of faith and hope. It was a way of unconditional love and compassion. It was not the way that generation wanted. And so, that generation never entered the promised land.
Their children inherited the promise. Sadly, their children and their descendants never fully claimed the promise. The promise is grounded in the personal relationship God offers his people.

God led the people out of Egypt but the people carried Egypt with them. They carried the attitudes and actions of spiritual and economic slavery into the Sinai. They grumbled, they complained, they rebelled against Moses’ leadership.

God told the people he would be their king. The people rejected God’s offer. They complained: why should we of all people not have a king of our own choosing? Despite God’s warnings that the kings of men dominate and destroy the people demanded a king. And, that king and his descendants abused their power as God had warned.
The greatest abuse of power is to reject the sovereign plan and purpose of God.
It doesn’t take a king to exercise this kind of power. We each have the capacity to rebel against God and to reject God’s plan and purpose. When a king, a ruler, does this the entire nation is affected.

King Herod had met with the Wise Men. He recognized their insights and discernment. He consulted his own wise men, the priests and scholars of his court. He formed an image of what they all told him. King Herod concluded that the child they spoke of was a real and present danger to his power.

King Herod believed the prophets could see into the future. He lacked the faith that the prophets spoke God’s sovereign and infallible word. He heard the prophetic message of salvation as a threat to his personal power. In his pride he thought he could eliminate this threat. He missed his moment of conversion. He missed his moment of salvation. He rejected the Way of divine love and compassion. He pursued the way of dominance and destruction.

King Herod killed many children in Bethlehem and its surrounding villages. His missed his target. It was not time. A descendant of that King Herod would participate in the murder of Jesus Christ. He too would meet his moment of grace and reject the invitation to salvation.

Our Heavenly Father wove the events of the past into the present. As Jacob, also known as Israel, had taken his family into Egypt for safety, so Joseph took his family into Egypt for safety. As God had revealed to the prophet Hosea that he had called his Son, Israel, out of Egypt so in the fullness of time God called Joseph to bring his family back from Egypt into the promised land.

By these events molded in the crucible of absolute power and violent death, God revealed how his Son, Jesus Christ, was the pattern, the plan and the purpose of God.
Jesus is Israel. Jesus is a particular person. In his humanity he is the descendant of Judah and the line of kings descended from King David. In his divinity he is the one true and eternal king whom the people of Israel had once rejected.

Many centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, Israel had rejected the kingship of God. They demanded and received human kings who brought high taxes, war and oppression to the nation. In Jesus Christ, God healed the covenant Isreal had broken. In Jesus Christ God united the human line of kings with the divine kingship of the Plan of Salvation.

As an infant and young child, Jesus relived the experience of his human ancestors. He fled death in the promised land. He lived in exile in Egypt. He experienced the exodus from Egypt in his return to the Promised Land. He lived with the threat of arrest and execution as an exile in his own country.

In Jesus, God took the many detours the people of Israel had embraced and wove them back into the Plan and Pattern and Purpose of the Way of Salvation.

There is a way that seems right to people. It is the multi faceted way of self will, pride and fear. It goes by many names and offers many promises. Whatever it is called and whatever it promises it cannot deliver what people truly desire. It can only deliver temporary pleasure. It can only follow the path of command and control. It can only lead to murmuring, grumbling and the non negotiable demands and threats of the will to power.

This is not the way of salvation. This is not the way of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God offers a very different way. It is the way of reunification. It is the way of conversion.

Conversion does not happen once. Reunification with the Father through the Son in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit takes place once in a moment of time. Conversion is a life long process.

Jesus lived that process. He relived the process for Israel and offered to that nation what they themselves refused to accomplish. He lived that process for us.
The process is the way of salvation.

The moment of salvation is the real choice we make to receive Jesus as our personal lord and savior. That choice reunites us to God the Father. That choice allows God the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. That choice gives us a new life which is eternal.
The process is the new way of living that proceeds from the new life, the eternal life. Every day we live God invites us to make choices about the path we follow in this world. The one true way of eternal life is Jesus Christ. All other ways lead to suffering and death.

The Way of Jesus Christ for humanity is the way of daily conversion. Every day in every way Jesus invites us to give our sins to him. As we give our sins to him he transforms them back into their original blessing.

The choice is always ours. The way of the world ( our culture) is the way of self will and pride. The way of the flesh ( our sin nature) is the way of self indulgence, demand and rebellion. The way of Satan ( the angelic being who presumes to set himself in God’s place) is the way of the exaltation of the will to power.
Jesus relived the ancient history of his people in his own life. He took the failure of that history and healed it. He restored the Plan, the Pattern, and the Purpose of God to Israel and offered them a second chance to enter into a personal relationship with God.

Jesus does the same for us. There is only one way to God. There is only one way that brings forth eternal life here and now. It is the way of Jesus Christ. Jesus meets us on the detours we have taken and offers to help us return to the way of divine love and compassion.

That way is the way of personal daily conversion. That way is formed and directed by the questions the Holy Spirit encourages us to ask. The sign posts on that way are the Bible, the Sacraments, the saints, the liturgy, and the lives of other believers.
On this second Sunday of Christmas Jesus is asking you: where do you need to experience conversion? Where have you taken a detour off the way of eternal love? Where do you need to make a course correction and a change?

Those who live the old way live in slavery. Those who live in slavery are those who symbolically live in Egypt. God calls you out of slavery. God calls you out of Egypt even as we hear this day that God called his Son, his only begotten Son, out of Egypt in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Plan and Pattern of Salvation.

As it was for Jesus so it can be for you. Out of Egypt have I called my sons and my daughters.

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us

At Christmas time each year we remember God united his divinity with our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

God has visited this planet in person twice so far in our history. The first time was in Eden. God the Son appeared to us in his pre incarnate form. He walked with us. He spoke with us. He shared with us the wonder of creation. He invited us to complete our own creation by making a real choice to be his eternal companion.
Humans made a different choice. We chose to become God’s equal. There is no equal to God. God is infinite, eternal, the very source of life, the very essence of unconditional holy love.

In the effort to become God we lost the original blessing of being human. We plunged our species and our world into the chaos of rebellion, sin and death. The co-eternal Son left this planet. His Heavenly Father sent the Holy Spirit into the world to prepare for that very specific moment in time that we are gathered here to celebrate.
On this Christmas 2010 we remember and we celebrate the second time God visited this planet. This time, the co-eternal Son of God united his divinity with our humanity.

God the Son became a human being. He embraced our human nature in the most amazing and miraculous event. He fused his divine nature with our human nature in the very ordinary and incredibly miraculous event of conception, fetal development and birth.
Jesus Christ is one person with two natures. His divine nature is eternal. His human nature came into existence in a moment of time in the same way we come into existence.

The birth of God’s son as a helpless and completely dependent infant is an expression of Divine love, Divine Holiness, and Divine Compassion. The co –eternal of Son did not just casually visit this planet. He poured himself out for us so he could be one of us. He emptied himself of all the attributes human value most about God: knowledge and power. He came into the world as all children come into the world: naked and cold and fragile and dependent.

The birth of Jesus Christ is God’s pledge to us that he loves us so much he has freely chosen to become one of us.

The birth of Jesus Christ is God’s pledge that holiness is not condemnation. Holiness is unification. In Jesus Christ, God fully and completely identifies with us to experience life in all of its joys and sorrows as we experience life.
The birth of Jesus Christ is God’s pledge to us that he is real, he is personal, he is love, he is Jesus Christ.

Jesus entered into a world at war with itself. He came as the Prince of Peace.
Jesus entered into a world of fear. He came to offer faith.

Jesus entered into a world defined by the human will to power to command and control. He came to show us a life that is formed by love, a way of living that expresses itself through an attitude and an action of compassion.

Jesus just doesn’t have love or show love. Jesus is love. He is the eternal Beloved of the Father. That is why Jesus just doesn’t show us a way to find God. Jesus is the way God finds us.

That way is incredibly, almost scandalously, intimate and personal. God irrevocably chose to unite his divinity with our humanity so he could restore to us what we so foolishly abandoned. He has physically united himself to us so we may have the real choice to unite ourselves to him.

The gift of God to all people every
where is himself. In that gift lie all of the fullness of the original blessing God offered our species and our species rejected. In Jesus God not only tells us but shows us how our lives can be different if we choose the gift of the original blessing.

We see some of that blessing at this time of year. We feel the difference in the songs of joy and the hymns of peace. We hear that peace is possible and love is real. The Christ child reminds us of the innocence and tenderness we so seldom experience in our daily lives.

The image of Joseph, Mary and Jesus surrounded by animals, shepherds, Kings and angels offers us a alternate vision of how life can be different.

Savor the sentiments of Christmas. They are real. They are, as we all know, temporary. The Original Blessing the Christ Child brings is not temporary. The Original Blessing is a new life and a new way of living. It is a life characterized by the blessings of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control.

These are only some of the blessings the Christ Child brings to us and offers to us. We receive these blessings, these original blessings, these eternal blessings that never fade away, as we receive the one who embodies them.

Through original sin humanity chose to separate from God. In Jesus Christ God has chosen to unite himself to us. He now offers us a second chance to live the Original Blessing of Divine love. The second chance is the gift of Jesus Christ.

