Easter 2

Easter 2 (John 20:19-31)
“These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name.”

Faith precedes belief. Belief follows faith.

Human beings believe all sorts of strange and often contradictory things. The basis of these beliefs is desire and authority.

We frequently believe what we want to believe. This is the self justifying belief of convenience. And, we frequently believe what a trusted authority figure, such as a parent or a teacher, tell us.

Most of the time we do not examine our beliefs. Most of the time we do not question our beliefs. God wants us to examine our beliefs. God wants us to ask why we believe what we believe. It does matter what you believe. Belief enters into the world of cause and effect and produces a consequence.

The basis of belief for the apostles was evidence. The evidence was the personal and physical presence of the resurrected living Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus appeared to them, spoke with them, ate with them, led them in Bible study, celebrated Holy Communion, and invited them to touch him so they would know that he had a physical body.

Our heavenly Father did not, and does not, ask for us to believe in a set of laws, principles, rituals or philosophy as a condition for faith. Our heavenly Father invites us to place our trust and confidence and love in a person: Jesus Christ.
Faith is the solid rock foundation of belief. Belief without faith is like a house built on shifting sand. It won’t stand the time of testing. It won’t endure the storms of life.

It is certainly important to teach our children the beliefs of the Christian Faith. It is far more important to demonstrate faith.

Most of the apostles at first rejected the reality of the resurrection precisely because their minds and hearts and wills had been trained in a set of beliefs that said resurrection is impossible. They knew Jesus personally before he died on the cross. But, they had not yet placed their faith in him. They placed their faith in the religious leaders and the religious system that told them dead is dead. No one rises from the dead.

The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ challenged the fundamental beliefs people had about God, religion, life and death.

It wasn’t easy for the people who had known Jesus personally to accept the new reality of the New Covenant. It meant asking themselves some hard questions about themselves. It meant asking: why do I believe? What authority do I trust?
Jesus told Thomas, blessed are those who have not seen yet believe. Jesus personally appeared to some five hundred people during the forty days after his resurrection and prior to his ascension. Every one else who believes in Jesus is among those who have not seen yet believe.

The Christian Faith is a personal loyalty to a very specific person: Jesus Christ. This faith is not a blind leap in the dark. Jesus in fact states that he is the light of the world. Faith in Jesus is a movement from the darkness of separation, rebellion and death into the light of Divine Love and Divine life.

Jesus is not a cleverly devised myth. His historic reality is attested by thousands of people who knew him. Some of those accepted Jesus. Some rejected him. Some were largely indifferent. In the First Century, people formed an opinion about Jesus as a real person not a mythological story.

All but one of the apostles died for their simple testimony that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. For centuries the church has experienced the reality that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Jesus never authorized any of his followers to kill for him. He asks us to live for him. And, sometimes he asks us to die for him.

Christian martyrs die proclaiming: Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

Most of the New Testament books were written before the destruction of the Temple in 70A.D. Certainly all of the New Testament books were in existence by the end of the First Century. This is attested by Christian, Roman, and Jewish writers who quote extensively from the gospels and the epistles. Some quote to uphold the Christian faith. Others quote to attack that faith. And still others quote from a place of indifferent commentary.

The real question is: who is Jesus Christ?

Modern atheists assert Jesus never lived. Does this assertion fit the historic facts?

Modern secularists assert that Jesus was a nice moral teacher but never claimed to be God. Does this assertion fit the eye witness accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching?

Some religions teach that Jesus was one in a long line of prophets but could not have been the Son of God. Does this assertion fit the eye witness accounts of Jesus birth, death and resurrection?

People believe what they want to believe. And, we believe what a trusted authority teaches us to believe.

Jesus invites us into a personal relationship with himself. He asks us to come to him and place our trust in him. He does not ask that we embrace a fully formed inflexible set of beliefs first. The relationship comes first. The faith precedes the beliefs.

The Good News the apostles proclaimed to their generation is that God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ.

The written record of that Good News encourages us to taste and see. Taste and see that the lord is good. Ask Jesus to make himself known to you. Read the stories. Ponder them. Ask: does this make sense?

