Brennan Manning (speaking about waking up years ago in a gutter, after he began to follow Jesus, in an alcoholic fog and what Jesus has shown him since then): “…and the God I’ve come to know, the Jesus I have met in my own life loved me as much that  morning in a state of disgrace as He does tonight in a state of grace. For His compassion is never, NEVER, never based on our performance. It knows no shadow, alteration or change. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Isaiahan prophecy.  The bruised reed of your life He will not crush, and the smoldering wick He will not quench… This night will you let Jesus come to you on His terms?  Will you let Him love you as you are and not as you should be? Because nobody [here] is as they should be.” He goes on to say, “The day you surrender in faith, in unwavering trust, in reckless confidence to the compassion of Jesus in your life, I promise you, every trace of shame, guilt, remorse, self-hatred, self-condemnation, will vanish from your life.  Jesus Christ is not simply a bit of information in the Bible. He is the transformation, the transforming power of God!  And this night when you surrender in your brokenness, in your sinfulness, in your darkness, in your emptiness, in your phoniness, when you come to Jesus and say, ‘Here I am, it’s all I got” and let Jesus come to you on His terms. Let him come to you as the Son of Compassion. Let Him bring healing to your heart. Total forgiveness for every sin of your past life. Let Jesus be who He is: Your Savior.”

What I long for with every fiber of my being is to surrender to Jesus the Compassionate One tonight and for the guilt of debt to be lifted. For the worry to be lifted. I am not excited about the future. I want to be excited about the future! I want to enjoy today!! I long to be so close to Jesus in my normal life that I get taken apart and and I want to have the desperate, beautiful, aching, often ignored NEED for Him to be filled!!!

So, I encourage you to get a cup of coffee and sit down for an hour to hear what he has to say.

I like what he says in the end, “May all your expectations be frustrated.  May all your plans be thwarted.  May all your desires be withered into nothingness that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the compassion of God who is Father, Son and Spirit. Amen.”

Amen!

The War on Christmas!

Would Dave and Bing Be Protested Off the Stage Today?

Bah Humbug!  When stories arise about people complaining about “Christmas” parades being cancelled or called “Holiday” parades, I have wondered how many people who say that efforts are being made to take the Christ out of Christmas realize that their parades did that long ago.  While the parades say Christmas, rarely do they feature Jesus, angels, a manger scene, Mary and Joseph or anything else that resembles the true story of the Savior’s birth.  Instead, they have Santa Claus, reindeer, toys, presents, snow flakes, horns and other things that are more associated with the commercial, secular ideals of the Christmas holiday.  So, one could say that a name change is more honest as it seems to reflect what the parades generally show.  Truth be told, the story of Christ was probably only rarely a part of most parades and if you want to really make it a Christmas Parade, then you must remove Santa Claus.  But, before I paint this with too broad a brush, there is a town in Scotland that not only returned to having Christmas the centerpiece of their winter festival, it also has religious leaders speaking on hand to speak of the true meaning of Christmas.  Perhaps, they should speak to a Church of England Bishop. 

You kids stop that singing! It's Nonsense!

Now, a British Bishop is pooh-poohing traditional Christmas Carols.  Rt. Rev. Nick Baines says that the traditional carols take away from the true meaning of Christmas and attempts to turn Jesus into a Father Christmas figure.  The Church of England recently published his book, Why Wish You a Merry Christmas which says that the traditional songs bring forth an ideal of Victorian sentiments instead of the Biblical account of the birth of Christ.  He goes on to say that the words of Away in a Manger are nonsense.  He says that All Come All Ye Faithful is foolishness because the people who came, the shepherds, were not faithful but instead were considered the “great unwashed” and the wise men were “outside the covenant people of God.”  I kinda side with the music director at the Eton College who says, “They bring a smile to people’s faces. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like children at Christmas.” 

Reason for the Season No Matter Who Says What

Come on…aren’t people on both sides of the spectrum getting a bit too overzealous?  Let it be a Christmas Parade.  But, if the nincompoops who have nothing better to do than act offended by a title and wish to hurt the feelings of the majority of people are going to raise a ruckous, then so what?  And if people come together for Christmas and sing carols that aren’t altogether accurate, then let it go.  It brings a fellowship that might not otherwise happen and perhaps may even bring people to inquire and discover the true meaning of the birth of who historians Joyce Salisbury and Dennis Sherman callbrought about “the most influential religious transformation in the ancient West.”

Doesn't look Bad at Night

And you know what, when everyone agrees on a secular symbol to be put in a public square, then there is still arguing and fighting.  In England, the Dorset town of Poole.  They traditionally placed a Norway fir in the town square at a cost of about 500 pounds.  Remember, there is a global recession.  But so what?  The town pooh-bahs decided that the real tree was dangerous.  They said it had to be cordoned off to keep people at a distance. They say that there was always a danger that it would fall down with high winds.  They say it’s a liability issue and that it costs an additional 3500 pounds to decorate.  Now, keep in mind that the town leadership cut back on Christmas lights this year to save money.   So, the wise leadership decided to spend 14,000 pounds on a phony tree.   People are not happy.  One guy says that its okay at night when all you see is lights, but that it “just looks weird during the day.”  Others liken it to a giant green traffic cone, something from Dr. Who, a witches hat or that “it looks like something that just landed from outer space.” 

The sage of common sense

Presumably, the new fake tree costs  the same to decorate as the old tree.  Why the fake tree is less likely to be blown over by winds than the real McCoy is beyond me.   And, the time when they have a shortage of cash is now so the idea of spending 14,000 pounds today to save money later seems a bit off the mark.  It sorta reminds me of the idea that in Vietnam, a village had to be destroyed in order to save it.   To quote another source of wisdom, “can’t we all get along?”

Weather Bottom Line:   The high Sunday was 60.  We won’t see that again any time soon.  For a longer discussion, look at the previous post as it still applies.  Rain will be in the area probably through midday Monday but big t’storms along a cold front to the south will cut off a lot of the moisture.  Knock about 15 degrees for Monday afternoon. Then we move back to the 50’s for midweek.  End of week looks to hold for highs in the 30’s.  Hey, it happens but don’t let local weather people calling it “bitter cold” fool you. I just saw one call it a “bitter blast” at the same time it was described as “cooler air.”    Also, don’t get too worked up when they ballyhoo snow for Thursday.  It’s not a significant event.

Dr. Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archive, claims that she has reconstructed the death certificate of a man named “Jesus the Nazarene or Jesus of Nazareth” from fragments of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin words she sees imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, reports the U.K. Times Online. The letters Frale claims to be interpreting were first found in a 1978 examination of the Shroud. Other letters have allegedly been found since then.

Dr. Frale told “La Repubblica” that Jewish burial practices at the time of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem mandated that a body buried after execution of a death sentence had be in a common grave and could only be returned to the family after a year had passed. Therefore, a death certificate was glued to the burial shroud, usually on the cloth near the face, so that the body could be easily identified.

Frale’s reconstruction of the death certificate reads, “In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year.” Dr. Frale noted that many of the letters were missing from the Shroud, and that Jesus, for example, was referred to as “(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos.” (CNA)

Source: CBCP News

The Shroud of Turin has been in the news a bit recently, and I blogged about how it can be replicated using completely natural methods (something many Shroud-proponents say cannot be done – whoops).  Well, now the Shroudies are back, with one of them claiming that she has seen ancient writing on the actual Shroud which “proves” it was the funeral covering for Christ’s burial.

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth.

She asserts that the words include the name “(J)esu(s) Nazarene” — or Jesus of Nazareth — in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

Of course, the claim of “proof” here flies in the face of much other evidence which clearly shows the Shroud’s origins as a pious fraud in the 1300s A.D., way past the burial date of Christ.  This includes evidence from independent radiocarbon dating tests, as well as evidence from historical, iconographic, pathological, physical, and chemical sources that points to its inauthenticity. As one of the foremost skeptical Shroud researchers, Joe Nickell, has concluded: the shroud is a 14th century painting, not a 2000-year-old cloth with Christ’s image.  And, concerning these most recent claims of seeing writing in the Shroud, they are dubious for multiple reasons…

From the article:

On one hand, it is true that a medieval forger would label the object with Christ’s name, as were all relics produced at the time, said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written about the shroud. The problem is that there are no inscriptions to be seen in the first place.

“People work on grainy photos and think they see things,” Lombatti told the AP. “It’s all the result of imagination and computer software. … If you look at a photo of the shroud, there’s a lot of contrast between light and dark, but there are no letters.”

Further criticizing Frale’s work, Lombatti said that artifacts bearing Greek and Aramaic texts were found in Jewish burials from the first century, but the use of Latin is unheard of.

He also rejected the idea that authorities would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of that form of execution used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to its deterrent.

Lombatti said “the message was that you won’t even have a tomb to cry over.”

Another shroud expert, Gian Marco Rinaldi, said that even scientists who believe in the relic’s authenticity have dismissed as unreliable the images on which Frale’s study was based.

“These computer enhancements increase contrast in an unrealistic way to bring out these signs,” he said. “You can find them all over the shroud, not just near the head, and then with a bit of imagination, you see letters.”

In other words, the “writing” that Frale claims to be seeing & translating in the Shroud is likely nothing more than a classic case of pareidolia. There are numerous well-documented cases of this phenomena – many of them related to religious symbols such as the Shroud – whereby through self-delusion and sometimes “computer enhancement” people convince themselves that they’re seeing something familiar which isn’t really there.