The Christ Child is more than an example of blessing. He is the blessing. He offers himself to us this time of year when we may be just a little more receptive to hearing the message. From the manager in Bethlehem he reaches across time to seek and to find each one of us where we are. The Christ child is the unconditional love of God offering himself to us.

The reality of God is his gift to us, to each of us, to all of us. It is the first Christmas present ever given. It is a gift that God continues to offer. It is the gift of eternal love in the person of Jesus Christ.

Advent IV

Advent IV Emmanuel (Matthew 1:18-25)

God’s math is not like human math.

In God’s math one plus one plus one equals one. The three distinct persons of the Holy Trinity are one God.

In God’s math, one divided by two also equals one. Jesus Christ is one single person with two natures: human and divine. Jesus is not half human and half divine. He is one person who is fully human and fully divine.

Jesus is Emmanuel: God with us.

Human math insists that God is either one or three. Human math insists that Jesus is either human or divine. Of all of the people on earth it was holy mother Mary who knew that Jesus was fully human and fully God. Mary had the knowledge of personal experience.

We cannot have the same kind of knowledge Mary had. We can not have the same personal experience. We can have the knowledge that comes from faith. We can have the personal experience of Jesus Christ that comes from grace.

The incarnation of the second person of the Eternal Trinity is the reality that God not only wants to be found by human beings, he has in fact come to earth to find us- all of us, each of us.

Jesus is God with us.

Jesus is God fully embracing human nature. Jesus is God who has become a particular human being so he can relate to us the same way a friend relates to a long lost friend. We are the lost. Jesus is the friend (and more than a friend) who seeks us out and finds us.

Jesus finds us where ever we are. Jesus accepts us as we are. Jesus invites us to enter into a new place. The place is at the altar of sacrifice.
The altar of sacrifice is where Jesus pledges infallibly to be here for us, to be here with us.

Jesus invites us to become more than we are now. He invites us to give him our sins so he can transform them back into virtue. He invites us to surrender our self will so he can transform it by divine will into free will.

Jesus offers us a new life- eternal life. He offers us a new way of living- holy living. The world exalts separation, rebellion and self indulgence. Jesus very patiently asks: so, how is that working out for you? Are you tired yet? Are you tired of feeling tired? Are you tired of the skepticism, the cynicism, and the spite? Are you tired of a world at war with itself? Are you tired of fighting and accusing, of using and being used?

There is another way. Jesus himself is that other way. Jesus is that other way because he is Emmanuel, God with us.

God wants to be found. He reaches out to find us in Jesus Christ. What keeps us lost is our own self will, fear and pride. What keeps us lost is sin. The sin is the log in our eyes that blinds us from the reality of the Living Lord Jesus Christ.
Where do you live from the place of self will? Where you live from the place of demand? Where do you live from the attitude of judgment and exclusion? It is in that place that Jesus offers to become real to you as you surrender your sins to him . It is as he transforms those sins from selfishness into selflessness that Jesus becomes more real to us.

Despite the many distortions of the secular holiday season there is still an important insight in all of the materialism. The insight is that life is more blessed as we give. We are more blessed as we open our hearts to become channels of giving.

The world narrows the concept to a single day in a single way- the way of materialism. Jesus opens and expands this concept from an infinite and eternal way. It is the way of grace- unmerited favor, unconditional love.

As we open to the way of grace we open to the reality of God. And God finds us in that moment. Every time we approach life from the way of unconditional love we encounter Jesus Christ at our side. We find him who first finds us.
Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us in a single moment of grace.

Advent III

Advent III (Matthew 11: 2-11) Rejoice!
Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

All blessings come to earth from Jesus Christ.

This is a hard saying for most human beings most of the time. It was difficult for the people of First Century Israel to hear. It is no less difficult for the people of twenty first century to hear it and to accept it.

The Bible is a thousand year record of the observations of dozens of people who recorded their experiences under the supervision of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brought order to these observation. From time to time Moses and the prophets offered a theory to explain why people acted the way they did. These theories are remarkably consistent.

The Bible describes, classifies and then offers an opinion about the human condition. Jesus invites us to test the conclusions Moses and the prophets offer.
The Bible observes the virtues and vices of individuals, tribes and nations. It presents the observations in history, metaphor, poetry, song and saga. Based on the analysis of a thousand years of observation, the Bible makes two fundamental assertions, theories, about humanity.

The first assertion is that human beings are lost. Not only are we lost we are willfully and spitefully lost. Since we are lost we exist in a state of terrible emotional, psychological and spiritual pain. By our own choice and contrary to all reason we recycle that pain into suffering.

The second assertion is that we are lost because we have chosen to separate from the pattern, plan and purpose for life. Dogs always act in accord with their canine nature. Cats always act in accord with their feline nature. Of all the life forms on earth only human beings act contrary to our own self interest and contrary to our human nature.

The third assertion is that God is real. God is the plan, the pattern and the purpose for creation and for human nature.

The fourth assertion is that human beings are lost in separation because we have rejected God. Religious people attempt to create a god in their own image. Secular people see no value in the very concept of God. Not only are we lost, we don’t want to be found. We value our independence. We resist any effort to limit our self will. We fear any intrusion into our world view.

So it was, that the students of John the Baptist were confused about Jesus. John had proclaimed Jesus the Messiah. But, John was arrested and Jesus did nothing. Surely the true Messiah would use his divine power to rescue his own cousin, whom Jesus very openly declared to be the last of the Prophets.

That is part of the Biblical observation of human nature. It forms the theory the Bible sets forth that not only is humanity lost it is willfully and spitefully lost. And, humanity suffers from self created and self inflicted separation.

John sent his students back to the one person who could answer their questions. John sent them back to the one person who not only had the answer but is the answer. This revelation that Jesus is the answer is not what any one expected.

People were looking for some one to state the answer. They were looking for some one with the knowledge and the power to solve their problems and to give them victory over their enemies. They missed the teaching of Moses, the Prophets, and John that the root problem that brings so much pain and suffering to human existence is our own choice to separate from the Pattern, Plan and Purpose of Creation.

Moses and the Prophets assert that God is that Pattern, Plan and Purpose. John, the last of the prophets, declares that Jesus is God reaching out to humanity. Jesus is not the way we find God. Jesus is the way God finds us.

The long history of human separation and rebellion recorded in the Bible leads to the inescapable conclusion that people are lost and don’t want to be found. When our Heavenly Father sent his son, his only Son, into the world to seek and to find the lost the result of his coming was entirely predictable based on past observation of human behavior.

The lost don’t want to be found and so the lost will react to the one who has come to seek and to find. That reaction will lead to willful misunderstanding, rejection, and murder.

That dynamic of willful reaction continues to this day. Amazingly, in our culture, we manically celebrate the generic holiday season even as we demand that all references to Jesus Christ and even the word “Christmas” be removed from the public arena.

The Bible predicts this. Jesus experienced it. He knew he was coming to a planet where the dominant species had chosen separation. He knew our species would not only reject his message, as we had previously rejected the message of Moses and the Prophets, but would reject him.

Jesus just doesn’t teach about God’s love. Jesus just doesn’t show us God’s love. Jesus is God’s love made flesh in a particular person at a particular place and time. Jesus is the reality of God with us. That is just too much God for a species that has chosen separation and seeks the knowledge and the power to define the universe according to our own needs, desires and insights.

Jesus said: blessed is those who take no offense at me. Blessed are the ones who are not ashamed to claim the name of Christ and to proclaim the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

The blessing is not in the religion we form to help us draw closer to Christ. The blessing is not in the commentaries or assertion of self will by which we declare what we have concluded and what we believe.

The blessing is in the personal relationship God offers us in his co-eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to earth to seek and to find the lost. People reacted to Jesus by attempting to redefine him, to mold him and to shape him according to their own needs and desires. Yet, Jesus continued to reach out to the lost.

Jesus continued to ask questions and to invite questions. Jesus continued to encourage people to listen to Moses and the Prophets. Jesus continued to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to raise the dead, to be the friend of the friendless. And, he continues to do these things today.

The Blessing is in the relationship.

The relationship is a new life that produces a new way of living. That new life is based in reunification with the Father, through the Son. That new way of living is expressed in daily transformation through the indwelling Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit.

The blessing is unconditional love made real, made personal, made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Jesus asked the crowd- what are you looking for? What were you looking for in John? What are you looking for in me? Jesus continues to ask us the same question. He continues to invite us to test the observations and assertions recorded in the Bible. He continues to offer himself to us.

Jesus is the gift of God for all people. He is the unconditional love of God for all people. He never imposes himself. But, he continually offers himself. What are you looking for?

Moses, the prophets and the apostles offer us an answer to that question. Our heavenly Father sent Jesus Christ to be the answer to that question. It is as we make a real choice to allow ourselves to be found in Jesus Christ that we receive the blessing and in the blessing experience the joy.

Christmas letter 2010

Advent 2010
Dear family and friends,

Knowledge, understanding and wisdom are three of the seven gifts the Holy Spirit gives at Confirmation. The gifts are given in a single moment of time but unfold throughout time and beyond time.

I have sought knowledge this year in my ongoing Pathwork studies with Carol Day. The Daily Office is an amazing educational tool. Perhaps the most outstanding source of continuing education for me comes from the questions and observations of the children, teens and college students of the Parish.

