Pentecost 3 (Matthew 11:16-19;25-30) “Come to me.”
Jesus asked: “To what will I compare this generation?”
Every generation is beset by a common problem. That problem is separation from God. Separation from God produces a spiritual pain that envelops and enslaves the soul. That pain results in the distortion of our thoughts, emotions and wills.
As every human being is unique so every generation is unique. Every generation manifests the common problem of separation in the unique circumstances of its particular culture.
The culture Jesus grew up in was a religious culture. It was a religious culture of pride, fear, and the will to power. It was a religion of rewards and punishments. It was a culture of rigid categories that produced criticism, contempt and condemnation.
Jesus compares his generation to a group of children sitting in the marketplace. They are sitting still. Not moving. Inert. Frozen. Stagnant. They remain aloof in the pride of their own self sufficiency.
A child comes to the group and invites them to stand up and move around and join him in playing a game. That child is John the Baptist. John preached repentance from sin and preparation for the coming Messiah. John proclaimed a lament for the status quo and an urgent call for self examination and transformation.
That generation of religious leaders refused self examination. They were in fact self satisfied and self sufficient. They refused to enter into a process of transformation because they already considered themselves righteous. They listened to John but did not hear him. They remained seated, stationary, stagnant. John did every thing he could to encourage them to move even the slightest step forward. They refused.
Jesus came playing the flute. Jesus proclaimed the goodness of God and the joy of the Messianic Kingdom. Jesus came celebrating the Divine Presence in the ordinary events of life. He invited the sedentary religious leaders to stand up and join in the celebration.
As with John’s call to repentance, so it was with Jesus’ call to celebration. That generation resisted both John and Jesus. They were set in their ways. They were stuck in their programs. They were defined by their pride of position and power. They were resistant to both repentance and to celebration because they feared change.
They were like pouting petulant children trapped in their own demand to define life, other people and God. They thought they were righteous. They thought they had understanding. They thought they had God figured out. But, they lacked humility. Because they lacked humility they lacked wisdom.
Wisdom starts from the place of humility.
The great tragedy of the sin nature is pride. We can identify pride in our lives whenever we make non negotiable demands backed by a threat.
The way of wisdom is the way of Jesus Christ.
The book of Proverbs is a book about wisdom. The eighth chapter of Proverbs gives a very clear and concise summary of wisdom.
The way of wisdom is the way the co-eternal Son of God adopted when he came to earth. He surrendered every aspect of his divine prerogatives that the religion of his generation valued. He came helpless as an infant. He lived the life of the ordinary working poor. He came in the spirit of the Messianic prophecy announced by the prophet Isaiah: a bruised reed he will not break; a dimly burning wick he will not quench. He came with healing. He came with unconditional love.
This humility confused, bewildered and angered almost every one Jesus met during his three years of public ministry. This was not what anyone expected from the Messiah. The expectation was that the Messiah would support and reward the programs already developed by the righteous. The expectation was for a very material reward in terms of money and power.
The reality was not in the reward but in the relationship Jesus offered.
Jesus is very clear on both the problem confronting the human race and God’s solution to the problem.
People, all people, are lost in separation.
Religious people are lost in religion when we use religion to impose our will on other people; and, when we use our religion to place demands on God. The religion of Jesus’ generation was the religion of the loophole. People asked themselves and their leaders: what is the least I have to do to be considered righteous? What is the minimum requirement for me to avoid wrath and to gain my reward?
Secular people are lost in the pride of knowledge and the despair of superstition. Pride says “I don’t need God.” Despair says: “even if God exists he could never help me.” The secular assert: “it is all up to me and all about me.” The secular also say: “it is not my fault; some one else is to blame.”
Jesus teaches what the religious and the secular do not want to hear. Jesus teaches the personal responsibility of every individual to receive the gift our Heavenly Father offers us. The gift is a person: Jesus Christ.
Jesus angered everyone by proclaiming that he alone knows the Father.
Jesus confused everyone by offering that knowledge to all people as a gift. You can’t earn it. It is not a human right. It is a gift.
Jesus is God pouring himself out to each of us and to all of us in the person of his only begotten Son. Jesus is the real presence of the Infinite and Eternal inviting us to repent and to celebrate.
The invitation is one word: “Come”.
Are you weary? Come. Come to Jesus.
Are carrying heavy burdens? Come. Come to Jesus.
Are you feeling enslaved by your own impossible demands on life? Come . Come to Jesus.
Are you frustrated, confused, agitated by too much or too little knowledge about the world? Come. Come to Jesus.
Jesus offers rest to the weary.
Jesus offers release to the burdened.
Jesus offers renewal to the frustrated.
Jesus offers to refresh our mind, heart and will continually by his own Real Presence.
What Jesus offers is not a program, a set of laws, or a quick fix. What Jesus offers is a new life and a new way of living.
If we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior we reject all other masters. To take the yoke of Jesus is to forsake all other claims on our loyalty, our time, our priorities.
As we take that yoke of Lordship we enter into an active, dynamic, never ending journey of transformation in unconditional love.