So, taking Occam’s Razor out and applying it to the full amount of evidence, it is most likely that – even in the presence of these latest claims – the Shroud of Turin is still not what a lot of Shroudies claim it is.  But then, that won’t stop the true believers from engaging in goalpost moving or special pleading, because one of the last things they think could be possible is that they could be wrong.

Jesus of Nazareth – Christ of God

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: –  “Sermon on the Mount,” BIBLE, recorded by Matthew (Mat 7.7).

Jesus, born, Bethlehem – killed, yet rose from grave, Jerusalem –  lives forevermore!

Christ, eternal Son of God, coequal with The Father and The Spirit – Coming Again! 

I remember once being provided an anology by a pastor, that when Jesus came down to earth, it was LITERALLY like he became a fish.  Imagine that humans are all fish.  He was formerly all God; but now He was all God, and all man.  He sacrificed much coming down to earth, and “emptied himself“.  And we were like fish, stuck seeing the world right in front of them, stuck swimming in circles; never running outside of the bowl, finding Nemo adventures.

Truly amazing.

"After this we'll clone some troops to fill the gap for an escalation in Afghanistan."

The last few hours have been a flurry of news reports on the President’s supposed decision on troop levels for Afghanistan. First, CBS News reported that the president planned to send roughly 40,000 troops to Afghanistan for about four years.  Then, CNN reported that the White House angrily denied CBS News’ assertions, with two unnamed “senior administration officials” accusing Pentagon sources of leaking the story to set expectations and box the president into executing what’s essentially McChrystal’s preferred plan. Now, ABC News reports that, while the president has apparently not made a final decision, all five of the options now on the table would send more troops to Afghanistan.

There are a few explanations for the mixed signals. The first could be that some staff flunkie at the Pentagon wanted to impress a reporter and phoned in a tip before they knew what they were talking about, prompting an angry response from a White House still settling on options, all of which involve more troops. The second is slightly more sinister: elements in the Pentagon could be attempting to force the president’s hand, which would be a very subversive move and an assault on civilian control of the military. The third explanation is even darker: that the administration is more unified than it appears, and that it’s using leaks about high-end troop level estimates to desensitize the public and position the president’s inevitable, smaller troop increase as the more reasonable option. None of these explanations provide much comfort.

The simple truth is that even if one grants all the administration’s other assumptions about war and international politics (which I certainly do not), the troops are just not available for anything remotely approaching McChrystal’s preferred way forward, and certainly not within the critical period mentioned by his strategy paper. Spencer Ackerman:

The thing is, can we actually get 34,000 new troops into Afghanistan before summer of 2010? Remember that in the McChrystal strategy review, completed in late August, the commanding general talks about a window of about 12-18 month wherein he’ll know if he can arrest Taliban momentum. (That’s different, notice, than rolling back Taliban gains.)

Ackerman points to Politics Daily, which notes:

Maintaining one brigade combat team in the field requires two others on standby. So, for every unit in combat, planners keep a second one in training and a third one in “reset” after a long combat deployment – time when the Army can send its soldiers off for advanced schooling, absorb new replacements, receive new gear. Thus, a total of three BCTs are tied up.

Just to maintain the 16 current brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan is, let’s see, three times 16 is 48 and – oops! We’re already out of BCTs! And here’s the White House blithely batting around numbers like 40,000 more troops. That’s roughly eight BCTs, which do not exist.

"So this guy pulls me straight out of the cloning vats and says, 'Congratulations, we're sending you to Afghanistan!' Guess what my first word was!"

One of the only ways available to provide the levels of troops needed for anything remotely approaching a McChrystal plan would be to shorten dwell time at home for troops. That would be, in short, a mental health disaster. As PD notes,

Tragically, and despite an all-out prevention effort, the Army is experiencing another record-setting year for suicides. From January through September this year there were 117 reported suicides among active duty soldiers, up from 108 reported during the same period in 2008.

This is why, as Robert Naiman notes, the Joint Chiefs are begging the president not to do anything to shorten dwell times at home. Shorter dwell times means more mental health problems, period. The fact that troops “volunteered” (which is a rather flexible term in many situations) does not give the government the right to use them up until they break their brains. See how long your beloved “all-volunteer force” lasts when future recruits see that you’re shoving them into overseas hell holes over and over with shorter recovery periods between nightmares. At some point basic human dignity demands we end this farce.

I have to admit a certain level of exhaustion as a member of the anti-war movement focused on Afghanistan, especially when the debate moves into a place where our opponents start sputtering, “Well what’s your alternative?!” as if the options they push are reasonable and moored to the real resources available. The simple fact is that a person pushing for anything resembling a McChrystal strategy either a) has no clue as to the manpower restraints on the U.S. military or b) doesn’t give a damn about the mental health of the people they want to throw into combat. In fact, they don’t even understand fully McChrystal’s reasoning because key sections of his report were redacted for public consumption. A person asking me what my alternative is to troop increases in Afghanistan might as well be asking what my alternative is to firing the Death Star at Kandahar.

I don’t have to know how to construct a working safety belt to demand the recall of a car with a defective safety belt. I don’t have to know how to fashion a health reform bill to know that the health care system is broken and to demand that my elected representatives do something other than endorse the status quo. And I sure don’t have to be able to plot out the detailed exit strategy for our forces in Afghanistan to be able to say with integrity that we shouldn’t have our military tramping around someone else’s country killing people.

What I do know is this: every single person I’ve heard the president cite as a moral and philosophical guiding light, from Jesus of Nazareth, to Gandhi, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Cesar Chavez, to Reinhold Niebuhr, would reject the idea that the U.S. should be dropping bombs on people in Afghanistan in the pursuit of U.S. national security. Every single one. The president probably knows this too, and only the most cynical politician would continue to drop these names at campaign stops and press conferences while ordering more and more troops to fight and die and kill in Asia.

That’s enough now, Mr. President. Stop this war.

[As stated in my About, I want to tell the world about the Orthodox faith. Up to this point, my blogs have somewhat unorganized to do that. Now God has given me a more coorinated way to do that. I will be sharing articles from the Orthodox Faith.

This will be a long series, but I trust it will be profitable to you in learning about the Orthodox faith. From time to time, I will also provide addition blogs of interest.  - Herman Art]

Holy Spirit

… And in the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets …

The Holy Spirit bears the title of Lord with God the Father and Christ the Son. He is the Spirit of God and Spirit of Christ. He is eternal, uncreated, and divine; always existing with the Father and the Son; perpetually worshipped and glorified with them in the oneness of the Holy Trinity.

Just like the Son, there was no time when there was no Holy Spirit. The Spirit is before creation. He comes forth from God, as does the Son, in a timeless, eternal procession. “He proceeds from the Father,” in eternity in a divinely instantaneous and perpetual movement (Jn 15:26).

Orthodox doctrine confesses that God the Father is the eternal origin and source of the Spirit, just as He is the source of the Son. Yet, the Church affirms as well that the manner of the Father’s possession and production of the Spirit and the Son differ according to the difference between the Son being “born,” and the Spirit “proceeding.” There have been many attempts — by holy men inspired by God and with a genuine experience of His Trinitarian life to explain the distinction between the procession of the Spirit and the begetting or generation of the Son. For us it is enough to see that the difference between the two lies in the distinction between the divine persons and actions of the Son and the Spirit in relation to the Father, and so as well to each other and to the world. It is necessary to note further that all words and concepts about God and divinity, including those of “procession” and “generation” must give way before the mystical vision of the actual Divine Reality which they express. God may somehow be grasped by men as He has chosen to reveal Himself. However, the essence of His Triune existence remains — and will always remain — essentially inconceivable and inexpressible to created minds and lips. This does not mean that words about God are meaningless. It only means that they are inadequate to the Reality which they seek to express …

At this point also it is necessary to note that the Roman and Protestant churches differ in their credal statement about God by adding that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” (filioque) — a doctrinal addition unacceptable to Orthodoxy since it is both unscriptural and inconsistent with the Orthodox vision of God.

With the affirmation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and the necessity of worshipping and glorifying him with the Father and the Son, the Orthodox Church affirms that the Divine Reality, called also the Deity or the Godhead in the Orthodox Tradition, is the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Spirit is essentially one in his eternal existence with the Father and the Son; and so, in every action of God toward the world, the Holy Spirit is necessarily acting. Thus, in the Genesis account of creation it is written: “The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). It is this same Spirit who is the “breath of life” for all living things and particularly for man, made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:30; 2:7). Generally speaking the Spirit in Hebrew is called the “breath” or the “wind” of Yahweh. It is he who makes everything alive, the “giver of life” who upholds and sustains the universe in its existence and life (e.g. Ps 104:29; Job 33:4).

The Holy Spirit is also he who inspires the saints to speak God’s word and to do God’s will. He anoints the prophets, priests, and kings of the Old Testament; and “in the fullness of time” it is this same Spirit who “descends and remains” on Jesus of Nazareth, making him the Messiah (anointed) of God and manifesting him as such to the world. Thus, in the New Testament at the first epiphany (which means literally showing forth or manifestation) of Christ as the Messiah — his baptism by John in the Jordan — the Holy Spirit is revealed as descending and resting upon him “as a dove from heaven” (Jn 1:32; Lk 3:22, see also Mt 3:16 and Mk 1:9). It is important to note, both here and in the account of the Spirit’s coming on the Day of Pentecost, as well as in other places in the Scriptures, that the words “as” and “like” are used in order to avoid an incorrect “physical” interpretation of the events recorded where the Bible itself is literally speaking in quite a symbolical and metaphorical way.

Jesus begins his public work after his baptism, and immediately refers Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah directly to himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me …” (Is 61:1; Lk 4:18).

