Easter 2013

He is Risen

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal event in human history.

Before the resurrection everyone died. And, those who died ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Before the resurrection no human being who died entered into heaven.  There was no model in any of the ancient religions for the ascent of a soul into the realms of light.

Then Jesus came. Jesus unified in himself our humanity with God’s divinity. Jesus overcame the choice our species made to separate from God at the moment of his conception. He chose to unify humanity with divinity.

He chose to accept an unjust death on the cross in order to trap death in his own body. He stood in the place of separation with us. He took our sins into his ineffable holiness. He absorbed the fear, anger, hate, pride, despair and the will to power of humanity and by his infinite and eternal love transformed it all back into its original virtue.

He experienced the consequence of our choice to separate from God. He felt the depths of the Desolation of Abomination which our species summoned in pride and fears in despair. He met the void of non-existence head on and filled that void with light, and life and love.

As he experienced death he descended into the realm of the dead. He preached to the departed spirits of the dead. He offered them all reunification with the Father in Himself. Those who received this offer he set free from the land of the dead and brought into the land of the angels, heaven. This is not our final home. This is just the place where we can, if we choose, prepare to enter into the New Earth God will create for us.

Salvation is life because Jesus has swallowed up death and transformed it back into life by the Real Presence of his own eternal life.

Salvation is love because God is love. The One God eternally expresses Himself in the active dynamic creative and spontaneous inter relationship of the One who loves (the Father), the Beloved (the Son) and the very power of love himself (the Holy Spirit.)

In the resurrection Jesus represents to us the meaning and purpose of Creation. That meaning and purpose is love- infinite- eternal- active- dynamic- creative and so much more.

The resurrection is God’s assurance to humanity that death is not the final state for human beings. We can make a different choice. We can receive the gift of eternal life here and now. We can experience that gift here and now.

In the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion Jesus offers us himself. As he offers us himself he offers us light and light and love to live and move and have our being in joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control. Holy Communion is the Pascal Sacrifice of the Easter promise fulfilled and re-presented to us without fail on the seventh day of Real Presence.

Easter is the proclamation of the co-eternal Word of God that you, whoever your are- are loved with an everlasting love. Receive the gift. Live the gift. Share the gift.

The gift of God is the Great Mystery of Faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Good Friday 2013

Behold your mother.

The agony of crucifixion is exacerbated by the isolation and abandonment of the victim.The insidious genius of crucifixion is to inflict maximum pain for the maximum time and effect. The victim knows he has been abandoned by the state, the community, his family and God. He has become a curse and no longer a person of any value to anyone.

With only two exceptions, everyone who followed Jesus during his three year public ministry abandoned him. Those two exceptions are his mother (and her two companions) and his best friend ( a teen named John). Whatever comfort Jesus experienced as he endured the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual torments of crucifixion came from Mary and John.

As Jesus is the love of God incarnate as a particular person at a particular place and time, so Jesus recognized the particularity of love present in Holy Mother Mary and John the beloved.As he dies in great torment he nevertheless remains true to his nature. Jesus just doesn’t have love as an attribute. He is love.

He looks at his mother and his best friend from the place of universal unconditional and sacrificial love. That love is real and it is personal. He commends Mary to John and John to Mary. Now, Mary had many relatives. One of the women standing by her at the foot of the cross was her sister Mary, identified for us as the wife of Cleopas. One of her sons is James (the younger) who is holy mother Mary’s nephew. The scriptures mention Jesus’s brethren (step brothers or cousins). James the Just was one of these brethren. Mary had a large extended family more than willing to provide for her material needs.

John was one of many children of Zebedee. John’s mother was still alive and influential in the life of her sons. John did not need an older woman to act a surrogate mother. In what context does Jesus declare Mary to be John’s mother and John to be Mary’s son?

The context is the choice both individuals made to overcome fear by faith in grace. Mary and John risked their lives to stand at the foot of the cross. The Romans would not have harmed Mary. Romans held motherhood as a divine virtue, The religious and political fanatics of the time could easily have harmed Mary for her close association with a man they considered to be a blasphemer and a traitor.

