Thursday, May 27, 2010

Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday 2010
The Spirit of truth will guide you into all the truth.

Today we celebrate the truth that the one God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is not a truth we can analyze, categorize and reduce to a simple formula. Many people have attempted to over define, over complicate or over simply the truth of the Trinity. The Trinity is a reality that we can experience. We experience the reality and the truth of the Trinity in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Many people in our modern world have the mistaken idea that the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century created the idea of the Trinity and then used the Council of Nicea to write the Nicene Creed and impose the Trinity on the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The four biographies of Jesus that were written by eyewitnesses of his life all struggle to explain the unexplainable but inescapable truth that Jesus is both man and God. It is the truth that the One God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and the prophets, had in fact united His divinity with our humanity in a single individual, Jesus Christ.

The revelation of the incarnation is the revelation of the Trinity. At the incarnation God the Father sends the Holy Spirit to the blessed Virgin Mary to accomplish the incarnation of God the Son. At the incarnation God confirms and clarifies the revelation he had given to Moses and the prophets. That revelation states that God is One. It clarifies that the One God is transcendent, immanent, and personally present. Why is this important?

When Jesus came into the world there were two basic misconceptions about God that produced two fundamental misconceptions about the human condition.

The first misconception about God is that God is so completely transcendent and holy that God is unknown and unknowable. This God can only relate to human beings through a series of intermediary spiritual beings, lesser deities or angels. These lesser beings bring to humanity the Law.

This misconception about God leads to the misconception about the human condition. The God of pure transcendence is the God of Law. The God of Law is the God who maintains the moral order in the universe through a system of rewards and punishments. The lesser gods, angels, prophets, priests and teachers who represent this God teach that if you obey God’s laws then God is obligated by God’s own Law to bless you. God is also obligated under the Law to punish you if you break the Law.

The assumption is that human beings are born morally neutral with the free will to choose obedience or disobedience, blessing or punishment, heaven or hell. Incidentally, this is not what the Bible teaches about God, the Law, or the human condition. It is a distortion of the truth that leads to a dualistic world view cast in terms of absolute good at war with absolute evil.

The second major misconception about God is that God is all and all is God. This is the distortion of immanence. This distortion produces religious forms characterized by mysticism. It teaches that not only is God everywhere but that God is everything, including you.

This form of religion teaches that the problem confronting human beings is not disobedience but rather ignorance. The solution to the problem is knowledge acquired through a process called enlightenment. The goal of this knowledge is to recognize that you are merely God playing hide and seek with God. You are already perfect. Good and evil are an illusion that we choose to create to hide from our true divine nature.

The God of Law is the God of rewards and punishments who demands submission and authorizes aggression against the unrighteous. The God of Enlightenment is the God of passive withdrawal, fantasy, and self indulgence.

The One God seeks to rescue humanity from these distortions by uniting the principles of transcendence and immanence with incarnation.

In Jesus Christ God reveals that He is real, He is personal, He is love. In Jesus Christ God reveals that the problem confronting humanity is not disobedience or ignorance, it is separation. Since separation is the problem the only solution is reunification. God himself accomplishes this reunification by uniting his divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ. This reunification is what the Bible calls salvation.

As the apostles and their students pondered this truth they received two important insights from the Holy Spirit to help us understand how the reality of the incarnation and the Trinity impact our lives.

These insights are: What he did not assume he could not redeem. And, he became as we are so that we might become as he is. In Jesus Christ God recreates humanity and offers us all a new life and a new way of living. It is the fullness of God incarnate in Jesus Christ who reunites us to God.

Jesus is not a religious category. He does not just show us how to be good so we can earn God’s favor. Neither does he inspire us to acquire the knowledge we need to manifest our inner divinity. Jesus is God seeking us out, finding us, and calling us into a personal relationship with himself.

Jesus reveals to us that God eternally manifests His One Divine Nature in three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

God the Father is God transcendent. He is the one who eternally loves.
God the Son is God incarnate. He is the co-eternal Beloved.
God the Holy Spirit is God immanent, God everywhere, the co-eternal Love that manifests the One God as three persons and the three persons as One God.

The Trinity assures us that God is Love because the One God is a community of Love. The Trinity assures us that Love is available to all people everywhere. To be saved is to be reunited to God the Father, through God the Son, by the transforming Presence of God the Holy Spirit.
We cannot define or dissect God. We can only experience Him in His incarnate form: Jesus Christ.

