There are stories behind it all. Personally, I hear my parents decided to call me Andy because they liked Andy Williams, the singer. More generally, some people think Frank Sinatra passed on the song White Christmas, so Bing Crosby picked it up and it became famous through the show Holiday Inn. Since the 1940’s, it’s become etched into the cultural lexicon of “supposed to” as a staple ingredient of Christmas seasoning. When I think of early animation shows, like the 1964 stop motion animation version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, I hear Burl Ives and his made for narration voice that flowed in and out of song as the story unfolds.

This year I’ve watched several movies based on the Christmas theme. We could list out many that are vying their way into position as classics. Each one has its own storyline about what the season involves, some unique drama that leads to lessons we all need reminded of in what Christmas means. The newer ones tend to lean toward technologies, like Big Red that has cloaking domes that hide the North Pole from discovery, and a throw-down quality to the muscle-linked-with-gadget actions and a unique exploration into computer generated expressions of mythology. Or the theme park potential of various scenes in the Polar Express as Christmas is bound to a very tight schedule for delivery. Box office success lead to sequels and franchises. Each movie overlaps onto larger themes and has depictions that explain key aspects, like how Santa gets down every chimney on the planet in one night. The overall sentiments of love, giving of oneself for others, courage in the face of fear, mending relationships, and believing in the heart what the mind often loses overlaps from one screen to another.

Older shows, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, be sure to feature a segment that verbalizes the biblical narrative, inclusive (can we use that word?) of baby Jesus, shepherds, angels, a manger, with Mary and Joseph who follow a star. These shows also include Christmas trees, presents, pageants, music, and other traditional things that glob together like a conglomerate rock through time and pressure that bonds distinct stones to hold them in one solid piece.

It seems one person’s mythology is as good as another, and whatever stories emerge to express something going on at this time of year, whether it is based on a Christian message, a cultural leaning, winter Solstice with darkness and light, or a mix of all of these, one thing that is not lacking is myth, story, narrative, the telling. Songs, screenplays, musicals, movies, there is a constant stream of entertainment.

But story telling depends on perspective and makes assumptions about how that story is heard, and there is more than telling and hearing, for to the mouth and the ears, we can also add a layer: the eyes. With the combination of hearing, telling, and seeing, mythology translates into thought, concepts, and perceptions, forms of knowledge.

Early humanity listened. Auditory. Acoustic. Aural. Artwork such as statues or sculptures of ancient people feature ears but no mouth. People were immersed in the world as it presented itself to them, and they listened to the magical sounds. As language developed and societies gained complexity, people presented their story and explained their reality through myth. Very influential to Western culture, the Greeks and the Romans laid down narratives that became foundational and implicit. They also invented philosophy and taught terrestrial humanity to look up and gain more dimensions to their experience by seeing and thinking. Vision and optics became prominent, and we learned that seeing is believing, that a picture is worth a thousand words, and we equated sight with knowledge. But even pictures depend on a perspective, and most are relegated to two-dimensional space, maybe three if we’re fancy. Plus, now with artificial intelligence we cannot believe everything we see because it may (only) be computer generated.

Beyond three dimensions, four dimensions include not only up, down, front, back, each as a special component; but also, time. Not just the moment, but more than past, present, future, for there are other forms of time than simple chronology. Clock time based on the rotation of one planet around one sun hardly captures sidereal time which forms galaxies and births the universe(s). Eras, epochs, ages. Geologic, atomic, celestial. Then there’s eternity, which is often misinterpreted as time with no end, when really it involves that beyond the confines of measurement, but more qualitative, as intensification.

The entertainment factor, the economic activity, the mythological expressions, and religious assumptions of Christmas make an interesting exercise for perceptions, perspectives, and presumptions of the human species as expressed in the current iteration of Homo Sapiens. The three-dimensional world we tend to perpetuate mixes mental, mythical, and magical structures to create concepts to think about and perceive.

We have inherited one aspect that has much influence on humanity. This involves feeling separate. Separation. With each dimension, some aspect of what was before now appears lost. Although union is always present, the mythological experience comes with a catch for it includes (the illusion of) separation. In religious language, this is one definition of sin, the illusion of separation. In typical three-dimensional, mythological style, to bridge a perceived separation, a third party is necessary. To get from point A to point C, one needs to go through point B, which is not in a direct line but more like a triangle. If one does not go through point B, then, some say, the separation is irreversible, unrepairable, and a chasm which cannot be crossed. Religion has formed to mend the rift. To explain this, religion involves formal expressions of story.

One story I was told is that life is like being on a hill. In the distance, another mountain is visible. In between is a deep, forested valley. Life involves going from one hill to the other, but it is easy to get lost in the valley and never make it up that other mountain, to get to the other side. Jesus is the guide, the one who walks with us to help us navigate the valley of the shadow. That’s the story which was told to me with great intention, sincere devotion, loving intent, and a desire to speak truth. Of course, if Jesus is the person who helps us, at some point Jesus had to be born.

I’ve been immersed in the religious bubble of a Christmas narrative that’s based on assumptions about humanity, the world, and God. Most cultural expressions of Christmas are variations of this, such as Santa Claus who lives in the north, a story developed by the historical reality of Nicolas the Catholic Bishop who gave presents to impoverished children. He did not wear red, for that was imposed later. Is this still an accurate expression of myth? Historical things turned into story that over time gets embellished and customized? Like the Romans who transformed the observance of Saturnalia, the very popular and festive winter Solstice tradition of gift giving, into a narrative to explain the birth of Jesus, with the intent to Christianize the Empire through a common observance?

This is the first Christmas I’m not immersed in the religious expressions as a leader in the church. But I don’t seem to fit anywhere, for the cultural stories seem geared for entertainment, gift giving depend on a value system of economics from Capitalist culture, and the religious scene and interpretations of Tradition don’t fit anymore.

Perhaps “full circle” is a term that could help me, one that captures existential qualities, a broader time experience not dependent on measurement, and intangibles like relationship and participation. Early humans listened. This was before the clutter of concepts, the nebula of narratives, the vascular of visuals, and a plethora of perceptions. It seems Silence is generative. This primeval Silence creates, and helps undo, dismantle, and deconstruct in ways that provide opportunities for the essence, the components, the originary, unified field to create an archaic resonance that is enough to sustain without a need to explain.

Many say Jesus was born to die, to give his life as a ransom for sin so believers can spend a blessed eternity in heaven. Do you see the mythological, three-dimensional, perspectival underpinnings? In other words, a strictly Christian birth narrative is dependent on certain states of consciousness to perceive it. For me, this has become tiring and I’m somewhat weary of playing the game. Evangelical truth works, until it doesn’t, and for me it hasn’t for quite a while.

It is true that Jesus was born to save us from sin. Sin as the illusion of separation. Sin as an existential reality to the extent that our consciousness has gained various dimensions in which to create misperceptions and distortions to original, essential unity. Our ego plays tricks on us. The only divide Jesus bridges is in our perception. To save us is not in a context of threat or fear, but Jesus is one who reminds us to wake up from our delusions. Life is far more than the limits of our perspective, the attachments we create to various narratives so we can have a sense of control, or our attempts to assure certain outcomes. Although life is more than this, not many people are willing to let go, to allow Christmas on its own terms without added ingredients.

I really don’t know what Christmas will be like this year. I’m observing more than directing. Since retiring, I am thankful I don’t need to be up front to lead congregational singing of self-contradicting stories that stretch the limits of myth to a breaking point, that promote concepts of tradition in ways that try to control the narrative. I was feeling ingenuine, boxed in, an actor whose hypocrisy served as accomplice in the domestication of Jesus. The Living Christ is in our midst, and we are hidden in Christ in God from all eternity. Christ, whose intensification can never be described or contained by mere story, label, or name. Of course, peace and goodwill are helpful wishes no matter what time of year, and love is the ground of everything.

Whatever seasonings you notice during the season’s onslaught of distractions, I hope you have a Merry Christmidst. Jesus was born, for spirit and matter merge, and that is what matters.

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When does compost go from gross to golden, from disgusting to attractive, from repulsive to requested? A pile of cast-offs transforms into soil, from something our hands throw away to material we love to touch, run our fingers through, and work into gardens with care. Compost-gone-bad has a foul smell, but with attention to correct ratios of nitrogen and carbon mixed with moisture at just the right levels and timing, there are very few off-putting odors. But this process takes patient effort and attention.

Compost benefits from stirring, a procedure that mixes. This changes the chemistry at elemental levels, which is a fancy way to say compost needs to breathe. With access to oxygen, the anaerobic decomposition is released, and fresh air is received; there is an exchange of molecules. This aeration also allows little critters to live, bacteria, bugs, and worms that eat, digest, and excrete, all in the process of reduction, an intensification of prime components. Waste changes from an unhealthy pollutant with destructive side effects into nutrient-rich, renewed Earth.

This pattern of something giving rise to something else is archetypal, woven into the fabric of existence. Nothing on this planet is exclusive, everything is shared. In Christianity, the term cruciform describes the laying down of one life for the benefit of many, like a seed that germinates a new plant that grows to provide food and sustenance. Jesus describes himself as a kernel of wheat planted to give rise to a new crop. Hebrew writers observe in nature the withering of flowers and grasses as an essential step to renewal, and all through the life-death-life cycles, the word of God remains; constant divine energy given to empower form, spirit that fills matter, the Living Christ expressed in all things.

In our cultural experience as post-modern, Western thinkers, we’ve inherited an era of fragmentation, of fracturing and breaking down of systems once thought of as solid, dependable, and inherent to life’s form. This breakdown takes many expressions, from public to personal, and can include religion, politics, and economics, along with social dynamics from family to international society.

These breakdowns coincide with climate change. Some varied effects and expressions of global warming include a waffling jet stream, disruptions to the food chain, acidification of the oceans, stronger storms, intense flooding, record drought, unprecedented heatwaves, or lake-affect blizzards, these types of scenarios signal a shift: away from a stable, predictable, and reliable era to one that makes life harder to manage.

Future generations will notice things, like increases in the percentage of carbon in the atmosphere which cause lower nutrient levels in food. Today’s broccoli is healthier and tomorrow will have deficiencies not even considered in today’s thinking. The myth that each generation is better off than the one before is now exposed as failing. Side effects of the Industrial Age and rationalistic modes of thinking are starting to show glimpses of what will become more common, such as warmer air that holds higher levels of moisture, so rainstorms become torrents; catastrophic wildfires and extended dry seasons that shift migration routes and habitat for birds, in addition to seasonal disruptions that alter timing of food sources. Even small adjustments can be detrimental to reproductive patterns of many species. Like a lineup of dominos, when one goes, others fall. We are amid the sixth great extinction, which is accelerating and open-ended for now.

It is easy to get discouraged, down with despair, or locked into cycles of fear and cynicism through endless critiques yet not many good options to solve what seem like overwhelming dilemmas. Sometimes we grieve over what has been lost. Other times, over what will be lost. Sometimes we fail to grieve because we don’t notice. Perhaps we have selective attention, because the loss can be overwhelming and is too much to comprehend. Either way, we are caught.

This is when the image of compost may offer a glimpse of possibility, a reminder that sometimes things get worse before they get better, but this means they do get better; not only that, but what comes would not have been possible without what looked like an insurmountable, almost total loss. Redemptive outcomes bring new expressions that old systems cannot hold, nor were they designed to.

To say we are in a larger process does not deny the grief, pain, or suffering experienced through the fragmentation. It affirms the importance and value of what came before, recognizes them as essential, as part of the matrix that has led to what is. The decline is very real, and loss is formidable, almost as powerful as life’s relentlessness.

Life has intensity to it. Reality and existence find ways of expression, like plants that sprout through cracks in concrete, or trees that grow from the sides of cliffs. Patience, forgiveness, humility, love; these are essential components that help find fruition in a process that transcends and includes.

Integrate. This is a word that has an archetypal foundation to it, an archaic structure with inherent form. Integrate. This word can help shift from one shape to another, a magical transformation. Integrate. This word knows the stories of the past and is open to future chapters for fluid, dynamic retelling of time’s intensities. To live as an integrated human involves holding everything, but loosely. Humility, compassion, forgiveness, love, connection with all there is, seen and unseen; these are themes which repeat because they are essential elements, basic components, necessary for life to thrive. Transformation to an Integral Structure of consciousness invites us to be poetic.

Farmers know the science behind fertilizer, what it is crops need to increase yields. But real farmers are less technicians or land managers than they are artists and homesteading Earth-observers who co-create with Originary energies to bring about new life. Real farmers are discerning. They have respect for what is beneficial, rather than selfish. They are not greedy but can intuit what is helpful and healing and leads to wellness and wholeness in beneficial ways. They are open yet grounded to physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational aspects of what seeks to emerge and find expression. They take reality as presented, for real farmers, like all creatives, are midwives or stewards who know and partner with the Source of transformation.

As I stir compost piles on a sunny day in mid-July, the skies are clear but getting smoky as climactic feedback loops are harbingers of things to come. I hope what soil I help create can be of benefit to gardens and trees for future generations. When timescales overlap and continents shift as geological history continues to unfold, I entrust the essential components of my life’s small, short thread as a colorful strand in life’s larger tapestry, a natural fiber interwoven and integrated into planetary patterns that share beyond words the art of living.

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May 18, 2025, my last Sunday in the pulpit, on the occasion of my retirement from 30 years of leadership in church ministries of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Here is what I said:

The songs selected to sing, and the scriptures chosen to share on my last Sunday, none of them are from any assigned list or lectionary. We sing and read them because I picked them, each one for a reason. Either musically, or as literature, something in my life resonates with these favorites as they shimmer and shine for me. On my retirement from 30 years in ministry, these songs and scriptures have floated to the top of the heap where they serve as pointers to larger themes, indicators that bring back specific memories, or encouragements of grounded realities of grace and divine Presence.

The song, All Creatures of Our God and King, though couched in a context of patriarchal monarchy, still exhibits the humbling of St. Francis of Assisi in his culture of feudalism, a culture that we have not recovered from and can trace back many of our social ills. He too dealt with the stratification of society, the concentration of wealth at the higher and narrow levels, abuse of power by those who forget the common good, and the insistence on an aggressive military industrial complex at the expense of many other things. All of these continue Western culture’s march toward fragmentation and the downward spiral to destruction.

But this song gives us glimpses of life beyond these delusions. St. Francis’ cosmic vision that includes the sun and moon and stars, the music of flowing water, pure and clear, and the smallest details of each creature living their life, all remind us that he doesn’t say “The fertile Earth,” but “Thou fertile Earth,” as we are invited into a large communion of life participants interacting with Source, each with a place and purpose rooted in relationship with their Origin, invited to celebrate as we live our life as alleluias.

The song at the end of the service, Morning has Broken, brings me back to childhood memories of Northwood Presbyterian Church of Spokane’s annual campout at Riley Creek Recreation Area all the way up in North Idaho. The singing was led by Doc Evans, with Lottie Evans on her accordion as the families gathered with their lawn chairs for worship in the great outdoors. Bill Ailes would lead the prayers, John Pierce the pastor would preach, and in the context of outdoor ministry we were invited to experience our connection with the natural world.

Developmentally, it was pretty spot on. As a kid, it was hard to beat a sense of belonging to a community that enjoyed being with each other, and as us children rode bikes around the campground loops, we could stop at so many sites and be welcomed like family, a safe place of inclusion as lessons about Jesus were not only taught, but caught; experienced through the community of faith. We even got to pick huckleberries and have pancakes and pie.

The scriptures I picked point to aspects of life and ministry that catch my attention. I’m sure there are other passages that didn’t get read today, like Genesis chapter one and two, God’s good creation; John 20, Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ; and Psalm 121, that help us lift our eyes to the hills.

But the ones we read give us an overview of our heritage, an assessment of the present, and invitations to help the future unfold in ways that are beneficial.

Like the prophetic voices of Isaiah that remind us in chapter 42 that ministry involves calling and service.

This Hebrew Scripture reminds us that God creates the heavens and the Earth and

gives the breath of life to the people upon it, and spirit to those who walk in it.

This is inclusive. It doesn’t say, gives it to some, or just the important ones. All people have breath and spirit. And humans are one type of peoples among many other nations of created Earth creatures that participate with their own uniqueness.

I also like how Isaiah says, the people upon it, and those who walk in it. Upon and in, both. The Earth is not just a planet with a crust, not limited to a few superficial dimensions, and we are not only external to it, but we are in it because we are the Earth. Upon and in, these diffuse the boundaries of Earth. Is Earth simply the soil, the ground? Or does it include the air, the atmosphere, the orbit, the gravitational pull and dances with the Moon? What about our interaction with the other planets in orbit around the sun, and our place on the spiral of the Milky Way, one galaxy among countless billions? Humanity is not separate or isolated, but part of this planetary experience of life.

That passage ends with a reminder that there are former things that have come to pass, but indeed new things are declared and emerge and spring forth. Life’s relentless nature based on a pattern of life, death, and rebirth, is dependable, reliable, and the essence of redemption. The people Isaiah speaks to are suffering, all seems lost, yet this gives them hope.

Psalm 8 is a celebration that continues to explore our place in a larger, unified whole. The words sweep up broad strokes of celestial wonders and mix them with details of how we are called as stewards of everything. Humans participate in unique ways that carry responsibility on behalf of the larger majesty which proclaims the name of the Lord “in all the Earth!” Again, the word “in” as God is not removed from creation but expressed in and through.

