Revelation 21 TODAY

Fifth Easter
Acts 11:1-18   Revelation 21:1-6   Psalm 148  John 13:31-35

The Book of Revelation is like a "cut and paste" construction from myriad texts in the Jewish Bible. To read and understand one must be familiar with the Jewish texts to which it is related.

Around 500 BC, a generation after the Babylonians leveled their Temple and drove them into exile, the Jews returned to the promised land by order of the Persian King. The book of Isaiah contains many prophecies of hope and joy from this time period. The reality of return, however, did not match their expectations. Other prophetic writings indicate that the people still fell short in their relationship with God. As a result, God was with them, but always in a veiled way. The power of Sin continued to be a barrier to Kingdom Shalom.

The exile in Babylon, like slavery in Egypt and the expulsion from Garden of Eden, is a primary Biblical metaphor for alienation from God. The loss and restoration motif echoes the ultimate salvation found in death and resurrection. The last of the writers in the Isaiah tradition, addresses Israel with God's complaint that they were a people to whom He stretched out His hands and they did not respond, who turned to other gods before His face (Is 65). Yet, in spite of their infidelity YHWH the Lord declares salvation (Is 66-67).  He promises a glorious future with a new heaven and a new earth. One must read Isaiah to hear this vision of John we read in the Apocalypse today

Babylon is a code word for Rome in the Apocalypse. The revelation centers on the destruction of Jerusalem. However, the biblical revelation must also be read as spiritual metaphor. In every age, the Book of Revelation and the prophets are contemporary! Today at our own border we see people in exile from their homes. Nations continue to fail. Churches disappear. More deeply, there are exiled hearts, spiritually cut off from God. This spiritual decay within us often leads to the chaos around us. Those who are cut off from God have no protection from the demonic forces in our world.

The new heaven and new earth are the transforming life of salvation. Some day God will definitively redeem and heal the fallen world, but in the meantime, He does it here and now each day.

Salvation is not a one time event. The Kingdom is among us and within us. It works in our hearts now and impacts communities today. God dwells among us. Today tears are being wiped away and broken lives are healed. Jesus' ministry continues in the Church--wherever His Spirit encounters true faith.  We are being united with God through theosis and made into the holy Body of Christ. Our godly work is a first fruit of the new heaven and new earth. Our love for one another, today, is the "return" of Jesus manifested already, even as we wait for the Final Return. 

Salvation is not going to heaven when we die. It is a new mind and heart--the new heaven and earth at work within each of us right now! Until we go forth and bring the Kingdom life to others, we are not fully people of faith. When we pray with faith and act with trust-- every tear, every illness and all brokenness and sin are wiped away by His love through us.

The Book of Revelation announces to us "Have courage! Be steadfast! Do not waver in faith!" It invites us to open our hearts in love and faith so that God would reign within us more and more. It is a word of hope: 
Do not be discouraged if there is still suffering and pain--respond to it. 
Do not lose heart if there are still illness, loss and tears--heal it. 
Do not lose faith if God seems slow in coming--open in faith so He can work through you. 
His promise is true, and we must stop distancing ourselves from Him.

We must long for His reign and enthusiastically pray "Thy Kingdom Come!" Our words and deeds as members of Christ's own Body, must continually open the world to new life in His salvation.

Perhaps it is God who is in exile, not us. Perhaps He awaits our invitation with new heaven and new earth in hand. Maybe when enough of us turn to Him and say "Come Lord!" He will arrive. Until that Day, we must be open to His power to begin that work on this day.

Take a Lap

Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)     Revelation to John 5:11-14       John 21:1-19

Each of us is born into a world impacted by Original Sin. There is a distance separating us from God--a cloud of darkness shields His light. Saul thought he served God as he arrested Christians, until Jesus came to him. After the encounter, Saul is left physically blind, an outward sign of his spiritual blindness. A sincere error is still an error, and Paul was wrong. Union with God, theosis, requires a new mind. Union with God means that we must return to Him. The Hebrew for conversion is sub which means “to turn around.” Sin is primarily not a moral state, it is missing a target or wandering off the path. Sin is relational--being further from God and repentance is drawing near. The Greek word metanoia means a changed mind. Remember, the Mind, encompasses what we mean by “personality”—how we perceive, think, feel, understand and judge. We are born in a world that is separated from God. This condition is described as “darkness.” The Light, Who is Jesus Christ, heals our misperception of reality. Folks, we are just struggling to make it, doing our best to negotiate life. We have been wounded, we are haunted by doubts and fears, and we wander off. Even the saints struggle with the darkened mind and sinful desires, as we see in today’s readings.

