5 Pentecost, A p 9, July 9, 2017
Zechariah 9:9-12 Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a Matt. 11:25-30
Lectionary Link
Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest." St. Paul was a man who had become weary and who carried heavy burdens. What were his burdens? It mainly was his past life. St. Paul was a Pharisee and a religious zealot. But he was enraged by the followers of Jesus. He was so sure that people like Stephen were such heretics from true Judaism that they deserved to be persecuted, hunted and even put to death. He lived in times when it seemed acceptable to kill one's religious opponents. St. Paul also wrote that he had a "weakness" which he begged God to deliver him from but God did not answer his prayer except to say that his grace would be with him in his weakness.
We have read today from what I call the "twilight zone" portion of the Epistle to the Romans. You remember the introduction to the Twilight Zone? Do, do, do, do...do, do, do, do.... In but a paragraph the word "do" is used 17 times. My high school English teacher would have marked this writing in red with a note: "Paul, I appreciate your intensive struggle but to be an interesting writer you need to use more stylistic variation, since you obviously feel very attached to the word do."
What I also call this portion of the Epistle to the Romans is "the Good Book inspires the Big Book." The Good Book is, of course, the Bible and the Big Book is the Handbook of Alcoholic Anonymous. One can see in this writing of St. Paul an intensive anatomy of addiction. One could replace the word sin with the word addiction in this passage and understand Christ to be a graceful, personal High Power to help interdict the power of addiction.
St. Paul wrote about sin as the deep burden of his life. Something dominated him and enslaved him and completely took over his life. He hated the helplessness. He hated being out of control. He hated the loss of his freedom to the power of sin. He called the power of sin the body of death. What was Paul's burden? A body of death. This metaphor is quite a macabre metaphor that derived from a method of torture familiar to Paul in his time. A method of torture found in Virgil's Aeneid and among ancient Etruscan pirates was to tie a corpse face to face with the prisoner. The prisoner would go mad before dying. A body of death was literally tied to the tortured person. St. Paul said that his sin was like this body of death that he could not shake and at the moment of his greatest weakness, when he could not be proud about his self control or his strength, he mustered up the strength to turn to find Christ as the personal Higher Power to help him deal with his body of death.
Of course, we all can be sinners without knowing ourselves as abject addicts. St. Paul and each of us have our own history with what we might call the burdens of our lives. Each of us could write our own personal history of what sin means to us. Perhaps a more modern insight about this thing we have come to call sin is a wrong relationship with profound desire. Like the molten center of a volcano, the molten center of energy of one's life is what might be called desire. And desire is good. It is the continual engine of curiosity which drives us to embrace the future. It is a magnetic force that can be drawn to focus upon multiple objects and people. If we are in a good relationship with our Desire we can know it to be the power of love and hope. But desire can be known as fixated projection upon things and we can find ourselves enslaved in a habit. This enslavement is known when we do the things we don't want to do. We know what is right for us to do but we don't have the power to do it.
Civilization is built upon the effort to tame human desire. Desire can be so powerful that if there are not laws, desire can result in chaos and conflict among people. The evolution of societies with law and legal systems are proof that humanity has always feared the ability to destroy ourselves if we do not live under the instruction of rules backed up by the threat of punishment.
St. Paul was a Pharisee who had been raised to keep religious laws, but he found that having the nurture of the law and having fear of punishment still did not empower him to attain self control. If the law only taunts us about how we are making mistakes, it does not have the positive power of enabling new behaviors. St. Paul came to a place where he knew he needed a graceful power to enable new behaviors. Like a surfer, St. Paul climbed upon Christ, like a surf board and rode over the powerful waves of desire to carry him to his destination on shore. The world of desire never goes away until we die. The secret of the spiritual life is to learn how to surf one's desire and use the energy to propel us to do the really good and creative things that we want to do.
Jesus noted that religious people had turned religious laws into their own obsessive compulsive habits. Some thought that John the Baptist was too ascetic and said he was motivated by a demon. Jesus ate and drank with people who did not keep the dietary rules of Judaism and he was called a glutton and a drunkard. We can worship our own life habits so much that we end up judging others who don't perform their life and religion like we do. Jesus said, "Wisdom is finding one's own relationship with sin and with rules. We can help each other in dealing with sin and with rules but each person's history is so unique that the burden of sin happens a bit differently for each of us.
