Pentecost 8

Pentecost 8 (Matthew 14:13-21) He had compassion on them.

In Jesus God reveals that he is love. That love is universal and unconditional.

God has many attributes. God has power (omnipotence) but God is not power. God has knowledge
(Omniscience) but God is  not knowledge. The co-eternal Son surrendered all of his divine attributes when he became a human being. What he did not surrender and could not surrender is the divine nature. The divine nature is universal unconditional love. That is the Good News Jesus brings to all
people everywhere.

The great challenge religious people create for ourselves is a false image of God. That image of God derives from fear. Some people fear the world is broken and can never be healed. They want God to fix the world’s problems. They want to know and impose the right government and the right economic system.

Some people fear that there just isn’t enough to go around. They want God to give them what they need and deserve to live well.

Some people fear that God is a God of rewards and punishments. They need to know what they must believe and what they must do to earn God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath.

Some people believe that God not only punishes the unrighteous who fail to accept right belief and practice right behavior, they take it one step further and assert the fear that God will even punish the righteous who tolerate the unrighteous. They take it upon themselves to legislate on Earth what they believe to be divine law in heaven. They execute punishment upon the unrighteous lest God pour forth His wrath on them for failing to impose his Law.

The Bible says: perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love not only casts out fear, it transforms fear back into love by grace through faith.

How do we know this? How can we be sure? The answer is Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect love of God in human flesh.

God the Father instructed holy mother Mary to name her child “Jesus”, which means “savior”. God the Father also reveals to us that He has another name, an older name, a powerfully descriptive name for the Son. At the Baptism of Jesus and at the Transfiguration of Jesus, God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit to anoint Jesus and reveal that older more powerful and descriptive name. That name is: The Beloved.

In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for The Beloved is ‘O Agapetos. It is the word agape- steadfast, holy, unconditional, universal, uncrated, eternal love.

Jesus just doesn’t speak of this love. He just doesn’t demonstrate this love. He is this love.

Many people witnessed the miracles Jesus performed and concluded: he’s got the power. He is the one who will force the unrighteous to submit to divine law. He is the one who will give our nation military dominance over all other nations. He is the one who will bring us wealth.

The power by which Jesus performed his miracles is the power of universal unconditional love. It is the real presence of God who confronts scarcity and creates abundance, who meets sickness and manifests health, who transforms sin back into its original virtue by infusing the soul with the uncreated light and infinite compassion, who takes death into himself and transforms death into new unending life.

Jesus healed everyone who came to him. There were no exceptions. There were no preconditions.

Jesus fed everyone who came to him in a state of hunger and thirst. He did not ask which religious sect or political party they belonged to. If they were hungry- he fed them.

Jesus welcomed everyone who came to him with open arms. He turned no one away. He kept no checklist to exclude any group of people for any reason. Once, when his disciples attempted to prevent children from approaching Jesus he gently rebuked the disciples and said: Let the children come to me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus never practiced exclusivity, condemnation or separation. He taught: love your neighbor. When someone asked: who should I consider to be my neighbor? Jesus said: everyone. Everyone who comes to you in need is your neighbor. Everyone you meet who is in need is your neighbor.

Jesus even taught that how we treat those we consider least- least desirable, least worthy, least welcome is how we treat him. This is love- agape love. It is not the love we normally experience or bring forth in our lives. It is a love whose source is God alone. We can surrender our souls to God to be embraced by this love. We can ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to be channels of this love. We cannot produce agape by will alone.

Jesus reveals that God is agape love. That love is universal, unconditional and abundant. In the miracle of the loaves and fishes everyone is fed and there is more left over that what they initially had.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem reasonable. Somehow, it doesn’t seem real. Somehow, it contradicts everything we think we know about the world and society. It is the original pattern of our species that our first parents, Adam and Eve, rejected. It is the new life and the new way of living Jesus came to restore and continues to come to us to restore.

The blessed sacrament of Holy Communion is the divine abundance of grace Jesus pours into our souls to equip us to practice the new way of living. That new way of living is abundance for us and for all people everywhere through us.

What is the standard of this new way of living? Compassion.

What actions does this new way of living produce? Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Welcome the stranger. Care for the children. It is that straightforward and direct. It is that difficult and if we are honest it is that offensive. No one of us can do everything. Each of us can do something.