The Romans might have arrested John. John was a teen and the Romans might have perceived him as a threat. Two things kept John safe. The first thing was: he stood with the women. By doing so he identified himself as a child. Jesus’ enemies believed that real men do not associate with the weakness of grieving women. They perceived John as a child and therefore of no consequence.

What kept John safe from the Romans was superstition. John already had the reputation of being Jesus’ best friend. The Romans then and throughout John’s long life considered the real possibility that Jesus was a god. That made John the best friend of a god. On the outside chance this was true, the Romans decided they needed to be very careful how they treated John.

Jesus saw Mary and John as the nucleus of the new community of faith. In that context, Jesus was asking his mother to complete John’s spiritual formation. And in that context Jesus directed John to complete his spiritual formation under Mary’s guidance.

It was and is a very unusual personal and spiritual relationship. Only Mary could give John the insights he needed to write the most profound and theological of the four gospels. Under Mary’s instruction, John came to understand two foundational truths about God. Mary helped John understand that the one God is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And, she helped him understand that Jesus is the Son in human flesh.

Paul might have offered John a more rigorous analytical understanding of these Great Mysteries. James and Peter might have offered John a more Biblically based framework. What Mary offered John and John was uniquely capable of understanding was her own personal experience of the Trinity and the Incarnation. What she offered was her personal experience of Divine Love. Jesus knew that all of his disciples, John would be the one who would listen to Mary, value her insights, ponder her experience and rely on her guidance. The Gospel of John is foundational for the eventual formation of the Christian Faith in the Nicene Creed.

The particularity of Divine Love emerges in our relationships. Jesus recognized the love his mother had would complete and inspire the love John had. This simple word from the cross: woman behold your son; son behold your mother- sets in motion the Great Mystery of faith. Faith is personal transforming personal relationship in love, by love and for love.

If you want to know God come to Jesus. If you want to grow in your personal relationship with Jesus choose to follow the pattern of spiritual formation Jesus gave to his most loyal and beloved follower. Come to Mary. Ask Mary to help complete your spiritual formation. As Anglicans we follow a very ancient pattern of spirituality. We encourage people to grow in grace by asking for help from the one the Bible describes as full of grace.

This is not a command. It is a gift. It is the gift Jesus gave to John the beloved as Jesus died in great pain. It is the gift Jesus makes available to all people everywhere. It is one of the seven words of grace we hear on Good Friday. Behold your Mother!

 

 

 

 

 

Maundy Thursday 2013

A new commandment I give you.

The first part of the new commandment is not new.

The first part of the new commandment is for people to love each other. This is the ethic of Moses and the instruction of the prophets.

The second part of the new commandment is new. It is also astonishing. And, it is impossible to fulfill apart from Christ.

The full commandment Jesus gives is: love one another as I have loved you. This kind of love is new. At, least it is new to the human race after we chose to separate from God.

Our first parents knew this kind of love. They knew it personally and even intimately as the pre incarnate Son walked with them in the Garden. They came to reject it. They chose power over love. In that choice they separated from love. And, because God is love they separated from God. They said no to love and no to God.

God did not take that “no” as our final answer. God worked with a single family, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order to build a community of faith. In that community  of faith God searched for one person who could choose to say yes from the depths of their soul. God found that person in Mary.

Through Mary’s “yes” God sent His “yes” to rescue us from separation. God the Father sent God the Holy Spirit to bring forth God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ.

The new commandment is self-defining in it very brief and very precise terms. Love each other as the Son of God has loved you.

If someone is thirsty- give them something to drink.

If someone is hungry- feed them.

Meet the physical needs of others and meet those needs in the context of the highest most perfect form of love: worship.

Jesus holds all people before the Father in prayer, in sacrifice, in self-offering and in sanctifying grace.

The new commandment sets a new standard in a new context. The new standard is universal unconditional love. The new context is the steadfast holy sacrificial love of Jesus present to us in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

The Mass not only reminds us of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, the Mass re presents this sacrifice. At the altar of Sacrifice we stand in the real presence of the  Infinite and Eternal Love who offers his own life for us and to us.

It is the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper that reminds us we live and more and have our being as a community of Faith in the Real Presence of Love.  It is the love that seeks the highest good for everyone. It is the love that lifts us into the community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit- one God in three persons. It is the love that scandalizes the apostles by taking the job of a slave and washing their feet.