Ananias fails to trust Jesus. In response to the Lord's command he explains its a bad idea. We all judge God’s word as unreasonable or impractical. This has been the case since Eve looked at the tree and said, maybe God is wrong about things. It is foolish, but we do it.

We also, like Peter,  overestimate ourselves. At the Last Supper, Jesus told Peter "you will deny me." Peter is defensive, declaring "I would die for you!" His bravado is neither trust nor humility. Peter was a brave guy, he drew a sword to face down the large crowd. However, the courage waned and soon he quaked before a single woman denying he knew Jesus. You and I, how many times have we denied Jesus?

The Lord is not harsh with either, He tells Ananias that Saul has been chosen and he will suffer greatly. Ananias gets a “new mind” and gets back on the “right path,” doing as Jesus commanded. He even greets Paul as a brother, seeing him with the eyes of Jesus.

Jesus heals Peter’s sin by asking "Do you love me?" three times. In Morning Prayer today in the first letter of Peter we read "love covers a multitude of sins." Peter knew this truth first hand as his "you know that I love you’' covered the denials. But loving Jesus can never be disconnected from the church. Jesus tells Peter, and us, care for the flock, tend each lamb. His church is His body, as He made clear to Saul on the road. Loving Jesus always includes loving and serving the church. What you do to the church, you do to Jesus.

Trust is the open door for healing and union with God. We must become humble and trusting if we would ever know the abundance of Life in our Lord. So care for the church, care for the needy and pray. I conclude with this prayer, based on Psalm 131.

Lord I am not great or important. I have no answers to the mysteries of life. I will not busy myself with such things. Instead, I am just going to sit in Your lap, like a small child. I sit here and let you love me, because I trust You, not myself.

Easter: Resurrection Bodies or Matter Matters

EASTER 2019

For most humans, death is a problem. Death destroys beauty and joy. It breaks our heart to lose a loved one. The process of dying can be horrible as well. The fear of death is widespread. While the Stoics advocate courage in the face of all suffering and the acceptance of our mortal state, many long for more. World religions are divided on the afterlife.

When Dr. Moody's book, "Life After Life" came out in 1975, many were delighted to read about the  hundred people who had been clinically dead, were resuscitated and came back with amazing stories about their experiences. Since then, many others have added their own amazing stories and research, lending credence to the belief that the soul lives on after death. Whether true or not, the possibility of our souls continued existence does not solve all our problems, especially if we remain lonely, wounded and sinful. There really are things worse than death.

Resurrection is not a spiritual event. The resurrection stories about Jesus emphasize His physicality. Jesus is not a ghost. If His body was new and improved, it was still the same body, scars and all. He was not a disembodied spirit. Many of us think that the ancient people were ignorant and full of superstition. Even if this were true, it is simply not true that they believed dead people would be expected to show up alive again a few days later. Those Jews who did believe in resurrection looked for it to happen at the end of time. Just like us. We never expect someone we bury to walk through the wall and talk to us. They did not say they saw His ghost. They said they saw Him.

In the fourth century the church battled the Arian heresy. This heresy taught that Jesus was just a man. One over-reaction ended up becoming another kind of heresy called Apollinarianism. They taught that Jesus had a human body and soul, but a divine mind. The word mind encompasses what we mean by the Personality (think, feel, perceive, understand and judge). It meant that the Incarnation was incomplete. Many Christians today probably agree with this, not knowing it was rejected by the church as false. They also denigrate our physical bodies and the world, preferring to be "spiritual." This is why the resurrection of Jesus does not resonate, they to think that at death our soul is set free to fly off to God. The world is something to be left behind and heaven is a place where we become angels, free to leave our human existence behind.

The orthodox teaching of the Church--following the Bible--tells us that Jesus does not leave this all behind. He returns to the disciples with a new kind of physical body, but the incarnation continues. Jesus will also return again, to raise us all and judge us. We too will undergo a transformation--our suffering ended and our tears wiped away--sin and death finally defeated, we will live, not as disembodied spirits, but as human beings in human bodies. This transformation is called theosis. This is why it matters if orthodox Christianity is true. If Jesus had both a human and divine mind, then we, too, can remain our human self even as we are united with God and transformed. Eternal souls would be stuck forever in suffering and sin without redemption. Human bodies without their own 'minds' would be perfected, but our personal self would be obliterated so that God would just be living in the empty shell that was once our human frame.

