Trinity Sunday: Taking the Baptismal Covenant to the Streets

Trinity Sunday A   June 7,2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20

Lectionary Link

Video Trinity Sunday
These past days have been hard on us as a human family, because we have shown that we not always a very good family.  The death of George Floyd has exposed some very bad family traits, the traits of both subtle and not so subtle racism.  And experiencing our family at its very worst, we cannot write ourselves off completely, because events of this past show some bad interwoven with lots of peaceful voices marching for justice and change.  Some place have seen looting and tear gas and pushing and shoving and Billy clubbing, and yet there’s been police and protesters dancing, kneeling, and smiling and joining in common cause.  So, let’s not write off the whole human family, all of the time, yet.

And why do we sense our human failure in really bad family behaviors such as injustice and racism, misogyny and many other forms of prejudice?  Why?  Because the ultimate family to which we belong is led by such perfect Persons.

Today is the Day of the Holy Divine Family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And they are perfect.  They were perfectly Three in One, long before we in America could come up with E pluribus unum.  From the many one.  And why do we often fail to act as one in our differences?  In our sin and our group egos, we magnify difference and use the power of group egos to hinder the unity that is best expressed in justice for all.  Justice is not a privilege of people with money and power; justice is the right of everyone, like air, water and food. 

So, what are we going to do when we are faced with this failure of ours to let the unity of justice prevail for all of our many people?

We’re going to repent and return to the Lord God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Why?  Because that is what we promised when we were admitted into the Family of the Father, the Son and the Spirit at our baptism.

We have been baptized, immersed into the nature of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we took vows to this holy, holy family and we’ve confirmed those same vows in the presence of each other many times.  What are two of those vows which we have made and confirmed and reconfirmed in the presence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and each other?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will with God’s help.

This past week calls out to us to repent and return to more truly representing the Holy Trinity, into whom we have been baptized.

The other baptism vow that we have made and confirmed many times is this:

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

I will with God’s help.

There have been people who have not had equal justice and not been able to have peace and whose dignity has been diminished even unto wrongful death, even murder in the custody of peace and safety officers.  And what has that death spark around the entire world?

A cry for repentance.  A cry to renew our promise to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.

We prefer to whisper these promises in our quiet baptismal liturgies, but this past week people are yelling and crying this same baptismal pledge loud and together.

What we can thank God the Holy Trinity for this: that the Baptismal covenant has hit the streets and all over the world.  It is not a cute little baptism with a young baby boy dressed in the family baptismal garment.  It is shouting marching people in the street saying with God’s help and/or by holding each other accountable we will strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of all.  And yes, you will repent, because I will repent, and we will all be more diligent about holding each other to repentance.

If in the sadness of this past week we can rejoice that the baptismal covenant has come to be loudly confirmed in the streets of our world with blaring publicity, then we can know we have not given up trying to approximate our behaviors in the direction of the Perfect, Holy, Holy Family of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us rejoice that this week we had it made known that we have failed miserably in doing what the Holy Trinity would have us to do in our relationships with each other.

But let us rejoice that we are mourning and lamenting our failures and that at least we have had our consciences rebuked and renewed by the high standard of our baptism when water was poured over us and it was said, “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Why do we do this?  Because we want to keep alive the high and holy standard of the perfect family of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And we want to renew our initiation and we want to plead, "God keep making me a better Christian and let me live out better my baptismal vows and so that my confession of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday might be authentic, even as I endeavor to keep my vows."

In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we renew our endeavor to strive for peace and justice among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.  Amen.

The Personal Politics of the Trinity

Trinity Sunday A   June 7, 2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20


Lectionary Link

Today is Trinity Sunday on our liturgical calendar, and so the topic for the sermon seems to be dictated, even though I might rather talk about justice and health given what is happening to us in our public life today.  But if I got into talking about justice and health, I would be broaching one of the forbidden topics in the Episcopal Church, because we all disagree,  politics.  So, I will talk about the Trinity; surely there can be no politics when speaking about the Trinity?

Well, I'm wrong because one cannot avoid politics even when speaking about the Trinity.  The Trinity became front and center because of that little church convention in the city of Nicaea in 325.  An unbaptized Roman Emperor, Constantine had observed that his Empire was being rapidly populated by Christians.  This is instantiated by the fact that at the beginning of the fourth century Christian were not allowed in the Roman Army and by the end of the Fourth Century, only Christians were allowed in the Roman Army.  What kind of sea change was that!

Constantine observed that Christians weren't unified; they were divided over their beliefs about God and the nature of Jesus Christ.  Bishops with different beliefs had sponsoring and protecting local governors and this was a potential political problem for the overall unity of the Roman Empire.

Constantine, in effect said to the bishops, "get thee to Nicaea and standardize your faith because I don't want fighting among Christians to divide my Empire."  So the bishops gathered in Nicaea to develop a creed of belief and a canon of church laws to promulgate and enforce the official statements of the Council.  So the result of the council of Nicaea was immediate church unity?  Wrong.  The pronouncements of this Council resulted in the excommunication of more than half of the Christians in the Empire, even though the canonical effect was not immediate since Bishops who lost at the Council still had supporting governors and political authorities to protect them and their continued practice of post-Nicaean heresy.  They went to Nicaea thinking they were "orthodox" and good people of faith; and many bishops left being designated as heretics.

