Michaelmas 2014

Michaelmas 2014 ( John 1:47-51) “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened

And the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Worship is the key to eternal love.

Without worship love slowly and inexorably devolves into sentimentality, demand, separation and despair. The war in heaven as described by the beloved apostle John in the Book of Revelation is a war instigated and fought over worship.

God created a vast array of angels before He created the universe of matter, energy, time and space. He ordered the angelic beings in nine distinct categories according to form and function. They are Seraphim, Cherubim, Powers, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Virtues, Archangels and Angels. Within those categories each individual angelic being is unique in personal identity and ministry according to the form and function of that category.

God created the angelic beings by love, through love and for love. God the Father created the angels by power of the Holy Spirit to live and move and have their being in the love of the Son through the worship of the Son.

In the hierarchy of form and function the Seraph class angels lead the worship of heaven. The preeminent Seraph was Lucifer. Seraph means “burning bright” with holiness in love. Lucifer means “light bearer”. You could also understand his name as chalice of light. Lucifer led the countless numbers of angels in worship according to each class of being and each individual’s unique gifts.

The Mystery of Lucifer’s rebellion against God is the mystery of Love. Love requires a choice to be real. Love evolves and changes and transforms according to the principle of the choice and according to the pattern of the Son. That pattern is service through worship, kindness and compassion.

The details of Lucifer’s fall are not revealed to human beings. The general pattern is revealed. Lucifer began to compare the other angels to himself. He began to take his eyes off God. He decided that all of the other angelic beings were lesser than he. He chose to use his position as worship leader of heaven to alter the meaning and purpose of worship.

In this process we see that the mystery of evil is that it is a distortion of love. The highest form of love is worship. And so, the greatest distortion of love comes when a created being attempts to redefine, distort and eventually subvert worship. Eventually, Lucifer came to believe that only he knew the proper form of worship. He came to the place where he first invited then demanded of the angelic host to offer their imperfect worship to him so he could purify it within his superior intellect and sanctity then offer it to God.

Lucifer distorted his purpose to issue the call to worship and instead spoke the words: I am like God. It was a half -truth that led to a deceit- a fatal lie.  One third of the angels embraced this distortion. In following Lucifer they separated from God and lost their union with eternal love which is eternal life.

The smallest and comparatively weakest of the lowest class of angels heard the half- truth, perceived the deceit and rejected the lie. As so many of the angels chanted to Lucifer: you are like God, this least of all the angels shouted out the truth that Lucifer and so many other chose to distort. That shout was and is” Who is like God?” In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament that question is “Mi ca El”? Michael.

At that point war arose in heaven as all of the angels made the one real choice all beings created for love must make. We know the result. We know that Michael declared the truth of worship. We know that two thirds of the angels remained in that truth. We know that Lucifer attempted to subvert divine will by imposing his will on Michael and the loyal angels. We know that Michael defeated Lucifer by the power of God.

The war Lucifer started in heaven continues here on earth. It is a spiritual war fought over the issue of worship, love and life. Lucifer has so corrupted his own being that he now seeks to distort and subvert the highest form of love to build what he vainly imagines to be his kingdom.

So why does this matter to us?

Pride is the great distortion of our unique identity in divine love. Pride distorts the original grace of creation to re-form angelic spirits and human souls through the assertion of the will to power. The face of evil is not the grotesque images of supernatural monsters or violent dictators. The face of evil is an angel of light who tells us what we want to hear and whispers to us that we deserve what we desire and have a right to claim what we want whenever we want it. It is the voice of seduction that appeals to our reason, will and emotion to redefine God, creation and ourselves.

Lucifer forfeited his role as worship leader. He no longer issues the call for spirits and souls to immerse themselves in the infinite and eternal love of the Triune God. Michael now has that position. And the call to worship Michael proclaims throughout the universe is “Who is like God”?

The preeminent role of the angels in relation to mortals is to call us to worship the Father by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of the Son. The highest priority your guardian angel has for you is to encourage you to make worship your highest priority. The Plan of Salvation in Jesus Christ is the reunification of lost souls to a personal relationship with infinite and eternal love.  Jesus has assigned Michael the great and joyful responsibility to bear the name that proclaims the call to eternal life in the call to worship. “Who is like God?”

Pentecost 15

Pentecost 15 (Matthew 20:1-16)

“The first will be last and the last will be first.”

Divine principles frequently contradict human values.

Certainly, the Old Testament records this aspect of life for us. God called Jonah to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh The Bible describes Nineveh as a wicked city. The people of Nineveh had conquered many of the surrounding nations. They were militaristic and brutal.

