"Spiritual Blindness"

When you think of the word blindness what comes to your mind?   Being in the darkness, mobility, not being able to get around, aloneness, a burden to others.

There are the physically blind and then may I suggest there are those who are spiritually blind.

Readings:  Job 42: 1-6, 10-17, Psalm 34  Mark 10: 46-52

We heard two stories this morning that suggest there are two kind of blindness, not one but two.  There is physical blindness as in the case of Bartimaeus but in the case of Job, we find a great example of spiritual blindness.  

Bartimaeus was physically blind, he had no sight, but medical science tells us that if we lose one or our senses often other senses kick in and become more acute.  With physical blindness hearing and the ability to listen usually improve considerably.  Just recently science has discovered that the blind have sonar abilities were never completely understood before.  They can with training, actually detect objects and there position by using clicking sounds. Their hearing is so acute to sound that they hear an echo our ears are not trained to hear.   Some have gotten so good at it they can tell you the size and description of the object and it distance.  For the blind often scents and odors become more alive, more distinct, touch or taste more sensitive, they become more open to others. Listening for them opens up new possibilities.  May I suggest here that listening better, just may help many sighted persons? Do I hear an Amen?   The opposite occurs with Spiritual blindness.  The lack of spiritual awareness can cause people to become desensitized to their neighbor, their surroundings, nature and to presence of God in their lives.  People who suffer from spiritual blindness can easily become paranoid, more fearful, more self-centered, narrow in their thinking, reluctant to change and new possibilities.   These conditions exists not only with individuals but within groups, governments and even some religions.  Ecologists, theologians and environmentalists are suggesting today that many of those who hold the power within governments, religions and science have the blinders on.  That they are misleading us with their untruths, personal agenda, or personal ideologies.   Spiritual blindness is causing us to use up all our resources faster than we or nature can replenish them.  This kind of blindness can lead us into a world of protectionism, chaos and eventual self-destruction.   

Bartimaeus’ blindness was considered by the people of his time to be a curse from God because of some sin that he or one of his family members committed.   This way of perceiving God, a God who punishes sin with affliction is still being preached in some religious circles today.  Jesus exposes this non truth by reaching out to heal both physical and spiritual blindness.  If you allow Jesus to touch your heart, He can heal both kinds of blindness in you.   God heals because God is a God of rescue, a God of unconditional forgiveness and love not a tyrant who punishes.   Not trusting that God has our best interest in mind, regardless of our personal circumstances helps to add to our Spiritual blindness.   When we commit to personal sin or miss the mark as the Hebrew would say, unleash both conscious and unconscious consequences.  God doesn’t need to punish us, because God gave us the ability to punish ourselves.  It’s built right in to your choices folks, it’s called consequences.  Do something bad to yourself or to others behold consequences.    On the other hand, do something good to yourself or to others and behold consequences.  One might say that the first is spiritual blindness and the other is spiritual awareness.     

Take a long hard look at the Old Testament stories and your blinders will began to be removed.   Jesus isn’t trying to heal or save us from God’s punishment, Jesus wants to heal and save us from that which can become our worst enemy, ourselves. Is that not at the true core of salvation where We can be our own worst enemy as we create our own Hell.    Job is one of the stories that can help us with this deadly form of spiritual blindness. 

He was a righteous man whom loved God, yet God doesn’t stop misfortune, or disease from befalling him.  Yes even good people have a human nature that causes trouble in their lives.  Spiritual blindness allows us to think like Job’s friends.   That we are puppets on a string, that God manipulates us with a system of rewards and punishments.   Job’s friends wrongly assume that suffering always comes as a result of something we had done to upset God.  Job knows this is not so and maintains his faith no matter what the devil throws at him, even though he can’t understand the workings of God.  Spiritual blindness here makes us question the goodness of God especially when our expectations are not met or when we have to endure suffering because of a choice we or someone has made.  God’s wisdom is greater than our understanding.  God has allowed our human nature and our minds the ability to choose.  God doesn’t force control over our human nature but with Jesus’ help we can.   Here we need to remain faithful regardless of our circumstances, trusting, believing and relying on Him.     Spiritual blindness allows us to think that we can figure out and understand the wisdom of God.  Let me remind you of Isiah 55: 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God is God and we are just his children no matter how mature we think we have become.  Spiritual blindness allows us to think we can be Gods ourselves.

