Friday, December 30, 2011

Holy Name of Jesus 2012

The Holy Name of Jesus 2012 (Luke 2:15-22)
“He was called Jesus.”

Love and love alone is salvation.

Our Heavenly Father named his incarnate son Jesus. This is the name the archangel Gabriel announced to Holy Mother Mary at the moment of the incarnation.
The angel brought the Father’s message to the holy mother to name her son Jesus. Jesus means savior.

The people of that time looked for a savior. The Romans looked to the emperor to save them from political chaos. The Greeks looked to philosophers and scientists to save them from ignorance. The Jews looked to a messiah to save them from Roman imperialism and Greek polytheism.

The Romans feared political instability and so reacted by creating a immense and powerful imperial system.

The Greeks feared ignorance and so reacted by creating highly complex and diverse philosophies.

The Jews feared the loss of their identity and so reacted by creating rigid and restrictive religious systems to purify the people for the Messianic leader who would destroy the corrupting influences of Rome, Greece, and unrighteous Jews.

Each civilization felt a great and overwhelming fear. Each civilization attempted to express that fear in ways they could understand, manage and control. Each civilization drew back from the cause of that fear. The cause of that fear is separation from God. The outward and visible sign of separation is death.

Death is the fear that people do not want to name. It is beyond our control. It is beyond the influence of politics, philosophy or religion.

Jesus came to save all people everywhere from the power of death.

Jesus saves all people everywhere from death by making a real choice to embrace death on the cross. For every who has ever lived or will ever live the embrace of death is fearful and final. For Jesus, death is a distortion to be transformed.

Jesus just doesn’t conquer death or destroy death. Jesus saves the entire human species from death by willingly embracing death. The embrace of Jesus is the embrace of a love that is infinite and eternal. In that embrace Love transforms death back into life. In that embrace love transforms fear back into faith.

Jesus saves us from fear and death through Love. Only Jesus has this love because only Jesus is this love. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved of God the Father who is love.

Jesus is the universal savior for all people because Jesus is the transcendent pattern by which the Father created all people.

Jesus is not only the source of life he is the meaning and purpose of life. God the Father creates every human being through God the Holy Spirit to be the unique and forever friend of God the Son, Jesus, the Beloved.

Jesus is the Father’s gift to all people everywhere. Jesus is a true gift and a real gift. Jesus came to earth as a helpless infant to reassure a fearful humanity that he holds in his sacred heart only grace and compassion.

There is no condemnation in Jesus because there is not condemnation in God. There is no condemnation in God because God just doesn’t have love- God is love.
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There is no compulsion in the universal savior. Jesus offers himself to us as the one pure holy gift of divine love and compassion. The active principle of love is choice.
Jesus offers salvation to all people everywhere with no condition and no restriction. Salvation is Jesus. Only Jesus has embraced sin and death and transformed it back into love and life. Only Jesus has faced fear, embraced fear and transformed fear back into faith.

The call to worship is the call to reunification with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

The call to worship is the universal invitation to all human beings everywhere to receive the gift of divine love and compassion, to find a new life in that love, and to be transformed by that love.

The call to worship is the name Gabriel delivered to Mary and Mary joyfully gave to her son. It is the name of love himself. Love and love alone is salvation.
The name of love is Jesus.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011 (Luke 2:1-14)
“Fear not; I bring you good tidings of great joy.”

The great mystery of Christmas is Jesus Christ.

In Jesus God the Father united God the Son with human nature.

God became as we are so that we might become as God is.

The Christmas angel announced to the shepherds and to the world: fear not. This world and your lives are neither random nor meaningless. There is no condemnation in God. The Good News the angel brought to the poorest of the poor that night echoes throughout the centuries to all people everywhere.

The great joy of Christmas is that God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ.

Where so many people ponder the question of whether God exists or who God may be, God himself answers that question once and for all, fully and completely. The answer is Jesus Christ.

In the infant of Bethlehem we see how the co-eternal Beloved Son of the Father set aside his omnipotence and omniscience to become one of us. Fully God and fully human. A particular man at a particular time in a particular place to reveal the infinite eternal real presence of Divine Love and Compassion for all of us and to each of us.
Jesus is the transcendent Beloved of the Father. Jesus is God with us and God for us in the manger with Mary and Joseph, the animals and the shepherds, the kings and the angels.

