Service Is Key to the Messianic Secret

22  Pentecost b P.24  October 21,2018
Job 38:1-7, (34-41) Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45 

 Lectionary Link
I would like to tell you something about what biblical scholars call the "messianic secret."  Why is Jesus often presented as saying to everyone, "Shhh, don't tell anyone about who I am and this fabulous things that just happened to you?"   And why is it that the disciples are presented as people who can confess that Jesus is the Messiah but do not know what kind of Messiah he is?  The meaning of the Messiah is even kept from Peter and the disciples.  This is seen in the notions held by the disciples as presented in today's Gospel.  Apparently, James and John once regarded the Messiah to be triumphant political and military figure who would take over the world and this Messiah would need vice presidents and cabinet members to sit next to him in his earthly administration.  After all, the Caesar needed generals and administrators, surely any worthy Messiah would need right hand men.  "And Jesus, can me and my brother be your top leaders in your administration?"  The nature of the Christian Messiah was a secret even to the disciples who walked with him.

Now why was the Messiah a secret in the time of Jesus but not a secret to St. Paul?

The members of the early church understood the difference of the Risen Christ Messiah and how no one understood how Jesus was Messiah before his death and resurrection.  Jesus of Nazareth was confessed to the "the Messiah" but his contemporary did not yet know what his Messiahship meant.

How could Jesus be a Risen Christ Messiah whose community was spreading steadily and stealthily under the radar of Roman detection to become formidable household communities in widespread cities and yet he was not recognized as truly great in his own time?

The Gospel writers used this "messianic secret" explanation to try to show why Jesus became more popular after he lived than he was in his own time.

The disciples who are presented as clueless about the messianic secret were just like all of the Jews who remained in the synagogue and could not accept Jesus as a Messiah who fit their conceptions of a Messiah, one who would be a King like David and evict the Romans and give Israel back their land.

The disciples later experienced the Risen Christ; so the essence of the Messiah for them was the resurrection.  How could Jesus on the cross be understood as a Messiah?  He was the suffering servant messiah written about in the prophet Isaiah.

The suffering servant Messiah was also the one who said to be great is to be the servant of all.   Politicians are often called, "public servants," but only a very few actually live up to that billing.

The early churches as they grew in the cities of the Roman Empire were churches of people who knew the messianic secret.  They were a "suffering servant" church.  The house churches became micro-communities to integrate people arriving in the cities who were without the families and extended families of their former rural environs.  The house churches were Johnny-on-the-spot for the urban immigrants.  The churches gave them an identity and they received an initiation into the experience of the Risen Christ, whom they came to know as their Messiah, even though as Gentiles, they did not really have a "Messiah" tradition.

The early Christians, starting with Peter and Paul became a servant church; they saw the evidence of the Risen Christ  and the Holy Spirit in the lives of Gentiles who did not even know what a Messiah was.  Peter and Paul and other Jews who followed Jesus,  understood Jesus as a suffering servant Messiah. They served the presence of the Risen Christ as he came to be known in the life experience of many new Christians, Gentile Christians.  The early church was not a visible and powerful political organization.  It did not have imposing power on society, but what it had was a faithful, silent, steady servant mentality and this was known chiefly in hospitality to new people.

The servant churches of the first century in the Roman Empire consisted of people who had discovered the messianic secret.  They had learned that service made them great because it is the spirit of service which is most expressive of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Service may not be flashy but it is always winsome to the people who need to served.

The failure of the church today is that we've become too important; we often live without knowing the messianic secret: Jesus was a suffering servant messiah.  We too will know the messianic secret as we discover the secret of service.  Amen.

Finding Innocence and Living Beyond the Knowledge of Good and Evil

20  Pentecost Cycle b proper 22 October 7, 2018

Job 1:1; 2:1-10    Psalm 26

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12  Mark 10:2-16

Lectionary Link
The Hebrew Scriptures reveal the great gift of the law to the people of Israel.  And what is law?  I would call law the revelations of the best insights for how to live given the conditions of freedom which exist in our world.