Listen to these lyrics:  “The Spirit Song”

Many people today make the claim that they are not spiritual.    I believe that Jesus would disagree with them because that suggests that only some of what God created is spiritual.  To be human, to be part of creation is to be spiritual.  You can’t separate the two.  Everything in existence is spiritual.  God breathed into existence everything by the spirit.  According to the Gospel of John 1: everything in the cosmos both in heaven and on earth were created by the Word, and the word was light to the world.  In verse 3 we read “ through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life” and that life became a light to the world, it brings spiritual awareness, to a world full of darkness, full of the spiritually blind.   Therefore we could conclude that everything in life that has ever existed is sacred and spiritual.    If we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, all things, the rocks and trees, the flowers, and the bees, the oceans and all of its contents, the land, the insects and animals are all spiritual.   We humans are special, we are not like anything else that was created and we were given spiritual awareness and stewardship over all things in creation.  Stewardship seems to have lost its meaning for church folk today.  If you are not sure of it meaning, may I suggest that you google it when you get home or look it up with Webster’s.

Many feel this special spiritual connection to each other and to our world.     Many of us feel this connection when we commune with nature, or with certain people.  Our spirits seems to be on the same wave length, and there is a sense of peace and contentment when we are in each other’s company, even if you do not have to agree with each other’s perspective you still sense the connectedness.  Spiritual blindness can prevent us from experiencing this unexplainable joy and oneness with others, with Jesus, and with nature.   Let us pray   

Feeling Overwhelmed, Burnout?

Picture this:  A doctor rests his stethoscope on one of the rib bones of a human skeleton that is laying on the side of the road and the caption reads:  I guess I'm a little too late!!  

Oct. 21, 2018 Job 38: 1-1 Psalm 104, Mark 10: 35-45

How many of us here today quite frankly feel overwhelmed with all of the things you are being called to care about.    We have our family’s needs, our church needs us, the community beckons us, the different clubs and organizations call upon us, as they ask for our time, our money or our talent.  How many here get junk mail weekly with a plea to help the poor and needy of our world.  We are constantly being asked to fill the coffers of some worthy cause, church buildings, the Bible Society, research for cancer, kidney, heart, diabetes and list goes on doesn’t it.  

To top it all off,  if we don’t already feel guilty for not caring enough, there are an abundant number of people around whose whole purpose in life it seems is to ensure us, that we will no long escape that sense of guilt.  At least that is how I have felt at times in my life and I think that is how many others feel as well.  We get tired of all the people who ask us to care, we get tired of the guilt we feel for feeling this way, and we get tired of the fact that there is so much that needs caring for.           So what are we to do? 

I would like to suggest to you this morning that we need to reclaim for ourselves the good news of the Gospel in all this.  Here are three practical ways we might begin to do this. 

FIRST    - we need to try and understand what the Gospels and Jesus want us to do in our daily life.   There is no question that Jesus wants us to care and calls us to be, as he was, a servant of others.  But now where in the Gospels will you find that we are called or expected to be superman or superwomen, that call is coming from whom in your life?   Is it from your family, the church, your social group, your work place who?     Many of us do not have the strength nor the resources to make a dint in the overwhelming amount of caring that is needed to heal our own family let alone the church or situations within our world.   Jesus is not asking us to do what we can’t, but only what we can.  What does Jesus say”  May I suggest looking at the parable of the Sheep and the Goats  Matthew 25: 30-40,  there you might find the answer in verse 40 where Jesus says:  "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me."   As many times as we have heard this statement before, many of us have not heard what Jesus said?     
Now I want you to close your eyes and emphasize these words from Jesus in your mind, “Whatever” not quantity, but whatever you did for one of the least, not many but one of the least, you did it for me.   In other words whatever we can do for each another is all Jesus is asking of us.  The amount or quality of care or concern we offer is not as important as our willingness to actually do something for just one person.     Some of us may have great resources to offer from, others who have little in material resources can share their time, their talent, their physical ability, make a phone call to someone who needs and ear, send a card, a visit in person is just as important as offering money or other material resources.     All caring gives signs of hope to the recipient, and a feeling of worth to the giver if done without an ulterior motive.   Folks, each of us is called to do what we can as the opportunity arises.   This is what the good news of Jesus Christ is about in our daily lives: having a servant attitude - a person who cares and wants to do it - and then does it even just for one.