The good news is God created us to be in relationship with Him. The incarnation of God the Son in Jesus Christ provides us with a real example of how that can take place. Human life is precious to God and His intent is to raise us up, infilled with the Holy Spirit, making us one in Christ with Him. Death is real darkness, but beyond death there is a more radiant light. We will pass from death to life. Jesus is a trustworthy Witness. He is the One who has already done it. He calls us to die a death like His so that we can live our life in Him.

As we live here each day, we do not have to say "this is all there is,'' nor need we escape by claiming to be "spiritual." Resurrection means that this life is the raw material that God redeems and raises up. Remember "Death is temporary,  Life is eternal." We are not destined for eternal darkness or a bodiless existence in the spirit realm. So we must consecrate each moment and every place to God, as eternally significant. Resurrection faith means our body and life matter, as make our Easter cry, "Alleluia! Alleluia!"

Good Friday

Good Friday

Scripture scholars have long debated the identity of the suffering servant in Isaiah. There are many possibilities. Isaiah uses the term my servant for the whole Jewish nation, as well as a faithful remnant within it. It may well refer to an unknown contemporary, maybe even the prophet himself. Others think it a reflection on a Biblical hero like Moses or Jeremiah. Or it could be looking ahead to a Messianic figure in the future.

I think that they are all correct. I believe that in every age God saves and in every age the work of salvation includes great suffering. Those whom God chooses to be His instruments, be they individuals or nations, will share more deeply in the nature of God. God is love, and to love is to be willing to suffer. The Lord fashioned creation with this truth at its heart--redemption is painful and suffering love saves. If we would love another then we will suffer. Let us be clear, it is Jesus who does this perfectly.

Why? True Love is self emptying. We humans are not capable of complete love, but even in our imperfect loving we know that if you open your heart to love, it can and will be hurt. Love makes us vulnerable and weak because love does not rule or control the other. Love is self gift in the power of weakness. The cost of love is suffering. True love is constantly forgiving the debt that is owed. To forgive the debt is to absorb its consequences. Forgiveness is suffering for another to save them from heir sin. This is why God suffers with us and for us in Jesus Christ. God Incarnate joins us because love forgives the one who walks away and love seeks out the one who is lost.

The world uses power to oppress. The demonic is self-seeking. The flesh would compel us to match violence with violence, hatred with hatred, strength with strength. The world, the flesh and the devil bid us to embrace what is evil in the name of defeating the other. God teaches that evil can only be defeated by goodness, goodness poured out in suffering love. God constantly saves us in and through those who will pay the price of suffering love. The Son is always among us taking upon Himself our sins, our suffering and our dying.

Jesus suffers and dies with us because our union with God (theosis) is a two way street--He abides in us and we in Him. God becomes one of us in Jesus, so Jesus embraces even the most wretched aspects of our existence. This is the revelation of the cross: the Messiah God who negates Himself to find those He loves and invite them out of the darkness into His light.

God gave us the freedom to choose sin and death, and we did. The gift of freedom rendered God powerless to prevent our fall. But our God heard the cries of His foolish children and out of love He emptied Himself into our fallen state. He refused to let suffering and death be the end of our story. Jesus, God Incarnate joined us. His suffering redeemed human suffering and His death redeemed from death. It is what love does--it suffers so to save. There is more to this story but it waits for Sunday....

palm Sunday

Zechariah 9:9-12 

Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Philippians 2:5-11

Luke 19:28-40

Doug was a young father when I left for seminary in 1977. After many years I ran into him at Costco. He told me that he had had his own business selling farm machinery, but was going bankrupt. I asked if it was because sales were low. He responded, "No, sales were great. We sold lots of stuff. They just wouldn’t make the payments." It was an Epiphany.

Doug had written off a lot of debt, but forgiving a debt didn't make it magically disappear. It was still there, it is just that someone else had to eat it. In this case, it was Doug. Doug forgave one debt after another and it killed his business. This is what God does for us.

