Candelmas 2015

Candlemas 2015 (Luke 2:22-40) “As it is written.”

Jesus came to fulfill the Law of Moses.

The Law reflects the fundamental pattern of the universe and our species. The three underlying principles of the Law are: choice, cause and effect, and consequence.

No one ever breaks the law. We can ignore the law. We can subvert the law. We can even violate the law. But, we cannot break the Law. The Law can and will break us.

That is why salvation is not about our ability to keep the Law. Moses and the prophets and the apostles are very clear that we cannot keep the law. Deeply rooted in our souls is the spiritual pride that insists on having everything my way.

Law based religion demands submission to the Law by an act of will. It ignores the deeper desires of the heart and the deepest desire of the soul.

Jesus was able to keep the law perfectly by love. As the incarnation of the logos, the transcendent rational pattern of the universe, Jesus in his own being resonates with the Law as the perfect plan and pattern of the divine. But, Jesus kept the law by love.

Theologians express this in a question. Was Jesus able not to sin; or, was Jesus not able to sin? If you ask the question from the place of will the answer is that Jesus was able not to sin. He could have sinned but he restrained his desires by an act of will in submission to the Law of God.

If you ask the question from the place of love the answer is that Jesus was not able to sin. The Ecumenical Councils decided that second answer- that Jesus was not able to sin- better expresses who Jesus is and how he made choices. Jesus is the very love of God in human flesh. His will is directed and ordered from his love. His love is the unchanging compass of love that led him from heaven to earth to the cross and back to heaven. It is the compass that will lead him back to earth in his second coming.

Mary kept the law of Moses in the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple by grace through faith grounded in love.

Mary did not keep the Law by will alone. She did not grit her teeth and suppress her own desires in order to earn God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath. She did make a real choice early in her life to surrender her heart to God by faith. In that faith she recognized and appropriated the universal grace God pours out to all people everywhere but most people ignore, distort or reject.

Mary kept the Law of Moses by presenting Jesus in the Temple and offering the appointed sacrifices at the appointed place and time as an act of love in response to grace.

She could have questioned the particularities of the Law as so many people then and now do. She could have used her intellect to rationalize away the clear and explicit command for her to travel to the Temple in Jerusalem on the 40^th day after the birth of Jesus to offer the specified sacrifice at the altar of sacrifice.

Remember, the Law is holy and good. The Law is perfect and immutable. The Law is the impersonal aspect of God imprinted on every particle of the universe. Mary kept the Law of sacrifice by grace through faith in love. In that choice Mary fulfilled her part in our Heavenly Father’s Plan of salvation.

Mary understood that what is written in the Bible reflects the transcendent and eternal pattern of God. The very form of the pattern is love. It is the love that sets reunites us to the Father, through the Son by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And, it is the love that sets us free from sin to make a real choice to transform sin back into virtue.

Mary’s preeminent virtues were humility and loyalty. Through humility Mary responded to God’s grace by saying: I am the Lord’s servant may God’s will be done. Through loyalty Mary lived her life with the desire to meet God at the time and the place God wrote into the universe for him to meet us.

At the feast of the Presentation that time and place is the Temple in Jerusalem. On this commemoration of that feast, the time and the place is here and now at the altar of sacrifice on the Seventh Day, the Day of Real Presence. The Seventh Day is the pattern God designed into the universe for us to  make the real choice to receive divine grace by faith through love. That choice enters into the world of cause and effect to produce a result. The result is the glory of God manifesting in our lies, transforming our souls and setting us free to be the beloved of the eternal Father.

Epiphany III

Epiphany III (Mark 1: 14-20)

Repent and believe the Good News

Good news seldom sells.

Bad news not only sells it can be used to instill fear and manipulate people.

There was an abundance of bad news in the religion of the first century. Most if not all of the sects of Judaism taught that the purpose of religion was to help people avoid God’s wrath and earn God’s favor.

The means to accomplish this was the Law. It was based on the Ten Commandments as well as the 606 additional laws Moses recorded during his lifetime. It was expanded by religious scholars to a large complicated system of thousands and thousands of rules and regulations.