All the days of his life Jesus is “full of the Holy Spirit” — preaching, teaching, healing, casting out devils and accomplishing every sign and wonder of his messiahship by the Spirit’s power (Lk 4:11). It is written that even his self-offering to God on the cross is made “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb 9:14). And it is through the same divine Spirit that he and all men with him are risen from the dead (Ezek 37:1-4).

On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples of Christ in the form of “tongues as of fire,” with the sound “like that of a mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:1-4). We note once more the use of “as” and “like.” The coming of the Spirit on Pentecost is the final fulfillment of Christ’s earthly messianic mission, the beginning of the Christian Church. It is the fulfillment of the Old Testamental prophecy that in the time of the messiah-king, the Spirit of God will be “poured out on all flesh” (Joel 2:28; Acts 1:14). It is the condition of the age of the final and everlasting covenant of perfect mercy and peace (Ez 34:37; Jer 31-33; Is 11:42, 44, 61).

The Christian Church lives by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is the guarantee of God’s Kingdom on earth. He is the sole guarantee that God’s life and truth and love are with men. Only by the Holy Spirit can man and the world fulfill that for which they were created by God. All of God’s actions toward man and the world — in creation, salvation and final glorification — are from the Father through the Son (Word) in the Holy Spirit; and all of man’s capabilities of response to God are in the same Spirit, through the same Son to the same Father.

Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you (Rom 8:11).

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.

When the Spirit of Truth comes he will guide you into all the Truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come (Jn 16:13; see also Jn 14:25; Jn 15:26).

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of divine sonship.

For all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery. … but you received the Spirit of sonship. When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:14; also Gal 4:6).

The Holy Spirit is the personal presence of the new and everlasting covenant between God and man, the seal and guarantee of the Kingdom of God, the power of the divine indwelling of God in man.

… you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. … our sufficiency is from God who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in written code but in the Spirit, for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:2-6).

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you. … For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are (1 Cor 3:16; also Rom 6:19).

… through him (Christ) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows in a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:18-22; also 1 Pet 2:4-9).

In the Holy Spirit men have the possibility of receiving every gift from God, of sharing His divine nature and life, of doing what Christ has done by fulfilling his “new commandment” to love one another even as he has loved us, “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which he has given us” (Rom 5:5).

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. … And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Gal 5:22-25; 6:8).

http://www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=25

I completed this in the early 1990s for an exhibition featuring various local artists at the Oldham Coliseum Theatre, England. Laurence Olivier as Nicodemus from the mini-series Jesus of Nazareth.

The media is ink wash and gouache paint on Daler art board. Size 15 inches square approx.

The printed publication, Fullness of the Time, is currently available for purchase through www.createspace.com online.  CreateSpace.com is an amazon.com Company.  Fullness of the Time is a paperback edition consisting of 194 pages and its cost is only $12.95.

We have made it available in this way because we realize that many people enjoy reading material in the traditional printed medium rather than reading the text from a computer screen.  Your purchase will also help us to make copies available to the English-speaking mission fields abroad, where many classic works are not readily available.

To know more about this book, go to the “About the Book” page link at top of the column on the right.

CLICK HERE, or on the cover to the left if you are interested in purchasing the printed book.

We have made this book available in pdf through the SermonAudio e-Docs page.  These documents were, and remain, absolutely free of charge.

Recipient: MindyR@inventorhelp.com

Subject: Re Inventor’s Kit – Cruciflex

Dear Mindy,

Thank you for the speed with which you shipped out my inventor’s help kit. It’s nice to know that there are still people out there who operate outside the mainstream grid of ‘Big Patent’. I recently received rejections from three major manufacturers and after pouring so much blood, sweat, and tears into my invention I truly do mean it when I say…thank you

Per your instructions, I am submitting my rough concept so that we can move forward in developing a patent for my invention. Please be aware that I’m not the greatest illustrator in the world, but that I did take some sketching classes as part of the labor department’s placement program after the plant let most of us go one year come November. Incidentally, it was during this very difficult time that our lord and personal savior touched me on the shoulder and inspired me to come up with this new invention. When I spoke to your customer service rep Sally she assured me that I could trust your organization not to steal my design. As a man of God I’m going to have faith and take Sally’s word for it. But it still makes me a little nervous; there’s all kinds of slippery eels and commies out there. PLEASE do not steal my invention idea. My family has put everything we had in savings into buying me some time off my new job so I could stay home and work on this.

As you know, our one true king of kings died on the cross so that we could be forgiven of our wickedness. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret that only God and I know; the cross is actually the physical model by which our human vessel bodies can find true immortality in this world. And the Romans knew this!

“To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life.” Romans 2:7 (KJV)

There it is right there! Eternal life. So what does this mean for us? Now I’m going to let you in on another secret! We can use the cross to not only bring life eternal but also give us the abs and muscle tone we’ve always wanted. My invention does this, and it works! I call it The Cruciflex. The Cruciflex harnesses the awesome power of the crucifix in a workout device that uses four major points of strength for multiple exercises. (See attachment)

As you can see, the design is simple. The user is mounted onto the cross using a pair of Velcro wrist straps that attach to the wrists and ankles. A system of cables connect to the straps through the back of the apparatus and move through two large pulleys which add torque to create resistance. The pulleys are connected to flexible weight bows (ala Bowflex) which allow the user to determine the amount of resistance. Once atop the Cruciflex, the user can then do compassion crunches, leg lifts, arm lifts, Baptist lifts, hosanna extensions, suicides, and any number of crucifix-based exercises.

The user is secured to the device for however long they deem appropriate for their workout, and once finished the device can be easily slid under a bed or used for daily worship. There are also a couple of additional bells and whistles which make the experience even more fun.

The device comes equipped with an iPod docking station mounted directly behind the headboard which houses a set of speakers so the user can listen to music during their workout. As an additional promotional giveaway I’ve also taken the liberty of drafting up a headband embroidered to look like a crown of thorns. With a little imagination, you can work on your pecks while pretending to forgive those warlocks who betrayed the son of man.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t steal this invention. This invention was whispered into my ear personally by Jesus of Nazareth, son of the ONE TRUE GOD OF ISRAEL AND THROUGH HIM ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE. STEALING IS A SIN. THOSE WHO STEAL ARE SINNERS AND WE REBUKE YOU IN HIS NAME.

I have already received 13 pre-orders for this invention from my congregation. If we can move forward in this process with great haste I would be greatly thank you. Please contact me as quickly as possible so we can begin manufacturing.

Sincerely,

Kevin

“The world has need of your theology,” said prominent Harvard theologian Diana Eck last year to one of our sister congregations in New York City. “In a world divided by race, and by religion and ideology, the very presence of a church like yours—committed to the oneness of God, the love of God, the love of neighbor, and service to humanity—is a beacon. Be bold in proclaiming it!” That’s what Diana Eck said.

But before boldness of proclamation, there must be a boldness of inner vision, of imagination. So this morning, I invite you to imagine boldly, along with me, this faith tradition, this religious movement, that the world needs. Imagine with me an image or series of images that captures our story, expresses it, telegraphs who we are and what we stand for.

For me, the boldness begins with a feeling of spaciousness, of size. I see in my mind’s eye blue sky, a bright sun, and a BIG building. Not a superdome or megamall—the values those kinds of architecture imply don’t fit. What comes to mind are the great structures of our religious past—Angkor Wat, the vast ancient Hindu temple complex in Cambodia; or Islam’s Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; or Chartres Cathedral in Paris. Architecture that serves to embody spiritual aspiration in stone and wood and glass. Spaciousness and size…..

And at this point I find myself particularly taken with the image of cathedral, so I’m going to follow up with it, trust my imagination to take me where I need to go. Unitarian Universalism is like a great massive cathedral—a cathedral of the world.

But now my inner imaginative eye—like a movie camera—swoops down and gives me a close up of the foundation of it all. I see, at the base of the cathedral, in the ground, twin foundation stones, ancient, upon which all the rest is built. Twin foundation stones: one representing Unitarianism, and the other representing Universalism.

The Unitarian stone has a date carved into it: 325AD. It represents an idea that is a lot older, but 325 AD is when it gained a definite kind of historical notoriety. The idea says that Jesus is not equal to God—Jesus is not God—God is one. Classical Unitarianism. And in 325AD, it was formally declared heretical. One of the foundation stones of the entire cathedral of the world edifice embodies … heresy.

And so does the other. Carved into it is the date 544AD, when the Universalist idea was declared heretical: the idea that God will gather up all beings into himself; no one shall be lost in hell for all time. Believe that, said the orthodox of the time, and your soul is eternally condemned.

Now pause here for a moment. This is our Unitarian Universalist cathedral of the world we are talking about, and look at how it begins: in heresy. And already we know the risks, at least theologically: our souls condemned, so say the orthodox. But there are political risks as well, since theology and politics unarguably reflect and form each other (even where there is separation of church and state). 1500 years ago, for example, to stake your claim on Unitarianism was, in essence, to reject the absolute God-ordained lordship of the emperor. Not a convenient thing to do back then when the emperor claimed his rule WAS God-ordained. In order to solidify this, in fact, he gathered up all the most important religious leaders of his day by sheer military might and charged them with defining the articles of proper Christian belief—doing this once and for all. But the religious leaders ended up dickering and dithering and multiplying distinctions and tiny differences—clarity was not happening—so the emperor essentially had to threaten them by the sword to get their act together and vote like he wanted them to: against Unitarianism and for Trinitarianism. History calls this the Council of Nicea.