Christology, the study of the nature of Christ, is a focus of the Gospel of John, rather well developed by the time the Prologue was written, the first bit of chapter one, in which we hear echoes of other creation myths whose stories seek to bear witness to life and the intensities of time, the balance of darkness and light, and the imminence of divine Presence and intention that infuses any thing that is. We are welcomed to an awareness of this ongoing self-giving of God as consciousness resonates.

The Apostle Paul brings us back to community and the importance of global connection lived out through local expressions of love, service, and sharing gifts as one body in Christ. This passage points out things, like the functions of ministry, that a pastor serves an office to teach and preach, but pastors are not alone in this for we are all ministers by virtue of our baptisms. Functions of the church are expressed in a variety of ways.

But this passage is more than liturgical, more than ecclesiastical, more than just church stuff or structure language. This passage declares the importance of spiritual disciplines, to enter silence, set aside our egoic tendencies, and invite the Spirit to work within us, to renew our mind and help us with spiritual discernment.

Ephesians expounds on this and explores the path of mystical Christianity, a path that many people, including Christians, reject because it has a way of undoing us from the inside as contemplation deepens and affects everything. The old wine skins of doctrinal faith cannot fully hold the new vintage. Paul’s vision to the Christians in Ephesus, a city I’ve walked through on a tour in 1996, past the old library and the fancy houses that even had plumbing back in the day, all reconstructed by archaeologists as funding allows. Paul wasn’t interested in hardware, but in the operating systems of our soul that include the mind and heart working with balance, not skewed like a culture bent by Greek Philosophy that favors rationalism and loses sensitivity as people fall into greed of many expressions to extract as much as they can at the expense of a deeper, inner life with God.

Paul the Mystic introduces us to terms like true self, false self, the old systems and values that seduce us with delusions, concepts, and thoughts; yet in Christ we are renewed in the spirit of the mind, created

according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

The mind has its place, but not a central place. That would be off balance.

This call toward balance that includes the heart is not just for saints, not for a special group of people, or the spiritually proud who think they’re exceptional or that their church has it right. This call is for anyone who wants to live life as it’s intended when everything works together as it’s meant to work. This message is more than information, but an invitation to transformation, not only hearing about God or Jesus, but a call to follow and live in that very sacredness of everything ordinary. This is the incarnation that continues as spirit and matter merge.

Matthew 6 is one of my favorites. It covers a lot, and we just look at a few things, like our heart that points to what is really important in our life, even as much of life is finite and fades away. Or the eye as the lamp of the body and how important it is to keep our eye healthy. Most of us probably think the topic involves optics, our eyeballs. But ancient religion and wisdom also invite third-eye seeing, like a chakra energy zone just above our head. The observer, that inner eye of deep knowing, wisdom ways of knowing through enlightenment and awareness. This passage seems to be that type of eye, which is an invitation to meditation and silence.

There’s also the reference to serving God or the system and these are not compatible, you cannot serve both God and the system. This can be off-putting, upsetting, uncomfortable. But in the confusion of this we are called beyond worry, called to trust.

Matthew 6 is poetic, like a song and it reverberates as I think of riding my bicycle on tours through the Rocky Mountains, or hiking quiet groves of Redwoods in northern California, or watching mist float through the reeds of northern lakes and waters in the canoe country of northern Minnesota and southern Ontario in wilderness people like Sigurd Olson worked so hard to protect.

Matthew 6 has grand-scale aspects, and details that invite local response. For example, I mow my lawn. This time of year it grows fast. But I may let the dandelions bloom a little longer so the pollinators get a good dose of protein as they dodge spring storms. Or I may let some dandelions turn from yellow to puffy white globes, especially when a little finch can stop me in my tracks while I watch it bend over the stalk and have its breakfast of seeds.

Birds and flowers have much to teach us about the ways of God, the balance of life, the abundance of provision, and the simplicity etched within complexities.

A song of response to this morning’s message is called Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. The melody is familiar to many. This was the first song I learned to play on the piano and I remember sitting at the keys where I self-taught through playing by ear.

I didn’t read music, didn’t know what the names of the notes were, couldn’t navigate very well how to get the right hand and left hand to work together, which is still problematic when I try to play piano. But somehow that song happened, and with childlike enthusiasm, I figured it out, at least enough to satisfy me. Not concert quality or symphonic by any means, but enough to capture some way to express the very thing the song proclaims, joy.

One of my friends texted me and said they hope I find joy in my retirement. I replied to the text, saying, “I already have joy.” This joy is a joy that gets directed, reflected, and given back to the very source from Whom it comes. Every day, joy leads us because it shapes us. Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee.

So, there’s a medley for you, a variety of biblical verses and songs that celebrate a journey of faith within community. I also want to thank the people of the church for your support over the years, the many ways you have helped me and my family. I certainly wish you well, for not only do I enter a new chapter in my life, but you do too. Ministry is very dynamic. You have good energy to rise to the occasion.

As we all journey into the future to live with Presence as Reality is Present-ed, may we have grace to play by ear and enjoy the music of life, love, and learning the joys of faith.

Peace and All Good be with you.

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In north Idaho, this spring has been a mix of rain and cool weather with an abundance of sunny, warm days in between. We’ve had an extended period without frost and the blooms and buds and leaves have emerged, and we are well along the progression of spring. Grass certainly grows fast this time of year, and blooms on trees and fields of yellow dandelions seem like a bumper crop. Life is prolific and grows while the growing is good.

Who knows? Maybe a month from now it will be 106 degrees in early June, like it was a few years ago. Hopefully not, because we’re not used to that kind of heat here. The hay fields tend to dry up and instead of two or three cuttings, on hot years there’s only one, then the grass turns brown. We prefer green pastures.

As those who are familiar with hayfields of green alfalfa and thick grass, it may be hard for us to relate to a Psalm about shepherding in the dry, rocky, arid landscapes of the Middle East.

We’re several cultures and languages removed from the Psalmist in region called the Negev. We need to learn that things like “still water” refer to water that’s not only safe to drink but located in an area that is safe to be, as opposed to a desert wadi. A wadi is a dry gully that has flash floods when it rains in the distant mountains. Water channels down the hills into the valleys and as it consolidates, it gains momentum and volume and fills the wadies with violent and sudden flows as the desert drains those downpours from upstream. If a sheep is lost among the smooth walls of a wadi, a dangerous flash flood could wash it away for there is no escape. Thankfully, a skilled shepherd knows where to lead the sheep for “quiet waters” or “still water.”

The Psalmist assumes we know what’s behind imagery used in this passage, not only of green pastures and quiet water, but the rod and staff that bring comfort rather than destructive blows; there’s a table of abundance which even includes enemies, anointing with oil, and cups that overflow. One line after another is filled with symbolic metaphors based on the near eastern, Semitic, agrarian culture of shepherding, which most of us don’t understand and have not experienced.

Yet this is also one of the most familiar of all scriptures in the United States. The Twenty Third Psalm is especially popular for funerals. In times of personal challenge and grief at the loss of a loved one, Psalm 23 shares words of comfort; they remind us that God is active and eternal. Notice it doesn’t get us out of tough times, but it reminds us of presence within tough times. The Psalmist walks through the darkest valley but does not fear evil because of God’s Presence.

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want…” The LORD. In English translations we have the word, LORD, in all capital letters. The breath word, Yah-weh, the unspeakable holy of holies, God Almighty who self describes as the great I AM, or I will be who I will be, the blessing of Presence, the breath of Life, the Source and Origin of all things. Maybe for us this capitalized LORD would be better translated as God’s “Is-ness.”

To proclaim, “God’s Is-ness is my shepherd” gets to the active quality, the relational reality, the living grace and love that pervade all of life at the deepest levels of existence that is so active, Is-ness is described by key words, for the LORD makes, leads, restores, is with, comforts, prepares, and anoints. Every aspect of this Psalm involves dynamics of movement.

I see movement every day. In Sandpoint we have a rather active airport and my house is on the southwest side of that airport, about a mile and a half from the south end of the runway, so lots of airplanes make their landing approach over our place. We even have small jets fly in and out of Sandpoint. Business class jets, charters, and private jets like Cessna Citations, Leers, Bombardier Globals and Challengers, Phantom Phenoms, Cirrus, Falcons, and Gulfstreams of various classes, each with custom-designed interiors. You can hear them when they rev their engines, increase the throttle, take off, and gain altitude as they roar their way into the sky.

For an airplane to work there must be movement. Engines help an airplane move forward, but it’s the shape of the wing that creates the lift which translates into flight. For that wing to work, airflow over the wing needs to be there in a certain way. Without airflow and movement, an airplane would fall to the ground, even if the engines work. The only static airplanes are the ones parked alongside the runway or in the hangars. You can run an engine with an airplane on the ground, but you cannot fly without airflow around the wing.

Movement is also part of the scripture from John as Jesus walks in the temple, “in the portico of Solomon” during the festival of Dedication in Jerusalem. Jesus is surrounded as “the Jews gathered around him” and questioned him. It seems rather abrupt and has a tense element to it. They say, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

That reminds me of an observation about the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is not doubt. Rather than doubt, the opposite of faith is certitude. Many people, so many Christians, want God to keep things clear, to interpret the Bible at doctrinal levels and moralistic dogmas that spell out with certainty what it is that we believe. “Tell us plainly” is woven into the fabric of systematic theologies and daily life, and we admit it, we find it comforting to have things clear, predictable, and in control.

Yet even Jesus says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” Then comes the relational example of the shepherd and the sheep, one of hearing and following, based on trust and the experience of unity. Then Jesus says to them, “The Father and I are one.”

The movement and dynamics of trust, relationship, and experiential faith are core aspects of these readings. An exception to this dynamic comes when devout religious people surround Jesus and demand certitude. They want simple words, “Tell us plainly.” Yet Jesus says, “look at my works done in my Father’s name, but you do not believe.”

Jesus embodies the imminence of deliverance, yet they want words that point toward deliverance and prefer to talk about it. Jesus embodies living connection, yet the people favor conceptual thinking and concepts that are clear. Jesus shows a balanced life that trusts the flow, yet they put a stop to it as they surround him and echo the sentiment to give in to temptation, “If you are the Son of God, tell us plainly.”

That image of Jesus surrounded, hemmed in; not only is the journey paused, but the movement of the shepherd is interrupted. Worse yet, the leading of the shepherd is disregarded, and it is the religious faithful that thwart the flow and reject any actual attempt to follow.

To help those who grow weary from a world that assumes might makes right, God holds out an alternative vision of peace and unity. Yet even Christians, both in the Eastern Church and Western Church, like the Jews around Jesus, put the brakes on it and prefer comforts of assumptions over dynamics of living faith.

Like a fish who swims in water, we find it difficult to notice the tyranny or evil of our own culture, or to confront subcultures within our own traditions. To acknowledge these evils seems overwhelming, so it’s just easier to go along with things, to be domesticated and say with everyone else, “God bless America.” Let’s have another fly-by of military jets at the big game as we numb ourselves through the distractions of entertainment.

In the qualitative life God gives, there is abundant, perpetual sustenance based on love, grace, reciprocity, and a peace beyond understanding. Jesus shows us an archetypal pattern as he says, “The Father and I and one.” This is not an example of or invitation toward independence. This is the blueprint of faith grounded in life that flourishes, based on interdependence.

We experience fragmentation of culture, yet there is a flow, a movement under the wings. Consciousness shifts, and ongoing mutations unfold new perspectives and modes of perception. We can trust the promise that God leads us through this valley that so often looks like the shadow of death, but also holds the possibility of birth as new life emerges.

Our understanding and experience of life is sustained by the Shepherd, the Living Christ, who calls us to follow and trust the Presence, a sacred union within, among, and around us. God be with us in our own versions of the Psalmist’s Negev and Jesus’ interrupted stroll on the portico. May we too find metaphors and image to express less a need for certainty, and more a desire for Love’s mystery.

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On the internet if you search for the topic of Jesus in a boat with the disciples, then click on images, there are thousands of inspirational drawings. These depict Jesus with disciples who pull out nets full of fish, who see him walk on water, or calm storms. Some of the images are ethereal with misty waves, shadows and light playing off each other as Jesus seems to float not only in the boat but through the clouds as all creation does his bidding. Some of the pictures are from reenactments, so they show actual people, while most look more like paintings.

My favorite one is a cartoon, like a pen and ink drawing. Here is a link if you choose to follow it, otherwise, read on through my vivid and brief description: (https://i.pinimg.com/564x/df/52/b4/df52b4d05eff37515804f31dac8663cb.jpg)

I can’t tell who created it, the signature looks like it starts with a letter C. But the colors are vivid as it shows a biblical scene of Jesus in a boat, standing at the bow, dressed in a white robe, with long hair and a flowing beard, and his side profile looks ahead in a steady way. Behind him, three of the disciples look annoyed at a fourth disciple who dances with finger cymbals. The text has one disciple scolding the dancing one, saying, “You idiot, he said, ‘Cast the nets!’” Those little cymbals are called castanets. This play on words has a humorous ring to it.

In this morning’s passage of Jesus on the shore, calling out to those fishing in the boat, there are other plays on words that are easy to skip over, but if we pause and ponder, these phrases lead us to deeper lessons.

For example, after the disciples fish all night without catching anything, at first light, Jesus appears but they don’t know it’s Jesus. From shore, Jesus says to them,

This is more of a statement than a question.

Jesus uses the term, “Children,” meaning Little Children, and like small children they are still in need of growth, of maturing; there are new perspectives to learn, and they will have experiences, and in this they gain wisdom. At the same time, Children is also a relational term, one that involves unconditional love and connection, one that sees beyond problems and claims the mystery of union that celebrates life in fullness.

Another phrase or backdrop to this scene is that they did not recognize that it was Jesus. Even when they somehow, “know” it is Jesus, they don’t ask him who he is. On a surface level, in a literal sense, this could mean Jesus has a different appearance. But perhaps this is an invitation for a deeper meaning, as a metaphor, more along lines to point out the fact that you cannot see what you have not grown to recognize. He has just called them children; they haven’t grown to recognize certain things.

Another dynamic to this scene is when Jesus tells them to throw their net to the right side of the boat. This almost comes across as a trivial suggestion. They’ve been fishing all night, and Peter and some of the others are professionals. They know what they are doing, they are comfortable with how things work, familiar with systems they have learned and used for years.

Right side left side; what’s one side of the boat compared to the other, in terms of the water underneath you? It’s only a matter of few feet. As most people who have fished on a slow day could attest to, trying one side of the boat verses the other is not usually a key factor in catching fish. Yet Jesus tells them to throw their net in the same water, only on the other side of the boat.

Of course, this request has little to do with fishing and more to do with Resurrection Life. Jesus requests that they throw their net on the unconventional side of the boat. This is a total re-work of all the systems they have set up. But that’s where they find fish.

Jesus invites them to something unconventional. That word, “unconventional” has to do with alternative, unusual, even eccentric. This certainly involves discomfort as new things and thoughts are explored and tried, old patterns are questioned, and previous assumptions no longer serve as limitations. The Jesus they don’t recognize, yet somehow know, even though he’s on shore, is figuratively ‘rocking the boat’ as he makes his peculiar request that leads to not only fish, but lots of fish, and large ones, and they don’t rip the net; all the positives one could hope for in a fish story; they even ate some fresh catch on the beach.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we see similar themes. Saul doesn’t see Jesus, and then comes to a conversion experience where he knows the Lord. While he’s in a home with a blindness, another unconventional, paradoxical scene sets up, where Ananias, a Christian, has a vision where God tells him to go visit Saul and help restore his sight.

Saul’s reputation is that of a persecutor of the early church, of people of “the Way,” and this is well known to Ananias, who questions God about doing this. Yet going beyond conventional values, Ananias takes this alternative message in a stance of faith and devotion. Saul receives him, hears about Jesus, scales fall away, his vision is renewed, and he’s baptized and begins to gain strength for the journey for which God calls him.

Back in John’s Gospel, in the conversation Peter has with the Risen Lord, we see themes that involve a progression; from young to old, from feeding lambs to tending sheep and then feeding sheep. Metaphorically, this really resembles the dynamic of first half of life spirituality and second half of life spirituality. Even in the story, Jesus talks about Peter as a young man, and Peter as an older man. It’s as the older Peter that persecution comes, but not laced with fear or foreboding as before when he wept with denial, but steeped in a sense of Presence and reassurance. Even through martyrdom, the Mystery of the eternal is shown.

The conversation between the Risen Lord and Peter is also a progression in the reality of forgiveness. The question asked three times, Peter do you love me, echoes the previous three times Peter denies Jesus leading up to the cross.

Notice in this fish story that in the boat, Peter is naked, and then to get to shore before the others, he jumps in the water to swim. But first, Peter puts on his clothes. Again, this detail is here for more reasons than literal story value or historical reference, but in a representative way.

In terms of first half of life, second half of life spiritualities, Peter puts on his clothing, perhaps representing his life as it is up to that point, including his denial of Jesus three times. He wants to see Jesus but he brings his baggage with him, he’s still wrapped by his perspectives and the ways he processes concepts.

Peter jumps in the water, which to our Christianized ears sounds very similar to baptism, even a full immersion, and he’s washed clean on the way to shore, there’s absolution and a drenching by droplets of grace in an embodied way. This foreshadows in image the words Jesus uses in his questions, forgiving Peter.