That journey is grounded in our souls through the spirit of humility Jesus gives us. It isn’t easy. And, it doesn’t happen over night. It is the only way we can know God. It is the only way we can live the blessing God offers us.
Jesus compared his generation to sullen spiteful children who wouldn’t respond to the call to repentance or the call to worship.
To what does Jesus compare our generation?
How do we respond to the call to repentance, conversion and transformation? Do we say, “Yes Lord?” Or, do we say, “not now?” What do we say? Do we respond with humility or do we react with pride?
How do we respond to the call to worship? The call to worship is the call to the total immersion of the soul in the steadfast holy unconditional love of God. Do we say: “Yes Lord.” Or, do we look for loopholes to avoid the invitation. Do we respond with humility or do we react with pride?
The blessing God offers is in the relationship God offers in Jesus Christ. The relationship sets us free from fear, self will and pride to enjoy a new life and a new way of living in renewal and celebration as we hear the invitation of Jesus Christ in the words: “Come to me”.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Pentecost 2
Pentecost 2 (Matthew 10:40-42)
Whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Jesus is the fullness of God in human flesh.
If you really want to know God look at Jesus. Everything in the Old Testament prepares us to understand Jesus. Everything in the New Testament helps us to receive Jesus. The sole purpose of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is to help people experience the living reality of the living Lord Jesus Christ.
All religion is human speculation about God. Only Jesus Christ is God reaching out to the human race.
All religion asks some basic questions: who or what is God? What does this Deity or Deities want from me? How does this make a difference in my life? Our Heavenly Father answers this question in a very unusual way. That Way is Jesus.
Most forms of religion assume a rewards/punishment pattern to human interaction with the divine. For most people most of the time, the good things in life are the reward and the bad things in life are the punishment.
Virtually every atheistic I have ever listened to tells the same story. I don’t believe in God because God failed me. God failed the implicit bargain religion teaches. That bargain can be stated: if you do good you get good; if you do bad you get bad. This is not the way the world works. It is the demand of the human soul. It is a demand that leaves us empty and seeking something new or something different to satisfy our longing.
People desire many things. People long for happiness, justice and love. As St. Paul wrote: the greatest is Love. As Moses wrote: God brings forth steadfast holy love. As King David sang: O Lord, I will celebrate your love forever. As the prophets proclaimed: The Lord yearns to bless his people as a groom longs to bring happiness to his bride.
As the beloved apostle John wrote and experienced: God just doesn’t have love; God is love. Jesus is the Love of the Eternal Father in human flesh.
The reason we exist is because our Heavenly Father created us to live in an active dynamic transforming relationship of infinite and eternal love with the co-eternal son.
The Archangel Gabriel directed the Blessed Virgin Mary to name her son Jesus, savior. Our Heavenly Father has audibly declared Jesus’ name in eternity is: The Beloved.
If you receive Jesus as your personal lord and savior you receive the co-eternal Beloved. Jesus himself is the reward. The reward is the new life and the new way of living that comes from entering into the new relationship God offers all people everywhere.
What does God want?
God wants us to make a real choice to immerse our mind, our heart, our will in the real presence of the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ. This is the one thing God wants from us. All other things Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles taught all derive from this one thing.
The reward of the prophets and the righteous is the immersion of the soul in the steadfast holy unconditional love of God.
This is why the Holy Spirit led Moses into the wilderness. He was too distracted by the pleasures and the power and the pride of his position as a Prince of Egypt. He had to learn love by becoming a shepherd of sheep. From among the highest in human society Moses became the lowest. In that journey from the palaces of Egypt to the Sinai desert, Moses learned what only the desert could teach him. Moses learned unconditional love.
In learning unconditional love, Moses prepared himself to hear what very few people have ever heard. Moses prepared his mind, his heart, his will to hear the Word of God.
It is the same Word Moses heard in the desert that the prophets heard and proclaimed. It is the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ and dwelt among us in complete humility.
If you receive Jesus you receive the one who sent him. If you receive Jesus you receive the one who prepared Moses and the Prophets to announce his coming. If you receive Jesus you receive the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The reward is the relationship.
In this present world of duality there will be good times and bad times. In this world of cause and effect we will know success and we will know failure. We will know pleasure and we will know pain. In this world as it is, Jesus offers us himself.
He stands at the thresh hold of this world and knocks. He stands at the door to our individual souls and knocks. Jesus never imposes himself on us. He did not and will not come into this world to command and control. He came and continues to come into this world to offer himself to us.
The question implicit in Jesus’ teaching on this second Sunday of Pentecost is: will you welcome me?
For just a moment forget the religion. Focus on the relationship. For just a second forget the doctrine. Focus on the person. Listen. Pay attention. Here and now in the space of a single breath Jesus is calling to us. Here and now within a single heart beat Jesus invites you to receive an eternal treasure that will transform your life.
That treasure is a personal relationship with the co-eternal Beloved of the eternal Father. That treasure is the Holy Spirit infusing love into our souls by the presence of his own infinite and eternal love.
