Sermon for 14 Pentecost 9/18/2011

Here we are again! at the start of a new fall season.

There is a sense of energy in the air

            in anticipation about what this year will hold for us:

parents rejoicing in the start of the school year,

kids excited about what they will learn at school

            but more probably they are excited about seeing old friends,

            starting class another year older

                        as they rush eagerly towards more independence

                                    and getting to do more big kid things than last year.

Today we bless their backpacks,

            symbols of education for our young people,

and I hope each of us older ones

            can imagine our own symbolic book bags

                        also presented before the altar to be blest,

that each of us in our individual spiritual practice and devotion

            might continue to grow in love and serve and knowledge of the Lord.

And this morning we also have the great, good pleasure of a baptism,

            presenting us with the sacramental image of new beginnings.

We have Lucy and Tony Vedrich’s little grandson, Elijah,

            to demonstrate this for us

            and to remind us, as we pledge ourselves to do all in our power

                                    to support Elijah in his life in Christ,

that we have also said these words in promise

            for each of our other children in the congregation.

And so, as we have commended them

                                                            to Christian education and spiritual formation,

            let us lead by example, and practice what we preach,

that is, let us attend to the scripture lessons presented to us today

                        and how they get us started on our new fall schedule.

First the collect for today addresses

                                    our immediate anxiety about current circumstances.

Attention is called to

            the things that are passing away and those that shall endure –

                        the temporal and the eternal.

When we set our attention on the things that are passing away,

            we are seeing things from a limited perspective

and when attention is draw to that which endures

            that limited perspective is expanded until we are seeing things

                                                                                    from God’s perspective.

Another way of saying this is: “It’s bigger than me.”

In part the reason why we come here may be just that thing –

            to be moved out of our limited perspective

                        and to catch the vision of the eternal,

            to have our awareness expanded

                        and be brought into the Presence of God.

So let’s see how the readings can expand our awareness.

I believe there is a good connection between the story from Exodus

and the parable Jesus told about the owner of the vineyard and the laborers.

In Exodus the situation is this:

The Israelites had just escaped crushing slavery in Egypt.

They were on their way

            off into the unknown

            with a hope for a promised land flowing with milk and honey.

But where they were now was in the middle of a desert,

            a huge expanse of inhospitable geography that dwarfed their numbers,

            a threatening environment with no respite.

How did the Children of Israel react?  They complained.

            That word, complained, is used 7 times in this passage.

They weren’t thankful for being saved from bondage as slaves.

They weren’t even faithfully down on their knees

                        asking the God who had saved them once

                                                            to help them now in this time of need.

They were complaining.

But it didn’t matter.

They were going to get fed.

That was the plan,

            for they were a chosen people,

chosen to become a people who would be a light to the nations,

            an example of God’s redemptive grace.

            an example to show what God could do.

The test was how they would respond to the current situation.

Their reactions showed their current spiritual condition,

            that is, a limited perspective concerned with things passing away.

But God’s grace would intervene.

Then we have the Parable of the owner of the vineyard:

As usual Jesus tells a story with a twist on the expected,

and this time he presents the Kingdom of Heaven

            as a landowner who employs an economic policy

                        that is entirely contrary to common sense

                                                            and the economic system we know and live in.

Jesus messes with the economic values

                                                                        and moral sensibility of human culture.

It appears he has the owner take advantage of the hard working laborers                                    and then reward those who contributed little.

            There was no recognition of the great disparity in labor.

When we hear this parable we may say with the workers hired first,

            “It’s not fair!”

In the parable, who were those hired at the beginning of the day?

            the best workers:

                        those known to be able to work the hardest,

                                    to bring in the most bushels of grapes per hour,

                        those who would give an honest day’s work

                                    for an honest day’s wage.

But…

those hired at the end of the day were likely to be those who were known for

                        taking long coffee breaks

                        eating as many grapes as went into the baskets

                        those who were slow, harvested less per hour

                        and were late showing up for work in the morning

To pay the workers hired at 5 minutes before quitting time

            the same as those hired at 8:00 AM

was taken as an insult to the quality and quantity of work of those hired first.