SECOND:  We the baptized need to reclaim the good news of Jesus Christ for ourselves. Social Justice work without first getting its roots planted in the Gospels will eventually turn on its self to become self-justifying and self-centered.   Jesus is lord of our lives because we have professed Him to be, follow His ways and have become his disciples.  The good news of Jesus Christ is that we need to reclaim ourselves with his teaching of inclusive unconditional love and forgiveness for both friend stranger and foe.  You must learn to love yourself unconditionally first, and forgive yourself for any past mistakes before you can authentically offer this love and forgiveness to others.   When you have accomplished this for yourself, you will feel the burdens being lifted.  The load you are carrying will get lighter.  As you believe and try to live by love in and through Christ, God forgives you and helps you, for God knows that you are human and that you can only do so much.  Jesus knows we are incapable of surrendering everything.   All we are asked is that we try, giving out of gratitude,  and when we try - Christ himself intercedes for us and gives the blessings of God's mercy and grace in our time of need.   May I suggest that this is the way it was intended. 

THIRD and last:  We need to show others that we are a people of resurrection, that we have been changed and we must proclaim who changed us.  That out of the fertile dirt and dust created in our despair, loss  poverty, oppression, and yes even death itself, we will emerge, as did Christ resurrected, with the power of love, compassion, full of forgiveness with ready and willing heart nourished with the riches of Christ himself.   God in his ultimate wisdom has given us example after example of how change, even death itself, brings new life.  Look at the wonder of the cocoon, where new life in new form emerges, the forests that never die but recreates itself from its own death over and over again, food from the soil, fruit from the vine, new life requires change folks.  Something that appears to us to be totally consumed by death is nothing more than fertile ground for new growth, and new life.  We need to be a people of the way.  What way you ask why the way of Christ.  In Him we become a new being.  The old has passed away and the new has hope and promise.   As we show and proclaim, others will follow, we are a resurrected people, thanks Be to Our God in Christ, who lives within us.   

Transforming Pain

Transforming Pain

by Richard Rohr Wednesday, October 17, 2018

All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust and the undeserved—all of which eventually come into every lifetime. If only we could see these “wounds” as the way through, as Jesus did, then they would become sacred wounds rather than scars to deny, disguise, or project onto others. I am sorry to admit that I first see my wounds as an obstacle more than a gift. Healing is a long journey.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of many of the greatest novels, myths, and stories of every culture. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.

Scapegoating, exporting our unresolved hurt, is the most common storyline of human history. The Jesus Story is about radically transforming history and individuals so that we don’t just keep handing on the pain to the next generation. Unless we can find a meaning for human suffering, that God is somehow in it and can also use it for good, humanity is in major trouble. Because we will suffer. Even the Buddha said that suffering is part of the deal!

We shouldn’t try to get rid of our own pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach. When we can hold our pain consciously and trustfully (and not project it elsewhere), we find ourselves in a very special liminal space. Here we are open to learning and breaking through to a much deeper level of faith and consciousness. Please trust me on this. We must all carry the cross of our own reality until God transforms us through it. These are the wounded healers of the world, and healers who have fully faced their wounds are the only ones who heal anyone else.