What does God want? He wants to call us the beloved of the co-eternal beloved. He wants to immerse our souls in the love of that relationship. He wants to transform our fear, anger, frustration, pain, pride and despair in the active dynamic of that relationship.
That is what God wants.
What do you want?
Will you allow Jesus to be who he is?
Will you surrender the urgent and impossible demand of the sin nature to define other people, the world and even God?
Will you yield your self will to be transformed by divine will and discover the liberation of free will in Jesus Christ?
Will you this day at this time and in this place just as you are welcome the Living Lord Jesus Christ as your personal forever friend and companion?
Wealth and power will pass away. Friends and partners will disappoint you. Only Jesus is the eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father.
The reward Jesus offers is himself. The reward is the relationship that will never pass away. The relationship will only get better as we discover in Jesus the reality of the infinite and eternal love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Jesus is the fullness of God in human flesh.
If you really want to know God look at Jesus. Everything in the Old Testament prepares us to understand Jesus. Everything in the New Testament helps us to receive Jesus. The sole purpose of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is to help people experience the living reality of the living Lord Jesus Christ.
All religion is human speculation about God. Only Jesus Christ is God reaching out to the human race.
All religion asks some basic questions: who or what is God? What does this Deity or Deities want from me? How does this make a difference in my life? Our Heavenly Father answers this question in a very unusual way. That Way is Jesus.
Most forms of religion assume a rewards/punishment pattern to human interaction with the divine. For most people most of the time, the good things in life are the reward and the bad things in life are the punishment.
Virtually every atheistic I have ever listened to tells the same story. I don’t believe in God because God failed me. God failed the implicit bargain religion teaches. That bargain can be stated: if you do good you get good; if you do bad you get bad. This is not the way the world works. It is the demand of the human soul. It is a demand that leaves us empty and seeking something new or something different to satisfy our longing.
People desire many things. People long for happiness, justice and love. As St. Paul wrote: the greatest is Love. As Moses wrote: God brings forth steadfast holy love. As King David sang: O Lord, I will celebrate your love forever. As the prophets proclaimed: The Lord yearns to bless his people as a groom longs to bring happiness to his bride.
As the beloved apostle John wrote and experienced: God just doesn’t have love; God is love. Jesus is the Love of the Eternal Father in human flesh.
The reason we exist is because our Heavenly Father created us to live in an active dynamic transforming relationship of infinite and eternal love with the co-eternal son.
The Archangel Gabriel directed the Blessed Virgin Mary to name her son Jesus, savior. Our Heavenly Father has audibly declared Jesus’ name in eternity is: The Beloved.
If you receive Jesus as your personal lord and savior you receive the co-eternal Beloved. Jesus himself is the reward. The reward is the new life and the new way of living that comes from entering into the new relationship God offers all people everywhere.
What does God want?
God wants us to make a real choice to immerse our mind, our heart, our will in the real presence of the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ. This is the one thing God wants from us. All other things Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles taught all derive from this one thing.
The reward of the prophets and the righteous is the immersion of the soul in the steadfast holy unconditional love of God.
This is why the Holy Spirit led Moses into the wilderness. He was too distracted by the pleasures and the power and the pride of his position as a Prince of Egypt. He had to learn love by becoming a shepherd of sheep. From among the highest in human society Moses became the lowest. In that journey from the palaces of Egypt to the Sinai desert, Moses learned what only the desert could teach him. Moses learned unconditional love.
In learning unconditional love, Moses prepared himself to hear what very few people have ever heard. Moses prepared his mind, his heart, his will to hear the Word of God.
It is the same Word Moses heard in the desert that the prophets heard and proclaimed. It is the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ and dwelt among us in complete humility.
If you receive Jesus you receive the one who sent him. If you receive Jesus you receive the one who prepared Moses and the Prophets to announce his coming. If you receive Jesus you receive the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The reward is the relationship.
In this present world of duality there will be good times and bad times. In this world of cause and effect we will know success and we will know failure. We will know pleasure and we will know pain. In this world as it is, Jesus offers us himself.
He stands at the thresh hold of this world and knocks. He stands at the door to our individual souls and knocks. Jesus never imposes himself on us. He did not and will not come into this world to command and control. He came and continues to come into this world to offer himself to us.
The question implicit in Jesus’ teaching on this second Sunday of Pentecost is: will you welcome me?
For just a moment forget the religion. Focus on the relationship. For just a second forget the doctrine. Focus on the person. Listen. Pay attention. Here and now in the space of a single breath Jesus is calling to us. Here and now within a single heart beat Jesus invites you to receive an eternal treasure that will transform your life.
That treasure is a personal relationship with the co-eternal Beloved of the eternal Father. That treasure is the Holy Spirit infusing love into our souls by the presence of his own infinite and eternal love.
What does God want? He wants to call us the beloved of the co-eternal beloved. He wants to immerse our souls in the love of that relationship. He wants to transform our fear, anger, frustration, pain, pride and despair in the active dynamic of that relationship.