Jesus is the real and personal love of God for everyone. Jesus excludes no one and welcomes everyone to receive the gift of eternal love. That love has no beginning and will have no end. As we make a real choice to be found by that love and to immerse our souls in that love we reclaim the Original Blessing our species once rejected.

In Jesus God calls us to be who He originally created us to be. God the Father calls us to be the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ. Jesus fills us with that infinite love and compassion who is eternally the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus, God finds us wherever we are. In Jesus God found Mary and Joseph in the working class town of Nazareth. In Jesus, God found the shepherds in the fields. In Jesus God found the three kings in their observatory pondering the vastness of the universe. In Jesus God finds each of us where we are here and now.

The Christmas angel proclaims: Feat not. God is real. God is love. God is personal. God is Jesus Christ for you and forever. Amen.



Thursday, December 15, 2011

Advent 4

Advent 4 “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1:26-38)

It is important to know who you are. It is even more important to know whose you are.
When the archangel Gabriel greeted Mary he used the formal greeting of the time. The Latin equivalent is “Ave”, Hail. The archangel recognized who Mary was and whose she is.

From scripture we learn that Mary was a young woman, a teen. We see that even as a teen she memorized scripture. And, we have evidence from Mary’s actions that she made worship in the Temple a priority.

Mary was one of the working poor who paid high taxes and lived in a state of constant fear. The working poor feared the Roman occupation army. Even more than the Romans they feared the Tax Collectors Rome hired to bring revenue to the Empire. And, they feared the religious authorities who used their position and power to intimidate and bully the people through a religion of legalism and submission.
People frequently allow the sufferings and the uncertainties of life to define them.
Mary lived in a culture of fear but made a real choice to cultivate the three virtues of faith, hope and love.

Mary made a real choice to use the grace God pours out on all people to define her very being. She chose so completely to immerse her soul in grace that the archangel described her personality as being full of grace.

Grace is a gift. It is a gift of the Real Presence of the Living God. It is a gift not a command. The Bible is very honest in its observation that most people most of the time reject the gift. We reject the gift to preserve our separation from God. In that separation we trade the blessings of God for the illusions of power, prestige, position, possessions and pleasure.

The rich seek more money.

The powerful seek more power.

The poor and dispossessed are paralyzed by fear.

Mary made a different choice. Mary chose to receive the gift and define her life by the gift.

The gift of God is God Himself.

A fundamental principle of scripture is that human beings do not seek out and find God. God seeks out and finds us. Our choice is not formed by our initiative but by our response to God’s intiative.

Mary is the penultimate personality in the plan of salvation. Where so many people for so many centuries said no to God Mary said yes. Where so many people insisted on their right to define God according to their needs and desires, Mary simply acknowledged the core truth of Creation: Behold, I am the Lord’s servant.

The way of Mary is the way of grace. It is the way of faith. It is the truth that God seeks us and finds us.

The issue is not which is the right religion. The issue is not whether every religious and spiritual path is a valid way for human beings to seek God. The issue is how we choose to react or respond to the active dynamic Real Presence of God seeking us and offering us Himself in Jesus Christ.

Mary chose to set aside her fear so that she could experience faith. Mary chose to surrender her self-will to Divine Will so that she could receive God’s gift. Mary used the grace of God to transform the pride of separation back into the original blessing of union with God. Humility is the chalice of the Original Blessing.

Mary sought no position and exercised no rule. She lived and breathed and moved in the grace of God. In that grace she chose the way of faith. In that faith she immersed herself in divine love through worship. And, in that love she fulfilled God’s call for her to become who God created her to be. She became the hagios theotokos, the holy mother of God.

The joy of Mary is that from the moment of his conception, Jesus was fully human and fully divine.

The life of Mary is largely a life of quiet obscurity governed by her care and nurture of her son. God the Father entrusted Mary to bear and raise Jesus because Mary lived from the place of steadfast holy love.

The sorrow of Mary begins as Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism and enters a public ministry that ended in his betrayal, arrest, torture and execution.
The glory of Mary is the reflected glory of the resurrection: the victory of eternal love over death.

The ministry of Mary was to enlighten the teen age apostle John about the ineffable Mystery of the person of Jesus Christ.

The Queenship of Mary, depicted for us at St. Luke’s in the reredos over our altar, is the Queenship of humility, compassion, and the witness of a soul filled with the superabundance of grace and immersed in the infinite and eternal love of God.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent we honor Mary as the person who discovered her true self in the love of God by grace through faith.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent Holy Mother Mary asks us with all compassion and humility to give up our search for meaning, purpose, self and God so we can discover that is it God who is seeking us. It is God who has found us and reveals to us our true self and true purpose in Jesus Christ.