In the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion Jesus unites his body to our bodies, his blood to our blood, his life to our lives. He pours himself into our souls in the infinite abundance of divine love so we may pour ourselves out in compassionate acts of kindness to the people God brings into our lives.

Jesus is the compassion of God reaching out to the lost and suffering people of the world through us.

Pentecost 7

Pentecost 7 (Matthew 13:31-33;44-52)

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

The Kingdom of Heaven is a set of personal relationships.

The language of the Kingdom is the language of relationships. It is a poetic language of metaphor, simile and symbol. It is a language that derives from an experience. In many ways it is the language of romance.

The kingdom of heaven emerges in the midst of our daily lives in the most unassuming and unforeseen ways. Jesus teaches that the kingdom is like a tiny seed. That seed is easy to ignore. But, it contains the full potential of something greater and something magnificent. If we look only at the outward and visible form of the seed we miss the greater reality the seed contains.

The Kingdom is also transformative. Like the small measure of yeast it penetrates the whole slowly and inexorably. It permeates the soul as the yeast permeates the dough. If we are looking for a quick fix or an immediate gratification we miss the emergent quality of grace.

These qualities of great potential in small measures require the virtue of patience to appreciate and to apply.

The Kingdom of heaven is also expressed in the categories of value and priority.

And so, the kingdom is like a hidden treasure or a rare pearl of great price. The merchant sells all of his wealth to gain the greater treasure he discovers almost by chance. He acts quickly and decisively lest he lose the prize. He makes the acquisition of the treasure his first priority.

A basic principle revealed in the Bible is that we worship that which we value most. And, we can discern that utmost value by where we place our time and attention. What we think about most shows us what we treasure. What brings us the greatest joy in life is where we place our passion.

In Jesus’ day that treasure was wealth and power. The people who met Jesus expected the Messiah to give the righteous elite of Israel the power to destroy their enemies, enslave the nations and fill Jerusalem with gold and silver and precious gems.

For all the outward display of religious fervor in First Century Judea, the  bottom line value then was no different from the bottom line value of our society today. That bottom line value is wealth and power.

Jesus use of parables to describe the kingdom of heaven in the poetic language of relationships confused and bewildered everyone. Only his mother and his best friend appreciated that language and valued that description of the kingdom. Everyone else simply ignored the teaching and kept looking for what they considered the obvious. For them, the Kingdom of Heaven was the embellished stories of King David the conqueror and King Solomon the wealthy. For them, Rome was the image of the Kingdom they anticipated.

Relationship, kindness, compassion and personal transformation in Divine Love were all meaningless categories at best and  outright obstacles to the bottom line value at worst.

Nevertheless, Jesus adds that one additional quality of the Kingdom is universality. It is like a broad net that encompasses all sorts and conditions of people. The Kingdom is the relationship God offers in Jesus Christ. The offer of the relationship is universal and unconditional.

No one deserves the kingdom. No one is entitled to the Kingdom. No one is excluded from the kingdom. It is an unconditional gift to all people everywhere.

The final sorting of the good and bad is the self selection of the final judgment. The basis of the final judgment is the ultimate value the individual soul has chosen to embody in this life.

Those who have chosen love as the ultimate value receive love as the ultimate reward. Love is not a sentiment or a feeling. Love is a person: Jesus Christ. All who seek love find love and they find love in Jesus Christ.

All who have chosen wealth and power as the ultimate value in life walk the path of pride. The end result of pride is despair. What they seek most is simply not present in the Kingdom. What they value most is what they have chosen to worship, What they have chosen to worship forms and shapes and molds their soul. Like the fish that have no value to the fisherman, the souls of the lost cannot find any value in the central defining value of the Kingdom.

Had these souls even the tiniest seed of love in their souls they could make a different choice. Had they even the smallest measure of yeast in their souls they would experience transforming grace. They did not value the grace; they valued the money. They did not value the love; they valued the power. They were not willing to sacrifice their attachment to wealth and power. Unlike the merchant, they did not make the choice to buy the field that held the treasure. They did not choose the pearl of great price.