It is a love so centered in the Infinite and Eternal life of the Triune God that even in death he transforms death back into life. He gives that pattern and process of transformation to us. It is as we make a real choice to immerse our minds hearts and wills in the Real Presence of Divine Love that we discover within ourselves the new desire to fulfill the new commandment: love one another as Jesus has loved you.

 

 

Palm Sunday 2013

Palm Sunday 2013

(Luke 19:28-40) Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The duality of joy and sorrow on Palm Sunday. Split souls tend to make split decisions.

Souls lost in separation see the world in terms of dualistic conflict.

Souls lost in separation create a world of dualistic conflict.

On Palm Sunday the crowds in Jerusalem greeted Jesus as the conquering hero. They knew he had the power. They knew God was on his side. They declared him to be the rightful king of Israel. They believed they had picked the winner and they wanted to show their support to gain his attention, his favor and his rewards. They were happy beyond imagination.

Others in Jerusalem were not so happy. Everyone who worked for the Temple was not happy. The Sanhedrin (the religious court) was not happy. Many of the religious teachers and students in the dozen or so sectarian schools weren’t happy. The wealthy businessmen were not happy. And, the Romans were not happy.

In the world that human beings create, a winner requires a loser.

The people who greeted Jesus with shouts of “Hosanna! - Praise the Lord- claimed the status of winners. And, they knew very well that there would be losers. Part of the joy of victory is the defeat of your opponent.

Jesus embodies unity. He is the union of humanity and divinity. He is the balance of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, profit and loss. The balance point is love. It is the steadfast holy unconditional universal love that is God.  There are no winners and loser in this love. There is only love. Love is the origin of our species. Love is the meaning, purpose and destiny of our species.

Very quickly, many people find their joy at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem turn to sorrow. Within days, it becomes clear that Jesus is doing nothing the crowds expect, desire or demand. They begin to abandon him. One of the inner circle surrounding Jesus does a quick calculation of the situation and chooses to save his life by betraying Jesus.

By Thursday night those who fear Jesus perceive his strange behavior as their opportunity to strike. They arrest him and condemn him to death. His followers run away. The crowds who had shouted: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord now shout out “Crucify him!” At the end, only his mother and her two companions and a teenager named John remain loyal to him.

What went wrong?

From a human perspective Jesus failed to work within the world system the human race has created, maintains and extends. We create a system of wealth and poverty, rewards and punishments, power and submission, winners and losers. From a human perspective Jesus failed to live within the system and to use his power to be a winner. In that failure he became a loser.

From God’s perspective, this was the only way to solve the underlying problem that defines our species.  This underlying problem is separation. We chose separation from God. We choose separation from each other. We perpetual separation in the way we think, feel and make choices.

Separated souls are split souls. We spilt ourselves, our institutions and our societies into units of competition and conflict. Split souls issue split decisions.

Split decisions are based on a single question: what’s in it for me?

On Palm Sunday many people looked at Jesus from that question and answered it with two words: money and power.

On Good Friday virtually all people looked at Jesus and answered the same question with two different words: pain and death.

Jesus didn’t love the people on Palm Sunday any more or any less on Good Friday. Jesus just doesn’t have love. Jesus is love. That love is proceeds from unity with God and accomplishes the Great Mystery of what the church calls salvation.

Salvation is the reunion of a separated soul with God.

The basis of reunion is not grounded in the duality of righteousness and unrighteousness, of perfection or imperfection, of rewards and punishments, of winners or losers. The foundation of reunification is Divine Love incarnate in Jesus Christ.

As a man, Jesus could experience the full extremes of joy and sorrow we as a species create. He could and did experience pleasure and pain, light and darkness, life and death.

During this Holy Week observe how Jesus does this. Pay attention to the emotional reactions and demands of his followers and his enemies. Ponder how Jesus as a man experiences this terrible conflict born of separation. Contemplate how Jesus as God is the resolution of this conflict.

The Great Mystery of Faith is for us to shout out the Palm Sunday acclamation in the midst of duality, in the midst of please and pain, of joy and sorrow, of life and death,.