Our world is hard wired to the pragmatic way of looking at things that says

            it’s all about working to get paid what you’ve earned.

The least the owner of the vineyard should have done

                        if he was going to pay those hired last the same full day’s wage

            would have been to give those hired first merit raises!

It’s not fair!

But this parable is not about the workers, but about grace.

This parable is very radical,

            breaking cultural and social expectations and mores

                        not only in Jesus’ time

                        but ours here just as much.

Jesus does not say that the Kingdom of Heaven is like the workers

            but like the owner of the vineyard.

The Kingdom of God has different values:

            it is inclusive.

            The last get the same as the first.

We think those who work more should get more.

But Jesus says everyone needs the daily wage, that is, their daily bread.

He says, give everybody a full day’s wage to meet their needs…

            Everyone has the same basic needs.

The landowner included them for that reason,

            not in return for their labor,

                        but out of compassion and generosity  

                                                and from his own apparently limitless abundance.

To cry, “No fair!” is to speak out of the limited perspective of things temporal.

It’s like God providing the manna and the quails

            to all those complaining Israelites.

The compassion and generosity is not conditioned by our limited perspective.

It’s the things eternal – compassion and generosity.

May we each be able to recognize the gift of daily bread,

            that which we think we have earned that provides for us,

                                    that supplies our literal, physical needs,

            AND that which provides us with our very life breath

                        day by day and hour by hour and minute by minute,

            that which sustains us body and spirit.

May we each be able to recognize

            how we have been called by a compassionate Savior

                        and baptized into the Kingdom of God, into the very Body of Christ.­

“Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things,

            but to love things heavenly;

and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away,

            to hold fast to those that shall endure…”

Let this be the way to start the fall:

            our consideration of why we are drawn here,

            our consideration of our own economic system and world view

in contrast with the absurd abundance of Kingdom of Heaven economics.

Let’s not get hung up on the temporal, limited perspective,

            but hold fast to the unlimited expansiveness of eternal grace,

compassionate, loving beyond what we ever could earn, absurdly abundant.

Flash of Insight

A personal story – This last year brought the unexpected, a surprise diagnosis of breast cancer, unexpected because there was no way I could have known without the new digital imaging technology that is capable of finding lumps to small to be felt.  That, of course, was good news, because the cancer was caught very early.  However it meant a big shift in my agenda for the last eleven months.  I joked about taking on a new hobby – medical appointments! 

I thought I was doing well in responding to this health threat.  I did research and became aware of all the different aspects of breast cancer and its treatment.  I consulted with knowledgeable people, who gave me excellent advice and whom I deeply appreciate.  I made choices about treatment and changed my life style so as to give my body the best advantage in discouraging any further cancer.  And I wanted very much to be able to put it all behind me, and get my body back.  As a modest person, I had never exposed myself to so many strangers!  Yet the stress manifested itself.  For example, it showed up last week when I finally dug my way down to my desk top only to discover to my chagrin a pile of thank you notes from Christmas written but never mailed!

Now long after surgery and radiation I continue to deal with the aftermath of the treatments that brought their own new hitches in my desire to eliminate medical appointments from my calendar.  None of this is really of any great consequence – except one that I found particularly distressing.  No longer taking estrogen I began experiencing hot flashes.  They were of such intensity and number that they could not be easily ignored or tolerated.  They disturbed my sleep, left me dehydrated, broke my train of thought and concentration, and became the focus of irritation.  Even in meditation as I sat deep in silence they came.  I got so I could detect the first very subtle shift that marks the beginning of a rise in temperature.  At least then I could throw off my sweater or jacket or shawl, so as not to soak them when the sweat began.

I tried many different herbal remedies and acupuncture with only marginal improvement.  The hot flashes were sapping emotional energy as well as the physical discomfort, and my resentment was growing.  I knew that people didn’t die of hot flashes, and that while they were a nuisance, they really weren’t all that harmful.  But they were making a big impact on my equilibrium and general disposition. 