So how can we avoid politics when speaking about the Trinity?  At Nicaea most of the vocabulary for speaking about the nature of God came from Greek Philosophy.  This too was quite a change since the biblical writings came from grounding in Hebraic and Semitic words and thoughts and thinking.  The Nicaean Council is proof about how Gentile the Christian faith had become since the scholarly bishops used their background in the language of hellenistic philosophies to speak about the notions which arose from the more Hebraic context of Jesus of Nazareth.

Most Christians in the world have tacitly accepted the results of the Council of Nicaea and it is almost for the Christian world, a "ho hum;" it goes without saying that God is One God in Trinity of Equal Persons.

How can you and I be embraced by a Trinitarian understanding of God in a way that has a direct message for us today, in a divided country today?

The most obvious reason that we are Trinitarian is because of the way that we understand the life of Jesus presented to us in the Gospel and particularly the Gospel of John.

How is Jesus presented?  He is presented as the very ground of knowing anything at all.  In his pre-existence he is called the Word who was with God and who was God.  To know anything at all, we first assume that we live on the ground of Word and having language.  Knowing existence is mediated through us having language.

Having language means that we live in a personal universe.  Naming everything means that we live in a personal language.  Language is the essence of relationship and relationship is personal.

In the biblical traditional, what happened because we have language?  Everything  and everyone gets named.  And so did God.  God came to have many names.  There are over one hundred names for God in the Bible and these names seek to cover the vast ways in which people believed God to be involved and related to their lives.  All of the names of God indicate the belief in personal relationship.

In the life of Jesus, we came to find all of the names of God for human and personal relationship with God arrive at very specific Persons of God.  We cannot avoid that we live in a personal universe because we have words and language.  And Jesus really simplified an understanding of God.  In Jesus, we found one so superlative that we came to know and confess Jesus as one who was completely bilingual in God-language and human language.  And Jesus made God known in the most accessible human way to reveal that God has accepted human experience as a valid way to know God and to be in relationship with God.  In the understanding of God, God went from such general Personality with many names of the divine attributes, to the unveiling of God in distinctly three Persons, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not because any human language can control or limit the greatness of God, but because we need to know particular personal relationship with God.  We need to know that we have permission to assume a relationship with God.  And that is what Jesus Christ did for us in such a poignant way.  He gave us permission to accept ourselves a sons and daughters of God, with him as the sibling to lead to our membership in God's family.

We know the difficulty in living within the one human family.  We're one human family but prone to let our many differences keep us from expressing our unity.

And this is where we arrive at the pure politics of the Holy Trinity for us today.  God as One God and in three distinct different Persons is the perfect model for us today.  Unity in Difference.  E pluribus unum is not unique to our Country.  Knowing God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we can know three Persons who are One in unity.

And how we need to resort to this perfect model of the three in One today in our country, more than ever as we face the constant challenge of a dignified unity honoring the differences of each one.

Today, let us not try to over-intellectualize the Holy Trinity, let us accept that we live in a personal universe because we live in the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning.  And living in a personal world means that relationship is unavoidable.  And if relationship is unavoidable, let relationship be known as the the unity of Peace, as is best expressed in the practice of love and justice.

We accept the Holy Trinity as the impossible and unattainable Unity in Diversity Model for us in actual practice, but we accept it as defining the direction which we want to be headed towards in good human living.

In our baptismal association with the Holy Trinity, we believe God is associated with us, in spite of ourselves, and we are always challenged to live up to being associated with the Trinitarian family of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us set the direction of our lives toward the Unity and Diversity of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Language as the Personal Field for Knowing God as Trinity

Trinity Sunday A   June 7,2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20      

Lectionary Link

Today on Trinity Sunday, we might stop to ponder why we as Christians have come to confess God as One God in Trinity of Persons.

First the only way in which we can know anything at all is to know it as it is mediated in the field of language.  To have language, to use words in speaking and in writing and in body language deeds is the manifestation of the very medium of personality.  To have language means we are by basic nature personal because language implies being in relationship and relationship is how personality comes to be known and manifested.

As language users, we assign value within human experience.   We come to assign some values as being values which are literally out of our reach, beyond our "pay grade" because we know that individually and collectively we cannot comprehend the vastness of the existence which confronts us.  And so we posit some experiencing being who has the capacity to comprehend the vastness of all, and we conceive of a greatest one who came long before us and will be long after we are gone.

But does the conception of such a great One who experiences all, imply a personality?  Albert Einstein once wrote that an important question in life is whether the universe is a friendly place.

Should you and I take all of the events of freedom in this vast cosmos personally?  We cannot help but do other since we are prisoners of human personhood and having language is the essence of personhood.  To use language in all forms is to be a person.  When we interact with non-human life, we do so as persons.  The attributing of human like characteristics to non-human life is called anthropomorphic projection.  Such is unavoidable.  An astronomer in the study of the stars might want to forget his or her humanity in being some impartial, non-human observer of the stars, but there is no way to escape being human being seeing human versions of the non-human worlds.  So, we cannot help but project our human personality because we are using language in our observation and interactions.

