Sunday, June 8, 2014

1st Whitsun 2014, Father's Love

Pentecost
John 14: 23-31
Blake, Ancient of Days

Jesus replied, “He who truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. He who does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I am.
I have told you now, before it happens, so that when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitsun I
June 8, 2014
John 14:23 – 31

Our creed speaks of an almighty divine being we call our Father.  A father precedes his children; he is there before they are born and provides a home for them, what they need to live and grow. He provides for them because he loves them.

Our heavenly Father was there before us. He poured out his being, his essence, his substance into creating the world. He did so in order to provide a home for us, to give us what we need to live and grow. Here on earth he provides what we cannot so easily acquire in heavenly realms: the often difficult lessons of love in freedom that only mortality can bring. This is the kind of learning we can only acquire here on earth. God created all this for us because he loves us.

Although we are all sons and daughters of the Father, He sent his first born son to us for a particular reason. Christ came so that through him we would remember our Father.  Christ came so that we would learn to love the world the way God the Father and his Son do. Christ is here to help us learn such lessons of love because they build for us an eternal dwelling place for us to be in the heavenly realms with the Father when we die.  Allen Ginsberg said:

Nicoletto Semitecolo
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.[1]


 May the Father’s love be in us.




[1]  Allen Ginsberg , “ Song” in Collected Poems 1947-1980



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