Epiphany 2014

Christmas II (Epiphany observed) Matthew 2: 1-12

“We have observed his star at its rising.”

Did you ever send out written announcements to your family and friends at the birth of a child? Our Heavenly Father announced the birth of His co-eternal Son in Jesus Christ with the appearance of a star.

There is a context to this stellar birth announcement. Ancient people held a belief that could be expressed in the phrase: “as above so below.”

It was a belief that the pattern of the universe derives from a transcendent eternal source. The Greeks expressed this belief in the word: Logos.

As the universe reflects the transcendent pattern in its laws and structures at the highest and broadest levels in the stars and planets- so those structures can give insight into the patterns of life here on Earth.

That was the belief.

The Magi tested that belief. They had been educated in math and science as well as astrology and religion. As with the prophets of Israel they tested their inherited beliefs with observation and rational analysis of experience- their own personal experience as well as the experience of other people.

The Magi had knowledge, wealth and a certain degree of power. They also had something most people then and most people now lack. They had curiosity informed by humility.

They avoided the skepticism of the Greek philosophers, the cynicism of the Roman aristocracy and the fanaticism of the Jewish religious elites. They also questioned the superstitions of the masses of people in the ancient world.

They observed. They questioned. They tested. They acknowledged they could only discern truth through inquiry and humility.

As they followed the star they pursued a path that most people in their time and ours reject.

God had announced the birth of his incarnate Son, Jesus, to the world in the star. Only a very few people then and now paid attention to the announcement enough to perceive the invitation in the announcement.

From time to time modern skeptics, both religious and secular, ask: where is God? Why is he not speaking? If God is real let him demonstrate his reality in the terms and under the conditions we understand.

The long and consistent observation of Moses, the prophets and the Magi is that God is as present to us as our next breath. God speaks in clarity to all people everywhere. The problem is not that God is silent. The problem is that most people most of the time aren’t paying attention. The problem is that we cannot see the path before us even when it is illumined by the brightness of a star, the word of the prophet and the song of the angels.

Epiphany is the manifestation of the Real Presence of God to all people everywhere. It is the invitation to walk the path of curiosity with humility. It is the defining principle of wisdom that says: now I know in part.

How is God speaking to you? Are you paying attention? Are you willing to be found? Do you have a desire to be surprised when God acts through nature to reveal the eternal pattern of the logos that gives the natural world its substance and form?

The Magi visited the political and religious elites of Jerusalem with a single purpose. We have observed his star at its rising. How can you help us understand this sign? What insight can you offer to help us complete our long journey on the path to Truth?

They found the answer they were looking for. They completed this first part of their journey only to discover a fuller understanding of the path. The fuller understanding is the way of grace. It is the way of faith. It is the personal relationship God offers all of us and each of us in Jesus Christ.

 

 

Christmas I

Christmas I (John 1:1-18) “The Word became flesh.”

Jesus is God.

In Jesus, God unites His divinity with our humanity permanently and irrevocably.

Moses and the prophets observe the human condition and conclude that the great problem defining our species is separation. Through Adam and Eve humanity chose to separate from God. In that separation we also chose to perpetuate separation from God, from each other, from life itself.

Human nature is now defined by the corrupting power of Original Separation. In our personal individual lives we bring forth the pattern of separation in sin and death.  We are not only lost in sin we are willfully and spitefully lost.

The lost do not want to be found. The lost perpetuate separation through prideful distortion of virtue, Law, religion and science. God Himself invites us to test this assertion. Through the prophet Isaiah God declares: come, let us reason together.

In a world of abundance there is scarcity. How does that happen?

For a species created in the image and likeness of unconditional love there is fear. Where does that fear come from?

The moment you explain a rule to a child testing the limits of the rule becomes his chief priority. Why?

God reveals to us that He created the world and people respond with skepticism, cynicism and pride.

God invites us to assume the responsibility to care for each other and we demand the right to assert our individual will to power.

