St. Michael and All Angels

Saint Michael and All Angels 2013 (John 1:47-51)

“You will see heaven opened…”

Eternal life starts now.

Eternal life begins at the baptismal font and is nourished at the altar of sacrifice.

Most forms of religion speak of God, Heaven, salvation or eternal life as a future reward for present actions. Most forms of religion, including many forms of Christianity, use the language of debits and credits, the language of rewards and punishments to frame the reality of God.

Jesus uses the language of relationship.

Jesus reveals and embodies the reality that the One God is a relationship of three persons. Moses and the prophets help us understand that we as a species have willfully and spitefully chosen to separate from God. In that separation we experience profound distortions in our mind, heart and will. Those distortions result in sin and death.

Jesus reveals that salvation from sin and death is organic and relational. Jesus is the second Adam, the new man, who restores the original pattern of love and holiness to our species. Salvation from sin and death is the gift of a new life and a new way of living.

The gift of salvation is universal and unconditional. Jesus is the pattern of a way of being human that restores the broken relationship with God, each other and the image of God imprinted on our souls.

To use modern evangelical language- we are saved as individuals  but immediately grafted into the Body of Christ. In the Body of Christ, the Church, we enter into a set of relationships.

The first relationship is the life of the infinite and eternal Triune God. Jesus, the co-eternal Son of God, reunites us to God the Father and transforms us by God the Holy Spirit.

It is in that new relationship that we receive the gift of eternal life.

As the Body of Christ we are also placed in a set of relationships within the wider church. The wider church includes the saints of the Church Triumphant. The saints pray for us. Preeminent among the saints is Holy Mother Mary. She not only prays for us she channels additional grace to us from the superabundance of grace she receives from God.

In addition to the saints of the church Triumphant are the souls of the Church Expectant. They pray for us and rely on our prayers to grow in grace as they prepare for the resurrection. We are not permitted to communicate with them or they with us. Our prayers reassure, comfort and encourage them to release their attachment to the distortions of sin and to grow in love and holiness.

The third part of the church is the Church Militant. That is us. We have been given the assignment to work and pray for the salvation and sanctification of souls. As a living community of Faith we gather to express and experience the threefold aspect of eternal love. That threefold aspect of eternal love is worship, charity and personal transformation.

As the Body of Christ we are also supported by the angels. God created innumerable angels before He created the material universe of matter, energy time and space. Theologians perceive nine different kinds, species, of angels organized in three sets of three.

There are seraphim, cherubim and thrones. Principalities, powers and dominions. Virtues, archangels and angels. Of the nine types of angels, sometimes referred to as the nine choirs of angels, only two have direct relationships with human beings: archangels and angels.

God has appointed these classes of spiritual to be servants of the children of God in Christ.

Some theologians speculate that Lucifer rejected the plan for the pure angelic spirits to leave the transcendent realm of Heaven to serve the corporeal beings God created in the material universe. Lucifer wanted these angels to serve him, not us.

Jesus teaches that we each have a guardian angel. This angel is a veteran from the war in Heaven against Lucifer. Guardian angels guard us from the influence of the fallen angels. They also pray for us, encourage us and stand by us. No Christian is ever alone. We are part of the Body of Christ encompassing the Church Triumphant, the Church Expectant and the Church Militant.

We each have a Guardian Angel who protects us and encourages us to grow in grace.

St. Michael has a very important role in the Plan of Salvation. He is the general of the angelic armies. We see in the book of the prophet Daniel that Michael is the guardian angel of the nation of Israel. He is also the Guardian Angel of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We do not pray to the angels or saints. We can ask them to pray for us, to encourage us in the Communion of the Saints and to channel their own unique reflected grace into our souls.

The Ministry of Angels is the ministry of the Bridegroom’s servants. They help to prepare us spiritually to be who God the Father created us to be: the Bride of Christ, the personal and intimate friends of the co-eternal Son of God.

The preeminent service angels offer is to encourage us to enter into the Real Presence of God at the altar of Sacrifice on the Day of Real Presence, Sunday.