Understanding is a gift that unfolds in the duality of the world as it is. For me, the Rosary is the pattern of this duality. Joy and sorrow interact within Divine Grace to produce an awareness of the Glory of God. The Glory of God manifests in each singular moment of life within the light and life and love of Jesus Christ.

There has been a fair amount of sorrow with the unexpected death of my father in early August, the death of an old childhood friend, Rick, in late August, and the death of my Confessor and advisor, the Very Reverend Lloyd Chattin, in September. The Curtin family has had more than its share of illness this year. And, I am still recovering from “minor surgery” I had in late August.

Through knowledge and understanding come wisdom. The wisdom I have experienced is the wisdom of the Great Mystery of Divine love. As I age I recognize the imperfection and transitory quality of knowledge. More and more I understand St. Paul’s statement ” now I know in part.” Since I am beginning to appreciate the temporal imperfection of knowledge I am more comfortable stepping back from the illusion of knowing and stepping into the Mystery of Faith.

I have discovered and continue to discover the Mystery of Faith in a person, the living Lord Jesus Christ. He is real. He is personal. He just doesn’t speak of love or show love He is Love. He just doesn’t speak of God or offer a way to God He is God. He is Emmanuel, God with us.

A blessed Advent and a merry Christmas,

Advent II

Advent II Repent (Matthew 3:1-12)
John the Baptist was a wild and crazy guy.

Our Heavenly Father sent the Holy Spirit to sanctify John at the moment of his conception. As John grew up he left his home village, lived in the desert, wore camel’s hair robes and ate bugs and honey.

As the last of the true prophets of God, John’s basic message consisted of just two words: repent and prepare. As with all true prophets of God, John looked back to the perfect Law of Moses and held up the Law as a mirror to the human soul. In that mirror we see where we have separated from God and where we fall short of God’s standard for life.

Repent means to stop. Look. Listen. Make a change. Correct our course in life.
The prophets all ask us to stop what we are doing and reflect. Just how do we make choices? Where are our priorities? What are we doing with our lives? How do we treat other people? How do we treat God? Repentance can only begin when we start asking these kinds of questions about our own attitude and action.

After we stop it is important to look, to examine our lives. Where are we not happy? Where is there meaning and purpose in our lives? How does the world around us attempt to mold us into its values and expectations? What does Moses teach about our actions and attitudes?

After we stop and look we need to listen. We need to listen to the voice of God speaking to us. God speaks through nature, other people, the Bible and in moments of silence. The prophets invite us to seek silence so we can hear God speak. The world seeks to inundate us with noise so we are constantly distracted.

People some times complain that God is not speaking. In truth, the Prophets declare God speaks clearly and concisely but human beings do not listen. Not only do we fail to listen, we make choices to fill our lives with so many distractions that we cannot hear the clear and present Word of God.

Take time for silence. Make time for silence. Turn off all of the electronic devices that so fill our lives with noise. Make a date with Jesus Christ to meet him in a moment of silence that you choose to set aside for that sole purpose. Mother Teresa once said if you are too busy to schedule ten minutes a day for silence then you are too busy.

Jesus Christ is the pattern, the plan and the purpose for our lives. There is a popular saying: when all else fails read the instructions. Don’t wait for failure. Don’t wait for a crisis. Live intentionally. Choose to reset the course of your life by the bright and morning star, Jesus Christ.

Stop. Look. Listen. Change. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you one specific change you need to make in your life here and now.
The true prophet of God does not impel aggression. The true prophet of God does not demand submission. The true prophet of God does not lead us into esoteric withdrawal from the world. The True prophet of God encourages us to ask the hard questions. The True prophet of God asks us to seek the wisdom, the insight and the courage to change.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. Everything else in this universe of matter, energy, time and space is subject to change. Only human beings can choose to direct that change.

The Prophets remind us very bluntly that every choice we make has eternal consequences. More often than not the power in choice is in the little things of life- what the world calls the details of life.

Choices are cumulative.

Sin is a step by step journey of incremental compromises and distractions.
Our Heavenly Father invites us to enter into the journey of life in companionship with his only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The surrounding culture, the distorted desires of our mind, heart and will and the subtle seductive half truths that Satan embeds in the world all seek to lead us into a journey away from that companionship.
The true prophet has been anointed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit to identify the logic junctions where we leave the path of steadfast holy love. The true prophet has the clarity of sight, the purity of heart and the singleness of will to discern how and when we are walking in the wrong direction.

John recognized the wrong direction the people of his time and culture had chosen. They had abandoned the way of love and compassion. They had embraced the way of command and control. They turned away from the one true path of life and walked in the multiple paths of self destruction and death.

From the dessert, John cried out to the people of the farms, the villages and the cities. From his own self chosen poverty John called out to the poor, the rich and the powerful. His voice was clear and unmistakable: Repent.

Repent. Stop what you are doing. Look at your lives. Listen to the voice of God revealed in Moses and the Prophets. Hear God speaking to you now in this time and in this place in a moment of silence. Repent. Change. Change now before change is too late. Choose the way that is life.

Change of this magnitude is only possible as we ask our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit into our minds and hearts and wills. The desire for change produces the invitation of the soul to experience change.

We experience change as we ask God to transform our basic desires. Jesus one said: blessed is he whose only desire is to do what God requires.

We all need to make a course correction in our lives from time to time. We all need to look up and find our way through the bright and morning star. He is always there for us. He is always willing and able to work our foolish and our sinful choices back into the Plan and Pattern and Purpose of Divine Love and Compassion.
Every choice is an eternal choice. And, Jesus can transform every choice by his own love and holiness into a choice that produces eternal life.

This course correction from the path of death into the path of life is only possible as we hear the word of the prophet: repent.

Advent I Year A 2010

Advent 1 Keep Awake!

Jesus Christ is personally returning to this planet.

For now, Jesus has ascended into heaven. For now, only God the Father knows when Jesus will return. As it was is the day of Noah so it was in the day Jesus preached. People were caught up in the daily events of their lives: eating, drinking, marriage, birth and death.

As it was in the day when Jesus preached so it is now in this Church Age, the Age of Grace. People pursue their lives. We eat and drink, we work and play, we experience pleasure and pain. Marriage, births and deaths. The world goes on as it has for thousands of years.

The world goes on but one thing changes. Every day that passes brings the day of Jesus’ return to Earth one day closer.

In the First Century most people missed the Real Presence of God in Jesus Christ. Some were indifferent. Some wanted to use Jesus to advance their own plans. Some resented and rejected Jesus. Few, perhaps only four at the end, understood that faith is more important than belief. Those four: Holy Mother Mary, her sister Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved apostle John had slowly come to understand that Faith is a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ command and encouragement to his followers to keep awake is an invitation to wake up from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about life, other people and God. These stories lull us into a half life of borrowed dreams.

For many in Jesus’ day the borrowed dreams were of aggressive military conquest, power and dominance. For others, the borrowed dreams were cast in the seductive illusions of pleasure and withdrawal from the world. For others the dreams involved submission to a set of laws, rituals or philosophies.

Jesus entered into the world to call us to wake up and pay attention. Jesus is not just another religious leader who brings temporary relief from life’s trials and tribulations. Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God, the Logos, the very Pattern, Plan, and Purpose of the universe.

In Jesus Christ God offers us a new life and a new way of living. In Jesus Christ God reveals to us the essential truth of Creation. Jesus just doesn’t offer an opinion about truth, Jesus is the Truth.

Jesus just doesn’t offer us an alternative way of being religious. Jesus is the Way we can be fully alive, fully human, and fully awake. Jesus is the origin and source of life.

Jesus asks us to wake up. Observe. Question. Reflect. Pray. Engage fully in life. Receive the great blessing of God in the unconditional love of God.
During Advent, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church invites us to consider how we can respond to the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Where are you still asleep and living some one else’s borrowed dream? Where are you placing you trust? How are sleepwalking through life, living by default?

The invitation to keep awake is the invitation for each of us and all of us to make a real choice to live in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. It is an invitation to pay attention. Observe. Watch.

The invitation is to pay attention to the world as it is not as we want it to be or demand it should be.

The invitation to pay attention is to come to the altar of God regularly to immerse our minds, hearts, and wills in the eternal love of Jesus Christ in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

The invitation to pay attention is the invitation to wake up to the new Way of living, the fundamental truth of life, and to the very origin and source of life: Jesus Christ.

Two thousand years ago the co-eternal Son of God became a human being. He was born as we are born. He grew up as we grow up. He lived a quiet obscure life as most of us live. For three years he preached the Good News of the Kingdom of God. People looked at him but did not see him. People listened to him but did not hear him. People placed their hopes and fears on him without any regard for who he was. Those hopes and fears nailed him to the cross. As he died on the cross, Jesus transformed those hopes and fears by the power of unconditional eternal love.

Jesus offers us a new life and a new way of living. Have you received that new life? Are you waking up and claiming the new way of living? The Christian Faith is not a set of beliefs. The Christian faith is a personal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus invites us to wake up to the reality of his Presence and to stay awake in the new way of living he gives us. He is coming back to this planet. We have a responsibility to prepare ourselves to greet him. We have an invitation to help others to wake up into the new life of grace.