Again, if you want to take this scene deeper, it seems to have something to do with identity, with being attached to our self-made perceptions of who we think we are, living the life we think we live, and its often from the foundation of our false self that we take action, like Peter jumping in from the boat, which is not exactly solid ground.

Remember the season we’re in. This is a story featured during Eastertide, and this Resurrection celebration claims that Jesus died on the cross, was laid in the tomb, and on the third day, on the Lord’s Day, Christ arose. Jesus died, Christ arose. In these post-resurrection scenes, and this morning we read the third one, the disciples don’t recognize Jesus. There’s something qualitatively different about the Risen Christ. Yet through a different kind of knowing, the disciples hear Jesus say, “Follow Me.”

Follow me. Not, worship me as a separate Being. Follow.

Follow the risen Christ deeper into love, into living without fear, free from a typical self-inflicted identity which clings to pain, as ego tries to separate on its mandate to wipe out all it does not understand. Follow deeper into faith which uses the heart as an organ of spiritual perception, open to the wisdom of God and deeper meanings which are revealed as we learn and grow and mature through a spirituality which no longer needs to cling or carry baggage of conventional understandings.

Mystery does not depend on, and cannot be fully captured by, systematic theology. Follow Jesus, who shows us the Way to depths of discovery as we are released from the tyranny of the false self and surface-level conventional systems, and are given peace and all good through our True Self in the Risen Christ.

As God’s children, may these readings bless us with wisdom through the power and Presence of the Living Spirit, and help us dive deeper into love through a different kind of knowing, even as we trust that God is glorified, now, even as forever.

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The Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is most often called “Palm Sunday” even though Luke’s gospel makes no mention of palm branches. “Cloak Sunday” doesn’t have the same appeal, although that’s what the people laid on the road in front of Jesus riding a colt. Cloaks. Multiple details vary, depending on which gospel you read, Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Easter Sunday is not much different as scriptures ebb and flow with details and elaborations. We wonder if it was one Mary or three women who went to the tomb early in the morning. Was it dark or the light of dawn, were there two men in white clothing, or one angel? Did the Risen Christ appear and speak directly, or is it mentioned by others that Christ would go ahead of them to Galilee? And a big question, was there a body in the tomb, as Jesus the man died but Christ the second person of the Trinity arose, or was the body not there and the grave clothes lay empty? For these types of questions, maybe the answers are elusive. Either way, even if we claim certainty, it depends on which manuscript you read and when those were written. The earlier biblical manuscripts often lack details that the newer ones include.

Each gospel varies on the details to the point where the mechanics of how that first Easter happened don’t match up, sometimes even within the same Gospel. So, we do our best. We can pick which one we like better and go with that, which is why I picked John 20:1-18. I like that one.

Unlike the complications of the other gospel accounts, in John there’s only one footnote about Mary bending over “to look” into the tomb. Seems simple enough. The Greek language used in earlier writing lacks “to look” but in the New Revised Standard Version, in English we have it. Otherwise, it’s pretty straightforward and Mary is alone, comes in the dark, and apparently can run in the dark to get Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and they all went back to check out the Easter scene.

Easter Sunday and Eastertide have less to do with chronology and sequence and detail than with quality and Kairos, an opportune time for critical action. Easter is about life that death cannot overcome or understand, life that is relentlessly eternal with qualities of trust, presence, and love. These never die because they are held in Divine glory, which is always ongoing, centered in the Living Christ, and shall always be.

The Resurrection on Easter morning is not dependent on details even though many are mentioned, because, in their own way, these various reports all point to the same thing: something happened, something amazing, something that is a pivot-point in life that is transformational, and somehow everything is now defined by these deep truths, even when it seems like these truths are not always noticed by the larger world.

I talked with someone recently and mentioned something about Maundy Thursday during Holy Week. They didn’t know what Maundy Thursday was. They had some vague understanding that Jesus was a person who had been killed on a cross, but they hadn’t connected that Jesus had been arrested prior to this. They didn’t know Jesus met in an upper room and washed his disciples feet in a sign of humble love, then was betrayed, arrested, put through a rushed trial with false witnesses in the middle of the night before the cock crowed three times. They didn’t know all that.

I also went to a shop on Friday and as I was leaving one of the employees told me to have a Happy Easter. I said, “Thanks, you too.” But then I mumbled to myself under my breath on the way to the car, “Kind of jumping right past Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Happy Easter? It’s only Good Friday.”

We don’t have to look very far to see Easter’s confusion and notice layers upon layers of cultural and religious assumptions and thoughts that have built up around it. But why should this surprise us?

Easter is probably the most important anchor point of Christian faith, yet even the biblical accounts cannot reconcile a basic storyline. Easter details get muddled and we wonder what is Easter really about? (And what does a bunny have to do with it? And eggs? And chocolate? Well actually, let’s not question chocolate).

One of the reasons I like John’s version with Mary Magdalene at the tomb is because after the two disciples who run to the tomb leave, Mary stays. She lingers in the garden, weeping. She gives us an emotional reality check that often matches our own when someone we love dies and the bodily presence, their physical proximity comes to an end. We also learn that Easter joy is not defined by these limitations, that there are other ways to be present, but these can be hard to recognize.

Mary converses with someone she assumes was the gardener. It’s amazing how often the Risen Christ appears and is not recognized, even by his disciples. Something about this new appearance must have been different than that of Jesus before he was killed.

That’s another thing about Mary and the gardener in those early hours by the tomb of confusion: most of the world didn’t care about this scene as it unfolds. Most of the world is sleeping.

But Mary goes to the tomb early, and after those disciples come and go with limited understanding, Mary stays, and her cultural limitations are overcome. She does not recognize the gardener likely because she doesn’t make eye contact with this man because she is a woman and in that culture it was forbidden to make eye contact. But these gender boundaries are permeable as the Living Christ says her name and she recognizes him. He becomes not only present to her, but a Presence. The Living Christ Presence is seen.

But we also know that to see something you need to be something. To see God, it is the divine Presence within us that enables us to see. To see the Living Christ, it is through the Living Christ in us. And since everything is made in and through Christ, then everything carries this sacredness.

But we also learn that for Mary “to see” Christ, she first needed “to see” the tomb. The tomb was empty, but in Christ the fullness of life is revealed, life that does not stop at death but is connected to it. As Christian mystics may suggest, death is not a problem, but a mystery. If it were a problem that would imply that it is external to us, an “it” that we could observe independently. But death is a mystery, alongside many other mysteries, because it includes part of us.

Remember that little footnote about the Greek language not having “to look” in this scene? When Mary bent over into the tomb, if we include the words “to look” or don’t include those words, this messes with perspective and whether we objectify that which is around us as if we’re separate, or unify our understanding because we recognize part of ourselves in everything else as it is God’s Presence, the Christ in all things and all things in Christ, that we see.

This is a very different image than Mary “bent over ‘to look’ into the tomb” because it signals a different consciousness. One is immersed, the other is detached. Both involve tears and weeping, but one leads to assumptions that keep us on the surface of things and the other invites an awareness of Presence in new ways to notice what would have been overlooked. We live in a time when philosophy has reached limits and cannot go where intuitive experience and deep, relational faith can.

After Mary lingers in the garden with the Risen Christ in the light of Easter joy, she returns to the others and declares, “I have seen the Lord.” Her vision is complete, her mystical bond and spiritual connection is anchored in Divine Presence, and she becomes archetypal to show the world that everything is a new creation in Christ, Jesus the Lord.

Thanks be to God that Easter is more than detail, beyond the confusions of logistics or mechanics, not hindered by ignorance or the world’s misunderstandings, but a reality that transforms and continues to transform because it’s an inside job and our hearts are forever enriched as divine life unfolds and the boundless nature of love has no end. A very sincere Happy Easter for us all, both now and forever.

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At a church worship service Palm Sunday, we feature eco-palms that are sustainably harvested, so rather than exploit workers, we partner with growers so they can receive compensation through the Fair-Trade process. While capitalism would have us be savvy shoppers looking for the cheapest price, which forces growers into competitive modes that are not always the most beneficial for the Earth, the larger Church and those with a collaborative approach to Fair-Trade have created networks and cooperatives that pay farmers an amount that helps create sustainability for their livelihood and hopefully regenerative qualities that enhance the farms involved with raising crops, such as these palms.

Every year we get palm branches. Every year we wave them to remember Jesus’ triumphal entry and the beginning of Holy Week. Yet here we are in Lectionary Year C of a three-year, A-B-C cycle, with Luke as the controlling Gospel, and Luke doesn’t mention palm branches at all.

These verses of Jesus greeted by a crowd and a parade of people on his way to Jerusalem, mentions no palms, only cloaks as people spread fabric on the colt and on the road ahead of them.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called “Synoptic Gospels” because so many stories overlap about Jesus and his ministry. Synoptic starts with the letters, s-y-n, like the word synonym, which means words that are like other words. That s-y-n has to do with being the same only different, close, related, or similar in their meaning. Same with the Synoptic Gospels as Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar.

In Mark 11:8 it says, “Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.” In Matthew’s gospel, it’s not until chapter 21:8 when it says, “Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.”

Churches don’t celebrate “Cloak Sunday” by laying our coats in the aisle. And where are the branches from? In Mark they come from the fields, in Matthew they come from trees, and in Luke, there are no branches at all. So much for being similar. Which version of Palm Sunday is the real deal? What is the truth, and how can we biblically verify it if different texts have stories that don’t exactly match?

By the way, as we read in Luke the disciples go and untie the colt which has never been ridden and bring it to Jesus because “the Lord needs it.” Some translations of Luke say, “The Master needs it.” In Mark, the same thing happens. But in Matthew, they go and “find a donkey tied, and a colt with her.” In that one, they say, “The Lord needs them,” and they bring the donkey and the colt, they bring both, and put their cloaks on them, and apparently he rides both to fulfill the prophet Zechariah, who says, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

I was ordained as a pastor a little over 30 years ago, October 16, 1994. I’ve preached many Palm Sundays, and in churches, all of them have featured palm branches. Even when we didn’t meet in person because of Covid, on Sunday morning when my wife and I came here, and Annie played the piano, and we did Facebook Live for streaming only because the sanctuary was empty, even that year we had a bucket outside at the bottom of the steps filled with palm branches in case anyone felt the urge to swing by and get one. I don’t know if anyone did, but it was there.

Every year the Palm Sunday scriptures change on who does what, where things come from, and what animals are involved. This story is hard to pin down. Not only that, but the variety of symbolism can be confusing. Palm branches are like flags of rebellion. People are ushering in a political savior, like a coup, in hopes that Jesus will kick out Rome and put Israel on top of all the nations, filled with power, totally strong and secure, dominating their enemies; and the palm branches symbolize that might makes right through Jesus the king. As they enter Jerusalem, it has the theme of an invasion. The people are excited, the disciples “praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen…”

The Pharisees of Jerusalem have a status-quo-self-interest to protect, so they tell Jesus to end this rebellious attention. They don’t want Rome to get upset. There’s no use getting a powerful country riled up enough for an invasion, especially if you are the smaller one that is already controlled, occupied by the larger force. This political action would likely lead to a disproportionate response, a total destruction.

It seems that human nature and the headlines of politics echo through the ages and the more things change the more they stay the same.

All the overlapping biblical accounts about Palm Sunday have an interesting undercurrent. The crowds and disciples hail Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with triumph because they expect God’s judgment from the highest heaven to be swift and in their favor. But by the way he enters, Jesus makes very clear that Jesus is more interested in humility, and a stance of being open to the flow of God’s Spirit from a purity of heart.

Rather than a political parade, Jesus is on a path, and it’s a path of love. This path doesn’t fit the mold of the political systems and religious leaders, most of whom don’t comprehend a deep, spiritual path of love, but view Jesus as an enemy. It’s not long before he’s arrested and killed for what the leaders interpret as blasphemy and sedition, as a threat to the religious establishment and the Roman State’s politics of law and order. The context was set, but Jesus chooses to enter Jerusalem anyway.

In these stories of Jesus on a donkey or colt, he accepts his context and situation and how people are doing what they are doing, and he takes responsibility to choose to love no matter what comes his way. He doesn’t take the criticisms personally, and he doesn’t take the praises personally either; he doesn’t go for the title, King, he’s never promoted that, and earlier when people tried to make him king, he withdrew to a mountain in prayer by himself. Early in his public ministry, Jesus set the tone. By this parade time, Jesus has courage in the face of threats and chooses the path of descent, to let go of everything to enter God’s spacious, loving Presence, and in that, discovers his True Essence.

As the people lay their cloaks down in a sign of respect for royalty, as the disciples shout out blessings and praises to God, I got to wondering which version of this parade do we tend to favor? Which version do you want? Do you want a political Jesus, one that rallies people in excitement to his cause? Do you want Jesus and his ministry, which the crowds are hyped up about, to involve deeds of power and glory?

Imagery is important in how this text from Luke is interpreted. Is it telling you what you want to hear, reinforcing your own ego-centered notions of biblical truth? Or is it stretching you, a help to move deeper into love in ways you might not have anticipated? Jesus is on the path of descent, as he shows us the art of letting go, not in a renunciation, like penitence in Lent to help us repent, but humiliation, in humbling, awakening to our need for God, for spiritual insight, for wisdom’s guidance, and the Spirit’s presence. Jesus enters Jerusalem humbled.

This passage is more than political, involves more than human beings who push the margins of power and control and shape a narrative to their benefit. These verses also include the larger world. Notice the last part of Luke’s passage, where some of the “Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answers, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”

Depending on which version you want, we could say lots of things about that last dialogue. We could be encouraged that this is about God’s omnipotent power and purpose, unstoppable, and this recognizes divine action. We could also view this through social-justice angles and see the Pharisees as those in positions of power who push their authority to demand a certain outcome and try and silence the lower classes, of whom Jesus was part of. They tell Jesus what to do, and yet he doesn’t comply. Maybe in that sense, we could interpret this as Jesus illustrating the power of non-violent active resistance. This is a blueprint for revolution. Jesus uses the power of the people to confront unjust systems to bring change and, uses non-violence and organized action as a political tool in the face of a power imbalance.

We could also focus on the word “silent.” There is a play between silence and shouting, between the disciples and the stones. From a unity perspective, Jesus could be declaring God’s purpose and Presence in all things, whether disciples or stones. In all creation, God’s glory is honored and the purpose of God’s creative power is fulfilled. Whether people or stones, its all star-dust taking form to express the Living Christ.

No single political, economic, or social system, and no single religious structure or tradition can contain the unbounded grace and Wisdom of God. Blessed peace and glory rooted in creativity through the Christ consciousness, holds all things together without duality or exclusion; everything is held in tension and paradox, and everything belongs.

Whether you lay a cloak or wave a branch from a tree or from the field; as we wave our branches, we realize that Jesus shows us that the human path is not always easy. The path that seems to be headed somewhere, to a destination, gets twisted and just as we think we’ve arrived, something turns and we’re on the edge. But whether we’re close to center or on the fringe, it’s the same path and life involves taking one step at a time. Each step has its place, and the entire journey is one.

As he enters Jerusalem, Jesus shows us the Easter story is about opening our hearts to give God consent to fill us, use us, send us, and humble us in the same model of ministry Jesus chooses. Christ shares the peace of heaven with the world in self-giving ways.

The colt participates, the stones participate, Jesus participates, the disciples and the crowds and the religious leaders with mixed motives all participate, and we are invited to participate in praise and trust in God.

As we walk paths of contemplation and experience faith, love leads us to action as God helps us on the path of descent. As we journey deeper into love, both NOW, and forever, Peace and All Good be with you.

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Saint Bonaventure was born in Italy around 1217, just a few years before the death of Saint Francis of Assisi, who, when asked to pray for the recovery of this young child from a serious illness, St. Francis cried out, ‘O buona ventura!’ – which means, O good forturne! At 22 years old he entered the Franciscan order and took the name, “Bonaventure.” He continued his studies in Paris, became friends with Saint Thomas Aquinas, and they both received degrees of Doctor of Theology. He was also friends with King St. Louis. He taught at university, and later became the general of his Order. A few years later, Pope Gregory X appointed him a cardinal, and Bonaventure was the first to speak at the Council of Lyons. He died suddenly in 1274. Some theories say he was poisoned.

He had a way of uniting scholarly theology with practical living through the Franciscan teachings which not only proclaimed a God of love, but more than proclaim, he embodied this love. He was a unifier, and able to connect groups that were at odds, and he brought renewal and order to a chaotic time in the life of the Franciscan Order.

One of the reasons I mention him is because of Epistemology.

Do you remember that word? It’s the study of how we know what we know.

Many people read the Bible and assume it’s true at a surface-level reading because God said it. They forget to add that layer of self-critique, which is a mark of Christian maturity. Epistemology takes a closer look at the assumptions and attitudes we’ve inherited or developed, the things we assume, and how this knowledge shapes our reading of scripture.

The Bible mentions just about everything, and people can use verses of scripture to validate almost any worldview or opinion. The lenses we view scripture through lead different people to quite diverse outcomes. In his day, Bonaventure was confronted by powerful people who didn’t like how the Franciscans were medicants, known for poverty and begging, asking people to support their ministry and life. These critics read the same scriptures that Bonaventure read, yet he came to see and experience warmth and welcome and a deep trust in divine love, one that invites us to follow Jesus in non-materialistic ways, which promotes simplicity and a welcoming heart.

