Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving 2013 (Matthew 6:25-33) “Do not worry.”

Worry is about the fear of the future. It is an anxiety that subverts the joy of the present. It borrows trouble from a fantasy future that may or may not ever exist.

Jesus very pointedly teaches: do not worry. Worry, for most of us, is choice we make. In that choice we establish a pattern of thought and emotional reaction. Eventually, that pattern becomes an embedded behavior that defines our path through life.

My grandfather always advised my brothers and I not to worry about things. “you don’t need to worry about anything,” he would say. “You father worries enough for all of us.”

Worry is a distortion of the soul that has real physical effects on the human brain. Both the Bible and modern science reveal that we can train our thoughts. We can adopt a pessimistic view of life that perceives a threat in every frown and an enemy in every smile. Ot , we can live by grace through faith.

The basic definition of grace is “gift”.

Moses and the prophets observe that all of life is a gift. They also observe that we did not create this world or ourselves. We do make choices to distort our perception of the world. We also make choices to subvert the pattern that exists in the world.

The pattern is the Logos. The Apostle John very clearly, precisely and even poetically writes about the Logos as the co-eternal Word of God by whom, through whom and for whom this world and our species was created.

Worry is a corruption of rational analysis and planning. Worry looks at the world and sees only threat, feels only fear, exists in a narrow space of reaction to imagined danger.

The antidote for worry is to give thanks for the blessings of the present moment.

At this moment, right here, right now, what are you experiencing?

Remember, worry and anxiety are about a possible future that has only a remote probability of coming to pass.

The pattern of the universe is grace. It is the gift of God in the co-eternal Beloved of God to live and move and have our being in the Real Presence of the Holy Spirit of God in the present moment.

On this National Holiday of Thanksgiving the Church asks us to pause and ponder the reality of the present. Right here, right now, what are you thankful for. Jesus is right here in the blessed sacrament of the altr. He is here for you. He offers his friendship to you. In that friendship he gives you the grace, the gift, of freedom.

Jesus will set you free from the resentments and anger of pain that rises from past events. Jesus will set you free from the worry and anxiety that rises from a false belief that the future will only bring more pain. Jesus sets us free by calling our attention to His Real Presence in the present moment.

Let the past go. But, let it go in and through the love of God the Father in the Real Presence of God the co-eternal Beloved, by the infusion of grace of God the Holy Spirit. Let the past rest in peace.

Let the future go. Whatever future you are holding onto through worry and anxiety is only an illusion. Jesus will be in whatever future you are journeying into. There is no need to fear now about a future threat. Jesus will walk with you and stand by you in the pleasures and in the pain of life as it unfolds in time.

Grace sets us free to be.

When God reveals his name to Moses He says: “I AM”.

God is the eternal present. Jesus is the Real Presence of God in the present moment. The present moment holds the pattern of the Logos, the co-eternal Beloved of God, in grace.

In that grace we meet and enjoy the great love of God in Jesus Christ.

What are you thankful for at this time and in this place? Trust Jesus to set you free from worry and fear to enjoy the gift of God in the Real Presence of God in the here and now of an eternal moment of grace.

Pentecost 26

Pentecost 26 (Luke 21:5-19)

“Beware that you are not led astray.”

There are three means by which we can be led astray. They are the world, the flesh and the devil. There are three standards of authority that can help us avoid being led astray. These are reason, tradition and scripture. There is one, and only one, person who can protect us from being led astray. That person is Jesus Christ.

To be lead astray is to be deceived. As we are deceived our lives become more narrow, confined and restricted. We lose the blessing God has designed into the universe and our souls. We experience increasing levels of frustration, fear, anxiety and anger. The world, the flesh and the devil seek to define our possibilities and potential in a way that diminishes us and controls us.

The world is our surrounding culture. It is an exterior form of temptation through distortion. The key word is distortion. Much of the temptation that comes from the world is not in and of itself bad or evil. Most of the pressure the world brings to bear on our minds, hearts and wills come from the distortion of where we set our priorities and how we spend our time.