No law can correct this problem. No religion, spiritual exercise, philosophy or science can restore the Original Blessing our species rejected and continues to repudiate.

That is why God the Father sent God the Son in the power of God the Holy Spirit.

God the Son is the pattern of all things and all people. The Greek philosophers, mathematicians and scientists called that pattern the logos- the rational transcendent creative and eternal Word by which, through which and for which all things exist.

Through our choice to separate from God, we shattered that pattern in our souls.  Having broken the pattern we no longer have the desire or the resources to repair the pattern.

God the Father repairs the pattern for us by sending God the Son to become the second Adam. God the Holy Spirit invites us to allow the Son to reunite what we have separated.

In Jesus God reunites us to Himself not just as a legal fiction but in a real organic and substantial way.

Since the problem with being lost is that we don’t want to be found, we don’t want the pattern we broke to be repaired, God does it all for us.

Salvation is reunification with God in the incarnate Son of God. It is a gift. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it. It is the gift of God in Jesus restoring the original blessing in the original pattern of the co-eternal Logos- the Word of God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.

Salvation is not a matter of debits and credits. It is also not a human right we can demand and claim. It is a gift. The gift and the giver of the gift are one.

They are one in the same because the gift and the giver are infinite and eternal love. Salvation is the how God the Father finds the lost in Jesus and then restores the lost by the transforming Presence of the Holy Spirit.

The original pattern of humanity is the Logos, the Word. And the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ to restore to us that original pattern of universal unconditional love.

Christmas 2013

Christmas 2013 (Luke 2:1-20) “Glory to God in the highest!’

How do you celebrate someone’s birthday? How do you expect people to celebrate your birthday?

If it were your birthday would you expect some sort of party with food and gifts? Would you be surprised if people celebrated your birthday by ignoring you and giving gifts to each other instead?

Today we celebrate Christmas. Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ.

God invites all people everywhere to gather together to celebrate this wonderful birthday of His only Son. Jesus is God the Father’s gift of eternal love to all people.  The gift of God is the love of God in the person of God.

God the Father created this universe, our planet and each of us individually by the power of the Holy Spirit according to the pattern of God the Beloved Son. In Jesus, God the Father unites God the Beloved Son with the humanity of holy Mother Mary by the power of God the Holy Spirit.

On Christmas, God reminds us that He just doesn’t have love- He is love.

On Christmas, the One God reveals to us that Love is an eternal pattern of relationships: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

On Christmas, God assures us by demonstrating for us that His Triune eternal love is universal and unconditional. God loves everyone without exception. There is no one God does not love.

God proves this to us by uniting our humanity with His divinity in the birth of a helpless infant: Jesus.

All of the sentiments of Christmas derive from the pattern of the Beloved Son who became a little child at that first Christmas.

Ponder this great amazing truth. Savor this greatest of all Good News.

Jesus is God with us. Jesus is God for us. Jesus is the infant exiled from the town to the manger. He shivers in the cold. Angels sing about him. Shepherds and Kings worship him. Mary and Joseph look over him and protect him.

On Christmas, we remember that there is no condemnation in God. There is only the infinite and eternal Triune Love manifesting to us and for us in a helpless child.

Jesus, the son of Mary, is God with us now and forever, world without end. Amen and Merry Christmas.

 

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving 2013 (Matthew 6:25-33) “Do not worry.”

Worry is about the fear of the future. It is an anxiety that subverts the joy of the present. It borrows trouble from a fantasy future that may or may not ever exist.

Jesus very pointedly teaches: do not worry. Worry, for most of us, is choice we make. In that choice we establish a pattern of thought and emotional reaction. Eventually, that pattern becomes an embedded behavior that defines our path through life.

My grandfather always advised my brothers and I not to worry about things. “you don’t need to worry about anything,” he would say. “You father worries enough for all of us.”