Angels are unique manifestations of Divine Love. They encourage us to come to church. They stand with us and surround us at the altar of sacrifice in the very pattern of worship they experience in the transcendent realm of heaven.

The Holy Spirit specifically uses our angelic servants to help us grow and transform in the highest form of love: worship. It is through worship that we experience the reality of eternal life here and now. The greatest most profound and transforming blessing available to us is here at the altar of sacrifice.

The angels in heaven rejoice when a soul makes a real choice to receive reunification with Divine Love in the waters of baptism. St. Michael the Archangel and our own personal Guardian Angel rejoice as the baptized in the Church Militant make a real choice to experience the total immersion of the soul in Divine Love at the altar of sacrifice.

The angels guide us very specifically to this place at this time to experience the blessing of Real Presence and see heaven opened for us here and now and forever. Amen.

 

Pentecost 18

Pentecost 18 (Luke 16:1-13)

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

Jesus sometimes used shock as a teaching device.

In the story of the unfaithful steward, Jesus contrasts the shrewdness of the embezzler with the folly of the faithful.

Jesus does not commend the disloyal steward for his crimes. He simply points out that this particular criminal is focused and alert and clever.

Jesus intended this teaching to shock people. It is a like the physical shock of diving into a cold lake or ocean. The intent is to wake us up from our self- induced slumber. Jesus understood very well that most people most of the time sleep walk through life. We simply accept the cultural norms we grew up with. We follow the path of least resistance when it comes to setting priorities and expressing values.

Once Jesus has the attention of the audience he moves into more profound spiritual truth. The teaching just does not stop with the parable. The parable is the splash of cold water to get our attention and encourage us to ask questions.

The first question might be: is this true? Is the shrewdness of the disloyal servant a virtue or a vice? Is Jesus comment about the lack of attention and planning amongst the faithful true? Are we missing opportunities for service by our complacency and lethargy?

Jesus used a teaching device designed to engage his listeners in a dialog. Sadly, virtually everyone who heard Jesus wanted quick easy answers instead. They wanted check lists for right behavior not principles to live by. They wanted detailed rigid inflexible and uncompromising beliefs. They did not want a broad universal and unconditional faith.

Underlying these desires was the demand: tell us what we must do to avoid God’s wrath and earn God’s reward.

They seldom asked questions because in the pride of Original Separation they inherited the belief that they knew everything they needed to know about the nature of God and humanity. They not only believed they claimed to know that God is power and the meaning and purpose of human life is to use that transcendent power of the divine to acquire worldly power and wealth.

Jesus challenges this assumption.

In Jesus God the Father reveals that the one God is an eternal community of love. What God wants from humanity is not submission to Law that brings people wealth and power. What God wants from humanity is an active transforming relationship.

God designed our species and each of us as individuals to grow in grace and to transform in love.

Our Anglican expression of faith encourages us to savor the Great Mystery of Divine Love, to delight in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ at the altar of sacrifice, and to enter into the transforming active dynamic relationship with God the Holy Spirit through reason, emotion and will.

What is it that Jesus invites us to be faithful in?

The disloyal steward was single-mindedly dedicated to his own wealth and power. Jesus did not endorse his crime but did use his dedication as a example for us to consider how we set our priorities.

Who are we faithful to? Where are our loyalties? How are we divided in our loyalties?

Moses, the prophets and the apostles are very clear about priorities. The three Biblically based priorities are Jesus, Others, You.

The three Biblically based principles underlying these three priorities are worship, charitable service, and personal growth and development.

Moses and the prophets were very clear in their teaching. A nation, a family and an individual cannot successfully live with divided loyalties. Jesus refines this teaching as he issues a call to make a choice in our loyalties, priorities and values.

The bottom line then as now is the bottom line: you cannot serve God and wealth. These are mutually exclusive loyalties. We will either paralyze ourselves through indecisiveness or we will fall into hypocrisy.

The direction we take in life is revealed to us in the details of our lives. It is the little choices of how we spend our time and resources that reveals our loyalties and principles.