Do you assume that pets and plants have human-like mutually responsive features?  People talk to their plants as though they can understand and interact in human-like ways.  And even if you think this is silly, do you think that regarding such projection is a valid human poetry celebrating our intimate connection with important non-human being?  The Psalmist wrote the heavens declare the glory of God.  The Psalmist was projecting a deliberate vocation of the stars with regard to God.  Also ancient astrologers, projected upon the stars a personal relationship between the constellation of the stars and the life situation of people.  Astrology is the ancient poetic projection of the universe having all kinds of personality which was accessible to the chief persons, human beings.

If we can understand our pets as being "like" people enough for significant mutual beneficial behaviors, it is not a great leap for us to understand the poetry of the great One from whom all derive as embracing the personality of God as heavenly parent and Father of the Plenitude and us.  In confessing God to be a Trinity of Persons, we do not confess God as Father and Holy Spirit to be the exact kind of embodied persons as we are.  We would say they are "hyper-Persons, super-Persons," in fact so super that to attain clarity on how we might address them as distinct persons, we would need One who had bi-lingual experience between the divine and the human.  And in the Person of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God as Trinity becomes manifest.  We found Jesus of Nazareth to be so perfectly human, literally, out of our league so that we confess him to be God's unique Child.

Let's be honest; we confess God as Trinity of Persons, because we first came to confess Jesus as God's unique Son who shows us how we in human terms could understand the personal dynamic of the divine.

The standard of believing in the Trinity comes from accepting the presentation of the witness of Jesus Christ and his relationship with divinity.

For Christians, the main access to the Trinity is through Jesus because he is the One who is known to be bi-lingual with God and humanity so that the divine could be translated to human terms.  And Jesus translated the divine in the familial terms of the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is highly intuitive poetry to say the very least and so it resonates with us.

Frankly, our acceptance of Jesus as the the truly God-human bi-lingual being is the honest acceptance of the validity of human experience as the only way in which human beings can come into the highest values of living.

In Jesus, we have come to accept the Trinity as intuitively sound, because we have in him the acceptance of the validity of our lives as a way of "knowing" God.

And in accepting the understanding of the Trinity today as best presented by Jesus Christ, we know the deep Gospel love of God accepting us, as human beings, mere human beings, but truly loved.  Amen.

We Need an Apparent Holy Spirit

Day of Pentecost  A May 31, 2020

Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17  
Lectionary Link

At 13:16 mark of video. 

Come Holy Spirit.  Veni Sancte Spiritus. Ven Espiritu Santo,Viens Esprit Saint, Komm Heiliger Geist, Ruh al'qdos Biya, 

Pentecost is the event of finding harmony in difference.  It is the day of affirming that people who speak different languages and have drastically different world experience and conditions can come to harmony and peace together.

And so we say in every language today, "Come Holy Spirit," even though we know that the Spirit came in creation and has never left the world.  The Spirit creates the divine environment and so we can know ourselves to live and move and have our being in God.  If the Spirit has always been, why to do pray, Come Holy Spirit? We do so, because it isn't always enough to know that there is a wind; we need to see the leaves move in the tree.  We need to see the Holy Spirit as apparent in human community.

And how we need the peaceful Holy Spirit to become apparent in our human communities today.   On Pentecost, we have been literally "pent" up, sheltering in our homes for longer than the Easter season.  We have been "pent" up in anxiety about the pandemic and its many drastic effects upon human life on every level.  And now the injustice inflicted upon the life of a black man in Minneapolis seems to put us over the top of what we can actually bear without the acting out of frustration about long denied justice and the practice of uneven justice in our society.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  Be made apparent even as a peace dove calming our hearts.  Today, we need more than our belief in the Holy Spirit; we need the Apparent Effects of the Holy Spirit to be realized in significant ways.

The Holy Spirit can become apparent, if the Spirit has the leader who can unite.  And Jesus Christ was the one who could unite hearts with voices which spoke different languages.

The Holy Spirit is looking today for worthy leaders who can unite in the midst of differences. The Holy Spirit of Peace is looking for us to be the leading channels or instruments of peace as goes the prayer attributed to St. Francis.

There are other spirits besides the Holy Spirit and the spirits of peace that the Holy Spirit inspires.

"Spirits" are the constellation of the energies of group identities which motivate group actions, some are destructive and evil, some are entertaining, benign and beneficial, and some become the vehicle for God's Holy Spirit to be peaceful, loving unifying justice in our world, not just in ideal, but in actual practice.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

Think about all of the group identities which are the "esprit de corps" rallying what people do when they come together.  Think about all of the footage of horrifying dictators who have flamed unities of hatred and bias.  The mob spirit found in our history books and in our world today are truly anti-Christ, because they don't end in inspiring peace, truth and unity.

There are other manifestation of group spirit which are benign and even beneficial.  Colleges, sports teams, school spirit, city pride, hometown spirit are manifestations of esprit de corps in very benign ways.  An esprit de corps which raises money to fight cancer and every sort of illness or malaise can true be a beneficial "mob" spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  And help us discern what you truly inspire.  And how is Holy Spirit distinguished from the other manifestations of "esprit de corps" in our world?