Worry is a distortion of the soul that has real physical effects on the human brain. Both the Bible and modern science reveal that we can train our thoughts. We can adopt a pessimistic view of life that perceives a threat in every frown and an enemy in every smile. Ot , we can live by grace through faith.

The basic definition of grace is “gift”.

Moses and the prophets observe that all of life is a gift. They also observe that we did not create this world or ourselves. We do make choices to distort our perception of the world. We also make choices to subvert the pattern that exists in the world.

The pattern is the Logos. The Apostle John very clearly, precisely and even poetically writes about the Logos as the co-eternal Word of God by whom, through whom and for whom this world and our species was created.

Worry is a corruption of rational analysis and planning. Worry looks at the world and sees only threat, feels only fear, exists in a narrow space of reaction to imagined danger.

The antidote for worry is to give thanks for the blessings of the present moment.

At this moment, right here, right now, what are you experiencing?

Remember, worry and anxiety are about a possible future that has only a remote probability of coming to pass.

The pattern of the universe is grace. It is the gift of God in the co-eternal Beloved of God to live and move and have our being in the Real Presence of the Holy Spirit of God in the present moment.

On this National Holiday of Thanksgiving the Church asks us to pause and ponder the reality of the present. Right here, right now, what are you thankful for. Jesus is right here in the blessed sacrament of the altr. He is here for you. He offers his friendship to you. In that friendship he gives you the grace, the gift, of freedom.

Jesus will set you free from the resentments and anger of pain that rises from past events. Jesus will set you free from the worry and anxiety that rises from a false belief that the future will only bring more pain. Jesus sets us free by calling our attention to His Real Presence in the present moment.

Let the past go. But, let it go in and through the love of God the Father in the Real Presence of God the co-eternal Beloved, by the infusion of grace of God the Holy Spirit. Let the past rest in peace.

Let the future go. Whatever future you are holding onto through worry and anxiety is only an illusion. Jesus will be in whatever future you are journeying into. There is no need to fear now about a future threat. Jesus will walk with you and stand by you in the pleasures and in the pain of life as it unfolds in time.

Grace sets us free to be.

When God reveals his name to Moses He says: “I AM”.

God is the eternal present. Jesus is the Real Presence of God in the present moment. The present moment holds the pattern of the Logos, the co-eternal Beloved of God, in grace.

In that grace we meet and enjoy the great love of God in Jesus Christ.

What are you thankful for at this time and in this place? Trust Jesus to set you free from worry and fear to enjoy the gift of God in the Real Presence of God in the here and now of an eternal moment of grace.

Pentecost 26

Pentecost 26 (Luke 21:5-19)

“Beware that you are not led astray.”

There are three means by which we can be led astray. They are the world, the flesh and the devil. There are three standards of authority that can help us avoid being led astray. These are reason, tradition and scripture. There is one, and only one, person who can protect us from being led astray. That person is Jesus Christ.

To be lead astray is to be deceived. As we are deceived our lives become more narrow, confined and restricted. We lose the blessing God has designed into the universe and our souls. We experience increasing levels of frustration, fear, anxiety and anger. The world, the flesh and the devil seek to define our possibilities and potential in a way that diminishes us and controls us.

The world is our surrounding culture. It is an exterior form of temptation through distortion. The key word is distortion. Much of the temptation that comes from the world is not in and of itself bad or evil. Most of the pressure the world brings to bear on our minds, hearts and wills come from the distortion of where we set our priorities and how we spend our time.

Moses and the prophets are very clear. God, more specifically the worship of God on the Sabbath Day, is the first priority God designed into our souls. Compassionate service to other people is our second priority. Personal transformation through prayer, Bible study and self-discipline is our third priority. Consider what does not even appear on this list of God’s priorities for our lives. It doesn’t mean these other things are not important or have no place. It does mean they should not take the place of God’s priorities. If they do subvert God’s priorities they become idols- false gods of culture, society and peer pressure.

