Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Quiz of the Day, May 2022
Sunday, May 29, 2022
The Post-Ascension Church
7 Easter May 29, 2022
Acts 16:16-34 Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21 John 17:20-26
Topography is a geographical term. But the word topic, is a rhetorical term, referring to common themes of use for argument and dialogue. Each word is related to a Greek word, "topos", meaning place.
One of Aristotle's works in logic was called The Topics, or commonplaces that are used in arguments to derive the conclusions of the arguments.
The Bible is a book of topography and topics. It is a geography of the outer world and the inner world because language is an inner attribute comprising each person's effort to sew together what is inside us with what is outside. We use language to name the outer world of our landscape, our geographical topography; we use language to name our interior geography, things like soul, emotions, thinking, memory, volition, heart, and spirit. The Bible provides a series of topics from which our major faith conclusions are drawn.
What is the main conclusion of the New Testament? The Jesus who died, rose into an ascended state, is now known as the Risen Christ nature within humanity. What is the whole point of the New Testament? To get people to realize the Risen Christ nature within themselves.
Today's Bible readings gives us topics in various presentations to point to the main conclusion.
The geography of Jesus Christ is this: He was born, he ministered in word and deed and demonstration and friendship, he died, he continued to be known in various ways by his followers who explained such as appearances until such appearances ceased and his absence was explained by his departure in an ascension. He took a spiritual elevator to an exalted space, and in our modern day, we must confess this exalted space to be an inner space, because we no longer hold to a three-tiered universe of netherworld, flat earth, domed sky with an opening to the highest heaven.
How did the writer of John's Gospel understand Christ as exalted to the highest inner space? He understood that Christ was an intercessor asking that everyone could come to a union with the Great One of heaven and know themselves as child of God, one with the heavenly parent who is the condition of the creation of everything.
The topic is the presentation of the prayer of Christ for us to come to know our family oneness with God our heavenly parent. This is not a Jesus wanting to be God's only child; it is the Risen Christ begging that God might help everyone realize their divine family origin by accessing their spiritual oneness with God.
Another topic is the result of the conclusion about experiencing the Risen Christ nature. It gave Paul and Silas the ability to resist the interior lies that controlled others; and they could people whisper just like Jesus had people whispered. What happens to those who realize their Risen Christ natures? The uncanny. Prison doors are opened, and they know not how; the earthquake seem to cause their release. And their release was for the purpose of passing on the realization of the Christ nature to their jailor and his family. The realization of the Risen Christ nature creates for us the sense of the uncanny, the marvelous, the bafflement, and the awe; the sense of our being really small because of God's greatness. We can experience the sense of wonder of us being touched by that greatness, and known in events of seeming providential care.
Realizing the divine presence made the Psalmist a poet. Poets speak in exaggeration; that's what mystical experience does. Poetry is a response to the Sublime. And the sense of the sublime is a topic which points to the conclusion of the realized Risen Christ nature.
And for some, the awareness of the sublime Risen Christ nature came in the inscrutable and fluid and plastic imagery like the writings of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. Do you know how you can offend an artist, a poet, writer, or a painter? By being very sure that you really know what they meant in their artistic presentation. Artists and paints and writers can be very glad that their works are appreciated and even forgiving when people presume to know exactly what they meant. I am very tired of people who think that they know exactly what John the Divine wrote about or exactly what the Bible means. Why? The meanings of the Bible are not yet finished, just like the meaning of any work of art is never arrived at. Let us not offend the Bible by presuming we know precisely what the words mean. It is a book of artistic presentation of language to inspire us in the art of living well. It is not a book of dogma to presume that we know so well, that we want to force our meanings on everyone else.
Lots of people who think they know what the Book of Revelation is about speak over and over again about the Second Coming. I don't think the word "second" is ever used to refer to the coming of Christ, because the comings of Christ are more than two. Just last week we read about how Christ was leaving the disciples but was coming to them again soon in the Advocate Holy Spirit.