The Gospel is that God has forgiven our debt. This doesn't mean it just disappeared, that He acted like nothing happened. He has 'eaten' it. The Lord takes on our sickness and sin. He accepts the consequences of sin which is death. You see, Sin and death are not arbitrarily tied together. In the legal system, laws and punishment are determined by human beings. Not all laws make sense to us. Punishments don’t always fit the crime. We do our best, but the legal system is always somewhat arbitrary. But sin and death are not simply a legal matter! They are connected naturally.

Natural Laws is never arbitrary. It is just how things work. We can pass laws which make it legal to sell products which kill people, but that does not save them from the consequences of consuming those products. The law of gravity isn’t interested in what you want or need. Natural Laws are the rules which cannot control or ignore. We must discover them through inquiry and observation, discern them through reason or accept them in revelation. 

Spiritual natural laws govern the life of the human soul in relationship with God and others. Spiritual laws and their consequences are never arbitrary. Sin separates us from God. God is life.  Once you walk away from God you have chosen death. Death is what happens to those who reject Life. Death is not capital punishment imposed by a judge. Death is not God’s revenge. Death is the only possible outcome of sin. Therefore, death is not what God does to us--it is what we choose for ourselves. The cost of Sin is "a debt" which is paid by our Death. You make your choice and you pay the price.

We are separated from God and only He can bridge that gap, so God chose to eat that debt. Philippians describes the process. He began in the form of God, He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. [remember Moses, David, the prophets—they are all called the servant of God] A servant is completely subservient and obedient to the will of another. The Man Jesus is completely obedient to the Father because Jesus is God Incarnate and He is the debt eater. He enters the human condition, which is governed by sin and death. That is the cost to God: incarnation, emptying of self, becoming nothing to join us, being subject to evil and death. God must empty Himself every time He interacts with us, crushing His perfection and eternity to fit into our imperfect and temporal world. 

We didn’t read it today, but the next verse in Luke's Gospel says Jesus weeps when He enters the city. He is heartbroken that the people rejected the chance to be delivered. Sad enough to cry. He said peace had been possible, that God could save if they returned. They didn’t and Roman armies destroyed the city, as Jesus warned. Things could have been different. Instead, Jesus will suffer and die. Death will have its way with Jesus. The powers of the Fallen World will be on full display. The world, the flesh and the devil will have victory over the Lord's Messiah, His self-emptying Servant. 

This is the added tragedy of God's Self-emptying. His love and mercy rejected, He loves us all the more and forgives even that...

So today we watch Him ride into town, it is rather exciting and festive. By Thursday we eat the Passover and He blows our minds with His reinterpretation of that dinner. The on Friday the unthinkable horror, we see Him crucified, our debt to the power of Death consumed before our eyes. And next Sunday, the deliverance is assured. Let us not, however, rush to that happy ending, lest we forget that we, too, must walk with Him in dying in order to rise with Him in Living. For the Mystery is that He does it for us, but also with us and in us.

The Good Father and the Two Boys

LENT 4

Joshua 5:9-12     Psalm 32     2 Corinthians 5:16-21    Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32

In Luke, the religious leaders are "grumbling'' because Jesus welcomed sinners. The Greek word only appears twice in the New Testament (here and Luke 19), both times in reference to Jesus’ embrace of sinners. It occurs three in the Jewish Bible [Exodus 16:2, 7, 8; Numbers 14:2 and Joshua 9:18, 24]. The three times in Exodus are from the story of Israel’s murmuring against Moses because they were thirsty. While they were focused on the man, Moses, they were really turning from God. Murmuring is rebellion against God.

The parable is pretty transparent. Obviously, the younger brother represents "the sinners," while the older brother is the religious leaders grumbling against Jesus. The story seems to say that all people are God’s children, the sinners should repent and those already at home should welcome them back. Typically, we read the parable as a condemnation of the religiously self-righteous. So it is interesting that while the Father does not go in search of the younger son, He does go out to seek the older brother. I believe Jesus is letting us no that, really, no one is righteous: we are all lost, but, Good News, the Father loves us. These are deep words: "All that I have is yours....come into the celebration!"

Today, however, I invite you to look within your own heart, where both brothers (you can make them sisters) live. The younger son represents the flesh—the part of you ruled by desires (passions) which lead away from God. The key insight is that the younger son wanted to do his own thing, as do each of us. Do not be deceived. It is not just the wild decadent life of a young man which constitutes “squandering the inheritance.” The gaudy sins of the flesh are obvious and we must tame these impulses and temptations through prayer, fasting, and spiritual disciplines. However, we are far more likely to squander our inheritance on mundane things. Jesus warned the church that the pre-occupations of daily life can cause us to drift away from God. The most dangerous passions, we have learned, are masquerading as virtues. 