Being a heretic is neither convenient nor safe. But our cathedral of the world is not built on foundations of convenience. Heresy in its most positive sense means to choose. It means to think and act on the basis of one’s personal integrity, no matter what. It is courage. That’s what our twin foundation stones say about us, who we are as a people of faith. We must never forget this. Our faith was never meant to be easy.

But now it is time to enter into the cathedral. We pass the foundation stones as we walk through massive double-doors and into a vast space. We lift up our eyes to see amazing stained glass, through which light streams and illuminates. Can you see it, in your mind’s eye?

The first piece of stained glass our eyes rest on portrays Jesus. It reminds us that Unitarianism and Universalism are ultimately responses to experiences people had of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Once he said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance,” and this is the gospel that launched us as well as so many other communities of faith, though through the long years there has been a branching effect, differences and distinctions multiplied in ways that no emperor could prevent for long, until today, one group’s definition of Christianity might be the exact opposite of another’s. As Unitarian Universalists, sometimes we grow anxious at our seeming inability to define ourselves in a once-and-for-all sort of way. But it is good to be reminded by the example of Christianity that the task of definition is hard all-around. There is no other side of the fence where the grass is greener. Even the most dogmatic, hard-line faiths have to work hard to keep their people straight.

But that’s another sermon. For now, we are gazing on and appreciating the great teacher and prophet, Jesus. Yet this is the cathedral or the world, and the wisdom we have to offer does not stop with Christianity. Today we are a more-than-Christian, post-Christian faith. Look just to the left, and you will see light streaming through a stained glass window that portrays the Buddha—perhaps that part of his life when he experiences illumination sitting at the base of a bo tree. Light shining through this, and through so many other stained glass windows. Moses with his Ten Commandments; Lao Tzu walking in remote misty mountains; Gandhi at his spinning wheel; Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. preaching “I have a dream.” Light shining and streaming through. We look up, and what we see is breathtaking. One light, many windows. Windows of the world’s great religions. Windows of prophetic women and men. Windows of science. Windows of humanism. Windows of earth-based spirituality. Windows of mysticism. Many windows, but one shining, streaming light of truth and meaning….

We have come a long way since the earliest Jesus communities of first century Palestine, or our moments of heresy in the fourth and sixth centuries. We’ve come a long way even since the 19th century, when American Unitarianism and American Universalism were Bible-centered and exclusively Christian.

And while there are many causes I could cite for this—for our expansion into a pluralistic faith—I will ask you simply to gaze upon yet another stained glass window in our cathedral of the world. There it is: it portrays the great Unitarian preacher and prophet of Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Live after the infinite Law that is in you,” he once said, “and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms.” Revelation, in other words, can’t possibly be contained just within the Hebrew or Christian Bible. The wellspring is fundamentally within each of our souls; revelation bubbles up out of the spark of the Divine in our depths. Add to this the revelation of nature, as well as the revelation embodied by the Bibles of many times and lands, such as Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita. The one light of truth is abundant; no single stained-glass window may ever contain it or control it. One light but many, many windows.

So our job, says Emerson, is to live in the light. Let the light that comes to us through so many windows of truth and wisdom go deep and awaken the sleeping source of light within. Let sleeping heretics awaken, to choose with integrity and with courage what they shall believe about God and the afterlife and ethics and so many other things. Let sleeping heretics awaken and know their hidden powers for healing and action and compassion. Said Emerson in 1836, “Our age is retrospective. It builds on the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” In our cathedral of the world, there are already many stained glass windows, yet larger still is the space awaiting what is new. Your window, my window. Revelation is not ended. Revelation is not sealed. The journey never ends.

Yet at this point I need to acknowledge something. So far, we have seen that today’s Unitarian Universalism invites us on a great adventure of light. One light, many windows. Yet that is not all there is to our lives. And that’s not all there is in our cathedral of the world. For in our cathedral, there are plenty of shadows as well.

To understand what I mean, we need to learn a little more about Emerson’s life. Emerson’s father was a traditional minister who never blessed him. His first wife Ellen, who believed in him, who was his rock, died young … and death repeatedly struck his brothers and his own children. The man who wrote, “Hitch your wagon to a star” and “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” also wrote, “after thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning.” And then from his student days at Harvard: right in the middle of an essay he was writing about God, struggling with what those three little letters strung together refer to—his eyes failed him and he was able to see no light at all. Only after two surgeries and nine months of recuperation was he able to go back to wrestling with his theological studies.

If ever there was a man who loved light, it was Emerson. Yet the light never comes unmixed. Adversity is a part and parcel of the human condition. Shadow parts in ourselves and in our relationships lead to self-destructiveness and addictions and bad habits of every kind. Shadow parts in society and the larger world lead to structural poverty and prejudice and war. The light never comes unmixed.

Life is a great mystery. Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church puts it this way: “By the time we die, we will barely have gotten our minds wet. The wisest of us all will have but the faintest notion of what life was all about.” He goes on to say: “This counsels humility, but also oneness. … My favorite etymology speaks eloquently to this very point. Human, humane, humanitarian, humor, humility, humus.”

For me, what all of this leads to is my sense of the Unitarian Universalist religious journey as NOT a quest for certainty—NOT a quest for perfection in the here and now—but a quest for greater trust in the meaningfulness and worth of life, no matter where it leads. I need the abundance of light that streams and shines through the many windows of our cathedral of the world to encourage me, to strengthen me. I need it to waken the sleeping light within, as well, so that the abundance within me can be released. So that I can be a messenger of hope and humor to others, a messenger of compassion and peace. We live in a world that is so often unfair, and joy is weirdly and jarringly juxtaposed with every kind of woe. Randomness and senselessness and sorrow strike. Life can place so many limits on us. But there are no limits that can be placed on our human capacity to respond with courage and grace and forgiveness. There are no limits to this. Our greatest prophets and saints prove the point. Jesus. The Buddha. No limits to the abundance of the human heart to be generous in times of anxiety and fear. No limits to clarity or compassion. None.

Our cathedral of the world is all about abundance. Abundant choice, abundant light, abundant mystery, abundant capacity to respond to life with limitless love. “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.”

But there is one more thing to notice, before we are done with this bold imaginative vision of who we are as a religious people—the vision we can proclaim boldly in the world. We have been looking up at the stained glass windows for a long time now, so now let’s look down at the floor. What we see is a Latin phrase: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

To me, this suggests how we see ourselves as a community of gathered seekers. It’s wonderfully infused by core American values which have themselves been shaped and formed by key Unitarian and Universalist leaders. The author of these words, for example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Words from the Declaration of Independence—written by Thomas Jefferson, Unitarian. It’s why our community affirms the inherent worth and dignity of each person. Why our community affirms the spirituality of the work of social justice to defend human dignity and restore it when others threaten to take it away. It’s why our community affirms open conversation in the context of supportive community. It’s why we affirm each individual journey of faith because we know that the Creator has a creative connection with each and every person here and now. This is the floor upon which we stand—the covenant that unites us and makes us whole. We need not think alike to love alike.

Consider another distinctly American phrase that resonates with us: “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Here is the classic definition of democracy, which Abraham Lincoln famously used in his Gettysburg Address. But it’s not original with him. He got it from Theodore Parker, one of our best Unitarian preachers in the 19th century, whose services would gather literally thousands of people—he was a megachurch preacher and didn’t know it. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” It means that through our gathered generosity of presence and service and witness and giving, we can become great. We each get a vote in this community, in some form or fashion, and to the degree that we vote, we are vital and strong. It’s good old American enterprise: You get only as much as you put in. Vote with your time and energy, because without you, this community cannot be strong. Vote with your presence. Vote with your volunteerism. Vote with your financial generosity. Don’t be fooled by all the people you see, thinking that someone else will do it so you don’t have to. Don’t think that no one will miss your single vote, since there are so many others. American democracy can’t survive such apathy, since it inevitably builds and steamrolls; and we can’t survive it here, in our Unitarian Universalist spiritual democracy. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” means everyone involved in some way, everyone informed, because everyone has a vital stake in the outcome.

The building of our cathedral of the world never ends. It needs every one of us. But it is worth it. It is bold. It symbolizes a religion which essentially says: abundance. Abundance of choice, abundance of light, abundance of mystery, abundance of humanity, abundance of involvement and enterprise in building community. The challenge for us, ultimately, is this: how shall we live in this abundance? Will we allow it to change us? Will we let it sink it, transform us from within?

Though the foundation stones are ancient, still, Unitarian Universalism itself is only a baby faith, born with the formal consolidation of Unitarianism and Universalism in the 20th century, in 1961. A new thing came to life in that year, different from anything that had ever been before. And I believe that we live in a unique moment of time, where congregations like this one can make a huge impact on the shape of our movement and its future. We need to give ourselves to the abundance of this faith and let it inspire us, create out of it. Back in 1836, Emerson asked, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” Why not? Why not, here at UUCA? Let us imagine our faith boldly, and then proclaim it boldly—this faith that the world needs.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m indebted to the Rev. Forrest Church, who is the original source of the “one light, many windows” concept, as well as the image of “the cathedral of the world.” Together with many other Unitarian Universalists around the world, I grieve his recent death and honor his leadership in our movement.

     Oscar Wilde once said, “All first novels are about either the author or Jesus Christ.”  With this quote in mind, I am beginning a story.  The story is not about me.   In keeping with Wilde’s observation, it is intended to be a fictionalized account of the public life of Jesus of Nazareth.  The story will begin prior to Jesus’ meeting John the Baptist and follow his activities until just before his execution.  Following is a preface, of sorts, to the story. . .

