Pentecost 14

Pentecost 14 (Luke 13:10-17) “You are set free from you ailment.”

Jesus set people free.

The people in Jesus’ day were no different from the people of our day. They were oppressed by many fears. They suffered from illness, depression, conflicts and the knowledge that the only certainties in life are death and taxes.

Many in Israel cried out to God for help. Sadly, most people most of the time were looking for God in all the wrong places. They were looking for God in generals and kings. They were looking for God in the whirlwind and the lightning. They were convinced that God demanded rigid inflexible and uncompromising submission to laws that governed every detail of every aspect of life.

God indeed answered their cry for help. God sent Jesus to deliver the people from sin and sadness from fear and death. Jesus is God’s answer to the problems confronting our species and defining our species. Sadly, people rejected the solution God offered. They wanted the power and the glory not the personal holiness and the path of compassion.

Luke tells the account of Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath Day in the synagogue.The story starts well.  The people are where God invites them to be at the time and place God Himself designed into the Creation. The story gets complicated when Jesus sees a woman who was bent over and unable to stand.

Jesus heals the woman. The woman rejoices and gives glory to God. The religious leader protests the healing on the grounds that healing is work and work is prohibited on the Sabbath. Of course, for Jesus, healing is not work. It is not labor. It is the natural state of divine grace.

Moses never taught: don’t help people on the Sabbath Day. Moses delivered the very simple and direct command that God Himself wrote on stone. Keep the Sabbath Day Holy.

A fundamental Biblical principle is that holiness is wholeness. We are less of who God created to be when we depart from the path of Holiness and enter into the distortions of separation, self-will, pride and the will to power. We are most of who God has created us to be as we enter into the Real Presence of God.

Jesus is the Real Presence of God. The Sabbath Day is the Day of Real Presence. Tragically, the religious people lived and moved and formed their being in the categories of rules and regulations. In order to be sure they were righteous within these categories they developed a complicated and detailed set of laws that sought to govern every aspect of life.

They built in loop holes for themselves to pursue their economic interests. So, they defined healing as work but pulling a valuable farm animal out of a pit as not work. The principle underlying the distinction is that money trumps religion.

They blamed other people for any failure to obey their laws and their laws and interpretation of their laws. So, they condemn Jesus for healing a crippled woman instead of recognizing the Real Presence of God in their midst on the Day of Real Presence.

The religious people were so close and yet so far. After centuries of resistance and rebellion they had finally accepted the Sabbath Day. That was an amazing step forward. At the same time, they had rebranded the Sabbath Day from a blessing to a burden. And, they had designed loopholes so they could do what they wanted to do on the Sabbath and still get credit for being righteous.

The Sabbath is not about credits or debits. It is about blessing. The blessing of the Sabbath is the Real Presence of God on the day of real Presence. Jesus is the real presence of God. Our Heavenly Father designed the Sabbath to facilitate the relationship He offers us in the Son. Jesus is the reason for the Sabbath. Jesus is the relationship God offers us on the Sabbath.In God there is only wholeness and healing and liberation. Jesus fulfills the very essence of the Sabbath when he restores the woman to health. Jesus describes this healing in terms of liberation.

From his perspective, the woman is in bondage to her disease and defined by her disease. She is “the cripple”. She is the woman bent over and unable to stand straight for 18 years.Jesus sees the woman as a unique person. She bears His image and likeness in a way no one else can. Jesus heals her in order to set her free to be who the Father created her to be.The Sabbath Day healing reveals the essential meaning of the Sabbath. God the Father set apart one day in seven by the power of God the Holy Spirit to invite people into a personal transforming and life giving relationship with God the Son.

The Sabbath Day of Real Presence is the reset day for us to enter into the original blessing  of wholeness, health and happiness. Jesus healed the woman that day and in that place because that was when and where she met him. The Holy Spirit has used that event to remind us that the principle of the Sabbath is not in the details of rules and regulations people make to define the Sabbath. The principle of the Sabbath is the gift of wholeness God the Father offers us in God the Son.

The world defines people in dualistic categories of right and wrong, sinner and virtuous, righteous and unrighteous, givers and takers. On the Sabbath Day, Jesus liberates us from these dualistic definitions to be who the Father created us to  be: the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved Son of God. That is who we are. And, that is who Jesus sets us free to be.  

 

Assumption Day 2013

“Do you know how to interpret the present time?”

Ancient people lived with certain insights into nature that modern people have abandoned.

One of these insights is the principle: “as above so below.”

The insight draws from observation of nature: the earth, the stars and planets, and indeed human behavior. The insight perceives the patterns. The knowledge of patterns produces an understanding of an overarching plan. That understanding produces the wisdom of the ancients in the word: logos.

The logos is the transcendent rational infinite and eternal pattern, plan, and purpose of all things in this realm of matter, energy, time and space. The testimony of a man named John is that the logos. The divine pattern, plan and purpose of the universe chose to become a human being.

How did John get such insight?

First: as a teen, John spent three years with Jesus. He did something no one else did. He paid attention. He wasn’t perfect. He could be a brat at times. But, unlike most of the people who met Jesus and heard him speak, John wanted to be Jesus’ friend. And, he wanted Jesus to be his friend.

