Sunday, June 22, 2014

2nd June Trinity 2014, Helping Guide

June Trinity
John 4, 1-26
  
At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

2nd June Trinity
June 22, 2014
John 4: 1-26

If we wish to journey through an area foreign to us, we may engage a guide. The guide knows where best to stop for food and water, for shelter. We depend on his familiarity with the terrain to get us safely through to our destination.

There is a certain sense in which our own five senses are guides.  They each offer specific information about where we are. Taken individually each sense gives such different information that we cannot depend on them singly. We ourselves need to sift through what we receive from them. And further, their information is limited to the earthly, sense-perceptible world.

In the non-material world, the world of life and living beings, the world of love, we need another guide; someone who knows the territory, who will nourish and shelter us on the way; who will see us to our destination. The Act of Consecration of Man (communion liturgy) speaks of One who is our helping guide through the territory of our freedom.

The Samaritan woman meets him by the well. In tradition she is called Photina, ‘the luminous one’. In her conversation with him she realizes that relying only on the guidance of her five senses, (her ‘husbands’) is not taking her where she wishes to go. Her soul is parched. Christ offers himself as the living water, and as her guide on her journey. She recognizes that he knows, in fact is the way; that he stands before her and speaks to her of where she truly wishes to go; that He is her helping guide.

Psalm 121 speaks of this guide:

 ….The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart.
His peace will keep you untroubled
even in the greatest pain.
When you find him present within you,
you find truth at every moment.
He will guard you from all wrongdoing;
he will guide your feet on his path….*



*A Book of Psalms, trans. and adapted by Stephen Mitchell

4th St. Johnstide 2013, We Forget

John the Baptist
St. Johnstide
Matthew 11: 2-15

When John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are awakened, and those who have become poor receive the message of salvation. Blessed are those who are not offended by my Being.”

When they had gone, Jesus began to speak about John. “Why did you go out into the desert? Did you want to see a reed swaying in the wind? Or was it something else you wanted to see? Did you want to see a man in splendid garments? Those in splendid garments are in the palaces of kings. Did you go to see a man who is initiated into he mysteries of the spirit, a prophet? Yes, I say to you—he is more than a prophet. He it is of whom it is written:
           
            Behold it well: I will send my angel before your face;
            He shall prepare the way of your working in the hearts of men
            So that your being may be revealed.

The truth I say to you: among all who are born of women, not one has risen up who is greater than John the Baptist; and yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist, and even more now, the kingdom of heaven will arise within human beings through the power of the will; those who exert themselves can freely grasp it. The deeds of the prophets and the content of the Law are words of the spirit that were valid [worked into the future] until the time of John. And if you want to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

4th St. Johnstide
John in Prison
July 21, 2013
Matthew 11: 2 – 15

It may seem amazing that John the Baptist has doubts. After all, he witnessed the Holy Spirit descend and remain on Jesus at the Baptism. He witnessed him as the Lamb of God who bears the burden of humankind’s guilt. Yet it is as though he begins to question what he saw – ‘Are you the one who was to come?’

John is imprisoned; imprisoned in a jail; imprisoned perhaps in the popular expectations of what the Messiah would be; imprisoned in his temporal, mortal body.

Yet Christ is not offended by John’s questioning. Rather than answer directly, he points to the healing fruits of what he is doing. And he continues to speak lovingly and affirmingly of John.

Christ is the ever-faithful friend of our soul. He gazes ever upon our eternal self.

It is in the nature of our spiritual experiences that they come and go. They are born, they die away; they are buried in the everyday. And when they disappear, doubt arises.  But for Christ, this does not matter. He is not offended, for he operates in a realm outside of time’s annihilation.

And he holds fast to what is eternal in us, to the eternal facts of our experiences. What dies away for us is resurrected in Him. Although John, and we, forget what we saw, what we knew, he holds them for us. Christ is the loving and objective witness of our soul.