​Luke 12:13-21  -  What is the purpose of life? It is the searching question asked by the writer of Ecclesiastes (our Old Testament reading for today). Where do we find our meaning? 

A few years ago, I heard that a person I went to school with took his own life. The story behind his suicide was tragic.  On leaving school, he had set his sights on becoming financially wealthy. His whole life had been focused on building up his financial wealth so that he could retire early and live the good life.  And by all accounts he was actually very successful. By his 30’s he had more money than most people would have over a life-time.  But then something when wrong. It was around 2008, and within a very short period of time, with the financial crash he lost almost all of his money.  The shock of it was too much to bare. He could not conceive of his life apart from the abundance of his accumulated wealth. His whole life purpose up to that point had crumbled away into nothingness. With his dream and his sense of purpose completely crushed, he took his own life. What is the meaning of life? And how much money does one need to live a life of meaning? 

Our passage today opens with a man asking Jesus to settle a family dispute over inheritance. It reminds us of the saying ‘where there is a will, there is a family feud’, or as expressed in an African proverb, ‘when a father dies, brothers become enemies’. Sayings like this are sad commentary on how money, inheritance and greed can destroy relationships.  Jesus refuses to play the role of arbitrator. Instead, he turns the question into a deeper teaching about greed, which gets to the heart of most financial dispute. 

And so Jesus tells a parable about a wealthy landowner whose fields yield a plentiful harvest. So plentiful, in fact, that the man has nowhere to store it all. His solution? Build bigger barns. Store up more. Settle into a life of comfort: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

But then comes the rude awakening: in vere 20 we read the Voice of the Divine:
“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared — whose will they be?”

Jesus ends with the moral: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Two Sundays ago Wendy and I went to the All Souls Pride Service. I realise that not everyone would hold the same views as me on LGBT+ issues and I am not hereby expecting you to change your mind.  Outside the service, across the road was a group of street preachers with a sound system. And throughout the service, the group of preachers took turns condemning what they spoke of as immorality. They also played loud songs and hymns in between trying to disrupt the service. Inside the church, those who were leading kept reminding us that our love needs to extend even to the street preachers outside who were doing everything in their power to disturb and disrupt the service. 

After reading this parable of Jesus, I find it interesting that street preachers often condemn particularly homosexuality, but I don’t think I have heard a street preacher condemning greed (despite the fact that the sin of greed is spoken of repeatedly in the New Testament). I have never heard of a street preachers setting up their sound-systems trying to interrupt major investment coroporations or the gatherings of the super wealthy.  

The parable itself is quite an arresting parable… especially in a culture in which to have lots of money and stored up wealth in barns was interpreted in Jesus day as a sign of God’s blessing.  In this parable Jesus clearly sees greed and the hoarding of money as a failing and a short coming. The word traditionally used in Christian circles is sin? (And in the New Testament that is exactly what the word sin means – simply means shortcoming. The Greek word ‘harmatia’ refers to an arrow that falls short of it’s target.) Why is it that many Christians today are very quick to identify homosexuality as a sin, and yet do not follow the example of Jesus is calling greed a sin?  Isn’t that interesting? Why is that? Is it possible that in our culture a certain level of greed is simply accepted as normal. (And in talking of sin I should add that I personally don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin – that would be my personal belief that I have held for the last +-20 years).

The attitude of the man in the parable in fact summarises the great capitalist aspiration of most western people.  We are schooled by our culture in the belief that our greatest happiness in life will come when we have stored up enough grain in our storehouses so that we too can relax, eat, drink and be merry in a long and extended retirement.  This parable deeply challenges our cultural values and assumptions...

In recent years it seems that there is a growing number of voices beginning to question our current value system that places the accumulation of money as the highest value in life, voices that are beginning in small ways to echo the sentiment of Jesus when he reminds us in this passage that Life does not consist in the abundance of our money or possessions’.  Some of those voices that are questioning our current economic value system approach it from an ecological angle recognizing that our current economic model of endless growth accumulation and consumption are not sustainable – destroying the very basis not just of life – our economic system in destroying the earth is destroying the goose that lays the golden egg.  

But in recent years, its seems more and more people are also beginning to realise that financial wealth is not the only or the defining measure of what it means to lead a rich and a full life.  Wendy was listening to a podcast with Dr. Chatterjee, a doctor from England who no longer practices in medicine but who has started a podcast to help people explore what health and wellness means in a wider more holistic sense. He interviewed an author who called Sohil Bloom who describes 5 dimensions of true wealth, only one of which is financial: to be truly wealthy he suggests you need a balance of the following: Time Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth, Physical Wealth, and Financial Wealth.  He suggests for example that you can have all the money in the world, but if you do not have enough time, then you are in fact not wealthy at all. 

By the same token if you work yourself to death, destroying your health in order to have a large bank account how wealthy are you really. 

Again, if you sacrifice your mental health and your social connections and family relationships in the pursuit of financial wealth, then how rich are you really? 

Robin Sharma is another author who expresses very similar ideas in a book he wrote called: The Wealth Money Can’t Buy.  

He expands the idea of other kinds of wealth to 8 categories, only one of which is financial. 

He speaks of Spiritual Wealth, the wealth of an inner life of connection to Spirit, and inner life that is alive and growing with deeper self-understanding and deeper connection to a greater wisdom. 

He speaks of the wealth of Physicial Health and vitality, the wealth of having a Career or a Craft that is meaningful, The richness or wealth or family and social connections, the wealth of what he calls a circle of genius, having people around you that inspire you to grow, Also what he calls Adventure Wealth, expanding one’s horizons through rich and meaningful experiences, meeting new people, having rich and interesting conversations, reading rich and interesting books. He also speaks of Service Wealth,  living for something greater than yourself, helping others, inspiring others, and finding fulfilment in giving back.   And the 8th kind of wealth is financial wealth. 

It is only one spoke on the wheel of a truly rich and meaningful life and the truth is that the other seven spokes of the wheel of a truly rich and meaningful life do not depend huge quantities of excess financial wealth. 

What neither Robin Sharma, nor Sohil Bloom mention is the wealth or the richness of generosity… although perhaps it is implied. 

And this seems to be the point of Jesus in this parable. The man in the parable has stored up his wealth in building bigger barns, but he has neither been rich towards God nor to his neighbours, remembering that for Jesus the life of faith includes three dimensions, Love for God, Love of Neighbour (which includes the stranger) and love and care for self. 

The judgement of the parable is that he has been rich in the abundance of his possessions, but he has not been rich and generous in heart and spirit.  He has thought only about himself and his own comfort and thus he has lived with a closed heart.  He has robbed himself of the joy that comes from giving.  He has closed himself off to the flow of God’s Spirit of Love and generosity. 

The question we might ask ourselves is where is the good news in all of this?  In the Buddhist tradition, greed is spoken of as one of the three fundamental poisons.  Greed poisons our hearts, it poisons our relationships, it poisons the earth, it fuels wars between countries.  The good news however is generosity itself.  If greed is the poison, generosity is the anti-dote.  Behind the warning against greed, Jesus is inviting us to the richness of spirit that comes through generosity. 

I end with two quotes on generosity that capture some very important dimensions of our passage today: 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.  Winston Churchill

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. - Albert Pike

Finding Our Centre - Luke 10:38–42

Today’s Gospel reading presents us with a simple domestic scene, a visit to the home of two sisters, Martha and Mary which includes a small domestic squabble. But as is often the case in Luke’s Gospel, what seems ordinary is charged with deep theological meaning.

Luke 10:38–42 may be short in length, but it opens a profound window into Jesus’ vision of discipleship, and it speaks directly to our anxious, multitasking world. To appreciate the richness of this story, we must locate it in the broader flow of Luke’s Gospel and be attentive to some key themes in Luke’s Gospel.