While some people are just waiting for the "big one," the big coming, I believe the witness of John the Divine to you and me is found in one word that should always be on our lips and in our hearts.
That word: "Come!" Come Lord Jesus! Come again, now, and later. Come Lord Jesus in these Eucharistic gifts. Come within the gathered people. Come within the crazy terror of gun slayings aftermaths and come within the lingering dreadful war in Ukraine.
What is in this word "come?" It is a request from hearts won by the hospitality of Christ, and it is being converted to being hospitable? And what do hospitable people say? Come!
Come, Lord Jesus. Amen
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Sunday School, May 29, 2022 7 Easter C Ascension Sunday
Sunday School, May 29, 2022 7 Easter C Ascension Sunday
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Real Absence is Real Presence?
6 Easter C May 22, 2022
Acts 14:8-18 Ps. 67
Rev. 21:22-22:5 John 14:23-29
The Gospel of John in many ways is the persuasive writing of the Johannine church, more than fifty years after Jesus. The writer is part of a community who believe themselves to be able to write in first person, words of Jesus with the following contradiction: My real absence is also my real presence.
From the doubting Thomas story to the promotion of Gospel writing as a means of coming to belief, the Gospel of John is about the reality of a different kind of presence than the physical body of Jesus in history; it is about the Real Presence of the Risen, Ascended, glorified Christ in the lives of people who want to realize it. The Real Presence of the Risen Christ is a different sort of presence than Jesus in his physical body. It happens because the Holy Spirit who was in Jesus is also the Holy Spirit who is in us. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the Christ Nature evident in us.
And if we call earth our home because it is where we live and have our roots, we could also call the earth, God's home, and God's body because the traces of the maker reside in all of what has come to be.
You and I know that home can used in a general sense, as in the earth and the universe as our home, but it can also be used in the very particular sense, namely the very personal places where we live. I think that most everyone who is happy, is so, because they can say that their home is a favorite place. What makes a home special? A place to sleep. A place of privacy. A place of comfort. A place to serve food. A safe place with people who tolerate one's habits.
The amazing thing about the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, is the assertion that God, our heavenly parent wants to make a home in us. God's most specific home within the general home of the universe is within human people, who we believe to most distinctly bear the image of God because we, following Christ the eternal Word, bear on our lives the ability of language which is the essence of relationship, communication, and the differential labeling of everything in creation.
The words of Jesus indicated to us that God considers us to be divine dwelling places, homes for the divine presence. And how are we to know the divine dwelling? By the Holy Spirit. The same inner essence of the life of Jesus, is to be the essence of our inner lives. And what is the result? The result is the experience of peace, which casts out fear and relieves the troubled heart.
Each of us more than anything probably wants our homes to be peaceful. And what makes our homes peaceful? When each person realizes the peaceful interior life of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And this is how the real absence of the historical Jesus can be known as the real presence of the Risen Christ within us. We are the tabernacle of the abiding presence of God if we can be persuaded to understand our lives in this way. The receptacle for holding the consecrated bread is called a tabernacle. It symbolizes the dwelling of the Risen Christ being made known under the special consecrated bread, but also symbolizing that each human being is made to be a tabernacle for the presence of Christ, signifying that God has made us as a home for the divine presence.
And if we can live this way, we can live the life of blessing as is expressed in our appointed Psalm. We can be those who offer the saving health of God to all people.
Lydia, who came to understand that God resided in her life, wanted Paul to stay at her home. The Gospel is a message which makes people want to practice hospitality and be at home with each other.
The Gospel is also the perpetual vision of futurism, as is seen in the writing of John the Divine. We always need a vision of a perfect city, a place where people live together well. We always need water, fruit, and healing. To know the homing of God within our lives is to be able to live from the perpetual vision of futurism of the better life of peace, healing, the sustenance of quenched thirst and well-fed souls with fruit from the tree of life.
Today, let us accept the Gospel of God making a home in us. And let us go forth to share the good news that God wants everyone to know that they can know themselves to be a dwelling place of God. Amen.
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