As an example of holding the pain, picture Mary standing at the foot of the cross or, as in Michelangelo’s Pietà cradling Jesus’ body. One would expect her to take her role wailing or protesting, but she doesn’t! We must reflect on this deeply. Mary is in complete solidarity with the mystery of life and death. It’s as if she is saying, “There’s something deeper happening here. How can I absorb it just as Jesus is absorbing it, instead of returning it in kind?” Consider the analogy of energy circuits: Most of us are relay stations; only a minority are transformers—people who actually change the electrical charge that passes through us.

Jesus on the cross and Mary standing beneath the cross are classic images of transformative spirituality. They do not return the hostility, hatred, accusations, or malice directed at them. They hold the suffering until it becomes resurrection! That’s the core mystery of Christianity. It takes our whole life to begin to comprehend this. It tends to be the wisdom of elders, not youngers.

Unfortunately, our natural instinct is to try to fix pain, to control it, or even, foolishly, to try to understand it. The ego insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand in liminal space, to stand on the threshold, to hold the contraries, until we are moved by grace to a much deeper level and a much larger frame, where our private pain is not center stage but a mystery shared with every act of bloodshed and every tear wept since the beginning of time. Our pain is not just our own.

When Is Good, Good Enough?

Oct 14, 2018 Readings:  Job 23: 1-17, Psalm 127, Mark 10: 17-31

How many of us here today have been faced with this question at some point in your life, whether as an adult or a child.   Don’t they recognize what I have done, I’ve done my best but my best never seems to be good enough,   For many, this is especially true when dealing with family, work, or even play?   Does this sound familiar to you?  Well it was for me.    Most of us who have had this experience when we were young came to the conclusion that no matter how hard we tried, good never seems to be good enough.  “What’s Good for anyway and what kind of Good is good enough”    Most of us have been brought up to believe as did the rich man in the story from Mark today,  that if we do enough good deeds, follow the ethical and moral laws of the land, surely that’s good enough, at least good enough to get us into heaven right!  The GOOD GET TO GO right!!!!     Let me tell you a story. 

A Sunday school teacher was looking for a way to explain to the 8 year olds in his class what someone had to do in order to go to heaven.  In an attempt to discover what the kids already believed about the subject, he asked a few questions.  If I sold my house and car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the poor would that get me into heaven?   No the children answered.   If I attended Church every week, helped on all the committees and mowed the yard, would that get me into heaven?  No the children answered.   If I was kind to animals, nature and gave candy to all the children, loved my wife and was good to my neighbors; surely that would get me into heaven?   Once again the children answered No!!   Well then, said the teacher “how can I get into heaven.”  A boy in the back row stood up and shouted “YOU GOTTA BE DEAD”  

Here in lay the problem:  Now think about this for a moment FOLKS for you literally have to die in order to find out if there even is a heaven to get into.  Consequently, only the dead can truly know much about the after-life.    You know there are some people who seem to be confident about what eternal life is like, they are those who claim to have died and come back to tell us about it, and what do they say.   Well you have to read about it, in one of their bestselling books on the subject and some make a lot of money doing it.   There stories are interesting and they get a lot of attention from their readers but, they still never really answer the age old question,   how do we get there?   One of the big assumptions for most of us who have been brought up in North America is that the “Good People Get to Go”.  But that brings up another question, if only good people get to go “WHO” sets the standard for GOOD and what measure of this good is good enough?  Well then what did Jesus say in the reading from this morning?   Mark 10: 18  ¹⁸ “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.