Be wary of the pressure that comes from our culture to place God last in our lives. Be wary of the voice that says: “everybody is doing it.”

The second avenue of temptation that will lead us astray is the flesh. When the Bible speaks of the flesh it addresses our legitimate needs and desires as they are distorted by the pain of Original Separation and produce sin.

How does this work? Every sin is a distorted virtue that God designed into our souls for our benefit. Pride is a distortion of humility. Fear is a distortion of faith. Gluttony is a distortion of appetite. Sloth is a distortion of rest. Every aspect of our being when distorted by the pain of Original Separation leads to sin.

The distortion of our needs and desires deceives us about the way God has designed us. The voice of the flesh says: “how can it be so bad when it feels so good.” Be wary of how the flesh will deceive us to reject God’s perfect plan for our lives for a moment of transient pleasure.

Of the list of three means by which we are led astray the devil is the least obvious, the least powerful but the most deadly. Satan crafts a set of lies specific to each generation in every culture. The power of Satan is in misdirection and confusion. The world and the flesh do the rest.

We see the pattern Satan employs in Genesis where Satan tempts Eve by seeking to confuse her about God’s Word, God’s Nature and God’s Plan for humanity. Satan cannot force you to do anything. He will seduce you away from an active dynamic faith into a rigid inflexible set of beliefs. He doesn’t care if you are religious or secular. He does care if you follow the Way, the Truth and the Life of God as revealed in Jesus Christ even if you have not yet made a profession of faith in Christ.

The way we avoid being led astray is through Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Scripture is fundamental. Scripture combines the observations of dozens of people over the course of hundreds of years and in many cultures with God’s perspective. It is vitally important that we read, study and memorize Scripture. Jesus frequently quoted scripture to correct misunderstandings the religious leadership of his day had about God’s Word, God’s Nature and God’s Plan for humanity.

Tradition does not mean “the way we’ve always done things”. Tradition means the Apostolic teaching about the Plan of Salvation. The standard of Tradition is the Seven Ecumenical Councils. The summary of Tradition is the Nicene Creed.

Reason simply means that the Truth is not counterfactual. Truth emerges from observation, analysis and synthesis. Our secular culture has largely abandoned faith in the name of reason. We have also abandoned religion in the name of spirituality. The result has not been the enlightened self-actualized individual the secular world promises. The result is massive levels of fear, anxiety, anger, addictions, conflict, violence, distrust superstition and isolation. Above all else reason is most effective when united to the virtue of humility.

The key to all of this is Jesus Christ. When someone asserts that Jesus never claimed to be God ask yourself: What does scripture reveal about Jesus? What does the Apostolic Tradition teach in the Nicene Creed? Is it reasonable that God would create us only to abandon us?

In this passage, Jesus addresses the issue of the consummation of the age. Most people interpret this to mean the end of the world. Jesus invited the people who heard him and he invites us to consider what this means. Jesus uses scripture, tradition and reason to warn, reassure and comfort.

The warning is: do not be led astray. Do not be led astray by false teachers, your cultural norms, or you own desires.

The reassurance is: nothing has to happen before the Consummation of All Things. Life goes on. Life continues. People act in much the same way they have always acted.

The comfort is that Jesus is the one who brings human history to a conclusion. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is not about war, famine, pestilence and death. Those are the things human choice influenced by the world, the flesh and the devil bring to us.

Jesus came the first time to bring life. He will return to complete what he started. He will bring a new and abundant life to a lost and broken world.

Do not be led astray. Test the priorities of our culture, the demands of our desires and the seductive deceits of Satan against the one pure and perfect standard of Creation. That one pure and perfect standard is Jesus Christ.

Pentecost 25

Pentecost 25 (Luke 20:27-38)

“Now God is not the God of the dead but the living.”

God created human beings to enjoy life.

The life we can enjoy derives from God the Son who is life eternal.  Jesus came to restore to us what we pride fully rejected. In Jesus God reunites humanity and divinity.