If God is real, does it make sense he would care about us?

If God is real, does it make sense he would come to us in person to show us who he is?

If God is real, does it make sense that he would invite us to make a real choice to enter into a personal relationship with himself?

If God is real does it make sense that He would choose four very different people to record their personal experiences and impressions of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

If God is real, does it make sense that he loves us so much that he refuses to impose his will on us but rather invites us to taste and see?

The apostle John believed in the resurrection even before he met the risen Lord. He believed because he had already found faith at the Last Supper, in the company of Holy Mother Mary, and at the foot of the Cross. That faith is a personal trust and loyalty.

We do not have the same opportunity to experience Jesus as Thomas and the other apostles experienced him. We do have that same opportunity that John had.

We have the Holy Eucharist which re presents to us the reality of the Last Supper. We have the personal witness and intercessory ministry of holy Mother Mary. We can, if we choose, stand at the foot of the cross in meditation and contemplation. And, we have an additional opportunity John lacked. We have the gospels.

We have the written record of the apostolic experience of Jesus Christ. The written record is about faith. It is about the living Lord Jesus Christ reaching out to everyone with his personal invitation to receive the gift of God. It is about the unconditional love of God asking us to trust in him.

The invitation to faith is the invitation to a new life that is grounded in unconditional love and a new way of living that is the font of every blessing. John tells us: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name.”

Choose wisely. Choose life. Choose Jesus.

Easter 2011

Easter 2011 “He saw and he believed.”

Of all of Jesus’ apostles only John stood at the foot of the cross as Jesus died. Of all of Jesus’ apostles only John believed in the resurrection solely on the basis of the empty tomb.

John’s faith is grounded in the love that brought him with Holy Mother Mary to the foot of the cross.

The essential revelation of God in Jesus Christ is that God is real, God is love, God is personal, God is Jesus Christ.

As a teen who came to consider Jesus his best friend, John grasped the Great Mystery that God just doesn’t have love, God is love. That love is real. That love is personal. That love is Jesus Christ.

The fundamental reality of the universe is the love of God in Jesus Christ. The new life that God offers all people everywhere unfolds in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Our Heavenly Father names Jesus “The Beloved.” Jesus is the plan, the pattern and the purpose for humanity. God the Father created all of us and each of us by the power of God the Holy Spirit to live and move and have our being through a personal relationship with the co-eternal Beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

John believed because John loved. Where so many others wanted Jesus to give them power and position and prestige, John discovered that friendship with Jesus was the most important thing. John experienced that amazing discovery at the foot of the cross in the company of Holy Mother Mary.

Mary also stood at the foot of the cross in the power of love. Her love was the love of a mother for her only Son. It was also a love that filled Mary’s soul with divine grace.

Friendship brought John to the foot of the cross. Mary’s maternal love transformed John’s love through the grace of God.

John’s loyalty to his friend transformed Mary’s love in that same moment of grace.
Jesus’ great love for each of them perfected their human love for him by his divine love for them in a singular moment of grace.

The Christian faith is God’s personal invitation to all people everywhere to experience the transforming presence of Divine Love in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The other disciples of Jesus needed to meet and hear and touch the resurrected Lord before they would believe. Until they had that experience they still thought of Jesus in terms of religion and politics and their own self will. Even when they met him they had trouble recognizing him. They needed to hear his voice and feel his embrace to grasp what they thought to be impossible.

John did not need to see the resurrected Jesus in order to believe in the resurrection. On that Easter morning, John already had faith. He discovered that faith at the foot of the cross in the company of Holy Mother Mary. With Mary the Holy Mother, John the teenager discovered the Great Mystery that God is real, God is love, God is personal, God is Jesus Christ.

Alleluia Christ is risen!

He is risen for you. He is risen for me. He is risen for all humanity. In the resurrection Jesus transforms death into life and sin into love.

On this Easter Morning John, the beloved of the Beloved, prays for us with Mary, the Holy Mother of God that we ,too, would look at that place in our souls where we experience love. That is the place of grace that produces faith. That is the place of grace that will reunite us to God the Father, through God the Son, in the Presence of God the Holy Spirit.