If we take Jesus seriously as found in Gospel of Mark, it clears up the whole problem of who or what is good,  because according to Jesus nothing we do can be compared to the Goodness of God.    Only God is entitled to be seen as good.  This was devastating to the rich man, because, according to Jesus, his notion of Goodness was irrelevant, in fact so is ours.   Human Goodness, no matter how good we think it is, will not guarantee us anything.  You have heard the saying, only the good die young.  This may come as a shock to a lot of people especially those who have fallen into the trap of believing in brownie points as did the rich man.   Now I don’t want to take the wind out of anyone’s sails or suggest that our good works are meaningless because we all know that’s not true.  Our good works here are for the benefit of each other, our good works lay the foundation for God’s Kingdom here on earth, which according to Jesus isn’t later but is at hand, meaning now, not sometime later in an after- life. The kingdom is begin built as we speak whenever we mimic the goodness of God.   God and the heavens rejoice when one of us does a good works no matter who performs it, or how it is offered.  BUT!!!  As humans we are flawed, we have invisible strings attached to our goodness, and if exposed as was the case of the rich man with Jesus, we also will see, compared to the Goodness God we are but a shadow of that good.   Jesus does not stop loving the rich man even though he can’t give up his riches Jesus love him anyway.   He loves us too, unconditionally, even though we aren’t ready yet either to give over all, we to hold back.   God’s goodness, poured out upon us, is without obligation.  There are no strings attached to the blessings God continues to pours upon us.   We receive his blessings by grace, and it is completely free of obligation.   You don’t have to earn them nor can you improve on them and no one is denied.   Jesus said in Mathew 5: 44-45,  “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  It is the same with God’s LOVE and God’s Forgiveness, there are yours for the receiving, you don’t earn them.     Yet we need to understand that our good deeds and acts of compassion are meant as an offering to God but not to have him look favorably upon us.  They are offerings made to honor God in obedience to Gods will.  These offerings help to build the foundations of faith in others and give others hope when things seem to be hopeless.   Therefore we need to be humble, not making claim to the goodness that is produced in us, for it doesn’t come from us, but through us, from the author of Good.    In verse 27 Jesus makes it clear that salvation is not based on human effort, for humans cannot save themselves, we in fact need to be saved from ourselves.  He goes on to point out that with God’s unconditional blessing of grace, all things are then made possible.  What should we do?  Do as Jesus tells us Matthew 3: 2, repent, meaning stop turning away from Gods will for us and enter my kingdom now, which is at hand, it already exists for you says Jesus   He asks us to follow in His way, and He will offer you a new lease on life, a fresh start.  Give Him what you can, He knows you can’t give it all over at once, but the day will come when you must.  Jesus continues to loves us anyway and still He offers us new life.  The past will begin to fade, and the future will be full of hope as we begin to live the moments of our day in Him.   Let us be the example of God’s goodness in the world, for this truly is what we are meant to be, we are meant for service, service to one another.  

"Atonement Do You Have Questions"

Oct 7 2018 proper 22 “Worldwide Communion Sunday” Job 1:1   &   2: 1-10

Hebrews 1: 4,  &   2:5-12               

In the begging years of my pulpit ministry, the book of Hebrews for me appeared to be an exclusively bloody interpretation of atonement theology.  So much so, in the beginning I just mostly avoided it.   The idea that God would will the sacrifice of his only Son in such a violent ghastly way was simply repulsive to me.  A sacrificial human for the sins of the world?   I must admit I was not fully convinced of this theological perspective.  It was not until much later in my ministry that I began to meet Jesus in a deeper more healing way through the Hebrew text.   I began to see Jesus as the exact imprint of God’s very being.  In fact, the Jesus these passages began to introduce me to, would show me a path that would lead me towards polishing and reflecting the image of God’s love in my own life. 

Educator the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nish-i-ok-a has helped the contemporary Church understand what our dropout young adults are yearning and searching for.  According to Hishioka they are “not” looking for a halo crowned, white robed, squeaky clean Shepheard who gathers little children around him.  No, they are longing for a tangible, perceivable, passionate Jesus that doesn’t just speak of the human condition, suffering and the outcast in society, but actually becomes a living example of this human experience.   Jesus doesn’t project an image of becoming one with the elite and powerful within the world but projects and image of becoming one with the poor, the suffering and the outcast in the world.   And so I began to see that there was no other way that God could do this but to allow His only begotten Son to become fully human.  To live and experience life as we do.  Not just the joy, laughter and fellowship but also the rejection, the humiliation, the pain and suffering that love and loss bring with it.  That is the Jesus we must get to know too folks.  The book of Hebrews unveils this passionate, loving, yet suffering Jesus.  The human Jesus who is made perfect through the excruciating suffering and reality of the human experience.   Here in lies the mystery! Jesus the Christ embodies the authenticity of human life and the authenticity of divine love all wrapped up in His mysterious incarnation.   Jesus is the real thing folks.  Let just say He is the full meal deal.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  Fully human yet, full of divine unconditional love for all of humanity as it was expressed on the cross.    