That kind of a system required religious lawyers to interpret the law, religious courts to make judgments, religions police to enforce and an all-encompassing council, the Sanhedrin, to administer the system. The religion of the day said: follow these laws and we guarantee God will give you good things. Break these laws and we will punish you to administer God’s wrath. The great fear in law based religion is that if the righteous fail to punish the unrighteous then God’s wrath will fall on them as well.

Jesus never disputed the holiness of the law. He also never said: follow these laws in order to gain God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath. Jesus had a very different message: follow me.

This message is the Good News that God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ. It is a unique message. No other prophet or religious teacher has said this. They speak of following a law, a set of spiritual disciplines or a pattern of rituals. Only Jesus says: follow me. Only Jesus says: repent and believe the Good News.

The Good News is the real presence of God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

The bad news, from which we need to repent, is the human tendency to create God in our own image. The Bible describes two basic results from this choice. One is a religion of rigid, inflexible uncompromising beliefs and laws. The other is the lack of all standards, boundaries and structures. What these approaches share in common is the erosion of civility, kindness and compassion in society as a result of the assertion of self-will through pride.

Jesus offers a different way. It is the middle way of grace through faith in love.

It is the way that invites us to give up our demands and fears and judgments by entering into a personal relationship with the living God.

In the context of that personal relationship the law becomes a tutor and a guide. Our focus is on using the law in union with the Holy Spirit to discern where we need to seek divine help to transform our particular sins back into their original virtues. The Good News liberates. The bad news enslaves.

The Good News helps us to grow, transform and build. The bad news gives us permission to judge, condemn and destroy.  The Kingdom of God is a set of relationships we create and nurture in union with God.

The Kingdom of God is not something we impose by law and by force. As we grow into the Kingdom by grace through faith we become the change people long for and thirst for.

People came to Jesus because he told them the Good News that God is universal unconditional love. People followed Jesus because he showed them a new way of living in relationship with God and other people. People received the gift of Jesus as they came to understand that Jesus is the real presence of God reaching out to all people everywhere with the Good News that God is with us and God is for us.

Jesus asks us today to surrender judgment and condemnation of others as well as ourselves. Jesus asks us to receive the reality of God as Good News for us and for all people everywhere.

Epiphany ll

Epiphany ll (John 1:43-51)

You will see greater things than these.

Jesus makes all things new.

For a world lost in conflict and cynicism Jesus brings hope. He does this patiently and personally.

Our heavenly Father did not send his son into the world to impose a law or establish a program. He sent Jesus to establish and cultivate a personal relationship.

The law has its place. The rituals of our religion have their place. Their place is to facilitate the personal relationship our Heavenly Father offers us in Jesus Christ.

We see the pattern of this dynamic in this passage. Jesus always meets us where we are, accepts us fully and completely where we are and then offers us a new way forward into an abundant life we never dreamed possible.

When Jesus tells Nathaniel “you will see greater things than these” he is introducing Nathaniel into a new way of experiencing God, other people and himself.

There are two basic observations the Biblical writers record. The first is that most people most of the time do not pay attention. We do not pay attention to God, other people or the reality of who we are and who we might become. We are lost in the many distractions of our culture, our disordered desires and the subtle temptations of Satan to avoid change.

A second observation is a consequence of not paying attention. That observation can be summarized in the phrase: your God is too small. What keeps our God, our concept of God, too small, is pride. We all have a tendency to place God in a box. We each craft our own unique box to enshrine and limit God. For Philip, Nathaniel and the other disciples the box was nationalism and xenophobia. They believed God was the exclusive protector of their nation. They believed all other nations were cursed.

They did not pay attention to the prophets who declared that the Messiah would be a light to enlighten all of the nations. They refused to observe that God makes his sun to shine and rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Jesus knew this. He knew this from personal experience. He knew that God is infinite and universal love. He knew that people in general are lost in willful and spiteful separation from God. He also knew that the only solution to this problem was to offer people a new Way.