Something had to change, and if the hot flashes couldn’t stop, then it was my attitude that had to change.  How was I to pray about this?  What could I ask God for?  It was clear to me that even as I asked for mercy and to be relieved of this benign affliction, I had a sense that I needed to learn from this also.  An easy out from the situation would not be in my best interest spiritually, since the whole of life for me is offered into the mercy of the Lamb of God.

                  A few of weeks ago I complained to my spiritual director about the hot flashes, and he started to tell me what I already knew had to be done – to look at reframing my reaction to the hot flashes.  And just as he was saying that, there was a flash of insight.  It was a moment of revelation in which everything shifted.  Suddenly I was seeing the situation from a whole new perspective and meaning framework.  Matthew 3:11 flashed through my mind, the words of John the Baptist: "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  Incredibly those hot flashes were now being presented to me as a gift, a sacramental sign and reminder of the spiritual work of purgation being done within us through the grace of Yeshua and the work of his Spirit.  Now they were intimate and incarnated reminders of God’s mercy arising in the midst of meditation and all the various daily activities, markers alerting me to the inward spiritual process that is continually going on.  Now they have become moments in the day in which attention is drawn to God’s presence and divine intervention in my life for cleansing and purging.  Fire is rich in scriptural reference: burning the chaff, fire as the energetic radiance of divine presence in burning bush and pillar of cloud, tongues of fire on the Day of Pentecost, purifying fire, empowering fire, all consuming fire, the Fire of Love. 

The point of all this is that this breakthrough in my attitude came not because I thought and reasoned it out, or that I had turned my will to the intention of making myself have a different attitude.  Rather it was a merciful intervention, a revelation, and in that moment of recognition I said yes to it.  After this my attitude changed effortlessly, naturally, and without trying or intention.  And I have actually looked forward to the hot flashes.  They now are instant messages of purgatorial love.  And interestingly their intensity and frequency have decreased.

This is one of the reasons why we sit and do nothing and practice meditation.  When we practice sitting awake and watchful without self-concern, we become more alert to our own self imagination, game playing, and self-delusionary tactics for avoiding reality.  As we sit in that mercy of Yeshua, Lamb of God, we can face this about ourselves and we open more and more in trust to the salvation being worked out in us.  We end up discovering that everything, everything that happens to us, everything we encounter, can therefore serve us in our awakening into wholeness, can serve us in our realization of our full potential as children of God.

                  Keep meditating!

                                                                        Blessings in the Lamb,

Beverly

For indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:29, Deuteronomy 4:24, 9:3

Sermon for 10 Pentecost 8/21/2011

 “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked his disciples,

and he also could just as well be asking you and me that question.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Jesus in this reading is having an intensive time of teaching with his disciples,

and he gives them, we could say, a mid-term exam.

Question #1  “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

Well, first we need to examine what the term “Son of Man” refers to.

Here Man is the Greek word that would be much better translated as

                         human being, or person, or humankind, humanity,

since whenever the Greek text is referring to man as specifically male,

that’s an entirely different word in Greek.

So Son of Humankind

– this phrase, as you may already know, referred to a title

used in the Hebrew scriptures

as one who is a servant to everyone else,

someone who serves all others,

someone willing to take the lowest position

so as to offer the greatest service.

It was a title picked up by prophets -

prophets bringing fiery messages of truth radiating

from the divine presence of God,

messages of revelation, judgment, and justice,

messages calling people into account.

So the question posed was,

“Who do people say that this servant, the Son of Humankind is?”

And the disciples dutifully mention the prophets,

and name Jeremiah and Elijah,

and they include John the Baptist as in that noteworthy tradition.

But Jesus also had been referring to himself by that title,

as he went about teaching and healing and feeding

and serving all who came to him.

He had taken on that title as the One willing to take the lowest position

so as to offer the greatest service to ALL of humankind.

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests;

but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

And he would later take off his cloak and assume the literal role of that servant

                        and wash his disciples’ feet.

Next Jesus says, “Who do you say that I am?”

And Simon Peter says,

“You are the Christ, that is, the anointed one, the Messiah,

the Son of the Living God.”