Mary said and continues to say: let it be. Let God be God. Let us each surrender to the Great Mystery of eternal love made flesh in Jesus Christ. Be who God created you to be. Be the living chalice of grace filled with grace. Discover who you are in Christ and then be who you are and whose you are in Christ.

Holy Mother Mary pray for us that we may rejoice in the midst of sorrow and discover the glory of who God created us to be in the proclamation: behold I am the Lord’s servant may it be unto me according to God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Amen.



Friday, December 9, 2011

Advent 3

Advent 3 “Make straight the way of the Lord.” (John 1:6-8, 19-28)

The straight way is the way to the Real Presence of the living God. It is not a religion it is a relationship. The relationship is with Jesus Christ. The relationship is characterized by love and compassion. And, it is a relationship initiated by the Holy Spirit in the call to worship.

There are many detours along the way. There are no short cuts. Short cuts make long delays, as JJR Tolkien once wrote.

When John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, preached to the people of Judea and Galilee there were three main detours off the straight way of salvation.

For the Romans, power was the detour and war was the short cut.
For the Greeks, knowledge was the detour and cynicism was the short cut.
For the Jews, religion was the detour and legalism was the short cut.
At the risk of offending any one, I suspect that for contemporary Western Civilization the love of money is the detour and self indulgent pleasure is one of many short cuts.

The true prophet of God has the clear sight to discern these detours and short cuts. The Holy Spirit provides the clarity. And, the Holy Spirit directs the prophetic message with two words: repent and prepare.

John the Baptist had the unenviable task of announcing to a very religious culture that they had missed the mark. They maintained the outward and visible signs of religion whist rejecting the inward and spiritual grace.

John’s call to repentance attracted huge crowds. His message stirred the emotions of thousands of people. What John could not do was to change the hearts of those multitudes. He understood the dynamic of the crowds. People might enter into the waters of repentance today and the quickly forget their promise to God by evening. The religious leaders might listen to the message in silence even as they considered how to use John to maintain their position and extend their influence.

John knew his time was short. The true prophet usually does not live long. The true prophet tells people we are lost and in a state of rebellion against the Divine Plan, pattern and purpose of Creation. People in general and people with religious and political power don’ t like that message.

The lost do not want to be found. The rebellious strike back and strike back hard when a true prophet speaks the true word of God.

John’s purpose as the last of the prophets is to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ. John calls people to recognize their sin, to repent of their sin, and to understand that the problem of sin runs far deeper than any prophet or religion can reach.

The problem confronting humanity is our choice to separate from God. The solution is to prepare for the One whom God sends into the world to save us from sin. That salvation comes as a gift. It is the gift of reunification with God the Father and transformation in God the Holy Spirit through a personal relationship with God the son.

The straight way to salvation is modeled for us in holy mother Mary’s response to the message of the archangel Gabriel. It is a response to grace by faith summarized in one word: yes.

The call of the true prophet begins with the urgent invitation to consider where we say no to God and how we say no to God. Where are we moving into a detour off the straight and narrow road of salvation? How do we seek the short cuts of self will to tell God what we demand of him?

Jesus is the unity of divinity and humanity. He the second Adam- the pattern of a new life and the purpose for a new way of living.

During Advent we have the opportunity to consider the prophetic call to make our path to God straight- unencumbered by sin.

The straight way is the way of Holy Mother Mary who said: Behold, I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be unto me according to God’s word.
The straight way is the way of the apostle Paul who declared: for me to live is Jesus Christ.

The straight way is the way of the apostle John to whom God the Holy Spirit gave the name: beloved of the co-eternal Beloved.

The straight way is the way of unconditional love.

The last of the true prophets calls us to consider where have chosen detours and short cuts. His call is to return to the royal road of Divine Love and compassion. His call is to walk the pathways of this life with Jesus Christ.
His call is: “Make straight the way of the Lord.”


Friday, December 2, 2011

Advent 2

Advent 2 “Prepare” (Mark 1:1-8)

The true prophet proclaims one message in two words: repent and prepare.

The call to repentance is the invitation to consider the fundamental problem that defines the human race. If you misunderstand the problem the solution our Heavenly Father offers makes little or no sense.