Jesus himself is the Way. As the disciples entered into that Way through a personal friendship with Jesus they discovered something amazing. They experienced life the way God intended us to experience life. They experienced the wonder and the mystery of divine love in their relationships with each other and with other people.

Jesus performed miracles through relationships. He transformed water into wine at a wedding banquet as the servants heard his word, believed his word and acted on his word. He fed thousands of hungry people as a child heard his word, believed his word and acted on his word by sharing his own lunch with Jesus.

He alludes to these miracles and more at the beginning of his public ministry. He astonishes Nathaniel by a simple statement. Then he says: does this impress you? You haven’t seen anything yet. Come. Follow me and you will experience God, other people and life itself in a new and amazing way.

Jesus says the same to us today. Come. Follow me. Meet me at the altar of sacrifice. Meet me on the seventh day of real presence. Read the Bible with me. Follow me as I seek the lost and find the lost. Join with me to feed the hungry and meet the needs of the poor, the sick and the lonely.

And realize that as you enter into this new way of life you still will see greater things than these.

The Baptism of Jesus

The Baptism of Jesus (Mark 1:4-11)

“You are my Son, The Beloved.”

If you are born once you will die twice. If you are born twice you will only die once.

The baptism of John, the last of the prophets, was a baptism of repentance. John himself recognizes that he is a transitional figure in our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation. He can only issue the prophetic call to repent and prepare. Jesus is the one, the only one, who can accomplish the Plan of Salvation.

John’s baptism is symbolic of the desire to seek a new life. Baptism in Jesus is the sacramental reality of the new life, and the new way of living God offers us.

John’s baptism calls for a choice to take an action. The choice is to repent- to recognize that I have sinned and will continue to sin.  The choice is to enter the waters of baptism as a sign and symbol of my need to die to sin.

John’s baptism can only point the way. Jesus accepts the baptism of John to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus had no need to repent of sin. Jesus never sinned. He never sinned because he never separated from God,

Moses and the prophets and the apostles uniquely identify the root cause of sin as separation from God. Sin is a consequence, and not even the immediate consequence, of the choice our species made to separate from God.

Repentance of actual sin- things done that we should not do as well as things left undone that we should do- is good. Repentance of actual sin alone has little effect on our lives.  We need to get to the root cause of actual sin. We need to receive and embrace our Heavenly Father’s solution to the underlying problem.

The problem is Original Separation (Original Sin). That choice forms every human soul. Collectively and individually we are lost in Separation. The lost live with a terrible but ill defined sense of pain- existential pain. That pain distorts every aspect of our being- our mind, heart and will. Those distortions affect every aspect of our lives.

A lost soul exists in three primary distortions: pride, self-will and fear. The distortion of pride is the claim to deity in the categories of knowledge and power. It is the claim the serpent used to tempt Adam and Eve. It is the attitude that says: I am the master of my fate; the captain of my soul. The  Bible is very clear that this kind of pride keeps us separated from God, other people and from the image and likeness of God imprinted on our souls. The Bible is also clear that pride always decays into despair.

Self- will is the will to power that insists: I want what I want and I want it now, and indeed I deserve it now. Fear is the wolf pack in the forest that haunts our dreams and fills us with doubt, insecurity and dread. It is the unforeseen and unpredictable events in life that take us by surprise and leave us powerless.

The actual sins of omission or commission that we commit are consequences of these distortions. That is why no set of laws or rituals can solve the problem of sin. If, as the Bible teaches, the problem is separation, existential pain, and the distortions of mind, heart and will that produce actual sin, then the only solution is reunification. That solution is God’s solution. That solution is Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist preached repentance to prepare the Way for salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Father’s declaration of reunification.

When God the Father audibly declares to Jesus: you are my Son, The Beloved, He is not only telling us about reunification- he is also showing us reunification. Jesus is reunification.

Our Heavenly Father’s Plan of salvation is organic. It is incarnational. And, it is sacramental. As God unites his divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ so he sends the Holy Spirit to unite us to the Father, through the Son in the sacramental waters of baptism.

In that union, Jesus overcomes the power of separation and sends the Holy Spirit into our souls to begin to heal the distortions of mind, heart and will that lead to actual sin.