John saw the empty tomb and John believed in the resurrection by the Great Mystery of eternal love. With Holy Mother Mary, the loyal angels and all of the saints John, the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved invites us to proclaim loudly, boldly and joyfully: Alleluia Christ is risen!

Good Friday

Good Friday 2011 “It is finished”
As Jesus dies on the cross he declares “It is finished.”

What is finished is what the co-eternal Beloved came to Earth to accomplish. The Beloved united his divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ in order to rescue us from the choice we made as a species to separate from God.

As religious people we are so familiar with the story of that original choice that we tend to lose sight of how that choice formed our species and continues to form each of us.

The Original Choice to separate from God was and is the choice to reject God’s offer of a personal relationship with the Beloved. The choice to separate is the assertion of free will to demand equality with God according to two of God’s many attributes. It is also the choice to reject God’s own description of his essential nature.

The attributes of God our species chose to demand are knowledge and power. The essential nature of God that we rejected are love and holiness.

Original Separation creates original pain. It is a deeply seated pervasive existential pain that we live with all of our lives. It is a pain that creates terrible distortions in the way we think, feel and make choices. It is pain we seek to hide from in the various pleasures and distractions and fatal addictions our culture offers us.

As we seek to hide from the truth of this pain we seek to hide from God. We become lost in the distortions. Those distortions produce a corruption of the many virtues God designed for us to live by and to enjoy. That corruption of virtue is what the Church calls “actual sin”. Finally, the ultimate consequence of Original Separation is death.

This death is two fold. There is the spiritual death at work in our souls. And, there is the physical death that destroys our bodies.
The great problem that confronts and defines the human race is that as a species we have separated from God and are now lost. Not only are we lost we do not want to be found.

The process of death at work in a lost soul manifests in the will to power. The will to power uses people and loves things. The will to power demands of all other people, the natural world and God Himself: my will be done. Do it my way. I want what I want and I want it now.

The will to power is the exaltation of pride that leads to despair.
When our species made this original choice to separate from God, God immediately devised a plan to rescue us from that choice.

The rescue operation is the plan of salvation. The plan of salvation holds no condemnation. The Plan of Salvation preserves God’s original plan for our species to be the immortal beloved of The co-eternal Beloved.

Jesus Christ just doesn’t teach about the plan of salvation, he is the Plan of Salvation.

In Jesus, The Beloved second person of the Trinity unites his divinity with our humanity. In that union, Jesus reunites humanity with divinity in his own person. Jesus is the Father’s Plan of Salvation because Jesus is the second Adam. Jesus is the new way of being human that was God’s original plan for humanity.

Jesus knew people would reject him and kill him. In his humanity he asked if there were any other way to accomplish the Plan of Salvation. There wasn’t. There isn’t. Because the Plan of Salvation is not a religion it is the person of Jesus Christ himself.

As humanity tortured and killed Jesus to preserve our separation from God, Jesus took our will to power into himself, felt the fullness of our sin and death, then transformed it back into love and life through the essential nature of his own eternal love and eternal life.

Jesus said: it is finished as he died on the cross. He said this because he had allowed humanity to do its worst to him. He suffered the worst we could offer and the worst we ourselves could experience. He endured the Original Pain of Original Separation so he could trap it in his own body and soul and by the power of Divine love and holiness transform it back into love.

Salvation is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the reason God the Father created our species. Jesus Christ is The Beloved of the Father who now reaches out to all people everywhere with the invitation for each of us and all of us to become the beloved of the Beloved.

As our origin is in Divine Love so the new life Jesus offers us is in Divine love. There is no condemnation in that love. There is only the compassion of Jesus Christ offering us a completed and perfected work he himself accomplished on the cross.
Jesus said: it is finished. He now offers us that completed work of salvation as a free gift. The free gift is a new life in union with the Father through the Son. The free gift is a new way of living in the personal Presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 2011 “I am among you as one who serves.”