The call to repentance is the invitation to look into the perfect Law of God. It is as we perceive ourselves, our attitudes and actions, in the perfect mirror of the Law that we recognize sin.

Sin, however, is not the root of the problem. The prophets encourage us to ask questions. Through the prophet Isaiah God says: come let us reason together. Think. Ponder. Question. Dialog.

The logical question to ask ourselves when we look into the perfect Law of God and recognize sin is why? Why do I sin? Why does everyone sin?

The Bible offers a unique answer to this question. It is an answer that leads to another question. The reason why all people sin is because in each of us our reason, emotions and will are distorted.

More often than not we use our reason to rationalize sin. We experience an emotional attraction to sin. And we use our will to rebel against God and to compete with and fight against other people.

The next question is where did these distortions come from? The Bible offers an answer to that question as well. It is an answer grounded in the observation of human behavior spanning several thousand years, Distortion comes from pain. It is a deeply rooted all pervasive existential pain that we are born with.

If we are born with this pain where did it come from? This question takes us to the source of the problem. Deeply rooted existential pain comes from the original choice our species made to separate from God. The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church calls this choice “Original Sin.”

Original Sin is the real choice our species made to separate from God. Separation plunges our spirit into profound existential pain. That pain distorts the way we think, feel and make choices. Those distortions cause sin. The end of the process is death.

The true prophet calls people to recognize the reality of sin, the process of sin, and the origin of sin. As far as I can tell, almost every religion teaches actual sin. No religion other than Christianity teaches Original Sin.

If Moses and the prophets are correct in their observations of human behavior and human nature, there can be only one solution to the problem. The solution is Jesus Christ.

If Moses and the Prophets are correct in their conclusions about the human condition then our species is not only lost in Original Separation, we are lost and do not want to be found. We separated to avoid the Living God and we are willfully and rebelliously lost in that separation.

If this is true, then the moment Jesus came to earth he would meet opposition, redefinition, rejection and death. And, that is exactly what happened.

If this is true then the second prophetic word completes the first. The call to repentance is the introduction and foundation for the call to preparation.

What is it that the prophets ask us to prepare for? It is not the Law. We already have the Law and fail to keep it. Is it religion? There are a multitude of religions and an even greater number of denominations, sects and cults generated by those religions. The prophets declare human religion is distorted by the same process of sin that distorts our mind, heart and will.

The prophetic call to repent identifies the problem. The prophetic call to prepare identifies God’s solution to the problem. The solution is Jesus Christ.

Sadly, just as people rejected the call to repentance by killing the prophets then encapsulating a distorted image of the prophets in religious structures, so people rejected the call to prepare for the coming of the holy Beloved. Instead, they prepared for the coming of a Messianic Caesar. They prepared for the wrong person and the wrong plan because they incorrectly identified the problem.

Jesus knew this. He knew what he would find in his generation. He understood the problem better than anyone. He knew that a species lost in separation is also lost in religion, politics, economics, philosophy, culture, self-will, fear and pride.
The lost do not wish to be found. We are found only in the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus God unites His divinity with our humanity. It is that union that God finds us and makes it possible for us to receive reunification with the Way, the truth and the life of God made manifest in Jesus Christ.

On this 2nd Sunday of Advent the Holy Spirit is calling us to prepare our minds and hearts and wills to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. In that birth we celebrate the holy Beloved of God who seeks the lost, finds the lost, and rescues the lost.
Repentance and preparation are two sides of one coin.

The Holy Spirit encourages us to ask the questions that can bring clarity to our thoughts, purity to our hearts and unity to our will. The question is: who or what do you prepare for this Advent season? Are you already caught up in the Santa celebrations? Are you preparing to celebrate the cleverly devised myths or the transcendent reality of the Living Lord Jesus Christ?

When Jesus was born into the world the world did not know him. The world did not want to know him. They were preparing for someone and something very different. Advent is that time when we have the opportunity to reflect on our religious lives and our spiritual needs. It is a time of quiet in the midst of a time of activity and distraction. It is a time of real choice.

The true prophet call out “Prepare!”

The Holy Spirit calls to us: Prepare for the holy Beloved of God. Make the pathways of your mind, heart and will straight in the light and love of Jesus Christ. Enter into the new life of grace. Enter into the new way of living by faith. Make a real choice to believe in Jesus. Make a real choice to receive Jesus into your soul. Make a real choice to prepare for the birth of the co-eternal Beloved of God.