In the marriage ceremony the priest declares: those whom God has joined together let no one separate. Marriage is the pre-eminent image of God’s relationship to humanity. In Adam humanity has chosen separation from God. In Jesus God replies: therefore, what God has joined together let no one separate.

The Sadducees were well aware of the Biblical teaching on marriage. They used the teaching to challenge Jesus rather than to understand Jesus. The Sadducees considered themselves to be strict conservatives. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible to be authoritative. They focused exclusively on the Law as the means by which they could count themselves righteous and lay a claim to Divine favor in this life.

The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife of any sort. As with most people of the ancient world they believed dead was dead. They believed the spirit was quite literally in the breath. When you breathed your last breath your body died and your spirit expired.  The Sadducees ridiculed the Pharisees for believing in the resurrection. It seemed ludicrous to the Sadducees that God would somehow recreate a long dead body and breathe the breath of life back into it.

To emphasize their point, they challenged Jesus from the place an absurd scenario. According to the Law of Moses, if a man died without children it was the responsibility of his brother to marry the widow and have children to preserve the dead brother’s name and memory.

The scenario postulates this process continuing through the death of seven brothers until they and finally the wife die. The question then becomes: if they are resurrected then who is the real husband?

The Sadducees as well as other religious sects took a perverse pleasure in this line of questioning. They devised the most improbable scenarios and the most absurd interpretations to discredit beliefs they rejected.

Jesus handled this situation with great skill and compassion. He uses the challenge as an occasion for instruction.

Jesus teaches that the resurrection body is a physical body but a physical body raised to perfection to live in a new set of relationships. Very specifically, he assures the Sadducees that the resurrection of the body is real. But, he corrects their misunderstanding of what resurrection is. The resurrection body is a new body for a new world. It is no longer subject to the distortions of separation, sin and death. In the resurrection people live in union with God, each other, and the image of God imprinted on their souls.  It is a new life and a new way of living for a new set of relationships that brings to fulfillment and perfection the old life and the old set of relationships.

Very specifically, in terms of marriage, the spiritual promise of marriage in the soul’s union with God is made real and made complete. The old form of marriage ends with physical death. The new life of the resurrection transforms the exclusive marriage relationship on earth to an inclusive and transcendent set of relationships.

Jesus compares this new life to the life of the angels who neither marry or are given in marriage yet enjoy both particular and universal relationships with each other, with human beings and with God.

Jesus summarizes his teaching with the assurance to those who believe dead is dead that God is life eternal. In God all live. Physical death is the tragic consequence of Original Separation. Eternal life is the great gift of God in the reunion of humanity with divinity in Jesus Christ. The Pharisees taught that an afterlife was a reward for those few who kept the Law by keeping themselves separate from lesser men. The Sadducees taught that the reward for righteousness comes only in this life.

Jesus teaches that life emerges from a series of relationships. The primary life giving relationship is our relationship with God. The secondary life giving relationship is our relationships with other people. The third life giving relationship is our relationship with the image and likeness of God imprinted on our souls- our true and unique personal identity.

Life derives from relationships. Broken relationships diminish our lives and facilitate the process of Original Separation that leads to death. The restoration of our broken relationship with God in the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus reconnects us with the Original Blessing of eternal life.

Jesus restored human nature to life in the incarnation. He took away sin on the cross. He transformed death back into life by his resurrection. He did it all for us and offers it all to us. What he offers in these amazing gifts is a new life that can, if we choose to follow the path, produce a new way of living.  That new way of living is active, dynamic, spontaneous, creative, filled with infinite possibilities and formed by the unifying principle of eternal love. This is possible and this is real because Jesus just doesn’t have life. He is the very source and pattern of life. He reassured the Sadducees and he reassures us: “Now God is not the God of the dead but the living.”

 

All Saints 2013

All Saints 2013 (Luke 6:20-31)

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Our Heavenly Father designed our species and each one of us by love, through love and for love.