To the Jews “Christ crucified” was a scandal.  The mysterious God, the one they called Messiah, dead never to be seen again.   To the Greeks “Christ crucified” why he was foolishness, because for them, a God who feels, suffers, weeps and dies was an abomination to superior logical Greek mind a true God would have no need of this experience.   May I suggest to you that Atonement presented only as the Lamb that takes away the sins of our world, has superseded His wondrous act of divine love and the unshakable obedience to His fathers will.  Luke 22: 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”  To paraphrase this passage in my own words.  He goes kicking and screaming but he goes, never walking away from the path of His Fathers will.  Even unto a cross.  That is the deepest expression I can think of for a Son's love.  You now can hear and understand the expression "It wasn't the nails that kept Jesus hanging on the cross, it was LOVE. 

The idea of a super powered hero is so far removed from our humble human experience that many can only worship Jesus at arm’s length or from afar.  A personal relationship!   Why it seems almost impossible for so many Church going folk.   

I am more and more convinced that the uniqueness of the Christian life is the radical way in we are called to embrace the paradox.   Grace and truth, life and death, darkness and light, suffering and joy. In the rich verses of Hebrews we are given a Jesus who embodies glory and humiliation, power and suffering, authority and servanthood, radical grace and radical obedience.  Each side of the paradox makes the other side possible.  This is the kind of God that makes His Son possible and personal.  God knows our struggle and God’s love brought to us through Christ Jesus can never be taken from us. 

All we are asked to do is to accept Him a master over our lives by taking Him into our hearts, follow in His ways so we can be with Him now and for evermore.  Now isn’t that GREAT!    As we come to the table today let us be reminded that the Jesus who committed himself to the cross through obedience and love is here in our hearts with us today.

                                        Sow Mercy, Sow Grace

"What is Truth"

Human history is in a time of great flux, of great cultural and spiritual change. The psyche doesn’t know what to do with so much information. I am told that if you take all of the information that human beings had up until 1900 and call that one unit, that unit now doubles every ten years. No wonder there’s so much anxiety, confusion, and mistaking fact for fiction and fiction for fact!

In light of today’s information overload, people are looking for a few clear certitudes by which to define themselves. We see various forms of fundamentalism in many religious leaders when it serves their cultural or political worldview. We surely see it at the lowest levels of religion—Christianity as well as Judaism, Islam, and secular fundamentalism, too—where God is used to justify violence, hatred, prejudice, and whatever is “my” way of doing things.

The fundamentalist mind likes answers and explanations so much that it remains willfully ignorant about how history arrived at those explanations or how self-serving they usually are. Satisfying untruth is more pleasing to us than unsatisfying truth, and Big Truth is invariably unsatisfying—at least to the small self.

Great spirituality, on the other hand, seeks a creative balance between opposites. As Jesuit William Johnston writes, “Faith is that breakthrough into that deep realm of the soul which accepts paradox with humility.” [1] When you go to one side or the other too much, you find yourself either overly righteous or overly skeptical and cynical. There must be a healthy middle, as we try to hold both the necessary light and darkness.

We cannot settle today’s confusion by pretending to have absolute and certain answers. But we must not give up seeking truth, observing reality from all its angles. We settle human confusion not by falsely pretending to settle all the dust, but by teaching people an honest and humble process for learning and listening, which we call contemplation. Then people come to wisdom in a calm and compassionate way. There will not be the knee jerk overreactions that we have in so many on both Left and Right today.

The Judeo-Christian tradition was not supposed to be a top-down affair, but an organic meeting between an Inner Knower (the Indwelling Holy Spirit) accessed by prayer and experience; and the Outer Knower, which we would call Scripture (Holy Writings) and Tradition (all the ancestors). This is a calm and wonderfully healing way to know full Reality.