Jesus came to make a difference in our lives here and now. In the here and now Jesus invites us to wake up. Pay attention. Watch. Watch for our moment of grace. Watch for the opportunities to worship God and to help other people. Watch over the choices we make. Choose wisely. Stay awake. Jesus will make a difference in our lives as we listen to him and live fully present in the world as it is. The world “as it is” reveals the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, God with us and God for us.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2010 Do not worry

Do not worry. The command is easier said than done.

There is a lot in the world that inspires worry, fear, anxiety. Jesus names some of them. Strangely, Jesus has a very different attitude about all of these things that bring so much anxiety into our lives.

Jesus asserts that the things that can lead to worry have no essential power to cause the worry. Poverty, starvation, scarcity all are serious challenges to human life. But none of these things can of themselves impose fear, anxiety and worry on us. Even death lacks that power.

So, where does the worry come from? Jesus reveals to us that it comes from within our souls. It comes from the place of separation. It manifests in the fear that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong. It distorts our attitude towards life, other people and even God with the phrase: what’s in it for me?

Separation from God produces a story we tell ourselves and each other. The story is grounded in the concept of scarcity. The story is: there isn’t enough. The story is that life is a struggle and then you die. The story is that we are all victims and someone else or something else is always to blame. The story produces worry and the justification for a life lived in defense against all manner of potential threats to our well being.

Jesus came into the world to address the problem of separation. In his own body he united divinity with humanity. In the way he lived his life he demonstrated that it is possible to live with a different story. The story Jesus tells is a story of the abundance of God’s love. The abundance is grace: the gift of God to all people everywhere.

The abundance comes from the reunification of our souls with the infinite and eternal love of God. The new story is the Good News of God with us. God is our loving heavenly Father who is consistently concerned about us. Our Heavenly Father knows our every need and is more than willing to help us meet those needs.
The new story invites us to live from the place of thankfulness for the many blessings God gives us constantly and unfailingly.

Jesus asks: do you believe this? Where do you place your faith? Do you place your faith in laws, rituals, knowledge, yourself? Or, do you place your faith in the incarnate co-eternal Son of God?

Jesus lived his life by the constant prayer: heavenly Father, not my will but your will be done. Jesus took the human tendency to ask of life: “what’s in it for me?” and transformed it into a different question: “how may I help?”

Jesus invites into a new life: a life of abundance in the peace, love and joy of the Holy Spirit. Jesus offers to help us to participate in a new way of living: an undefended way of living that trusts God to protect us and to provide for us.
Salvation in Jesus Christ is about the way we experience our lives here and now. We are personally responsible for our lives. We can choose. We can choose a story of scarcity, fear, self will and worry. Or, we can choose a story of abundance, faith, divine will and peace.

Jesus encourages us to examine the stories we tell ourselves. Do we say life is a struggle and a problem? Do we tell ourselves we are victims? Or, do we embrace the Good News of the story Jesus tells us: God is real. God is personal. God is love. God is for us and with us in the Real Presence of the Living Lord Jesus Christ?
Jesus asks: do we make a real choice to live our lives by grace through faith in the goodness of God? Will we live from the place of Thanksgiving for all of the many blessings God pours into our lives, our hearts, our minds, our souls?

Jesus asks us to re examine our priorities. He teaches the best and most fulfilling priority is the personal relationship with God that he himself gives to us as a gift. If we start from that place, the personal relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ, all other things will find their proper place.

Jesus tells us how we can live life without worry when he gives us a new story with a new priority: seek first the Kingdom of God. Seek first a personal relationship with God. As you do that, as you live into that choice, you will experience the abundance of Divine love. The worry will yield to the faith as you live from the place of grace, the gift of God in Jesus Christ.

Christ the King Sunday 2010

Christ the King Sunday (Luke 23:33-43
“Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Jesus forgave those who rejected him, tortured him and killed him.
How is this possible?

From the first moment our first parents separated from God in a choice we now call Original Sin, God worked in human history to rescue us from the terrible consequences of that choice.

Separation shatters the image of God in our souls. The Image is still there, but the soul can no longer hold it with clarity and purpose. The soul is lost in the pain of isolation. The soul rebels against God, other people, the Creation itself. The soul seeks to dominate out of the confusion of fear and pride.

A lost soul is a soul that is frustrated, confused, fearful and demanding. A lost soul seeks to dominate other people, the world, even God in order to restore meaning and purpose. Sadly, the lost perpetuation separation by their every action or inaction. Separation is self perpetuating. The more you try to overcome the pain of separation by your own will, the more you recycle that pain into suffering, and the more you perpetuate that pain in your own soul.

All of these aspects of Original Sin were present at Calvary. The religious authorities had long since abandoned the personal God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had moved God far away into the esoteric realm of philosophy and transcendence. They had allocated to themselves the authority of Moses and the Prophets.
They rejected Jesus because he was a threat to their own plan of salvation. They not only believed they knew who God was and what God wanted; they knew that they knew. Their beliefs were detailed, specific and inflexible. Jesus challenged these detailed, specific and inflexible beliefs.

Belief without faith leads to death.

Jesus came to Israel to remind them that God is real, God is love, God is personal. Jesus came to Israel to remind the people that above all else God seeks a personal relationship with humanity. In that relationship, God finds the lost who do not want to be found.

The relationship is not in the Law, the ritual or even the religion as important as they are. The relationship is in the friendship our Heavenly Father offers all people in the person of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

When God asks us to do something, such as coming to church once a week, this is not a command to restrict our choices. It is an invitation to experience a unique opportunity to immerse our selves, our souls and bodies in the Infinite and Eternal Love of God in Jesus Christ.

Those who convicted Jesus of blasphemy for claiming to be God were caught in a feedback loop of fear, self will and pride. In order to maintain what they knew they knew they could only react to a different image of God by destroying that image.
Even at the last, the religious leaders and the soldiers taunted Jesus with his last temptation: come down from the cross, be who we demand you to become, and then we will not only follow you- we will worship you.

They thought they knew. They actually knew they knew. But, they were lost in a false belief system that blocked their ability to see and hear the very Presence of the Living God in their midst.

Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father to forgive them all because they were lost and incapable of breaking their own chains of rebellion, self will and sin. They had so constructed their beliefs about God, the creation and other people that there was no room for Emmanuel- God with us. There was room only for knowledge and power and Law.
They acted out of pain, the pain of separation. And so, on the Cross Jesus sealed the breach between humanity and divinity. They acted out of fear that Jesus would destroy the certainty of their beliefs and in the wake destroy their position in society and their very existence. Jesus took that fear into himself on the cross and transformed it back into faith.

They acted of Pride that they knew, and they knew they knew, what was best for everyone in all circumstances. Jesus took that pride into himself on the cross and transformed it back into love.

They acted out of self will that perpetuates separation through a never ending and never to be satisfied demand: my will be done. Jesus took that self will into himself and transformed it by his own constant prayer: heavenly Father not my will but your will be done.

Jesus died on the cross because it was the only way to overcome the power of separation. Jesus fully embraced and experienced the full consequence of separation in the sin and death of all people who have ever lived and will ever lived. He died and in his death he transformed death back into life.

The Bible is very clear about the human condition. We are lost in the pain of Original Separation and we do not want to be found. We do not want to know that we are lost. We do not want to know that life is not about our search for meaning and purpose, for knowledge and power, for possessions and pleasure. Life is about a personal relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ.

As Jesus prayed from the cross for the religious leaders and the soldiers, so he prays for all people everywhere. Heavenly Father, they are lost and do not want to be found. They are lost in the pride of what they think they know and even more in what they know they know. And so it must be that the Son die on the cross so that sin and death die on the cross with him.

What is it that hinders us from transformation in divine love and holiness? What do we think we know and perhaps even know we know that needs to die on the cross so Jesus can transform it and give it back to us in its purity as God’s original blessing?

On this Christ the King Sunday we remember that Jesus reigns from the cross so that we may surrender our self will, fear and pride to be transformed back into the original blessing of faith, hope and love.

Jesus reigns from His throne of glory in Heaven with Holy Mother Mary, the angels and the saints having accomplished our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation on the cross.

Jesus reigns from the altar in the blessed sacrament of the altar where he offers his very body and blood to feed us, nurture us and transform us with his own eternal life.

Jesus reigns in the hearts and minds and lives of His faithful people who receive the gift of divine love by faith. By that faith we experience a new life and a new way of living. By that new way of living we proclaim in thought, word and deed that Jesus Christ is king of kings because he is king of steadfast holy love.

Jesus has already forgiven us from the cross. His passionate desire is that we receive the new life and the new way of living made possible by his death and resurrection. It is his passionate desire to say to each of us here and now and all the days of our lives: today you are with me in Paradise. Today you are found. Today you are being filled with the Original Blessing that makes all things new now, and tomorrow and forever. Amen.

Pentecost 25

Pentecost 25 (Luke 21:5-19)
Beware that you are not led astray.

The Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ brings division to the world.
Those who reject Christ reject those who follow him. For the first three hundred years of the Christian Faith it was illegal to be a Christian. It is still illegal in many parts of the world.

When Jesus spoke of the persecution his followers would face he never authorized the Church to fight and kill for the Faith. He asks us to live for our faith. And, sometimes he asks us to endure persecution for our Faith.

Not all who associate with the Church are willing to live for the Faith. Not all who associate with the Church are willing to endure ridicule, rejection and outright persecution. There is a tendency to adjust the Faith to the surrounding culture.
Jesus warns us that those who seek to make such an accommodation are in danger of being led astray.