The Son of the Living God.

Not a dead prophet,

        but someone proceeding directly from the present, living God of NOW.

And Jesus zeroed in on this: “Blessed are you, Simon Peter,

because you didn’t think this up out of your own cleverness. 

This is a revelation that has come to you directly,

God’s Spirit to your spirit,

bypassing flesh and blood and brain.

You are nicknamed Peter; they call you a rock.

But here’s the rock-solid foundation, here in what you just said,

that is what I am building the Church on, Jesus was saying.

The Church, the gathering of the community of disciples.

The basis, the Rock, is the divine revelation of who Jesus is,

that then brings on realization of, recognition of the link between

Jesus and the Living God.

We Episcopalians say

that the rock on which the Community of Faith is built is not Peter,

as the first bishop of Rome,

but his confession of faith,

which we celebrate as a major feast day on January 18.

But we need to be careful not to get caught up

in patting Peter on the back, and saying,

“Nice going on that exam question; you get an A.”

The rock is divine revelation perceived and received by the open heart.

It is this realization enlightening our inner most being

that is what the gates of hell will not prevail against.

The Gates of Hades

as understood in that century

and widely throughout that world culture

                   were understood as that which nothing was supposed to be stronger.

Once the gates of death closed

nothing could open them again.

This revelation of Jesus radiating the Living God

would prove to be far stronger than the gates of death.

This is the key to the Kingdom of Heaven,

the ever abundant and ever present Reign of God breaking in among us,

                        breaking into our awareness,

the key with which we can discover that we have it within us

to bind up or release anything whatever,

restrain or let it go.

It’s all tied up in recognizing the revelation of the Living God through Jesus.

Peter had said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

But Messiah?  Ooh, be careful! 

            That was a loaded term, highly political in Peter’s day:

                        Messiah as liberator from Roman oppression,

            a mighty ruler then to whom the nations would come and bow down –

                                    a very limited and politicized understanding of Messiah.

So today’s Gospel ends with the these words:

“Then he sternly ordered the disciples to say to no one that he was the Messiah.”

Jesus, Son of the Living God.

Are we his disciples today?

professing the faith of the confession of Peter,

reciting the words of the Nicene Creed each Sunday.

Let’s examine our own individual experiences of divine revelation

            in which we could recognize that Jesus has radiated to us the Living God.

Let me tell you a personal story.

This was from when I was living in Duluth, Minnesota.

One evening I was giving a ride to someone

on our way to the International Folk Dancing group that we belonged to.

This was a young woman from China

who had come to the United States to study

and was now working in a highly technical job in a local plant.

She told me that someone from work had invited her to church,

and she had gone,

and had found that to be an interesting, mysterious experience,

that left her with many questions and confusion

because she did not know what it was all about. 

You see, she had never been to a church before. 

I, being the Episcopal priest, offered to answer some of her questions. 

So the first question she asked me, straight-forward and with all innocence

             was, “Who is Jesus?”

I had 10 minutes before we would arrive at our destination

in which to answer this simple, yet profound inquiry.

I think each one of us should have that sort of encounter,

that each one of us should be sent someone who hasn’t a clue

who will ask us point blank

in a situation in which we must reply to just this question.

Out of my experience with this young woman from China,

I came back to the congregations I was working with then,

and posed the same situation and question to them.

It is a school of discipleship lesson that I now would like to pose to you also,

a good refresher for those of you have dealt seriously with this question, and a direct challenge for all of us to express,

and give voice to the answer we would give,

that each of us could also articulate what is at the core of our spiritual lives.

So I’ll give you a homework assignment.

Find someone in your family, or some close friend,

and practice answering the question, “Who is Jesus?” with them.

Choose someone with whom you would feel comfortable

so that it will be easier to overcome any reticence you might have, but also someone who will help you examine your answer

and keep you honest.

Now in answering that question, “Who do you say that I am?”

speak to your own experience of Jesus,

what is current and living,

not what is history,

and certainly not what is theological book-learning!