Looking at the context in Luke’s Gospel, this encounter takes place while Jesus is “on the way” to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51 & 10:38). That phrase is not just geographical, it is also theological. From Luke 9:51 onward, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem, where he will face the cross. Everything that happens on this journey is shaped by this looming confrontation with power, suffering, and salvation. And our passage today opens with the words, “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way...”

Luke’s narrative carefully choreographs the stories of what Jesus does and says along the way to teach his readers the values of the kingdom. Just before this passage, Jesus rejects the way of retaliation and vengeance when he and his disciples are refused hospitality from a Samaritan village, next Jesus sends out the seventy two, then he teaches the parable of the Good Samaritan, and now visits the home of Martha and Mary.

These  scenes are not random. They are offering a full picture of the life of discipleship:
- A Turning from Vengeance and Retaliation (moving on from the Samaritan village),
- The call to Mission (the sending out of the Seventy Two),
- The call to Service and Compassion (the parable of the Good Samaritan), and now..
-The call to Contemplation and Prayerful Attentiveness  (Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet).

As we enter the story, in the home, we find two sisters: Martha, active, responsible, burdened by many tasks.  Mary, seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to his word.

Martha is not a villain. She is doing what would be expected of a host, particularly a woman in that culture, welcoming, preparing food, ensuring hospitality. In fact, the Greek word used for her “tasks” is diakonia, often translated as “service” or “ministry”, the word a word that elsewhere in the New Testament is viewed positively and forms the root for the word Deacon. Luke is not rejecting service.

But what is being critiqued is distraction. Martha is ‘pulled away’, or ‘pulled apart’ by many things. That’s what the Greek implies. And it leads to inner frustration, anger and judgement that ends up putting her in judgemental opposition not just towards her sister Mary, but also pitted  against Jesus himself: “Lord don’t you care! Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself – she is angry and frustrated with Jesus for not caring -  Tell her to help me!” Jesus however doesn’t get caught up in her vortex of busy, frustrated angry energy.  Instead he replies, in what appears to be quite a relaxed and laid back kind of way: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her”..

It is important to note that Jesus does not scold her for serving, but for being anxious and troubled about “many things,” when only “one thing is necessary.”

Those words ‘one thing’ takes us to Psalm 27 where the Psalmist speaks of ‘one thing’ - “One thing I ask from the Holy One,  this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Eternal
    all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Holy One, and to seek him in his temple.”
That “one thing” is what Mary has chosen: to be present, to listen, to be receptive to the sacred Presence of Christ in their midst.  And in doing so we she grounding herself in her own sacred centre.  

Several characteristic themes of Luke’s Gospel converge in this short story:

-Reversal of Expectations: In a culture where men learned from rabbis and women served in the background, Mary’s posture—sitting at Jesus’ feet—is a quiet but radical act. It’s the posture of a disciple. Jesus affirms her in this role. Once again, Luke lifts up those on the margins and challenges social norms. Women are welcomed as disciples.

-The Priority of the Word: Luke emphasises the centrality of hearing and keeping God’s word of grace, and love. In the parable of the sower (Luke 8), the good soil is the one who hears the word and holds it fast. At the Transfiguration, God says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). Mary models this listening heart – just like Mary the Mother of Jesus does early on in the Gospel when she treasures these things in her heart.

-The Importance of Prayer in the life of discipleship:  More than any of the other Gospels Luke shows Jesus life and action punctuated regularly by moments of retreat, of quiet withdrawal and prayerful stillness.  Beneath all our activity, we need a quiet centre where we can remain in touch with the Holy and Eternal One.  It is no accident that in Luke’s Gospel the very next passage is Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. Mary in this passage models this life of prayer and prayerful attentiveness as she sits at the feet of Jesus. 

-Lastly, Freedom from Anxiety:  Luke often warns against the tyranny of worry. In Luke 12, Jesus says, “Do not worry about your life…” Here, Martha’s anxious busyness distracts her from the presence of Christ in her home. The call is to let go of the noise within and attend to the still, steady voice of Christ.

It is tempting to pit Mary and Martha against each other: contemplation verses. action, service verses prayer. But that misses the point. In the flow of Luke 10, these two modes are meant to be held together:

The Seventy are sent out in mission—active, outward, engaged.

The Samaritan shows radical mercy—crossing boundaries, responding with compassion.

Mary sits in silent listening—receptive, inward, open.

Discipleship includes all three dimensions.  This is interesting in the context of the religions of the world, because Hinduism emphasises a similar threefold path. In the Baghavad Gita, one of the most loved of the Hindu Scriptures, three paths to the Divine are outlined. The first in the path of devotion, Bhakti Yoga symbolised by Mary seated in quiet devotion at the feet of Jesus. The second path is the path of wisdom, Jnana Yoga – symbolised by Mary listening intently to the words of Jesus. The third path is the path of practical service, Karma Yoga. This is the path that Martha is more naturally drawn to, but if it is to become holy or sacred service, it needs to be balanced by quiet devotion and wisdom. 

What Luke is highlighting in this scene is this same emphasis on balance, that quiet contemplation grounds and nourishes action. Without the “one thing necessary”, without time at the feet of Jesus, or opening ourselves to the Eternal, the Holy One in our midst, our activity becomes frantic, angry, self-centred, and judgemental even if it is well-intentioned.

And so in closing, this story speaks especially to those of us who are busy, who serve, who care, who do. Like Martha, we may feel the weight of responsibilities pressing in. But Jesus gently invites us to a different way, a way of inner stillness, of intentional listening, of choosing the better part, learning to ground our action and service in a life of prayer and stillness, learning to allow our action and service to flow from our sacred centre.

Mary reminds us that the heart of Christian life is not what we do for God or Jesus, but what we allow God or Jesus to do in us and through us. Before we serve, we must listen. Before we speak, we must receive. Before we act, we must dwell in the presence of the Holy One who calls us by name and who dwells in the depth of our own being, for the Kingdom of God is within you says Jesus if we would only take the time to be still and listen.

In a world full of noise and rush, may we, too, choose the better part, finding our spiritual centre as we sit for a while in the Presence of the One who is our peace, our teacher, and our life.

Amen.

 A Religion of Kindness: Who Is My Neighbour? -  Luke 10:25–37

In our passage today, a religious lawyer stands up to test Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It’s a big question, not just about what happens when we die, but as we see in Jesus response it is about how we live in the here and now. The Greek word often translated as eternal (aiōnios) doesn’t just mean “unending.” It means ‘of the age’, or ‘belonging to the divine realm’, the realm of the Eternal. So when the lawyer asks about “eternal life,” Jesus hears a deeper question:
“How do I live in harmony with the Eternal One? How do I live a life that reflects the Divine reality?”

Jesus answers, as he so often does, with a question of his own. He draws the man back to Torah (the Law): “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” And the man responds with the Shema, the very heartbeat of Jewish faith: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, your neighbour as yourself.”

“You have answered correctly,” says Jesus. “Do this, and you will live.” In other words, you will live now, fully, divinely, in harmony with the life of The Eternal.

But, as many of us might be inclined to do, the lawyer seeks to narrow the field: “And who is my neighbour?” he asks.

That’s when Jesus tells a story, a story that shatters ethnic boundaries, a story that cuts to the heart of the Jewish-Samaritan divide. A story that speaks profoundly to our fractured world today.  To fully feel the weight of this parable, we need to understand the history between Jews and Samaritans.

The Samaritans were descendants of Israelites left behind after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BC. These Northern Israelites had overtime intermarried with foreigners brought into the land by the Assyrians. While still maintaining their Hebrew religious heritage, over time, their religion developed a little differently. They had their own slightly different version of the Torah or Scriptures, they revered Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, and rejected the Jerusalem Temple and priesthood in Judea. 