First, Holy Spirit is permanent.  It is the ground of the omnipresence of God within whom we live and move and have our being.

Second, it is Personal.  We acknowledge on Pentecost the rising in human understanding of the Holy Spirit as a Person of the Godhead.  The reason that we can project Personality upon the omnipresent Spirit is because we as humans are personal, meaning we are connected and related to all that is.  Personality is our highest attribute and if we confess someone greater than we are, that Someone also is at the very least a very exalted Person.

Come, Personal Holy Spirit.  We need you.

The Holy Spirit has had a general permanency since forever, but the Holy Spirit also has "coming out" parties and events.  Pentecost was the chief coming out party of the Holy Spirit.  There needs to be particular manifestation so that we can be renewed in knowing the Great Friend of the universe.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.  Wind, I need to see the leaves move on the tree to reassure me that you are still here.

So we need both the general and the particular apparent experiences of the Holy Spirit to reinforce the belief in the unseen in the middle of all that we do see, touch, feel, and hurt and cry about.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

The Holy Spirit is not just enlightened esprit de corps; the enlightened identity attained by people who want to let the Christ nature become evident in them.  The Holy Spirit is also individual and personal.  The Holy Spirit can be known within each of us as the Clean Heart which the Psalmist prayed for.  We need the Holy Spirit as our Clean Heart because we need the highest authority for our consciences and motives.

We need the Holy Spirit as the experience of deep calm and peace within us, because we know that things on layers above the Holy Spirit can be turbulent and unsettled and even frightening.  We need an internal place of retreat and refuge, not to escape our world but to have an anchor within the tossing waves of the world.

And we need the Holy Spirit as proof of our longevity in Hope.  Hope has made me want more than can ever be delivered in my lifetime.  Is my Hope a taunting God who wants good things that will never fully be my experience?  Or is that Hope the very presence of the eternal Spirit who is saying that I will ride the eternal Spirit, eternally?

Come, Holy Spirit Come, and come in apparent and particular ways for us today.  Inspire and activate manifold creativity to bring an end to this world pandemic.  Inspire and convert leaders who will promote social harmony.  Bring police and minority communities together for the common good of actual justice.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come, even to us the people of St. Mary's-in-the-Valley in specific ways.  Let us discern your manifestations today.  Amen.

Pentecost and "esprit de corps"

Day of Pentecost  A May 31, 2020

Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32

Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17  
Lectionary Link

Today is the Feast of Pentecost and we might begin by recounting the meaning and the symbols of this Feast Day.  

Pentecost means fiftieth and on the Christian calendar is the 50th day after Easter.  It parallel as Jewish feast of Shavuot, or feast of weeks which is the day after the 7 weeks after Passover.  So, Judaism and Christianity have Pentecosts but they have diverge with completely different meanings.

In salvation history, Pentecost is seen as the "coming" out day of the Holy Spirit.  If Christ is the Word who is God from the beginning, then the Holy Spirit is the Eternal Word translated and spoken in every language; meaning that Christian faith was a strategic plan to make God, through Christ universally accessible to the world, and it meant that an understanding of God could no longer be exclusive to the synagogue for only the ritually adherent members of the Jewish faith.  Although, we see an uneven chronology about the Holy Spirit because according to the Gospel of John, the 11 disciples did not have to wait until Pentecost to receive the Spirit; Jesus breathed the Spirit on them in the Doubting Thomas encounter.    And those pre-filled disciples were speaking in different tongues on Pentecost.

Pentecost is the healing of the event of the Babel tower, when God confused the languages of humanity because a "united" humanity planned a prideful overthrow of God by building a great city with a great tower unto the heavens.  A polyglot world of people was seen as God's punishment; but in Pentecost the revealing  of the Holy Spirit meant that Christ could be known in all languages and hence it was a celebration of a unity of harmony in differences.  Humanity can indeed be united in the right way and the right way is for everyone to come to know the nature of Christ, the eternal Word within them.

What does the use of metaphors tell us?  It tells us that metaphors reach their limitation when one tries to convert poetry into literalism.  So, what is the limitation of Spirit or Holy Spirit?  What does it mean to say Holy Special Wind or Breath?  Or Holy Dove?  Or Holy purifying Fire?  Or Holy Anointing oil?  When we try to speak of Spirit we just keep adding metaphors and similes; but are we getting to substantial insight about the meaning of Spirit?

As you know, I like to go off the reservation of textbook and cliche theology and doctrine because I'm too curious about how and what Spirit can mean and evoke meaning for me in this post-modern age that has brought us to skepticism of skepticism.

A pragmatic and graspable insight about Spirit, is to understand it as the mystery of receiving the identities of our lives.  Our group identities are mysteries.  What do we call group mystical identity?  esprits de corps.  Spirit of the body.  We experience esprit de corps in families, in nationality, in school and colleges, hometown cities and town, with our sporting teams and in our faith communities.   We experience esprit de corps in any significant identity we come to have in our lives.  We admit that it is something of a mystery about our group identity.  E pluribus unum.  Out of the many, one.  How does this oneness of group identity happen?