In the Gospel reading, we find a variation of the born again metaphor. The wise and intelligent have attained the benefit of culture, law and learning but they can still be "out of control" when it comes to sin. What has God hidden from adults? The original blessing that is known in the experience of infants.
We adults have become completely formed and shaped by our social environments and in so doing we have lost connection with our original blessing, the power of the joy of our original innocence. The original innocence of God's joyful image upon our lives.
St. Paul learned that Christ could be for him the one who helped him with his burden of sin. Jesus asked his followers to get into his yoke. A yoke could hold two oxen together to pull a cart that could not be pulled by just one ox because of a heavy load. In this metaphor we have insights about our lives. All of us have our burdens and loads of our "pre-existing conditions" which we are carrying. We are invited to get in step with the yoke of Christ and learn how to pull the load of our lives with the help of Christ.
Jesus Christ can be our spiritual master. With him we can be returned to the power and grace of our original blessing and innocence. We can come to know that desire itself is not bad, it is very good energy that we can let carry us to enjoyment of life and good and hopeful outcomes.
The Gospel today for us is that sin is uniquely known by each of us. Paul had his metaphors for his experience of sin and his experience of grace. What should be common for all of us in our experience of sin is the promise of the helpful intervention of the personal higher power of Jesus Christ. With Christ, we are not given an escape from sin or from this sinful world; rather we are joined in the yoke of Christ to know that there is someone stronger than us pulling for and with us as we seek to learn how to ride the waves of the desire of our life.
Today, I congratulate each one for your uniquely sinful life. I hope your sinful life does not leave you feeling as bad as St. Paul did. I also congratulate you on your unique life of grace because each of us has had to find that we are not left alone in our sins, we are given the inward higher power to help us ride the power of desire toward enjoyment and not towards addiction.
I wish for each of us the knowledge of being yoked and helped by the personal higher power of the Risen Christ today. Amen.
Zechariah 9:9-12 Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a Matt. 11:25-30
Lectionary Link
Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest." St. Paul was a man who had become weary and who carried heavy burdens. What were his burdens? It mainly was his past life. St. Paul was a Pharisee and a religious zealot. But he was enraged by the followers of Jesus. He was so sure that people like Stephen were such heretics from true Judaism that they deserved to be persecuted, hunted and even put to death. He lived in times when it seemed acceptable to kill one's religious opponents. St. Paul also wrote that he had a "weakness" which he begged God to deliver him from but God did not answer his prayer except to say that his grace would be with him in his weakness.
We have read today from what I call the "twilight zone" portion of the Epistle to the Romans. You remember the introduction to the Twilight Zone? Do, do, do, do...do, do, do, do.... In but a paragraph the word "do" is used 17 times. My high school English teacher would have marked this writing in red with a note: "Paul, I appreciate your intensive struggle but to be an interesting writer you need to use more stylistic variation, since you obviously feel very attached to the word do."
What I also call this portion of the Epistle to the Romans is "the Good Book inspires the Big Book." The Good Book is, of course, the Bible and the Big Book is the Handbook of Alcoholic Anonymous. One can see in this writing of St. Paul an intensive anatomy of addiction. One could replace the word sin with the word addiction in this passage and understand Christ to be a graceful, personal High Power to help interdict the power of addiction.
St. Paul wrote about sin as the deep burden of his life. Something dominated him and enslaved him and completely took over his life. He hated the helplessness. He hated being out of control. He hated the loss of his freedom to the power of sin. He called the power of sin the body of death. What was Paul's burden? A body of death. This metaphor is quite a macabre metaphor that derived from a method of torture familiar to Paul in his time. A method of torture found in Virgil's Aeneid and among ancient Etruscan pirates was to tie a corpse face to face with the prisoner. The prisoner would go mad before dying. A body of death was literally tied to the tortured person. St. Paul said that his sin was like this body of death that he could not shake and at the moment of his greatest weakness, when he could not be proud about his self control or his strength, he mustered up the strength to turn to find Christ as the personal Higher Power to help him deal with his body of death.