This pattern of epistemology, of seeing scripture but exploring our point of view invites us to deeper self-awareness as we not only ask, ‘How do we know what we know,’ but also ask, ‘Does what we know lead us deeper into love and unity, or are our assumptions simply defending our ego as we validate our positions, which actually prevents a deeper trust in Christ?’

A life that is unexamined is like that old trick of the blind leading the blind, or leads to the backdrop to quotes from Jesus like, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In other words, actions stem from perspectives, but perspectives are limited. Yet the way we tend to think takes limited perspective and creates a totalized view of reality, when really, perspectives are just one way of seeing. One way among a diverse, equal, and inclusive humanity as we live as planetary creatures.

Through our reading of these scriptures, we’re reminded that our existence has ripple effects. Spiritual experiences remind us that our created being, our presence, participates in the larger creation, and we take up space. Kind of like a rock thrown into a calm pond, it has ripple effects. When the rock enters the water, the mass of the rock causes the water to move, to adjust, and to welcome; to us it looks like ripples. As we live and move and have our being, the word that happens is called “turbidity.” Our life has an effect and affects everything around us.

In the passage from Isaiah, the LORD makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, and the Exodus story of Pharaoh’s army is remembered. But right after that, Isaiah says,

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

In terms of epistemology and turbidity, a life that dwells on the past, wants to return to some concept of a perceived former ideal, perfection, or greatness, has a very different focus and feel than a life that is grounded in the present and accepting of what is.

Like the Psalmist in Psalm 126, who asks God to restore the people,

like the watercourses in the Negeb,

we see that desert image of a vast, arid landscape with one green ribbon winding its way along dusty sands and rock. Put this as a metaphor alongside the concept of time, and the past is a desert, the future is a desert, but the present is filled with life, and yet it flows in a connected way, in and through what was and what will be. Time is more than marooned in the now, but past, present, and future are all in tension, in relationship, and this is dynamic and has influence.

Notice the images Isaiah continues with – that of jackals and ostriches, wild animals that honor God. What is it about them that teaches about honoring God? Jackals, kind of like a coyote or fox, are a type of predator, and ostriches, the world’s largest birds, are always vigilant as they look for dangers. Predators like Jackals tend to have eyes on the front of their face, looking forward. Ostriches, like most prey, have eyes to the side that gather the periphery; they keep watch all around them, including behind. Yet although Jackals look forward and Ostriches look behind, they are fully present in each moment.

Applied to time, these creatures do not dwell on the past or worry about the future, for if they did, they would be distracted and miss out on what’s happening right now. They learn from them, but they do not dwell on them. God’s love, God’s Presence, God’s spaciousness, intimate and imminent, are now, here, and this is how we honor God, how we reflect God, how we welcome God, how we praise God. We remember God’s presence and in this we have joy. But to remember means more than recall, but to become, to embody, to re-member.

Turbidity involves our awareness of the moment, that our presence affects others, like a seismic wave that flows into a larger life experience. Move along a sidewalk and you catch someone’s eye, and you smile, maybe say hello! Your welcoming presence has an effect, and maybe you softened someone’s heart or contribute to an overall raising of collective consciousness as you celebrate connection, deep down as created beings, you claim our unity as unique people who share a common humanity. Your being, your living essence makes a difference.

In Bethany Jesus is anointed for his death by Mary, and the whole house fills with scent of costly perfume, even as Judas complains. Spiritual inspiration is symbolized by the extravagance of this scene, the intimacy to the point of scandal as love is claimed. Mary uses expensive perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus, and she wipes his feet with her hair, which means she has long hair, and it’s draped down, visible in a man’s world of rigid rules and protocols. Her culturally tinged actions are erotic and immediately condemned while Judas hides his greed behind a false defense of the poor.

Their immediate future looks troubling, yet the extravagance of unconditional love unites them in a moment where fear is not part of the equation. Love casts out fear. Presence helps our perspectives when relationship claims love and spiritual unity.

Judas seems to resist reality, he resists death, he resists the power of love, and resists the turbidity of his True Self in God. Mary is surrendered, fully present in the moment, and pours herself out for the other as love is shared, not as people who are separate but people who are united, intimate with love’s bond, and the whole house is filled with ripples of beauty and fragrance. Mary trusts Jesus and will follow him no matter what this may lead them to on love’s journey.

There is much more to these passages. There is much more to learn about how we filter them and how we know what we know. Some things are too much for tradition to handle so we settle for lesser interpretations that are more acceptable. We do what we can. But along the way, maybe we can learn and share ways to free our mind from bondage to the past or worry about the future, but to learn trust in the Now.

May we claim in the present God’s Presence and a peace beyond understanding shared from Christ as a gift of grace. May we learn how to release blocks of resistance in our lives, so we may share in the movements of love, like a river through a desert that brings life to a connected watershed. O Buona Ventura!... O Good Fortune! Thanks be to God for the power of dynamic life in the Spirit and the fragrance of love in Christ.

Peace and All Good be with you.

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Lectio (lexio) Divina is a spiritual practice of holy reading, or spiritual reading. There are various techniques, but the goal is the same: to read something at a soul level, to see what the words are saying through the eyes of faith, and to hear, beneath the words, God’s Spirit resonate with our spirit. Maybe it’s a felt sense, something from our inner experience, or a qualitative presence that serves to guide us; Lectio (lexio) Divina is intended to help us grow and deepen, to build a sense of belonging in God’s love.

But how does it work? One part of spiritual reading is to read repetitively, to take a passage of scripture, for example, and read it once for familiarity, read it another time to see what stands out, and then also a third time to ask, in contemplation, what God may be trying to say to you through those words and the feelings or thoughts that arise as those words shimmer in the eye of your heart. There is introduction, meditation, and contemplation, these three.

The scripture passages from this morning have three words that stood out to me as I prepared this reflection. One is from Psalm 27. There’s lots of imagery in that Psalm, and some of those words or phrases are loaded terms to us. Salvation. Light. House of the Lord. Sacrifices. Face. Violence. Wait for the Lord. Land of the living. Courage.

We use these words religiously. But one word that jumped out to me is near the beginning as the Psalmist asks and says, “Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” The word that jumps out is “stronghold.” Stronghold.

A stronghold is like a fortress, heavy on defense, a safe place to seek protection. A stronghold surrounds you and keeps away whatever enemies may lurk. In the shelter of a stronghold one can catch their breath, take refuge, and find strength again.

There is a town called Oregon in the state of Illinois. Near Oregon, Illinois there is a Presbyterian Camp & Retreat Center called Stronghold. (https://strongholdcenter.org/). The main building was constructed between 1928 and 1930, right near the start of the Great Depression. For decades it served as the summer home for Walter Strong and his family. The main building has a resemblance to the strong structure of a castle or a fortress; lots of stone, concrete, stucco, a slate roof, and metal trim work. Archways and tall walls have a look that is part medieval and part English manor. These protect and enclose an inner courtyard that has a round pool with a fountain. If you take the tour, it lasts about an hour.

Walter Strong’s family sold the property to the Presbyterian Church in 1960 to be used as a campground and retreat center. That’s what strongholds are, a place to retreat, to gain your footing, to find center, all in a place that is a shelter, a protection, away from enemies, pressures, and adversaries.

The powerful language and tone of the Psalmist who claims God Almighty as the “stronghold” of their life is echoed by Jesus in Luke. Another term that stands out today is how Jesus calls Herod a “fox.” “Go and tell that fox for me,” and he gives the Pharisees a message about his ministry and the actions of God taking place through his life. Why would Jesus use the term “fox” to describe King Herod? Though there are likely many reasons, and various traditions and cultures to interpret this image through, lets look at two possibilities.

One is descriptive. Foxes are attributed to qualities such as cunning, their coats are furry and lovely, but the attraction could be deadly because they are predators. They have sharp hearing, and all their senses are tuned in to their surroundings. A desert fox must be especially skilled at survival. Herod is on the hunt for Jesus because he views him as a political and religious threat.

Jesus is strong in his language, but in describing himself the second reason he may use the term fox intertwines with a third term that stands out for us today. In speaking of Jerusalem, Jesus says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”

A hen. He calls Herod a fox and offers himself as a hen, easy picking for a fox. But vulnerability isn’t focused on a sense of victim, but on the image of maternal care and providing a stronghold under a soft, feathered wing.

When we’re stressed, hiding under God’s wing makes sense. That loving reassurance can help us through challenges. But first, we need to recognize that we are stressed, there are so many pressures that build in ways that cause tension or angst. If we give ourselves permission to recognize stress in life, this invites a response of humility. It takes humility to run under the wing, to find retreat, to set things aside for self-care and renewal in the Spirit.

But there are also times in life where we might be in “slipper mode?” No stress, we’ve even got our slippers on, we’re comfortable. It’s almost harder to be a chick, going under that wing. We don’t think we need spiritual renewal or the shelter of God in our life.

Jesus wants to gather Jerusalem under his wing, and they are not willing. When something goes wrong, it’s natural to cry out, “Oh, God help me!” We see psalm after psalm declare the Jewish faith’s insistence that God is our deliverer. But when we’re doing fine, living like we tell ourselves we want to live, to intentionally let things go to be in that same nurturing Presence without the stresses; even this takes discipline.

Let’s recognize that chicks and the chicken are not a one-way image. We don’t just receive from God, but God delights in us when we give thanks, praise, lament, attention; when we become more aware of how dynamic and important a relationship with God really is to help us build awareness, resiliency, and deepen our experience of faith. Jesus has a desire for this, for us to share this with him.

Spiritual disciplines, like Lectio (lexio) Divina, ground us in Christ’s consciousness. Prayerful meditation and contemplative scripture reading, along with other Lenten practices like worship, fasting, extra financial gifts, and others, all help us in the experience of faith and lead us toward action, faithful steps to engage God’s larger world.

That’s another aspect of being a chick, you’re part of a larger flock, you’re not alone. The Christian journey involves community, and it’s Christ that gathers us together, it’s Christ that fills us with divine Presence, and it’s as Christ’s Body that, together, we respond, through faith. Even hermits in the desert pray on behalf of the world and offer their solitary strength for the sake of society’s health and wellbeing.

As Christians, from the ground of our being, the source of our life, we put trust into service, love into expression, even as we learn day by day how to open our hearts, how to swim around in silence and discover joy and peace, release from the despair of fear, worry, anger, sadness, to trust more deeply God’s providential care even through these things. That’s the stronghold of God Almighty.

That may be another reason Jesus calls Herod a fox. Jesus is angry, sorrowful, and his righteous indignation expresses a range of human emotion. Jesus calls a spade a spade as Herod in his delusions hunts one who offers care through God’s love.

If Jesus experiences these human emotions, then we will too. Yet rather than lashing out at this fox in hatred, revenge, or through a tendency for tyranny, the message Jesus shares even with his enemy is one grounded in love as Jesus claims the stronghold of his life.

As evil doers assail him, he is confident and claims joy in God’s grace. Good lessons for us to learn too, probably easier said than done, yet lived experience is faith, contemplation put to action.

As we continue in the Season of Lent, life’s laments and the reality of stresses mix with hope and courage and a call toward self-care even as we share our life with others. May we seek out the protective wing of God so we can peek out to discover and explore the wonders of God’s larger world, all in the reality of God’s love enfolded around us. As the Spirit continues to reveal, shimmer, and shine in our hearts, may Peace and All Good be with you, NOW, even as forever.

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Jesus is full of, and led by, the Holy Spirit. God’s action and activity is the driving, creative power in this story. The focus is often on the devil’s offers of temptations. But as Jesus participates in this struggle, which is not only in the desert but ongoing throughout his life and ministry, what he continues to rely on is a deep trust. Jesus embodies the reality that God is always there, the Spirit is constant as Advocate, and even in death God is a trusted refuge. This is the shape not only of this story, but the season of Lent emphasizes that the Passion of Christ embodies this archetypal narrative as Jesus journeys to the cross.

Make no mistake, although the Holy Spirit is the driver, the struggle can be agonizing, and the stakes are as high as life itself. Earthly expressions of life hang in the balance on a razor’s edge. In this story, Jesus is fasting, he ate nothing at all. His entire body is focused on this spiritual birthing in the wilderness.

If we step back for a big picture description of this story, the temptation in the wilderness, we see it as an illustration of what humanity experiences as we are on the cusp of a new epoch, a new era. The temptations represent status quo thinking, the what and how of Mythic and Mental Structures that perpetuate dualistic thinking, the illusion of separation from others and the Earth, and cycles of destruction in the quest for power and control through domination. Jesus introduces us to the Integral Structure of consciousness, a new mind and renewed heart engaged in spiritual transformation, a conversion through humility, relationship, and love into the fullness of human participation in planetary connection. In this, old models and patterns don’t fit with their deficiencies, and they break down. But as they are set aside, or healed to reveal their efficiencies, new archetypes emerge to nourish in new ways.

Do you remember when you were born? More than just the date, but the actual experience? The cramps, the shifting, the pressure, the dark birth canal, the cold air that hit you. It’s a traumatic event. The entire skull of a newborn has plates that are intended to shift and contort so the human head can fit through the narrow birth canal. We only remember our own birth through our subconsciousness. The memory of it has been filed away deep within the recesses of our larger psyche.

There is so much that happens in the process of birth, and it’s messy, with water, blood, muscle, and bone all doing things they don’t usually do on any other given day. Things can go bad, or things can go well. Either way, getting born is hard work, yet birth is miraculous, a moment unlike any other.

Why should we assume spiritual transformation should be any different? The emergence of more intense forms of consciousness is likely tied to traumatic events, struggle, and the cycle of death and rebirth.

Growing in the depths of faith takes effort, and these scriptures show one of the most important patterns involved in this, which is illustrated by one of the traditional practices of the Season of Lent. Simply put, the palm branches from previous years are burned and the ashes are used for Ash Wednesday.

It doesn’t take long for the lovely green palm branches waved with celebration to dry out and become brittle and rigid. The more they get touched, the more mess there is, so it is better to just store them clumped in a pile like dead leaves on branches. But then Ash Wednesday arrives, and they are picked up, taken to the kitchen, clipped so the leaves are off the hard, stalky stems. They get posthumously pruned, then burned with a flash of fire into fine ash. I then mix this with just a dash of olive oil. The black sludge had a purpose: to mark foreheads with the sign of the cross as we remember we are stardust and to stardust we shall return.

This physical action of marking is a way to participate and usher in a spiritual invitation toward deeper awareness. Claiming the cosmic Christ and our part in the larger universe as created beings helps loosen the stranglehold of our own limited perspectives, helps us die to the false self our ego makes, which favors rigid mental structures we defend through our attitudes, actions, alliances, and schisms.

In burning, those leaves change. Their brittle form is not able to contain their new, larger purpose. As ash, they take on the role of usher, transitioning from a season in the past to a journey right before us. Like a threshold, people come forward to the liminal space, they bare the skin of their forehead, which, we notice, is the first part revealed in their physical birth as the head emerges. The black sludge of ash and oil anoints them by the mark of the cross. This intentional action invites rebirth of the soul and spirit.

The devil is right. The devil’s invitations to Jesus are accurate. Jesus could have made stones into bread and had the angels bear him up from the cliffs. Jesus could have worshiped the devil and gave his full devotion to something that has authority, power, and strength in this world. The devil is attractive that way, and evil is usually disguised quite well, hidden in plain sight as something of value or attraction, something that appears to get things done. Like my friend once said decades ago, “The spiritually proud are the devil’s foot soldiers.”

How do we live in ways that don’t give in to temptations? How do we not deceive ourselves through spiritual pride? How do we discern among things that seem attractive or right, even assumed to be the very voice of God revealed in our mind or in our experience? In a world filled with tension, anxiety, and stressors at high levels from the personal to the social, from individual to international, how do we invite authentic transformation of our mind, heart, and soul in ways that honor the Most High, the Almighty, “my God, in whom I trust?” How do we accept Reality as its presented, without the judgment or added drama of dualistic thinking?

Jesus goes to the wilderness as a marked man. Don’t let the little detail slip by unnoticed. He’s in the wilderness as a marked man. Luke writes,

Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and returned. He returned, and was led, to the wilderness. That’s where we live most of the time, in the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, and the insanely beautiful wilderness.

“From the Jordan” is the anchor point, the only non-wilderness reference. But what Jesus “returned” from is more than geography. What happened at the Jordan? That’s the river where Jesus and all the people were baptized. That’s where the community came together in the humble act of rebirth. Going into the waters is a form of dying. To rise from the waters, new life and the fullness of the Holy Spirit are confirmed. This is how Jesus journeys through the wilderness. This is how Jesus moves from past into future as his ministry begins: as a person marked by baptism, one who dies and rises again, one led by spiritual conversion, filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the relational covenant of love in action: to trust God at every turn, even when that road leads to what appears as an end, to death.

The rubber hits the road in our daily lives, and we are bombarded by multiple, global crises and the fragmentation of society. The entire planet is in a phase, the sixth great extinction. Global warming with climate change has made permanent impacts that only increase with denial and controversy. Humanity as a species is kind of like a baby in the womb. We cause and experience lots of pressures, contortions, pain. Mother Earth rides the razor’s edge of transformation. However, there are Christians who refuse to use a term like Mother when referring to Earth. There are Christians who don’t like phrases like The Big Bang to describe another word they take as superstitious: evolution. But even this mix of religious understandings in the larger cosmology and phenomenology and ontology of a species gone viral, even this mix is part of the process.