The great Bible story begins with a totally innocent world and through the work of the serpent and human agency the knowledge of good and evil became the human experience.

Once human beings discover good and evil within the freedom of the world, what does God do to help people live together with safety and without sustaining too much harm?

God gave the law.  The law arises as recommended actuarial living.  When people live in the conditions of freedom, what probably will happen?  How can human being live so that more probable good can happen than more probable evil? How can people in community live to create the best probable outcomes?  This is where the law comes in.

Israel through Moses received the law with great and wonderful actuarial wisdom on how to live so that there is more probability of good things happening than bad things.

So, Israel, you need an identity that will keep you together as a people so that you don't fall apart as a community.  How do you do that?  You love one God.  You don't imitate the neighboring tribes who have many gods.  You keep from hypocrisy of saying you believe in one God when in practice you don't.  (Don't take God's name in vain). You give God some time to build your One God identity. (Keep the sabbath).  You want to add good probability to your life?  Honor family relations, like parents and spouses.  You honor property rights; don't steal.  You honor truth; don't lie.  You honor life; don't kill.  And you learn impulse control; don't covet.  And so there are many of laws and rules for times and places in one's life for social order.  Big laws and little laws, all based on some notion of actuarial wisdom.

But if one observes the law to one's best ability, does that keep bad things from happening to anyone?  There was a tradition of religious thinking that arose which said that if bad things happened to you, then you must have offended God and transgressed some law and so the resulting evil was a reciprocal punishment.  Conversely, if you were blessed with luck and success that must mean you were properly observing God's law and attaining the resulting blessing.

And so we have the witness of Job; he was an religious observant man.  He was faithful, helped the needy and was law abiding.  He should have been the one obviously blessed to have good fortune.  He was proving good probability theory.  But Job was the figure in a wisdom story to challenge very narrow minded thinking about the law.  The story about God who is perfect freedom, included the Satanic agency of bad things happening.  No matter how religious one is or how one lives, good and bad things can happen to anyone in seeming inconsistent ways.

Why do so many of the world's tyrant get so much power and wealth while being the most dishonest and cruel people of their times?  This kind of disproves the theory of only good things happening to good people.

Job is the story of bad things happening to a good man and his struggle to maintain his faith and belief in God, even while his friends victimized him and told him to admit his secret faults which had caused his bad luck.

Keeping the law is good actuarial practice; but it still does not guarantee exemption from bad things happening to anyone.

The presence of the law in the lives of people also requires an expansion of the number of laws.  Why?  Because people fail to keep the law and when people fail to keep the law, new laws of sentencing and punishment have to be written to deal with human failure.

Charity often fails in human relationship, in marriage and divorce happens.  The reasons for permitting divorce was a big theological question among the rabbis in the time of Jesus.  Jesus was upset with the emphasis that religious leader expressed.  Just because people fail at charity, the failure at charity and divorce cannot overturn the standard of marriage as being the norm.

Jesus was saying just because people fail at charity, such failure cannot be stated as the norm.  Marriage is the still the law, even if people fail a marriage.  Jesus was not denying the fact that divorce occurred in the lives of people, he was upset that the religious leaders began to treat divorce as being a legal principle which challenged the primacy of marriage.  The law of marriage remains the same no matter how much people fail and petition for divorce.

Jesus confronted people who were burdened with legalistic lives.  Some people thought they were blessed because they were members of the correct religious party.  Others were so concerned with failure to keep the law, that they began to treat failure as the norm.

Jesus was fed up with adult religious life of religious leaders which had become legal arguments between religious parties about who believed in the right way.

What did he do?  He brought a child and rebuked the adult religious cynics.  "See this child...this child is innocent...this child lives beyond good and evil of adult religious legalism.  You want to understand God's kingdom, access your child aspect of personality, the part of you that still retains original blessing and original innocence.   With the energy of your inner child you can be restored in the new birth that you need to understand God in the adult world so bogged down within the knowledge of good and evil and their effects upon us."


What have we learned from Holy Scriptures today?

