Candlemas 2014

Candlemas 2014 (Luke 2:22-40) “When the time came…”

There is a time and a place for everything.

King Solomon observed this about the world thousands of years ago. King Solomon expressed this principle in the words: to everything there is a season.

My parents frequently expressed this concept to my brothers and I as we were growing up. It can be a difficult concept for a child to learn. Children frequently want what they want and want it now. They need to hear the message; no. now is not the time for ice cream. Now is the time for dinner.

We all, at any age, need to hear the message: now is the time for worship.

Mary and Joseph understood this. Mary and Joseph lived this.

God had revealed the principles of worship and the details of worship some two thousand years before Jesus was born. The principles of worship are three fold.

First: God sets the time, the place and the pattern for worship.

Second: The essence of worship is sacrifice.

Third: the Plan of worship is the Real Presence of Eternal Love for the salvation and sanctification of souls.

As we remember the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and the Purification of Mary after childbirth it is important to place these historic events in their context. The context is our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation.

God clearly and explicitly set the time the place and the pattern. The time is forty days after childbirth. The place is the Temple in Jerusalem. The pattern is the offering of a sacrifice at the altar. There were two acceptable sacrifices. Mary and Joseph chose the option they could afford: two pigeons.

Fortunately for modern Americans, Jesus fulfilled and completed this aspect of Divine Law. Had he not done that there would be all manner of grumbling and murmuring and open rebellion. Why forty days? I can’t possibly fit that into my schedule. Why the Temple in Jerusalem? Why can’t I use a branch Temple closer to where I live? Why that sacrifice? I should be able to bring any sacrifice that I want.

The Psychoanalyst Victor Frankel once observed that Medieval man functioned at the emotional level of a twelve year old. He also observed the modern man functions at the level of a two year old. We have a tendency to a sense of individual entitlement. We have a tendency to insist on our way or the highway. We have a tendency to make non- negotiable demands backed by a threat.

 Jesus fulfilled and transformed the law of sacrificial worship. At every stage in his life he fulfilled the Law. Mary and Joseph helped him with this when he was an infant and a child. We no longer have to offer two pigeons at the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after childbirth.

The principles of sacrificial worship remain in effect. The details have changed.

The principle is expressed in the prayer Jesus most frequently prayed: Heavenly Father, not my will but Thy will be done. The principle is revealed in the question Jesus most frequently asked people: how may I help?

The sacrifice God now asks us to make is our time, attention and attitude. Jesus manifests the reality that there is no love without sacrifice. Jesus is not a religious minimalist. He is the infinite and eternal love of God personified. He is Divine abundance for all people everywhere.

When the time came as appointed by God and designed by God Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer the appointed sacrifice. They did so willingly and joyfully. In that surrender of self-will to Divine will they met two prophets: Simeon and Anna. They received the prophetic blessing. They entered into the Divine Glory.

For us as fallen human beings all worship will involve sacrifice. Worship is the highest form of love and love does not come easily to the descendants of Adam and Eve. Pride and self-will come to us and emerge from our souls more easily than the sacrificial love of the new life Jesus offers and the new way of living the Holy Spirit is cultivating in our minds, hearts and wills.

From the heavenly realm of the Church Triumphant Mary and Joseph pray for us to seek first the Kingdom of God. Seek first Divine will. Seek first the steadfast holy sacrificial love of Jesus.

The time has come. The time is now. Be where God is. Choose to set aside self-will and pride through the help of the Holy Spirit. Choose the Jesus Way of sacrificial love in how we use our time and where we direct our attention.

When the time came Mary and Joseph said “yes” to God. As the preeminent intercessors in the Universal Church, Mary and Joseph encourage us to make the same choice. Offer your best to God. Become your best in God. Enter into the blessing so you can experience the blessing and become the blessing to others.

Epiphany 3

Epiphany 3 (Matthew 4:12-23)

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

Context defines content.

Another way of saying this is: people hear what they want to hear.

Jesus began his public ministry in the context of Divine Manifestation. At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit and God the Son set the context for the Good News of the Messiah. The Good News is the reunification of a lost rebellious humanity in the person of Jesus the Anointed one. Salvation is organic not legal. Because salvation is organic it is a gift.

Jesus’ call to repentance extends the call to repentance issued by the prophets. John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, sets the stage for Jesus by calling people to repent in order to prepare.

All true prophets issue the same word: repent.  Repent of your choice to separate from God, Repent of your rebellion against the person of God. Repent of actual sins of omission and commission that result from your separation and rebellion. Then: prepare. Prepare for the Good News of Salvation.

The Good News of Salvation is that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. The Good News of Salvation is that the Kingdom of Heaven is a personal relationship with the Father, in the Son, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

People could understand the call to repent of actual sin. They could not and would not understand the call to repent of their separation from God and their rebellion against God. Had they been able to do that there would have been no need for the co-eternal Beloved Son to come to earth and unify his divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ.

