Pentecost 6 (Luke 9:51-62)

“Go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom of God is the reunification and transformation of the soul.

The enemies and friends of Jesus thought of the Kingdom of God in earthly terms. They may have used the phrase “Kingdom of God” but they really meant ‘the Kingdom of Man.”

The Bible is a record of how human beings seek to use God to create and sustain the Kingdom of Man. All of the ancient empires fall into this category. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome all sought divine favor to establish and maintain the rule of man in the world.

They all invoked a very basic assertion: God is on my side. Since God is on my side I have the right to dominate, conquer and rule.

Virtually all people who met Jesus, listened to him teach and saw his miracles had the expectation that he would follow the pattern of the Kingdom of Man. He would inspire his followers. Raise an army. Use the divine power at his disposal to subjugate his enemies. And, he would create a new world order to impose divine Law on the nations.

He would authorize the righteous  to practice aggression against the unrighteous. He would demand the unrighteous submit to the rigid inflexible and uncompromising rule of the righteous.

To the very end this is how the people who knew Jesus interpreted his presence in the world.

And so, we see how James and John wish to punish the Samaritan villages for refusing to submit to them as the true righteous representative of God. Jesus rebukes the brothers for their pride and self-will. There is no condemnation in Jesus. Jesus never authorizes his follower or representatives to condemn.

And so, as Jesus nears Jerusalem there are those who seek to gain his favor. They are seeking the material rewards from the Kingdom of Man. They are seeking maximum wealth and power for minimal effort. Jesus is quick to clarify the cost of following him, the cost of discipleship.

To one man Jesus clarifies that he is not offering a palace to live in and a city to rule. Jesus himself has no permanent home in this world. To be sure, the entire planet belongs to Jesus. But, Jesus is not parceling out territory to his followers. He calls his followers to be stewards of his planet not owners.

To others Jesus asks for a reordering of priorities. The principle underlying the call to discipleship is: if you place God second you place God last. This is not a demand to submit to a monarch in fear. It is an invitation to surrender to the Beloved of God in love.

Where we chose to place our time and attention reveals our current spiritual state and our future spiritual direction.

The Summary of the Law sets the standard in the Call to worship. The call to worship invites us to make a real choice to enter into the Real Presence of God at the time and place God himself has designed into the very fabric of the universe.

It is as we surrender self-will to Divine will through love that we find our true self. That true self is the image and likeness of the Logos, the co-eternal Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. It is a life long journey away from fear, anxiety frustration and stagnation into an active dynamic transform life of service and  celebration.

No one then understood this amazing gift of God until the day of Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fulfills the promise of the Son to lead us into all truth.

It takes time. It requires choice. Each small choice we make to receive the word of God, to believe the word of God and to live the word of God moves us more closely to the one who is the Word of God. That person is Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of Man is the assertion of the individual will to power to use God and other people to meet our needs and desires. The Kingdom of God is the personal relationship our Heavenly Father offers all people everywhere to receive and experience. The quality of that relationship can be described as the adventure of a forever friendship with someone who knows us, cares for us, and has only our good as his goal.

This forever friendship is the Kingdom that Jesus asks us to proclaim to everyone we know and to everyone we meet.

 

 

Pentecost 5 (Luke 8:26-39)

Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.

Jesus is Good News. The Good News Jesus embodies is that God is real, God is personal, God is love.

The Good News is that God sets us free from whatever binds us, enslaves us and oppresses us. God does this in the active dynamic and practical personal relationship Jesus offers. Our Heavenly Father created all of us and each of us to be the forever friend of His co-eternal Son. To make that friendship real and substantial the co-eternal Son became a particular human being.

Jesus demonstrates to us and for us that God is not some abstraction. He also reminds us that there is no condemnation in God. In God there is only an infinite ocean of love. In God there is only an eternal outpouring of the waters of life.

The practical consequence of this revelation is the particular result. A basic principle of logic is that a difference that makes no difference is no difference. When we consider religion, Moses and the prophets invite us and encourage us to ask the basic question: what difference does this religion make in my life, the life of my family and of society as a whole.

Jesus made a significant difference for the man possessed by demons. Demon possession is not the same as mental illness. Any contact with the occult will result in mental breakdown. Demon possession is a rare but very real extreme case of occult activity.

It is unclear in this account why this man was possessed by demons.  Generally speaking, a demon cannot take possession of a human being apart from human choice. That is why any contact with the occult however tenuous is so dangerous.