The preeminent religious rites of the Law are circumcision and the Passover. The preeminent religious rites of the Gospel are baptism and Holy Communion.
The Law, the Law of Moses, sets the standards for humanity and defines the sacrifices that must be offered by humanity when, not if, we break the standards. The Bible clearly observes that everyone breaks the Law.Everyone except Jesus.

Jesus never broke the Law. He came to the cross having lived a perfect life according to the Law. He did this not by law but by love. He never broke the Law because he never separated from Love.

Twice during his public ministry, our Heavenly Father declared audibly: this is my Son, The Beloved. Jesus knew who he was: The Beloved. He made a real choice in his human nature to remain who he was: The Beloved. In that choice he expressed his relationship to our heavenly Father in the prayer: Heavenly Father, not my will but your will be done.

Jesus did what our species failed to do. Our species made the original choice to say to God: not your will but my will be done. In that Original Choice to assert self will over divine will humanity separated from God. In that separation we lost our free will and immersed our souls in sin.

The Bible is a thousand year record of dozens, perhaps scores, of different individuals from different walks of life recording their observations of human behavior. The record is remarkably consistent. Human beings reject divine will in order to assert self will.

God gave the Law to Moses to restrain the evil we bring into our lives and into the wider world. Embedded in that Law is the sacrificial system. That system prepares humanity for the final solution to Original Separation. The final solution to separation, sin and death is Jesus Christ.

At that last supper Jesus was already suffering the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual torments of the final sacrifice. He did not embrace the cross as a martyr. He embraced the cross as the one pure perfect and final sacrifice for sin.

As Jesus prepares for his death he summarizes the Father’s Plan of Salvation. The Plan of Salvation requires Jesus to live a perfect life then offer that life as the final sacrifice for sin. The Plan of Salvation starts with the Law of Moses, goes through the cross of Calvary, and reaches its fulfillment in the resurrection.

As Jesus speaks the word that once created everything out of nothing he takes bread, holds it, blesses it and declares: This is my body. He takes a cup of wine, holds it, blesses it and declares: this is my blood.

Jesus speaks and creates a new reality. It is a new contract with humanity that fulfills the old contract. It is a new law that fulfills the old Law. It is a new religious rite that perfects the old religious rites.

No mere human being could have done this. No teacher, prophet, priest or King could have done this. All human beings are lost in separation from God. All human beings live from the place of self will. Every human being lives with the illusion that we can create our own reality. Only Jesus can in fact create reality with a word.

At the Last Supper Jesus declared: I am among you as one who serves. His life reveals his nature. He never sinned. He helped everyone who came to him. His constant prayer was: Heavenly Father, not my will but your will be done.

Jesus is the alternative way of being human our species rejected. Jesus chose to be who he was. Jesus chose to be The Beloved of the Father. In that choice he overcame Adam’s choice to separate from God.
In that choice he demonstrated how a soul that places Divine will above self will lives from the place of free will.

In that choice Jesus fulfilled the plan of salvation. Jesus takes the choice our species made to separate and re forms it into a sacrifice of self will rather than as an expression of the will to power. In that sacrifice, Jesus trapped Original Separation, sin and death in his own body and soul.

As the sacrifice, Jesus The Beloved, overcame Separation, sin and death and transformed it back into reunion, love and holiness.

The Last Supper is the new rite instituted by the new Adam for the new community of Faith.

The religious content of the Last Supper is the act of love Jesus performed on the cross. The new reality of the Last Supper is that by a word Jesus transforms bread into his body, wine into his blood, self will into free will through Divine Will.

All who partake of Christ’s body and blood partake of that new reality. It is not magic. It is not science. It is Sacrament. It is a new reality Jesus gives us in order to empower us to surrender our separated and sinful self will to Divine will so that we can discover free will. The evidence of the work of the sacrament in our lives is whether we pray the prayer Jesus prayed when he was on earth.

Do we pray: Heavenly Father not my will but your will be done?

Do we aspire to make a real choice in the real presence of Jesus Christ to say to all we meet: I am among you as one who serves.