No matter how religious we are, we are not exempt from the free conditions that can happen to anyone.  So let us not get bogged down in claiming such an exemption.  Don't presume to know why bad things happen to us or anyone else.  We may victimize them instead of simply offering our assistance and care.

Next, just because it is common to people to fail to keep the law, the norm and ideal still remain the same.  Human failure at marriage does not change the normalcy of marriage and enduring love in personal commitment to each other.

Finally, is the world of the knowledge of good and evil making you cynical and angry and unable to love.  Is the knowledge of good and evil making us misanthropic, leaning toward disillusionment with humanity?  Look to project upon the infant and the child and recover the power of innocence within oneself to know the power of a new birth.  The power of innocence can help us survive living with the free conditions of knowing good and evil.  With the power of innocence, we can overcome the anxiety of the adult world of living with the knowledge of good and evil.

Let each of us find the new birth of the child within us to counter the effects of living with the knowledge of good and evil.  Amen.

Gospel Neo-natal, Infant and Child Theology

18 Pentecost Cycle b Proper 20   September 23, 2018

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22 Ps. 54

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37      

Lectionary Link
One of the most difficult things for me to learn and remember about the New Testament has to do with the issue of chronological confusion.  By this, I mean that I know logically that Jesus came before Paul and the church.  But in writing of the New Testament, St. Paul's and the apostles' spiritual experience came before the writings which retold the life of Jesus.  What this means is that the Gospels were written in a way to account for what had been happening in the early church.  But they had to be written in ways that were not blatantly anachronistic, that is, they did not want to import into telling about the life of Jesus the obvious experiences of the much later church.  How could the experiences of the church be told using the life and words of Jesus to anticipate the success of the Christian mission in the Roman Empire?

St. Paul did not see Jesus; he had mystical experience of the Risen Christ.  More people had mystical experiences of the Risen Christ than had personal experience of Jesus in his own time.  Jesus was much more popular after his Resurrection appearances than he was in his own time in the limited areas of Palestine.

How could the story of the success of the church be told using the life narratives of Jesus?

In the mysticism of St. Paul, he had a profound experience of identity with Christ.  Paul said, "Christ lived within him."  Paul said that "Christ was all and in all."  Paul said that he lived "in Christ."  How does one take this poetry of mystical identity and re-relate it through the telling of the life of Jesus of Nazareth?

One of the teaching illustrations of the Gospel is what I would call neo-natal, infant and child theology.  John the Baptist before he was born leapt in his mother's womb in recognizing Mary who was carrying Jesus the Messiah in her womb.  Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be "born again."  Poor Nick wondered about how he as an old man could get back into his mother's womb.  The Gospel writer showed Jesus saying, "Nick, it's not about literalism; it is about the mystical experience of new birth."  Jesus said God had withheld the mystery from the wise and had revealed it to infants.  Jesus said that one had to be like a child to enter the kingdom of God.  Jesus told his disciples who were shooing the children way, "Let the children come to me; don't forbid them because the kingdom of God belong to such as these."

And in today's Gospel we have what I would call the sacramental theology of the child.  We call the bread and wine of Holy Eucharist, sacramental because they bear to us the presence of Christ.  While the disciples argued about who was going to be the greatest and have the best positions, Jesus took a child and said, "If you receive this child, then you have received me and the one who sent me."  How many people presume to easily find Christ in the bread and wine and not find it in babies and children?  Jesus was telling power hungry people that if they didn't take care of the vulnerable child as being important to their life, then they did not understand him or God, his Father.

I am blessed each day to be at the door of our preschool and welcome the children and the babies.  I strongly believe in the theology of the child as promoted by Jesus in the Gospel writings.  I think that the theology of the child is the most obvious natural spiritual theology of all.

If we discriminate against a person because of his or her age, then we will miss the ministry of the people in that age group.  The disciples were adult bean counters; obvious adults like themselves are most valuable for the Jesus Movement.  "We know who the Movement needs to be successful.  And we are evangelist executives in our prime, so we are indispensable to the success of the movement."  Each were saying to Jesus, "I want to be your main man."