Demons are the burnt out remnants of the angels who followed Lucifer in the war in heaven. Through pride they sought to become gods. Through despair they are now mere shadows of what they had been created to be. They exist as spirits of spite. They will not and cannot repent of their rebellion. But they vainly seek relief from their own self-imposed suffering.

Why the demons possessed the man is not explained. The result is very clear. The result is insanity, isolation and despair.  Someone who is possessed by demons is in a visible and tangible state of spiritual slavery. The end result of this spiritual slavery is death- usually by suicide.

Jesus in his pre-incarnate form saw Lucifer and the rebel angels attack the loyal angels. He saw Lucifer fall from heaven in the last battle of the great war. He saw Lucifer drag down his followers with him. And, those followers, now demons, remember the ineffable glory of the Trinity. They recognize that glory in Jesus.

The demons fear, hate and despise Jesus. They accuse him of coming into the world solely to pursue and torment them. This is the key to understanding why the demons cannot repent. They are completely  self-obsessed. From their perspective everything is only and completely about them.

Jesus recognizes their presence. They are where they ought not to be. Jesus has the authority to command them as Jesus has the authority to command all created beings and indeed nature itself. He asks them to name themselves so that they might reveal themselves. Ancient peoples believed the name of a person or a thing carries the fullness of the identity of the person or thing.

He gives them permission to enter into a herd of pigs, an unclean animal under the Law of Moses. The demonic foothold on earth ends as the pigs react to the demons by plunging to their deaths in the sea. The demons cannot be destroyed. They also cannot stay on earth. They collapse into the desolate realm of the underworld.

The man is liberated. But, his community does not rejoice. They react with fear. In that fear they make the most terrible request possible. They ask Jesus to leave.

God never imposes his love on anyone. He offers it to everyone. Jesus hears the request and respects it. Jesus does not give up on the people. He asks the man whom he has healed to stay and witness to the Good News of God.

The people are lost in their own self manufactured bad news about God. They still need to be found. They still need to be saved from their fear. Jesus assigns that task to the man he healed.In this event we see the pattern of our Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation. Jesus initiated a process of new life and a new way of living. He has appointed the proclamation of the Good News to human beings.

He asks each of us to draw close to him through the Bible and the sacraments so can experience liberation from fear, pride and the will to power. He fills us with his love so we can bring the Good News of Divine love to other people who are still lost in fear.

All Jesus asks us to do is to tell other people about how much God has done for us. He does not ask us to argue belief. He asks us share our faith.

Jesus delivered the man from spiritual slavery to demons. Jesus delivers us from spiritual slavery to our own sin. In that liberation, Jesus asks us to declare how much God has done for you.

Pentecost 4 (Luke 7:36-8:3)

The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

There is a saying that those who know don’t tell and those who don’t know teach.

The people in Jesus day who considered themselves righteous not only believed they were uniquely favored by God, they knew it. In that knowledge they assumed the role of “teachers of righteousness.” They defined who was approved by God and who was not. Who is defined as righteous and who is defined as a sinner. Who God approves and who God condemns.

St. Paul once believed in this way. After his personal encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ, Paul would write: knowledge puffs up. Love builds up. Righteousness that is defined by law and knowledge always cultivates hubris, the presumption of fatal pride.

That presumption of fatal pride locks the soul into a rigid inflexible uncompromising belief. Sadly, that belief blinds the soul to both the problem that defines our species and the solution.

By the standards of the day the Pharisees were righteous. They gave every evidence of holding the right set of beliefs about God, society, politics, economics and religion. BY definition as the righteous their actions were righteous. The presence of Jesus revealed to the Pharisees the fatal flaw in their beliefs and in their actions.

Jesus does not deny that the woman is a sinner. Jesus is not a moral relativist. He acknowledges her sin but he does not define her by her sin. Because he does not follow the teaching of the Pharisees that the woman is fully completely and only a sinner, he perceives her faith, her repentance, and her piety. Where the Pharisees see a reprobate sinner, Jesus sees a lost soul yearning to be found. Jesus sees a person that His heavenly Father created by the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ own image and likeness.

Pride blinds a separated soul from its true state and its true call. Where the woman feels the pain of separation through her sins, the Pharisee numbs himself to the pain of separation through self-righteous arrogance.

The Pharisee actually fails to live up to his own standard of righteousness as a result of spiritual numbness. He fails the test of sacred hospitality in the most obvious and egregious way possible.