The differences are interesting when looked at more closely...

The Samaritans, like the Jews accepted the first five books of Moses (the Torah) as authoritative: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. 

And so interestingly both groups revered and shared the same core scriptures. They shared the same  creation stories, the stories of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the covenant at Sinai and the same laws of Moses

However, the Samaritan version of the Torah had some notable differences. The key difference included the central place of worship: The Jewish version of the Torah points to Jerusalem as the chosen place of worship (see Deuteronomy 12). The Samaritan version of the Torah points instead to Mount Gerizim in Samaria as the chosen holy place.  This was a central theological divide, and is why the Samaritan woman at the well could say to Jesus in John 4:20–22:  “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

In addition to these shared scriptures Samaritans however rejected the scrolls of the Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel etc…), and also what iss known as the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Daniel).

The real, fundemental break between Samaritans and Jews came after the Jews returned to Judea and Jerusalem after a 70 year exile in Babylon in 538 BC.  When the Jews came back from exile in Babylon, especially under the influence of Ezra and Nehemiah they came back with a policy quite extreme ethnic purity.  The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell of how Jews were forced to divorce and send away their foreign wives along with children born of those wives. One can only imagine the suffering they endured.   Some scholars say that the books of Ruth and Jonah were written as a direct challenge to this policy of ethnic purity and exclusiveness – showing God’s care towards foeigners.  

It was this policy of ethnic purity from returning Babylonian Jews that led to a decisive break with those who became known as the Samaritans because the Samaritans were regarded as not ethnically pure enough to belong. 

And so with this background, to the Jews of Jesus’ day, the Samaritans were religious deviants and ethnic half-breeds despite the fact that they shared some core religious beliefs and Scriptures and a common religious and genetic heritage. Samaritans, in turn, deeply resented being excluded and looked down upon by the Jews, whom they saw as arrogant and dismissive of their own ancient faith and traditions that also went back to Abraham and Moses.  The Jewish historian Josephus records that, at one point, some Samaritans defiled the Jerusalem Temple by scattering human bones in the sanctuary, a shocking act in Jewish eyes.  This was the kind of tension that existed between the two groups who avoided each others villages and who at times engaged in violent spats between each other.
 
And so when Jesus says in his parable, “A Samaritan came near, and was moved with compassion” he isn't just telling a nice story about kindness. He's breaking open centuries of division, suspicion and hatred.  Imagine saying today in Israel-Palestine:

“A Palestinian child lay bleeding, and it was an Israeli settler or Israeli Soldier who stopped, bound the wounds, and paid for the child’s care…”
Or
“A wounded Israeli soldier was left on the road… and a Palestinian came near, saw him, and was moved with compassion…”

Jesus deliberately chooses the person the lawyer would least expect, or even despise, to be the hero of his story. Why? Why doesn’t Jesus affirm love within his own group? Why does he push the boundary? Why not just love your own?  Because Jesus did not look at humanity through the eyes of nationalism or ethnic identity. He saw all people as members of one human family… He saw all people, Jews, Greeks, Samaritans and Romans as all equally children of God.  His views effectively shattered the notion of his own Jewish people, that they were more special, considering themselves to be God’s favourites as God’s chosen people.  It is clear from Jesus actions and from this story that he no longer believed in the myth of the chosen people, for all people were God’s children, all people were God’s chosen people.  

This was not in fact a new innovation on Jesus part. It is a view shared by Amos one of the earliest prophets.   In words that would have shattered the Jewish/Israel sense of specialness in Amos 9:7 we read “Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
(Amos 9:7)

This verse is astonishingly universalist in tone. Amos is suggesting that Israel’s exodus from Egypt is not a unique saving act. Other nations, too, have experienced divine guidance and liberation. The Philistines and Arameans, even Israel's enemies, are also part of God’s providential care and concern. This would have deeply unsettled any idea that Israel alone was the object of God’s saving action. Amos relativises Israel’s special status, placing it alongside other nations in God’s care.

And so for Jesus in our passage today, he is saying to the Jewish lawyer that to live in harmony with the Eternal One is to expand the heart beyond care and concern for one’s own group. The true test of love, in harmony with the Eternal Heart of God, suggests Jesus in this parable, is how we love and treat those who are unlike us, even those we might consider enemies. This is deeply challenging stuff for all of us. 

And so Jesus locates Eternal Life in the here and the now - precisely in the radical acts of kindness, mercy and compassion that cross ethnic and religious boundaries.

What might this parable say to our world today?  It invites us to see the humanity in the ones we have been taught to fear and despise. To let compassion rise above history’s divisions. To let the grief and the pain of others matter as much as our own.

The Samaritan does not ask who the man is. He simply sees a fellow human being in need.  This does not mean we ignore questions of justice or injustice or collapse moral distinctions or ignore cultural differences. But it does mean there is no path to peace unless we learn to see the other as neighbour and as fellow human being.

Jesus ends the parable not with a grand theological summary, but with a simple command:

“Go and do likewise.”  

Seventy Messengers of Peace - Luke 10:1–11, 16–20

Last week in the Gospel reading from Luke 9, we found ourselves with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. It’s a turning point in Luke’s narrative, as Jesus “sets his face” toward Jerusalem. The tone of the narrative shifts. From this point onward in Luke’s Gospel there is an urgency and a resolve in Jesus. But as we saw last week there is also misunderstanding.

As Jesus and his followers pass through a Samaritan village, they are refused hospitality. And James and John—perhaps feeling personally offended, or perhaps righteous in their tribal loyalty—respond with a chilling suggestion:  “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”

Jesus rebukes them. He will have none it. His way will not be the way of violence, retaliation, or coercion.

And that brings us to today’s passage.

If Luke 9 shows us the temptation to destroy what we fear or do not understand, Luke 10 shows us the alternative: the sending out of the seventy (or seventy-two), not to call down fire from heaven, but to be bearers and shareres of the inner Kingdom of the Heart, the Inner Kingdom of Love and Peace… not just peace as social politeness, but peace that comes from a heart and a life rooted in the Eternal where living waters well up with Eternal life and where we are in touch with the peace that passes all understanding. 

This is no small detail. It’s as if Jesus is saying:

“You thought fire and power were the signs of God. But the real revolution, the true sign of God’s kingdom will be people entering homes, sharing food, accepting hospitality, and speaking words of peace.”

As I mentioned last week, we’re living in a time when fire is very much being called down. The fires of war, of fear, of nationalism, of vengeance. We’ve seen cities reduced to rubble, hospitals and schools turned to ash, entire families wiped out in moments—in Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Israel, Iran. The cycle o violence is devastating and seemingly endless. It is violence that flows out of hearts overflowing not with the inner peace of the Divine, but from hearts overflowing with fear, anger, resentment and vengeance. 

And yet, in contrast to the ethnic violent intent of his own disciples James and John, as well as the cycles of violence we see in our own world today, here in this passage we find Jesus sending out disciples two by two, “like lambs among wolves”, to offer the inner Kingdom of peace to all nations – that is the significance of the number 70/72. In the Old Testament this is the number of the totality of the nations. The disciples are to go to all the nations, not to condemn, not to dominate, but to announce that the kingdom of God has come near for indeed it resides in the depth of every human heart waiting to be discovered and brought forth.

In contrast to the desire of James and John to dominate and destroy their perceived enemies in the preceding passage, notice how Jesus sends out the seventy two: No purse. No bag. No sandals. Greet no one on the road.

In other words, they are to go in vulnerability, in trust, with nothing to defend and nothing to prove, while remaining focussed, undistracted from the task before them.