Had people been able to acknowledge our personal and corporate responsibility for Separation and Rebellion the Law of Moses and the Prophetic Call to repentance would have been enough. It wasn’t enough. The long history of Israel reveals how the Law and the Prophets can only prepare the way for the Way of Salvation.

Salvation is reunification and transformation.

Reunification takes place at the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection. In Jesus God adopts human nature into the eternal community of infinite Love. That eternal community of infinite love is the Trinity,

Most people then in Jesus’ day and now in our day think of salvation as an external event. In that context, the Kingdom of Heaven is an external expression of knowledge and power we can earn or claim.

Jesus proclaimed by word and deed that the Kingdom of Heaven is an internal event. Jesus declared: the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. In that context, the Kingdom of Heaven derives from and manifests in the personal relationship Jesus offers us in the new humanity he gives us.

We cannot earn salvation. We have no claim to salvation. Salvation is a gift. In our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation the giver of the gift is the gift. The gift is universal and unconditional. Jesus is the gift who offers himself to everyone everywhere without exception and without condition.

Jesus is the Father’s gift to humanity. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus transforms and re- energizes the call to repentance. Repent of your continued choice to remain lost in separation from God and in rebellion against God.

Such repentance does not require perfection. Such repentance only requires accepting the one fixed and immutable truth of our species. That truth is that God the Father created all of us and each of us by God the Holy Spirit to be the forever friends of God the Son. That friendship is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Salvation is not about getting our own way. Salvation is not about being right and making other people wrong. Salvation is not about manipulating people with fear or living from the place of fear. Salvation is the new life in Jesus Christ. Salvation is the new way of living by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. That new life is our choice to participate in the active dynamic creative universal and unconditional love of the One God who is Three persons. Salvation, the Kingdom of Heaven, is the Way we live and move and have our being in the personal relationships God created us to enjoy.

The lack of peace and the lack of joy indicate to us where we are still living from the place of separation. The rigid inflexible demands of self- will indicate to us where we are in a state of rebellion. The prayer of repentance is the prayer Jesus modeled for us. That prayer is the prayer of real presence that says to God: not my will by Thy will be done. The call to repentance is the call to surrender pride, self-will and fear to the infinite and eternal love of the infinite and eternal God who is Love. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. It is as near to you as your next breath in all of its abundance, delight and everlasting life. The Kingdom of Heaven is the personal relationship God offers everyone in the new life of Jesus Christ.   Repent. For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

Epiphany 2

Epiphany 2 (John 1:29-42) “What are you looking for?”

Jesus frequently asked people questions.

He asked questions to help people clarify their spiritual state.

Sadly, most people then (as now) refused to consider the questions Jesus asked. Most people most of the time were locked into a system of rigid, inflexible uncompromising belief. They were in fact lost in their own narrow and unquestioned assumptions about God, other people and themselves.

The most difficult people Jesus encountered were the religious leaders of the time. These were well educated, accomplished, wealthy and powerful people. They not only believed they knew the one right religion- they knew they knew. They were lost in the spiritual state of invincible ignorance.

They were those of whom the prophet Amos said: woe to those who are at ease in Zion. They were those who were looking for a Messiah to confirm their beliefs and secure their wealth and power.

Jesus knew this aspect of human nature. He grew up in a society in conflict. He listened to the various rabbis of the many religious sects argue with each other and condemn each other. He knew that once he began to teach that these religious leaders would analyze and criticize his every word looking for flaws.

As the perfect mirror of God, Jesus reveals to us our spiritual condition. In the question: “what are you looking for?” Jesus invites us to consider our inherited beliefs.

The apostles by and large were not members of the religious elite. They were working class men. The smartest and the brightest among them was Judas. They also came to Jesus looking for something. As with everyone at that time they initially came with a demand.

The demand comes from deep within the soul. The demand is: my will be done. Give me what I want.

Jesus came in the superabundance of divine love. He came to seek out and to find the lost who do not want to be found. He came to fulfill the Law of Moses and the teachings of the Prophets. He came to reveal that God just doesn’t have love as one of many attributes but God is love.

Jesus is the extravagance of divine love who comes to offer a new life and a new way of living. Sadly, no one wanted the new life. They wanted their old lives enriched and empowered. No one wanted the new way of living. They just wanted more of what they already had. Fundamentally, lost souls do not want to change. Lost souls do not want to be challenged or inspired. Lost souls do not want the active dynamic transforming personal relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus knew all of this. At the beginning of His public ministry He knew his time was short. He knew that people lost in separation would criticize him, reject him, abandon him and kill him. He knew he had to endure the worst that people would inflict upon him in order to bring the best that God has to offer.