That is what God wants.
What do you want?
Will you allow Jesus to be who he is?
Will you surrender the urgent and impossible demand of the sin nature to define other people, the world and even God?
Will you yield your self will to be transformed by divine will and discover the liberation of free will in Jesus Christ?
Will you this day at this time and in this place just as you are welcome the Living Lord Jesus Christ as your personal forever friend and companion?
Wealth and power will pass away. Friends and partners will disappoint you. Only Jesus is the eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father.
The reward Jesus offers is himself. The reward is the relationship that will never pass away. The relationship will only get better as we discover in Jesus the reality of the infinite and eternal love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Trinity
Trinity Sunday 2011 (Matthew 28:16-20)
Remember, I am with you always.
The Trinity reveals the pattern, plan and purpose for human life.
The reality that the one God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can only come through divine revelation. The key to that revelation is Jesus Christ.
Certainly, Moses and the Prophets experienced the reality of God the Holy Spirit as that personal Presence of God the Father who called them into ministry and empowered them for ministry. They also looked forward to the coming of the Messiah.
The word “Trinity” is not used in the Bible. It is a word the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church chose to describe the reality of God as set forth in the Bible and as experienced in the lives of the apostles.
The teaching that the one God is three persons is grounded in the Incarnation. In Luke we read how our Heavenly Father sent the Holy Spirit to effect the incarnation of the co-eternal Logos, the Beloved Son of the Father. In John we read how the Word was always with God and always is God. That Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ.
At Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, God the Father speaks audibly and declares: this is my Son, The Beloved. God the Holy Spirit appears visibly in a form the witnesses could only describe as similar to a dove. The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus to be the Christ, the anointed one.
In the Transfiguration the Holy Spirit appears visibly to the senses of the apostles as a luminescent cloud. Once again, God the Father speaks audibly and declares Jesus to be His Son, The Beloved.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears visibly as fire and audibly as the sound of a mighty rushing wind.
Jesus himself refers to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus gives us the baptismal formula as the simple, direct and explicit statement of the reality of the Trinity.
Most people who are not Christians tend to describe the Christian belief in the Trinity as tri-theism. They cannot understand how the one God can be three persons so they tell us we really believe in three gods. No less a person than Sir Isaac Newtown was so troubled by his inability to comprehend the Trinity intellectually, that he rejected the teaching in his effort to make God fit into the mathematical precision of the world of matter, energy, time and space.
God is not limited by that world. God is infinite and eternal. God is greater than the universe. Those of us who live in the universe are limited in our understanding. All of us participate in our first parents’ choice to separate from God. As a consequence of that original choice, we are lost in separation and do not wish to be found.
The record of scripture through Moses and the Prophets is that people do not seek God. People flee from God. Religious people flee from God by creating God in their own image according to their own desires. Secular people flee from God by rejecting the very concept of God.
The first ecumenical councils met to formulate the Nicene Creed in response to a serious challenge to the teaching of the Incarnation and the Trinity. A priest by the name of Arius decided the doctrine of the Trinity was incomprehensible and confusing. He came to believe this doctrine was the cause for anti-Christian persecution.
Arius asserted that there was only one eternally self existent God. That God created the Son in a moment of time, thus removing the complexity of the co-eternal Son. Having rejected the Son as co-eternal with the Father, Arius redefined the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force emanating from God.
Arius accomplished what Sir Isaac Newtown would later assert: he fit God into the limited categories of human understand. He redefined God in human terms. God will not be defined by any one. God is God. God is the great “I am”. The Bible is very clear that the One God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Ecumenical Councils struggled to find the words to express this Divine Mystery revealed in the Bible and made real for us in Jesus Christ. They found the words in the subtly of Greek Philosophical thought. After much prayer, Bible study and debate, the First Ecumenical Council in the year 325 AD wrote the Nicene Creed. The second Ecumenical Council met in the year 381 AD to respond to further challenges to the creed and gave us the creed in its present form.
Modern critics of the Council assert that the Church invented the Trinity to appease the pagan Roman mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even Arius recognized that it was the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation that confused the Romans and led them to persecute the Christians under the treason laws.
Other critics say that the Nicene Creed became the official teaching of the church by the narrowest majority of one vote. This is also not true. The overwhelming majority of the bishops who attended the Council understood what was at stake. The debates were not so much about whether the incarnation and the Trinity were Biblical. The debate was over how to express these divinely revealed truths in the most precise language possible.
By the end of the First Ecumenical Council only two of three hundred bishops refused to sign the decision.
Why is the teaching of the Trinity important?
During the debates in the Council a phrase emerged that helped clarify the issue. The phrase is: What he (Jesus) did not assume he could not redeem.
The apostolic witness in the New Testament is very clear. Only God can save. No prophet, priest, king or angel has the power to transform sin into love and death into life. Salvation is Jesus Christ because only in Jesus does the Eternal and Infinite Love of God unite divinity with humanity. Only in that union can Jesus transform sin and death into love and life.