Palm Sunday 2011

Palm Sunday 2011 (Matthew 21:1-11)
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Virtually no one was able to accept Jesus for who Jesus was.

It was an incredible almost triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The city was in a tumult. Visitors from all over the Roman world and from the Persian Empire had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover in the one and only Temple the One and only God had authorized people to build.

They asked: who is this coming into the city in triumph? People said: it is the prophet Jesus. People shouted out: Hosanna! Save we pray!

The chief priests and the religious authorities reacted with fear. The people were proclaiming Jesus to be the savior of the nation, the Messiah. If this were true, the priests would lose their jobs and the religious authorities would lose their power.

If it were not true, if Jesus failed to live up to the expectations of the people, there would be chaos. In that chaos Rome would impose the heavy hand of imperial rule. Many would die and the priests and religious leaders could be replaced for failing to maintain order.

There was a third alternative. The third alternative was for the priests and rulers to listen to Jesus. They could easily have asked him to clarify his position and his person. More than even Jesus’ students, the priests and rulers had listened to and watched Jesus over the preceding three years. But, as with almost everyone else, they never took Jesus seriously. They never allowed Jesus to be who he said he was.
Thousands of people had experienced Jesus’ miracles. They each saw something different.

The disciples saw a road to power through Jesus. But, Jesus had not come to impose a new system or institution on the people.

The crowds saw debt relief and revenge on their oppressors. But Jesus had not come with to overturn the economic system or to punish the oppressors.
The priests and rulers saw Jesus as a threat to their wealth and power. But, Jesus had not come to lead a revolution.

Many others looked at Jesus, experienced the miracles and then said: that’s nice but that’s religion and I’m not overly religious so Jesus means little to me. But, Jesus did not come into the world to offer one more religious opinion.

People imposed their own needs and desires on Jesus because all people reserve the right and the power to define God as we chose. This is the essence of Original Separation from God.

God had revealed himself to our first parents as love and holiness. They looked past the love and holiness to see the knowledge and power God had. They chose to purse two of the attributes of God and to ignore the essential nature of God.

BY that Original Choice our species separated from God. We are lost and we cannot find our way back by our own insights, efforts or will to power. The story of Jesus is the proof of this principle.

Virtually no one was able to accept Jesus for who Jesus was.

People heard the name Jesus, which means savior, and wanted Jesus to save them from the Romans, the priests and the religious rulers. In that salvation, they expected Jesus to crush their enemies, exalt his friends to positions of power, and make Jerusalem the capital of a new world empire that would enslave the nations.

This was not the salvation Jesus brought. It is not the salvation Jesus brings.
At the end, only Holy Mother Mary and the beloved apostle John had a tenuous sense of what salvation Jesus brought. As they stood at the foot of the cross they observed just how Jesus would embody salvation.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to effect regime change. He did not come to offer one more opinion among many opinions about religion. He came to seek the lost, find the lost, and reunite the lost to God.

He did this in two ways: he united his divinity with our humanity. And then, in that union, he trapped sin and death in his own body and soul as he died on the cross.
The cross was not something Jesus wanted to embrace. It was the only means by which he could accomplish his goal. For Jesus just doesn’t have love, Jesus is love. He is the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father.

Jesus came to reunite each of us to God. He came to save us from sin by transforming sin back into love. He did this through his real choice to unite his will with the will of The Father. He did this by accepting the full weight of human sin on his soul and in his body on the cross.

Jesus came to save us from death. Death was never part of our Heavenly Father’s Plan for the human race. Death is the result of humanity’s original choice to separate from God. Death is not a punishment. It is a consequence.

God and God alone is the source of life. To separate from God is to separate from life.

Jesus trapped death in his own body on the cross so he could swallow it up and transform it back into life by the power of his own eternal life.

The salvation Jesus brings is a new life and a new way of living.

Jesus is not an add on to a personal philosophy.

Jesus is not one option among many.