The call to salvation is the apostolic call to receive the Father’s gift of reunification in the Son and then to live by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. As we heed that call and receive that gift we are re-born in Christ, we are born again to eternal life. We have a new life and enter into a new way of living in Christ and with Christ.

At his own baptism, Jesus enters the waters of an old model of outward repentance to transform that model into the new model of an inner reunification and transformation. At that moment of transition, God the Father declares to Jesus, to John the Baptist, to the crowds and to us just who Jesus is and just what he accomplishes: Jesus is the co-eternal Son of the Father. Jesus is The co-eternal Beloved on the one God who is infinite and eternal love. That love is eternal life now and forever. Amen.

Epiphany 2015

Epiphany 2015 (Matthew 2:1-12)

 “At the time of King Herod.”

The persons, places and events of the Bible are grounded in human history. King Herod ruled over Galilee under the authority of Rome. He started the project to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Magi were an order of scholars and priests in Persia. They studied math, astronomy and philosphy. They discerned the reality of the Divine in both science and religion, in the recorded observations of the prophets and the astronomers of the ancient world.

It is important to understand that the stories recorded in scripture are a record of how specific people at a specific time experienced God in the events. God reveals himself in the interactions of nature and human society.

In the Epiphany story we see several important themes emerge. These themes are part of a larger pattern of revelation that happens all around us.

First there is King Herod. He believes the Bible but rejects its message. How is this possible? For Herod, it meant he recognized the prophets as fortune tellers who saw into the future and recorded their visions. He read the scriptures from the narrow place of political power and expediency. He read to use not to receive wisdom. He read with the question: how can I use this to secure my power and to increase my power. Of course, this is not the purpose of the prophets.

The purpose of the prophets was to proclaim two words: repent and prepare. King Herod did neither. In his pride, he attempted to use the information in the prophetic books to impose his will on the people and events of his time. He had a narrow and rigid form of belief. He lacked a living and dynamic faith. And so, he missed his moment of grace by his own will to power.

It is important to know the scriptures. It is also important to understand the scriptures by grace through faith.

The Magi had very likely read the scriptures from a detached academic perspective. The Bible was one of many books they read and yes studied. They had no vested interest in the outcome of Biblical prophecy, as did Herod. Nevertheless, they also lacked the sense of personal investment the prophets asked.

What changed the Magi was the star. The star was their moment of grace. For them, as ancient astronomers, the star was not just a curious phenomena to be observed and catalogued. It had meaning. The Magi went on a journey of discovery. They had hope that the journey would bear a result. They had faith that the journey was the proper way to achieve that goal.

King Herod was spiritually frozen in a narrow rigid inflexible and uncompromising set of beliefs. He had chosen those beliefs from the place of pride and from the place of fear. Those beliefs now imprisoned his mind, heart and will in an unyielding and unteachable spiritual stagnation. He used those beliefs to defend his position and power. Sadly, his defenses also blocked his response to the grace of God revealed in scripture, nature and personal relationships.

The Magi also lived their lives from within a framework of belief. They observed the world, recorded their observations, formed theories to explain their recorded observations and occasionally even tested their theories.

Their decision to follow the star was the test – the experiment- they set for themselves to discern the greater truth. Their commitment to truth led them to Jesus who himself is the very pattern of truth.

Herod and the Magi represent two patterns. One is the pattern of stagnation. The other is the pattern of exploration. There is grace sufficient for everyone to experience the reality of God in nature, society, science, religion and interpersonal relationships.

God manifests himself to us in Jesus through many avenues. He uses the three primary channels of knowledge he designed into our species: mind, heart and will. He invites all people everywhere to taste the goodness of the Lord. Just a little taste is fine to start. Jesus is not an acquired taste- he is the bread of life.

At the time of King Herod people were lost in inherited belief systems based in fear and defended by force. God subverts fear through love in the person of the Christ Child. In the holy infant God says: do not be afraid. You have no reason to defend your- self from this child. For now, just set aside your beliefs. For now just hear the angels sing. For now, just follow the star. Now is your time. This time is your moment of grace.