3 Pentecost C 5 June 5, 2016
1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24) Psalm 146
Galatians 1:11-24 Luke 7:11-17
One of my mission as a preacher of the Gospel has been to deliver us from the fallacy of the chronological. What is the fallacy of the chronological? I call the fallacy of the chronological as regard the Gospel this: The Gospels present the narratives of the life of Jesus who came first, but the Gospel present Jesus through the spirituality of the early church. One of my preaching goals has been to show how the spiritual poetry, theology and practice of St. Paul is shown in story form in the Gospels since the Gospels came to written form some time after the writings of St. Paul.
St. Paul wrote about sin being the state of living in the condition of death. When people live in the deathly state of sin, they need life. They need a liberating life experience which could transform one's life before one died a bodily death. St. Paul believed that people needed to experience a kind of abundant life within our lives.
In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul wrote, "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life." In the Pauline writing to the Ephesian church, it is written: "You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2in which you once lived.......but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."
How could this theology of Paul, his poetry of spiritual metaphors and method be placed into the context of the life of Jesus? How could this spiritual method become spiritual manuals of the early churches? If we understand the presentation of the spiritual method of Paul into written forms using events in a narrative of Jesus to illustrate these spiritual metaphors, then we can appreciate the incredible significance of the Gospels to the people for whom they were first intended.
You and I regard the Gospels to be universal literature, freely available to be read by anyone. In the times when they were being written, they were spiritual manuals not for the general populace but for the more private communities, communities that often had to gather in secrecy. The Gospels were written and they hid the spiritual practices of the early church within presentations of events in the life of Jesus. The Gospels hid spiritual practice in plain literal words, because the writers of the Gospel believed that to be initiated into a life practice of spiritual transformation, one needed to have another set of interior eyes to discern the spiritual practice hidden within the plain words of the texts.
The early church believe that after the resurrection of Christ that he reappeared to some of his followers and he initiated them into an experience of the Spirit, and they in turn could initiate others to know the Spirit. And when the Spirit was known in peoples lives they were so transformed that it was like contrasting death and life. The experience of knowing God's eternal Spirit was to awaken to a new life, being born again or being born from above.
Today, we have read a restoration to life story of Jesus. A young man is brought back to life. One of the clues that this Gospel is a teaching story is because there are no names given for the young and the widow. Names would have been included if specific historical events were being written. The story revisit the life model of the Prophet Elijah and his interaction with a widow and her young son. The early church practiced a communal life where people took care of each other, proving that God loves the widow and the orphan.
But what is also found in this Gospel story is the spirituality written about by St. Paul. Each and every person comes to live under the conditions of sin. Sin is shooting our arrows of effort at the targets of life and those arrows are always falling short. Having rules and laws does not deliver us from sin and from its deathly effects: we still shoot arrows and still fall short of what we want and need to be. St. Paul wrote that he had been very religious person following the law but he was still involved in trying to kill his religious opponents, the followers of Jesus. An encounter with the Risen Christ converted him to begin another kind of life. He found a transforming life experience in the midst of his deathly condition of sin of ironically wanting to kill others for religious reasons.
The state of sin in St. Paul was metaphorically, a state of living death; it was a state of slavery and darkness.
In the Gospel spiritual manuals, each reader of the Gospel in those early church knew what the stories of "people coming back to life meant." They knew that an encounter with the Risen Christ brought to them a new life and a deliverance from the deathly state of sin.
Did the experience of grace and transformation mean that sin ended in one's life? Just as the healing stories and the restoration to life stories of the Gospel did not mean that people healed and restored did not die, the experience of the grace of God's life giving Spirit does not end sin in this world. Sin continues, because there is still a future. Hope means that we still continue to aim the actions of our life toward the targets of excellence in life. And we still fall short because there is still a future and as long as there is a future we will never be given the pride of finishing anything in a final and perfect way. Sin is not finished, but with the graceful experience of the High Power of God's presence, we have a different relationship with sin. We no longer need to be defeated by the false sense of perfection. We are not going to be perfect, because we never will be finished. Everlasting life means we will never be finished and once we accept our everlasting life we will no longer be defeated or live in disappointed despair about our failures.
Today, let us try to read the Gospels in the way in which the first readers read them. They were enrolled into a program of the spiritual transformation of their lives. Leaders like Paul and Peter were guiding these initiates into the transformation of their lives. The Gospels were written to hide the spiritual metaphors of the early church within the narratives of the life stories of Jesus. The restoration to life of the young man was a witness to the restoration of being freed from the effects of the death of sin. Each Gospel reader knew that he or she had been restored to new life from the deathly life of sin.