The lost do not want to change. The lost resist transformation. The lost need both change (conversion) and transformation (sanctification). The only alternative is stagnation (damnation). Jesus died to save us from ourselves. Jesus died to save us from stagnation.

Human nature never changes of itself. People are still lost in separation from God. People still live from the place of pride that declares: do it my way. Give me what I want when I want it or else.

Human nature can only change as we follow the path of Jesus into a personal transforming relationship with God in Jesus Christ. The way forward into the kingdom of heaven is the altar of sacrifice. It is the way of Jesus who prayed: heavenly Father not my will but Thy will be done. It is the way of sacrifice and service empowered by divine love.

Are you willing to surrender self- will to Divine will in the prayer of Jesus: Heavenly Father, not my will but Thy will be done?

Jesus asks us the same question he asked the religious people of the first century: “What are you looking for?”

Your words and actions answer that question more loudly and more profoundly than your imagined religious beliefs.

 

 

Epiphany 2

Epiphany I (Matthew 2:13-15; 19-23) “This is my Son, The Beloved.”

God is not a minimalist.

Nature testifies to the extravagance of Divine creativity.  The Plan of Salvation reveals the extravagance of infinite and eternal love. God so loved the world that He did not send a committee.

God so loved the world that He did not leave us with a book of instructions to figure out by ourselves. God so loved the world that He sent The Beloved.

At the baptism of Jesus God reveals Himself to us in several important ways.

First: God reveals that He is one God in three persons. All three persons of the Trinity actively manifest at the baptism of Jesus. God the Father speaks audibly to the crowd. God the Holy Spirit takes visible form as He anoints Jesus for his three year mission of preaching, teaching and healing. Jesus emerges from the waters of baptism revealed to everyone as the Son of God.

Second: God reveals the incarnation. In the fullness of the Trinity the One God reveals audibly, visually and actively that Jesus is the incarnate co-eternal Son. Lest we miss it, the Father declares of Jesus: This is my Son, The Beloved.

Third: God reveals that he is love. God has power but is not power. God has knowledge but is not knowledge. In the fullness of revelation at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, God reveals to John, the assembled crowds, the nation of Israel and the entirety of the human race that God is love.

As the Son of God, who is love, Jesus is The Beloved. He is not a beloved. He is not simply loved by God as we are all loved by God. Jesus is The Beloved- the one and only co-eternal Son of the Father.

Jesus is the very pattern of Divine abundance and Divine extravagance.

The Bible also testifies to Divine abundance and extravagance. John the Baptist is present at the baptism of Jesus to remind us that God the Holy Spirit worked with dozens of individuals over the course of hundreds of year to produce the Bible, the written record of the Plan of Salvation. God did not dictate the Bible to a single prophet. Neither did he inscribe the Bible on golden tablets to be translated by a single prophet.

God used the unique personalities, languages and cultures of dozens of people over the course of time to present a mosaic of images, observations, experiences, history, poetry, songs and wisdom to convey an amazing pattern of revelation.

The pattern of divine abundance and extravagance is revealed in the pattern of liturgical worship. From the Tabernacle, to the Temple to the Church God Himself reveals that the pattern of worship is liturgical worship. God invites us to participate in this pattern to be transformed by this pattern.

It is no historic accident that the Puritan minimalists who rejected the divinely revealed and appointed pattern of liturgical worship evolved into the Unitarian congregations who have largely secularized faith as a cultural phenomenon

The revelation of God the Father and the confirmation of God the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved Son is key to the salvation and sanctification of souls.

As Jesus is the incarnate Beloved the Plan of Salvation is revealed in three basic categories: Reunification, Relationship, and Transformation.

The sole purpose for the existence of the Church is to work and pray for the reunification of lost souls to God the Father, through a personal relationship with the God the Son, by the transforming real presence of God the Holy Spirit. We are not a cultural institution. We are, for now, the instrumentality of the Plan of Salvation.

The Apostles and their heirs understood this revelation. They understood that a religion of rigid inflexible uncompromising law cannot support the infinite and eternal relationship The One God offers in the fullness of the Three Persons of God.

The apostles and the Ecumenical Councils also understood that the new life and the new way of living God offers in Jesus cannot be sustained by minimalist forms of worship. God invites us to offer our best in the pattern of worship He himself revealed to Moses, the Prophets and the Apostles. Anything less than the best in music, art, architecture, language and liturgy diminishes us and our ability to grow in grace and to experience personal transformation in divine love.

God the Father reveals the extravagance and the superabundance of Divine Love in a person: Jesus Christ. The most profound and transforming way to experience that love is in the highest form of love God designed into our souls. That highest form of love is worship.

The principle of worship is transformation. The pattern of worship is the interior life of the One God who is three persons. The extravagance of worship in art, music, language and ritual invites us to participate in and be transformed by the extravagance of infinite and eternal love made manifest in Jesus Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit, and declared by God the Father as: The Beloved.