To understand spirit, we might look at an entire continuum of kinds of identities.  We know that there can be evil "esprit d'corps, known as mob behaviors.  One can see when dictators and prejudiced leaders can create mob behaviors and people will shout and do hateful things as a group which they would not necessarily do as an individual.  A bad "spirit" can possess a mob.  Other public group identities are more benign or even beneficial.  A sporting event or even a partisan political rally can be benign.  A rally of people supporting a cancer fundraiser or patriotic causes can result in a beneficial group "esprit d'corps."  In the Christian context, the diversity of believers in Jesus gathering and uniting in that belief through prayer, teaching, singing and liturgy represent what we understand to be the Holy Spirit of Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit can be evident in the effervescence of a gathering.  It is the numerical strength in numbers which shows itself in a qualitative palpable feeling of identity among people.  It is expressed as the mystery of experience another person, as in "whenever two or three are gathered in Christ's name," Christ is present and can be known as giving wisdom and insight within the group experience.

The Bible also includes "spirit" and individual personal self-knowledge.  The Psalmist cried out, "Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me."  It is a goal in life to be "pure in heart."  And we know how hard it is for us to know ourselves as being "pure in motives" in all things.  We also know that in the purity code certain people of wildly erratic public behavior deemed as anti-social were said to have "unclean spirits."  Part of the ministry of Jesus was to whisper people to a place of peaceful "cleanliness of spirit."

But further, the Gospels indicate that Jesus not only invited us to know ourselves as children of God in knowing our heavenly Parent, he also promised that his absence would not leave us disconnected from Him or His Father.  He would send, he would breath, he unveiled that knowing of an inner Advocate, a Spirit of Truth who would help us in the task of replicating the life practices of Jesus with us.

The Feast of Pentecost sums up the very best of knowing within ourselves the Clean Heart of knowing the Holy Spirit within us.  The Feast of Pentecost is a celebration of the spark and effervescence which happens when people knowing the Holy Spirit gather together to reinforce their identity with Christ.  Sparks happen.  It is as though everyone's spirit surfaces and then there is an experience of the further identity of knowing Christ in our midst.  This is why we gather.  This is why we miss gathering now.  We want each person's experience of the Holy Spirit to be evident in a physical gathering so as to realize the group identity of being the body of Christ.   As we celebrate being quite different members in gifts and calling, yet finding enlightened and peaceful reciprocity in pooling our spiritual gifts to make Christ known in our world.

Today, we long for gathered effervescence of the Holy Spirit, even while we make the most of our virtual gatherings.  Don't diminish them and their importance.  The entire holy Scriptures are virtual.  We weren't there when Scriptures were written to their specific communities but by the technology of writing, the Scriptures are virtually available to us and they have been important in the transmission of the presence of God and Christ across history.  And who can we give credit to for this transmission of the Good News of God in Christ across history?  The Holy Spirit, of course.

Let us be thankful for the unveiling of the Holy Spirit for us, as the Clean Heart which we can experience within us.  But also let us renew the effervescent group identity of knowing ourselves socially as the Body of Christ.

We say today again, "Come Holy Spirit, our hearts inspire and enlighten with celestial fire."  Let us know the most significant inner Advocate and affirming presence in our lives today.  Amen.

Jesus Did Not Want to Be an Only Child!

7 Easter Cycle  A      May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14        Ps. 68 

 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11   John 17:1-11     
Lectionary Link

Today is the Sunday after the Ascension.  Houston, there's been a lift off and Jesus has gone out of sight....And where did the early church believe that Jesus went?  They believed that he went into the realm of God to be with his heavenly parent and be a High Priest in the heavenly realm.  And what does Jesus the High Priest do?  He continues to live forever making intercession on our behalf.

In the Gospel of John for today, we've read the true "Lord's Prayer;" the other one is actually the disciples' prayer taught to them by Jesus, and he did teach them to address God as "Our Father."

When we read the Gospel of John, we get the impression that the writer walked with Jesus and was so beloved and close to Jesus that he shared with him his words and thoughts.  And if Jesus is a great High Priest who intercedes for us in heaven, the Gospels also presented him as a man who prayed and interceded for his friends while he lived on earth.

The writer of John really felt so close to Jesus, that he knew how Jesus prayed, so much so that we get a glimpse into the heart of concern of Jesus.  This prayer of Jesus expresses the mystical goal of the Gospel program of John's Gospel.  "Father, I ask that my friends might be one, as you and are one."

We sometimes think that this refers to the unity of the church, and it can and does, but more specifically in John's mystical program, Jesus desires that each person come to know the oneness with the heavenly parent as it has been modeled by him.  

Jesus is saying to his heavenly parent, " Father, I don't want to be an only child....let me have many, many, many brothers and sister.  Let them realize their end in life, which is to know themselves as sons and daughters of God.  That they may be one with you Father, as I am one with with you.

So, how are you and I going to realize and know that we are sons and daughters of God and one with our heavenly parent?

We're going to do what Jesus did.  And what did Jesus do?  He prayed.  We pray because we already have taken up identity within the family of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  What is prayer?  According to our catechism it is living as though all our lives is a continual response to God with words and without words; with unspoken words of our body language in what we do and perform in love and justice.