God the Father created humanity by the power of God the Holy Spirit according to the pattern, plan and purpose of God the Beloved, the co-eternal Son.

If you want to know what it means to be human study the life of Jesus Christ. If you want to understand the principles the Triune God designed into the universe and our souls, read, study and memorize the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The principle of God are usually contrary to the principles human beings developed to govern our societies.

Jesus teaches that the blessings of God derive from our emerging awareness of the Divine Pattern of love. And so, Jesus asserts that the poor are blessed. How can that be? The blessing is not in the poverty itself. The blessing lies in the emerging awareness that we are all dependent upon God for our daily bread; and, responsible before God to make sure no human being goes hungry.

The rich have a tendency in the pride of their status to believe they and they alone can take credit for their abundance. Yet, it is not only the rich who are susceptible to pride. Those who have tend to despise those who have not. Those who have also tend to fear those who have less.

The poor are those who in their lack recognize Divine Abundance. It it they who are open to receive the blessing of God. Others, both rich and poor, allow pride and fear to blind them to that abundance.

The abundance is the Real Presence of the one God who eternally manifests as a community of Love in three persons. The Great Mystery of the eternal Trinity is the Great Mystery of eternal love. Eternal love is active, dynamic, spontaneous, creative and giving.

Divine abundance is the pattern, plan and purpose for human beings. Nature holds more than enough resources for all people to live well. Poverty is the choice some of make and impose on the rest of us.

Jesus teaches us and demonstrates for us how we can make a different choice. Jesus also reveals why we can make a different choice.

The choice that produces poverty in our world proceeds from the Original Sin that now defines our species. The origin of sin is the choice our first parents, Adam and Eve, made to separate from God. They, we, made that choice to form our souls according to the categories of knowledge and power.

Jesus resets humanity to the place of original blessing. Original Blessing is union with God the Father by the indwelling Presence of God the Holy Spirit in a forever friendship with God the Beloved, the co-eternal Son.

The Original Blessing is the pattern and principle of all particular blessing God has designed for us to discover and share as we move through time.

The Pattern of Blessing is relationship. The principle of blessing is caring, sharing and helping.

All 616 laws God revealed to Moses derive from and help us to understand this pattern and these principles.

All of the true prophets of God call us to measure our attitudes and actions according to the pattern and these principles.

In Jesus, God resets human nature according to that pattern and these principles.

Do you want to draw closer to God? The only way to do this is to make a real choice to participate actively in the active dynamic creative spontaneous  relationship of love that forms the Triune God. The means to do this is worship. The place  to do this is the community of faith that God has established to be the instrumentality of faith. That community is the broader church.

Do you want to receive the blessings of God? The only way to do this is to make a real choice to follow where Jesus leads. Where does Jesus lead?

If someone is hungry Jesus invites us to feed them.

If someone is lonely, Jesus invites us to comfort them.

If someone is sick, Jesus invites us to heal them.

If someone is lost, Jesus invites us to reassure them that they are already found in the love of God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

On this All Saints/All Souls Sunday the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church reminds us that the Original Blessing is union with the God Father, by the indwelling real presence of God the Holy Spirit , in a forever friendship with God the Beloved, the co-eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

We are part of the wider community of the Church Triumphant- the saints in heaven depicted for us our reredos. We are one with them and with the departed souls of the Church Expectant- represented for us at the altar of sacrifice and through the incense offering in the liturgy.

And, God has placed us into the community of the Church Militant, all of us here today and those of us who choose not to be here. The Church Militant is the school of reunification and transformation. It is the instrumentality of the Plan of Salvation.

The principle is very concise. Come to the altar of sacrifice to enter into the transforming grace of the Divine Presence. Then, make a real choice to use that grace to make a difference in the lives of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lonely and the lost.

The teaching Jesus gives to us on this All Saints/All Souls Sunday is: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”