There are three basic sources of this erosion of Faith. They are the world, the flesh and the devil.

The world is the surrounding culture. The world says it’s OK to be religious but all religion says the same thing. The world presses hard to redefine Christ according to its own perceptions and values. The world sees Jesus as one among many religious teachers. The world says: it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are a good person.

The world also seeks to change faith into belief and belief into opinion. For the world. It doesn’t matter if Jesus ever lived. He is an ideal not a reality.
Finally, the world teaches that there is no evidence for religious belief.

Therefore, religion is less important and less significant than knowledge, power, pleasure, prestige. The world seeks to turn the Faithful into lukewarm Christians who see Jesus as one option among many for our time and attention.
The flesh is the distorted desires and demands of our mind, heart and will. These desires generally place the distractions of entertainment and pleasure as their first priority. The demands of the flesh say: church is fine if I’m not too busy and have nothing else to do.

The devil, Satan, works through the world and the flesh to seduce people away from our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation in Jesus Christ. Satan is most effective when people think of him as a cartoonish myth used to frighten children. Satan works by corrupting language, leaders and love.

The corruption of language is the tendency to obscure the meaning of words. Satan seeks to influence language through writers, artists, academics, advertisers, politicians and religion. The greatest form of linguistic confusion is the assertion that there is no absolute truth and that everything is relative to our own individual tastes and desires.

The corruption of leaders follows the corruption of language. Satan is powerful but limited. He focuses on seducing leaders in society to abandon Biblical values and then relies on them to do his work in the name of progress, science, or enlightenment.

The final corruption is the corruption of love. God is love. Satan knows very well who this love is and how this love created the universe, redeems the universe and can transform the universe. Satan uses a very old bait and switch technique whereby he redefines love as self indulgence.

And so, temptation to sin often comes with the words: if you really loved me. Or, I’m just not in love with you any more. Or, how can it be wrong when it feels so good?

Satan corrupts our understanding of love by confusing the meaning of the word and then encouraging popular culture to portray love as romantic idealism and self indulgence.

The ultimate Satanic Seduction is through religion. Satan targets the religiously inclined and seeks to subvert Faith by distorting belief. Satan is an expert in creating religion and then fomenting divisions within religion. Atheists very astutely observe that religion kills, divides, and contradicts. Of course, this is exactly what Satan wants. It is a form of negative advertising that creates confusion and disgust with all religion so people resist the Plan of Salvation as just one more unsubstantiated mythology.

The ultimate expression of false religion is the anti-Christ. An anti-Christ offers an experience of the divine that rejects the Incarnation of the co-eternal Son.
Why does this matter? After all, if God is love surely he will forgive our mistakes and confusions. That is perhaps the most subtle of Satan’s lies.

For God does indeed forgive. There is in fact no condemnation in the steadfast holy unconditional love of God. The problem is not with God. The problem is with us.
God the Father designed us to live in an eternal relationship with God the Son through the presence and power of God the Holy Spirit. Sin is the choice we made to separate from God. Jesus Christ is the solution to the problem of separation.
Jesus died on the cross not just to satisfy the demands of the law or some spiritual debt. Jesus died on the cross to transform separation back into reunification. Jesus died on the cross to transform death back into life.

Jesus just doesn’t show us a way to seek God. Jesus is the way, the only way, God finds us, restores us, and transforms us.

Jesus knows very well that human beings lost in sin are also lost in the distortions of fear, self will and pride. The Bible is not a book about man’s search for God. The Bible is a two thousand year record of man fleeing from God. The Bible is also a book of how God nevertheless patiently and persistently seeks and finds the lonely, broken and lost.

If religion alone were the answer to the fundamental problem facing the human race then Jesus would never have had to die on the cross. Moses would have been sufficient. The Temple in Jerusalem would have been enough.

As the religious leaders of Jesus day rejected him through fear and anger and turned him over to the Romans to kill, so they eventually rejected the purpose for which God authorized the Temple. The Temple was built to be a house of prayer for all nations. The religious leaders turned it into a nationalistic symbol of pride and might.

Once the Temple became a political symbol of aggression against Rome, it became the preeminent rallying point for the nationalistic to wage war, and it became the preeminent military target in that war. In 70 AD terrorists seized the Temple, slaughtered the priests and led the people into a devastating war. They promised the people that God was on their side. They lost that war. The Romans killed everyone in Jerusalem then leveled the city and the Temple. The Temple has never been rebuilt.
Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. In his resurrection he has transformed death back into life. As we unite with Jesus by grace through faith we receive the great gift of God: reunification with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

The principle of salvation is very simple: we become like who we worship.
It is not entirely a matter of belief. It is entirely a matter of faith. The question the Bible asks is: who do you trust?

Jesus warns us that there will be many false teachers, false prophets and anti-Christs who will offer an alternative to our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation. They are all spiritual dead ends. They are all spiritual deadly ends. Only Jesus can and has transformed death back into life, separation back into reunification, sin back into love.

Be warned. Be wary. Beware that you are not led astray.

Pentecost 24

Pentecost 24 (Luke 20:27-38 (God is the God of the living.)
God did not design human beings for death.

From the very first moment of creation, God designed human beings for life. The life derives from God who is life. God’s life is eternal.

Death entered the world when human beings chose to separate from God. As we separate from God we separate from Life, from Love and from Holiness. The result of this separation is sin and death. The effect of sin and death on the soul is to produce an existence characterized by fear, self will and pride.

From the first moment our first parents chose that original sin, that original separation from God, God set forth his plan of salvation to rescue us from sin and death.

God gave the Law to restrain the power of sin in our societies. God gave the law to serve as a perfect mirror to our souls to convict us and to convince us that we are lost in separation. God sent the prophets to call us to repentance and to preparation.

The prophets hold up the perfect mirror of divine law to remind us how far we have fallen. The prophets proclaim the coming of the Messiah to remind us that we are not only lost in sin but we are incapable of finding our way out of sin. The evidence of this is death.

Death is the first and final reminder that humanity is lost and cannot find its way back. The way back is the way of life, the way of love, the way of holiness. The way back is not the Law. If it were, people could choose perfection and claim immortality as a right.

The way back is not in religion. The Prophets clearly demonstrate that the religious are lost in separation and produce only further levels of separation.
The Sadducees are one of many religious groups that prove the point.
The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible as God’s word. The Sadducees asserted that God was so holy, so perfect, so transcendent that any human reference to God or name for God was not only inadequate but meaningless. God is the ineffable Mystery.

The Sadducees taught that any teaching about God is not only futile but counterproductive. And so, they also taught that miracles are superstitious interpretations of natural events. Angles are a figment of an over active imagination. And, life after death- especially the teaching of resurrection- is a narcotic that dulls the mind and weakens the will.

The Sadducees taught that belief in an afterlife undermined all human effort to live well in this life and to work to improve society here and now. They viewed the resurrection as particularly offense and nonsensical.

Resurrection means that at some future time God will recreate our bodies and restore not only our lives but our personalities to live in a new and perfect world. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection.

Sadducees believed dead is dead. Once the body dies the person dies. The body decays. Nothing remains and there is no mechanism by which any one, not even God, can reconstruct a dead body and restore to it life and personality.

Neither the Pharisees or the Sadducees believed in an immortal soul that was separate from the body and self existent apart from the body. Both groups believed dead was dead. The Pharisees also believed the resurrection of the body was the means by which the righteous would experience an afterlife.

Jesus spoke of the resurrection. So, the Sadducees challenged Jesus by presenting what they believed would be a plausible but absurd scenario about the resurrection.
Of course, the Sadducees were lost in their own logic and in their own self will. They did not want the resurrection to be real. They were a small segment of the population. They were rich, powerful, and dominated the Temple. Many temple priests were Sadducees. They were quite satisfied to perform the Temple sacrifices and rituals, to collect their fees and to dominate the religious life of the nation.
Jesus quoted Moses to confront their assumptions. They claimed to accept the religious authority of Moses. So, Jesus directs them to what Moses recorded when he heard God speak to him from the burning bush.

God reveals his name as “I am”. I am is eternal self existence. I am is life that has no beginning at some point in the past neither an ending at some point in the future. God says I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As God is self existence, as God is eternal life, all who are in a relationship with God by grace through faith partake of that divine self existence, that eternal life.
Of course, the proof of this teaching is very close to the Sadducees, the Pharisees and every one else in that generation. The resurrection is not a fantasy, as the Sadducees claimed, nor an esoteric unproven belief as the Pharisees asserted. The resurrection is an historical fact.

It is the personal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ at a particular moment in time and at a particular place on earth that establishes the fact of the general resurrection God promises to all people. The personal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is an event in human history that invites all people everywhere into faith.

Faith is not the same as belief. Belief is the object of speculation. Faith is the result of a personal encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ.

The resurrection can be an object of belief. It can also be the subject of faith.
Jesus reassures us this morning: God is life and all who enter into a relationship with God by grace through faith are reunited with that eternal life that has no beginning and has no end. For God is the God of the living who live forever in the steadfast holy love of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 23

Pentecost 23 (Luke 19:1-10) The Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.
Zacchaeus was lost.