In John's Gospel, Christ is the Eternal Word from the beginning.  Jesus said that his words were Spirit and life.   And when we make our lives prayer lives, we make our words spirit and life.  We live our lives emulating Jesus who is an intercessor for others.

When Jesus walked this earth, he prayed for his friends.  When Christ rose and ascended, he continues to pray.  And he says to us, " I want to borrow you and your life; I want to pray in and through you continually and make your lives, lives of prayer, and so you will know your true identity as sons and daughters of God, because you will embrace the very same prayer ministry that I have in this world."

Dear friends, don't doubt the image of God on your life.  You belong to God.  And how do you know it and practice it?  You pray, I pray and we all pray, all of the time.  Prayer involves word and Prayer words create.  They name the situation.  They name the need.  They name the normalcy of health and salvation.  They state the deprivation from health and salvation which sin and sickness and this pandemic are.  And words are like votes; if we cast enough of them to invoke health and salvation, we can tip the scales toward majority in the freedom that is in our world and come to realize health.

No matter what happened to Jesus.  He prayed.  Why?  He was one with God the Creator.  And you and I are invited into the priestly ministry of Jesus by living lives of prayer as it has been shown to us by Jesus.

Rejoice today.  We are chlldren of God.  We are one with the Father.  So, let get on with it.  Let get on with making prayer the very vocation of our lives.  Not just table grace prayer or prayer at church; but prayer as our intentional life of responding to God as our Father.  Amen.

Mystical Union? Being a Child of God

7 Easter Cycle A May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14 Ps. 68

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 John 17:1-11

Lectionary Link

The Gospel of John is significantly different from the other canonical Gospels. It was written later and includes different literary forms. It does not have parables; it does not have exorcisms, it does not have the Bethlehem birth story, and the miracles are called signs but it does have very long discourses and is the most significant "red letter/words of Jesus" Gospel. One of the long "discourses" of Jesus is the long prayer in John, chapter 17, which is in fact, can more likely be called the "Lord's Prayer," than the "Our Father," since the "Our Father," could be called the disciples' prayer. Remember the Gospel process involved persons who believe they were filled with God's Spirit, who had the mind of Christ, and who believed that when they spoke in the name of Jesus, they were channeling his words as an oracle of Christ himself. These oracle words channeled through the early preachers/friends of Jesus were then placed in narrative teaching contexts that became the Gospels. In the Gospel writings, there is a distinction of weaved words from the oral tradition of Jesus of Nazareth and the oracles words of the Risen Christ channeled through the early evangelists. John's Gospel is so distinctly different, it seems to involve more channeled words of the Risen Christ and the word are presented in a mystagogic form as a spiritual program for initiates to be on a transformational path to realize the end and goal of human life.

What is the biblical end and goal of human life? It is to recover and live out the image of God as our heavenly parent. Jesus Christ is the one who God gave to this world to help human being realize themselves as sons and daughters of God.

In the prayer of Jesus, which we read on Ascension Sunday, we have a prayer of Jesus speaking in the past tense about his time on earth. And he states his pray wish for his disciples. "Father, I pray that they may be one, even as you are one in me." This is the mystical goal of life. Jesus, told his disciples, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." And now he wants it to be, "if you see my disciple, you also can see the Father; that is, you can see the image of God upon their lives as they have come into the power to be children of God."

What did the early Christians believe about the Ascended Christ? They believed that he had attained another state of glory, of profound influential fame, the influential fame of being next to God and interceding on behalf of his earthly friends.

You and I should use the interceding prayers of Jesus like our stairway, ladder or elevator to attain what St. Paul said, "be seated with Christ in heavenly places." This is the spiritual poetry of the early church to speak about mystical union with God in Christ in knowing oneself as a child of God.

John's Gospel is the most profound Gospel about the Fatherhood of God. Many of the words of the Risen Christ in the Gospel oracles are about the relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father. Jesus is the unique Child, unique Son of God to help us realize, or have the power and authority to be sibling children of God.

In our modern era of coming into a fuller appreciation of the equality of women in our social order, but also into our theological symbols, the seeming limitation of "masculine" designation for the divine can seem starkly excluding of the feminine. And in charity, we need to understand the limitation of cultures of patriarchal dominance. Hebrew Scriptures has feminine designations for the divine, even while the masculine often prevailed because of the heavenly competition with the various goddesses of Canaan. In the old order when microscopic things were not yet seen, the contribution of the egg as equal in child birth was not known, and the masculine was given an omni-competence for generating the whole child, who had merely been planted in "soil" of the womb. In the old order, the masculine was the nature of a child and the feminine was but the nurture of the child. Since Paul wrote that in Christ, there is neither male nor female, but a new creation, we can understand the Fatherhood of God in a more androgynous way, as an omni-competent Heavenly Parent from whom we derived and whom we seek to be one with as we seek to perfectly bear the image of our heavenly parent.

The prayer, "that they may be one," has often been reduced to ecclesiastical policy. It is seen as a prayer of Jesus for the unity of the church. And yet there are so many churches which are not in such unity. I think that this prayer of Jesus has less to do with the administrative unity of everyone who calls themselves Christian; no, it has to do with each person coming into the power of being a child of God and bearing in the best possible way the image of our heaven parent and creator.