There are only two options for humanity: life in union with God through Jesus Christ; or, death in separation from God through the individual will to power.
Who is Jesus Christ to you? Are you willing to allow Jesus be who he is? Are you willing to accept the gift Jesus brings, the gift Jesus is?

When you say the hosanna what do you chose to be saved from?
The crowds spoke truth when they shouted “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. They just weren’t willing to ask themselves the question Pilate asked: what is truth?

The answer to that question is a matter of life and death. The answer to that question is the context of the Palm Sunday acclamation: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

The answer is Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth and the life, who is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He, blessed is Jesus Christ, who comes in the name of the Lord.

Lent 5 Jesus Wept

Lent 5 (John 11:1-45) Jesus wept.

Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead is the catalyst for the crucifixion.
As we have observed in the gospel readings during Lent, the miracles Jesus performed attracted large crowds, convinced his disciples he was the promised Messiah, and brought fear, confusion and anger to the religious authorities.

In the midst of this turmoil, Jesus reveals himself most fully and completely as the One who is both human and divine. The particular incident involves Jesus’ relationship with a single family.

According to the internal evidence of scripture, the family of Martha, Mary and Lazarus are wealthy Pharisees who live just outside Jerusalem. We understand they are wealthy because of Mary’s extravagance in pouring a precious ointment on Jesus’ feet. We understand they are Pharisees because of Martha’s statement of faith in the resurrection. Most Jews at that time did not hold that belief.

Tradition suggests Martha was the eldest and the head of the household. This is based on Martha’s concern about providing all the details of hospitality when Jesus visited. Tradition also suggests that Mary was younger than Martha and that Lazarus was the youngest. He was probably an older teen. He had not yet assumed his responsibility as the head of the household. And, he had not yet married and fathered children to carry the family name into the future.

If the tradition is accurate, Lazarus’ death was a terrible tragedy on many levels. Despite the family wealth, the death of the only male heir left his older sisters vulnerable in a patriarchal society. It also meant the end of the family line since the common belief was that the only assurance of life after death was in a man’s children. The children would remember his name. Without heirs to hold the memory of the ancestors, they were truly dead.

The amazing aspect about the story is how the entire universal Plan of Salvation is woven into the particularity of one family’s terrible tragedy. The universal experience of humanity is present: sickness and health, faith and fear, hope and despair, life and death.

Lazarus becomes sick. Martha, as head of the household, sends for Jesus. She includes in the message: your friend is ill. It is clear the family enjoys a close personal relationship with Jesus. And, Martha reminds Jesus that her younger brother is Jesus’ friend. Surely, Martha reasons, Jesus will come and heal his friend. After all, he has healed thousands of total strangers in his three years of public ministry.

There is a very subtle but very powerful use of language in the passage. When Martha and her friends speak of Jesus’ love for Lazarus they use the word that means friendship. When John refers to Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his family he uses the word that means steadfast holy unconditional eternal love.

For the sake of friendship, Martha and Mary and their neighbors expect Jesus to heal Lazarus before he dies. For the sake of steadfast holy unconditional eternal love Jesus invites his friend, Lazarus, to participate more fully and completely in the universal Plan of Salvation for the entire human race.

This choice is not without cost. It cost Lazarus his life. It certainly cost the family terrible sorrow and grief. It cost Jesus a temporary loss of respect from his disciples and the people who wondered if he had failed. It cost Jesus the emotional turmoil of entering into the grief and sorrow of the moment. And, it set into motion the sequence of events that would culminate in the crucifixion.

The disciples warned Jesus that he had only barely escaped death the last time he visited Jerusalem. The religious authorities would be waiting for an opportunity to kill him. Jesus decides to go to Bethany, a town just outside Jerusalem, yet he deliberately waits two days. He waits in accord with the Father’s will. He waits so that the Glory of God might be manifested in the resurrection of Lazarus and in the final culmination of the Plan of Salvation.

The story is familiar. Martha and Mary lament that Jesus is too late. The crowds express doubt in Jesus’ power. Jesus dialogs with the sisters and hears the mixture of faith and fear, belief and doubt, in their grief.