     Jesus had been preaching in Galilee, in Judea (in Jerusalem during the feast days) and in Samaria, although he abandoned the Samarian ministry early on, for some three years since the arrest and imprisonment of John the Baptist.  He was not having a great deal of success; the people were, for the most part, more interested in the supposed miracle healings he was said to have performed, and listened to his preaching as, more or less, the price they had to pay for a possible healing.  Whether Jesus himself believed he possessed the power to perform these miracles, we shall never know as he did not see fit to leave a written record of his thoughts and beliefs.  We do know some, his disciples, believed he could relieve the suffering of some who came to hear him speak.  The Bible mentions fewer than one hundred disciples aside from the core following of twelve ( or thirteen if one takes into account Mary of Magdala — the Magdalene — as one of his constant apostles.)

     The strain trying to suceed at the work begun by the Baptist, his inability to make even his closest disciples understand what he was trying to do, and the fact that although he attracted large crowds, the Temple authorities largely ignored him, had begun to take its toll.  Up until now Jesus had managed to avoid any confrontation except for the occasional attack on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  It was becoming more and more apparent that he would have to force attention on himself, and his cause, in a way impossible to ignore.  But how?

      One thing was certain; there was no way Jesus was going to elicit the attention of the Romans or King Herod, at least not yet. . .

Who are your three main enemies? They are the devil, the “world,” and your flesh. The devil wants to lie to you, and deceive you. Your flesh wants you to please you, and not to please God. The world wants you to be fake – something you’re not – so that it can somehow make money at your expense.

It is important to be what God wants you to be. When you are fake, God knows it, and that is damaging to your integrity. When you are fake, other people know it, and that’s damaging to your character. Let’s look at the example of Mary in the Bible, and see what we can learn about her character and integrity.

Mary lived in Nazareth, a disreputable place.

Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

John 1:45-46

There are places today with a reputation similar to Nazareth. I grew up in a small town that is kind of the “Nazareth” of North Louisiana. Nazareth in Mary’s time would have been the kind of place where a teenaged girl could have easily been bored, seeing the merchants and traders going to and from Jerusalem. That boredom could have led to temptation and promiscuity and immorality for many of the teenaged girls who lived there.

However, Mary was engaged to be married, and she was a virgin. The angel Gabriel came to visit her. He told her that she would conceive and bear a Son, and that she was to name Him Jesus, and that this Jesus was the Son of God. Mary was probably around 13-15 years old at this time.

Contrary to Roman Catholic dogma, Mary was not sinless. She, like all of us, was a descendant of Adam. Of all the people ever to walk the face of the Earth, only Jesus was without sin.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Romans 5:12

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Romans 3:23

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:15

Mary called called God her Savior. (Luke 1:47) She knew she was a sinner, and she knew she needed a Savior.

Even though she was a sinner, Mary is a good Bible example of someone with integrity. She kept her virginity. She was saved.

Let’s look at her character. In a previous lesson we learned about the things which spoke well of David’s character.

Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him.

I Samuel 16:28

We can compare this description of David to Mary.

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

Luke 1:28

People who knew Mary might have wondered about her character. God knew she was a virgin, but what do you think people said when they found out she was pregnant before she got married?

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.

John 8:39-41

People who knew about Jesus’s birth and childhood accused Him of being born out of wedlock. That was a reflection of their opinion of Mary, too. However, Mary surrendered her character to the Lord.

Character has to do with your name – what other people think of you – but we can’t always control that. What happens when you have integrity, but other people are wrongly smearing your character? I have three school-age daughters, and I can tell you from what I know of their experiences that all children can be mean, but girls can be meaner than boys – especially when it comes to gossip.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:38

Even though Mary could predict how her miraculous pregnancy would affect her character, she said, “That’s fine with me, Lord.” Mary considered herself a handmaiden, and, in Mary’s day, handmaidens had to serve – and they had to serve joyfully.

Can you say with Mary, “Be it unto me according to Thy Word?” Before you begin to hope that God would never do something to you that would embarrass you the way Mary’s pregnancy embarrassed her, remember: He already has. His Word tells you to do all sorts of things that are going to make people think you’re weird. And some of those things are going to affect your character – in the short term.

Are we willing to look in the Book and see it what it says? Are we dressing modestly? Do we tell lies? Do we put ourselves in places of sexual temptation? Are we actively hoping for some strong temptation to come along, so that when we fall, we can blame the temptation, and not ourselves?

Many Christians say, “I’m saved – but I’m going to mess up once in while.” If we call ourselves Christians, then we had better stand for the Name of Christ. When I fill in the blank on a form that asks what religion I am, and I say, “Christian,” I don’t want to be responsible for someone else saying no to Jesus, based on my character.

Mary not only surrendered to the Lord, she was happy about it. As soon as she heard about God’s plan, she went to see her cousin, and she sang a song of praise about it. Her song is found in Luke 1:46-55. It is often called the “Magnificat.”

The word “Magnificat,” comes from the same root which gives us our word, “magnify.” To “magnify” something means to “make something bigger” or “to give someone glory.” Mary’s song magnified the Lord. She was interested in making herself seem smaller, and the Lord seem bigger. Mary would not have been happy with the way this part of the Bible is often used today. The Roman Catholic Church has a well-known prayer referred to as the “Hail Mary.” It comes from a combination of Luke 1:28 and 42. The Catholic prayer says, “Hail Mary, full of grace…” But Luke 1:28 tells us that the “hail” with which the angel greeted Mary, was just that: a greeting – not a description of sinlessness. Mary was not “full of grace.” She was a sinner, saved by God’s grace, through faith. When the Bible calls her “highly favored” it means that Mary was the recipient of grace given to her by God.

Note that Luke 1:32 does not say, “You will be great…” It says, “He shall be great..,” referring to Jesus. And Verse 42, which says, “blessed art thou among women,” has Elisabeth, Mary’s cousin – not the angel – speaking.

So, what was Mary’s secret? How could she be so happy, so excited, so obedient… knowing that her character was going to be questioned? For one thing, Mary loved the Word of God – she knew the Scriptures.

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.

Psalm 119:165

Remember, Mary did not have a Bible. She would have gone to the synagogue to hear the Word of God in the Old Testament being read aloud. Mary hid the Word in her heart – she memorized it. In her song, she quotes from the Law, the prophets, and the Psalms. Luke 1:50 has part of Exodus 20:6 in it. Luke 1:51 has part of Isaiah 40:10 in it. Luke 1:53 has part of Psalm 107:9 in it. If Mary could memorize Bible verses without even owning a Bible, how much more should we be able to do it when we can have access to a Bible any time we want!

It grieves me to see people – especially teenaged children – get up after a Sunday School class, and leave their Bible lying on the floor. We have to wonder if Mary would have gone out of the synagogue and left her written copy of God’s Word, if she had had one, lying on the floor.

So we see, Mary could face the possibility of having people say bad things about her – to fail to see her true character – because she was not being fake. She was being real. She understood that her life needed to be given to obeying the Lord joyfully. The secret of having that joy was (1) surrendering to God’s Word and His way; (2) magnifying the Lord; and (3) knowing the Bible and memorizing it.

Unlike David, other people didn’t always say, “The Lord is with him/her…” However, when it comes to Mary’s character, think about the people who whispered about Mary, and said bad things about her behind her back. And then ask yourself, “Who do we recognize as the earthly mother of our Savior?” Bible students for centuries have honored the name of Mary for her Godly character, but we do not know the name of a single one of her critics. I’d say that’s pretty good character.

 The importance of forgiveness should be obvious from the Gospels themselves where it is centrally featured in both the preaching and praxis of Jesus. The forgiveness even of enemies is insisted upon in the Sermon on the Mount, and the pardoning of those who trespass against us is at the heart of the prayer that Jesus taught his church. But more to the point, Jesus’ own startling practice of forgiving the sins of others emerges as one of the distinctive and most controversial elements in his ministry: “Why does this fellow speak this way? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). And both rhetoric and practice reach their fullest expression when the crucified Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who are torturing him to death and when the risen Jesus says “Shalom” to those who have abandoned him, We speak the truth because Jesus is the Truth; we forgive because he forgave.

But what exactly is forgiveness? We must not, despite our typically modern tendency to do so, subjectivize and interiorize forgiveness, as though it amounted to little more than a conviction or a resolution. To say, “I have put that offense out of my mind and have resolved to move on” is not forgiveness; even to feel no further anger at someone who has hurt me and to refrain from harming that person is not tantamount to real forgiveness. Forgiveness, in the full New Testament sense of the term, is an act and not an attitude. It is the active and embodied repairing of a broken relationship, even in the face of opposition, violence, or indifference. When a relationship is severed, each party should, in justice, do his part to reestablish the bond, Forgiveness — which of necessity transcends justice — is the bearing of the other person’s burden, moving toward her, even when she refuses to move an inch toward you. There is something relentless, even aggressive, about forgiveness, since it amounts to a refusal ever to give up on a relationship. “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times?” Simon Peter asks Jesus; comes the reply: “I assure you, not seven times, but seventy times seven times.” Christians should never cease in our efforts to establish love.

Stanley Hauerwas relates a terrible story of authentic forgiveness. There was an Amish family — a father, a mother, and their teenaged son — riding along, as was their custom, in a horse-drawn buggy. Behind them came a car filled with rowdy and impatient young people. Annoyed at the slow-moving carriage, they honked the horn and waved their fists in aggravation. Finally, in a swirl of dust, they rushed around the Amish. As they passed, one of the young men in the car hurled a stone in the direction of the horse, hoping just to harass the family. Instead, the stone hit the Amish boy in the head, killing him instantly. The town was outraged, and the young killer came to trial for manslaughter. To everyone’s amazement, the parents of the slain teenager, still crippled by grief, appeared to testify on behalf of the stone-thrower. Despite this testimony, the young man was condemned and sent to prison. Now, every month, the Amish parents come to the jail and visit their son’s slayer, comforting him, encouraging him, seeking to bring him back eventually into the community. That is forgiveness.