The apostolic witness is very clear that salvation touches the very essence of our being. It is, to use the language of philosophy, ontological not just legal.
The Council relied most on the apostle John’s writing in his gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
It is only the co-eternal Beloved of the Father, incarnate in Jesus Christ, who can reunite a lost broken and rebellious humanity with God. It is Jesus Himself who describes the Holy Spirit as coming from God, having a unique and defined personality, and as being co-eternal with the Father and the Son.
In the end, the Ecumenical Councils recognized there was no other way of describing what the apostles experienced in their lives and wrote in the New Testament than what is set forth in the Nicene Creed.
The Trinity is not a reality the human mind can analyze and prove. The Trinity is the reality of God Jesus invites us to experience.
The Bible never seeks to prove God’s existence. Moses and the Prophets never attempted to prove God’s existence. Jesus is himself the proof of God’s existence yet virtually everyone he knew rejected him, abandoned him and betrayed him. God is “I am”. He is the infinite and eternal self existence that created the universe and became a particular human being within the confines of the universe to rescue human beings from self imposed separation.
We cannot logically prove the Trinity any more than we can logically prove the existence of God. Jesus invites us to experience the reality of the Trinity by faith through grace.
Jesus is himself the key.
Jesus reveals that the one God is not static transcendent inapproachable perfection. Jesus reveals that the One God is an active dynamic outpouring personal love. Within the reality of the eternal, God actively expresses his essential nature in the dynamic out pouring of love. God the Father is the Eternal Lover, the one who loves. God the son is the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father. God the Holy Spirit is the Presence and Power of that love. One way of experiencing the Trinity is to participate in the new life of The Divine Lover, The Beloved and The Love.
Salvation is a new life in the active dynamic and infinitely creative eternal outpouring of divinity in the three persons of the One God.
We baptize into the Trinity to reunite with life.
We experience sanctification of our minds, hearts and wills in communion with the Trinity to be transformed in holiness.
We enter into eternal unconditional self giving love most fully and completely at the altar of sacrificial worship in the Divine Presence of the Trinity.
Jesus assures us and encourages us to remember that he is always with us. Through Jesus Christ we who live in a universe of matter, energy, time and space are also actively participating in the Divine Life and Love of the One God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Remember, I am with you always.
The Trinity reveals the pattern, plan and purpose for human life.
The reality that the one God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can only come through divine revelation. The key to that revelation is Jesus Christ.
Certainly, Moses and the Prophets experienced the reality of God the Holy Spirit as that personal Presence of God the Father who called them into ministry and empowered them for ministry. They also looked forward to the coming of the Messiah.
The word “Trinity” is not used in the Bible. It is a word the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church chose to describe the reality of God as set forth in the Bible and as experienced in the lives of the apostles.
The teaching that the one God is three persons is grounded in the Incarnation. In Luke we read how our Heavenly Father sent the Holy Spirit to effect the incarnation of the co-eternal Logos, the Beloved Son of the Father. In John we read how the Word was always with God and always is God. That Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ.
At Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, God the Father speaks audibly and declares: this is my Son, The Beloved. God the Holy Spirit appears visibly in a form the witnesses could only describe as similar to a dove. The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus to be the Christ, the anointed one.
In the Transfiguration the Holy Spirit appears visibly to the senses of the apostles as a luminescent cloud. Once again, God the Father speaks audibly and declares Jesus to be His Son, The Beloved.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears visibly as fire and audibly as the sound of a mighty rushing wind.
Jesus himself refers to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus gives us the baptismal formula as the simple, direct and explicit statement of the reality of the Trinity.
Most people who are not Christians tend to describe the Christian belief in the Trinity as tri-theism. They cannot understand how the one God can be three persons so they tell us we really believe in three gods. No less a person than Sir Isaac Newtown was so troubled by his inability to comprehend the Trinity intellectually, that he rejected the teaching in his effort to make God fit into the mathematical precision of the world of matter, energy, time and space.
God is not limited by that world. God is infinite and eternal. God is greater than the universe. Those of us who live in the universe are limited in our understanding. All of us participate in our first parents’ choice to separate from God. As a consequence of that original choice, we are lost in separation and do not wish to be found.
The record of scripture through Moses and the Prophets is that people do not seek God. People flee from God. Religious people flee from God by creating God in their own image according to their own desires. Secular people flee from God by rejecting the very concept of God.
The first ecumenical councils met to formulate the Nicene Creed in response to a serious challenge to the teaching of the Incarnation and the Trinity. A priest by the name of Arius decided the doctrine of the Trinity was incomprehensible and confusing. He came to believe this doctrine was the cause for anti-Christian persecution.
Arius asserted that there was only one eternally self existent God. That God created the Son in a moment of time, thus removing the complexity of the co-eternal Son. Having rejected the Son as co-eternal with the Father, Arius redefined the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force emanating from God.