The prophet Jonah, like most people in Israel, feared and hated Nineveh. Jonah did not want to preach repentance to the enemies of his nation. He wanted them to die in their sin under God’s judgment. He even complains to God that God is merciful and forgiving. Jonah wants the wrath. He demands the condemnation.

Jonah is the reluctant prophet and the rebellious prophet who insists on defining God as condemnation even as God insists on revealing himself as merciful and compassionate. Jonah valued power- the power to destroy the enemies of his people. God values relationships. God wants to restore and rebuild relationships through a process of repentance and transformation.

Jesus’ parable about the workers confronts human value about rewards and punishments. Jesus told the parable in such a way that most people, both rich and poor, powerful and powerless, would react with protest. As the workers in the parable state: it isn’t fair. Those who came early should be paid more. Those who came late should be paid less.

Of course, Jesus is using this parable in the same way God used the events in Jonah’s life. Jesus used the parable as a mirror for the human soul. Where God is generous, merciful and compassionate people tend to be penurious, judgmental and condemning. Where God declares that a bruised reed he will not break and a dimly burning wick he will not quench, people tend to see any sign of weakness as an opportunity to subvert and discredit.

The underlying principle of the parable is the underlying principle of the Plan of Salvation. That principle is grace. That grace is universal and it is abundant. As the landowner chose to pay all of the workers the same amount so God offers the same level of grace to all.

A day’s wage in Jesus’ day is the sum of money that can buy enough food for that day. The landowner makes sure that all who responded to his call to labor in his fields will have enough to buy food for the day.

Divine grace is similar. Divine grace is God’s outpouring of blessing for that day.  The character of the Landowner is the very character of God. God is love. God is more willing to bless that we are to receive the blessing or to share the blessing.

The principle of grace is frequently scandalous to human beings who are lost in separation from God. Jonah displays how he is scandalized by Divine grace when he complains that God heard the prayers of repentance from Nineveh and spared the city from destruction.

The people in the parable, speaking on behalf of the people hearing the parable, are likewise scandalized by the generosity of God. They are not looking for grace. They are looking for rewards.

Grace is God’s unmerited favor towards us. No one deserves God’s favor. All have separated from God and live from the place of self-will and pride. God loves us anyway.  Grace is not reward. Grace is mercy and compassion. Grace initiates a process of transformation. What blocks grace is pride and self-will. What liberates the soul to be immersed in grace is gratitude.

The Holy Spirit shows us where we are still lost in separation by the attitude we bring to the principles of the Kingdom and by the actions we bring forth in how we treat other people. If you are lost in the religious categories of rewards and punishments you will experience the generosity of God as unfair. If you seek to be first within the religious categories of rewards and punishments you will experience divine grace as a personal affront to your demand for God to reward you as God punishes or with holds blessings from people you perceive as lesser than you.

Jesus commends to us the way of kindness and compassion grounded in the infinite love of the infinite God who is love. If you make a real choice to accept Jesus as Lord, Jesus will send the Holy Spirit to help you discern where you are still lost in judgment, condemnation and separation. Jesus will show you where you are withholding a blessing from others and how that withholding only diminishes your own soul. In that awareness, Jesus will invite you to receive grace sufficient for the day to make a change.

God saved the people of Nineveh despite Jonah. God invites us to participate in the Plan of Salvation so that we can experience transforming grace. We experience that transforming grace as we yield self-will to divine will. We become living channels of that transforming grace as we say yes to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to live and move and have our being in the inexhaustible abundance of divine love. The grace creates the expansion of our souls as we say yes to God to become the living fountains of grace in our families, the parish and the community.

Jonah wasn’t there yet. He wanted wrath. He was lost in spite. He missed the joy of salvation the angels experience when even one soul repents and returns to the Lord. The people in the parable and who heard the parable weren’t there yet either. They, too, were lost in spite. They wanted a reward commensurate with their self-image as the self-righteous who deserved more and demanded more. In the demand to be first in line for a reward they made themselves last to receive the blessing as a gift.

 Jesus offers us something very different than wrath and much better than a reward. Jesus offers the generosity and abundance of grace- of unconditional love.

Holy Cross Day 2014

Holy Cross Day 2014 (John 12:31-36a)

“I, if I be lifted up, will draw all people to me.”

The cross of Christ divides human history. Everyone before Christ died in a state of separation from God. Everyone since Christ is offered reunification with God.

The cross of Christ is the instrument by which God overcomes separation. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world. There are two parts to that statement. Jesus allowed himself to be placed into the breach of separation between humanity and God. In that place, Jesus willingly accepted the consequence of the human choice to separate from God. That choice is what the church calls “original sin”, or: the origin of sin.