If you have to explain or define any word that you use in describing Jesus,

             then this is moving away from the immediacy of experience and trust.

And if you find that you cannot answer the question at all,

            may this be a holy disturbance for you

                        stimulating some good introspection,

and I invite you into further discussion with me and others around this topic,

            because for now I’m not going to tell you what I said to that young woman!

The rock is divine revelation perceived and received by the open heart.

Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?”

Unadorned with political and theological titles and vocabulary,

who is Jesus for you?

Sermon for 6 Pentecost 7/24/2011

The Gospel reading for today is the third in a three week series
from the 13th chapter of Matthew,
a whole long chapter of the parables of Jesus about the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven –
and it is good to note here that these parables are not about the heaven
people often think of as where you go after you die if you’ve been good.

No, this is the Kingdom of Heaven at hand,
obviously then not a political kingdom or system of government,
and not the pearly gates,
but something else that seems intangible or cloaked or undiscerned.

So Jesus tells these stories, these parables
that those with spiritual perception will pick up on,
parables not entirely apparent on the surface reading,
but loaded with depth of insight and meaning.

In today’s selection we have five short parables.
Let’s look at one of them.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,
which someone found and hid;
then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Notice that there is the field, and there is the treasure hidden in the field –
two different things.

The field could be good acreage for planting a crop
or full of boulders and weeds
or covered by trees and flowers.
There could have been an old barn in the field
or a lovely building of good architectural design and functionality.

But it wasn’t any of this that made the field so valuable
that someone would go and sell all that he has
in order to buy that field.
One might observe that the treasure that this someone found and hid again
was worth more than what he could raise even by selling all that he had,
and worth far more than the field in itself.

In this parable the kingdom of heaven is not like the field,
but like the hidden treasure.
The field has a value of its own, but it can’t compare with the treasure.

Now I am thinking that the Church can be described in terms of this parable.
The Church in general.
The Church is the field, an expanse of a piece of property
possibly with grass and trees and flowers
and a building on the land of particular design and functionality.
It has its value, but this is not the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is hidden within it, hidden – oddly enough,
too often obscured from sight, a treasure waiting to be discovered,
a treasure of such value that those who find it
are willing to sell all in order to have it.

How perplexing and disturbing it has been for me
through all my years of ministry
in so many different local congregations,
that so many come to church and don’t see past the field to the treasure.

After all, it is not the field – that is, the church building and its grounds –
that will save you.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…”

So what exactly is the kingdom of heaven?
if we are not talking about heaven when you die,
or a kingdom like a political system of government.

The answer, like the treasure in the field, is hidden in plain sight.

Look at Jesus.

Look at the one who was saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Everything he said and did exhibited what the kingdom of heaven is like,
the values and qualities, the potency and effectiveness,
the actuality and the truth of the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, healing all who came to him,
liberating those who were oppressed and bound by demonic forces,
transforming awareness and teaching truth,
teaching reality breaking through self-deception,
Jesus expressing the Love of God
and Jesus confronting,
confronting hypocrisy, closed-handedness, hard heartedness, and lack of faith,
O ye of little faith,
all the ways in which we contract away from the generosity of life
endowed upon us by our Creator
and respond with a miserly littleness of attitude and action.

Look at Jesus, everything he did and everything he said,
and especially at the incredibly generous and selfless way
he poured out his whole life.
Look at the Cross and look at the Resurrection
and look at the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Were it not for this universal and eternal saving action of Christ
holding all that is together right now,
the whole world would burn itself up in the insanity of all the violence.

Look, look! The world, the people in it, are totally crazy,
drunk with violence and greed and contention
and tight-fisted, self-centered, hardness of heart
in relationship of one to another,
whether we are talking about nations or individuals.

The treasure is here, present among us,
veiled in bread and wine,
expressed in words and actions that flow out of that love which is real,
that love which God is.

The treasure is here, present with us,
hidden in the words of the Epistle lesson for today
until we read them and see them and get it.