And what did Jesus do?  He brought a child in their midst.  And what can a child do?  The child can't preach.  The child can't give any money.  Maybe a child could be an errand boy or girl, but are they really important to the success of the Jesus Movement?

And what did Jesus say?  "See this child.  If you receive this child you have received me."  The values of Jesus were different from his disciples who wanted to be great in the Jesus Movement.  Yes, the Jesus movement is about preaching and teaching, but it is also an intergenerational community.  The community needs everyone because each person bears the image of something important to the entire community.

What does a child do for the community?  Children carry with them the state of living that has been forgotten by us adults.   We adults have tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.  We have become hurt by life; we have become disillusioned, disappointed and we have become protective and sometimes even cynical.  As adults we can easily lose the joy of living and the sense of wonder and curiosity.   That is why we need children and babies; they bear the secrets of what we have forgotten or have quit trying to find with spiritual practice.  Jesus reminds us that we will not find the kingdom of God as a parallel existence in this world if we have lost our ability to have wonder.

When we project upon a baby or child, we have to soften up; we have to put our adult aspect of personality on hold and access our child aspect of personality.  And if we can do that we will understand Christ and we will be able to access the parallel world of the kingdom of God which coexists with all of the adult life of this world which is chock full of good and bad things.

The wonder of the child is beyond good and evil of our adult world.  And we need to access this aspect of ourselves if we are going be able to integrate all the stages of the age cycles of our lives.

God has placed the agents of innocence in our lives in our babies and children, and even in our pets.  These are gifts to us to project on them and recover what we might have lost with all of our adult seriousness.

Let us receive the witness of the child and vulnerable today as the Gospel lesson that Jesus wanted to teach this world.  Let us tend to the children of the world; but let us also attend to the child aspect of our own personalities so that we might tap into an incredible capacity for new birth, original joy and hope for our future.

Come and find the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, but don't stop there; in the innocence of children and babies we can also access the wonder of the presence of Christ.  Amen.


   

The Cross: History's Greatest Makeover

17 Pentecost Proper19  September 16, 2018 

Proverbs 1:20-33 Psalm 116:1-8

James 3:1-12  Mark 8:27-38

Lectionary Link

How many of us are wearing a cross today?  How many of us often wear a cross as a necklace, bracelet or as earrings?

The cross rendered in gold, silver and jewels is perhaps the greatest symbolic makeover in history.

A tortuous instrument of capital punishment is now romanticized and spiritualized to the point of becoming jewelry.  In the language of St. Paul he wrote that he "gloried in the Cross of Christ."  How did such makeover happen?

It is no secret to us because we know the end of the story.  When Jesus reappeared to his disciples, the Cross of Jesus became something else.  It became but one event in the life of Jesus, and it became an event with different meaning than what the Roman authorities had intended.

The Romans used the crucifixion of Jesus to put an end to the Jesus Movement, which was regarded by them as a movement which threatened the peace of Palestine.  The Romans used the crucifixion to snuff out the Jesus Movement forever.

Even after the Resurrection of Christ, the cross had different meanings for the Jews.  For those who did not experience the resurrection appearances of Christ, it was hard for them to understand Jesus as a heroic Messiah.  For many Jews, the Messiah had to be a heroic king like King David who would be known when he delivered the Jews in Palestine from the Roman occupation.

The competing versions regarding the Messiah is found in the Gospel dialogue between Jesus and Peter.  Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah and when he was told by Jesus what it meant to be the Messiah,  Peter presumed to tell the Messiah that he was wrong about himself.  Kind of ironic: "Jesus, you're the Messiah but you don't know what that means."

This Gospel highlights the early disagreement among the Jews about Jesus and the nature of the Messiah.  The Hebrew Scriptures contain different traditions of the Messiah.  The Messiah was seen as a returning conquering King in one tradition; He was seen as a suffering servant in another tradition.