Did you notice all those big words? Good thing fasting in the desert takes Jesus down to the bare essentials. This is the invitation to religion of our day as Christians are called to be midwives and ushers. By virtue of our baptisms, we are all ministers, and prophets, and like Jesus, the Holy Spirit uses us even amid temptations that seem very real. We cannot force this process, only bear with it as it unfolds. With encouragement and love, our center is in Christ.

Jesus shows us that the temptation to command stones to turn to bread is an invitation to give up the desire to command; to move from one paradigm to another. This shift is a humble action, a step on the path of kenosis, of learning the art of letting go. The Warrior Mentality of so many people in positions of power do not understand this type of journey. But their argument that ‘might makes right’ is hollowed out, gutted by this 2,000-year-old biblical narrative as Jesus faces the old temptations and exudes emerging grace.

This is a wilderness experience that continues as we, like Jesus in the desert, learn to let everything go, to focus less on what is going away and more on what is getting born. This involves spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting, worship, and inner wisdom. We are called beyond ourselves to discern and share God’s love with a larger creation, one that does not fit our desire for theories and systems and predictability.

Wilderness is wild. It is good to have a guide who knows and shows the way.

As we’re led by the Spirit, in Christ, may we journey the Jesus way, and through humble trust, may God be glorified, now, here, always, everywhere, and forever.

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Transfiguration Sunday happens every year. Transfiguration is a word we don’t usually use. It’s long and sounds complicated and has lots of syllables. It’s easier to say that Jesus changes rather than Jesus is transfigured. What’s it matter, really, as long as whatever happens to Jesus is something we would approve of, in this case getting all shiny and bright.

A few years ago, at Luther Seminary in Minnesota, Rolph Jacobson heard a sermon by Mark Throntveit, Professor of the Hebrew Scriptures. In that sermon he says,

This is the Jesus we want. On either end of Lent is a mountain, on one is the Jesus we want, on the other is the Jesus we get. Here is Jesus lit up like the Vegas Strip, all in glory. Let’s stay here! This is so awesome! And then God says, ‘No, the way I want to be apprehended is I wish to be apprehended only in the cross.’ The glory of the transfiguration does come to us, but it comes to us in the cross. God has promised to meet us in our suffering, and we are to meet the world in its suffering.”

(Working Preacher, sermon brainwave podcast, SB461, Transfiguration Sunday).

Perhaps this is why a convulsing demon in a healing story is the very next thing as Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain of glory.

As we begin the Lenten season and journey toward the cross, God’s radiant glory helps us be healed from the inside out, and like the Moses of Exodus with a radiant face, the world may see our joy, something qualitatively different in and through us.

As we read about Transfiguration and the shining face of Moses, and Jesus brighter than the sun, it got me thinking about an article I wrote that talks about “radiant glory” and, like Moses and Jesus, cultivating conscious awareness of living in God’s Presence. I wrote this during a winter that was actually a winter, with cold temperatures in February rather than the Hawaiian heat waves we’ve been having in 2025.

Here’s my article, Radiant Glory:

“Have you ever noticed a difference in heat? Furnaces warm the air to control the climate of an indoor space. People also pile on blankets or coats to protect from cold air and capture heat generated by our body. Some folks use hand warmers, heating pads, or hot water bottles to focus on specific areas. But there is one type of heat that has a quality to it that is very special. Radiant heat.

Radiant energy moves from a source to an object, and the temperature of the air doesn’t necessarily negate this transfer. Layering is not as needed to capture the heat because it is continuous. The other day, the air temperature outside was around 10 degrees, and one didn’t want to linger too long without protection from February’s Arctic blast. But the sun was out, and the radiant heat felt surprisingly good. While some parts of my body were cold, other parts were basking in this brief gift of solar amazement.

Light travels through space as waves of energy. Sound also does this, but slower as it moves through air at 1,125 feet per second, which is not even a quarter mile per second. Light moves much faster, at about 186,000 miles per second. The sun is around 93 million miles from Earth, so we travel back in time when we feel the warmth. The radiant energy we experience in the moment was generated by nuclear fusion 8 minutes earlier, and it’s just a slice of the pie. One-one billionth of the sun’s energy reaches Earth, and much of that gets reflected back into space. It doesn’t take much to keep the Earth just right.

On that cold day out in the sunshine, although I noticed the benefit of radiant heat, this was soon offset, overwhelmed by a breeze, the wind biting with that arctic chill. But in calm places, in direct sunlight, radiant energy was shared in ways that provided light, comfort, and warmth amidst an otherwise cold winter day.

As days get filled with busyness and distractions, it’s easy for fears or anxious thoughts to creep in. We hear headlines of wars and rumors of wars, and divisiveness is experienced in various arenas like political systems and religion. There is much suffering in the world, and it is easy to lose our footing. It can be a struggle to maintain health and well-being, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. But we are always invited to claim our center, in Christ.

Natural cycles teach us about deeper truths. The Bible mentions the sun, moon, and stars, along with mountains, trees, fields, rivers, seas, birds and flowers, and many other parts of creation. All participate in praise that point us toward God’s glory revealed.

Every day eventually ends, and night brings on darkness. Both day and night are important for natural cycles on Earth, but for the sun there is no darkness, no night. The sun burns bright continuously in every direction. But even the sun is bound to laws of nature and at some point, will die. Brother Sun has his own cycles to run, and all this coming in and going out is held in the care of God, with whom there is no shadow, no turning. The Divine Origin, the Living Christ, our Source, is ever-present.

Jesus would have known Psalm 121 and the biblical reminder that “He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” Jesus spent much time on the mountains in prayerful communion with God, both day and night. Jesus invites us to follow him deeper into trust that God’s love and sustaining Spirit is always with us. The radiant energy of God’s constant presence sustains our soul as Source connects.

On a clear February day, the sun shines. It’s optional whether we notice.

Like our skin welcomes radiant warmth reaching out through time and space, we are invited to prayerfully open our heart to perceive God’s love reach toward our soul, our life-essence.

When you’re outside on a sunny day, invite the generosity of life to help you notice. Feel the warmth of the light. Breathe deep the gift of air. Then give the breath back to natural cycles as we participate together as children of God.

At First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, we observe the season of Lent which begins on Ash Wednesday. In worship at 6:30 p.m., we use ash from previous Palm Sunday branches and mark the sign of the cross on our forehead. I say, ‘Remember you are stardust and to stardust you shall return.’ Truly, we are sustained by the grace of radiant Glory.”

That was the article, Radiant Glory. These themes echo as we read of Moses and Jesus who each have a Theophany, another long, fancy word that means an encounter with the Divine, both taking place on mountain tops and having a shiny effect on their appearance. They talked with God.

If only they could have stayed shiny. If only the people would allow Moses to radiate rather than ask him to put a cover on because they were frightened. If only Jesus could have stayed in those dazzling white clothes and with his face changed in appearance as well.

But thankfully, they don’t stay that way. Jesus comes down from that mountain of transfiguration and the next scene is an example of how the world is healed. It’s hard work to bring this healing, the demons convulse, and generations miss the point. But Jesus comes down, heals, and unites, and the greatness of God is astounding.

Thanks be to God for glimpses of radiant glory! May we learn to notice the sacred in all things and not be afraid for all things are held in love that knows no end, always shines, is not limited by direction or spacial confines, and can be felt as much if not more than it can be seen. Even if it’s veiled, the light shines from within as we journey into a season that helps us prepare our hearts for Easter joy.

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All three scripture readings are loaded with cultural influence, spiritual practice, and divine promise. To struggle with wrongdoers yet trust in the Lord; to hear that the meek shall inherit the land; these are all core aspects of the Christian journey and basic to our human experience of living in faith. Not only do these stories highlight specific people in particular places, like Joseph in Egypt and Jesus on the plain, but they speak to the larger identity of what it’s like to be alive in the world. The truths within these stories echo through the ages.

But I say to you that listen, Love, do good, bless, pray.

It’s Jesus who gives these actions as foundation to the more contextual, cultural expressions such as turning the other cheek or giving away your coat and shirt. Jesus was a pacifist, much like Christians of the early church for the first 300 years after Jesus who would not participate in the violence of the military or engage in warfare. Jesus practiced non-violence and these commands are grounded in the power of active, non-violent resistance.

Being a pacifist is different than doing nothing. It means that what you choose to do is non-violent. This affects all aspects of life, from political to economic, from public to private, and like many things in life, non-violent actions are rooted in a deep heart-space of spiritual formation.

That’s why Jesus says right away,

But I say to you that listen

because not everybody’s listening, they’re not interested, nor do they seek self-awareness. He speaks on a heart level, and not everyone is open to this transformational depth. But Jesus the Jewish mystic knows that for those who are, then the things that he says are received at a faith level, which is a different form of listening that just using your ears. Listening and not listening are quite a contrast.

Notice other dramatic and distinct contrasts, which make no sense to the mind or a scientific angle, as Jesus links the action of love with the word “enemy” and doing good connected with “those who hate you.” A similar spectrum is involved with “blessing those who curse you,” and praying accompanies no less than the word, “abusers.” People who abuse, curse, hate, and are enemies are seemingly the opposite of those who pray, bless, do good, and love.

Dynamics involved with these tensions have to do with power and authority. Abusers tend to have power over people through positions of authority. Church sex abuse situations, for example, have ministers or priests with some form of authority that parishioners do not, bishops have even more, and on up the hierarchy. Abuse of power and authority is at the root of many destructive situations and cycles of cover up as the voices of victims are silenced or ignored too long.

As Jesus says,

there are many scales to measure these types of hatreds, cursing, abuse, and enemies of all types through global, historical scales. Many of us benefit from history that has handed down what we might call “cultural privileges” which are now codified by law, engrained institutionally, and protected by regulation, power, and position. White privilege based on race is one of several dynamic factors in our culture.

Jesus is not inviting his followers to take peoples coats or steal peoples’ shirts. Jesus doesn’t ask his followers to slap people across the face. Jesus does not promote aggression, not stockpiling weapons as a hedge against evil doers, to lash back in defense if things get out of hand.

Jesus is speaking to people who are violated. He speaks to those who know what it’s like to suffer. He addresses the victims but does not identify them with a victim mentality. Just the opposite, Jesus empowers people to claim their inherent honor as those created by God. Jesus teaches them to live into the dignity of all things as loved by God. Jesus is reminding them of the ongoing connection they have at their disposal as those in relationship with God.

Jesus lives into the unity he shares with all other things as expressions of the Cosmic, Living Christ. This unity is so foundational and solid that even love for enemies is possible because those distinctions are not ultimate. Living in the image of God, with our focus on God’s Presence, the quality of divine love is what really matters.

Notice the action, the verbs that lead us through this: love, do good, lend, be merciful, do not judge, do not condemn, forgive, give, for the measure you give is what you get back, even how (or if) you measure matters.

Christianity is essentially a positive message to the world, grounded and centered in Christ, expressed through love’s connective actions, embodied by people as we participate in the larger creation story.

Every culture puts their slant on this experience. Jesus plays on some of the contextual aspects of his society. For example, someone could demand a coat, but to take their shirt was illegal. Yet he says, give them your shirt. Someone with power and position could legally strike the face of a subordinate or a slave. But to turn the other cheek, like Jesus says, is a way to force their hand to strike again in a way that was culturally shaming to the one doing the slapping. These examples of non-violent, active resistance force wrongdoers into looking at their actions, hopefully to learn of the absurdity. They also show that people don’t have to take abuse, but they can call people to account.

The intent is not revenge. We hear enough of that on the news cycles when one country does something absurd and hurtful to another country. The leaders react, and say, “We’ll have our revenge.” But this tired cycle simply perpetuates woundedness. Whether you are a perpetrator or a victim, at the source, it is all painful. Jesus tries to release all people from pain, better yet, teaches us how to integrate paint without projecting it so we may embrace a higher energy, a life-giving promise, the very love of God.

As we come to the end of the Season of Epiphany, the greatest lesson these stories share is the Reality of Grace in the sure and certain Presence of God, and that we are participants in the Divine Dance of the Trinity. Relational, covenant Presence is the source of all goodness and mercy, forgiveness, and peace. As we follow the Jesus who invites us to non-violence, this involves an openness to listening. This listening helps us as we seek self-awareness. In this meandering, circuitous journey, may we learn to trust God more, to love more deeply, to live more simply, to view meekness as an asset and not a liability. Maybe then we’ll discover unity that is so pervasive and life so abundant that even water and air and creatures of all kinds will have a right to exist simply by participating in the larger creation. May jarring forms of destruction and domination be exposed for what they truly are, as we continue to learn how to listen, love, do good, bless, and pray as we trust, delight, and commit our way to Christ’s humility and glory.

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In trials and triumphs, we learn what it means to be fully human as a spiritual being. Life involves a balance between dignity and humility, of the low lifted up and the proud brought down. Even in our own lives we see a wrestling between the faculties of rational, mental structures of our egoic mind (many of which have become deficient) and the operations of heart and soul inviting spaciousness beyond concepts, a spiritual depth that’s intuitive and inherent. We could, perhaps, call this the journey from our small self into our Larger Self.

The prophet, Jeremiah shares something that reflects this dynamic, saying,

Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes.

If we translate mere flesh as ego limitations, if we are a product of our own unexamined thoughts, we are limited, even diminished, like a parched bush with no help in sight. This tyranny overwhelms our heart, and it’s because the heart is turned away that desert imagery resonates, and relief isn’t recognized.

But if we cultivate our heart and don’t turn our heart away, then, like deserts after a rain, our heart is transformed. When a transformed heart unites with a renewed mind, this allows the creation of a new organ of spiritual perception, one that can receive what it is that sustains us through all things, like a tree planted by streams of Living Water.

This doesn’t mean thoughts are bad and feelings are good. It’s not that simple. What it means involves balance and unity of a renewed mind and transformed heart. This centered balance leads to blessing for not only “those who trust in the LORD,” but for those “whose trust is the LORD.”

Did you pick up on that quality in Jeremiah? Their trust is in the LORD and their trust is the LORD. God is more than a thing. God is. This is similar to how love is not so much a noun, but more a verb. Love is not a static thing which can be measured, only an action that has no beginning or end. This love reveals, and is, divine Presence. Love casts out fear and heals us from our own delusions.

This is the blessing Jesus experiences as he’s moved by the Spirit in the desert; comes into his own as someone well grounded and yet not attached to a rigid identity as he teaches in Nazareth and surrounding villages. Jesus is open to the flow of radiant life as he shares with the crowds on a level place. In Luke we see Jesus embody Christ’s unitive consciousness, even as he is surrounded by the dualistic splits and barriers of either/or separations that we settle for in our world. We see this right off in verse 17, which is more than introductory. This verse does a great job of setting the tone and context not only in terms of geography and culture, but phenomenologically, in terms of our experience of the phenomenon of life.

Here's that verse, a verse at the core of existence, at the center of life:

Isn’t that amazing imagery? It’s so Gospel According to Luke! Jesus, standing, the full stature of a human being, who earlier was described as growing in wisdom and stature, and here he is, standing with a great crowd around him.

He came down, which is partly because he’d spent the night on a mountain in prayer and in the morning called his disciples and chose the twelve. He “came down with them” and they all stood together.

Came down can also be symbolic, a visual image of humility, reminding us of John’s gospel about the Cosmic Christ, the Word that becomes flesh and dwells among them. This is Jesus, the Christ; and this Jesus, along with his disciples, have humbled themselves, responding to God’s call to be “with them.”

On a level place. Verse 17 starts with an amazing promise, a heavenly vision: the twelve recently handpicked disciples and Jesus, along with a great crowd of other disciples and a great multitude of people…so far, still rather heavenly. “He came down with them.” Jesus is with them, not in a compassionate way, like he has pity for the little people, but in a solidarity way. Jesus is “with them” because Jesus is part of the poor multitude. These are his people. Jesus is not a wealthy class, political elite, not a priestly power broker with prestige in the Temple. Jesus is working class, a peasant, someone who is considered in that society as a nobody, and he’s surrounded by the nobodies. Rome doesn’t care about them, for they are, as Richard Rohr calls them, “expendable.” (https://cac.org/no-one-is-expendable-2022-01-26/, by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, a daily online meditation). Jesus shows us that in Christ, no one is expendable. Everyone and everything belong.

Then we hit the speed bumps, the potholes; jarring realities we face in the world as distinctions come into view. The great crowd is

from all Judea

(yes!)

Jerusalem

(yes!)

and the coast of Tyre and Sidon

(wait, what? No way! How could they!)

But yes, in Luke we see healthy religion doing its job, like ligaments that knit bones together, uniting all the parts of the larger body.

The culture war of wealthy coastal people of Tyre and Sidon, who charged the inland peasant Jewish farmers high rates to get their crops out of those port cities, is overcome. The rigid religious, economic, and political distinctions of these groups fall away and they’re all together, on a level place. This is an inclusive vision, filled with diversity, and justice and healing are shared by renewed minds and transformed hearts, in Christ.

Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.

Power came out from him and healed all of them.

In Christ, humanity has capacity to rise above inequality and injustice, but not in the same mentality that creates these. The poor peasant farmers and the wealthy port city folks. They all come, and Jesus shares blessings and woes because these people, and us, need both. The elite need humility, to wake up from selfish delusions. The poor need to awaken to their inherent dignity. Like that crowd where “all in the crowd were trying to touch him,” we know there is a spiritual necessity for real transformation to occur, we too yearn for a stable center, and this is needed in everyone’s individual lives and as a species in our shared humanity.