In addition to Original Sin, Jesus also took upon himself all of the actual sins of omission and commission that all people have ever or will ever commit. There is no such thing as a secret sin or a victimless crime. Jesus experienced every sin and every crime humanity commits.

On the cross, Jesus experiences the universal and particular consequences of sin. The universal consequence is death and judgment. The particular consequence in the unique death of every individual who has ever lived and will ever live. The death of Jesus on the cross is the assurance that no one ever dies alone. Jesus is right there with them.

From time to time people relay stories of some gruesome and horrible death. They ask the question: where was God? Where was God when bullies kicked a teen ager to death? Where was God when a young child died so tragically? Where is God in a world where people kill innocent civilians in the name of one true religion?

God was right there. Jesus experienced that death personally. And, Jesus revealed to his beloved apostle John that he takes away the sting of death and the memory of death from all who receive his offer of divine love.

On the cross, Jesus accepted the full force of human sin, pride, fear, anger and self-will. Jesus accepted the consequence of sin: death. That death is physical and spiritual Jesus entered into that place which the Bible calls the Abomination of Desolation: the inverted pride of despair in the place of eternal separation from God.

God lives in the eternal realm. To enter into the Divine Presence is to leave time and enter into the Eternal. Sadly, souls lost in separation from God are lost in time and attached to time. The fatal irony of separation is that people have no time for God because we have no time for the eternal. We make no time for God because we make no time for the eternal.

The sufferings of the lost souls are entirely self- inflicted as they reject the eternal Real Presence of the Divine in a vain effort to hold onto the duality of time.

There is no duality in the eternal Real Presence of God. There is only love. There is only patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and delight.  In that unitive state there is only the joy of growing in the infinite knowledge and love of the infinite and eternal love.

On the cross, Jesus saves us from sin and death through love. It is the eternal love of God incarnate in the particular person of Jesus Christ who embraces the duality of sin, separation and death. In that embrace Jesus transforms sin back into original virtue, death back into original life, separation back into original unity.

The three parts of salvation Jesus accomplished on the cross are: justification, sanctification and glorification.

Justification is reunification of lost souls to God. As the new Adam, Jesus resets human nature back to its original pattern, The reset is a gift Jesus offers to all people regardless of who we are or what we do or even what we believe. Jesus offers justification (reunification) to people of all religions or no religions, to fine upstanding moral people as well as to people steeped in vice and sin, to the poor, the sick the lonely and the oppressed as well as to the rich the prideful the powerful and the oppressors.

In Jesus, God the Father restores to our entire species what we so foolishly abandoned and even more foolishly refuse to value.

The sacrament of Justification is baptism. The image of infant baptism is a perfect image of the gift of Justification. We are justified (reunited to God) by grace through faith- initially the faith of the church, eventually as we grow in grace- our own faith and personal trust in Jesus Christ.

The second part of salvation is Sanctification. The sacrament of sanctification is Holy Communion. The person of the Holy Trinity who oversees, directs and guides the soul in the process of sanctification is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit always leads the soul into a deeper, more profound and joyful friendship with Jesus Christ. The two Biblical marks of friendship are time and attention. Friendship with Jesus is an active dynamic that sets us free from the tyranny of time, the pride of time and the despair of time to live and move and have our being in eternal love. Jesus sets us free to move more freely and more joyfully through time without being enslaved to time.

Attachment to time is slavery to duality. The religious manifestation of slavery to duality is legalism. Legalism always asks the question: what is the minimum I must do to gain the maximum reward? It is a question grounded in the deceit of separation and fueled by pride. It takes an entire lifetime of living the new life and following the new Way of living in friendship with Jesus to overcome this attachment to duality.

Finally, the third aspect of salvation Jesus achieved for us on the cross is glorification. Glorification takes place outside of time in the realm of the eternal. For those souls still attached to the duality of rewards and punishments, of the least effort for the maximum result, the first aspects of Glorification will be purgation.

In union with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, all souls will ask Jesus to help them surrender their attachment to the bondage of time and slavery to duality.

Since glorification takes place in the eternal realm, Anglicans do not assign a quantity of time to purgation. We grow in glorification in the hereafter much as we have chosen to grow in sanctification in the here and now. We grow according to our desire to change.

On the cross, Jesus reunified a lost and prideful humanity with the very source of life by the personal power of infinite and eternal love. It was if sin, being a drop of black ink, fell into an infinite ocean of pure unstained love.

 This is what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross.

This is what Jesus is now accomplishing for us on the cross.

This is what Jesus will forever accomplish for us on the cross.

Jesus says from the place of infinite love that resounds throughout time and eternity: “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all people to me.”

Now and forever, world without end. Amen,.