This is radically countercultural. We tend to associate power with being armed, prepared, and in control. But Jesus sends them out disarmed, dependent, and open.  And their message? It’s not “Convert or else.” It’s not “Here’s how to fix your life.” It’s simply: “Peace to this house.”

If that peace is welcomed, it rests there. If not, they are to move on. No manipulation. No forcing. Just peace, the peace of the inner Kingdom of the heart offered freely, and the freedom to walk away without bitterness.

This is mission as mutuality, a sacred encounter between guest and host, where both are changed in the mutual exchange of peace. It is a sharing in communion from the deep inner peace of the soul – the inner kingdom of the heart.

Of course, Jesus acknowledges that not every house will receive peace. Sometimes, the inner door of the heart will stay shut. The openness and welcome will not come from hearts and minds stuck in the ways of the small egoic self.

And in these instances he says:  “Shake the dust from your feet.”

We should not read these words as a curse but rather a gesture of release, a way of saying, “I leave without resentment.” It's a refusal to carry spiritual residue, shame, anger, or rejection, resentment.  How often when we think someone has rejected or slighted us, we chew on it for ages and it seeps into our hearts and into our bones and the anger and resentment begin to rise up within us and we just can’t let it go.  Don’t let this happen to you says Jesus to his disciples. Don’t hang onto the dust of resentment. Don’t let it get a grip on you. Simply shake off the dust from your shoes and move on.  This teaching is echoed in AA spirituality in the phrase: “What other people think of me is none of my business...”  (it’s their business). In other words, shake of the dust and move on. 

And so in the passage, the Kingdom of God comes near, but it is never imposed.

Now, if you’ve read beyond today’s selected verses, you’ll know that in Luke 10:12–15 Jesus speaks some hard words of warning for the towns that do not receive his messengers. 

These harsh-sounding verses, Jesus’ woes to Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, can sound like divine threats. But if we are to be consistent in understanding the way of Jesus they should be read more like laments. They’re not curses but warnings. Jesus is naming the path some are walking down, the path of the ego, a path of resistance to peace, resistance to the vulnerable kingdom he’s offering.

And looking back, Luke’s community would have known and seen those consequences unfold. The violent Jewish revolt of 66 AD, and the crushing Roman response, left cities like Jerusalem in ruins. Towns and villages were destroyed. Thousands were killed or displaced.

In these difficult verses from 12-15, Jesus is not threatening judgment from above, but grieving what happens when individuals and whole societies turns from the ways of peace. And that grief echoes painfully in our own day too. When the peace of God’s inner Kingdom is refused, when cycles of vengeance are chosen, we find ourselves weeping over the consequences.

Lastly, after being sent out in this way, the disciples return amazed. Even the demons submit to them. They’ve seen the power of Jesus message of peace flowing through them.

But Jesus cautions them:  “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but that your names are written in heaven.”

In other words: Don’t measure your worth in your success, your impact, or your status. Your joy is not in power or success, but rather in belonging, in being known, held, and loved by the Source of all life that dwells in the depth of our hearts. 

This is good news for us in a culture obsessed with performance and influence. The deepest joy is not what we do or achieve, but that we are known and loved by God, the Divine Source of Life, that we are in fact children of eternity, that I believe is what the phrase “your names are written in heaven” is pointing to – finding our true identity rooted in the eternal.   

When this happens, then like Jesus says, we will see Satan fall like lightening.  This I believe is symbolic, mythical language that refers to the ego, that false, small self within, the inner voice of separation, accusation, pride, fear, and domination. When we are rooted in our Eternal Inner identify, then we too experience the 

In conclusion our passage today invites us to become bearers and carriers of the inner Kingdom of God’s peace in a world on fire.  And Jesus sends us out as he sent his disciples:  Not with clever arguments or worldly power, but with open hearts and open hands. Not to call down fire, as James and John want to, but to be messengers of peace. In a world that burns with division, vengeance and inhumanity, our challenge and our vocation as followers of Jesus is to carry the cool water of mercy, to be, as Jesus says, lambs amongst wolves, vulnerable messengers of the inner Kingdom of Divine peace.

We might not change the world today. But we might change a conversation. We might ease someone’s burden. We might hold a space for healing.  And when that happens, the kingdom of God has come near.

Calling Down Fire - Luke 9:51–62

This past week has seen more Airstrikes and  Bombings in Gaza as well as in Lebanon, more destruction in Ukraine, as well as bomb attacks in Israel and Iran.  And so it is one of those interesting co-incidences or perhaps tragic ironies that in the Revised Common Lectionary, in the Gospel reading set for this Sunday we read of James and John asking Jesus: 

“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”

Recalling the stories on Elijah in the Old Testament where the prophet calls down fire from heaven on his enemies, James and John ask this not in a war room, but on the dusty road with Jesus, after a Samaritan village has refused them welcome. They want payback, Divine retribution, a holy incineration. And Jesus rebukes them.

Luke 9:51 marks a decisive moment, a turning point in Luke’s Gospel:  “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem. He knows the road ahead leads to confrontation, betrayal, suffering, and death. And so he begins his journey to the Cross.  His purpose however is not to destroy, but to heal; not to dominate, but to embody and to reveal within his own life the divine way of peace.

The refusal of the Samaritan village to welcome Jesus is not surprising. Samaritans and Jews had long-standing hostilities. Mostly they lived in a state of estrangement and tension, avoiding one-another’s areas, but at times the tensions broke out into acts of violence and murder. James and John’s response reveals how easily religious identity can fuse with violence. They had grown up in a culture which looked down upon Samaritans who they had been taught to view as heretics, ethnically impure, and theologically corrupt. In turn, the Samaritans saw the Jerusalem-based Judaism of the south as a later corrupt innovation from returned exiles from Babylon.  James and John assume they are acting righteously in defending Jesus' honour in wanting to call fire down from heaven to destroy the Samaritan village. But Jesus will have none of it.

He is not a Messiah of fire and fury. He is not here to crush enemies, but to love them. And that is a distinctly Lukan theme.

From the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is framed as a bringer of peace:

The angels at his birth sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” (Luke 2:14)

Zechariah speaks of “the tender mercy of our God… to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78–79)

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem later in the Gospel saying, “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace…” (Luke 19:42)

In Luke, Jesus does not only teach peace; he embodies it. He enacts a non-violent revolution calling his followers to a life of radical simplicity, equality, generosity and unwavering love.

That’s why this rebuke of James and John is so important. It is a teaching moment. Jesus is forming his followers not just in doctrine, but in holy Christ-like living. Discipleship in Luke’s Gospel is not so much about being right but in living in harmony with the way of God shown by Jesus. It’s about becoming whole and compassionate as God himself is compassionate as Jesus says earlier in Luke’s Gospel. It’s about resisting the urge to retaliate, to harden, to fire back in vengeance.

This is the way of the Kingdom of God in Luke’s gospel. 

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on a phrase I came across in the writing of Levi Dowling. In his portrayal of Jesus he has Jesus speak not so much of the Kingdom of God, but rather of the Kingdom of the Soul.  Suggesting that the Kingdom of God is an internal, inner reality of the soul, the heart, of the mind and of the spirit.  It struck me deeply.

And so when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom, he is not merely referring to some geopolitical rearrangement or a future afterlife. He is pointing to a presence and a reality at the deepest level of our being—an inner realm where God reigns, not by force, but by love, an inner reality that when discovered radiates outwards to touch and transform the external world

In this story, James and John have not yet entered this Kingdom of the Soul, The Kingdom of God that Jesus says is within them. They are still clinging to the outer world of tribal pride, reactive violence, and religious ego.

The Kingdom of the Soul from which Jesus lives says: Let go of vengeance.  Let go of needing to be right. Let go of the illusion that God is on your side more than anyone else’s.