Moses and the prophets are very clear. God, more specifically the worship of God on the Sabbath Day, is the first priority God designed into our souls. Compassionate service to other people is our second priority. Personal transformation through prayer, Bible study and self-discipline is our third priority. Consider what does not even appear on this list of God’s priorities for our lives. It doesn’t mean these other things are not important or have no place. It does mean they should not take the place of God’s priorities. If they do subvert God’s priorities they become idols- false gods of culture, society and peer pressure.

Be wary of the pressure that comes from our culture to place God last in our lives. Be wary of the voice that says: “everybody is doing it.”

The second avenue of temptation that will lead us astray is the flesh. When the Bible speaks of the flesh it addresses our legitimate needs and desires as they are distorted by the pain of Original Separation and produce sin.

How does this work? Every sin is a distorted virtue that God designed into our souls for our benefit. Pride is a distortion of humility. Fear is a distortion of faith. Gluttony is a distortion of appetite. Sloth is a distortion of rest. Every aspect of our being when distorted by the pain of Original Separation leads to sin.

The distortion of our needs and desires deceives us about the way God has designed us. The voice of the flesh says: “how can it be so bad when it feels so good.” Be wary of how the flesh will deceive us to reject God’s perfect plan for our lives for a moment of transient pleasure.

Of the list of three means by which we are led astray the devil is the least obvious, the least powerful but the most deadly. Satan crafts a set of lies specific to each generation in every culture. The power of Satan is in misdirection and confusion. The world and the flesh do the rest.

We see the pattern Satan employs in Genesis where Satan tempts Eve by seeking to confuse her about God’s Word, God’s Nature and God’s Plan for humanity. Satan cannot force you to do anything. He will seduce you away from an active dynamic faith into a rigid inflexible set of beliefs. He doesn’t care if you are religious or secular. He does care if you follow the Way, the Truth and the Life of God as revealed in Jesus Christ even if you have not yet made a profession of faith in Christ.

The way we avoid being led astray is through Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Scripture is fundamental. Scripture combines the observations of dozens of people over the course of hundreds of years and in many cultures with God’s perspective. It is vitally important that we read, study and memorize Scripture. Jesus frequently quoted scripture to correct misunderstandings the religious leadership of his day had about God’s Word, God’s Nature and God’s Plan for humanity.

Tradition does not mean “the way we’ve always done things”. Tradition means the Apostolic teaching about the Plan of Salvation. The standard of Tradition is the Seven Ecumenical Councils. The summary of Tradition is the Nicene Creed.

Reason simply means that the Truth is not counterfactual. Truth emerges from observation, analysis and synthesis. Our secular culture has largely abandoned faith in the name of reason. We have also abandoned religion in the name of spirituality. The result has not been the enlightened self-actualized individual the secular world promises. The result is massive levels of fear, anxiety, anger, addictions, conflict, violence, distrust superstition and isolation. Above all else reason is most effective when united to the virtue of humility.

The key to all of this is Jesus Christ. When someone asserts that Jesus never claimed to be God ask yourself: What does scripture reveal about Jesus? What does the Apostolic Tradition teach in the Nicene Creed? Is it reasonable that God would create us only to abandon us?

In this passage, Jesus addresses the issue of the consummation of the age. Most people interpret this to mean the end of the world. Jesus invited the people who heard him and he invites us to consider what this means. Jesus uses scripture, tradition and reason to warn, reassure and comfort.

The warning is: do not be led astray. Do not be led astray by false teachers, your cultural norms, or you own desires.

The reassurance is: nothing has to happen before the Consummation of All Things. Life goes on. Life continues. People act in much the same way they have always acted.

The comfort is that Jesus is the one who brings human history to a conclusion. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is not about war, famine, pestilence and death. Those are the things human choice influenced by the world, the flesh and the devil bring to us.

Jesus came the first time to bring life. He will return to complete what he started. He will bring a new and abundant life to a lost and broken world.

Do not be led astray. Test the priorities of our culture, the demands of our desires and the seductive deceits of Satan against the one pure and perfect standard of Creation. That one pure and perfect standard is Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 25

Pentecost 25 (Luke 20:27-38)

“Now God is not the God of the dead but the living.”