Pentecost 13

Pentecost 13 (Matthew 18:15-20

“For where two or three are gathered in my Name: I am there among them.”

In most cases, it is better to preserve a relationship than to be right. Law based religion seeks both to practice and impose right behavior. Knowledge based religion seeks both to hold and require right belief.

Jesus teaches that the purpose of the Law is to facilitate right relationship. There can be no rigid inflexible uncompromising practice when we follow the Jesus Way of right relationship. The way of right relationship is the Way of abundant life. The practice of this Way begins with silence. At first, this way of silence seems counterintuitive.

Do you experience silence in your life? Do you choose moments of silence for your life? The English lay theologian C.C\S. Lewis envisioned Hell as a realm of endless noise. The purpose for this noise is to keep the fallen angels and lost human souls in a state of distraction and agitation.

God says: be still and know that I am God. The prophet Elijah discovered the Real Presence of the Divine in the silent moment following conflict and natural disaster. The Psalmist writes: “For God alone my soul in silence waits.” We not only need moments of silence in our lives, silence is a basic design feature of our souls. Silence holds Real Presence.

Satan wants to keep us distracted by noise and lost in the melodrama of earthly existence. Make a different choice. Choose to enter into moments of silence each day. Silence isn’t magic. Silence isn’t easy. It is not the lightning spiritual path of the quick fix. It is a practice.

Silence is very similar to gardening. You plan, you prepare, you plant, you prune and you wait patiently. Are you willing to wait for Jesus? Or, do you always have one eye on the clock and one foot out the door to chase after the next thing? From Silence we make room for Jesus.

The practice of the Way of relationships is communal. The old English word for this was “corporate.” In North America that word has acquired some connotations that are not necessarily helpful to our understanding of the Way. Nevertheless, it is not a bad word. It simply means “out of many- one.” The one God himself is a unified community of three distinct co-eternal persons. Moses observed that this corporate God, the One who is eternally manifesting as three persons, created us in His own image and likeness. We, too, are many and one. The Biblical writers assert that the basic unit of society is the family- not the individual. The apostles teach that the basic unit of the church is the parish. We become more of who God created us to be in community.

From time to time people tell me that they have a personal relationship with God and therefore don’t need the church. A phrase they often use is: “it’s just me and God.” From time to time other people tell me they are spiritual but not religious. They also say they don’t need a church or a religion to find God. God has a very different perspective. We can know God’s perspective by reading Moses and the prophets. We can experience God’s perspective in Jesus Christ.

Jesus gives us a principle as he says: when two or three of you are gathered together. It is the principle of relationship. It is the image and likeness of love. It is the reality that love cannot exist apart from a set of relationships.

That principle offers insight into the very nature of the Triune God who is love, who is one and three. That principle also offers insight into understanding who we are. We are collectively the Body of Christ. A person is saved from original separation ( original sin) individually by being grafted into the Triune God through the waters of baptism. A Christian who stands separate and apart is an oxymoron.

Our Heavenly Father reunifies each of us to Himself in Jesus Christ and each of us to all of us in Jesus Christ. The great work of sanctification (personal transformation) can only be accomplished in community. When we stand apart we lose the blessing Jesus offers us through His Body, the Church. When we stay apart we deny others the blessing God designed into our souls to bring to others. When we live apart we are lost. God designed us for community.

It is not easy. It does not come naturally. It requires the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit. It requires that we heal ourselves in the medicine of immortality and nourish ourselves in the food and drink of new and unending life. The sacrament of total immersion is Holy Communion. The Church requires that at least two people be present for Holy Communion: the priest and one other who together hold the image of God in community. The Mass is the symbol and the emerging reality of the Body of Christ, the faithful community.

The process of sanctification- transformation in the co-eternal community of divine love- will only take place in the community of the faithful, the Church. The cutting edge of sanctification is learning to surrender self- will to divine will. The application is in how we manage our relationships.

That is why it is usually more important to learn how to preserve a relationship than it is to be right. The Holy Spirit can always bring greater clarity of thought to the faithful as we accept the fact we may be wrong. Once we break a relationship to prove ourselves right and the other person wrong, it becomes much more difficult to repair the soul. We move from the sanctifying grace of the community to the pride of the individual will to power. Pride kills. Love enlivens.

The Holy Spirit creates and preserves unity in community at the altar of sacrifice in the sacrament of divine love. All blessings flow from the altar to be metabolized by the faithful community before the blessings can be appropriated by the individual and then shared.

As we do this, as we follow where the Holy Spirit leads, as we embrace the Way our Heavenly Father designed us as a species and as a community- as we make a real choice to do these things- Jesus assures us He is with us.

 “For where two or three are gathered in my Name: I am there among you.”