A similar story unfolded in Chicago in 1995. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was accused of having sexually abused a young man, Steven Cook, years before, when Cook was a seminarian and the cardinal was archbishop of Cincinnati. When the story became public, the cardinal appeared before dozens of cameras and hundreds of reporters at a wrenching news conference. As his image and the terrible charge were transmitted all over the world, he had to endure the most humiliating and intrusive questions, under the literally glaring light of publicity. In the ensuing weeks, he endured a sort of Garden of Gethsemane. Following his usual busy public schedule, he would appear at Masses, gatherings, and social events, and, as the people turned to face him, he knew, to his infinite shame, that many of them probably believed the charge against him. During that period, the cardinal came to Mundelein Seminary where I teach, and he addressed the seminarians. He told them that when he prayed, he now stretched himself out full on the floor and begged God to take this suffering from him.

Eventually Steven Cook admitted that his accusations were groundless, and the charges were withdrawn. At this point, who would have blamed Cardinal Bernardin if he had lashed out in anger, condemning Cook and the media, perhaps threatening to countersue? And wouldn’t we have praised him if he had quietly said, “Well, I am going to let this go and move on”? But he did neither of these things; instead, he chose to forgive. He visited Steven Cook in his home, embraced him, celebrated Mass with him, gave him a gift of the Bible, anointed him, and prayed with him. Bernardin bore absolutely no responsibility for the severed relationship between himself and Cook; it was brought about exclusively through the efforts of his accuser. In strict justice, therefore, he was obliged to do nothing to repair it. But, as the Scripture says, “mercy mocks justice.” Bearing his accuser’s burden, the cardinal made the overture that the young man was unable to make — and in doing that, he forgave.

Why do I relate this radical practice to the second path of holiness, of knowing that you are a sinner? To walk this second path is to know that we are sinners and that we, accordingly, stand in constant need of forgiveness. What makes our forgiveness of others necessary is their sin; but what makes it possible is our deep gratitude for having been first forgiven ourselves. This becomes clear in the Gospel story of the. penitent prostitute in the house of Simon the Pharisee. To the shock of the gathered company, a woman of ill-repute approaches the rabbi from Nazareth, weeping onto his feet and anointing them with oil. Furious at the woman and disappointed in the altogether too permissive rabbi, Simon reacts violently: “If this man were a prophet, he would have know who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him — that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39). But Jesus gently corrects his host: “I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. . . . Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:44—47). Simon is so spiritually cramped, so unable to love, because he has not yet felt the power of being forgiven; the woman overflows with love because she has felt to the bottom of her soul that her many sins have been wiped away. As Paul Tillich pointed out in his sermon on this passage, it is not that she loves and is therefore forgiven; rather, it is that she is forgiven and therefore loves.

In accordance with the governing intuition of path two, when we know that we are forgiven sinners, we become agents of divine forgiveness in the world, grateful bearers of others’ burdens, bold speakers of the hard truth.
The Strangest Way – Fr. Robert Barron

The Practice Of Forgiveness
The difficulty of the practice of forgiveness should not be underestimated. We may think we are forgiving, when all we are doing is denying that we have hurt or been hurt by sin. We may think we are forgiving when we have only grown weary of the fear and danger generated by hurt, and have accommodated ourselves to the presence of sin in ourselves or others. We may think we are forgiving when we are only acquiescing in sin against ourselves or against others. We learn the true nature of forgiveness from the way in which God forgives us. Because God knows us completely, God is also able to see that we are not totally identified with our sinful behavior, even if we think of ourselves as defined by sin. God is able to see and summon a self that we perhaps are not able to see. God calls into being that which is as yet only potential within us, namely a self that is not a sinner. In this sense, God forgives us rather than the sin. The sinful self is allowed to die. The self that can live to righteousness is raised by God. When we are able to trust that God so forgives us, we are able then to “turn” or “convert” to the self that God sees and calls into being, and can ourselves activate the self that lives again to righteousness.

We can learn to forgive each other from the way in which God forgives us. We can cultivate the habit of seeing in other s a self that is not defined by their sin. We can seek that self and call it into being, encouraging the growth of that larger self that is capable of living in communion. And as we learn this discipline of genuine forgiveness, we also grow larger – both because we are forgiven in turn and because we increasingly see our neighbors as God perceives them.

But let us also always be aware that we are not God, and cannot forgive as God forgives. We do not see the other truly and completely. There are hurts that we are not able, either individually or communally, to get around or grow past – to forgive or accept forgiveness for. And it is precisely in this humble condition of inadequacy and failure and even sin that we most truly implore the merciful God to forgive us, so that we might someday approach forgiving others as, we trust, God now already forgives them.
Anon

The Gift Of Forgiveness
In answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does….That forgiveness can be vouchsafed only to the one who want it, or at least is willing to accept it, is perfectly obvious to everyone. If someone who were to be forgiven who does not want forgiveness, that would mean declaring him literally incapable of assuming responsibility of himself. …If we realize that perfectly consummated human guilt finally means a decision against God, and ultimately against Him alone, then it will suddenly dawn on us that man’s sin – despite his contrition and confession of guilt – can really only be extinguished by one act, by one act alone: the gift of forgiveness freely bestowed on us by God himself.
The Concept of Sin – Josef Pieper

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was a German Catholic philosopher, at the forefront of the Neo-Thomistic wave in twentieth century Catholic philosophy. Among his most notable works are The Four Cardinal Virtues, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, The Philosophical Act, and Guide to Thomas Aquinas

Forgive Us Our Trespasses
The fifth petition of the Our Father presupposes a world in which there is trespass – trespass of men in relation to other men, trespass in relation to God. Every instance of trespass among men involves some kind of injury to truth and to love and thus opposed to God, who is truth and love…Guilt is a reality, an objective force; it has caused destruction that must be repaired. For this reason, forgiveness must be more than a matter of ignoring, of merely trying to forget. Guilt must be worked through, handled , and thus overcome. Forgiveness exacts a price – first of all from the person who forgives. He must overcome within himself the evil done to him; he must, as it were, burn it interiorly and in so doing renew himself. As a result, he also involves the other, the trespasser, in this process of transformation, of inner purification, and both parties, suffering all the way through and overcoming evil are made new.

The idea that God allowed the forgiveness of guilt, the healing of man from within, to cost him the death of his Son has come to seem quite alien to us today. That the Lord “has borne our diseases and taken upon himself sorrows,” that “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities,” and that “with his wounds we are healed”[Isaiah 53:4-6] no longer seems possible to us today. Militating against this on one side, is the trivialization of evil in which we take refuge, despite the fact that at the very same time we that the horrors of human history, especially of the most recent human history, as an irrefutable pretext for denying the existence of a good God and slandering his creature man. But the understanding of the great mystery of expiation is also blocked by our individual image of man. We can no longer grasp substitution because we think that every man is ensconced in himself alone. The fact that all individual beings are deeply interwoven and that all are encompassed in turn by the being of the one, the Incarnate Son, is something we are no longer capable of seeing….Cardinal John Henry Newman once said that while God could create the whole world out of nothing with just one word, he could overcome men’s guilt and suffering only by bringing himself into play, by becoming in his Son a sufferer who carried this burden and overcame it through his self-surrender. The overcoming of guilt has a price: We must put our heart – or, better, our whole existence – on the line. And even this act is insufficient; it can become effective only through communion with the One who bore the burdens of us all.

The petition for forgiveness is more than a moral exhortation – though it is that as well, and as such it challenges us anew every day. But as its deepest core, it is – like the other petitions – a Christological prayer. It reminds us of he who allowed forgiveness to cost him descent into the hardship of human existence and death on the Cross. It calls us first and foremost to thankfulness for that, and then, with him, to work through and suffer through evil by means of love, And while we must acknowledge day by day how little our capacities suffice for that task, and how often we ourselves keep falling into guilt, this petition gives us the great consolation that our prayer is held safe within the  power of his love – with which , though which and in which it can still become a power of healing.
Jesus of Nazareth – Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

The True Gravity Of Sin, The Free Grace Of Forgiveness
Now here is the point I wish to make, because this is the thought that came to me as I was putting all this before the Lord. Existence is the essential thing and the holy thing. If the Lord chooses to make nothing of our transgression then they are nothing. Or whatever reality they have is trivial and conditional beside the exquisite primary fact of existence. Of course the Lord would wipe them away, just as I wipe dirt from your face, or tears. After all, why should the Lord bother much over these smirches that are no part of His Creation.

Well, there are a good many reasons why He should. We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep. I am aware that significant confusion enters my thinking at this point. I’m tired — that may be some part of the problem. Though I recall even in my prime foundering whenever I see the true gravity of sin over against the free grace of forgiveness. If young Boughton is my son, then by the same reasoning that child of his was also my daughter, and it was just terrible what happened to her, and that’s a fact. As I am a Christian man, I could never say otherwise.
Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr

I recently fell victim to a rule here in Germany entitled ‘The Good Samaritan Law.’

The statute irked me even before I suffered under it, because it evokes a sacred parable, but totally misses the enduring message of the story.  Worse, for those not familiar with one of the most important stories in all of Christianity, familiarity with this law will likely make you presume the exact opposite storyline of The Good Samaritan.