That is why Jesus summarizes his teaching from the parable of the disloyal steward by setting forth the principle:  

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

 

 

Pentecost 17

Pentecost 17 (Luke 15:1-10)

“Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Jesus welcomes sinners.

Jesus not only welcomes sinners he listens to them, feeds them, heals them and offers himself to them as the Salvation of God. In that offer, Jesus defines the underlying problem that defines our species. And, he offers the solution.

If you don’t properly identify the problem you can’t find the solution.

Some forms of religion teach that the problem is not enough law. People do bad things because they lack guidance. The solution is more law. The solution involves rewards and punishments to enforce the law.

The Pharisees and the scribes held this form of religion. St. Paul grew up in this form of religion. After St. Paul met Jesus he realized that while the Law is holy and good it cannot effect our salvation.

The Law functions to restrain evil and to convict us of our need for a savior. The lessons of the Bible teach that most (and possibly all) people do not know what they need to be saved from. Certainly none of the disciples (with the possible exception of John as he stood with Mary at the foot of the cross) understood the salvation Jesus brought until the resurrection.

Religious people then tended to understand salvation in exclusive categories of law and politics. For the Pharisees, the Messiah would confirm and secure their position of wealth and power. He would destroy their enemies, enslave the unrighteous and give the righteous the power to rule the world.

For the Messiah to associate with the unrighteous challenged the basic assumptions of law based religion. Those assumptions taught that God gave the Law to make men righteous. People can choose to obey the Law, People can just say no to sin.

The righteous can  be identified by their beliefs, their actions and their position in society. The assumption is that the Law determines who God will reward with wealth and power and who God will punish with poverty and tribulation.

Law based religion tends to define God as absolute rigid inflexible and uncompromising perfection. In this model God is so transcendent that all human language about God is inadequate and misleading.

The Deity of Law based religion will not and cannot relate to the imperfections and struggles of sinful men. That Deity uses angels to communicate with select prophets to write down the Laws that people must follow. If you follow the Laws you succeed in life. If you violate the Laws you fail. The successful people are the righteous elite who hold the wealth and power in society. The Messiah, the anointed man of God, is a kind of super prophet who has the power to impose Divine Law, reward the righteous and punish the unrighteous.

This of course is not what Moses and the Prophets taught.  Embedded in the Law is the sacrificial system. Moses declares: these are the Laws and when (not if) you break these Laws these are the sacrifices you must offer.

Jesus raised the religious standard by declaring that the standard of the Law is perfection. Of course, no one is or can be perfect. Jesus is the perfect mirror to the human soul that reveals to us that we cannot just say no to sin.

Jesus is very clear. All people are lost in separation from God. The religious are lost in religion. The rich are lost in their riches. Intellectuals are lost in the pride of intellect.

Jesus reveals that God is not just absolute transcendence. God is not just the unknown and unknowable Absolute. To the skeptic Jesus reveals that God is real. To the religious Jesus reveals that God is both transcendent and personal. To all people Jesus reveals that God is love.

The problem confronting our species is that we have chosen to separate from God. In that separation we are not only lost we are willfully and spitefully lost.

Human intellect, emotion or will cannot reunite us to God. All aspects of our being are distorted by separation. The evidence of that distortion is sin. And the evidence of separation is death.

The solution is reunification. That reunification is personal. God Himself effects the reunification by permanently and irrevocably uniting His divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ. Salvation is organic.

The incarnation makes the sacrifice on the cross possible. As a man, Jesus can die on the cross as the final sacrifice for sin. As the co-eternal Son of God, Jesus can take away the sin of all people, experience the death of all people and transform sin back into holiness and death back into life. What makes this possible is that the Messiah is the co-eternal Beloved of God.

This is the Messiah that God the Holy Spirit revealed to Moses, the prophets and Holy Mother Mary. This is the Messiah that God the Father sent into the world. This is the Messiah who reveals  that all human beings are willfully and spitefully lost in separation. And this is the Messiah who announces that he is the good shepherd who has come into the world to seek the lost, to find the lost, to restore the lost and to transform the lost.