It was obvious to the Jews that Jesus was not a military Messiah who would free Israel from Roman control, in fact, in the year 70, Jerusalem was razed to the ground and the Temple was destroyed for the last time by the Roman army.

How is Jesus on the cross reconciled with the notion of the Messiah as being a majestic figure in the life of the world?

The Risen Christ was able to be made known to so many in such obvious and unavoidable ways, the ones who understood the power of the presence of the Risen Christ found a different way to understand the Messiah than the prevailing view.  Jesus was the suffering servant, sacrificial Passover Lamb Messiah in his first coming.  The Risen Christ would be the victorious Kingly Messiah in his second coming.

The continuous experiences of the Risen Christ in the lives of many brought about the new meanings of the Cross of Christ.

For St. Paul, he believed in taking on a mystical identity with the cross of Christ.  He wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ."   In such an identity he found the ability to die to his sinful self and let the Risen life of Christ live through him.  To have the power to crucify the sinful self, the possibility of living sacrificially became a reality.  For the writer of the Epistle of James, dying to one's self meant being able to control one's tongue.

In the churches of the Gospel, to take up one's cross and follow Christ became the mystical catch phrase for the transformation of one's life.

So why do we continue to wear the Cross today?  We have the same selfish ego problems common to people of all times.  We need help to live in the sacrificial way of love needed for the quality survival of our world and our local communities.  We need a higher power interdiction of the unworthy and harmful impulses of our lives.  The death of perfect Jesus was a reverse power; by identifying with the power of the death of Jesus, we bring to death the power of our selfish selves and we allow the power of the Spirit of Christ to perform the sacrificial acts of love needed to transform our lives to be like Christ.

Let us not trivialize the cross of Christ by separating it from all of the depth of its meanings.  It was a horrible event that happened to the perfect Jesus.  The cross of Jesus, killed him into his resurrection life and transformed the cross for us.

Let us embrace both the power of the cross and the power of the resurrection as we seek to transform our lives toward the excellence of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Does God Have Favorites?

16  Pentecost P.18  September 9, 2018

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23  Ps. 146: 4-9

James 1:17-27        Mark 7:31-37     

Lectionary Link

Does God have favorites?  How would we know if God had favorites?  Are you one of God's favorites?  If I believe that I am one of God's favorites, does that mean other people cannot be God's favorites?

The natural way for us to think about God having favorites is to assume that God shows preference by giving people, events of good fortune or good luck.  When we read the Bible, we might think that the Jewish people are God's favorites.  In fact we often hear the Jews called God's chosen people. 

Did some fortunate and wonderful things happen to the Jews?  Yes, indeed.  They were given the law and having the ancient writings of the Hebrew Scriptures have made them stand out in a special way among the peoples of the earth.  But the Bible also shows that the Jews probably had more bad luck than good luck.  They had their land taken away from them for the majority of their history.  Lots of bad things happened to Israel and the people of Israel.

Today, we can think that God favors people who are successful in their lives with wealth, knowledge and power.  And we might want to be associated with lucky and successful people.  And we might want to avoid people who are poor, uneducated and people without status and power in society. 

Our readings from the Scriptures today invite us to think about what it means to be God's favorites.  The writer of James tells us we're not supposed to treat people poorly because they aren't our favorites.  We're supposed to be impartial in our works and deeds toward others.  Why should we be impartial in how we treat other people?  Because everyone is equal in dignity of being people who can have faith.  Having faith, is what makes us equal in dignity.

The Gospels are the oracles of Christ in the early church.  In the oracles which came to writing, the early preachers used the life of Jesus as a way to teach the Gospel message.  What is the Gospel message that we have read today?  It is having faith in Christ which gives us the experience that we are God's chosen and favorite.

A Syrophoenician woman was not regarded to be a favorite person of God in the time of Jesus in Jewish society.  She was an outsider, a foreigner and how could she be one of God's favorites?  The words of Jesus to this woman seem cruel.  This woman had a child who was deeply troubled with an unclean spirit.  All this woman wanted was the health of her child.  She had heard about Jesus and she believed Jesus could heal her daughter.