Our passage suggests that this kingdom grows where healing and forgiveness is chosen over vengeance. It is made visible when we refuse to call down fire, even when it may feel justified.

The passage continues with three interesting and perhaps confusing encounters with would-be disciples who are drawn to Jesus but hesitate when the cost becomes clear.

One wants to follow, but Jesus warns he has no place to lay his head.  Another asks to bury his father first—a reasonable request—but Jesus calls him forward without delay. A third wants to say goodbye to family, but Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom.”

These are hard words. But perhaps they are best understood not as commands, but rather as  invitations to inner freedom. They are intended by Luke as stark and arresting comments to get us the reader to consider where our true commitments lie and the potential cost of what following Jesus might actually mean.  

Following Jesus into the Kingdom of the Soul means loosening our grip on all that keeps us bound—whether comfort, security, grief, guilt, obligation, or fear.

The way of peace that Jesus models in Luke’s Gospel is not comfortable. It requires letting go of identities and attachments that once felt sacred. It means trusting in something deeper, even as we walk a difficult road.

In closing, today, Jesus invites us to become people who refuse to call down fire—even when the world around us seems to demand it.

What does that look like?

Perhaps it may mean speaking the truth in love while also trying to find common ground in a family torn by tension.

It may mean resisting the urge to dehumanise the other side in political debates, or in fact anyone who one may disagree with.

It may mean advocating for justice not with rage, but with reverence and a deep sense of care.

It may mean praying not for our enemies to be defeated, but for their eyes—and ours—to be opened to see a deeper truth and a bigger reality.

The world will always tempt us to burn bridges, to scorch the earth, to believe that some lives are worth more than others.

But Jesus shows us another way. He walks to Jerusalem not to bring destruction, but to bear it in his own body on the cross—absorbing the worst of human violence and answering it in return with an unwavering love. And how can he do this? Because he has awakened to a deeper Kingdom, a Kingdom of the Soul where we discover that life is eternal and death does not truly exist. What we call death is but a moment of transition and transformation into a new and greater existence. And living in the freedom of this space, Jesus is able to give his life away in Love.  And his invitation is that we too might discover this Kingdom of the Soul for ourselves and to begin to live in the freedom and love that is brings.

I can’t say that I live fully in that space myself.  But I think I see glimpses of it and it urges me to a place of deeper trust, deeper wisdom, and deeper love. Amen.

​The Love that Restores - Luke 8:26–39 

This morning we hear one of the more haunting and mysterious stories in the Gospels, but as with many of the stories in Mark’s Gospel we need to look beneath the literal to explore the symbolic value of the story: Jesus steps out of a boat, into a foreign land, the country of the Gerasenes. It is a place on the “other side,” both literally and symbolically. This is Gentile territory, Roman territory, empire territory. And no sooner has Jesus arrived than he is met by a man in torment.

This man is naked. He lives not in a house, but among the tombs, the place of the dead. He is unclean, chained, howling, torn apart from himself and his community. Luke tells us he has been this way for a long time. When Jesus asks him his name, he replies: “Legion”, “for we are many.”

The first thing to note is that “Legion” is a loaded word. A Roman legion was a military unit of several thousand armed soldiers, the very symbol of imperial occupation and power. So here is a man, in a Roman-occupied land, whose very self has been occupied. And when Jesus heals him, the demons — the “Legion” — are cast into a herd of pigs. The pigs run into the lake and drown. The local economy takes a hit. And the people, instead of rejoicing, are terrified. They ask Jesus to leave.

It’s a strange story. But under the surface, it is full of wisdom for our time — and full of hope for our hearts.

Some Biblical scholars suggest that when Luke uses the word Legion, it’s no accident. It’s a political word. Luke wants us to hear Roman boots marching through the text. 

Judith Jones makes some very interesting observations about the story of the Gerasene demoniac, especially when we remember that Luke’s Gospel was probably written around 80–90 AD.

She notes that when the man confronts Jesus, Luke uses a Greek verb that he also uses elsewhere to describe armies meeting in battle (Luke 14:31). When the demon “seizes” the man, Luke uses a word that appears elsewhere in Acts when Christians are arrested and brought to trial (see Acts 6:12 and 19:29). In addition, the words Luke uses for chains, binding, and guarding are the same as those he later uses in Acts to describe how the disciples are imprisoned. In other words, the language Luke chooses here paints a vivid picture of what it feels like to live under the control of a brutal occupying power.

There’s also a further disturbing historical backdrop to this story. The region of the Gerasenes was the site of a terrible massacre. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, around the year 68 CE, during the Jewish revolt, the Roman general Vespasian sent his soldiers to recapture the city of Gerasa. They killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city, and then attacked villages throughout the area. Many of the people buried in the Gerasene tombs would have been victims of this Roman violence.

Jones also points out a striking symbolic detail: one of the emblems of the Tenth Roman Legion (Legio X Fretensis) was a pig. This was the same legion that helped destroy Jerusalem, led the reconquest of Palestine, and was later stationed in Jerusalem. So when the demons in the story name themselves “Legion” and then enter a herd of pigs, it would have felt like a powerful image to people in that region — it’s message clear – that the way and the spirit of Jesus comes to cast out the systems of domination and to create a different kind of society. 

And so some scholars suggest that the man’s suffering isn’t just personal, it’s symbolic of what happens when people are crushed under systems of power. When their identity is stripped. When they are robbed of voice and dignity. This man becomes a symbol of what occupation does to the soul, whether it’s Roman military occupation in the first century, or military occupation in the 21st century, or the soul-numbing forces of meaningless secular consumerism, systemic racism, war and poverty.

And yet in the story, Jesus does not turn away from the demon possessed man who comes to meet him as many of us would be inclined to do today. He steps ashore. He sees the man and asks his name. And in that moment, Jesus does what the forces of empire never does: he seeks to restore the human being. Not control him. Not manage him. Not exile him. But heal him.

In the story this healing has consequences. The demons are sent into pigs, unclean animals to Jewish ears, but also valuable assets in Gentile commerce. And when the pigs drown, the town suffers economic loss. David D. M. King, a Lukan scholar, draws our attention to this. He says that throughout Luke’s Gospel, the message of Jesus consistently challenges and disrupts economic systems, not to punish people, but to declare that people are more important than profit.

In today’s passage, the healing of a human being comes at a cost — and the town doesn’t want to pay it. They ask Jesus to leave. I wonder if that’s still true today? Healing, whether of people, communities, or the planet often requires us to let go of what we’ve grown comfortable with. And it can feel costly. But the story of Jesus healing this fragmented deranged man tells us that the value of a human life is greater than any system’s bottom line.

Now let’s look at this story not just politically, but psychologically too. In the field of Voice Dialogue Therapy, we learn that every one of us has a crowd of inner voices, parts of ourselves that speak with different needs, different wounds, different energies. It is why often we can feel divided within ourselves, feeling ourselves being pulled in more than one direction. Some of our inner voices we embrace, the helper, the achiever, the good one. Other voices we exile or hide — anger, grief, fear, shame. And like the man in the story, those exiled voices don’t just disappear. They cry out from the tombs of our subconscious. They may sabotage us, at times possess us and overwhelm us, not because they are evil, but because they have been hidden, denied and left unacknowledged.

When Jesus says, “What is your name?” he is doing what healing always begins with: naming,  facing, listening and integrating.

The man’s name is Legion, but that’s not who he really is. That’s the crowd of forces that have swallowed his true self. After the healing, we see him again: clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He is himself again.

The demons in this story are not just moral failings. They are what happens when a soul is disconnected, from itself, from others, from love. And that disconnection, left untreated, can become destructive, to self, to others and to society. But the work of Jesus, and perhaps our work too, is to reconnect, to help reweave the torn fabric of the human soul. 