The Kingdom of heaven emerges in our ordinary day to day experiences. The guiding principle of the kingdom is choice. The bottom line value of the kingdom is love. The Kingdom of Heaven emerges from where we place our priorities and what we value most.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like seed, yeast, treasure, a rare pearl of great price and the fisherman’s net cast wide and far to encompass all people. The Kingdom of heaven is like all of these things and more. The Kingdom of Heaven is nothing more and mothing less than Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 6

Pentecost 6 (Matthew 13:24-30;36-43) “The righteous will shine like the Sun.”

Righteousness is right relationship. Our Heavenly Father created us to live and move and have our being in the context of three sets of relationships. The Primary relationship is our friendship with Jesus.

God the Father created us by the power of God the Holy Spirit acting in the material universe to be the forever friend of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus offers this friendship to all people. The Holy Spirit offers to help us grow and transform in this friendship. God the Father designed into us an ability to accept this friendship. The design feature that facilitates friendship with God is choice.  Because God designed us for love he gifted us with choice. Love is not real unless it is chosen. Because we have the ability to make choices we also have the ability to change.

Moses records for us the broad outline of the original choice our species made to separate from God. Theologians call this choice: original sin. It was and continues to be the choice to reject God’s love in an effort to acquire God’s power and knowledge. The Prophets observed how this original choice enters into our species and governs the beliefs, expectations and actions of each generation. The prophets observed and experienced the consequences of this original choice in the details of daily life.

The first and most deadly consequence of Original Sin is the choice to ignore or subvert one of the basic features God designed into this universe of matter, energy, time and space. That feature is the Sabbath Day.  The Prophets heard all of the excuses. I have a business to run. I have social obligations. In the First Century many Jews adopted the Greek obsession with sports and placed sporting events first in their choices. The prophets recorded their observations that most people most of the time simply ignore the Sabbath Day. Others adopted a minimalist approach that allowed them to claim an outward appearance of righteousness by giving God an hour of their time before they moved on to what they believed was more important.

The second deadly consequence of Original Sin is poverty. God designed abundance into the universe. Man creates scarcity. Moses gave certain laws to hold scarcity in check and ensure that none of God’s children would suffer poverty or starvation. The prophets recorded their observations that people simply ignored those laws. They substituted the call to bring abundance to all people through acts of kindness and compassion with an assertion that poverty is God’s punishment for the weak, the lazy and the sinful.

The Law God gave to Moses and the prophets asked the people to follow is the impersonal aspect of God in the world. The Law is perfect as God is perfect. The Law is immutable as God is immutable, The Law shows us the best way to be human in the context of the three sets of relationships God designed for us to enjoy.  St. Paul tells us that no one other than Jesus has ever been able to keep the Law. St. James goes so far as to write that the Law is a seamless whole. Even if you could keep 99% of the Law, failure in only one point means failure in all. No one other than Jesus can be righteous according to the standard of the law.

So how did Jesus keep the Law? He never separated from God. He remained in union with the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the second Adam who resets human nature according to the original pattern God designed into our species,

As the Law is the impersonal aspect of God in the universe so Jesus is the personal presence of God in the universe. In this parable Jesus comments on another aspect of our Heavenly Father’s Plan of salvation. Last week the parable spoke of universal unconditional grace as the seed. The universal unconditional grace offers a choice.  This week’s parable speaks of the result of that choice.

Those who make a choice to receive the universal unconditional grace of God are grafted into Christ. They are the children of grace who are being remade according to the pattern of grace. Jesus is the personal aspect of that pattern. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into the depth of our souls to restore divine love as the animating principle of our lives and the motivating force in our lives.

The three outward and visible signs of whether we are responding to grace and how we are responding to grace are the three loves Jesus taught, lived and demonstrated. The three loves comprise the summary of the Law we hear at the beginning of the Liturgy. They are: love God first through worship. Love other people by acts of compassion and kindness. Love our selves by making the choice to change and transform our minds, heart and wills in divine love according the pattern and the principle of the Law.

We can do this in two ways. We can attempt to do this from the place of separation. If we make that choice we focus exclusively on the minimal. We give as little as possible to gain the maximum reward. By so doing, we miss the blessing. We are bringing forth counterfeit righteousness much as the seeds in the parable initially look like the grain producing wheat but grow into weeds.