Arius accomplished what Sir Isaac Newtown would later assert: he fit God into the limited categories of human understand. He redefined God in human terms. God will not be defined by any one. God is God. God is the great “I am”. The Bible is very clear that the One God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Ecumenical Councils struggled to find the words to express this Divine Mystery revealed in the Bible and made real for us in Jesus Christ. They found the words in the subtly of Greek Philosophical thought. After much prayer, Bible study and debate, the First Ecumenical Council in the year 325 AD wrote the Nicene Creed. The second Ecumenical Council met in the year 381 AD to respond to further challenges to the creed and gave us the creed in its present form.
Modern critics of the Council assert that the Church invented the Trinity to appease the pagan Roman mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even Arius recognized that it was the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation that confused the Romans and led them to persecute the Christians under the treason laws.
Other critics say that the Nicene Creed became the official teaching of the church by the narrowest majority of one vote. This is also not true. The overwhelming majority of the bishops who attended the Council understood what was at stake. The debates were not so much about whether the incarnation and the Trinity were Biblical. The debate was over how to express these divinely revealed truths in the most precise language possible.
By the end of the First Ecumenical Council only two of three hundred bishops refused to sign the decision.
Why is the teaching of the Trinity important?
During the debates in the Council a phrase emerged that helped clarify the issue. The phrase is: What he (Jesus) did not assume he could not redeem.
The apostolic witness in the New Testament is very clear. Only God can save. No prophet, priest, king or angel has the power to transform sin into love and death into life. Salvation is Jesus Christ because only in Jesus does the Eternal and Infinite Love of God unite divinity with humanity. Only in that union can Jesus transform sin and death into love and life.
The apostolic witness is very clear that salvation touches the very essence of our being. It is, to use the language of philosophy, ontological not just legal.
The Council relied most on the apostle John’s writing in his gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
It is only the co-eternal Beloved of the Father, incarnate in Jesus Christ, who can reunite a lost broken and rebellious humanity with God. It is Jesus Himself who describes the Holy Spirit as coming from God, having a unique and defined personality, and as being co-eternal with the Father and the Son.
In the end, the Ecumenical Councils recognized there was no other way of describing what the apostles experienced in their lives and wrote in the New Testament than what is set forth in the Nicene Creed.
The Trinity is not a reality the human mind can analyze and prove. The Trinity is the reality of God Jesus invites us to experience.
The Bible never seeks to prove God’s existence. Moses and the Prophets never attempted to prove God’s existence. Jesus is himself the proof of God’s existence yet virtually everyone he knew rejected him, abandoned him and betrayed him. God is “I am”. He is the infinite and eternal self existence that created the universe and became a particular human being within the confines of the universe to rescue human beings from self imposed separation.
We cannot logically prove the Trinity any more than we can logically prove the existence of God. Jesus invites us to experience the reality of the Trinity by faith through grace.
Jesus is himself the key.
Jesus reveals that the one God is not static transcendent inapproachable perfection. Jesus reveals that the One God is an active dynamic outpouring personal love. Within the reality of the eternal, God actively expresses his essential nature in the dynamic out pouring of love. God the Father is the Eternal Lover, the one who loves. God the son is the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father. God the Holy Spirit is the Presence and Power of that love. One way of experiencing the Trinity is to participate in the new life of The Divine Lover, The Beloved and The Love.
Salvation is a new life in the active dynamic and infinitely creative eternal outpouring of divinity in the three persons of the One God.
We baptize into the Trinity to reunite with life.
We experience sanctification of our minds, hearts and wills in communion with the Trinity to be transformed in holiness.
We enter into eternal unconditional self giving love most fully and completely at the altar of sacrificial worship in the Divine Presence of the Trinity.
Jesus assures us and encourages us to remember that he is always with us. Through Jesus Christ we who live in a universe of matter, energy, time and space are also actively participating in the Divine Life and Love of the One God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Pentecost 2011
Pentecost 2011 “Out of the believer’s heart” (John 7:37-39)
What proceeds from your heart?
What do your nourish and cultivate and cherish in your innermost being? What you choose to hold within is what by default you bring forth to your family, friends, acquaintances and to the wider world.
Jesus knew this about us first hand. He abandoned the ineffable delights of the Heavenly realm and surrendered all of his divine power and knowledge so he could experience life as we experience life: moment by moment in the duality and uncertainty of time.
From the eternal realm Jesus saw the original choice we made to separate from God. He saw that choice enter into the world of cause and effect. He saw how the effect upon the human heart is a terrible pain that distorts every aspect of our being. He saw and he acted.
Jesus, the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father, came to earth at a particular time in a particular place as a particular person in order to experience the brokenness of human existence. He did this so he could heal that brokenness.
Jesus heals our brokenness in two ways. The first way is called Justification. Jesus never sinned. He never sinned because he never made the choice to separate from the Eternal Father. Jesus did suffer the consequences of humanity’s original choice to separate from God.
Jesus bore the particular sin of every human being on the Cross at the moment of his death. During his life, during his thirty three years living on this planet, he also suffered the recycled pain our species inflicts on itself.