He was lost in crime, in sin, and in separation from God and other people. He was also lost in his wealth. His soul had disintegrated to that place where he was possessed by his possessions.

Jesus came to earth to seek and to find and to restore the lost. He came to Jericho that day for that purpose.

It is unclear if Zacchaeus knew anything about Jesus. As a Chief Tax Collector in Judea, Zacchaeus focused his time and attention on what he valued most: money. Yet, when Jesus entered the city there were many in Jericho who had heard of his reputation as a teacher, a healer, and a miracle worker. Whether they believed in Jesus or not they were curious about him. They wanted to see him.

Zacchaeus heard the commotion. He saw the gathering crowd. He, too was curious. He wanted to see what was going on. Zacchaeus had a problem that prevented him from seeing Jesus. He was short. It is an interesting and almost irrelevant detail in the story.

In the excitement of the moment Zacchaeus was caught up in the press of the crowd to see Jesus. Yet, Zacchaeus was too short to see over the crowd. So, he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a tree further down the street. He knew Jesus would pass that way. He knew he would be able to see over the crowd. He did not expect Jesus to speak to him personally.

Zaccaheus was a Chief Tax Collector. He was little more than a legalized gangster hired by Rome to collect taxes by any means, People hated him. The religious people would not speak with him.

Jesus spoke with him. Jesus initiated the conversation. I suspect Jesus saw the humor in this short self important self obsessed official sitting in a tree to get a better view of him. Jesus looked at him, saw him, recognized him and then called him by name. Zacchaeus.

The co-eternal Son of God had emptied himself of his omnipotence and omniscient when he became a particular man. He lived life as we live life- one day at a time, moment by moment. Unlike all of us, Jesus never separated from the Father. He lived each moment of life in communion with the Father. Jesus paid attention to other people, the world around him and to his heavenly Father is a way we do not.

Jesus learned the name of this short Chief Tax Collector and he called him by name. He showed him respect even though by the standards of the time he deserved condemnation. But, Jesus had come to Jericho to save the lost. And, Zacchaeus was among the lost.

Jesus paused and saw Zacchaeus for who was and in spite of who Zacchaeus was Jesus had compassion on him. Jesus gives Zacchaeus an invitation: “Come on down, Zacchaeus. Come on down from that tree. Hurry up. Come down now.”
This was Zacchaeus’ moment of grace. It was at an unexpected time under unusual circumstances. It was the moment Jesus saw him, spoke to him and invited him to make a real choice.

Then, Jesus offers Zaccaeus an amazing gift. “I must stay at your house today.” People avoided Zacchaeus. People hated him and would not even speak with him. Jesus asked to come to Zacchaeus’s house and to dine with him. A Pharisee would never think of doing this. A priest would never think of doing this. The religious people of Jesus’ day brought forth condemnation and separation. Jesus came with compassion and reconciliation.

People began to talk. People began to grumble. How can Jesus be so good when he associates with people who are so bad? How can Jesus be a righteous man when he enters the home of the unrighteous? How can Jesus be a religious teacher when he engages the corrupt and immoral people in conversation and fellowship.
The assumption is that the righteous exclude and condemn the unrighteous. The assumption is that the religious reject and ostracize the irreligious. The assumption is that God favors some people and rejects all others. The assumption is wrong.

Jesus is the reality that God accepts all people. Jesus is the perfect mirror to the human soul that reveals all are lost. All are lost and none wish to be found. Yet, Jesus has come to seek the lost, to find the lost and to save the lost.
Zacchaeus experienced salvation that day that Jesus called him by name and came to his house. He experienced what so many religious people who were caught up in their own rules and regulations could not appreciate.

Zacchaeus experienced conversion. He experienced a change of heart and a change of direction. He received a new life and entered into a new way of living. “I give half my wealth to the poor,” he told Jesus.“ I will restore four fold what I have stolen,” he continues.

Before he met Jesus, Zacchaeus lived only for money. He worked to build his wealth. He schemed, lied, cheated and bullied people to increase his wealth. He worshipped only money and his soul was collapsing into the dark abyss of separation from God.
God met Zacchaeus in Jesus Christ. God found Zacchaeus in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, Zaccaheus, I must stay with you today. And, Zacchaeus recognized his moment of grace and said “yes.”

Salvation is not about religion, philosophy or science. Salvation is not about our search for God. Salvation is about God coming to earth in person to seek, find and restore the lost. Salvation is Jesus Christ.

Jesus met Zacchaeus at a very precise moment in time under some very unusual circumstances. The moment of grace is always very precise. The circumstances in that moment are always unusual. In the moment of grace God finds us where we are, accepts us for who we are, and invites us to become more than who we are.

In the moment of grace, Jesus offers us the gift of forgiveness, the gift of reunification with God the Father, the gift of transformation in God the Holy Spirit. Salvation is a gift God the Father offers us in Jesus Christ. It is the gift of a new life and a new way of living. It is God in Christ who seeks the lost who do not want to be seen, who finds the lost who do not want to be found, and who saves the lost who stubbornly insist on going our own way.

The way of salvation is Jesus Christ. It is the way of love and compassion. It is the way of daily transformation. It is the way our Heavenly Father seeks out and saves the lost.

Pentecost 22

Pentecost 22 (Luke 18:9-14)
“He who exalts himself will be humbled.”

Pride goeth before a fall. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins and is in fact near the root of all sin.

We hear the voice of pride in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, the tax collector. According to the standards of the day the Pharisee is the virtuous religious and patriotic man. The tax collector is a traitor to his nation, his religion and to ordinary ethical standards of behavior.

Tax Collectors worked for Rome. They extorted money from ordinary citizens to enrich themselves. They stayed away from the synagogues and the Temple. People hated them. They despised and used the people. They were the bad guys in every morality tale and in every religious parable.

Pharisees would not even peak with Romans. They kept themselves separated from pagans. They worshipped regularly in the Temple, studied the scriptures in the synagogue, and gave money to support the religious institutions of Israel. They were the good guys in the morality tales and religious parables of the time.

Jesus reversed the standard roles assigned to these two people to illustrate a point. The Bible often confounds people by praising those whom the world condemns. It is a way to get people to think outside the box. It is a way to break through layers of cultural expectations and demands to the truth God wants to reveal to people.

Jesus inverted the expected roles of the Pharisee and the Publican in his parable to demonstrate a very precise and important point. That point might be summarized in the statement: the “I”s have it.

The Pharisee begins his prayer with the word “I’. That word defines his prayer. That prayer forms his worship. That worship reveals who he is and who he is choosing to become.

The Pharisee prays, God, I thank you that I am not like other people. And then he lists all the sins and sinners in the world , all of the things he asserts he is not; and, of the things that set him apart from and superior to everyone else. In fact, all of the things he lists are sins. His assessment of these activities is correct.

Next, he lists all of his virtues, good works, and religious observances. I fast. I give. I- me. Once again, the things he is doing are good. The defect is the motive. The motive is revealed in that little word “I” that so dominates his prayer that it leaves no room for God.

For the Pharisee, God is simply the backlighting that reveals the Pharisee’s own stellar spiritual condition. God is simply a rhetorical device the Pharisee can summon to contrast his virtue with the Publican’s vice.

He had so much going for him. He had achieved so much. But, he used it to glorify himself. I. me. His motive was no different than the motive which led the Publican into a life of sin. Me. What’s in it for me. Where the Publican asserted his self indulgent pride by breaking the law, the Pharisee asserted his self indulgent pride by asserting that he had kept the law.

Both men were self absorbed. Both men made choices to assert their will to power to dominate their world. One dominated by sin. The other dominated by an outward display of virtue.

The difference comes when the Publican prays. There is no “I” in his prayer. There is no comparison to others. He doesn’t say: God, I may not be all that good but at least I’m not a Samaritan. Those guys are really disgusting. He doesn’t say that. He simply stands before the living God.

There. In the Divine Presence, God’s holiness reveals the Publican’s many sins and his single virtue. He has one virtue left. Just one. It is enough. The virtue is humility. In the Divine Presence he has the one quality that God seeks from all people. He has the humility to accept the truth.

He is a sinner. He deserves judgment. As he recognizes this aspect of himself he does not try to argue with God. He does not try to blame others. He accepts full responsibility for his sin and simply asks for mercy. God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

The Pharisee stood in the Divine Presence and compared himself to the sinners. His conclusion was: I am here to show you, God. How wonderful I am. I need nothing from you because I have already done it all. So thank you God that I am so righteous and everyone else is so sinful.

Jesus said: it was the Publican who experienced reunification (justification) with God. The Pharisee was simply there to tell God how wonderful he was. His pride would not allow him to admit that he, too, for all of his good deeds, needed to be reunited to God through God’s justifying grace.

This is the core of the Good News. All have sinned. All need to be reunited to God. In Jesus Christ, God has accomplished this reunification and now offers the blessing as a gift. We need only receive the gift to experience the blessing.

It is so straightforward. It is so simple. But, it is not easy. It requires we stop comparing ourselves to others. It requires a shift in our awareness. It requires a transformation in our basic attitude to ourselves, others, the world around us, and God.

Pride is the great obstacle to salvation. Pride inflates the ego. The ego builds itself by comparing itself to others, condemning others and blaming others. The soul which is caught in pride is a soul that is creating its own destruction. Pride has no room for grace. Pride says, I can do it. I know what is best. Religious pride says: I know the best way to practice my religion. My God would never condemn me or anyone for our honest opinions.