This is the daunting task of our lives; to bear the image of God into our world as we have been given the perfect example in the life of Jesus Christ.

And how to we bear the image of God into our world? With the practice of love and justice. What does God look like in our world now? God looks like love and justice as it can come to people in many ways through the practice of people who are seeking to bear and live out the image of God in this world.

Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." And what did we see in Jesus? Sacrificial love, honesty and justice.

Now this day, on Ascension Sunday, we note the real absence of Jesus of Nazareth from this world. And what is it that takes the place of the absent Jesus of Nazareth?

The Risen Christ says, "If people see you, then they have seen your heavenly parent." Why? Because the prayer of the Risen Christ is always, "Father/Parent, make them one as you are one in me."

Let us use the power of the prayer of Christ for us, to realize ourselves as children of God today. Amen

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Being Contained as God's Offspring through Jesus Christ

6 Easter A       May 17, 2020  

Acts 17:22-31       Ps. Ps. 66   

1 Peter 3:13-22     John 14:15-21                

Lectionary Link
What is a container?   A container is something that has stuff inside of it.  A container has a boundary, a border and outside surface.  And in many ways we live in a world of containers, entities with outer surfaces which contain inner stuff.

Each of us is a container.  Our outer surface is our epidermis with some "attachments," like hair, eyeballs and finger nail and toe nails.    And we have inside of us all our physiological stuff that is best known by surgeons who actually get to interact with the same.  But we contain lots of "non-physiological" stuff, the stuff of what we call thought, emotions, feelings, sense of self, personal identity, cultural identity and many other things which we have named because we believe that they reside or are contained within us.  Through our cultures we have come to accept the mapping of our interior life, and we inherited the knowing of ourselves as body, soul and spirit in our Christian interior map.

The encounter of St. Paul with the Greeks on Mars Hill in Athens is a telling account.  It instantiate the fact that Paul, formerly, Saul of Tarsus was a man with a background in the Hebrew-Judaic tradition but he lived in the Diaspora as a Roman citizen within a culture that would be called Greco-Roman in composition.

Athens was the ultimate symbolic place of Greek philosophical world influence.  Greek philosophers from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle found a way to hold their beliefs in gods and goddesses even while proposing the very foundation of rigorous philosophical, reasoned inquiry.

Paul is presented, in this account from the Acts of the Apostles as a Christian apologist who is looking for correspondences within the artifacts of the Greek culture.  He encountered the agnosticism in the statute with the engraving, "To an unknown god."  This is quite amazing, since there were many gods and goddesses in the Greco-Roman pantheon, so to honor an "unknown god," was a place for Paul to begin, since it represented a humility of openness that there might be something further to understand about the meaning of the divine life.

And Paul, also adopted a phrase which suggested that the God which the Greco-Roman people did not know was not just another member of the pantheon of gods and goddesses, but rather this God was the ultimate Container.  Paul stated, "In God, we live and move and have our being."  Is there a more ultimate Container than such a God?  Such a container would not have anything outside of it influencing it from without.  Such a container would only be influenced by everything that it contained.  We live and move and have our being in God.  We are contained by the ultimate Container.

And yet Paul also goes on to affirm the special existence of human beings.  We are not impersonal stuff in the great God Container; no, we are offspring of God.  Here again, Paul recognized an insight which came, not from the Hebrew Scriptures but which came from a Greek poet.  And Paul, as a Jew, could agree, because he believed that in the tradition of Adam, we were made in God's image, so we are higher personality stuff; not like a rock, or tree, or even a monkey.  We are higher personality stuff.

God can be regarded to be "unknown."  If God is so high and a different kind of existing being, then such an alien would not be able to be communicated with.  There would be no common language between humanity and such a God.  How does an unknown God become known by human beings?  By discovering a human being who is so magnificent that he is bi-lingual in the life and language of God and in the life and language of Jesus Christ we have such a "bi-lingual" Being.  And if such a being is made known, then we can be directed to find our own "bi-lingual nature," and realize our identity as children of God.

The Gospel of John is about knowing the power, the authority of being children of God.  The Gospel of John is explicit about Jesus presenting God as our heavenly Parent with Jesus as the unique divine Son who bears the image of God in such a profound way as to become definitive of what our relationship with God is to be.

Are we to be trapped in the physical and psychological determinism of our natural parents and cultures? No, the Gospel of John through the oracles of Jesus indicate that we can know our determination by our heavenly parent.  We can know that we are offspring of God, sons and daughters of God.

When parents die or leave our lives, we become orphans.  The Gospel of Jesus is a message about never being an orphan; our heavenly parent never left, never will leave, and never will die.

"So, Jesus, how can we know that we've not abandoned orphans, after you are gone and we are not able to see you?"  "I'm glad you ask," says the Risen Christ, "because I have the Holy Spirit within me to know this perpetual connection with God, the heavenly Parent.  And you are going to have this Internal Advocate too, so that you will have your true parentage always verified."  The Holy Spirit verifies our heavenly DNA.

