1st February Trinity 2014, Generous Reward

1st February Trinity

Matthew 20: 1-16

 

The kingdom of the heavens is like a man, the master of his house, who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. Agreeing to pay them one denarius a day, he sent them out into his vineyard.

At about 9 o’clock he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace, and he said to them, “Go also into my vineyard, and I will give you whatever is right.” So they went.

He went out again at about noon and at 3 o’clock and did the same. At 5 o’clock he went out and found others standing there, and he said to them, “Why do you stand here all day idle?” They said, “Because no one has hired us.” He said, “You, too, go into the vineyard.”

And when evening came, the master of the vineyard said to his steward, “Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.”

Those who had been hired at 5 o’clock came forward, and each received one denarius. Therefore, when it was the turn of those who were hired first, they expected to receive more. However, they too also received one denarius each. They took it, but they began to grumble against the master of the house. “These men who were hired last only worked one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”

 

However, he answered one of them, saying, “Friend, I am not being unjust to you. Did you not agree with me for one denarius? Take what you have earned and go. I wish to give to the man hired last the same as I give to you. Have I not the right to do as I wish with what is mine? Or do you give me an evil look because I am generous? Thus will the last be first and the first will one day be last. “

1^st February Trinity

February 9, 2014

Matthew 20:1-16

This gospel reading about the workers in the vineyard has meaning on many levels. Commonly it is read as a lesson in social justice. This story is also a metaphor for our many lives on earth.

We are all wanting to work on the earth for the Kingdom of the Heavens. Some of us arrive early in the Earth-Day and have labored long. Some of us arrive later, and some barely in time. At the end of the aeon, the end of the Earth-Day, we all receive the same reward—the ‘one denarius’ of our completed selfhood. That is what we have agreed upon with the Master. We each receive the same unique one-ness. The mistake is in thinking that we deserve more than others.

We are all laboring together. Some must labor for selfhood long and hard, with suffering; others seem to acquire it with less effort; but they too have suffered; they have suffered the meaninglessness of not being engaged in the work.  But a selfhood that operates in love is the generous reward of the Master of the kingdom of the heavens; it is the reward for those who show up for the Great Work, no matter how early or late they come to it. The poet says:

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Denise Levertov, “Variation On A Theme By Rilke (The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)” in Breathing the Water

4th Epiphany 2007, Failure to Thrive

4^th Epiphany

John 5: 1-18

Some time later, there was a Jewish feast, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, near the Sheep’s Gate, a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which is surrounded by 5 covered porches. Here lay a great many invalids, the blind, the lame [crippled], the weak [withered], waiting for the water to begin moving. For from time to time a powerful angel of the Lord descended into the pool and stirred up the waters. The first one in the pool after such a disturbance would be cured of whatever ailment he had.

And there was a certain man there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and became aware that he had been ill for so long, he asked him,

“Do you want [have the will] to become whole?”

The invalid answered him, “Lord [Sir], I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Rise up, take up your pallet, and walk.”  At once the man was healed and picked up his pallet and walked.

           

However it was the Sabbath on that day. Therefore the Jewish leaders said to the man who was healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your pallet.”

But he replied, “The man who healed me said to me, “take up you pallet and walk!”

And they asked him, “Who is the man who said to you ‘take it up and walk’?”

But the one who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, as there was a crowd in the place.

Later, Jesus found him in the Temple and said to him, “Take to heart what I say: Behold, you have become whole. Sin no more, lest your destiny bring you something worse.”

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had healed him. That is why they persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath.

Then he himself countered them with the words, “Until now my Father has worked, and from now on I also work.”

Then they sought all the more to kill him, because not only had he broken the Sabbath, but also because he had called God his own Father and had set himself equal to God.

4^th Epiphany

January 28, 2007

John 5: 1-18

There are two kinds of extremes in the way our soul conducts itself. One extreme might be called “too tight a grip”. It is the temptation to plan and control everything and everyone, down to the last minute and penny. There is no room, no gap for the divine spark to ignite.