He never participated in this terrible pattern of sin, the action and reaction of Original pain at work in the human heart in the world of cause and effect. He did suffer the consequences. He suffered constant insult and abuse from people who rejected him. He suffered constant misunderstanding and demand from people who wanted him to give them power and wealth.
Most of all, Jesus suffered the betrayal of love from every human being he met.
Jesus is the love of God in human flesh. Jesus is the sure and certain truth that God just doesn’t have love- God is love. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved for whom God the Father created all of us and each of us. There is no human being whom God does not love and whom Jesus does not cherished.
Whoever you are and whoever you have chosen to become, Jesus is the love of God the Father reaching out to you. You are the love of God the Father designed to hold the love of the co-eternal Son and to share that love with him.
A twentieth century song states: you always hurt the one you love. You always hurt the one who loves you the most. Other people may find you irritating and dismiss you. Only the one who really loves you can feel the pain you bring forth from the depths of your soul through the distortions of your heart.
Jesus endured this pain from his enemies, from his friends and from his family and from us. No one then and no one now considers who Jesus is.
People then and now seek to define Jesus according to our needs and desires. And, we seek to define Jesus from the place of Original Pain from the Original Choice we made to separate from God. As we do this, we miss the very plan, pattern and purpose for our lives.
That is why the co-eternal Son of God was willing to come to earth and accept the pain humanity inflicted upon him and still inflicts upon him. The great love of God in Jesus Christ bears all human sin, recycled pain, suffering and death then transforms it back into life, eternal life.
The process by which the co-eternal Son applies this transformation to individual souls is the Holy Spirit.
On Good Friday on the cross, the Son sealed the breach of original separation.
On Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit into the souls of those who chose to enter into the new life Jesus offers all people.
As the Holy Spirit entered into the souls of the Apostles, He created the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. People did not create the church. The apostles were content to return to their fishing business. They were intent on grafting the New Covenant of Jesus Christ into the Synagogue and the Temple.
The Church is a divinely created organism that temporarily takes form in the world in an institutional form. The Church that the Holy Spirit is forming is the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ.
The twofold purpose of the church is the two fold action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the faithful. That two fold purpose is the salvation and sanctification of souls.
The salvation of souls is the gift of reunification with God Jesus offers. The sanctification of souls is the purification of the heart and the transformation of the soul that the Holy Spirit offers. This is grace. Grace means gift.
The Holy Spirit is the co-eternal third person of the Eternal Trinity. His purpose is to transform us in love, by love and for love. His purpose for the church is to keep us on message. We have a job to do. We are easily distracted. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy, the saints, and through the faithful to call the institution away from these distractions and back to the plan of salvation.
The Holy Spirit is working in each of us to bring us clarity of thought, purity of heart and singleness of will.
It is the Holy Spirit, who has shared the eternal love of the Father and the Son, who passionately and charismatically seeks to pour into our hearts that touch of transcendence by which we can experience the same love that is the very essence of the divine.
To use a more mundane but no less real image, the Holy Spirit is teaching each of us how to love. He teaches us how to love God, other people and ourselves. He not only teaches- he transforms. He takes the broken aspects of our lives and initiates a healing process. He offers to change our very desires. He will, if we give him permission, convert our sins back into their original virtue.
To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to experience the passionate desire to be the love of God at this time and in this place.
It is as we seek this transformation that our hearts find relief from the pain of separation and the recycled suffering human sin inflicts on the world.
On Pentecost, the apostles experienced conversion, purification and transformation in a very powerful, visual, audible and tangible way. They entered the room fearful and confused. They left the room filled with the wonder and awe of divine love and holiness. They went into the city and proclaimed the love of God in Jesus Christ. Within a single generation they had taken that Good News into Europe, Africa and Asia.
The same Holy Spirit who inspired and empowered the apostles is here with us today. He offers us the same level of conversion, purification and transformation in divine love and holiness.The choice is ours. It is as we choose to be filled by the Holy Spirit that we experience a thirst for God. It is as we experience that thirst that we come to the altar to drink deeply of the grace of God in the sacramental Presence of God. And, it is as we release the pain in our hearts to be healed and transformed in grace that our hearts become springs of living waters for us and for everyone in our lives.
It all starts when we hear Jesus’ words, believe his words, and receive his words into our hearts. It becomes real for us as we pray” Lord Jesus Christ, release the power of the Holy Spirit in my soul that from my heart you may pour forth overflowing rivers of blessings.” Amen.
What proceeds from your heart?
What do your nourish and cultivate and cherish in your innermost being? What you choose to hold within is what by default you bring forth to your family, friends, acquaintances and to the wider world.
Jesus knew this about us first hand. He abandoned the ineffable delights of the Heavenly realm and surrendered all of his divine power and knowledge so he could experience life as we experience life: moment by moment in the duality and uncertainty of time.
From the eternal realm Jesus saw the original choice we made to separate from God. He saw that choice enter into the world of cause and effect. He saw how the effect upon the human heart is a terrible pain that distorts every aspect of our being. He saw and he acted.