Secular pride says: I am fine just the way I am. I don’t need a religious crutch to help me through life. I believe in myself. That is all I need to survive and thrive.
Humility starts when we can say: there is a mystery to life. I can’t figure it all out. I am not the superior individual I thought I was. I am willing to learn. I am even willing to unlearn what I have been taught. I am even willing to listen to the most improbable of stories ever written: the stories about Jesus.

Those who exalt themselves build a false ego based on false assumptions about themselves, other people, even God. These false assumptions are so embedded in our culture that we take them for granted. We take them for granted in much the same way people in Jesus’ time took for granted that the hero of the story should be the righteous Pharisee and the villain the corrupt Tax Collector.

God sees things from a very different perspective. God’s perspective is revealed in part in the Bible. God’s perspective is fully and completely revealed in his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Those who know that they know about God, whether religious or secular- don’t know. They have no room in their minds, hearts or wills to experience the infinite and eternal reality that is God. They have no need of faith. They have knowledge. They are their own God.

Those who think they know about God are a little closer to faith. Whether religious or secular, righteous or sinful, they have some room to consider another possibility. They have the some place where the seed of faith might fall and grow and blossom.

Those who know they don’t know are blessed. They are the ones who stand in the Divine Presence with an attitude of humility. Whether they are religious or secular, righteous or sinful, their prayer is: God be merciful to me . God- be who you are and transform me according to your divine nature.

Those who know they don’t know are those who have entered into the Divine Presence with the necessary and sufficient humility to acknowledge a reality beyond themselves, beyond their false ego, beyond their preconceived ideas about knowledge and power. These are the ones who experience exaltation in the steadfast holy love of the divine nature.

Through pride we fall into the inner recesses of our own egos.
Through humility, we stand before God by grace through faith so that God can lift us up and bless us in the Mystery of Divine Love made flesh and revealed in Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 20

Pentecost 20 (Luke 17:11-19) Where are they?
The question Jesus asked of the ten lepers is very similar to the first question God asked humanity.
That first question is recorded in the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve had chosen separation from God. In that separation they had attempted to hide from God. God asked them: where are you?
Now, God knew where Adam and Eve were and why they were hiding. Jesus also knew where the other nine lepers were and why they had not paused to give thanks. The question helps to reveal the human condition. The long record of Biblical history records an amazing and counter intuitive observation about the human condition.
Human beings have separated from God. In that separation people are lost. Most religions and many philosophies speak of humanity’s search for God. The Bible very uniquely speaks of humanity’s separation from God and our refusal to be found by God.
This, of course, is the reason the co-eternal Son of God became a particular human being at a particular point in time and at a particular place. He came to seek the lost who do not want to be found.
There is an ironic and somewhat cynical statement: no good deed goes unpunished. This statement could describe the life and even more- the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus came into the world with the one single desire to seek the lost and to find the lost. It was the one thing people did not want from God.
People who believed in God wanted all sorts of things from God. They mostly wanted to avoid God’s wrath and obtain God’s favor. Many people divided God according to their wants, desires and demands. And so there was a god of war for soldiers, a god of romance for those who sought romance, and a deity for every possible need or desire.
These deities were simply a superstitious expression of the human will to power. This is the root cause of original sin. God offered love and holiness to humanity. People chose knowledge and power.
God offered himself as a constant and reliable friend. People chose to create substitute deities for ourselves that reflected our fear and our demand. The Bible teaches that people do not seek God. We do not seek God for who he is. We do not value God for who he is. God is unconditional love.
Humanity seeks to define God according to our needs and desires in order to meet our needs and desires. We seek the gifts we believe God can give us. We do not seek or value the giver of the gifts.
Preeminently, people seek to define God in the categories of knowledge and power. We demand that if God is real then he must accept our definition of reality and readjust the universe to our will. We redefine unconditional love as indulgence and insist that if God has love then God must yield to our desires.
The record of scripture is that as soon as the One God revealed Himself through the patriarchs and prophets, people began to redefine God. God revealed himself as a loving father. People told stories of a wrathful judge.
God revealed himself as the bridegroom who seeks the love of his bride. People created a religion of rewards and punishments based on a system of credits and debits.
God revealed himself in the name: I am. People rejected the reality of God whenever they did not receive the material gifts and blessings they valued most. Very crassly worded people tell God: if you give me what I want I will believe in you. If you fail to give me what I want I will not believe in you.
God sent his only begotten son into the world to seek the lost, find the lost, and restore the lost. Most people took the benefits Christ offered but ignored the invitation. They wanted the gifts but not the giver.
The long record of human history from God’s perspective is not humanity’s search for God but rather God’s search for a lost and rebellious humanity, a people who stubbornly refuse to be found.
God calls people into a relationship of faith grounded in love and formed by holiness. People ask: what’s in it for me? Why should I have to adjust my schedule, my priorities my way of living?
God calls across time- where are you? Jesus echoes this call when he asks of the lepers: where are they?
Of the ten, only one- a foreigner who knew nothing of the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets, only one came to give thanks. Only one thought to glorify God. And only that one received the completion of his healing.
The nine others were still healed of their leprosy. What made their healing incomplete was their lack of faith in the one who healed them. They wanted the healing but not the healer. It is the healer, God himself in the person of Jesus Christ, who completes the healing.
God completes the healing as we receive the gift he offers. The gift is Jesus Christ.
The glory of God is not in the healing or in the miracles Jesus performed. The glory of God is in the relationship that Jesus offers us and makes possible. The relationship is the realty.
Jesus healed those ten lepers of the most horrible and fearful disease known to the people of his time. He told them to present themselves to the priests so the priest could examine them and certify the healing. Only that certification would allow them to return to their families and jobs.
Jesus also waited. He waited patiently for the ten lepers to make a real choice to complete their healing and to enter into wholeness.
Only one, a Samaritan whom the people of Israel despised, made that real choice. Only one of the ten chose to embrace the healer, give thanks to God, and glorify God.
Jesus still waits. He waits for us to come to him who offers himself to us. He waits for us to say: thank you. Thank you for living for me. Thank you for dying for me. Thank you for pouring yourself out to me daily, hourly.
Jesus waits for us to make a real choice to glorify God by receiving the love and the holiness God offers us in a new life and in a new way of living. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the only way to receive and experience this new life and this new way of living.
The new life is a life of wholeness. The new way of living is holiness. Wholeness and holiness are not perfection. We grow. We transform. We learn something new about God, other people, ourselves every day. We unlearn even more.
The Samaritan had to unlearn his fear and hatred of the Jews. He had to unlearn his contempt for the religion of Israel. He had to take a step forward into the understanding that faith is trust in a person not loyalty to an ethnic group, a political system, or a religious structure. The Samaritan had to make a real choice to allow God to be God regardless of everything he had learned to expect of God and to demand from God.
In Jesus Christ, God gives us that opportunity to make that real choice. Let God be God. Let God be the One who is, the “I am” who is eternally self existent as one God in three persons. Let God offer himself to us and find us in the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ.
The Bible teaches that God the Father created all people by the power of God the Holy Spirit to be the beloved companions and friends of God the Son, Jesus Christ.
In Eden, the pre incarnate Son asked humanity: where are you? I am here for you. Why have you chosen to separate from me?
In his public ministry, the incarnate Son asked: where are they? I am standing right here. I am the one who has come to seek you out, to find you, to heal you. Why have you chosen to walk away from me at the very moment of divine grace?
Jesus calls to us and to all the world today: where are you? I am here in the blessed sacrament of the altar. I wait for you. I offer myself to you in the fullness of unconditional love, eternal love, infinite love. I am here for you in your joys and in your sorrows. I will never leave you or forsake you. I will never turn you away.
The Holy Spirit calls to us and to all people and says: come. Come and receive the blessing. Let all who thirst for meaning and purpose come. Let all who are burdened by life come. Let all who yearn to know that they are loved with an everlasting love come.
Jesus says: I am here. I am here for them. Where are they?

Pentecost 19

Pentecost 19 If You had faith

Faith is substance and evidence.

Most people consider faith to be a belief in something for which there is no evidence and can never be proved or disproved. Most people consider faith to be a measurable commodity.

So it is that the disciples, Jesus’ students, thought that they only had a small portion of faith. They asked Jesus to increase that portion and make it larger.
On the surface it seems like a good request. On the surface the statement Jesus makes in response seems odd. Jesus heard the flaw in the request.

The disciples were looking for a teaching, a discipline, a method, a seminar or a program to increase something they thought they already had. They were looking for one of those self help books that might be titled “Seven Ways in Seven Days to increase your faith.” They wanted Jesus to assume the role of an inspirational speaker who would complement them for their spiritual accomplishments and give them certain tasks to perform in order to increase their faith.

Jesus’ response: “if you had faith” tells the disciples that they actually don’t have faith, yet.

Faith is substance and evidence. The substance is the personal relationship of love with the co-eternal Son of God. The evidence is in the transformation of their character in the holiness of the co-eternal Son of God.

Even the smallest kernel of faith establishes reunification with the infinite and eternal love of God. And so, even the smallest seed of faith is more than ample to accomplish amazing things for those who enter into a new life and a new way of living.