The other extreme might be called the soul’s “failure to thrive”. In this extreme, the soul is weak and lamed; it blames everyone and everything outside of itself for its own failures. “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred…someone always gets there ahead of me.” John 5:7

In the story Christ first raises the man’s awareness with His question: is it your will to become whole? The man’s answer is essentially a divided one: “Yes, but….” So Christ supplies the missing strength. Thirty-eight years of paralysis have built up some measure of resolve in the man; Christ adds what is lacking.

Yet the man’s soul weakness, which was at the basis of his bodily paralysis, continues to be evident. He is still not yet sovereign over what happens. When others tell him he shouldn’t be carrying his pallet, he tries to justify himself by shifting the blame for breaking the Sabbath onto Jesus. Excuses again.

So Jesus finds him in the Temple and offers follow-up therapy. “You have become whole; sin no more, lest your destiny bring you something worse.” John 5:14

The paralytic’s sin consists of not be able to act out of his own initiative, out of his own integrity. He has literally been raised to a new level. If he goes back to his old ways, his destiny will be forced to take more extreme measures in order to enforce his continuing evolution and growth. Once a higher level of functioning has been reached in the soul, there is no going back.

Here, in consecrating ourselves, we offer our integrity, or at least as much of the broken pieces of it we can gather up. The formative character of Christ’s body helps us consolidate our efforts, our soul’s gains. The fire of the wine mixed with water strengthens our will, dissolves our souls’ hardness, and helps us move forward. We cannot do it all by ourselves. Yet neither can Christ. Bit by bit a lifetime of weakness is given strength by what Christ adds to our own efforts at destiny. He gives us the strength of Himself, ‘the medicine that makes whole.’ 

4th Epiphany 2008, Right or Good

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 Sunday

January 27, 2008

Luke 13: 10-17

  

The insect world has an unusual characteristic. Bugs have no bones. Their muscles are attached to their outer shell. Their carapace is the support for their movement. Human muscle, however, is attached to bones within the body. Support for our movement comes from the bones; within the bones,our very lifeblood is made.

Jesus heals a woman from an oppressive spirit that had pushed her earthward. She had become earthbound, hindered from uprighting herself to connect with God in the heights. Jesus’ deed was a creative act, which restored her into the stream of God’s creative working.

The Law, the rule of the time, was interpreted in such a narrow way that, by law, Jesus was not allowed to do such a thing on that day of the week. The Law had become a kind of carapace, enforcing a kind of oppressive uprightness from without. Christ stood before the choice to follow the “right”, or to do the good, the creative, restorative thing. He makes it clear that the right and the good are not the same thing. This is particularly so when the rules have outlived their usefulness, or have become constraining.

In a certain sense, we can see Christ’s healing of the woman oppressed as a picture for the healing of the Law itself. Through Christ, the Being of Love, the Law is shrunk back to its origins and proper place within the human heart. Its essence is loving God with all one’s being and loving one’s neighbor as oneself.

Through Christ, we meet God as the Creating Word who draws us to His great heart. Through Christ in us, we meet other human beings on the expansive and expanding field of Humanity becoming Divine.

In the words of Rumi we can hear the words of Christ in us:

Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. 

I’ll meet you there.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Jelaluddin Rumi, ( 1207 – 1273 CE) “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrong-Doing”, The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks, p. 36

4th Epiphany 2009, Pour and Flow

4^th Epiphany

Robert Bateman

John 5: 1-1

Some time later, there was a Jewish feast, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, near the Sheep’s Gate, a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which is surrounded by 5 covered porches. Here lay a great many invalids, the blind, the lame [crippled], the weak [withered], waiting for the water to begin moving. For from time to time a powerful angel of the Lord descended into the pool and stirred up the waters. The first one in the pool after such a disturbance would be cured of whatever ailment he had.