Jesus mentions what ancestors did to the prophets, and false prophets. Jesus declares that a prophetic life does involve suffering, but it is transformed into a joy that cannot be touched by that suffering. Those who deceive themselves and do not suffer are false prophets and they will be hungry, mourn, and weep. No one is exempt from the fullness of life’s lessons. Whatever context we’re in, like Jeremiah reminds us,

I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.

This is not all doom and gloom prophet stuff; this is not God writing off some and accepting others. Inclusiveness includes everyone. Equality means there is no hierarchy of superiority at play when it comes to love’s unconditional covenant. But these words and lessons are pointers, indicators, or wake-up calls. Woes to the rich for they have received their consolation means wealth inequality only gets us so far, and then it doesn’t help. That the full will be hungry and those laughing will mourn and weep just shows us that the same old thing leads to the same old thing. Today’s perpetrators and conquerors are tomorrow’s victims as cycles of domination, power, revenge, and control loop and overlap and come up empty.

Did you notice something else about that scene of Jesus on a level place? Even as Jesus and the diverse crowds were gathered on a level place, it was the Earth that held them all. They are all standing on the level ground. As blessings and woes have their way in the world, the Earth herself holds us. One of the things the biblical writers intend is for us to look past the surface level. Even if things are going well, there is always an invitation to go deeper and discover more meaningful aspects of life. They hold out a vision of something more, of life’s interconnections, not only to live into our humanity, but to claim our place and responsibility as planetary creatures.

We have much to learn and many wounds to heal, and as these biblical stories ripple in our own lives, we are called by, empowered through, and held within a sacred, divine union. May God help us receive Christ’s transformative gift of divine Love that is entrusted to us so we may learn to live more than spiritual beings having a human experience, but as participants grounded and centered in the living, Cosmic Christ. This is nothing less than a planetary, transformational life of wholeness and healing. We come alongside those first disciples to follow Jesus, and we invite Divine Mercy to renew our mind and transform our heart to help the wholeness of our soul emerge.

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In Luke’s story, in part one Jesus gives a reading, a teaching, and everyone is impressed. Qualities of the first half of life are highlighted as we see strengths, such as the nurture of an identity, the security of belonging to a group, and the affirmation of truth found by ascribing to narratives of tradition. But part two shifts to the second half of life, and like many changes, this one is abrupt and a source of conflict and trauma. In this brief scene, the people go from praise and admiration to rage and hostile agitation to the point of attempted murder. They step outside to throw Jesus off a cliff!

Jesus says,

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

This verse is so pivotal. There is something about the Greek language the original text was written in; the Perfect tense is a type of verb that shows an action that is already complete, and even though it’s done, there’s also a sense that the action is ongoing, continually being done, and always needing done. In my last Spiritual Meditation, I ended with a final thought, that of looking at the thread woven through the readings, the mentioning of hearing. Jesus says,

Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Yes, I’ve quoted this verse twice now, its that pivotal. Not because it points to Jesus, but because it points to you. This scripture is fulfilled, and yet it continues to be fulfilled, but because you have heard it, it will keep being fulfilled, and therefore will keep needing to be fulfilled as it ripples in and through your life.

Like an echo, it is heard, it is heard, it is heard, and in their hearing this scripture is fulfilled. That is different than listening. Listening and hearing are different, just like cure and healing are different. Cure fixes you from ailment, but healing is wholistic, mind, body, soul. Listening is technical, but hearing involves receiving, responding, and embodying.

Jesus has a reputation as a healer, a miracle worker. His home-town crowd is filled with expectations that they will benefit from one of their own using this quality to enrich them, to usher in a Golden Age. But Jesus tries to teach them that they have these qualities, that the scripture is fulfilled as they interact and live it out. But he quickly points out their blind greed and he uses a couple of religiously charged, cultural examples to show how humans so easily miss the point when it comes to living a spiritual life in community with each other, with God, and the Earth. When he calls them out on this, challenges the limitations of their perspectives, this reveals the intensity of their racial, cultural violence, and like most things that feel threatened, they react and try to destroy him. This story is an illustration of well-defended egos that circle the wagons in defense, and labels anything outside the boundary as an enemy, one that needs defeated.

In this teaching, Jesus embodies divine declaration, promise, and invitation, and the story itself is the illustration of the importance of inner transformation at a heart level, because our mind, like the people of Nazareth, rejects this teaching. Rationalism doesn’t have the bandwidth to do spiritual work at a soul-level, not without heart-space to give balance.

Jesus preaches to his hometown crowd, as they switch from praise to attempted murder in reaction to his challenging their sense of nationalism. He points out their arrogance and assumptions, and calls them out on the difference between what they say they believe and how they actually live that out. But the dynamics of the Gospel story also have another reason for such drama, one which ties into the subtleties of this text in a different way, less of a social righteous angle, and more about inner awareness. Feelings.

I’ve seen bumper stickers around here that say, “I don’t care about your feelings.” But feelings are feelings, and they need to be recognized because they are coming from somewhere, deeper inside of us. We all carry feelings, sometimes of anger or rejection, like those who put strange bumper stickers on their rigs, or hopelessness in the sense of feeling small compared to international politics or presidential policies and powers that take actions which seem contrary to love. Sometimes our sense of hope waffles; we try to trust a larger consciousness, but really, find it easy to be discouraged. When despair and hope wrestle, life can be hard, and like the Psalmist who seeks refuge and deliverance, we all have feelings which need expressed and explored.

Power. Justice. Peace. Unity. Hope. All these themes mix down in the depths of our own attitudes and assumptions, our own sense of patriotism, of exploring where our heart is amid the mind’s wrestling.

Here we have Jesus quoting Isaiah, saying “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and we hear there is good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and even the oppressed go free.

I want this done. Not a perfect verb tense, but past tense. But Jesus on that day shows us the burden of getting involved in the ongoing struggle, to engage not only cultural assumptions that people stake their lives on, but the very mentality that creates this dynamic. Jesus calls for nothing less than a change of consciousness. Oh, if only this was simple!

We are called to partner with God, not so much to create believers with minds that have the right thoughts according to our measurements, but to make disciples whose hearts are renewed, and find their center in Christ, whether they use the vocabulary of institutional religion and doctrinal faith, or not. In fact, in our cultural context that language will likely be rejected, although the sentiment, the spiritual longing, remains.

This Gospel story, as it echoes through the ages with parallel stories, illustrates the difficulty and absolute necessity for the transformation of the human heart. We see and experience the murderous tyranny created by unhealthy egos that protect their position, the dangers created by attachment, even as we discover the amazing conversion that takes place when we find our center in Christ, who embodies the ongoing action of the only thing which truly matters, Love, which is God.

Love is imperfect, as far as Greek verbs go. Already done. Being done. Always needing done. Love never ends.

There’s a lot going on in this story. Jesus, the hometown boy arrives as an enlightened, Wisdom teacher with deep, theological invitations. He helps us to explore what it means to live as a human being created in God’s image, how to invite an awareness of God’s Presence, and how we open our hearts to allow that Presence to change our lives. Do you really want that kind change, to allow God to deepen your faith, or are you satisfied?

As the people of Nazareth are filled with rage that moves them to the point of trying to throw Jesus off the cliff, we notice a couple things. One is that it involves everyone, no one is exempt from this very challenging work.

All in the synagogue were filled with rage.

Human ego is not tamed willingly or without struggle. Second, they took him “to the brow of the hill on which their town was built.” In our Christian memory, we hear echoes of the temptation in the wilderness where the devil takes Jesus up on a pinnacle, shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and says Jesus can have them all if he just worships the devil. Jesus responds, saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” (Luke 4:8). Jesus challenges the human tendency to try and replace God, the technical word being ‘idolatry.’ We don’t give up our idols very easily, and like those villagers in Nazareth, even if we seem satisfied, we are masters at convincing ourselves that we don’t have any idols. Jesus exposes everyone’s delusions because he points out the limitations of our state of consciousness, not only what we think, but how we think, how we perceive reality.

Our mode of thinking is usually dualistic, based on the judgment of our ego, which welcomes that which it understands and rejects everything else. Our circles of acceptance have rigid boundaries, borders we protect from crossing in either direction. If the unknown approaches us we view it with fear, as a threat, and we take action to defend ourselves. This enemy happens to have all the qualities of our own shadow as we project our unprocessed baggage onto the other. This is small-minded thinking.

Jesus invites humanity into a Larger Mind, a Deeper Consciousness, a Centered Presence, a Relational Unity, and the response to this invitation has been, is now, and always needs to be through Love; love which is so grounded, boundaries become permeable; love so secure, it has nothing to defend; love that has learned the art of letting go.

Notice Jesus doesn’t curse or condemn the people, doesn’t call down lighting to zap them on that hill. Here he is on the edge of the cliff, all the people of the synagogue defending the boundary of their will, the entire town and everything it’s built on, which represents more than structure and architecture, and

This is an existential statement, not a description of how Jesus escaped their grip. Jesus reaches a limit in his life and transcends that limit. Jesus stands on the boundary of his circle of comfort and discovers the illusion of separation and how that self-imposed line doesn’t exist. Jesus takes all the teaching and fulfills it, then, now, and always. “Jesus went on his way” and his way is a journey of love, deeper into wisdom, oneness, patience, compassion, and humility.

One of my favorite quotes in all the world is from Paul Reese Nystrom, who died a few years ago from cancer. He wrote this:

Jesus teaches us how to get to the very edge and shows us how to see beyond limitations to get the entire view. We are invited to participate in the holy dance of life freed from the constraints of dualism, without the need to defend, holding loosely that which we once clung to with attachment, and trusting the power of love, which is the greatest gift and puts all other gifts like faith and hope in their proper alignment and perspective.

We are invited to follow Jesus on the way through the difficult struggles and temptations we face as we live into a deeper Reality defined by grace, where even things we typically view as opposites, like freedom and captivity, blindness and sight, oppression and freedom, are held together in paradox grounded in the deep mysteries of God, our refuge and deliverer.

May we, like Jesus, have courage to come alongside prophetic voices which teach truth and challenge the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny; to claim hope and faith during struggle and difficulty; but most of all, to embody love which creates, defines, and declares the deep peace of Christ in and for the world. As we heed Christ’s invitation to gather around this table which is prepared to celebrate union and embodiment of love in action, may we follow Jesus to live into our calling as Christ’s body given and sent. And in all things, may God be glorified, NOW, even as forever.

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When we moved into our house 14 years ago, I suffered recurring sinus infections, heavy hitters that needed antibiotics to clear up. These seemed to activate during rather moist seasons like spring or fall, sometimes winter. Something triggered these allergies. I traced it back to our house.

In North Idaho there are many days during the year when the air is 100 percent humid. We have a two-story house on a foundation with a decent-sized crawlspace, about 4 feet high. Have you ever been in an old home where the floors slope? Old houses seem to settle. But ours was built in 1979, so it’s not that old, any settling would be unsettling.

Yet, the crawl space had started to show signs of deterioration. The floor joists from the first floor had dark stains near the foundation walls as they absorbed moisture from the air. They started to rot and settle, crushed by the weight of the house pushing down. The dirt floor of the dark crawlspace was covered by a black tarp to keep the moisture from the ground from infiltrating the area, but it didn’t extend from wall to wall; there were gaps of a few feet all around the perimeter. Support posts down the center of the crawlspace seemed sturdy, but showed water stains, which meant that the crawl space had flooded at some various points in its past, with deep pools of water.

Conventional thinking and official building codes call for vents. Foundations have vents installed to allow the moist air from crawl spaces to leave the building. But guess what! This does not work! What does happen is a chimney affect. Houses act like a chimney and air goes up and through them. Air from the crawl space seeps its way to the first floor. It is replaced by humid air from outside drawn in through vents.

The moist air in our crawlspace caused rust and drips of condensation on the cold-water intake pipe, and our wooden floor joists were so moist that bracket fungi, other fungus, and mold grew on them. Moist air fed them and came into the house from both vents and from below, from ground water and soil. This moist air rises through the first floor and creates a breeding ground both in the crawl space and in the first-floor carpet pads and carpets. Guess what grew? Mold. That mold enjoyed the warm air of the main floor living area, and released spores, thus inviting my body to an allergic response which festered into sinus infections. In a house, much of the air you breathe comes from sources largely unseen and ignored.

After a couple years in the house, we sold some other property and used some of the money to pay a company (and I’ll give them a plug here), Premier Basement Systems out of Spokane, Washington and Post Falls, Idaho. They came to help us. They dug out trenches and installed drainpipes and a sump pump with a battery backup in case the power fails. They lined the entire dirt floor from foundation wall to wall with a white vapor barrier. The light color reflects light so it’s bright down there now, especially after I put in a couple of lights. The reflective, stiff foam insulation installed along the foundation wall has a reflective layer to keep the heat in and the cold out, and also helps brighten the space.

Before they came, I did much of the prep work. Because people don’t like their floors made cold from outside air down in the crawlspace, they put insulation between the floor joists, but over time the moist air infiltrates the insulation and renders it useless. Like a wet sponge, the insulation gets so heavy it starts to fall out, but in the meantime, it creates a great home for mice and other creatures. I removed the horrible insulation that had soaked water for decades, along with mice nests and a couple of carpenter ant nests with thousands of big, black ants happily enjoying the rotting floor joists from 1979.

The new sump pump now gets the bulk of seasonal ground water away from the house, no more flooding. We later put on rain gutters which also helps a huge amount to keep the foundation area dry. We sealed up the vents; it’s called encapsulation. No more moist air coming in at any time of year. Like right now, all that 30-degree humid air is safely kept outside, and warmer air that holds more moisture in other seasons is also blocked.

Our crawl space is now too dry to support molds and fungus, so without the need for chemical treatment, these simply dried up and died. The bugs went away because they didn’t have anything to eat. No need for pest control. Because that insulation habitat is gone, we don’t even have mice. But the best part is, I have not had a severe sinus infection for years, for which I’m thankful. The chimney-affect air is clean. I highly recommend an encapsulated crawl space with a sump pump to help a home not end up sagging under its own weight as it ages.

A house built with good intentions on a solid foundation inadvertently led to a dark and ignored space of rot overrun with fungus, insects, and rodents. But through a transformation there is now a bright, dry, relatively warm, and usable space that even has some storage. But to get there, we needed to challenge conventional wisdom, we needed to learn about encapsulation as a process for buildings, and we needed to trust that in covering vents, having a sump pump, and using rain gutters, these would be proactive practices toward health and wellbeing. We saved our house from sagging under its own weight, and I would never go back to the old space.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m telling you this entire story as a metaphor for spiritual life. Just like today’s biblical stories, we can challenge ourselves to look deeper into our own lives and at things we assume are true, so God can heal us in ways we didn’t even know we needed, often in unseen realms. But like the chimney affect, a transformation of heart and renewing of mind by the Spirit is foundational and shapes a life of love. And a lot of times, the things we need to challenge were taught to us by the church. Doctrines and dogmas and beliefs steep in biblical truth. Truth works, until it doesn’t.

Luke looks at Jesus teaching in his hometown of Nazareth. While we could take it literally at a historic level, like a play-by-play account of what happened, we could also see this biblical narrative as an artistic illustration. The entire story could be a metaphor that points to the life of Jesus like an architect looks to a blueprint. The blueprint of Jesus points us to Christ’s archetypal patterns. These are foundational to life itself and show something deeper than conventional wisdom and things that are assumed to be true. This story can speak to us at those deep, soul-language levels.

It helps us to come alongside the Psalmist who asks and requests, “But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults.” (Psalm 19:12). With this humble stance we acknowledge there may be things in our lives that we don’t pay to attention to, intentionally or not; things so difficult, or painful, or assumed to be true, that the only way to challenge them is through the divine help of God’s saving grace.

“Clear me from hidden faults” is a plea. If we allow these teachings room to work in our lives at deep levels, and if we are open to their unnerving challenges, our experience of faith can grow, and God’s love becomes more real to us in our lives. The Psalmist says, [awe and wonder] of [God Almighty] is pure, enduring forever; the [ways] of [God Almighty] are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (vs. 9-10). As a beekeeper, I know that’s pretty sweet! Honeycomb is amazing! “The drippings” means nothing is wasted.

Jesus speaks to the hometown crowd. He is filled with the Holy Spirit, just come from time alone in the wilderness as his call to ministry found focus through temptation and struggle, fasting, and prayer. His teachings begin to inspire many in the villages around Galilee and his reputation precedes him as he goes back to the place where he grew up, Nazareth.

On Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting in Spokane with my Spiritual Director. Her office is in the Shadle Park area on Spokane’s north side. I grew up on the north side, a little further out, in the Country Homes Boulevard area. After our time together, before the drive back to Sandpoint, I needed to stretch my legs in the last part of the afternoon. I parked the car just around the corner from the house I grew up in, on Ivanhoe Rd. I walked by the old place, no sidewalk so I could walk right on the front lawn, touch the tree roots of the old red maple, say hello to the now, old growth Ponderosa Pine that looks amazing. I could tell the new owners had remodeled the interior of the house, an entire wall was gone, and you could see through to the kitchen. I ended up walking around the neighborhood, did a big loop past the houses where my friends used to live, by the corner where we’d catch the school bus, and it was fun to see things and reminisce, yet it is also very different and most of the people are gone that I once knew, the people who helped me grow up, hired me to mow their lawns, walk their dogs, or collect their mail and newspapers when they were travelling. It was the same only different. A mix of appreciation and grief. The past has its place, and you can’t just plop back in, as Jesus shows us in Nazareth.