Let us summarize some Gospel and Scripture insights for today.  1-We and everything else is contained in God as the Ultimate Container.   2-God is a very Personal Container, and we are made as God's offspring because unlike a rock or water, we are made of higher personality stuff.  3-God can be unknown unless we have a divine-human bi-lingual conduit for communication between humanity and God.  4-Jesus Christ is the divine-human bi-lingual Unique Son of God who came so that we could realize the original blessing of our creation in God's image as God's children.

And knowing this Gospel, let us accept our heavenly parentage and let us follow Jesus in learning how to be better in our bi-lingual practice of speaking the language of heaven within our earthly human experience.  The divine language in human experience is best known as love and justice.  Jesus Christ became human and spoke human language so that within human language we might learn to speak that which is most God-ward in human experience and so fully possess our inheritance as children of God.

This is the Gospel we celebrate and offer to all today.  Amen

Jesus, like a Good Mom Prepared His "Kids" for His Absence

5 Easter a         May 10, 2020
Acts 17:1-15       Ps. 66: 1-8   
1 Peter 2:1-10     John 14:1-14

Lectionary Link

The Gospel of John include oracles of the Risen Christ placed within a narrative of Jesus.  These oracles address the issues which were facing the early Christian communities.

And in today's Gospel reading, we might understand Jesus as a good real estate agent, or a heavenly HUD authority.  We all like to have a place to live, and we may want to have assurance of a place to live in our afterlives.  Jesus, the ideal Real Estate agent, promises, "Guys, you going to be just fine in your afterlife, because in my Father's house there are many dwelling places and I've prepared one for each of you."  Now many of us with Downton Abbey sensitivities would prefer that the Risen Christ still spoke King James English, because in King James English, Jesus said, "Gentlemen, in my Father's house are many mansions.".....which would you rather live in a mansion or a nondescript "dwelling place?"  So, in changing translations do we get down-sized to the low rent district of the Father housing complex?

What is being addressed in the oracle of the Risen Christ in John's Gospel?

The church is dealing with the real absence of Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth is gone.  How can we still have faith and believe that he is alive.  And what kind of future will we have?  What kind of future afterlife will we have?  Will we have a location in the the afterlife?  Will we have a place to live in the afterlife?  Will we have a home in the afterlife?

What does the Risen Christ say?  “Don't be troubled.  You can believe in me and my Father that we will take care of you.  I will prepare a place for you.  You will always have a home with me.”  On Mother's Day, we associate Mom with preparing a home; and if Mom did it for us, so too we have the assurance of the Risen Christ about always having a home, a location, a continuing self identity no matter what happens.  Our good doubting Thomas states the obvious regarding empirical proof.  Jesus, we can't see where you're going or where you've arrived.  How can we know the way?  And the  Risen Christ says, "I am, in you, the Way,"  I'm your internal GPS guiding system because, "I am, in you, the Way."  "I am, in you, Truth and honesty about your life, about God and your purpose in life."  "I am, in you, Zoe, or Abundant Life.  I am, in you, Holy Spirit Risen Christ life, which is the experience of eternal life within ordinary biological mortal life.  I am, your brother in showing you that you belong to our heavenly parent as God's child."

Again, another doubter, Philip, who is all of us in our "show me" demands.  "Show us our Father, show us our heavenly parent, so that we can know we are God's child."

And what did the Risen Christ say?  "Seeing me, you have seen our heavenly parent...the very genetics of the divine image is in me completely and it is in you too as you see the divine image staring at you through each other.  Don't doubt the higher familial likeness of the divine image on you for that is how you are made."

What was another main concern of the early Christians?  Well, now that Jesus has left the world how can any work as good as what he did get done?  "Jesus, you did it all and you did it best, so what can we do in any comparable way?  What is our purpose and work now?"

What does the Risen Christ say?  "Friends, your work is even greater.  Why?  My work as Jesus of Nazareth was limited to the time that I lived in Palestine, but time still is accumulating in greatness in everlastingness.  So, to keep filling up the time, there is greater work to do and I will no longer be limited to my physical body in Palestine.  I will be the Risen Christ in you replicating and reproducing endlessly the work of the Gospel of the Good News of God's love.  So, friends, you are a part of the greater work as the Gospel rolls on in time in everlastingness.  Don't limit me to the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth; let me be the Risen Christ inhabiting all who want me to work in and through them.  I am the cornerstone to the body and temple of Christ as I will inhabit you to keep doing the greater work into the endless future."

Today's Gospel in short: Mom prepared a home for us. Christ has prepared an afterlife home for us and having faith in this, we can live with all of our other temporary homes on earth.  Second, trust the presence of Risen Christ as our Way or internal GPS guiding us as we intentionally commit ourselves to his path.  3rd. Let us live in the Truth as Honesty about the Risen Christ in us.  Next, let us accept the assurance of eternal life within mortal life.  And let us accept the familial likeness of the heavenly parent on our lives and find Christ in each other.  The Father is seen as we let the Father see through us.  And finally, let us not think that Jesus during his lifetime exhausted all of the work God wants to do in this world.  Let us accept the absence of the physical Jesus as the assurance of the omni-presence of the spiritual Risen Christ, who St. Paul said poetically, was All and in all.  By accepting the absence of the physical Jesus we can commit ourselves to be a part of doing the greater work that remains as we allow the Risen Christ to continue to work to share the good news of God's reconciling love in our world.  Amen.