And there was a certain man there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and became aware that he had been ill for so long, he asked him,

“Do you want [have the will] to become whole?”

The invalid answered him, “Lord [Sir], I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Rise up, take up your pallet, and walk.”  At once the man was healed and picked up his pallet and walked.

           

However it was the Sabbath on that day. Therefore the Jewish leaders said to the man who was healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your pallet.”

But he replied, “The man who healed me said to me, “take up you pallet and walk!”

And they asked him, “Who is the man who said to you ‘take it up and walk’?”

But the one who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, as there was a crowd in the place.

Later, Jesus found him in the Temple and said to him, “Take to heart what I say: Behold, you have become whole. Sin no more, lest your destiny bring you something worse.”

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had healed him. That is why they persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath.

Then he himself countered them with the words, “Until now my Father has worked, and from now on I also work.”

Then they sought all the more to kill him, because not only had he broken the Sabbath, but also because he had called God his own Father and had set himself equal to God.

4^th Epiphany

Feb 1, 2009

John 5: 1-18

Once again, we see that the arrival of the Christ signals the beginning of a new era. In ancient times, the forces of healing were still gifted to human beings from outside of themselves. A last remnant of this is pictured in this gospel reading as the angel who randomly stirs the healing waters in the pool of Bethesda.

With the advent of Christ on earth, the focus of the forces of healing moves away from outside agents. Healing begins to establish itself in the energy field generated by the relationship between Christ and the individual soul.

The first question Christ asks the paralytic is a very intimate one. It concerns the very basic question that Christ asks all of us: do you want to become whole, healthy? Is it truly your will to be healed? John 5:6 This is an important question. For Christ will not interfere with anyone’s basic freedom to choose. If we are truly honest, we would have to admit that sometimes we prefer to remain in the soul landscape of suffering because it is comfortably familiar.  It takes courage to change the basic pattern of a lifetime, to step into an unknown way of being.

As it is, the paralytic’s answer is a divided one. Of course he wants to be healed. But at the same time the power of his will, his ability to upright himself, to move about, to move forward in his destiny, to make an active contribution to his people, has been severely compromised. Interestingly, he dodges the question by blaming others, and saying that he has no one to help him. After thirty-eight years of paralysis of will and complaining, it is perhaps no wonder that no one is around to help! Christ’s question shines a light of consciousness on the very basic question He asks all of us, and that we all must ask of ourselves: in what direction is your will moving? Do you will transformation?

Nevertheless, Jesus has compassion on his weakness. For the paralytic symbolizes the state of mankind in general. Christ must indeed see some way forward for us. And so through the power of the Christ-Ego, Jesus infuses the paralytic’s will with a jolt of uprightness, of power. Christ integrates the paralytic’s soul forces so that they can raise the body. He jump-starts the paralyzed will.

“Rise up; take up the pallet [of your destiny, upon which you have been lying helpless], and move forward!” John 5:8

And it happens; for— in the words spoken to the Mary soul at the annunciation—no word is spoken in the worlds of spirit that does not have the power to become reality on earth. Luke 1:37

Our healing, our transformation and reintegration of soul, is a gift of Christ’s grace. But then it is up to us to treasure, to nurture and to maintain the transformation with which we have been gifted. Later Christ warns the paralytic, who is now walking about in the Temple, that he is to sin no more. That is to say that he is to take care not to separate himself again from the divine world, from the angel of his own destiny. The angel of our destiny offers us opportunities. Our failure to answer and nurture them poisons our future.

So in the words of Rilke:

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame

Where everything shines as it disappears….

What locks itself in sameness has congealed…

Pour yourself like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking

finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII, in Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again, Roger Housden, p. 21

4th Epiphany 2010, In-Valid

4^th Epiphany

John 5: 1-18

Some time later, there was a Jewish feast, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, near the Sheep’s Gate, a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which is surrounded by 5 covered porches. Here lay a great many invalids, the blind, the lame [crippled], the weak [withered], waiting for the water to begin moving. For from time to time a powerful angel of the Lord descended into the pool and stirred up the waters. The first one in the pool after such a disturbance would be cured of whatever ailment he had.