Here he is back home after he spends an unknown amount of time away. He serves as worship leader, reads a very important passage from Isaiah that resonates with Jewish belief about God’s faithfulness and deliverance in times of trial.

Jesus is the small-town kid who has made good, amounted to something, and in surprising ways gets peoples hopes up as they are filled with expectations and excitement.

He reads from the scroll,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He goes on with what some call the mission statement of his ministry. This resonates with people, and as their tradition has it, after he reads, he then sits down to teach.

The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

He has their attention. He says,

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Then Luke adds,

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

You’d be amazed too if you thought history was being made right before your very eyes and you got to be part of it in ways that would benefit you and validate everything you think and believe. You were part of the inside crowd, and you assume it’s only going to get better. It’s so great when our self-interest aligns with God’s purpose.

Jesus is one of them and they are so proud. They remember him as a little kid and here he is teaching with such authority, and a great reputation is forming. This story seems to be about good intentions, the love and support of community, the importance of identity and belonging. The grounding and support of a home base. At foundational levels, this archetypal story affirms first half of life development.

These dynamics are helpful and necessary, as far as they go. As the story goes on there is a creative shift. We didn’t read that part, where Jesus says a few more things that point out a struggle involved in breaking out of entrenched and unexamined patterns, of letting go things we cling to, held as strongly as belief, identity, and wounds we use to define us.

Whether we’re victims or heroes, the pressures of life, the rejections, the injustice, the grievances; these can become toxic resentments to us as life goes along and they compound in ways that the consciousness that led to them is not able to solve. We either crumble from the inside or become bitter, defensive, or reactive. When we don’t deal with these pressures, we project our inner negativity onto others and call them the enemy.

Even though second half of life offers tremendous spiritual growth and freedom from ourselves, most people resist this movement. But that is where the rest of the story comes in, the part we don’t read today as the entire, affirming hometown crowd changes and all of them are filled with rage. As a metaphor, this means that everyone needs to deal with this; no one is left out from great love and great suffering that invites spiritual transformation.

As a final thought we should notice one string that connects each of these passages and that has to do with hearing. In Nehemiah the people gather in the square and listen as the book of the law of Moses is read. After the reading there is interpretation, sermons, teachings, to help the people gain insight from what was read. When the people heard the words of law, they wept. But they were encouraged to not weep, but go, and share.

The people hear, the people live their lives, but they also have mercy on others, those who do not have what they do. Mercy is essential to unity. But we are not alone. Humans are not the only creatures on this planet. The Psalmist mentions other realms, as heavens tell the glory of God, the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Wow. Voices, hearing, life shaped by the message. Ears are not necessarily the only tool of perception for this foundational hearing.

May we have courage like the Psalmist to invite God to work in our heart. May we, like Jesus, trust the Spirit who leads us into deeper expressions and experiences of divine love. And in foundational ways, through our living, God is glorified, now, even as forever.

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When does worship begin? Is it when people gather in-person or online Sunday mornings? If so, what is the actual start of the worship service? Is it the prelude, as the pianist shares music and people gather in the pews? That’s a great time, it’s kind of a mix of saying hello to people but also a time to reflect, listen, and prepare our hearts for worship.

Or is it when the light of Christ, the candle is lit, often walked in, a processional from the back of the sanctuary? Is this what invites awareness? Is that what worship is? Awareness? Certainly, the visual of Christ in our midst, the flame with symbolism that links spiritual and material in the glow of divine life; is that the beginning of worship? If so, is it when the light enters the room, or as the worship leader brings it forward, or as the candle is lit? If it gets blown it out, is worship over? Does worship depend on the Christ candle burning?

Maybe worship starts with ringing of a bell, a singing bowl that is less visual and more to do with sound. We hear the tones, we feel the frequencies of vibration and our bodies get tuned in like a child who gets giddy when it’s time to do something, like open presents or have dessert or welcome a friend they’ve been waiting for with anticipation. The bell catches our attention and means our rendezvous with God is here.

But then there’s the silence, the pause, the moment of reflection as the tone of the bell fades off. Silence is more than empty space. Silence is an entity, a living presence that holds all the potential of creation. Silence is a solace, a friend that surrounds us when nothing else helps. Maybe as we welcome Silence, worship begins because spaciousness opens our hearts and minds and sets aside lesser concerns.

Then again, at church on Sunday morning we do have announcements, lots of them, some say not enough, and a verbal welcome to say hello, to extend hospitality and acknowledge both in-person and online worshippers. The verbal introduction time can introduce the context, the theme of the day, like the Second Sunday after Epiphany, a season we celebrate God with us. But maybe the talking is preliminary and not part of worship. Kind of a distraction, really.

Perhaps it’s all the way into the opening prayer before worship begins? Or the opening hymn? Then again, worship could start before we park, maybe even before we arrive at a place, or a time. Our anticipation, the pull, the draw, the desire to desire something deeper in life, to find meaning, to feel spiritual; maybe worship takes place without ceasing, like breath or the beat of our hearts, which leads us back to awareness.

Asking “when does worship begin” is an impossible question to answer. There are many layers, lots of options, countless critiques, but whatever the line of argument, eventually it breaks down and cannot carry the day. Somehow, all these aspects are needed and have a place. Integrating multiple layers, holding meanings that sometimes have paradox, and trusting that God is always in an open stance to receive, share, and inspire through worship, we discover that worship has no beginning, and thankfully, no real end. It doesn’t do you any good to compare, either. That keeps you in your judging mind, one that measures, counts, and is filled with fear.

Reading from 1 Corinthians about different spiritual gifts but all of them are important and held by the one Spirit, and in John the story of the wedding in Cana in Galilee, I’m reminded of a joke.

Did you hear the one about someone who went to the grocery store to buy water? They found the aisle that had all the big jugs of distilled water, drinking water, and even those smaller water bottles. But all that water was wine! There was a sign posted from the management, and it said, “Jesus was here.”

Jesus is here as we read this passage from the Gospel and discover it’s kind of like the beginning of worship. There are many layers, lots of options to explore, and it speaks to people in ways that may really help at one point but break down when things change.

As we listen to these verses with our Christian ears tuned, things stand out, like the very opening, “On the third day there was a wedding.” We remember that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. In scripture, the number three is significant, an indicator that something important is at work that needs to be noticed. John uses this to get our attention, to call us to awareness.

Here we have a wedding, in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. This is a family situation, a community event, a very important time in a culture based on the honor and shame of covenant life as a chosen people. To be invited, like Jesus and the disciples, is prestigious and points to the importance of connection and identity. This is a big deal.

But this wedding has an issue, they didn’t go to the right grocery store. They have plenty of water, but they run out of wine. In that culture, this is a massive disgrace, one the couple may never recover from in the eyes of the community. They have failed and brought shame. Shame is a powerful mark and hard to shake. No wonder the mother of Jesus is concerned and points out that, “They have no wine.”

Jesus responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” In other words, is this really worth getting upset about? What concern is that for us, are we really going to condemn them for this? “My hour has not yet come.” In other words, the world is still stuck in cycles of honor and shame, in the judging mind of dualistic thinking that clings to certain outcomes for the sake of appearance.

“Woman” isn’t something we typically call our mothers. It sort of sounds harsh, judgmental, condemning. Is Jesus being chauvinistic? Controlling? Or is he trying to avoid the responsibility of ministry before it even begins? He is not exempt from the culture he’s immersed in. The cultural intrigue starts to pile up, but this is nothing compared to the religious levels that emerge.

“Six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons” are standing there. Jesus has the servants fill them to the brim with water. We start with a wedding and the cultural implications, now we are at a spiritual level of religious observances, rites, and traditions. Isn’t it thrilling that purification is needed in a shame-based world assumed to be fallen and sinful. Yet there’s only six jars, not the perfect seven. There’s something missing, something these jars are unable to complete.

Then the water is wine, and the management, the chief steward, knows the best. Jesus has done his first sign in John’s gospel, a display of divine power and transformation.

A magical level notices the water becomes wine and Jesus makes it so. How? Because Jesus is the true vine and nature does his bidding. A mythical level knows this to be true because of the power of God. Jesus has authority and reveals his glory. Traditional faith is inspired by sacraments expressed, like baptism fulfilled as cleansing water saves the situation and wine flows like communion as the fullness of relationship is restored and celebrated. The requirements are met. Shame is exchanged as honor takes center stage through the ministry of Christ and Jesus makes it so. This deals with any sense of separation that might exist in our perception of reality.

Modernity, more of a Mental Structure, suggests that “woman” is more than a gender, but a title of completeness. Mother of Jesus, woman, like no other. Scandal is replaced by celebration, and it only gets better and better as the best is saved for last. Progress happens as social justice is done, and good outcomes are shared for generations. Servants are empowered and know more than those in charge. The world is changed because everyone has a place that’s important. There’s equality for all.

Could we read this biblical narrative as a metaphor for how life is? Like first half of life, second half of life? The first half of life, we focus on identity, we learn the rules and try to follow them, we shape a life based on certain patterns as we observe tradition. Life has a shape to it as we’re born, we grow, we peak and flourish, and then gradually fade as age takes its physical toll and there’s no way around that. That’s the bell curve of the first and second half of life. Emergence, increase, plateau, decline.

Yet the scriptures show us another type of growth, spiritual growth. While physical decline is part of life and everyone faces this, spiritual growth is optional. The second half of life doesn’t have to be a bell curve, but a steady incline. But this doesn’t just happen; it requires transformation. It helps to learn the art of letting go.

Notice Jesus isn’t hooked by social conventions, not limited by religious observance. His actions draw us toward a second half of life spirituality. For Jesus it is love that motivates, relationship that defines, completeness and covenant that shape his words and actions. Jesus holds it all in perfect tension. New wine in new wineskins, as second half of life learns what and how to let go of from the first half of life.

Learning spiritual disciplines to help us practice contemplation, we offer ourselves over to a process where life’s meaning goes deeper. Ordinary things take on a new hue, like water into wine. At many levels, this wedding story is amazing. From magical realities to spiritual metaphor, this sign of Jesus is a gift from God. As God’s glory is revealed, may God’s Spirit help us grow in depth of faith and in service, unity, and love.

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These scriptures take us on a journey of kenosis as we move, in terms of theme or dynamic, from high and mighty and potentially detached to low and humble and united. From heavenly beings called to ascribe the Lord glory and strength in Psalm 29, to a dove who brings down the living Presence of the Holy Spirit in Luke, we see thunder and lightning, flames, snapping trees, and shaking wilderness give way to heart-felt perceptions of relational closeness and acceptance as God is well pleased with the Beloved.

Kenosis is a Greek word for emptying, or in terms of following the life Jesus shares, Kenosis involves a path of descent. Kenosis invites holding things loosely, letting go, releasing, and rather than experiencing a diminishment, through this important soul work we enter spaciousness, an opening of the heart, and awareness grows through expansive vision of the miracles of life in the world all around us. Kenosis also depends on trust as one falls into the bottomless abyss of God’s Love.

Baptism reflects this. One is surrounded by water, descends into the depths (dying with Christ) with trust one shall be lifted up (rising with Christ) and breathe anew the breath of life. Luke’s Gospel introduces the adult Jesus and his ministry through baptism, which is infused with the Holy Spirit’s presence and the love of God through relationship.

Most of the world seems intent to invest in social structures based on power, greed, and influence. Competition, with winners and losers, is the name of the game in our society, and in a world of accumulation and materialism people become defensive. The more you have, the more you have to defend, which creates dependency on laws to help legislate human behavior, from personal to international levels. Many people look for these externals to help control others and gain a sense of stability. But externals can only go so far and they do not have the power to change the world.

In baptismal promises we discover the more ancient message of the Church, that we are centered in the grounding reality of divine love. This love involves inner transformation. From within, rules and regulations are put in their proper places and become results rather than mandates, they are indicators of the internal, not enforcers of the external.

As Kenosis happens, descending into the heart, perspectives clear as love takes hold. Baptismal waters wash away the debris of finite thoughts as we die to ourselves, are freed into multiple perspectives, discover a larger trust, and we find new life, centered in Christ. We become new creations.

Along the idea of baptism, I want to share a story that involves water. I went to college in northern Wisconsin and quickly gained an appreciation for the awe, power, and wonder of Lake Superior. On Lake Superior a storm from the northeast can bring waves across hundreds of miles of open water and by the time they reach the south shore they can be over ten, even twenty feet tall. They collide with cliffs made of sandstone, so old they don’t even have fossils, and the power of water carves out what’s called ‘sea caves.’ On smoother shores of sand, the waves pile up onto open beaches along Ojibway tribal lands.

In November those beaches are deserted, except for crazy college students that rush out with kayaks to meet the storms and surf those giant waves.

That’s what I did with a couple friends, Carey and Brett, back in the day. We paddled out into the storm as water and wind raged and the lake had heavy surf. With wet suits and layers of wool, life jackets zipped tight, each paddle stroke took us up and over the giant swells of six-to-ten-foot rollers.

Going into the waves was fun, like a carnival ride at a water park. Our excitement and inexperience brought us out too far given the conditions. When we decided to turn around, when sideways to the waves, I tipped over! I tried to roll the kayak but failed, so I ended up swimming, immersed in this inland sea, holding the bow of my kayak in one hand and my paddle in the other. Right after that, my other friend also tipped, but his boat got caught by the wind and drifted away, so he grabbed the stern of my boat and, together, we started kicking our way toward shore, which was a long way off. Our other friend paddled his boat to chase down the drifting kayak. Thankfully, he was a great paddler and stayed upright in his sea kayak. Eventually we swam to shore, and we’d blown so far off course we had a long walk back as we dragged my boat along the beach.

In the howling rain, switching to snow, the cold gale of November come early in a mighty wind from the northeast. Bobbing out in the middle of it, kicking one’s way to shore as wave after wave simply ignores you like floating debris, one gets a sense of how small we are in the larger picture of the Earth and cosmos and the dynamic forces of nature.

Once we returned to our starting point on shore, we regrouped, learned from our mistakes, and tightened our rotation so we didn’t paddle out as far. Back into the water! Quicker on the turns, we spent the rest of the afternoon making circuits and had a great time surfing some amazing waves in Northern Wisconsin on the Lake the Ojibwa call Gichi-Gami, meaning ‘Great Sea.’

When we were packed up, we stood outside in the snowy wind and looked out at the breaking surf. We knew we’d cut it close that day. We defeated death once again, and with heightened appreciation, life felt sweeter in its intensity. We were more alive than ever!

Like most adventures, they’re only great if you live to tell the tale. Just like the Psalmist, humbled by the LORD. The psalmist talks about visions of God Almighty who chooses to bless the people with peace, a people who know too well life’s precarious nature. Filled with awe and wonder of God with us, we come alongside the Psalmist to proclaim God’s glory, to trust that God’s Spirit still speaks through ongoing and active love, still breathes the world into being, not only in those first moments of creation, but even now, for they are the same moment in God’s eternal presence!

In Luke,

the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.

This is both an introduction to this scene, but more importantly an existential description. The people are filled. They have expectation. All of them are questioning in their hearts.

For one, being filled means you don’t have room for anything else, hardly a stance of humility.

Having expectation reminds us of that saying, Expectations are just resentments waiting to happen because much of the time life doesn’t cooperate with our preconceived, egocentric desires, and our expectations can lead to resentments.

Keeping in mind the path of decent, however, of the importance of Kenosis in Jesus’ ministry, notice how many times Luke uses the word “all” to describe this scene. “All of them are questioning” and “in their hearts” of all places! No one is settled or at peace in their hearts.

John the Baptizer goes on about the one coming using fire and the Holy Spirit, clearing out undesirables and ushering in a golden era for God’s chosen people. This is exactly what those questioning hearts long to hear, a fulfillment of their expectations as God’s thunder rolls over the waters, as God “gives strength to his people!”

But then comes Jesus, who is baptized like everyone else, and afterwards is praying. Cue the thunder! Bring on the shaking wilderness out there in the Jordan! But wait, all we get is a dove, in bodily form!? I’m sure Americans would have at least preferred an eagle. A voice comes from heaven,

Luke doesn’t mention who hears the voice. Is it John, or Jesus, or both, or all the people? Is it audible, heard with ears, or does this voice that comes from heaven register in some other way, and those with calm, spacious hearts can tune in to hear and pick up on it, while others, full of expectations with hearts that are questioning, just don’t?

This voice joins the Holy Spirit in bodily form like a dove to communicate the unique nature of Jesus as Son of God. His path of Kenosis sets a new template that even the followers of John the Baptizer, the greatest Prophet, don’t recognize.

John is a Zealot, son of the high priest but he rejects that status and power, and chooses instead the fasting and harsh, ascetic practices of the Essene Community which lives in the desert wilderness. He fully expects Jesus to not only observe their strict codes, but to take them to the next level of intensity. For the Holy Spirit, the fire John speaks of; to show up and gently settle in the bodily form of a dove? Later on, John sends messengers to ask Jesus,

Are you really the one, or shall we expect another?