Jesus, the co-eternal Beloved of the Eternal Father, came to earth at a particular time in a particular place as a particular person in order to experience the brokenness of human existence. He did this so he could heal that brokenness.
Jesus heals our brokenness in two ways. The first way is called Justification. Jesus never sinned. He never sinned because he never made the choice to separate from the Eternal Father. Jesus did suffer the consequences of humanity’s original choice to separate from God.
Jesus bore the particular sin of every human being on the Cross at the moment of his death. During his life, during his thirty three years living on this planet, he also suffered the recycled pain our species inflicts on itself.
He never participated in this terrible pattern of sin, the action and reaction of Original pain at work in the human heart in the world of cause and effect. He did suffer the consequences. He suffered constant insult and abuse from people who rejected him. He suffered constant misunderstanding and demand from people who wanted him to give them power and wealth.
Most of all, Jesus suffered the betrayal of love from every human being he met.
Jesus is the love of God in human flesh. Jesus is the sure and certain truth that God just doesn’t have love- God is love. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved for whom God the Father created all of us and each of us. There is no human being whom God does not love and whom Jesus does not cherished.
Whoever you are and whoever you have chosen to become, Jesus is the love of God the Father reaching out to you. You are the love of God the Father designed to hold the love of the co-eternal Son and to share that love with him.
A twentieth century song states: you always hurt the one you love. You always hurt the one who loves you the most. Other people may find you irritating and dismiss you. Only the one who really loves you can feel the pain you bring forth from the depths of your soul through the distortions of your heart.
Jesus endured this pain from his enemies, from his friends and from his family and from us. No one then and no one now considers who Jesus is.
People then and now seek to define Jesus according to our needs and desires. And, we seek to define Jesus from the place of Original Pain from the Original Choice we made to separate from God. As we do this, we miss the very plan, pattern and purpose for our lives.
That is why the co-eternal Son of God was willing to come to earth and accept the pain humanity inflicted upon him and still inflicts upon him. The great love of God in Jesus Christ bears all human sin, recycled pain, suffering and death then transforms it back into life, eternal life.
The process by which the co-eternal Son applies this transformation to individual souls is the Holy Spirit.
On Good Friday on the cross, the Son sealed the breach of original separation.
On Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit into the souls of those who chose to enter into the new life Jesus offers all people.
As the Holy Spirit entered into the souls of the Apostles, He created the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. People did not create the church. The apostles were content to return to their fishing business. They were intent on grafting the New Covenant of Jesus Christ into the Synagogue and the Temple.
The Church is a divinely created organism that temporarily takes form in the world in an institutional form. The Church that the Holy Spirit is forming is the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ.
The twofold purpose of the church is the two fold action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the faithful. That two fold purpose is the salvation and sanctification of souls.
The salvation of souls is the gift of reunification with God Jesus offers. The sanctification of souls is the purification of the heart and the transformation of the soul that the Holy Spirit offers. This is grace. Grace means gift.
The Holy Spirit is the co-eternal third person of the Eternal Trinity. His purpose is to transform us in love, by love and for love. His purpose for the church is to keep us on message. We have a job to do. We are easily distracted. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy, the saints, and through the faithful to call the institution away from these distractions and back to the plan of salvation.
The Holy Spirit is working in each of us to bring us clarity of thought, purity of heart and singleness of will.
It is the Holy Spirit, who has shared the eternal love of the Father and the Son, who passionately and charismatically seeks to pour into our hearts that touch of transcendence by which we can experience the same love that is the very essence of the divine.
To use a more mundane but no less real image, the Holy Spirit is teaching each of us how to love. He teaches us how to love God, other people and ourselves. He not only teaches- he transforms. He takes the broken aspects of our lives and initiates a healing process. He offers to change our very desires. He will, if we give him permission, convert our sins back into their original virtue.
To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to experience the passionate desire to be the love of God at this time and in this place.
It is as we seek this transformation that our hearts find relief from the pain of separation and the recycled suffering human sin inflicts on the world.
On Pentecost, the apostles experienced conversion, purification and transformation in a very powerful, visual, audible and tangible way. They entered the room fearful and confused. They left the room filled with the wonder and awe of divine love and holiness. They went into the city and proclaimed the love of God in Jesus Christ. Within a single generation they had taken that Good News into Europe, Africa and Asia.
The same Holy Spirit who inspired and empowered the apostles is here with us today. He offers us the same level of conversion, purification and transformation in divine love and holiness.The choice is ours. It is as we choose to be filled by the Holy Spirit that we experience a thirst for God. It is as we experience that thirst that we come to the altar to drink deeply of the grace of God in the sacramental Presence of God. And, it is as we release the pain in our hearts to be healed and transformed in grace that our hearts become springs of living waters for us and for everyone in our lives.
It all starts when we hear Jesus’ words, believe his words, and receive his words into our hearts. It becomes real for us as we pray” Lord Jesus Christ, release the power of the Holy Spirit in my soul that from my heart you may pour forth overflowing rivers of blessings.” Amen.
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