The words of Jesus are a teaching event.  "Dear woman, do you want me to heal your daughter?  Don't you accept the prevailing belief that only God's favorite children, the Jews,  get to have the benefit of sitting at table for the family meal?  What makes you think that you can be a part of the family?"

The woman said, "Well, I don't have to be a favorite child sitting at the table; just let me be like one of the dogs under the table that can eat a crumb which falls from the table.  That crumb will be enough for me if you will heal my daughter."

And Jesus said, "Wow, your faith has saved your daughter."

What was the church trying to teach with this Gospel?  They were trying to say that God's favor could not be limited to the Jewish people; God's favor was upon the Gentiles and anyone who exercised their faith in Christ.

What is the message for you and me today?  Do you want to be God's favorite? Then exercise your faith toward Christ.  That is how you are God's favorite.  Having faith does not mean that you will always be lucky or successful or wealthy, but having faith is the gift we have to help us to live the very best we can through whatever might happen to us.

And if we have faith in Christ, then we are God's favorite.  And if we have faith in Christ, we know that everyone else can also have faith in Christ, and so we will treat everyone with equal dignity, because we know that they can have faith and be God's favorite too.  And we can know that faith and good works go together because having faith in Christ is the best work of our lives.  Amen.

Religion, Faith and Authentic Living

15  Pentecost Cycle B proper 17   September 2, 2018

Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10

James 1:17-27  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Lectionary Link

I might love and appreciate music;  I might even try to participate in it in my amateur ways and yet I am not a musician.  Some people are not only gifted but also they have fully embraced the practice required to be a musician.  I can be a listener and hearer of music, but I cannot do it as well as fully trained and gifted musicians.

I admire people in many other disciplines, scientists, mathematicians, inventors and I can read and hear them, but I cannot do science or math or invention in the same way.

In life, as much competence as we try to attain, we still cannot be omni-competent in all of the disciplines of life.

But that brings us to the life of faith and religion.  Faith and religion is accessible to everyone.  No one has to take special training in faith or religion.

Faith and religion require of us all authentic living.  How do we attain authentic living?  By not only hearing the word of God, but also doing it.

Everyone is required in life to live up to their greatest ideals; no one is exempt.  The word of God and faith is accessible to everyone.  You don't need to go to seminary, you don't need to go to confirmation class, you don't need to go to church; hearing and obeying the word of God is accessible to everyone, everywhere and at all times.

One of the main problems that Jesus had with the religious leaders of his time is that they had put religious rules and rituals in place of the commonsense practice of doing goodness, kindness and justice to everyone.

When we replace being good in word and deed, with simply the ritual practice of religion, we have missed the point of faith, religion, the law, the prophets and the message of Christ.

Why are we tempted to replace being good with religious rituals?  Because being really good and just is much harder work.  It is harder work for our naturally selfish selves.  It is easy to come to church and to Mass while we know outside of our church walls there are many people without enough food, clothing and shelter.  Religious ritual is easy; actually loving our neighbors and doing justice for everyone is really difficult.

The Gospel words of Jesus today remind us about the purpose of religion, faith, the law and the prophets.  The purpose of faith is to grow and learn how to not only hear the word of God but also do the word of God in acts of love, sacrifice and justice.  Jesus did not have many good things to say about the interior life which motivates the bad thoughts and deeds of our life.  He was saying that we can't use religious behavior to be something like lipstick on a pig.  Jesus promised the baptism of the Holy Spirit for us to attain the source of a clean heart to motivate us beyond mere self interest and self love, to practice the religion of loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbors.

You and I come to this altar today, not because life is as easy as coming to this altar; we come here because we are desperate for God's help to be authentic people.  We come here to ask for grace to help us not only to hear God's word but also to do God's word in the way in which Jesus Christ lived.  Amen.

Being a Spiritual Warrior

14 Pentecost  Cycle B proper 16  August 26,2018

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18  Psalm 34:15-22

Ephesians 6:10-20  John 6:56-69

Lectionary Link

St. Paul like all users of language deployed figurative language and all kinds of metaphors in order to present insights for understanding and living a life of faith.

