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.