This Palm Sunday acclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” enters into the world of dualism human beings create. This acclamation becomes distorted, diminished and misunderstood in the context of conflict. This acclamation is rescued, redeemed and reformed in the triumph of Love we will celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Praise the Lord!

 

Lent 5 (John 12:1-8) “You do not always have me.”

The ethos of love is extravagance. The ethos of sin is scarcity.

John, the beloved apostle, comments that Judas lived from the place of scarcity in the presence of divine abundance. He lived from that place that says there will never be enough. There will never be enough for everyone so I must take what is my right to have in order for me to meet my needs and my desires.

Despite the outpouring of God the Father’s grace through God the Son by the power of God the Holy Spirit, Judas and so many others missed the reality of abundance. The effect of separation on the soul is the fear that there will not be enough for me.

There will not be enough grace so I must prove to God I am worthy of his limited blessing. I must be righteous so God will give me the blessing and withhold the blessing from lesser people.

There will not be enough money so I must do whatever I can to acquire wealth so I will have what I need to meet my needs and satisfy my desires.

There will never be enough natural resources so I must make sure I exercise ownership and control so I will have what I need and what I want.

There will never be enough security so I must exercise my will to power to ensure I dominate others and I have the means to destroy them before they destroy me.

This line of reasoning is grounded in the fear that there just isn’t enough for everyone. It is the belief that God created a world of limitation and scarcity. In this world there are winners and losers, there are the strong and the weak, there are the righteous and the unrighteous. Judas believed he had the inside track with God. He missed the reality of who God is.

Mary had clearer sight. She listened to Jesus and heard his words. She observed Jesus and recognized his nature. She witnesses the great miracle when Jesus restored her brother to life. And, she recognized the reality of God in the abundance of love.

It is the real presence of divine love embodied in Jesus that set Mary free from fear and free from scarcity to participate in the divine abundance of love. Her act of devotion is astonishing. The perfume is worth a year’s salary for an ordinary worker.

Judas is scandalized in the presence of such abundance. He pretends he has a concern for the poor but he is really horrified by the outpouring of love and devotion in such a tangible and material way.

The contrast between Mary’s sense of abundance and Judas’ sense of scarcity reveals the conflict of fear and faith, law and grace, possession and love. Jesus reminded his generation and he reminds ours that God creates abundance and human beings create scarcity.

The principles of scarcity are threefold. The principle of fear says: I have a God given right to get mine lest I miss out and others take what I want and need. The principle of self- will asserts the demand: I have the God given right to do it my way. The principle of pride says: God is on my side. These three principles of scarcity produce a world of conflict in which there is no room for faith, no room for hope, no room for love and no room for Jesus. The world of conflict is a world of winners and losers, of wealth and poverty, of dominance and submission.

Mary shows us a different way. It is the way of faith and hope that proceeds from and brings forth the abundance of love.

As Jesus Himself is the abundance of infinite and eternal love so those who embrace Jesus partake of that infinite and eternal love. There is no scarcity in that love.

Mary certainly had the means to share her personal wealth with Jesus. What makes her choice radically different from the choice Judas made and so many others make is her willingness and delight to pour forth her wealth in the extravagance of love. She saw in Jesus the perfect mirror of divine holiness and the perfect mirror of human potential.

At that moment, Mary chose love. In choosing love she chose Jesus. And, in choosing Jesus she chose divine abundance. This was her moment. This was her hour of decision. Jesus would not see her again. She would not experience his physical presence.

This moment here and now is always the time of choice. There will not be another time or place for us to meet Jesus and delight in his real presence in the same way this moment holds. This moment is all moments as Jesus comes from the timeless realm into time to meet us and to set us free from time to experience eternity.

Judas drew back from divine abundance in Jesus through fear of scarcity and the prideful assertion of his own will to power to get what he believed was his right.

Mary opened her mind, heart and will into the place of divine abundance. She gave according to her means- and indeed we hear that she gave from the place of wealth. Like the poor widow who gave two coins that valued a single penny she gave from the place of extravagance. That place is the infinite and eternal love of God. That place is Jesus here and now and forever.

 

 

 

Lent 4 (Matthew 21:33-46) Luke 15:1-3; 11-32 “He was lost and has been found.”

The prodigal son represents all of humanity.