He used both the metaphor of a birthing mother and caring father as his role in the lives of people coming to faith.  He used the metaphors of runner and boxer and prisoner.  

St. Paul lived in the Roman Empire.  Wherever he went, he found the presence of the Emperor and the presence of the Emperor was most visible in the person of the Roman soldier.

Soldiering was a major occupation in the Roman Empire.  There were centurions and soldiers in the Christian churches.  For Paul, the soldier became a metaphor to illustrate the Christian life.

St. Paul completely spiritualized the armor of the soldier to illustrate his understanding about a major experience in life.

Being a soldier is a special discipline.  It means always being physically and mentally ready for the arising crisis of battle.

We perhaps don't like admit a main reality of life.  What is that reality?  Life is a struggle.  And so Paul uses the metaphors of soldier and fighting and war.  We are at war.  Well, that's not too pleasant.  I wish life was just "having it made in the shade."  But just as exercise is needed to prevent atrophy of muscles, so struggle is necessary to prevent the atrophy of the muscles of faith.

In the disagreement about eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood, Jesus said that his words were spirit and his words were life.  The words of Paul were spirit and written about the spiritual life.

St. Paul wrote that we don't fight against flesh and blood.  This is a recognition that the environments in which we live are not always going to be automatically favorable or friendly for us.  And as we daily confront the environments of our lives, St. Paul writes that we must be spiritual warriors.  Our spiritual being has to be in good shape because if we only live in reactionary patterns to our five senses, we will be overcome.

The inner essential spiritual person has to be constantly prepared for the struggles which occur in our environment.

Even as a Roman soldier has all of the equipment of armor for protection and for attack, the inner spiritual person needs to be comprised with corresponding tools.  The battle that occurs in our environment has to be prepared for by being spiritually fit.

The life inside of us is a war of words.  Desire can create within us temptation for power, greed, anger, envy, revenge, fear, guilt and timidity.  We can be tempted to act in wrong ways because it often seems immediately to our advantage to lie instead of telling the truth. Paul wrote that we should wear the belt of truth.  Coupled with that is the breast plate of righteousness.  Simply put, if one is guided by just doing what is right, it prepares one to stand against accusations about wrong behaviors.  The spiritual soldier's shoes or boots, involve being prepared to share the Gospel of peace.  Jesus said, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel."  For Paul, the Gospel was a Gospel of peace and that is truly ironic given that Paul is using a soldier's uniform as a metaphor.  The spiritual warrior is a person of peace and one who is spreading the peace of Christ.  Paul's spiritual warrior carries a shield of faith.  There are many things that we face in life that could incite fear, anxiety, doubt and despair but faith is the ability to anchor our lives on hope rather than despair.  Faith is the ability always to act with the optimism of hope.  It's like the perpetually hopeful baseball fan: "Wait till next year."  I am going to live now as though things will eventually be much better, even toward a resurrection afterlife.  Hope is the quenching water for the flaming arrows of accusation and fear and with faith one accesses hope as a deep motive for living. Paul's spiritual warrior wears a helmet of salvation?  And what needs to be saved more than our thinking minds.  Certainly our minds can be the devil's playground as we can find them to be the battlefield of clashing thoughts representing the great disagreements which can occur within us.  Each day we need salvation in our minds; we need heath in our minds as we sort out all the thoughts that can arise within us.

 The spiritual warrior of Paul has lots of armor to be in place for defensive protection.  St. Paul's spiritual warrior is not just to be on the defensive; the spiritual warrior is to wield the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.  St. Paul's spiritual warrior did not yet have the book that we call the Bible (since even the words that Paul was writing did not become part of the Bible until centuries later), so Word of God does not refer specifically to our Bible.  The Word of God stems from Christ being called the Word of God who creates all things.  Words can be used in detrimental ways and in holy ways.  Using the Word of God in holy ways means to deploy the use of our language in word and deeds in ways which express what is excellent, loving, kind and just.  We are not just passive defenders taking the blows of all that life has to deal us.  We are also on the offense with the Word of God, as the holy and good speech and body language deeds are used to make our world a place worthy of Christ.