This is why Jesus met with gangsters and criminals. This is why Jesus reached out to the immoral and the unethical. This is even why Jesus  opened his arms wide to embrace the rigid inflexible and uncompromising religious elites.

Jesus is the savior who finds us where we are. He accepts us where we are. He reunites us to God the Father just as we are because he has already paid the price for our sins and transformed death back into life. He also sends the Holy Spirit to initiate a life long process of personal transformation in love and holiness.

Jesus does not take sides.

Jesus endorses no political party, no economic system, no human philosophy and no nation. He accepts us all where we are and then invites us to enter into union with Divine Love and compassion to experience personal transformation.

The Pharisees had created a religious institution from the place of separation to maintain separation. Jesus came to overcome separation.

For some Pharisees, this reality of God was liberating . For many others it was terrifying. For Jesus and the loyal angels it was a cause for great joy as Jesus declares to Heaven and Earth:

Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost.

Pentecost 16

Pentecost 16 (Luke 14:25-33)

“Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Everything in this world has an associated cost. Jesus wants to be sure we understand that there is a cost to discipleship.

Salvation is free to us but cost Jesus unimaginable pain and suffering and death. Those who accept this gift receive reunification with the Father through the Son by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Reunification gives us a new life that produces a new way of living. The new way of living is the way of the disciple.

The disciple is one who follows Jesus on the new way of living. That way is the way of sanctification. It is the way of transformation.  The three categories of transformation are the three fundamental relationships that form our unique personal identity.

These three categories are our relationship with God, with other people, with the unique identity God has given each of us.

The first cost of discipleship is the way of individual autonomy.

Jesus finds us lost in the individual will to power. He saves us from separation, isolation and the illusion of individual autonomy. He reunites us to the eternal triune community of the one God. And, he places us in the new community of interdependent relationships of the new humanity.

The first cost of disciple is the attitude that life is all about me. It is the self-offering of the false ego that says “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

The cost of individual autonomy is the cost of personal responsibility. The Anglican priest John Donne once wrote; “No man is an island.”  We are responsible to God for our actions. And, we are responsible for each other in our actions. We are our brother’s keeper. We are responsible for helping those in need of help according to our resources and abilities.

The cost of disciple is the way of sacrificial living that places Jesus first, other second and you third. It is the recognition that all things, all resources, all talents and abilities come from God not from the individual will to power.

The cost of discipleship in time is the Sabbath Day of Real Presence. How many who claim the name of Christ are willing to pay that price?

The cost of discipleship in resources is charity. How many who claim the name of Christ are will to pay the price of  compassionate service to others and Biblical tithes and offerings?

Finally, the cost of discipleship is the commitment to personal change, growth and reachability.  How many of those who claim the name of Christ are willing to pay the price of having their beliefs challenged, their sins revealed and transformed, their minds educated and their hearts softened?

The cost of disciple is the price we pay when we agree with God that Jesus is Lord and we are not.

The cost of disciple is the price we pay when Jesus reveals to us our sins of attitude and action and asks us to yield those sins to him to be transformed back into their original virtues.

The cost of discipleship is the personal trust we choose to place in Jesus as the new way of living, the pattern of truth and the only source of life.

The cost of discipleship is the sacrifice of the autonomous individual will to power in order to discover the unique personal identity God has designed for each of us in union with Him and with each other.

It isn’t easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus is more concerned with fundamental principles than detailed rules and regulations. The Great Mystery of faith is that it is only as we surrender the false ego of the individual will to power to the Divine Love of God in Jesus Christ that we discover the authentic, unique personal identity God the Father has given to each of us.

What we are willing to give up to be the people God created us to be defines who we are willing to become. It is the cost of discipleship. It is the way of redeeming sacrifice that is willing to give up the illusion of control to discover true freedom in the infinite and eternal Presence of the living God.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.  There is always a cost, always a price to pay. As we count the cost of discipleship and pay the price of sacrificial transformation Jesus assure us that there is available to us the banquet of blessing that begins here at the altar of sacrifice and forms us in our thoughts words and deeds to receive the blessing, to live the blessing and to be the blessing of God now and forever.