You can read the story yourself in any self-respecting Bible containing the book of Luke.  Specifically, Luke chapter 10, verses 25-37.

Incidentally, Luke is my favorite of the Gospels not only because he was a doctor, but also because without him, we wouldn’t really know much about the early church after Jesus died.  Luke wrote Acts along with his Gospel.

Doctors.  Always so thorough.

Anyway, for a brief run-down of the story, a guy gets the smack-down by bandits while traveling by himself on a lonely road.

While laying there – naked, hacking, bleeding and wheezing – 3 different people walk by.  The first two people are the most likely to stop and help him because they’re either from his tribe, or religious-types who might just kinda want to reflect the love of God to the lost and suffering (and involuntarily naked).

However, those guys pass right on by as the man lays suffering in the gutter.  The person who does stop is the sworn enemy of the  beat-up guy:  the Samaritan.  Jews and Samaritans hated each other back then.  So much that cultured Jews wouldn’t even speak the name ‘Samaritan’.  Both groups had all these issues with each other and the way they regarded themselves as El Guapo of God, etc.

So, the story in today’s parlayance would be something along the lines of: a hyper-conservative-to-the-distant-right-of-Pat-Robertson guy stops in a discordant wave of compassion to help a bleeding man with a pink neon sign strapped to his body cyclically buzzing “I’m a proud man-flamer and really, really damn proud of it.  Christians SUUUUCK!”  This would be after Richard Simmons, Barry Manilow, Franc from Father of the Bride, Surge from Beverly Hills Cop and Bruno all sauntered past without so much as a 2nd sideways glance.

THAT’S the story.  The point gets at perhaps Jesus’ most profound and challenging admonition: love your enemy.  Volitionally.  On purpose.  ’Cause you want to, you chose to, nobody made you.

In the Sermon on the Mount – by my estimation, the greatest oratory in all of human history – Jesus says,

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Arguably, this idea of extending love beyond your own brethren to everyone – even punks you hate – distinguishes Christianity from all other religions. In my mind, this teaching constitutes both the core of Christianity, and elevates it above the world’s other great religions.

Love your neighbor as yourself was espoused by the common religious teaching at the time, thought to be imported from Asia.  Love your brother as yourself is the prominent admonition in Islam.  But love your enemy?  That’s out there.  Was then.  Is today.  Pretty much never successfully followed by Christians, but profound teaching nonetheless.

So, you can see that when I encounter The Good Samaritan used in less-than-exact terms, I get edgy.  That story rests squarely in the central belief system of my life.

And what is the German Good Sam Law?  Simply, that if you see someone in need of aid, you are required to offer any assistance you reasonably can (no road-shoulder femur reductions required if you’re a manager at Staples, for example).

The name of this law probably came from an identically-named law in the States.  However, in the States, the Good Sam law simply protects anyone from getting sued for attempting to be a “Good Samaritan” by helping someone in dire need…and the would-be Sam actually screws it up, or just doesn’t actually help, or only sorta helped but could have done better…or anything else the average creative American might come up with to get themselves a lawsuit against your average kindhearted bonehead.

I don’t mind the name applied to the American law because it’s simply a protection against lawsuits.  It doesn’t reference the parable incorrectly.

The German law is incorrectly named because the whole notion of a Good Samaritan is that their actions are by choice and unexpected.  Furthermore, the Good Sam is helping someone he is supposed to hate.

The German law simply forces you to help anyone, love ‘em or hate ‘em.  So, the name has been applied lazily, which undermines a story with sacred meaning that shouldn’t be distorted.

Hmph.  Did I get old suddenly?

And how did this law affect me?  Today, while on an exit ramp on the autobahn, we were flagged down by a couple next to their car.  The man waved frantically, wide-eyed, looking like something must have gone terribly wrong.  I would not have pulled over at that point in the U.S.  I would have assumed it was some sort of scam and known that Emergency people could probably handle it.  But this is Germany.  I’m obligated to be a “Good Samaritan” (contradiction in terms…see above).  So I pull over.  The man urgently asks for gas money.

His car is out of gas.

Am I supposed to “help” with this?  Would I be a “Bad Samaritan” in Germany if I didn’t help this guy out?  Worriedly, I pull out 20 Euro and give it to him, furtively casting glances over my shoulder for the “Polezi” and seeing a disembodied officer’s head nod in approval as I hand over the legal tender.

The guy acts instantly relieved and immensely grateful.  He tries to give me his worthless “gold” chain, which we refuse.  I then realize that those 20 Euro cost me about 30 U.S. dollars, plus whatever cost I incurred to get them from the cash machine the day before.  Driving away, I realize that 30 bucks is more than enough to get some gas.  5 would have been fine.  I also wonder why the guy is trying to get money RIGHT THERE, why not wait ’till they got to the gas station, then peddle money?  My cash isn’t going to get him off the should of the road.

I gave more than I could afford, trying to avoid becoming a “Bad Samaritan”, and in truth, I was probably scammed.  In normal life, I virtually never give money to individual people I don’t know because I can’t be sure that what they do with the money will be beneficial.  I’ve long come to accept that giving money to beggars is really about my guilt issues, rather than my genuine desire to help them.

This time, giving that money derived from being afraid that I would go to German jail, forever labeled as a Bad Samaritan.

So, I’m critical of the title of the law.  I also think the whole idea of a law that forces you to help people has lots of ethical and liberty issues with it.

Germany’s great…but they ought to take another look at their law, starting with the name of it.

Good Shepherd Icon

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away — and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”
 John 10:7-15

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15 1-10

A tremendous thought breaks in on us: Jesus is saying that the bond between himself and us is the same bond which binds him to the Father, in that perfect intimacy and understanding of life shared in its entirety side by side. John speaks of this union in his opening words: “…and the Word was with God.”

…Now we understand better that humble and yet so exalted name that the Messiah goes by: Son of Man. No one is so warmly, so intimately, so excellently human as he. That is why he knows us, why his words strike the intrinsic in us. That is why man is more profoundly understood by Christ than he ever could understand himself. No wonder he can call his sheep by name! But then what about those others who also wish to help mankind — to teach wisdom, lead the way, fight for the truth behind our existence? Jesus says: I am the door to the sheepfold — door and shepherd. The shepherd comes in through the door. All others are thieves who sneak in to steal and kill and destroy.

He alone is the gateway to the essence of human existence. Anyone who would reach that essence must come through him. This is not meant figuratively, but literally. The intrinsic form of all Christian being is Jesus himself. He who would penetrate to man’s heart, to the core where all true decisions form, must pass through Christ. The thoughts of any other must be purged to blend with Christ’s thoughts, his words with Christ’s words. Then that other will think and speak truly, and his teaching will strike home. His intentions must be carried out as Christ would have wished them; his will must be fused with Christ’s love. It must be Jesus Christ who speaks, not he; Jesus Christ who is presented, and not other. Then the depths of the soul, which “know” the Lord and obey his voice, will respond. That the metaphor of the door might swing its full weight, Jesus declares categorically: All others are “thieves and robbers.” Terrible sentence! Nothing else is acknowledged, neither wisdom nor goodness, nor cleverness, nor pedagogy, nor pity.

Everything outside of Christ is swept aside. Obviously, ultimate reality is at stake, and no confusion with human attributes — even the noblest — can be countenanced. Compared with the coming of the Messiah, the advent of any mere human is theft, robbery, violence and murder. What an unmasking of human nature! We do well to waste no time wondering whether also Abraham is meant, Moses and the prophets – “all” others; the words are there in black and white. But never mind the others, see to yourself. God has declared what you are when you to others with your worldly wisdom; take his word for it!
The Lord — Romano Guardini

Man Is A Lost And Erring Creature
Somewhere in Mark we find the sentence: “And when he landed, Jesus saw a large crowd, and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” How well we understand these words: whenever we meet a crowd we are reminded of sheep without a shepherd. Man is a lost and erring creature who has forsaken the very fundaments of his being. Not because there are too few efficient or conscientious people who bother about the others — more would only mitigate the loneliness and isolation within existence. What is meant here is a sense of forsakenness that goes back much further. Existence itself is forsaken because it is as it is: estranged from God and sinking into nothingness. No human can rescue here, only Christ, the Godman, who has overcome the void.
The Lord — Romano Guardini

While he is still a long way off (still to some degree in the land of exile), his father catches sight of him (he had obviously been looking for him) and is “filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The word used in the Greek here for the feeling of compassion is esplagnisthe, meaning literally that the father’s guts are moved (gut wrenching?), the visceral connection to his child stirred up. This same term is applied in the New Testament to the feelings of Jesus himself: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). This powerful feeling leads to an extraordinary gesture. As many have pointed out, in ancient Jewish society, it was considered terribly unseemly for an elderly man to run to meet someone; rather, he was the one to whom others would come in a spirit of respect and obeisance. So the Father’s running, throwing caution and respectability to the wind, is an act of almost shocking condescension and other orientation.
The Priority of Christ – Fr. Robert Barron

The Shepherd Discourse
A third essential motif of the Shepherd discourse is the idea that the shepherd and his flock know each other: “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” [John: 10:3]  “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” [John 10:14]

These verses present two striking sets of interrelated ideas that we need to consider if we are to understand what is meant by “knowing.” First of all, knowing and belonging are interrelated. The shepherd knows the sheep because they belong to him, and they know him precisely because they are his. Knowing and belonging are actually one and the same thing. The true shepherd does not possess the sheep as if they were a thing to be used and consumed; rather, they “belong” to him, in the context of their knowing each other, and this knowing is an inner acceptance. It signifies an inner belonging that goes much deeper than the possession of things. …

Herein lies the distinction between the owner, the true Shepherd, and the robber. For the robber, for the ideologues and the dictators, human beings are merely a thing that they possess. For the true Shepherd, they are free in relation to truth and love; the Shepherd proves that they belong to him precisely by knowing and loving them, by wishing them to be in the freedom of the truth. They belong to him through the oneness of “knowing,” though the communion in the truth that the Shepherd himself is. This is why he does not use them, but gives his life for them. Just as Logos and Incarnation, Logos and Passion belong together, so too knowing and self-giving are ultimately one. ….