Today, you and I are reminded that we are spiritual warriors.  We have to learn how to win the war in the battleground that is always taking place within us, before we deploy ourselves in the various missions of our live to which we have been called.

Let us today put on the whole armor of Christ so that we may prepared to be faithful in our lives today and counter the atrophy of faith that can diminish our lives and the life of our world.  Amen.

We Don't Have a Choice That God Love Us

13 Pentecost proper 15  August 19, 2018

Proverbs 9:1-6  Psalm 34:9-14

Ephesians 5:15-20  John 6:51-58

Lectionary Link

Because Luke is here today to be presented for baptism, we get to have two sacraments instead of just one.  We get to have both Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist.  There are seven sacraments and I imagine they could all be celebrated in one liturgical occasion, if we could also have a wedding, confirmation, holy unction, ordination and private confession.

I guess we could have four today, if someone comes to the altar for the prayer of the sick and if I could preach words of conviction for someone to want private confession.

But two sacraments are enough and they are the main sacraments (called dominical sacraments); Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist.  Holy Baptism is to the spiritual life what birth is to our natural life.  In baptism, we confess that there are two orders of existence, the natural order and the spiritual order.  The spiritual order is a parallel existing order to the natural order.  Like the amphibian who lives on land and in the sea, we humans live in the kingdom of the world but we are also invited to live in the kingdom of God at the same time.

By birth or by adoption we enter the world of our birth family; in baptism we celebrate that simultaneously we belong to the family of God, because Jesus as the unique Son of God taught us that we, too, are sons and daughters of God.

Today, we celebrate that Luke is a son of God and in this rite of baptism, we remind ourselves again today that we are children of God in this great family of God.

Just as Luke did not get any choice about who he was born to or he does not get any choice about being in the family of God.  He is not old enough to make the choice so why do we ask of him to be baptized?

We baptize Luke because we want to pass on to him the very best that we have to offer.  What is the very best that we have to offer?  God loves Luke.  Luke does not have any choice about this, just as you and I don't have any choice about God loving us.  God is love and God loves us and God loves Luke.

We baptize Luke as a young child because of what is called Prevenient Grace.  This type of Grace is something we cannot choose; it is non-negotiable.  God loves us and we don't have any choice about this.

What we do have choices about is how we accept God's love and how we share it with other people.  If God's Love is prevenient Grace to Luke and to us, we are to become agents of God's prevenient grace to others, especially to Luke and those who do not yet understand it.  You and I are to live as agents of God's grace in Luke's life.  We are to model God's love, God's grace, God's forgiveness in such a way so that when Luke comes into his fuller adult capacity, he will choose to continue in this family of grace and love and pass it on to the generation after him.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of Christ.  When Luke was born, what was the first task of his mom for Luke?  To feed him, of course.  And Luke's family will continue to feed him.  They will provide for him many family meals.  And these family meals will not be just about eating food; they will be about friendship and fellowship and about memories.  And there will be regular meals and special meals like birthday meals, Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner with extended family.  These meals will feed Luke but also they will renew him within his special family tradition.

Before Jesus left, he gave his followers a special meal; a spiritual meal.  He told them to meet and host this meal so that they could remain united in a special fellowship tradition.  And when they met he promised that they could experience His presence which would be so significant that it would seem as though he was actually there.  Jesus identified his presence with the bread and the wine as a way of giving his friends a meal of gathering to keep them together forever.  And so today we continue in that meal tradition; and Luke is welcome to this family meal even though he may want to wait a few years before he partakes (in the Orthodox Church newly baptized babies are spoon fed the bread and the wine after they are baptized and this is the based upon the belief that baptism is full initiation into the body of Christ).

Today is a happy day of two sacraments as we see little Luke being made a Christian even as we hope that we ourselves are renewed and made better Christians as we are faithful to the word and sacraments given to us by Christ in the church.  Amen.