Jesus asks to visit the tomb. The family and the crowd expect Jesus to join them in the ritual lamentation for the dead. It is a loud weeping and wailing, for most religious people believed dead was dead. Even those who believed in resurrection believed it was only for the righteous. And, who could say whether any one particular individual would be accounted righteous. Lazarus was young. Perhaps he had not performed sufficient good works to qualify as righteous. Perhaps his untimely death was a sign of divine punishment for sin.

In the midst of this grief and sadness, doubt and uncertainty, Jesus himself weeps. He is fully human and can do no less. The suffering he encounters is deep and broad. It is the suffering of people lost in the pain of separation from God. It is the foretaste of the suffering Jesus will experience on the cross.

Jesus weeps for the death of his friend and he weeps for the human condition that results in such terrible sadness and death. People some times say: where was God when this terrible tragedy happened? Where was God in the earthquake, the tsunami? He is right there. In Jesus Christ God unites our humanity with His divinity. In that union God experiences our grief and our sorrow. The proof of this is in the statement: Jesus wept.

Jesus wept for Lazarus and for the human condition. This was not His Father’s original Plan for the human race. This is the consequence of the Original Choice our species made to separate from God. That separation has brought terrible distortions to the way we think, feel, choose and experience life. That separation produces fear, frustration, anger, sin and death. And, Jesus is God with us in the midst of all of that suffering.

Jesus is the assurance that although we abandon God, God never abandons us. He is with us in all of our joys and in all of our sorrows. He weeps with those who weep because he is fully human and knows life as we know life and feels suffering as we feel suffering.

This particular story has a happy ending for the family. Jesus raises Lazarus, the younger brother, from the dead. It is an amazing gift for the family that is also the catalyst for the religious leaders to move against Jesus with false accusations of blasphemy. Human separation from God produces fear, frustration, anger, the assertion of the will to power and the fatal pride that leads to the arrest, trial, torture and execution of the Son of God.

Jesus knew this was his path forward. Jesus knew his gift of life to Lazarus was his own death warrant. Jesus also knew this way forward was the only way to accomplish the Plan of Salvation.

Salvation is not a human right. Neither is it something we can earn or demand. Salvation is Life overcoming and transforming death.

No prophet can accomplish this. No religious teacher, philosopher or scientist can accomplish this. Only the co-eternal Son of God, The Beloved, can do this and has done it. Jesus just doesn’t give us a religious insight about God. Jesus is God.
As God, Jesus just doesn’t have life, he is life itself. He is eternal life. He raises Lazarus with a word. He embraces human separation, sin and death, and with a single word in a moment of terrible pain, he unifies a lost broken and tormented human nature with divine nature. By the infinite power of eternal love Jesus reunifies humanity with divinity. By the infinite power of eternal love Jesus transforms death into life.

Jesus wept. He knew the terrible suffering separation produces in human lives. He knew the terrible price he would have to pay to overcome that separation. He knew that even after his own resurrection people would reject the gift of salvation he offers. He continued on the path of the Plan of Salvation anyway. He chose to unite his will with the will of God the Father. That will is steadfast holy unconditional eternal love.

Jesus wept that day at the tomb in Bethany because Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved of the Father. Jesus wept because Jesus just doesn’t have love, Jesus is love.

Lent 4

Lent 4 (John 9:1-41) As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

False religion produces false answers to false problems.

Jesus had just performed an amazing miracle. He had healed a man born blind. The crowds were astonished. The man himself was filled with joy. The religious leaders were outraged.

Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath. According to the Law of Moses the Sabbath was a day God set aside for rest and worship. The Law says: do no work on the Sabbath day. It is a very simple straightforward command that the religious leaders had made incredibly complicated.

The purpose of the Sabbath is for people to set aside a time to enter more fully into a personal relationship with God. It is a time to ponder the wonders of God. It is a time set apart to enjoy the real presence of God.

The Pharisees and other religious leaders had redefined the Sabbath in terms of rigid rules and regulations focused on the minute detail of what a person could and could not do. They had taken an occasion of joy and delight and turned it into a day filled with restrictions and fear of punishment.