In a single parable, Jesus summarizes the story of salvation. There is the original blessing, the choice from pride to separate, the initial rush of power, the fall into distortion and despair, then repentance, reunification and transformation.

A parable is not an allegory. A parable is a story drawn from human experience to help us understand a broad and fundamental principle. The principle in this parable is repentance.

People who participate in Twelve Step programs understand the concept of “hitting rock bottom”. They understand that addictive behavior brings pleasure. They understand that the addict is lost in fatal pride that says: not me. Others can’t handle this. But I can. Others need help. But I don’t.

There is no repentance from the place of pride. Only as pride morphs into deeper and more profound levels of distortion, dissolution and despair does the soul cry out for deliverance.

The younger son in the parable demonstrates the journey of the soul in this world. We come from glory and are destined for glory in God’s forever family. By our own choice we look at the glory and decide we’d rather have the cash. The cash, of course, is the frozen energy of life.

Through pride we decide the relationships God has designed us for are only a means to an end. Through pride we choose knowledge that says: I and I alone know what is best for me and for everyone else. Through pride we assert the will to power which says: do it my way. Give me what I want when I want it and how I want it. Through pride we separate from God’s forever family and enter in a journey to a distant place. In that journey we become lost. We become lost in all manner of distortion that leads to sin. As we become lost in sin we suddenly realize one day we are lost in suffering, sadness and despair.

At that point of despair, when we hit rock bottom, grace enters in. In the parable the prodigal son “comes to himself”. He enters into a moment of clarity. That moment is a gift of God. It is the gift our Heavenly Father has imprinted in our souls, designed into natural law, and presents to every soul by the Real Presence of the Holy Spirit.

It is important to pause and ponder these words. He came to himself. He came to recognize the original blessing of God’s forever family. In coming to himself in this way he repented of his choice to separate. He literally turned his life around and journeyed back to his father.

He confessed his sin. He acknowledged his prideful actions from the place of humility. He offered to make restitution for his willful self-indulgence. He offered to repay his Father for all that he had taken from his father and squandered in the temporary pleasure of sin.

This is the pattern for repentance for all people. Not all of us follow the same detail of sin as the prodigal son. The Bible is very clear that all of us do follow the same path of separation that produces the distortions of pride and self-indulgence and results in sin.

The grace comes to us in those moments when we come to ourselves. We all have those moments. Not all of us make the choice the prodigal son made. Some of us remain stubbornly, willfully and spitefully lost. Some of us echo the words of Satan in Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost”: it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.

The moments of grace that can lead to repentance are unconditional, universal and unlimited. We don’t have to study the Bible to recognize this pattern in human behavior. We can look to history. We can look around us in the events and experiences of other people. Most powerfully, we can look within our own souls.

We can by grace perceive where we willfully, stubbornly and yes sometimes spitefully say no to God. We can by God’s grace look into the perfect mirror of grace who is Jesus Christ. He is the fullness of the original blessing.  The life he lived is the pattern, plan and purpose for how our Heavenly Father intends us to live. Any way of living that is less than Jesus is the way of separation, sin and death.

The prodigal separated from pride. The path of pride led him to despair. It was only at that place he was able to listen for the moment of grace. It was only in that place that he could come to himself, repent, change the direction of his life and return to his father. The brief pleasure in sin always decays into a half-life of endless regret, suffering and despair.

The message is two-fold. It is never too late to repent and turn your life around. It is better to repent sooner than later.

God gives all people everywhere sufficient grace both to discern the problem and to seek the solution. The problem is separation through pride. The solution is reunification through the humility of repentance, reunification and personal transformation.

As we journey through Lent stop, look and listen for your moment of grace. It will be there. It will likely come in a very unforeseen yet ordinary manner. It will be personal, designed for you. It will be formed in accord with the universal principles God has revealed in the Bible and personified in Jesus Christ.

Ask our Heavenly Father to release the power of the Holy Spirit in your soul so that when your moment of grace comes to you – you will be able to come to yourself and say yes to God through repentance of sin and transformation of sin back into its original virtue.

The great joy of the prodigal son came as he repented, returned and transformed. Jesus summarizes that great joy for the prodigal son in the parable and for each of us who are lost in the distortions of sin when he says: “He was lost and has been found.”