And so the story ends on a beautiful note. The man, now healed, begs to go with Jesus. But Jesus sends him back home reconnecting him with his own community -  “Return and tell how much God has done for you.”  

Writing on this passage in 2019 Judith Jones asks - “How many people in our world are haunted by a traumatic past and tortured by memories? How many live unsheltered and inadequately clothed because of social and economic forces that they cannot overcome, no matter how hard they struggle? How many are imprisoned, regarded as barely human, excluded, cast out? How many are enslaved by addictions no longer knowing where the addiction ends, and their own selves begin? Where do the governing authorities separate people from their families, denying them the opportunity to seek better lives? Where do occupying armies still brutalize entire communities and hold them captive to fear?”

In closing, the story of the Gerasene demoniac is not just about demons. It’s about the many ways we become divided and broken, by systems, by trauma, by the voices within. It’s about the courage it takes to face what we’ve hidden. And it’s about the sacred power of presence, the healing that comes when someone sees us, names our truth, and calls us back to ourselves. It is about the reminder that the Way of Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power whether internal or external, spiritual, social or political that prevents people from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image.  

But, as Judith Jones writes, like the townsfolk in the story, many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly. 

Across the 4 Gospels, Jesus is recorded as using a number of different titles to refer to God, including: The Great King, my God and your God, The One who sent me, The Most High, Lord of Heaven and Earth, The Lord, The Vinegrower, The Lord of the Harvest, The One Who is Good. And today, on this Father’s Day, I invite us to pause and reflect on the most loving and intimate word that Jesus used to refer to God, a word that speaks to the heart of love, trust, and relationship. That word is Abba.

We find Abba in a few key places in Scripture. One is in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before Jesus is arrested. In Mark 14:36, he prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you; take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.” It’s also found in Paul’s letters (in Romans 8 and Galatians 4) where Paul tells us that the Spirit within us cries out Abba, Father as a sign of our deep connection with the Divine.

But what does Abba mean?

In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Abba was the word young children used for their father. It’s close in feeling to Papa or Dada, not childish, but deeply tender. Over time, adults also used it to address their fathers with love and respect. It held both intimacy and reverence. So when Jesus called God Abba, he was not using a distant, formal word. He was speaking as a child might speak to someone they trust completely, someone who knows them fully and loves them unconditionally.

In many traditions, God has been seen as all-powerful, distant, or even fearsome. But Abba invites a different relationship, one rooted in nearness, vulnerability, and love.

The word Abba also represents the first sounds that a baby makes.  There is something primal or primordial about the sound… pointing us to the sense that God as Abba is the primordial reality or primordial source of all existence, the intimate source and origin of every soul, the nameless one within all names. 

And so the title Abba  doesn’t erase the mystery of the Divine but it tells us that beyond all mystery is relationship. We are not meant to approach life alone. We are invited to trust, to lean into something greater, something kind, something that knows our name.

And perhaps this word, Abba, can also help us heal some of the images of fatherhood that have been distorted by human failing. Not everyone has had a father they could trust. But the word Abba, as Jesus uses it, invites us to imagine what true fathering might be not about power or control, but about compassion, guidance, and presence.

For us today, whether we believe in a personal God or understand the Divine in broader terms, Abba can be a symbol, or a a doorway into relationship. It reminds us that the spiritual life is not a rulebook or a ladder, but a living connection to the sacred heart of life itself.

And so today, as we remember and honour those who have fathered us, in body or in spirit, may we also open our hearts to the Abba presence,  that deep well of love that holds us, guides us, and calls each of us beloved.

Amen.

​Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

All ancient cultures have myths and legends that came about to explain certain things about the world. 

You can see it at the Giants Causeway. When my brother and sister-in-law came to visit us in October 2018 we went with them to see the Giants Causeway and learnt 2 explanations about the origin of the Giants Causeway. 

The scientific version: Around 50 to 60 million years ago, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity. During that time highly fluid molten basalt came up through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled, if left pillar-like structures.

Then there is the mythic or folk explanation: in which the causeway is said to be the remains of a great bridge created by a giant Finn Mcool that stretched from Ireland to Scotland when he was challenged to a fight by the Scottish Giant Bennadonner.  As with many ancient myths and legends, there is embedded within it a deeper reflection and commentary on life: a reflection on both the ancient connection between Scotland and Ireland, but also something of the ancient rivalry that has existed as well. 

In the Bible, you see a parallel phenomenon, especially in some of the old Testament stories. For example in the story of the Tower of Babel, you can almost hear the voice of a child asking a grandparent: “Why do different people speak different languages?”

And in response we hear an attentive grand-parent begin to tell the story of the tower of Babel trying to put into words something that would satisfy the child#s curiosity while teaching some wide life lessons. .  The story itself is what we would call a myth or a legend. On the surface of the story, it is not historically true, but when you begin to explore something of the inner meaning of the story, one discovers that there is a hidden wisdom in the story... a little bit like the parables of Jesus. 

The parables of Jesus are fictional stories. None of them are historically true, but as parables they contain a wisdom that invites the listener to think more deeply about the nature of the Kingdom of God, which is the theme of most of Jesus parables. 

Marcus Borg, a contemporary Biblical scholar who died about 10 years ago tells the story of a Native American Indian story-teller. Whenever he would tell his tribes creation story or creation myth, he would begin with the words: “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”. 

When one comes to the story of the Tower of Babel, I believe that it would be appropriate to preface it with the same words:  “I don’t know if it happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true”.  In other words, I don’t believe that this story is historically true, but if we have ears to hear, we will hear a wisdom and a spiritual truth embedded within it.  Rob Bell puts it another way. A story like this is true not because it happened but because it happens. It is reflective of our human experience. 

In the story itself, we read that the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. The plain of Shinar is in fact a reference to Babylonia, and thus the origin of this story is probably again the time of the Jewish exile in Babylonia.  Having settled in Shinar or Babylonia, we read that the people learnt how to make bricks and began to build themselves a city.  Next they desired to build a tower that would reach towards the heavens, because we read they wanted to make a name for themselves. 

The story continues saying that that the Lord caught wind of their plans and so came down to see what they were up to and was clearly rather disturbed by it.  Maybe if the people built a tower to the heavens, they might try and take heaven by force and usurp the power of God himself. This is implied in verse 6 where the God voice suggests that nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.   And so in the story, God decides to intervene before it is too late, confusing their language and scattering them all over the earth.  

The actual tower of Babel in the story is probably a reference to the Ziguarats or pyramids of the Babylonian empire.  The word Babel is therefore a play on words. On the one hand it carrys overtones of the word Babylon but also carries overtones of the Hebrew word Balel which means “to be confused”.  For the Hebrews, listening to the Babylonian language it would have been a little bit like saying “It’s all Greek to me”, its all Babel or Balel to me. 

At one level, the story of the Tower of Babel reveals something of the Jewish prejudice against the Babylonians, and perhaps that is understandable when it was the Babylonians who had invaded Jerusalem and then taken them off into exile. Underlying this story is the accusation that the Babylonians with their impressive Ziggaurats are in fact a people in rebellion towards God. 

But if one reads beneath the prejudice, there is a commentary on human beings as a whole. We all in our own way want to make a name for ourselves. Sometimes that is not a bad thing, but often the rush of pride goes to our heads, we begin to think we are God, in the sense of being all-powerful and in the process our pride brings division.  The message of Jesus is in fact that we can become like God... we can share in God’s nature as we grow in love, humility, service. But many human beings are not interested in becoming like God in that way... for many human beings they want to become God by seizing power, through dominance and control and not through humble love and service.  The moral of the story is that humanity’s pride and tendency towards domination and control leads to a division between people, a fragmentation between communities.  Communities and peoples are no longer able to live in harmony with one-another. 