God had spoken through Moses and the Prophets to invite people into a personal life giving and life celebrating relationship with himself. When the co-eternal Son of God came to earth and became a human being he found a brittle fragmented and contentious religious culture in place of a spontaneous life giving relationship.
The question religious people asked themselves was: what must I do to avoid punishment and gain reward? What’s in it for me? They recreated God in their own image and according to their own expectations. They took the rituals and rules God had revealed to Moses as a means to an end and made them the end.

God always intended the Law, the rituals and the sacrifices to point beyond to the relationship God wanted people to enjoy. But, the people valued pleasure, power, possessions, prestige and pride more than the personal relationship. They wanted the material rewards they believed God could give them more than God himself.

They took religion and made it an end in and of itself rather than the means by which they could enter into the relationship. They made obedience to the Law as the guarantor of reward. They formed a religion of legalism to secure their own position in society.

When Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath the religious leaders could not rejoice that the love and compassion of God had brought healing and wholeness to someone who had suffered all of his life. They could only calculate the cost benefit equation for themselves.

They reasoned that if Jesus truly came from God and worked miracles by the power of God there were only two possible outcomes. He would succeed or he would fail.
If Jesus succeeded, if he became the new king of Israel, the Pharisees stood to lose everything they valued. For it was clear Jesus did not need them to administer the religious affairs of the nation. It was clear Jesus rejected their religious culture and institutions.

The new order would be revolutionary in its rejection of the established religious order. And, since the religious leaders only thought in categories of rewards and punishments they concluded that King Jesus would punish them and reward his circle of friends.

If Jesus failed to become the king there would be social chaos. The failed attempt to establish a new order would result in violent reaction and suppression by King Herod and the Romans. Many would die in the chaos including many of the Pharisees.
As the religious leaders assessed the situation, whether Jesus succeeded or failed they would suffer. They looked at Jesus through the lens of a religion of reward and punishment. They asked the question: what’s in it for me? They concluded Jesus would only bring them punishment. With that conclusion they knew they had to kill him before he could kill them.

Jesus knew this would happen. He knew the problem with humanity was not a lack of religious knowledge. He knew that people generally do not seek God. He knew that people create their own deities to suit their needs and desires. He knew what religious people refuse to acknowledge. Humanity has chosen separation from God and in that separation humanity is lost. We are not only lost we stubbornly refuse to be found.

If we are religious we tend to bend and warp and distort religion so it can answer the question: what’s in it for me? How does it build my resume? How does it advance my goals?

The disciples had the same problem as the Pharisees. The disciples saw the blind man and immediately asked: who sinned? Who is to blame? Who should we condemn?

They asked the wrong question because they, too, were trapped in a false religion that provided false answers to false problems. There is no condemnation in Jesus as he heals the blind man. There is no blame. There is no false assumption that if you do good you get good and if you do bad you get bad and its corollary that if you suffer it is only because you have sinned. Jesus knew the world didn’t work that way.
What Jesus wanted to reveal to the disciples and to the Pharisees is that the problem confronting humanity is not revealed in a man born blind but in a religious system that refused to see the light. The blind man is a vessel of grace by which the glory of God manifests to the lost.

In his own person and by his own example Jesus offers the people of his time and for all time a different question to ask. Where most people will ask: what’s in it for me? Jesus demonstrates the question: how may I help? Where can I bring forth the glory of God in a single act of compassion?

To the disciples Jesus says: stop trying to figure out who to blame. Blame is irrelevant. Ask rather, how may I help? As you ask that question you reveal the glory of God.

To the Pharisees Jesus says: personal holiness is personal responsibility for personal sin. Stop judging others. There is no condemnation in God. Righteousness is right relationship. Ask yourself: why do you see me as a threat? I come only with healing. I come only to restore sight to the blind.

It was a lot to ask the disciples and the Pharisees. It is a lot to ask of us. It is a question that only makes sense within the personal relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ who tell us As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
It is Jesus who reveals the problem confronting humanity. It is Jesus who is the solution to that problem.