Of course, we all can be sinners without knowing ourselves as abject addicts. St. Paul and each of us have our own history with what we might call the burdens of our lives. Each of us could write our own personal history of what sin means to us. Perhaps a more modern insight about this thing we have come to call sin is a wrong relationship with profound desire. Like the molten center of a volcano, the molten center of energy of one's life is what might be called desire. And desire is good. It is the continual engine of curiosity which drives us to embrace the future. It is a magnetic force that can be drawn to focus upon multiple objects and people. If we are in a good relationship with our Desire we can know it to be the power of love and hope. But desire can be known as fixated projection upon things and we can find ourselves enslaved in a habit. This enslavement is known when we do the things we don't want to do. We know what is right for us to do but we don't have the power to do it.
Civilization is built upon the effort to tame human desire. Desire can be so powerful that if there are not laws, desire can result in chaos and conflict among people. The evolution of societies with law and legal systems are proof that humanity has always feared the ability to destroy ourselves if we do not live under the instruction of rules backed up by the threat of punishment.
St. Paul was a Pharisee who had been raised to keep religious laws, but he found that having the nurture of the law and having fear of punishment still did not empower him to attain self control. If the law only taunts us about how we are making mistakes, it does not have the positive power of enabling new behaviors. St. Paul came to a place where he knew he needed a graceful power to enable new behaviors. Like a surfer, St. Paul climbed upon Christ, like a surf board and rode over the powerful waves of desire to carry him to his destination on shore. The world of desire never goes away until we die. The secret of the spiritual life is to learn how to surf one's desire and use the energy to propel us to do the really good and creative things that we want to do.
Jesus noted that religious people had turned religious laws into their own obsessive compulsive habits. Some thought that John the Baptist was too ascetic and said he was motivated by a demon. Jesus ate and drank with people who did not keep the dietary rules of Judaism and he was called a glutton and a drunkard. We can worship our own life habits so much that we end up judging others who don't perform their life and religion like we do. Jesus said, "Wisdom is finding one's own relationship with sin and with rules. We can help each other in dealing with sin and with rules but each person's history is so unique that the burden of sin happens a bit differently for each of us.
In the Gospel reading, we find a variation of the born again metaphor. The wise and intelligent have attained the benefit of culture, law and learning but they can still be "out of control" when it comes to sin. What has God hidden from adults? The original blessing that is known in the experience of infants.
We adults have become completely formed and shaped by our social environments and in so doing we have lost connection with our original blessing, the power of the joy of our original innocence. The original innocence of God's joyful image upon our lives.
St. Paul learned that Christ could be for him the one who helped him with his burden of sin. Jesus asked his followers to get into his yoke. A yoke could hold two oxen together to pull a cart that could not be pulled by just one ox because of a heavy load. In this metaphor we have insights about our lives. All of us have our burdens and loads of our "pre-existing conditions" which we are carrying. We are invited to get in step with the yoke of Christ and learn how to pull the load of our lives with the help of Christ.
Jesus Christ can be our spiritual master. With him we can be returned to the power and grace of our original blessing and innocence. We can come to know that desire itself is not bad, it is very good energy that we can let carry us to enjoyment of life and good and hopeful outcomes.
The Gospel today for us is that sin is uniquely known by each of us. Paul had his metaphors for his experience of sin and his experience of grace. What should be common for all of us in our experience of sin is the promise of the helpful intervention of the personal higher power of Jesus Christ. With Christ, we are not given an escape from sin or from this sinful world; rather we are joined in the yoke of Christ to know that there is someone stronger than us pulling for and with us as we seek to learn how to ride the waves of the desire of our life.
Today, I congratulate each one for your uniquely sinful life. I hope your sinful life does not leave you feeling as bad as St. Paul did. I also congratulate you on your unique life of grace because each of us has had to find that we are not left alone in our sins, we are given the inward higher power to help us ride the power of desire toward enjoyment and not towards addiction.
I wish for each of us the knowledge of being yoked and helped by the personal higher power of the Risen Christ today. Amen.
