Easter Sunday 2018, Rejoice and Open

Easter Sunday 

Mark 16: 1-18

Women at the Tomb, Fra Angelico

And when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb just as the sun was rising. And they said to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?”

And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back—and it was very large. And they went into the tomb. There they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clad in a white robe; and they were beside themselves with amazement. And he said to them, “Do not be startled; you seek Jesus of Nazareth the Crucified One. He is risen; He is not here; see, there is the place where they laid Him [his body]. But go and say to his disciples and Peter “He will lead you to Galilee. There you will see Him as He promised you.”

And they went out and fled from the tomb in great haste, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and being awestruck, they were unable to say anything to anyone about what they had experienced.

When He had risen early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom He had driven out seven demons. And she went and told those who had walked with Him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, their hearts could not grasp it.

Emmaus, Bonnell

After this, He appeared in another form to two of them on the way as they were walking over the fields. And they went back and told the rest, but they could not open their hearts to their words either.

Afterwards, He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were celebrating the meal. He reproached them for their lack of openness and for their hardness of heart because they had not wanted to believe those who had seen Him, the Risen One.

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the new message from the realm of the angels to the whole of creation. Whoever unites his heart with it [believes] and is immersed in me [baptized] will attain the salvation. But whoever closes himself against it does not let the power of selflessness into his heart [does not let the power of My Self into his heart] will meet his downfall. And spiritual powers [these signs] will stand by those who unite themselves with it and will attend their path [believe]: Through the power of my being [in my name] they will drive out demons; they will speak a new language; serpents they will make upright, and poisons they are given to drink will not harm them. They will lay their hands on the sick and give healing forces to them.

Easter Sunday

April 1, 2018

Mark 16:1-18

The heart is a house with many chambers and many doors. With each beat, doors open and doors close, letting in enlivened blood from the breath, and sending the spent to be renewed. Our heart is also where our souls and spirits reside. And the soul’s chambers also have doors.

Christ the Gardener and Magdalene, Rembrandt

Three days after his death, Christ appears in various unfamiliar ways to those who love Him. To the women at the tomb, He is a young man in white; to Mary Magdalene He seems to be a gardener until He calls her by name. The two on the way to Emmaus don’t recognize Him until He breaks bread. ‘Did our hearts not burn within us as he was speaking?’ they say. Yet even some of his devoted followers cannot open the soul door of their hearts to the possibility that He lives. When, finally, they all experience Him together, He chides them for their closed hearts.

Christ is the being of Love. He says to them, to us—whoever unites his heart with the new message of Life, whoever is immersed in Me, in Love, will be healed of the rift between God and the human.

Our hearts are the key. They are the place where the Being of Love would dwell. The Sunday Service for the Children says that although Christ died, He, Love, becomes alive in the hearts of those who make room for Him there.

Christ Knocking, William Holman Hunt

Every Easter His love is renewed in us. His warmth changes our heartbeat into jubilating, healing power. As He says in his Revelation to John, ‘See I am here. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door [of the heart] I will come in and share the holy meal with them and they with me.’* So rejoice and open. As the poet says:

Every breath is a resurrection.

…We're reborn in all the sacred parts

Of our own bodies:

the heart

… the brain

Releases its shower

Of sparks,

and the tear

Embarks on its pilgrimage

Down the cheek to meet

The smiling mouth.**

*Rev 3:20

**Gregory Orr, “Resurrection”, in Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

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4th Epiphany 2018, Beloved's Arms

4^th Epiphany
Luke 13: 10-17

Once he was teaching in a synagogue

on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit weakening her for eighteen years: she was bent over and could not stand upright [lift her head all the way up]. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, “Woman, you are released from your illness!”

He laid his hands upon her, and at once she was able to straighten up. And she praised the power of God. Then the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days for doing work; on those days you can come and let yourselves be healed—but not on the Sabbath.”

But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Does not every one of you untie his ox or his ass from the manger on the Sabbath and lead it away to the water trough? But this daughter of Abraham, who was held bound by the dark might of Satan for eighteen years, wasn’t supposed to be released from her bondage on the day of the Sabbath?”

All his opponents were put to shame by these words, and the people rejoiced over all the signs of spiritual power that happened through him.