John paid attention. He listened. And, he memorized the words Jesus spoke. As a teen, John soaked up the knowledge Jesus offered about God, humanity, the scriptures. But, he only had three years. He had the knowledge but lacked the understanding that comes from life experience.

Jesus himself provided John with two teachers to complete his education and spiritual formation. The first teacher is the Holy Spirit. The second is Holy Mother Mary.

Mary completed John’s education. She helped him use his knowledge to gain understanding of the logos and our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation.

Mary can do the same for us. From her throne in Heaven as Queen of Heaven Mary prays for us to grow in grace. Mary also pours the reflected grace of God into our souls as the sunlight pours through the stained glass windows of the church to reveal the outward and visible beauty of inward and spiritual holiness.

As above; so below. After Mary died, Jesus gave her the gift of immediate resurrection through the Assumption of her body into heaven. There, Jesus honored his mother by crowning her Queen of Heaven. She continues to manifest the infilling of grace that the archangel Gabriel announced at the incarnation. She continues to offer assistance to disciples of Jesus, us, to grow in knowledge, understanding, wisdom. Good counsel, piety, fortitude and reverence.

We honor Mary today on earth because Jesus himself honored Mary in Heaven. Jesus asks: do you know how to interpret the present time here and now? All we need to do is what John chose to do. Pay attention. Listen to the words of Jesus. Memorize them.

Assumption Day reminds us that Holy Mother Mary offers us assistance in interpreting the present from her throne in the eternal realm of heaven.

 

 

 

Pentecost 12

Pentecost 12 (Luke 12:32-40) “Be ready!”

You are the co-creator of your own soul.

Moses and the prophets are very clear that human choice determines human destiny.

Our Heavenly Father created our species and each of us by the power of the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of the Beloved Son. The essential quality of that pattern is love. That love is steadfast, holy, universal, unconditional, infinite and eternal.

All of us and each of us are a particular manifestation and a unique image of that love. The full potential of that love resides within every human soul.  For us who Iive and move and have our being in the realm of matter, energy, time and space love is actualized through choice.

That is why so much of what Jesus taught involves the invitation to make a conscious choice.

Moses and the prophets observed that most people most of the time sleepwalk through life. The primary cause for this existence of somnolence is Original Sin. Original Sin is the choice our species made to separate from God. It can also be called “Original Separation.”

That original choice defines our species. It forms the basis on which we build our lives, make our choices, use our reason and experience our emotions.

The Beloved Son came into the world as a particular man at a particular place and time to offer and to facilitate a different choice. Jesus restores the original pattern of humanity through his incarnation. He accepts the consequence of Original Separation as he dies on the cross. He restores what is lost and broken to the fullness of its original potential in the resurrection. And, during this Church Age, the Age of Evangelism he calls us to make a choice.

The fundamental and universal principle underlying that choice is love. The particularities of that choice lie in the broad categories of where we chose to spend our time and how we chose to use our talents, gifts and resources.

In this passage Jesus identifies certain particular choices we can make to appropriate the gift of salvation He gives us.

The first choice is faith vs fear. So many people exist in this world with intense fear about many things. Sadly, many people experience God through fear. We fear God will punish us. We fear God is indifferent to us. We fear God does not exist and the universe has no inherent meaning.

Jesus comforts us by saying fear not God just doesn’t have love as an attribute. God is love. Salvation from sin and death is a gift. You can’t earn it.  It is real. And it is a gift. Salvation is the reunification of the soul with God the Father through God the Son by the indwelling Real Presence of God the Holy Spirit. The first choice is the choice to receive this gift of reunification by faith.

Another choice is the choice of giving vs possessing. The Bible is very clear that this planet and all of its resources belong to Jesus Christ. Our Heavenly Father appointed human beings to be stewards of this world, not owners. Jesus invites us to enjoy the abundance of the creation. He warns us that the attitude of ownership will produce an action of possession that will block our ability to enjoy life.

Fundamentally, Jesus encourages us to share our possessions in much the same way a parent or a teacher encourages a young child to share. The tendency of a child to hold something tightly and shout out “mine!” is the window into the spiritual state of our species.  Jesus asks us to cultivate an attitude of compassion that produces an action of charity.

Next, Jesus offers us the choice of value. It is the choice of God vs the ego. The question is: what do you truly value? What you truly value determines what and how you will worship. What you worship defines your soul and determines your destiny.

Heaven is not a future reward for right belief and right action. Heaven is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that begins here and now. That relationship defines who we are and who we aspire to become.  Jesus reminds us that anything other than God is temporary. Only God is eternal. Only God can transform our fears into faith, our selfishness into charity, our anxiety into hope.

The concluding word of wisdom Jesus offers is: be ready.   Be aware. Make conscious choices. Do not sleep walk through life by following the values of our secular culture. Ask God the Father to send God the Holy Spirit to cultivate in your soul the desire to make the choice of faith, hope and charity.

Ask God to cultivate in your hear the desire to live and move and have your being in the Real Presence of the Living Lord Jesus Christ.

We hold ourselves ready for Jesus as we ready, study and memorize the Bible. We hold ourselves ready as we make the choice to come to the place of Real Presence on the Day of Real Presence. We hold ourselves ready as we make a real choice to help other people however we can.

And, we hold ourselves ready as we acknowledge our need to transform and ask the Holy Spirit to help us transform in grace by faith through the steadfast holy universal unconditional love of Jesus Christ.