Pentecost

Pentecost 2010
I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate who will be with you forever.
Faith plus obedience equals transformation.
We see this principle illustrated throughout the Bible. It is particularly evident in the story of Pentecost.
When Jesus ascended into heaven he instructed his apostles to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles had a choice. Wait or act. The basis for their choice was their faith.
Christian faith focuses on a person, Jesus Christ. Christian faith is the product of a personal relationship. Belief involves ideas, laws, rituals, doctrines. Faith, Christian faith, is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The apostles walked with Jesus for three years. They witnessed his miracles. They heard his teaching. They observed his behavior. They knew he was different than all other religious teachers. However, it wasn’t until the resurrection that they finally came to accept the reality that Jesus was not only fully human but fully God. Only God has the power to transform death into life.
Jesus had told them that he and the Father are one. Yet, they did not understand just how that could be true until after the resurrection. Jesus had also promised to send them another Advocate.
An Advocate is one who speaks on your behalf. The Holy Spirit speaks on our behalf to God the Father. The Holy Spirit also speaks on our behalf to other people. And, the Holy Spirit speaks to us to lead us into Faith in Jesus Christ.
The Apostles received Jesus’ instruction to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit with no clear idea as to who the Holy Spirit is.
The Apostles knew that the Holy Spirit had spoken through the prophets. The apostles also knew that the Messiah would initiate a new age of grace that would involve an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The apostles struggled to understand that the kingdom of God was not about command and control but rather about love and holiness.
On the Day of Pentecost, Jesus fulfilled his promise. Jesus prayer to the Father was fulfilled ten days after the Ascension. We heard the description of that amazing event in the reading from the Book of Acts.
The Apostles expressed their faith in Jesus by obeying his last command. Wait. As they waited they gathered for prayer with Holy Mother Mary. They did not wait passively. They waited with expectation. They waited with trust.
The Day of Pentecost is the birth of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The agent of this birth is the Holy Spirit. The evidence of this birth manifests in the outward and visible signs of the wind and fire and in the Apostles preaching the message of salvation in languages they had never learned. The evidence of this birth comes from the inward and spiritual grace that led three thousand people to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior.
On the day of Pentecost the number of believers increased from 120 to 3, 120 in a matter of minutes. As wonderful as the miraculous signs of wind and fire were, still more wonderful was the response of faith from the crowds who heard the apostles preach.
It was the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who gave life and power to the apostolic preaching. It was the Holy Spirit who spoke to the souls of people who had only recently rejected Jesus and led them to proclaim their faith and trust in Jesus. And. It was the Holy Spirit who transformed fearful and confused men into the preachers who went into the world with the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit gave birth to the church in Jerusalem that day. He reveals the purpose for the church. The purpose of the church is to be the instrumentality of our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit fills, directs and comforts the church to accomplish that task. He inhabits the soul of everyone who proclaims faith in Jesus Christ. He speaks in many and various ways to all people everywhere so that they would open their minds and hearts and wills to be found by God in Jesus Christ.
The work of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the continuation of the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is the proclamation of the Plan of Salvation, the invitation to Faith, and the very power of personal transformation into a new way of living.
Jesus not only promised to send the Holy Spirit, he promised that the Holy Spirit would be with us forever. The new life Jesus gives us through the Holy Spirit is forever. The new life is now. The new life is God with us in every moment of our lives and in every joy and every sorrow.
As we live into that new life, the Holy Spirit will enable us and equip us to accomplish amazing things for God. As we just heard read in the scriptures, the most amazing accomplishments will be in the re birth of a soul into the new life of eternal love in Jesus Christ.
Today, this moment, ask the Holy Spirit to release His divine power into your life. Ask him to be for you who Jesus wants him to be: the Presence of God in your soul now and forever. Amen.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Easter 7 The Sunday after the Ascension

Easter 7 the Sunday after Ascension Day
That they all may be one.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has many titles and two names.

Jesus holds the title of Christ. It is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew title “Messiah”. It means “anointed.” Jesus Christ means Jesus the anointed.
Jesus also holds such titles as King, Lord, Teacher, High Priest, Healer, God with us, logos and many others.

Jesus is the name the archangel Gabriel revealed to Holy Mother Mary. The name “Jesus” means “savior”. It is the descriptive name which defines the reason and purpose for Jesus’ life on earth.
Jesus has another name. It is far older and far more profound. Three times in Jesus’ life His Heavenly Father audibly spoke and revealed this other name. It is the name: “The Beloved”. In Greek it is the word “ o agapetos”. It is the name that reveals the transcendent reality of who Jesus really is.

As Jesus prays his high priestly prayer he manifests this reality.

Before the world came into existence the Father loved the Son and named him “The Beloved”. The Father did not create the Son in a moment of time. The Son eternally proceeds from the Father. The One God is a community of Infinite and Eternal Love. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father. The Holy Spirit is the Infinite love that binds the Father and the Son together as one God in three persons.