It’s no wonder they are questioning in their hearts. Here they think they’ve done a good job preparing. They think they are ready because they know the rules, they follow the law, and they do it better than anyone, even better than the corrupt priestly class of Jerusalem’s privileged elites. These Essenes are ready for that threshing floor to get cleared, to burn that chaff, and gather the wheat.

But God shows up and says Jesus is God’s Son, not in the sense of exclusiveness, but to highlight the unique and totally different angle or tack the ministry of God is heading from that point onward. It is not purity, not ascetics, not exclusion, not judgment which defines the unique character of God’s people only by differentiating from others who are looked down upon. Rather, we hear Jesus described as, “the Beloved.” This seems less an adjective and more a verb. It is love in action that shapes hearts and seeks justice, and not just for some, but as a condition of existence; justice as a thread woven with love into the very fabric of life for all creatures in bodily form. Christ’s Incarnation goes well beyond our expectations.

This is pleasing to God. Jesus, Christ, the new Adam, a fully human one who lives in relationship, with God and all things, through love; this is God’s pride and joy; this is what God’s voice now says over the baptismal waters of new birth as God delights in love and relationship!

Contemplation is experiential faith. Contemplative prayer, largely silent, is probably one of the most accurate spiritual disciplines to help us open our hearts to stay centered in Christ, to hear God’s Spirit-voice whisper to our soul. To enter Silence is different than just being introverted. It is more than choosing quiet. It is a form of kenosis, an intentional letting go, a form of dying that helps us practice dying before we die.

Let’s practice dying and rising with Christ through one minute of silence as we invite God’s peace and love to wash over us. Let’s pour some water into a basin and open our hearts to Loving Presence in Christ.

(pour water, remember, you are marked as Christ’s own, forever, extended silence).

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I don’t set up a Manger Scene with all the characters at first. Each week the crèche figures representing the wise travelers from the east who arrive in Bethlehem to give Jesus some gifts, each week they get a little closer. On Epiphany, they finally arrive in the Manger scene.

Most manger scenes, or crèches, have these astrologers incorporated somehow, but really, they probably were not there, at a manger scene, at Jesus’ birth, for it says, “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.” They were in a house. We also see Herod ordering the slaughter of all children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. So, the family probably stayed in Bethlehem for a while, up to two years. Then the Wise travelers come because they had seen the star, interpreted that light as a sign, and followed it.

What about these three wise guys? Even though our songs say they were kings, nothing in the Bible says they are kings, so even though their gifts are fit for royalty, they are not kings! Probably from Persia, most likely astrologers or astronomers who scanned the skies to look for signs of divine intent. They come to honor Jesus as a new king, a priestly figure with divine connections, and a future that would involve so much.

What they give as they present traditional gifts is meant for royalty.

The Hebrew Scripture book of Isaiah is often Christianized, where Christians look to what they call The Old Testament through the lens of the life of Jesus, in this case regarding the visit of the Three Wise Men from the East giving gifts to young Jesus. But the Hebrew Scriptures share God’s grace in a different context, in Isaiah’s case, this regards the destruction of Jerusalem, and Isaiah anticipates it’s glorious rebuilding. Isaiah is about God’s faithfulness to the people, God’s deliverance even through struggle.

This prophetic text in its specific context gave the people back then tremendous hope and vision in a time when those were lacking, and their circumstances would even contradict hope and vision. We can debate whether or how to link this passage from Isaiah with Christian New Testament stories of Jesus, but rather than get pulled into the depths of scholarly research, let’s simply recognize this morning that there is a specific link in the passages we read, something both Isaiah and Matthew mention in their stories. There are two gifts found in both passages, Isaiah and Matthew. These gifts are gold and frankincense. In Matthew, Myrrh is also added.

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. Gold is amazing. Gold is a precious metal, very valuable, and people tend to link the spiritual significance of this gift to honor Jesus as royalty, a king. Frankincense is a resin from a tree, and it has a connection to worship. It shows, symbolically, the Priestly role of Jesus, even the link of divinity present in this child. Frankincense also has medicinal qualities and helps ease inflammation or the effects of arthritis.

Myrrh, that one more thing which Matthew adds, is another resin derived from trees in the ancient near east and it is used to anoint, especially at the time of death. In that sense, it honors the unique role of Jesus as chosen, but also foreshadows his death. Three gifts, each of them very valuable, all of them customary to the times as something worthy of royalty. No wonder Herod, in his insecurities, becomes irrational and everyone is afraid.

The travelers from east were wealthy and if they carried such items, they were not alone. It is likely they were in a rather large caravan, with guards, servants, and multiple astrologers. That we settle on three kings is absurd, and has more to do with how many types of gifts are mentioned in Matthew. Gold. Frankincense. Myrr. Precious gifts worthy of royal status. It is no wonder that they can secure an audience with King Herod. He is obviously shaken enough by their display and presence that his paranoia is triggered, and like most political systems that defend and justify themselves, we see that state-sponsored, violent tyranny is the result.

As we look at Epiphany, which means, God with us, and celebrate the Incarnation, the holy within creation, the Christ embodied, divinity made flesh, we have this image of people who come to honor Jesus, who open their treasure chests, offer him gifts, and this gets us thinking about our own interactions with Jesus.

How do we engage our spirit with the many ways God is revealed in our lives every day? How does Jesus become real for us? And if Jesus is real to us, then what do we present as gifts to honor the one who shows us the unity of heaven and Earth and how to live without fear? What do you give, what do you lay at the feet of Jesus?

As we come alongside those wise travelers from the east who seek Jesus, as we become explorers of royal divinity and discover what it is that we present in honor of Christ in our lives, we too can recognize this involves a journey, a process, a relational undertaking that needs hints along the way. Rather than stumble in the dark, we do have light.

Did you notice that thread? What is it that the travelers from the east follow? The light of a star. What are the words that encourage the Jewish people even during the destruction of Jerusalem? Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. Even Paul’s letter to the Ephesians tells of God’s grace, hidden mysteries now made known. God creates all things, and God’s wisdom in rich variety might now be made known. These passages echo what John reminds us, that All things came into being through the Word […] and the life was the light of all people.

Light. In life, light does what light does. Light shines. Light illuminates. Light fills. Light exists in relation to everything, and even shadows cannot exist without light. The stronger the light, the deeper the shadow. Even in the darkest dark, a small flicker is all it takes for light to shine.

Maybe this Christmas season can give us the gift of enlightenment. Perhaps the season of Epiphany, that celebrates God with us, can teach us Wisdom to illuminate our soul, heart, and mind in ways that change not only our lives, but change world, the same world Jesus enters.

As we journey from one season to another, as manger scenes are put in boxes and stored away, lets carry with us unseen mysteries made known as we give and receive blessings of awareness. As light shines let’s live alert to Christ at work in the world in everyday life. Let’s present ourselves along with other gifts worthy of divinity, all which honor God in our midst.

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A few nights ago, we celebrated the birth of Jesus. Now, just a few days later and Jesus is a boy, 12 years old. My how time flies! His parents are worried about him, they search for days. They are astonished, distraught when they find him. He is in the temple. The religious leaders of Jerusalem are amazed by this child’s wisdom and understanding, and they recognize what Luke describes earlier as, “the favor of God was upon him.”

Jesus says to his parents,

Why were you searching for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?

Then Luke adds,

But they did not understand what he said to them.

Luke doesn’t say “Jesus asked them,” but that he “said to them.” These are not questions, but statements in question form.

His own parents don’t understand. What he says is more than meets the eye. What he says is like a summary of Psalm 148 and the passage from Colossians 3:12-17. Both of these bring together the micro and the macro and things that seem opposite are linked. Nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed, and everything is included. These passages present visions of unity, proclaim universal connection, and show Love’s Living Presence in all things.

We just went through Christmas. That season is often interpreted through traditional Christianity to say, “it’s only in Jesus.” We, too, often don’t understand Christ’s Incarnation, and we often fail to comprehend the unity of all things through the inherent presence of divinity. But if we do, the rigidity of distinctions between sacred and profane break down and good news is indeed for the whole world.

As Luke writes, this passage is not so much about the story, about a boy separated from his parents and them seeking him out, but about life and existence and love and truth. In this story, Jesus’ parents remind us of ourselves and how well equipped we are in our endless capacities to get things messed up, to confuse, or to miss the point entirely. Jesus tells them there is no need to search for what is inherently given, what’s already there. But we, too, are well schooled to deny what we are inherently given. When someone tells us we are inherently divine, we don’t believe them, and we look to lesser teachings. Sainthood seems reserved for others, most of whom are dead.

Jesus the boy is surrounded by the world’s religious elites, those in the know, the ones who are in charge and have peoples’ respect, the trusted voice of tradition, those whose interpretations carry authoritative weight. Levels of power and prestige are very high. Jesus listens to them. They are the teachers, and he listens. He also asks them questions, as any good student does, of course.

But the next sentence has dissonance, it’s jarring in trajectory. Rather than discuss what he asks them, or what they say as teachers in their response, instead, Luke tells us that,

All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

All who heard him. People are not amazed at what the teachers say, those who have position and prestige. Rather, this boy who has no position, no social status, no clout or formal training; this is the one who amazes all those who listen.

That means Jesus must have asked some tough or intriguing questions, really probes the subtleties that only scholars would pick up on. This implies that Jesus backs up his questions with observations or statements, and because he is a boy these are made with a type of innocence and are received without a hint of threat. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers means they ask him questions, and those are the answers and explanations that catch peoples’ attention and are noteworthy, not those of the teachers.

We just survived Christmas and Traditional Christianity’s quaint explanations of the Reason for the Season. Like those teachers in Jerusalem, most Christian churches are well versed in the teachings, well-schooled in how to answer questions from people who come to them with sincere devotion and faithful intent. Churches declare the truth, biblical truth.

We can be glad Luke flips this on its head as the Gospel reminds us that Christmas is so much more than what we thought it was, far beyond our limited understandings, even from within the Tradition.

When Jesus’ parents notice he’s not with them, they search among the relatives and group of travelers. They returned to Jerusalem to search for him. Luke doesn’t say if it’s just Mary and Joseph that returned, or a smaller group of other relatives with them, or the entire group. To cover the city, the more people to help, the better. Yet maybe some of them didn’t return, they just kept going.

Do we do this? Do we get through requisite expectations of Christmas and just keep on going? Do we assume the boy Jesus is with us and just keep going? Do we take the answers given by easy-church and just keep going? Do we wish Jesus would just behave properly, conform to our assumptions, so we can just keep going?

Mary tries to put Jesus in his place,

Child, why have you treated us like this?
Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.

Talk about loaded sentences.

Child. This is a demeaning category and tries to strip Jesus of all authority.

Treat us. This is ego-justification, an attempt to control and have power by creating a victim status. People can play the victim quite well and it has power to manipulate.

Mary says, Look, which is ironic, because for days and days, they are the ones who couldn’t find what they were looking for.

Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety. This is a qualitative statement which represents the human condition as people live distracted lives focused on lesser things.

Like the Psalmist and Paul in Colossians that seem to link contrasts, so too, Luke toys with the word, father.

Your father and I… this “father” is a human being, a role, a lowercase letter f. Mary says,

Your father and I have searched.

Jesus says,

Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?

Notice the capital letter F for Father. This makes a difference as it proclaims the Divine, God Almighty, Maker of heaven and Earth.

Did you not know is an existential statement as he points out that his own parents are not grounded in their experience, their hearts are not centered on God. What? Mary and Joseph? Really? This is confirmed in the next sentence,

But they did not understand what he said to them.

Anxiety. Confusion. Fear. They get the best of us.

People in the Temple are amazed at his understanding and his answers, but his own parents, wrapped in anxiety, cannot see or hear and they lack understanding throughout this story. It wraps up as the family goes to Nazareth, Mary ponders in her heart, and

The Christmas message declares Christ. In Jesus, Christ takes human form as an archetype. This declares that created things are worthy of God’s Presence, that it’s good to be human, and like the Psalmist proclaims, heaven and Earth are joined together in praises to God. God’s Presence is always present, breathing life and unity into each moment. Humble wisdom reveals spiritual perception, opens us to know in our hearts, as deep truths are revealed through inner experience with the Divine. As it says in Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

This is Christmas as Christ dwells within us and all things. May we come alongside Jesus as we claim unity as holy and beloved chosen ones called to give Love expression in the world. May we live into the humble wisdom of Christmas, now, even as forever.

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Here is what I said:

Every year we gather around the manger scene. Another name for those is crèche. The first crèche was made by St. Francis of Assisi, but that was over 1,000 years after Jesus was born. The baby Jesus is in a manger surrounded by animals.

Every year we read the same scriptures and talk about Jesus’ birth as divine mysteries take on flesh. The Incarnation of Christ. But how well, actually and factually, do we really know the Christmas story? Let’s take a quiz, just a few questions. Let’s test your knowledge of the biblical story of Christmas.

First question, “How did Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem?” Let’s do multiple choice. Raise your hand if you think Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem by camel. Or donkey. Or they walked. Or did Joseph walk while Mary rode a donkey? Or none of these, because we really don’t know?

(Author’s note: lots of people gathered raised their hands for each option, but everyone raised their hand for the Joseph walked/Mary rode the donkey choice.)

Are you ready? The correct answer is, “Who knows?” The Bible does not specify how Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem. Yet if you do a search on the internet with this inquiry, then click on Images, every picture show Mary on a donkey while Joseph walks. But the Bible says nothing.

Maybe that was a trick question. How about this one…Which animals does the Bible say were present at Jesus’ birth? Cows, sheep, goats? Or Cows, donkeys, sheep? Sheep and goats only? Various barn animals? Or none of the above?

(Author’s note: the crowd was getting nervous and only a few hands went up for anything. They were catching on to the trickery.)

Ready? The correct answer is: None of the above. The Bible says nothing about which animals are present at Jesus’ birth. It doesn’t say what type of facility Jesus was born in. It only says he was wrapped in cloth and laid in a manger, which is an animal feeding trough. Everything else is speculation and embellishment.

I’d ask you about the Three Kings of Orient that we tend to sing about, but I think you’ve become suspicious by now. Correct, the Bible has no mention of Kings coming to visit from the Orient, especially when Jesus was a newborn. There is mention that people of wisdom from the east came and presented three types of gifts to a child that may have been two years old by then. Likely a very large caravan, imposing enough to warrant a visit to King Herod, the one who then ordered the slaughter of the innocent; all children in Bethlehem two years and younger.

Symbolism and metaphors often get interpreted as specific details. Facts get lost in the shuffle. The post-truth world in a culture that’s not biblically literate forms traditions which make assumptions. Many people assume that Tradition is correct.

How do we get beyond assumptions? Especially when the birth of Jesus reminds us that all things are unique as creation itself expresses the very Christ who makes it. Jesus’ life proclaims good news for the world because it reminds us of what we’ve forgotten, and who we are, an identity of sacred origin. All things are invited to awaken and recognize inherent holiness grafted into creation, to celebrate Christ embodied from the very beginning.

In tonight’s scriptures, we hear the call for all things to sing God’s praises. Whether its Isaiah talking about endless peace established and upheld with justice and righteousness forever; or the Psalmist’s call for all the Earth to sing a new song, to sing to the Lord, declaring God’s glory and marvelous works among all the peoples. Even “all the trees of the forest sing for joy” as the heavens are glad, and the Earth rejoices; all that fills the sea and everything in the field exult and worship in holy splendor. Titus reminds us that salvation comes to all, as a gift of grace appearing, manifesting the glory of God in Jesus, the Christ.

Then comes Luke, whose gospel shares a story of the birth of Jesus, with echoes of cosmic ripples as eternal joy emanates from a specific place and time. Mary gives birth to her firstborn son, wraps him in scraps of cloth, places him in an animal feeding trough, for there is no room in the inn.

The Christmas story includes good news of great joy, shepherds, an angel, the heavenly army praising God and singing, “Glory!” That’s the basic outline, and many other traditions are thrown into this mix. We now have trees brought indoors around the time of winter solstice, gifts are shared like they were during the Saturn festival, and the commercialized economy booms because we do all those things we think we’re supposed to do.

How do we clear Christmas clutter? How do we simplify our faith when our own assumptions cloud our heart and obscure our mind? How do we live in the present with amazement at divinity revealed? How do we choose what’s positive about our traditions, but hold them loosely?

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet of the 1800’s, encourages us in his poem, “Lead Me By The Star’s Light” as he says,

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, O past, no more be seen!
But Bethlehem star may lead me
To the sight of him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord; thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and always:
Now begin, on Christmas Day.”

(Edge of Enclosure, Suzanne Guthrie, www.edgeofenclosure.org/thenativityabc.html).
Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poem, “Lead Me By The Star’s Light.” 

Something brought you here tonight. Something which resonates deeper than your own thoughts and more compelling than tradition. We come here to get beyond assumptions and to look for the Light that shines in the world and in our hearts. In fragile forms this light emerges; it’s often overlooked or ignored. It’s convenient that way, for if we shun the light and deny our participation in this sacred story, we don’t have to change; we can keep authentic, inner transformation at arm’s length. Or we can invite the light to expand our awareness and claim the depths of immeasurable Love as the Christ is born in our hearts. That way, we come here to learn how to see. We are here for illumination, to receive the gift of God, for Christ comes to Christ’s own.

As we receive the gift of peace beyond understanding, with our hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus our Lord, Merry Christmas to you.

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