And there was a certain man there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and became aware that he had been ill for so long, he asked him,

“Do you want [have the will] to become whole?”

The invalid answered him, “Lord [Sir], I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Rise up, take up your pallet, and walk.”  At once the man was healed and picked up his pallet and walked.

           

However it was the Sabbath on that day. Therefore the Jewish leaders said to the man who was healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your pallet.”

But he replied, “The man who healed me said to me, “take up you pallet and walk!”

And they asked him, “Who is the man who said to you ‘take it up and walk’?”

But the one who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, as there was a crowd in the place.

Later, Jesus found him in the Temple and said to him, “Take to heart what I say: Behold, you have become whole. Sin no more, lest your destiny bring you something worse.”

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had healed him. That is why they persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath.

Then he himself countered them with the words, “Until now my Father has worked, and from now on I also work.”

Then they sought all the more to kill him, because not only had he broken the Sabbath, but also because he had called God his own Father and had set himself equal to God.

4^th Epiphany

January 31, 2010

John 5: 1 -18

Often things happen without our knowing how. The movement or change or transformation seems to happen behind a curtain. We only see the result.

The will is such a mystery. In the broadest sense, it is connected to movement. It is through our will that we stand up, walk, and work. But the workings of this mysterious power are mostly hidden from us.

Today’s reading involves an invalid. (Interesting word—in-valid.) His will, his ability to stand up, to walk, to work had been ‘invalidated’. Christ asks him, ‘Is it your will to become whole, healthy? This question suggests that the man needed to become more conscious of his will. What is it that he wants? How devoted is he to achieving his goal? His answer: I have no one to help me. I can’t do it alone. So Christ helps him. Christ infuses His own healing, integrative will into the man’s weakened will (his ill will?), giving it strength.

In the Act of Consecration of Man we express our awareness of our own weaknesses of will, our own need of healing. We come to the altar, which is both a feast table and a worktable. We bring our humble offerings, the selfless purity of our best and most hope-filled thoughts, our noblest feelings, along with whatever amount of motive force we can muster. And Christ adds His own healing will to them. This gives our offerings the upward thrust and levity that allows them to rise up to the Father. Together the Father and His Son transform our will offerings. They are returned to us as healing medicine for our invalid souls, healing energy for a failing world.

So in the words of John O’Donohue:

May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness:

Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.

Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.

What quality of space it wants to create in you.

What you need to learn to become more fully yourself

That your presence may shine in the world.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] John O’Donohue, “A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness", in To Bless the Space between Us, p. 60

4th Epiphany 2011, Grace Arrives

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 30, 2011

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.”[1]

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

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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

4th Epiphany 2012, Restoration

Kenneth Dowdy

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 29, 2012

Luke 13:10-17

When a plant doesn’t get enough water, it wilts. Give it water and shortly it is upright again.

Sometimes we too are parched. We don’t have enough life force to counter the forces of droop. It may be that we are tired, or ill. But if enough life force is restored, we can upright ourselves again.

Some of the restoration we can do ourselves—through food and water, through sleep, through medicine. It is our responsibility to do what we can. But the true source of the Water of Life is Christ. Even today.

That is why we come to communion—to restore the level of life force in the world. We can do so not only for ourselves, but also for others. For it is possible to forward to others the strength and blessings of communion with Christ. It is possible to form the intention to send His healing and the peace of His touch into the world.

As Wendell Berry says:

As timely as a river

God's timeless life passes

Into this world. It passes

Through bodies, giving life,

….

The secret fish leaps up

Into the light and is

Again darkened. The sun

Comes from the dark, it lights

The always passing river,

Shines on the great-branched tree,

And goes. Longing and dark,

We are completely filled

With breath of love, in us

Forever incomplete.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Wendell Berry, poem III, in Given