Or, we can follow the inward and spiritual path of friendship with Jesus. As we follow this path we grow to understand that the giver of salvation is in fact the gift. Jesus transforms our desires as we cultivate our friendship. We no longer think in terms of scarcity,. We no longer ask: what is the least I must to do to gain the most God has to offer? The result of that path is abundance so filling our minds, hearts and wills that we become instruments of abundance and well springs of grace for other people.

The result of such a path is glory. Jesus says those who make a real choice to live and move and have our being according to the new life and the new way of living He offers will shine with the brilliance of the Sun. The saints observe that this light derives from the co-eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Jesus concludes his parable with the word: listen. Make a wise choice. Choose the path of universal unconditional grace. Choose Jesus.

Pentecost 4

Pentecost 4 (Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30) “Come to me.”

Prophets command people to follow a law in order to earn God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath. Sages tell people how to follow a spiritual discipline to discover the soul’s journey to God.  Modern teachers say: follow you own passion and realize you are God. Jesus invites everyone to come to him.

Jesus is the original pattern of our species. Modern people, both secular and religious, define Jesus as one of many historic religious teachers who offers one of many ways to find God.

Jesus reveals that he himself is the way God chose to find us. Jesus says: no one knows the Father except the Son.

The record of Moses and the prophets in over a thousand years of human experience is consistent and unique. Human beings are not seeking to find God. The religious attempt to use God to acquire and maintain power and wealth. The secular ignore God during good times, blame God during bad times, and try to bargain with God when nothing else works.

Twice now in our history, the co-eternal Son, the Beloved, has walked with us, talked with us, and invited us to share his forever friendship. The first time the Son visited us was in Eden. Our first parents chose to reject him in an attempt to acquire knowledge and power. They rejected his friendship in order to become his equal.

The second rejection was at the cross.

The Apostolic witness is very clear and brutally honest. Virtually no one wanted Jesus for who he was.  Every one wanted Jesus to fit the template of knowledge and power that humanity imposes on God. When Jesus failed to fulfill that template, some used their power to kill him. The disciples betrayed him and abandoned him. The crowds simply walked away. Only his mother with her two companions and the teen who wanted to be his best friend remained with him to the end.

This is the defining flaw in our species. We as a species and each of us individually are lost in separation from God. Moses and the prophets observe that we are not just accidentally lost. We are wilfully and spitefully lost.

The great gift of divine love in Jesus Christ is also the unfailing mirror of original sin (original separation) to the soul. How we react or respond to Jesus reveals who we are choosing to become.

Our Heavenly Father designed us by the power of the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of the Son to be the forever friends of the Son. This is the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the real choice our Heavenly Father sets before us. This is the one real choice the Holy Spirit inspires us and all people everywhere to make.

The choice is the Beloved.

As in Eden the choice involved one simple command so now in this Church age the choice involves one simple invitation.

The choice for the world now is at once very simple and incredibly difficult. The choice is to accept the divine invitation to meet Jesus, the Beloved, at the time and the place God the Father designed into the universe. God the Holy Spirit speaks to everyone and seeks to inspire everyone to make this choice. It is the function of God the Holy Spirit to issue the call to worship.

The call to worship is the invitation to meet Jesus, God incarnate. God sacramentally present in our world. As we meet Jesus at the altar of real presence on the day of real presence, the Triune God immerses our soul into infinite and eternal life and love.

Most people most of the time reject this invitation. It is inconvenient for some. It is a lower priority for others. It does not align  with the inherited beliefs of most of us. As with the people in the first century who actively or passively nailed Jesus to the cross the people of the 21^st century do not receive what they will not believe.

Certainly, Jesus knows this. That is why the Holy Spirit speaks to all of us and to each of us as long as we live in this world. That is why Jesus makes himself available to us at the altar regardless of who shows up to greet him, the meet him, to receive him.

That is why in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible the saints of the Church Triumphant say: Come. The Holy Spirit echoes that invitation with the same word: Come.

And Jesus in the gospel reading today, from his throne of glory at the right hand of the Father, and at the altar of real presence says: Come. Come to me. Come and receive the blessing of divine love. Come and receive abundant life. Come and be found by your forever friend who is with you always.