In this last portion of the high priestly prayer that we heard read this morning, Jesus prays for us. He prays for those who will believe on him without ever having seen him. He prays for those who believe based on the eye witness accounts of the apostles. And, he prays that we all may be one.

Jesus prays: Heavenly Father, grant that those who believe in me may experience the same unity of love that I experience with you. The unity is the love, steadfast, holy, unconditional, infinite and eternal love.

There are three areas of unity in Jesus’ prayer. He prays that we may be one with the Father. He prays that we may be one with each other. And, he prays that we might be one within ourselves.
As we enter into those three areas of unity Jesus tells us there will be a result. The result will be that the world, the lost and broken souls who have separated from God, will come to receive the love Jesus brings.

In this prayer, Jesus shows us that there is a relationship between our choice to immerse ourselves in Divine love and our obedience to his command to offer the gift of salvation to all people everywhere. The promise is that through our obedience to immerse ourselves in Divine Love others will come to understand and to choose that love for themselves.

The Beloved came into this world to bring Divine Love to a separated, lost and broken species. Jesus did not come into the world to tell us how we can reach God. Jesus came into the world as God reaching out to us. We do not find God. God finds us. And, God finds us by sending the Beloved to seek us out.

Jesus reminds us that there is no condemnation in God. God just doesn’t have love. God is love. The invitation to salvation is the invitation to be found by the Divine Love of God in Jesus Christ.
The great challenge to salvation is the human will to power that in every way demands: my will be done. That will to power molds and shapes a soul to reject Divine Love. That will to power forms a soul in the three categories of rebellion: pride, self will and fear.

The separated soul living from the place of rebellion creates religion or philosophy in a vain effort to tell God how God must accept it and reward it with heaven. It works under the assumption that the doors to heaven are shut and it must somehow bribe or demand they be opened.

Jesus brings to us a very different message. Jesus brings the Good News that the doors of Heaven are wide open. The Holy Spirit stands at those doors and announces to the entire world: Come. The saints of the Church Triumphant stand at those doors and proclaim to all people every where: Come!

Jesus not only tells us but demonstrates for us that Heaven is available to all and denied to none. Jesus teaches that we can only come to Heaven through love, with love and in love. We cannot come with a single condition or demand. Jesus reveals to us that Heaven is nothing more and nothing less than a personal relationship with the co-eternal beloved, Jesus Christ.
Since Heaven is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Heaven is available to everyone as a gift. The love of God in Jesus Christ is unconditional and all inclusive. Jesus loves all human beings. He prayed for those who killed him. And, he prayed for us who would receive his love through the eye witness accounts of his apostles.

Since Heaven is the gift of a new and personal relationship with Jesus Christ we begin to experience the joys of heaven here and now in this life. The joys begin at baptism. The joys find greater reality as we immerse ourselves into the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

For those who have chosen to enter into that new life of unconditional love death is simply a transition into a greater experience of something we already value and desire.
It is only as we make a real choice to immerse our minds, our hearts our wills into the unconditional love of Jesus Christ that we find the fulfillment of this His high priestly prayer for us.

Note that Jesus did not pray that his followers, His Church, would be wealthy or powerful. He prayed that we would experience in our daily lives the same infinite and eternal love that forms his very being. The Kingdom of Heaven is the infinite abundance of eternal love. No one can take that love from us. We can not earn it or demand it. We can only receive that love as the gift it is.
It is the love that reunites our lost and broken souls to the wholeness and holiness of the Living God. It is the love that invites us to make a real choice to enter into a new way of living. That new way of living gives us a new set of values and a new sense of priorities. That new way of living gives us a new awareness of meaning and purpose.

In His High Priestly prayer Jesus gives us a glimpse into his vision for human life. It is a vision that proceeds from the infinite and eternal love of God. It is a vision that is grounded in the experience of particular individuals each time we make a real choice to say yes to God’s invitation to a new way of living in Jesus Christ.

At the right hand of the Father, Jesus now prays for each of us to make that one real choice. He seeks us out in the circumstances of our daily lives. He prays for each of us by name. He invites each of us by name to experience the same eternal love that he embodies and holds for us.

Jesus prays to the Father and says: Heavenly Father I desire that each person here today receive the love that forms the Divine Essence of our being. I desire this so that they each may know the glory of a life lived in conscious awareness of living a blessed life. I desire this so the lost may be found, the broken healed, and the separated fragmented souls find reunification and transformation. I desire this, Holy Father, so that all who believe may be one with us, with each other and with the pattern of original blessing in their own souls. Father, fill them with your steadfast holy unconditional love. Amen.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Easter 6

Easter 6 Peace I leave with you.