And perhaps that is where we switch over and begin to reflect on our other passage today, the passage from Acts where we read of the Story of Pentecost.  Did the Pentecost story happen exactly like that “tongues of fire”, a violent wind, people speaking in different languages and tongues?  I cant be sure? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. 

But at the very least I would repeat the words of the Native American Story teller. I don’t know if the story happened exactly like this, but I know this story is true.  In other words, in the symbolism of the story there is a spiritual truth for us if we are open to hearing it. 

And so what, we might ask, is the truth that the Pentecost story seeking to communicate? 

For a long time, theologians have suggested that in the Pentecost story what we see happening is a reversal of the Tower of Babel story. 

In the Tower of Babel story, the arrogance and the pride of humanity has brought to division to the world and division between people. People are unable to communicate with one-another and  are scattered over the earth. But in the Pentecost Story you have a movement in the opposite direction. People from all over the known world have come together in Jerusalem, and through the gift of the Spirit the former divisions caused by language are overcome.  The apostles, those who have been anointed with the gift of the Spirit of God, are able to communicate across the language barrier or divide as they begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to do. 

The message of the two stories when read together I believe is this: Human Sin, pride, arrogance, unbridled ambition and domination brings division, but the Spirit of God which is also described in other passages in the book of Acts as the Spirit of Jesus, heals divisions and brings people together. Sin divides, but love unites. 

When people truly begin to be moved by the Spirit of Jesus... when people begin to speak the language of Christ’s self-emptying love, the divisions of this world begin to heal.  But the more we act out of distorted, unbalanced self-interest, the more the world begins to fragment and become divided.  But when people are moved by the spirit of Christ’s self-emptying love, putting others needs on a par with our own, then we become God’s partners in the undoing of the story tower of Babel story.

In Ephesians Paul speaks of the division between Jews and Gentiles (in other words ‘the nations’ – with most ancient Jews seeing themselves as God’s chosen people, superior to the Nations and in opposition to the nations who were their enemies because of the many times they had been a conquered by various neighbouring empires. But in Ephesians chapter 2 Paul says that Christ himself has now become our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility in his own body on the cross. His purpose -  to make a new humanity out of the two thus making peace and to reconcile them through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. 

I have always wondered how the cross of Jesus can heal our divisions. What exactly does it mean?  The more I have reflected on it, the more I have come to believe that the cross heals our divisions by teaching us the way of self-emptying love. 

On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit of God which is none other than the Spirit of the crucified Christ, that teaches us to speak the language of Christ-like love.   The Pentecost story inspires us to believe that the healing of this world is possible. The story of the Tower of Babel can be reversed, but it is costly (as the cross of Christ shows us), and will only come when people’s lives are touched and moved by the same spirit of self-emptying love that was at work in Jesus. 

The Greater Consciousness – John 17:20-26; Ephesians 4:1-13

Recently Wendy and I have been catching up on the BBC documentaries in which groups of celebrities go on pilgrimage through Wales, Ireland/Scotland, and through the Swiss Alps. 

For those who haven’t seen these, one gets a privileged insight into the spiritual journey’s of different people, from different faiths, and some of no faith who either consider themselves agnostic or atheist. 

One of the questions that pilgrims often battle with is the question of “Is there a God or isn’t there a God?”. What interests me though is that for most people this question is framed around a conception of God as a separate Personality located outside of themselves somewhere else in the universe, imagining God to be like an invisible super-sized human being.  God is over there and I am over here and God is much bigger than me.  Most often this understanding of God is spoken of as the ‘Man Above’ of ‘the Big Man in the Sky who looks over us’. 

While in some places in Scripture, there are highly personified and anthropomorphised images of God that give this impression, there are also many other far more sophisticated notions of God?  What if this notion of God as a supersized Man in the Sky is an oversimplification of who or what God really is? 

I was having a conversation with someone recently who was expressing their deep struggles with the notion of God. Again the notion of God that this person was struggling with was perhaps a simplified Sunday School notion of God: God as a separate person located somewhere else in the universe who controlled all the events on the earth from a distance, sometimes seeming to show up, but most of the time seemingly silent and missing in action.  This person said the they weren’t sure if they could believe in such a God?  But then went on to say that if God was spoken of in different terms, perhaps as the Greater Consciousness in which we all participate and which in fact dwells within each and every person, then that was a conception of God that could make more sense to them.  But the person was worried that this wasn’t what he had been taught growing up as a ‘Christian’ understanding of God and so had always been nervous to raise the question with previous ministers. 

But this view of God as the Greater Consciousness, Higher Wisdom or Greater Intelligence is actually one that I believe resonates very deeply with some important parts of the Biblical Tradition.  It is in fact a view of the Divine that makes more sense to me. 

It is a view that very much connects with our passage today:  In it Jesus speaks in very mysterious ways about himself and about God.  He speaks of God being in him, and he being in God as well as the possibility that we too can share in this experience of God and Jesus being in us and us being in God and in Christ? “...As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…” John 17:21

This is language that is hard to make sense of in terms of our simplistic nations of God as being a  separate living outside of us somewhere else.  How can two or even three separate objects or beings be inside each other at the same time?  How can Christ be in God and God in Christ at the same time…not to mention us being in them and they being in us? 

But if God is the Greater Consciousness, the High Wisdom or Greater Intelligence, then this language begins to make more sense - describing Christ as being in the Greater Consciousness and simultaneously the Greater Consciousness being in Christ. 

And what if we are all expressions of this Greater Consciousness? What if all beings participate in the Greater Consciousness and the Greater Consciousness lives in the depths of all beings?

The language of John’s Gospel from beginning to end supports this conception of God or the Divine.  

The opening of John’s Gospel introduces the Divine Logos—often translated as the Word—that was with God in the beginning and was God. In ancient Greek philosophy, particularly in the thought of the Stoics and later thinkers like Philo of Alexandria, the Logos was understood as the rational principle or divine reason that permeates and orders the cosmos—a kind of intelligent blueprint through which all things come into being.  The Logos is thus the inherent Intelligence and animating Wisdom of Life itself with all of life unfolding from its Source in diverse forms and expressions according to this Intelligent Blue-print of life. In the philosophical traditions influenced by Plato and Pythagoras, mathematics was seen as a key to understanding the underlying harmony and structure of the universe. For them, to study mathematics was, in a sense, to study the Logos, this divine order woven into creation. Thus, students of the Divine were often also students of mathematics, seeking to glimpse the patterns and proportions that reflect the order of the cosmos. 

John draws on this idea but transforms it. The Logos is not only a cosmic principle but becomes especially visible in the flesh, in the person of Jesus.  This language should probably be taken poetically rather than purely literally, suggesting in other words, that Jesus shows us what a human being looks like when we lived in unhindered harmony with the Eternal Logos. When lived according to the deep inherent Sacred Law of Life, the Intelligent Blue-print of Life, then humanity begins to look like Jesus, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). 

John’s Gospel also uses another Jewish religious idea to express this, the ‘I Am’, the name of God revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush.  John’s Gospel contains seven ‘I Am’ sayings of Jesus, I am the Bread of Life, I am the Gate for the Sheep, I Am the Way the Truth and the Life.  What is perhaps more important that the sayings themselves is the idea that the Divine ‘I Am’ is now seen to be located and revealed in Jesus as well.  The Divine I AM – the Nameless and Formless Source of All Existence -  is disclosed in the life of Jesus. 