Many people heard Jesus’ words as an invitation to create their own reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. The substance of faith is the relationship that we have with the one who is the way, the truth and the life.

By faith we learn to pray: Heavenly Father not my will but your will be done. In union with the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit we learn to surrender self will to divine will. In that surrender we become co-creators with God in the great plan of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Faith removes obstacles because faith is the union of human will with divine will that allows each of us to become agents of grace in this world.
The evidence of faith is in the transformation of our minds and hearts. The evidence of faith is in the priorities we set for our lives and in the work. The evidence of faith is the attitude we bring to life and to God.

The disciples wanted more faith so they could accomplish their goals. Their religion taught them that right action and right belief produced righteousness and resulted in rewards. Jesus came to remind people that righteousness is right relationship. The relationship is the reward.

The change in attitude for those who have faith is the attitude Jesus himself revealed in the way he lived his life. He surrendered his divine prerogatives and came to earth as a servant.

Faith in God produces a change in attitude. The change is from the desire to command and control to the passion for love and compassion. The change is from the question: what’s in it for me to the question: how may I help. The change is in the transformation of the soul’s demand: my will be done into the soul’s desire: Heavenly Father, Thy will be done.

The disciples wanted a list of things they could do to increase their faith so they could accomplish their goals according to their will. They lacked faith because they lacked love. The lacked love because they thought of God as the one who rewards and punishes.

God is the creator, redeemer, sanctifier and divine lover of souls.
God does not ask us to submit to his all powerful will to avoid punishment and earn a reward. God sent his only begotten Son into the world to invite us into a passionate transforming friendship.

Faith is substance. The substance is the love Jesus gives to us. The substance is the friendship Jesus offer us. The evidence of faith is in the change that friendship produces in our attitude and actions.

The change in attitude is the change from someone who wants to be in control to achieve the goals of self will to some one who embraces the role of a servant of God in order to accomplish God’s will.

The change in action is the change from self indulgence to holiness. It is the shift in priorities and release of attachment to things in order to direct our time and attention to love. Love of God through worship. Love of others through service. Love of the true essence of ourselves by our daily offering of ourselves to be the friends of God.

Faith is a gift God offers to all people everywhere through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit invites all people everywhere to embrace faith by embracing unconditional, steadfast holy love. This love is most fully and perfectly revealed and embodied in Jesus Christ.

If you had faith you would experience the substance of faith and produce the evidence of faith. The substance of faith is Jesus Christ who makes himself available to us in the reading of his word and in the blessed sacrament of the altar. The evidence of faith is the new life and the new way of living that is formed by the prayer Jesus most frequently prayed: Heavenly Father, not my will but Thy will be done.

Pentecost 17

Pentecost 17 Whoever is faithful in little will be faithful in much.

Does God really help those who help themselves?

This could be the lesson of the story Jesus told about the embezzling estate manager. He had cheated his employer to maintain his own inflated standard of living. When his employer caught him and asked for an audit of the books, he compounded his crime by even grater levels of deceit to protect his own self interest.

The shocking conclusion to the story comes in the employer’s response to the embezzler. The employer finds out everything that he has done and commends him for his shrewdness. The story ends there because the point of the story is in Jesus’ statement that the unrighteous are more dedicated in pursing their own self interest than the righteous are in pursing God’s interests.

Of course, there is the rest of the story. The employer commends the embezzler for his shrewdness but he still fires him. He still has legal recourse in the courts. Jesus does not tell the story to endorse clever thieves who ignore their legal and moral obligations. Jesus tells the story to express a sharp contrast .
The sharp contrast is in fidelity.

The embezzler is totally dedicated to his own self interest. And, he uses all of his talents and knowledge to pursue those interests. Jesus never commends the man for his crimes. He commends him as an example of someone who single mindedly pursues his goals.

Jesus uses this most extreme example to contrast the half hearted, casual and even unfocused way in which God’s people seek to accomplish God’s plan and God’s purpose.
The contrast is that the thief is dedicated in his life of crime but the people of God are not dedicated in the life of grace.

The thief served one master- his own greed. The people of God attempt to serve two masters: God and greed.

The prophet Elijah once challenged the people of Israel: choose whom you will serve. If the Lord is God then follow him. If the Lord is God then give up the idols of false deities and serve only the living God. The people of Israel wanted it both ways. They were hedging their bets. They would worship God from time to time to see what he had to offer. They would also worship the pagan deities to see what they had to offer.

In the book of Revelation Jesus instructs the beloved apostle John to write to the church- be either hot or cold, but not lukewarm. Make a choice. Live by that choice. Be faithful in that choice.

The unrighteous servant had made his choice. Jesus did not commend him for his crime but for his dedication. By contrast, the disciples, those who claimed to follow Jesus, were still hedging their bets. Jesus challenged them with this story to clarify what they valued most.

Jesus did not come into the world to offer an opinion about God. Jesus did not come into the world to settle disputes as to which religion is the one true religion that God endorses. Jesus spoke of God as the bridegroom who is seeking his bride.
Jesus is seeking to pour himself out to people. His is seeking people who recognize their brokenness and yearn for healing. He is seeking people who recognize they are lost and need to be found. He is seeking people who understand they are empty and long to be filled.

Jesus does not give us the option of leaving him in a religious institution, a set of rituals, customs and laws. Jesus is a new way of living grounded in the eternal truth of eternal love. That love touches every aspect of our lives. That love transforms every choice we make.

That love requires a choice. If we choose to make God second in our lives we choose to make God last. We can easily assign a lower priority to religion and religious practices. Jesus is not just about religion. Jesus is the way our Heavenly Father finds us, heals us, fills us with the truth of eternal love. That truth sets us free from fear, self will and pride. That truth forms the basis for a new life and a new way of living.

The reality of that new life and that new way of living is in the small almost insignificant choices we make every day of our lives.

The new life begins with a choice to receive the gift of God in Jesus Christ by grace through faith in the sacramental waters of baptism. The new life is nourished by the study of God’s written word in the Bible and by the total immersion of the soul in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

The new life is formed by the prayer of Divine Presence. It is the prayer Jesus most frequently prayed: Heavenly Father, not my will but you will be done.
The new life is guided by a series of questions. How do we do this? What does the new life look like as I set my priorities? How does the new way of living feel as I make the innumerable choices in my day?

Jesus sets the framework for the answers to these questions when he says: love God with all of your heart, soul and mind; love your neighbor as you love yourself. God first. God preeminent. God the highest priority. Service to others second. Self responsible growth in grace next.

What are the obstacles?

Jesus identifies a very common obstacle to the new life and the new way of living God offers us in Jesus Christ. That very common obstacle is the love of money.
Note: the obstacle is not the money itself. It is the love of money. The proper subject of love is God, other people, our own souls. The distortion of sin leads us to view God as an object of religious observance and money as the subject of love.
Despite the poverty of our English language to make a proper distinction in the word “love”, Jesus is very clear that human beings lost in separation from God have chosen to distort love. Human beings use God through religion. Human beings use other people through politics and economics. Human beings love the things of this world.

God never designed the things of this world for love. He designed things to be used for our benefit and even for our pleasure. He never designed things to be loved. He designed people to give love and to receive love.

The choice to use God and love things enmeshes the soul in an impossible vicious circle of desire, distortion and slavery. As we use God, and other people, in order to satisfy our love for things we lose our sense of who we are and why God created us.
The problem is expressed in the rich fool who is possessed by his possessions. He no longer derives legitimate pleasure from his possessions but he cannot let them go. Love of things, love of money, leads to the dissolution of the soul. It leads to slavery even as the soul deceives itself into believing it can use things to bring security, meaning and purpose.

Jesus very sharply draws the contrast that brings clarity and choice. As you are faithful to God in the small choices of your life you evidence the primary choice, the fundamental choice, to love God and to use things in accord with God’s principles and God’s purpose.

Jesus makes it very cleat that we can’t have it both ways. We cannot serve God and money. We cannot love God and love wealth. That position is inherently unstable and corrupting.

God created all people by love, through love and for love. We are more of who God created us to be as we immerse our minds and hearts and wills in that love.
As we hear the words of Jesus Christ today the Holy Spirit is asking us these question: whom do you serve? Where do you place your love? How is you mind, your heart and your will divided and in conflict?

Jesus commended the embezzler not for his crime but for his shrewdness in analyzing the situation and making a clear choice to solve the problem. It was indeed the wrong solution but it was a very shrewd decision.

How much more, then, does God expect us to exercise wisdom in how we choose to live our lives? How much more then does our Heavenly Father invite us to choose the love of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as the priority and principle that underlies all of our choices?
Jesus warns us we can’t have it both ways. We can’t serve God and money. We can’t use God and love things. They are mutually exclusive categories. The test of who we serve and who we love is in the little choices we make in our daily lives.

There is an urgency in Jesus’ statement. It is the urgency of the one who loves us and wants to fill us with his love. It is the urgency of the universal savior who longs to set us free from the slavery of things into the freedom of Divine grace. It is the urgency of the Bridegroom who is preparing the wedding feast for all but who will never require any of us to attend.

The truth of Jesus Christ is the truth of eternal love. The reality of that love for human beings is choice. Who ever is faithful in little will be faithful in much. Choose shrewdly. Choose wisely. Choose Jesus.