Which brings us to the turning point of the young son’s story. “He came to himself,” it says. I think what that means is the “false ego self” was unmasked. We can speculate about what wounds, lies, doubts and fears had led him to leave. We do know that he did not understand his identity as a son. Now, finally, he remembered (re-member: put the pieces back together as a whole) his father and life in the father’s house. Maybe his repentance is motivated by selfishness? Whatever the case, returning home and speaking the words receive an unmerited love and welcome.

The older son reflects the dark side or shadow of our goodness. Being good has its own dynamics and so it often judgmental and resentful. Paradoxically, for example, serious minded Christians can look down on those who do not take faith seriously, but non-believers can be equally self-righteous in declaring "I am not one of those church-going hypocrites." Self-righteousness is fed by the feeling that we have been treated unfairly and resentment that others are getting a better deal. It delights in seeing other people pay for their crimes. It is also blind. It is so blind. He cannot see himself. The tragedy of the older son is a failure to recognize his status as an heir. He does not see how he is treating the father the same way as his brother did. He does not see that “Everything I have is yours.” He does not see the pain of his brother, only his sins. He cannot feel compassion or intimacy. He probably never saw His Father's heartbreak. The demons afflicting the self-righteous are more dangerous because they are more subtle, and the wounds they feed on are more deeply hidden.

The Father is disrespected and unloved by both his sons. It is a tragic picture, made all the worse because it accurately reflects how each of us relate to God. The warning of the story is that while the Father’s love is never in question, our response is. The work of repentance is to trust in the Father’s love, to look for the sons within our hearts, and to lay the unique way work in us before Him, and ask Him to heal and cooperate in the process.

Lent 3 Journey into God

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9


Moses is a shepherd—a common biblical metaphor for leadership. It is also an image of love and care for the needy. In our journey to God, love and care for others is a prerequisite.

The encounter occurs "behind the mountain" in the “wilderness.” The Hebrew word for desert—midbar—has the same root as the Hebrew dabar—which means speak and word. We must strip away the daily distractions and find a quiet place to hear God. We must journey through emptiness beyond the mundane to find Him.

God appears as a fire in a thistle bush. The story of Adam’s sin is quietly at play—remember the earth was cursed and would produce bramble. It is as if God were redeeming the earth through this holy fire. The same fire is in Genesis when God made covenant with Abraham. The same fire appears at Pentecost. The same fire can engulf us if we trust.

God told Moses to take off his sandals. We must approach God with reverence and a heart of worship. The secular age has diminished God for centuries. We are victims of its poisonous treason. A regular practice of humbling ourselves before God is the antidote.

The voice from the fire declares “I am the God of your fathers. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” It is family and covenant—love and intimacy—which are at the center of His communication. It displays His compassionate concern, which is clearly expressed in what follows: "I have seen their oppression, I have heard their cries. I know their pain.  I have come to save." The Hebrew ‘know’ conveys intimacy. God participates with us in our pain, most completely in the cross of Jesus. The movement of salvation is theosis, God comes down to bring the people up.

The gift of Salvation is participatory. Paul warns us God’s grace met with resistance and the Israelites perished in the desert. Likewise, Jesus tells His own listeners that unless they repentant they too will perish. Repent (metanoia) means to take on a new mind and return to God. Salvation is a process of cooperation. Furthermore, the Lord uses humans to save.  God told Moses, "I send you." An apostle is one who is sent—each of us has a mission. The more we cooperate with God, the more we are healed in body, soul, spirit! The more we mediate salvation to others, the more it grows in us!

Ideally, Lent is a journey through our own desert; an encounter with God in a quiet, holy place. There we meet the God whose Name is "I am who I am." Salvation unites us with God. We, too, must become who we are. Too often, our name is "I am who you want me to be" as we comply with the world. Too often our name is "I am what my wounds, fears, doubts and desires deceive me to be" Original Sin means that we were all born into a world where God is distant--but He still sees, He hears, He knows and He continues to comes down to save us from slavery. The world is still run by the Pharaohs who forbids us to worship God. Too often we embrace this slavery—so Jesus warns us, “Repent,” “Turn back!” “Get your mind right!” And remember, we are also sent. Sent to carry the Jesus within us—to heal, to teach, to deliver--to save the world.