You and I are invited to the intentional path of spiritual transformation. You and I are invited to look for and find this new kind of life within the life of time that bears the tinges of death. You and I are invited to be surprised by the grace of finding new life within the conditions that could be characterized by the metaphors of death, darkness and slavery. Let us not carry the past as a burdensome corpse of our sin and failure; let us look forward to the new and fresh life of a future ruled by hope. And let us read this Gospel like the first Gospel readers who heard Christ say to them: "Young man, young woman, I say arise." And let us confess about Christ in our experience of new life: A great prophet, a great Savior has lived among us. Amen.
St. Paul wrote about sin being the state of living in the condition of death. When people live in the deathly state of sin, they need life. They need a liberating life experience which could transform one's life before one died a bodily death. St. Paul believed that people needed to experience a kind of abundant life within our lives.
In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul wrote, "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life." In the Pauline writing to the Ephesian church, it is written: "You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2in which you once lived.......but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."
How could this theology of Paul, his poetry of spiritual metaphors and method be placed into the context of the life of Jesus? How could this spiritual method become spiritual manuals of the early churches? If we understand the presentation of the spiritual method of Paul into written forms using events in a narrative of Jesus to illustrate these spiritual metaphors, then we can appreciate the incredible significance of the Gospels to the people for whom they were first intended.
You and I regard the Gospels to be universal literature, freely available to be read by anyone. In the times when they were being written, they were spiritual manuals not for the general populace but for the more private communities, communities that often had to gather in secrecy. The Gospels were written and they hid the spiritual practices of the early church within presentations of events in the life of Jesus. The Gospels hid spiritual practice in plain literal words, because the writers of the Gospel believed that to be initiated into a life practice of spiritual transformation, one needed to have another set of interior eyes to discern the spiritual practice hidden within the plain words of the texts.
The early church believe that after the resurrection of Christ that he reappeared to some of his followers and he initiated them into an experience of the Spirit, and they in turn could initiate others to know the Spirit. And when the Spirit was known in peoples lives they were so transformed that it was like contrasting death and life. The experience of knowing God's eternal Spirit was to awaken to a new life, being born again or being born from above.
Today, we have read a restoration to life story of Jesus. A young man is brought back to life. One of the clues that this Gospel is a teaching story is because there are no names given for the young and the widow. Names would have been included if specific historical events were being written. The story revisit the life model of the Prophet Elijah and his interaction with a widow and her young son. The early church practiced a communal life where people took care of each other, proving that God loves the widow and the orphan.
But what is also found in this Gospel story is the spirituality written about by St. Paul. Each and every person comes to live under the conditions of sin. Sin is shooting our arrows of effort at the targets of life and those arrows are always falling short. Having rules and laws does not deliver us from sin and from its deathly effects: we still shoot arrows and still fall short of what we want and need to be. St. Paul wrote that he had been very religious person following the law but he was still involved in trying to kill his religious opponents, the followers of Jesus. An encounter with the Risen Christ converted him to begin another kind of life. He found a transforming life experience in the midst of his deathly condition of sin of ironically wanting to kill others for religious reasons.
The state of sin in St. Paul was metaphorically, a state of living death; it was a state of slavery and darkness.
In the Gospel spiritual manuals, each reader of the Gospel in those early church knew what the stories of "people coming back to life meant." They knew that an encounter with the Risen Christ brought to them a new life and a deliverance from the deathly state of sin.
Did the experience of grace and transformation mean that sin ended in one's life? Just as the healing stories and the restoration to life stories of the Gospel did not mean that people healed and restored did not die, the experience of the grace of God's life giving Spirit does not end sin in this world. Sin continues, because there is still a future. Hope means that we still continue to aim the actions of our life toward the targets of excellence in life. And we still fall short because there is still a future and as long as there is a future we will never be given the pride of finishing anything in a final and perfect way. Sin is not finished, but with the graceful experience of the High Power of God's presence, we have a different relationship with sin. We no longer need to be defeated by the false sense of perfection. We are not going to be perfect, because we never will be finished. Everlasting life means we will never be finished and once we accept our everlasting life we will no longer be defeated or live in disappointed despair about our failures.
Today, let us try to read the Gospels in the way in which the first readers read them. They were enrolled into a program of the spiritual transformation of their lives. Leaders like Paul and Peter were guiding these initiates into the transformation of their lives. The Gospels were written to hide the spiritual metaphors of the early church within the narratives of the life stories of Jesus. The restoration to life of the young man was a witness to the restoration of being freed from the effects of the death of sin. Each Gospel reader knew that he or she had been restored to new life from the deathly life of sin.
You and I are invited to the intentional path of spiritual transformation. You and I are invited to look for and find this new kind of life within the life of time that bears the tinges of death. You and I are invited to be surprised by the grace of finding new life within the conditions that could be characterized by the metaphors of death, darkness and slavery. Let us not carry the past as a burdensome corpse of our sin and failure; let us look forward to the new and fresh life of a future ruled by hope. And let us read this Gospel like the first Gospel readers who heard Christ say to them: "Young man, young woman, I say arise." And let us confess about Christ in our experience of new life: A great prophet, a great Savior has lived among us. Amen.
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