How are you choosing to form your own soul?
To whom do you turn for advice, counsel and inspiration ?
What do you want?

A fundamental Biblical principle is that we become who we worship. That is why the first four commandments of the Ten Commandments deal with worship. That is why Jesus summarized all of the commandments and all of the Law in a single elegant and powerful statement: love God. Love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind.

That love is not just a feeling. That love is a real choice. It is the one real choice we can make that will impact and inform all other choices we make. It is the one real choice we can make that will answer such questions as: who am I? What is the meaning and purpose of my life?

Jesus states very simply and directly: those who love me will keep my word. Notice that Jesus didn’t say if you keep my word I will love you. He said: if you love me- then you will keep my word. The desire and the ability to keep God’s word comes from the love.

Another fundamental Biblical principle is that we always choose what we most want at the moment of choice. The choice doesn’t have to be rational. The choice reflects the desire of our heart at that moment.

The Bible is more concerned about who or what we love, about how and why we love, than about philosophical categories of free will. The will is simply the agency by which the soul expresses its innermost desire by bringing forth choice into the world of cause and effect.

Jesus preaches to the soul. He preaches to that part of us that is the depth of desire and the seat of our identity. That is why everyone who heard Jesus either misunderstood him or rejected him. Jesus speaks to that place within our souls that defines who we are and who we are choosing to become.

Jesus is not just an add on accessory to life. Jesus is life. The choice he offers us reminds us that all choices are eternal choices. The little choices, the big choices, the terrible and the wonderful choices all proceed from the depth of the soul, the seat of our personal unique identity.
Jesus preaches to the soul and offers steadfast holy unconditional love as the reality by which we experience a new way of living.

Jesus just doesn’t command us to do certain things. He just doesn’t command us to love. He offers us reunification with this love. In that reunification the love becomes the guiding principle by which we make a choice and exercise our will to initiate an action in the world of cause and effect. Jesus himself is that love, that steadfast holy unconditional love.

As we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ we enter into a new way of living. As we cultivate that personal relationship through prayer, Bible study, service to others and above all else: worship, we become more fully and completely a unique manifestation of that infinite and eternal love here in this world.

Those who love Jesus are those who offer themselves, their souls and bodies, at the altar of sacrifice to be immersed in the divine life and light and love of Jesus Christ. Those who love Jesus Christ are those who have made and continue to make a real choice to surrender self will to divine will, pride to humility, and fear to faith.

To love Jesus Christ is to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ whereby he becomes the foundation for a new way of living. Jesus becomes the meaning and purpose for our lives.

As we make this real choice three things happen.
First, Jesus reunites us to God.
Second: Through that reunification Jesus initiates a process of personal transformation.
Third: Jesus sends the third person of the Holy and Eternal Trinity to be our teacher, advisor, courage and strength.

In this process there are three primary shifts in our soul substance:
First is the shift in our souls from separation to relationship. We begin to discern, experience and choose relationship over separation.
Second is the shift from fear, self will and pride to steadfast holy unconditional love. We begin to question the assumptions by which we make choices. We begin to ask the difficult question of our cultural values: is this true? As we make a real choice to live from the place of steadfast holy unconditional love we become more alive, more authentic, and more open to receive the blessings God has prepared for us.
Third is peace. It is not the peace the world offers. It is not peace through conquest of life, other people, our own human nature. It is not peace through submission to other people or circumstances. It is not peace through withdrawal from the challenges of life. It is God’s peace.

That peace emerges from the very center of our being as we make the choice to immerse our minds, hearts and wills in steadfast holy unconditional love. The source of that peace is Jesus Christ. The reality of that peace comes from our relationship with Christ. It is not dependent on external circumstances. And so, external circumstances cannot diminish or disrupt that peace.

As we choose to live from the place of separation we live in reaction to people and circumstances. From the place of reaction we do not keep the word of God. We do not experience the peace of God.

As we choose to live from the place of reunification and transformation we live from the new life of a personal relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ. That relationship transforms our desires so that we seek first to keep God’s word. We experience the peace of God because we live and move and have our being in that peace.

The great challenge in hearing Jesus’ words is the challenge to hear from the soul. It is the challenge to hear what Jesus is saying and not just what we want to hear. It is the challenge to make a more profound choice to hear past our self will, fear and pride. It is the challenge to hear through the confusion and distraction of our culture.

As we make those choices to hear the word Jesus speaks, we open our souls to be filled with the word who Jesus is. The peace that passes human understanding is the personal presence of Jesus Christ, God with us. Jesus says: those who love me keep my word. Those who love me live in my peace.