But John’s Gospel does not suggest that this Divine status of Jesus is exclusive to Jesus only. When the religious authorities in John’s Gospel begin to complain that Jesus is blaspheming by claiming to the Son of God, he refers them to their own scriptures. Quoting from the psalms he asks them… “Does not your own scriptures tell you you are gods (or divine)” (John 10:34). Psalm 82:6 puts it like this “ ‘You are gods; you are all children of the Most High”. In other words it could be said “...your primordial or essential nature is Divine… you are expressions of the Divine.” But the religious leaders in Jesus day, like most of humanity, live in ignorance of this truth about themselves and about Jesus. 

Another clue in John’s Gospel is that in describing God to the woman at the well, Jesus explicitly tells her that God is not an object, not even the supreme object, that can be located in a specific place in the universe or in the world.  “God is Spirit” Jesus says in John 4:24. ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew means breathe, it is what gives life to physical bodies. What I believe that Jesus is suggesting is that God is the life-giving breathe of the whole cosmos, the whole created order. This is not far off from saying that God is the Greater Consciousness. It suggests that God is the Greater Life that lives and breathes and moves through all creation and all creatures.  As the Scottish Presbyterian hymn writer Walter Chalmers Smith puts it, “To all life thou givest—to both great and small; In all life thou livest, the true life of all;”.  God is the Greater Life, the Greater Consciousness that lives over, in and through all creation, ‘Over all, in all and through all’ as the writer Ephesians puts it (4:6).  And so it turns out that creation is not separate from God after all. All of creation is in God and God is in all of creation, for as Paul puts in in Acts, in Him we live and move and exist (or have our being) Acts 17:28.  According to these verses, creation and nature are woven through with the Divine Presence, both as the Intelligent Blueprint of Life (the Logos), and as the Spirit or Breathe of Life that lives in and through all.  And so to live in openness and harmony to the Greater Consciousness or Greater Life of God, should also bring us into greater harmony with nature and the created order itself not further away from nature as our modern life is doing. 

When we understand God as the Greater Consciousness that lives in and through all, then the possibility of psychic phenomenon, mental telepathy is not so far fetched.  If there is One Divine Consciousness living and breathing through all of us then it is not so far fetched that we might be able to communicate in ways that our ancestors were aware of but which science is unable to account at this point.   150 years ago science had no idea of radio waves.  It would have seemed like magic to some of our ancestors.  I wonder if in future other ways of communicating between people might be considered natural ways that more ancient people were aware of? 
If the Gospels are to be trusted, then it appears that Jesus possessed these abilities. 

But I feel like I am straying from the passage now… as we get back to the passage in John 17 and we consider this language of Christ in God, God in Christ, Christ in us and us in Christ, what it also points to is that God or the Divine is deeply relational. God is the stuff that connects us together deeply as persons. God or the Divine is not just an impersonal cosmic law, the rational blue-print of creation, God is also the mystery of love. For this is what the language of Jesus implies when he says in verse 22 & 23 “...may they be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  

When two people love each other deeply, they live inside of each other. They may have separate bodies, but at the level of heart and spirit there is a deep connection.  The language of our passage is deeply intimate. This is the language of Love.  God as the Greater Consciousness ‘of all’ and ‘in all’ is none other than the mystery of love. 

Though outwardly and physically we may seem like separate beings, when we begin to awaken to the deeper spiritual reality in which all of us share, that Divine Consciousness within all, we begin to perceive an underlying inner Oneness. It is this perception of a shared one-ness that gives rise to love.  I in God, God in me, You in God and God in you, you in me and I in you… That is the greater mystery that I believe this passage is pointing us to. 

A few weeks ago I shared a quote on Facebook that expresses this beautifully.  Is is from the Hindu teacher and mystic Shankarananda – “Holy Communion is to feel at one with the One in all beings and all creation.” It is an interesting quote because that is pretty much how the writer of Ephesians describes the Ascension of Christ -  (Ascension Day was on Thursday) –  when it says: “He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.” Eph 4:10). The writer suggests that the ascended Christ lives in a state of Holy Communion at one with the One in all beings and all creation… and if we are attentive enough through prayer and meditation we might discover this Presence of Christ, the Christ Consciousness (The Mind and Heart of Christ) dwelling within us also.  And that is what prayer is… it is the opening of our hearts and minds to the Greater Consciousness which we refer to by the word God that has been disclosed to us in Jesus. 

Just some more food for thought on the journey… 

“At Home in Love” -  John 14:23–29 

Our passage today is part of Jesus farewell discourse to his disciples in John’s Gospel that runs from chapter 13-17. In these verses, Jesus is preparing his disciples for his immanent departure and he is preparing the way for them to enter into a new kind of relationship with him, a relationship in the Spirit rather than in the flesh.  And in this context, in  verse 23 of our passage today Jesus says the following -  ‘If anyone loves me, they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’” John 14:23

There’s something beautifully tender and domestic in this verse.  “We will come and make our home with them.” This is not the language of fear or judgment but rather it is the language of relationship, of love, intimacy, and hospitality. It is the language of belonging.  And that word “home” is where I’d like us to dwell this morning.

But firstly we might ask:  What Does It Mean to Keep His Word?

Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, they will keep my word.” At first, we might hear this as a call to obedience, obeying specific rules or ethical commandments.  But in John’s Gospel, “keeping”  doesn’t mean simply obeying or following rules. It means holding close. Guarding. Treasuring. It’s the same word used of Mary who kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.  So when Jesus says, “keep my word,” he isn’t just saying “Do as I say.” He’s saying, “Hold on to the purpose I came for. Live by it. Let it live in you.”

To understand this verse a little better it is helpful to consider a very similar verse a little earlier in the chapter. In John 14:15, the English translation of the original Greek is often translated - 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Again, this sounds like instruction, but it is helpful to look a little deeper.  The Greek word for commandment, entolē, doesn’t just mean rule. It means objectives, purpose, goal, or even mission. Jesus is saying to his disciples: If you love me, you will hold close, guard, and treasure my objectives, my purpose, my goal and my mission. 

And what is that mission?  We hear it echo all through John’s Gospel: 
“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32) 
“A new Commandment (a new objective) I give unto you… that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34)

The purpose, the entolē, of Jesus is to draw us into divine love, to awaken us to the life of God within us, and to invite us to become fully alive, fully human, fully divine.

And so when Jesus says “keep my word,” he is inviting us to live by this larger vision:
To be people who draw others in with love, not push them away with judgment.  To give life, not to control it.  To help people become more of who they are in God, not less.  And to become a home where the Spirit of God finds rest.

That’s what it means to keep his word: To align our lives with his purpose, to love, to give life, to draw others toward wholeness. And then we hear the great promise, perhaps the heart of it:  “My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

This is no longer about us climbing up to God.  It is about God coming home to us. Making God’s home within us, making us alive to the Divine Presence within us that we have perhaps ignored and neglected. 

And so Jesus is saying: “When you live by this love, when you let it shape your words, your actions, your spirit, then God’s very presence will rest in you.” He doesn’t say: “If you are perfect…” Or “If you believe the right things…”

“If you love me, and keep my purpose close, we will make our home in you.”

And this is the promise of Pentecost which is coming up in two weeks time... 
It is the promise of presence, peace, and power, of God’s Spirit within.   We at home in God, and God at home in us. Interestingly, in this verse, Jesus is offering us not a mansion in the sky, but a home in the heart. When we make room for Christ’s ‘word’, his life-giving purpose and loving objectives, then we find ourselves already dwelling in God, and astonishingly, God dwelling within us.

And so in closing, what does it mean to follow Jesus? It is not just to believe something about him. But to embody his vision: To draw others in with love. To bring life where there is despair. To be a safe, welcoming place, for others, and for God.  And as we do, we discover that we are not alone. We are not abandoned or left as orphans. We are at home, at home in God, and more wonderfully still, God at home in us.

Amen.