Sacred hospitality is the common belief of all people in the Middle East that the realm of the divine periodically tests the integrity and virtue of the world of humanity. The test is called sacred hospitality. In this well-known and understood test the righteous Pharisee fails and the unrighteous woman succeeds.

Pride blinds the Pharisee and numbs him to his spiritual condition despite his right beliefs and right actions.

Humility allows the woman to see with the eyes of faith and act from the place of the divine image and likeness imprinted on her soul despite her many sins.. Her faith leads her to acknowledge her sin and seek forgiveness.

The Pharisee can’t even perceive his sin and so as he is locked in a rigid self-indulgent belief system he numbs himself to his moment of salvation. He refuses to repent because he is convinced he has no need of repentance.

Pride subverts love. Humility facilitates love. As Jesus comments: The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

 

 

 

Pentecost 3 (Luke 7:11-17) “He had compassion on her.”

Compassion is not charity.

Charity is certainly beneficial. It has its place. It can accomplish much good. And, for lost souls distorted by the pain of separation, charity can be a meritorious work and a condition for divine favor. Sadly, charity that proceeds from separation tends to perpetuate separation.

Compassion proceeds from the depths of the soul. It derives from that place Moses calls “the image and likeness of God.” We each bear that image and likeness in our souls. That image and likeness is what makes salvation from sin and death possible.

Jesus appeals to that image and likeness in our souls. It is the true self. It is the threefold pattern of love Jesus reveals and Jesus embodies.

Compassion is that universal and unconditional love that asks: how may I help?

Jesus is the very source of compassion. We feel compassion, concern, for other people because God the Father created us by the power of God the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of God the Son. An important question to ask as we read the accounts of Jesus’ teaching and action is: what pattern of life does Jesus reveal?

The first element of the pattern is that Jesus was present in the moment. He was not distracted by anxiety about the future or fear derived from past events. His Real Presence is the gift of God to those who abide in Divine love through worship, prayer and Bible study.

The second element is that Jesus saw the woman. How many times do you really see the people in your lives? Because Jesus lives and moves and has his being in the Real Presence of God the Father he is the Real Presence of the Divine in the daily lives of all whom he meets. He sees the woman in all of her grief and need and fear. As a widow bereft of her only son she is now alone. There is no one to help her, protect her, care for her. She faces isolation, poverty and uncertainty about her survival.

Jesus saw all of this.

The third element is a feeling. He felt her pain. He identified with her anguish and isolation. Jesus reminds us that The Father created people to be in an interdependent relationship with each other. We are our brothers’ keeper. How we treat the least, the poorest and the outcast reveals our innermost nature.

The apostles teach that Christians rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Separation produces a numbness in our ability to identify and feel the emotions of other people. That numbness produces indifference. And, that indifference leads to active evil.

Jesus sees the widow, feels her pain, identifies with her need. He then initiates a conversation that will meet the woman’s need. He doesn’t wait to be asked. He doesn’t investigate her level of righteousness to determine she is worthy of help. He acts on the need. And, he acts from the Real Presence of God.

Jesus did not perform miracles from the place of power. Jesus performed miracles from the place of Real Presence. That place is steadfast, holy, universal and unconditional love.

People focus on the action in the miracle. The action is the word: rise- followed by the dead man returning to life and quite literally rising off the funeral bier. It is indeed an amazing miracle. The value to the widow is incalculable. The value to us is infinite.

The pattern in the miracle is the original blessing. It is the pattern of living God intended for us as a species and we as a species rejected. It is a pattern we as individuals reject through our daily choices. And, it is a pattern of living Jesus restores to us. All of us. Each of us.

The record of this miracle is designed to help us understand who God created us to be, how we choose to separate from our true selves, and what life would look like and feel like if we made a different choice.

Jesus is that different choice. Jesus is that pattern of the Original Blessing.

We are not Jesus. We can grow into his image and likeness. That pattern is already at the depth of our souls. We need only to take the first step forward by grace through faith to become who God  created us to be.

The gospel reading today gives us one important key to the new life nd the new way of living. That key is compassion.

The Holy Spirit, the Counselor, is encouraging you to practice compassion from the place of compassion. That place is not will. That place is the infinite and eternal love of God we experience as we make a real choice to immerse our hearts, minds and will in the Real Presence of God incarnate in Jesus Christ.