God created human beings to enjoy life.

The life we can enjoy derives from God the Son who is life eternal.  Jesus came to restore to us what we pride fully rejected. In Jesus God reunites humanity and divinity.

In the marriage ceremony the priest declares: those whom God has joined together let no one separate. Marriage is the pre-eminent image of God’s relationship to humanity. In Adam humanity has chosen separation from God. In Jesus God replies: therefore, what God has joined together let no one separate.

The Sadducees were well aware of the Biblical teaching on marriage. They used the teaching to challenge Jesus rather than to understand Jesus. The Sadducees considered themselves to be strict conservatives. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible to be authoritative. They focused exclusively on the Law as the means by which they could count themselves righteous and lay a claim to Divine favor in this life.

The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife of any sort. As with most people of the ancient world they believed dead was dead. They believed the spirit was quite literally in the breath. When you breathed your last breath your body died and your spirit expired.  The Sadducees ridiculed the Pharisees for believing in the resurrection. It seemed ludicrous to the Sadducees that God would somehow recreate a long dead body and breathe the breath of life back into it.

To emphasize their point, they challenged Jesus from the place an absurd scenario. According to the Law of Moses, if a man died without children it was the responsibility of his brother to marry the widow and have children to preserve the dead brother’s name and memory.

The scenario postulates this process continuing through the death of seven brothers until they and finally the wife die. The question then becomes: if they are resurrected then who is the real husband?

The Sadducees as well as other religious sects took a perverse pleasure in this line of questioning. They devised the most improbable scenarios and the most absurd interpretations to discredit beliefs they rejected.

Jesus handled this situation with great skill and compassion. He uses the challenge as an occasion for instruction.

Jesus teaches that the resurrection body is a physical body but a physical body raised to perfection to live in a new set of relationships. Very specifically, he assures the Sadducees that the resurrection of the body is real. But, he corrects their misunderstanding of what resurrection is. The resurrection body is a new body for a new world. It is no longer subject to the distortions of separation, sin and death. In the resurrection people live in union with God, each other, and the image of God imprinted on their souls.  It is a new life and a new way of living for a new set of relationships that brings to fulfillment and perfection the old life and the old set of relationships.

Very specifically, in terms of marriage, the spiritual promise of marriage in the soul’s union with God is made real and made complete. The old form of marriage ends with physical death. The new life of the resurrection transforms the exclusive marriage relationship on earth to an inclusive and transcendent set of relationships.

Jesus compares this new life to the life of the angels who neither marry or are given in marriage yet enjoy both particular and universal relationships with each other, with human beings and with God.

Jesus summarizes his teaching with the assurance to those who believe dead is dead that God is life eternal. In God all live. Physical death is the tragic consequence of Original Separation. Eternal life is the great gift of God in the reunion of humanity with divinity in Jesus Christ. The Pharisees taught that an afterlife was a reward for those few who kept the Law by keeping themselves separate from lesser men. The Sadducees taught that the reward for righteousness comes only in this life.

Jesus teaches that life emerges from a series of relationships. The primary life giving relationship is our relationship with God. The secondary life giving relationship is our relationships with other people. The third life giving relationship is our relationship with the image and likeness of God imprinted on our souls- our true and unique personal identity.

Life derives from relationships. Broken relationships diminish our lives and facilitate the process of Original Separation that leads to death. The restoration of our broken relationship with God in the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus reconnects us with the Original Blessing of eternal life.

Jesus restored human nature to life in the incarnation. He took away sin on the cross. He transformed death back into life by his resurrection. He did it all for us and offers it all to us. What he offers in these amazing gifts is a new life that can, if we choose to follow the path, produce a new way of living.  That new way of living is active, dynamic, spontaneous, creative, filled with infinite possibilities and formed by the unifying principle of eternal love. This is possible and this is real because Jesus just doesn’t have life. He is the very source and pattern of life. He reassured the Sadducees and he reassures us: “Now God is not the God of the dead but the living.”