The mutual knowing of the shepherd and sheep is interwoven with the mutual knowing of Father and Son. The knowing that links Jesus with “his own” exists within the space opened up by his “knowing” oneness with the Father. Jesus’ own are woven into the Trinitarian dialogue….This will help us to see that the Church and Trinity are mutually interwoven. This interpenetration of two levels of knowing is crucial for understanding the essence of the knowing of which John’s gospel speaks.

Applying all of the above to the world in which we live, we can say this: It is only in God and in light of God that we rightly know any man. Any “self-knowledge” that restricts man to the empirical and tangible fails to engage with man’s true depth. Man knows himself only when he learns to understand himself in light of God, and he knows others only when he sees the mystery of God in them.
Jesus of Nazareth – Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Death will come, so I do not fear it. MLK, Jr., stated “if a man has not found something he is willing to die for, he isn’t fit to live.” I concur. And, since I have to die, I want it to be for something that will improve and motivate those left behind.

I am ready to die, just like McNair. I loved to watch Steve McNair play football and I loved what good he did in the community; but, the McNair I was referring to was Ronald McNair. The astronaut that died in the Challenger explosion in 1986.

McNair was a spiritual man. A family man (wife and two kids). A scholar (PhD in Physics from MIT). A well rounded individual who was also a jazz saxophonist, member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and a black belt in karate. He did not die by the bullet of an assassin, but his death magnified his life. I am a fan of no man, save Jesus of Nazareth. However, there are some men and women I greatly admire and respect– McNair is one of those individuals, because of the life he lived as a quiet hero!

Bottom Line: In the past months our world has seen the death of many prominent figures that made us more conscious of our life-style decisions, wills, and death itself. But the reality is a lot of people die everyday for numerous reasons. When you hour comes, what will your legacy be, beloved. I do not need to be mourned by millions, but it is my prayer that the legacy I leave will positively affect billions (about 6.7 of em, if you understand).

Blessings and Prayers
The BLAQUESMITH

I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and lo!
The godly multitudes walked to and fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din -
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
With tranquil face, upon that holy show,
A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
“God keep you, stranger”, I exclaimed. “You are
No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
And yet I entertain the hope that you,
Like these good people, are a Christian too.”
He raised his eyes, and with a look so stern
It made me with a thousand blushes burn,
Replied – his manner with disdain was spiced:
“What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I’m Christ.”

Ambrose Bierce (writing as “Gassalasca Jape S.J.“) penned this near-perfect indictment of Christian incomprehension sometime around the turn of the 20th century; it was included in his 1911 Devil’s Dictionary under the heading CHRISTIAN. Every time I read it, I think back to when I first began to question what people were telling me about this Jesus person.

I was nine. Third grade, in the American public school system. More importantly, the “confirmation year” for our church, at the end of which each of us kids received our first Bibles. Ours was the last year that the confirmation class graduates received unannotated copies of the King James Version. I spent the next fifteen years trying to figure out who the hell the prophet Esaias was. But I digress.

I suppose most of my classmates took their gifts home, planted them on a bookshelf somewhere and promptly forgot about them. Me, I couldn’t wait to get mine. I read anything I could get my hands on anyway, mainly ’cause reading helped me forget that I was beneath useless at “gym” and “recess” (I was the odd one out every time the ball sides were chosen, and I stopped noticing that this was happening when there was an even number of kids in the pool). I especially wished to read all about this wonderful, kindly, Sunday school “Prince of Peace”.

I read some, and was perplexed. More, and grew dismayed. Still more, and I became positively alarmed. I wasn’t getting no Prince of Peace out of the pages of that KJV New Testament. What I was seeing was a razor-tongued SOB who was violent (Mark 11: 15-17), vindictive (Mark 11: 12-14, 20-21), petty (Mark 6: 4-5), and bigoted (Mark 7: 25-27; for “children”, read “Judeans” – in case you missed the memo, Jesus was a Judean). His own people were terrified of him (Mark 9: 32), and no wonder, for he was a master of the put-down (Mark 8: 17-18). No public school in today’s America would let this self-esteem killer anywhere near the children.

I can understand Jesus yelling at dense bureaucrats, and especially at demons. Sometimes you just have to speak in the language that your audience has a chance of understanding. But, your own people? And what did that poor leper do …?

Then a leper comes up to him, pleads with him, falls down on his knees, and says to him, “If you want to, you can make me clean.”

Although Jesus was indignant, [in first-century CE Judaism, the leper was about the filthiest sin-fouled skunk this side of a Samaritan or a Roman - for a righteous Judean literally untouchable] he stretched out his hand, touched him, and says to him, “Okay – you’re clean!” And right away the leprosy disappeared, and he was made clean.

And Jesus snapped at him, and dismissed him curtly with the warning, “See that you don’t tell anyone anything, but go, have a priest examine your skin.” – Mark 1: 40-44 (Scholar’s Version)

Prince of Peace? Hell. This Jesus of Nazareth character sounds more like your boss. Except dirtier (Mark 7: 1-5) and without the stock options. Not that those stock options have been doing your boss any good lately.

In taxonomy, the branch of science that takes on the task of putting names on living things, the name of a species is based on a physical object, the “type specimen”. In the case of a dispute over whether organism X belongs to species A or not, the judge and jury in the case is the type specimen of species A. Oftentimes, a scientist who is putting names on organisms and does not know, or has misunderstood, the type specimen of species A, will put species name A on organisms that actually belong to species B or C. Only later, when those specimens of B or C are reexamined together with A’s type, is the mistake discovered, and corrected. This happens, a lot. Crede expertum.

Bierce’s point, and mine, is that religions bearing the name “Christianity” have been named in the absence of the type specimen – Jesus of Nazareth, who had the misfortune to die before the institutions that bear his title, “the Christ”, had a chance to become established. Should it indeed come to pass that the type, Jesus, return to the third rock from Sol and make himself available for examination, we think that it will prove necessary to assign another name to “Christian” churches, on the basis of nonconformity of the name “Christian” with the type. We would expect, in this assessment, the vehement assent of Jesus himself.

And, just as the choicest rebukes in Mark’s gospel were reserved for the people in Jesus’s own retinue who weren’t “getting it”, so, I think, a returned Jesus would speak most sharply to those modern-day people who are the most conspicuously certain that they are following him.

NOTE: The quotations in this post are drawn exclusively from Mark’s gospel for several reasons.

1. Most scholars think that Mark is the earliest gospel, the first drafts of which were penned a mere twenty years or so after Jesus’s death (ca. 50-60 CE).

2. The gospels of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, grafting other materials onto Mark’s narrative structure and, in the process, providing semi-independent corroboration for nearly all of Mark. The only major story in Mark that is missing from Matthew and Luke is that of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:25-27). Neither “Matthew” nor “Luke” wished to remind their readers that Jesus was a mainstream, partisan Jew – “Matthew”, because his community had split from Judaism, “Luke” because he wished to “sell” the Christian movement to Gentiles.

3. Nearly all of the words of “Jesus” in the gospel of John are likely, instead, to be those of “John” – who was trying to unify his proto-Christian community under his leadership in the face of severe persecutions from both mainstream Judaism and Rome, some 70 years or so after Jesus’s death.

I therefore have assumed that, of the four canonical gospels, Mark comes closest to offering a picture of the “real Jesus”. Though it probably still isn’t very close.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Cover of The Miracle Worker

HELEN KELLER WROTE that “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the horizon of the spirit”

How does one define a pessimist? Well: the Oxford English Dictionary says that pessimism is a lack of hope or confidence in the future; and that, philosophically, it’s a belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good.

Born in Alabama on the 27th June 1880, Helen Keller didn’t build her life around pessimism. And she could have done, very easily indeed. Perhaps you’ve seen the extraordinary film The Miracle Worker – the inspiring story of a battle to overcome impossible obstacles and the struggle to communicate. As a young girl, Helen Keller contracted scarlet fever which left her blind, mute, and deaf.

Sealed off from the world, Helen could not communicate with others, nor others with her. Often desperate, Helen flew into uncontrollable rages that terrified her family. Until the gifted and patient teacher Annie Sullivan arrived in her world in March 1887. Annie believed in human ability to achieve very great things and with love and patience she helped the little girl understand the world from which she was isolated. Annie Sullivan began immediately to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with d-o-l-l for the doll that she had brought the little lass as a present.

This led to Helen’s eureka moment in April that same year, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of “water”; Annie was soon to become well nigh worn out as Helen demanded the names of all the other familiar objects in her world; freed from her internal prison forever Helen went on to become a world-famous speaker and author.

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars”, she wrote.

“Consider the birds of the air,” said Jesus of Nazareth, “they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6.26

You know: I’m going to make a real effort to sail to uncharted lands this week. Teachers like Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller and Jesus of Nazareth help me throw pessimism out the window. Reach for the stars. And maybe one day you’ll let me know how you got on.

PURE FM 107.8 – Thought for the Day