4^th Epiphany
January 28, 2018
Luke 13: 10-17

Plants unfold according to their own time. They bud, blossom, fruit when their time is ripe. In commercial settings, much is done to control that flowers bloom according to a market schedule. But commercially grown flowers often lack a certain thriving fullness, a radiance that naturally grown ones have.

The ill woman in the gospel rises, unfolds, blossoms in the healing light of the Christ sun. It took eighteen years for the fullness of the moment to arrive.  The synagogue leader complains that this has not been properly scheduled. But grace, love that heals, arrives in its own time. The only appropriate response is gratitude. We may feel that we want grace to arrive on our own timetable. But the reading makes it clear that control is vastly inferior to the working of grace.

St John of the Cross asks a question of God and God gives an expansive answer:

“What is grace” I asked God.

 And He said,
“All that happens.”
Then He added, when I looked perplexed,
“Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?
Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me
until the heart has
wisdom.”

Grace, love, existence itself—so much to be grateful for.

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*St John of the Cross, “WHAT IS GRACE”, in Love Poems from God: by Daniel Ladinsky, p. 321

9th August/September Trinity 2016, Vertiginous Clarity (Redux)

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6; 19-23

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

9th August Trinity

Sept 18, 2016

Matthew 6; 19-23

We know, at least intellectually, that we cannot take our physical possessions with us across the threshold of death. We even make ironic jokes, like ‘he who dies with the most toys wins!’ But even if we could somehow bring them with us, they would eventually disintegrate because they belong to the world of the transitory.

We are encouraged to store up heart-treasures, treasures that we can take with us through death. One such heart treasure is reverence and wonder toward God, toward our fellow human beings and toward the living being of nature. The health and vitality of our soul, indeed of our whole organism, depends on the manner in which we look at the world. If we look at the world through eyes open in wonder, filled with awe, then seeing through such eyes generates light, both inwardly and outwardly. Through wonder and awe, we gain the light of knowledge and the light of wisdom. Our eyes will shine. Lacking reverence before God, man and nature, our souls begin to darken. Even our bodily organism becomes darker and harder, less translucent. Awe enlightens. 
The poet says:

Never between the branches has the sky

burned with such brilliance, as if

it were offering all of its light to me,

to say – what? what urgent mystery

strains at that transparent mouth?

….the air

suddenly arches itself like this into infinity,

and glitters.

This evening, far from here,

a friend is entering his death,

he knows it, he walks

under bare trees alone,

perhaps for the last time. So much love,

so much struggle, spent and worn thin.

But when he looks up, suddenly the sky

is arrayed in this same vertiginous clarity.*

For, as Christ says, ‘Where you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you’.**

*Jean Joubert, “Brilliant Sky,” Trans. by Denise Levertov in The Gift of Tongues, ed. by Sam Hamill

** Matthew 6:21

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9th September Trinity 2015, Heart's Work

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6: 19-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where you have gathered a treasure, there  your heart will bear you.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

 “No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

Jane Halliwell Green

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9th August Trinity

September 20, 2015

Matthew 6: 19-34

In the Northern Hemisphere this is the time of harvest and of ‘putting by’. Older generations may still have experienced how families canned and preserved what they grew. August and September were times of intense and hot, hard work, work for the future.

In our time such work is largely done on a mass scale for us by others. Although we work hard now in other ways, we have the opportunity to examine our attitudes toward things of earth. Christ gives us some advice about our relationship to earthly things. First He begins by directing our gaze toward the way we perceive, and toward what it is that we value. For what is primary is what lives in our hearts. If we perceive in a clear and accurate way, then our inner life is full of light, enlightened. We will be able to see clearly in two directions.

First we will be able to see that an over-eager and hot pursuit of personal gain come from a spirit of greed that is demonically driven. And secondly we will be able to see the glorious beauty of the created world, and the care that our heavenly Father gives to all creatures, including us. And therefore our hearts can be striving, but in peace, even when we are hard at work. A poet says:

….I think all the time about invisible work.

…. all the while,

as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried

by great winds across the sky,

thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,

the slow, unglamorous work of healing,

the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe

and bees ransack this world into being,

….

I stopped and let myself lean

a moment, against the blue

shoulder of the air. The work

of my heart

is the work of the world's heart.[1]

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[1] Alison Luterman, “Invisible Work” in The Largest Possible Life