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness; [Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome]
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

Those who regularly practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation
know what this means.
What a treasure! God the Holy Spirit praying within us!
“…interced(ing) for the saints according to the will of God.”
Open your Bibles and read these words from the 8th chapter of Romans.

And look, all of us who are of little faith, look at these words:

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose.”

and
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Where IS our faith?
In the temporal things of this world that we can see?
Or in the treasure hidden in the field?

Want an example of what I mean by temporal?
although I know that we all can name examples.

Consider the Old Testament story today
in this summer-long series of readings
from the stories about the patriarchs in Genesis.

Jacob, the trickster, Jacob, whose name means trickster, gets tricked.

Well, what goes around, comes around.
Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing.
Now Laban does a bait and switch trick on Jacob
to get another seven years of service out of him. Shrewd.
It’s definitely the way of the world –
temporal actions for temporal value for temporal results,
and tricks of deception motivated by greed and hardness of heart.

Yet stay tuned for next week’s installment:
God will work with Jacob until he has his trickiness wrestled out of him.
Then Jacob will be more useful in his destined role as a patriarch of faith.
Ah, that which is eternal, not temporal – the treasure, not the field.

There, that is an example of temporal.
Now an example of that which is not temporal but eternal.

I quote from the diocesan news magazine, Episcopal Voice,
that just came out, page 9, from an article by our own Hunt Priest:

“I live and work in one of the ‘good neighborhoods,’
which means I have to be very intentional to remember,
make real and live out solidarity with the poor,
whether in my own life or in the life of the congregation I serve
as priest and pastor.
Our prayers, our work and our political influence for ‘the least of these’ –
the poor, the hungry, the elderly, children, immigrants –
must be central to our identity as Christians.
Otherwise, we no longer identify with those Jesus cared most about.”

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that someone took and sowed in his field;
it is the smallest of all the seeds,
but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

"The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of flour [not just one, but THREE measures]
until all of it was leavened."

The Kingdom of Heaven is about absurd abundance
from what initially appeared so small,
not the closed handedness of a scarcity mentality exhibiting little faith.

One is real and the other is not.
One is eternal and the other is business as usual on the temporal plane.

And let us remember these words from the collect for today:
may we so pass through the things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal.
Amen.

Sermon for 3 Pentecost 7/3/2011

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Yes! These are words we like to hear, words of great comfort.

But look at them in their context,
that is, how they fit in with the words that come before them,
and that will show us even more
about what these beautiful words mean.

That is, it’s not just rest, getting some R and R, taking a vacation,
that these words are all about.
No, there is a lot more than meets the eye.

These words, at the end of a whole chapter about controversy
over just who Jesus was, and who John the Baptist was.
Some saw them both as great prophets,
but those with the theological backgrounds had lots of considerations, because, first of all,
John the Baptist was this strange man
coming out of the Judean desert
with bits of grasshopper wings and dribbles of honey
in his untrimmed beard,
preaching sermons full of fire and brimstone and name calling.
Then Jesus comes along,
having called a tax-collector, to be one of his disciples,
a collaborator with an oppressive foreign regime,
Jesus eating and drinking with all sorts of low life.

Jesus certainly did not fit the observance of worship of God
or keeping of Torah, the Law,
as did those highly respected religious leaders,
like the clergy and the theologians
and congregational leaders, that is, the Pharisees,
known for the examples of how they lived upstanding lives.

But nevertheless what Jesus was saying and doing
galvanized many into following him about
to hear him preach and watch him heal.
And lives were being transformed,
people were being healed
and liberated in ways that opened their understanding
to experiencing the Kingdom of God present in their midst,
while at the same time
those who were so much into their practice of religion
were taking affront with this that was going on with Jesus
as irregular, immoral and uncontrolled.

So Jesus says,
"I give thanks to you, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth,
because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent
and have revealed them to infants;
yes, Father, for it was delightful before you, this that was coming to be."

So it's not the head knowledge that the wise and intelligent have,
but what can be called “heart” knowledge,
that is able to comprehend and take in the revelation of God.

“…revealed them to infants…” he said.
The word here is not just implying having child-like faith.

This is the word for new born babies,
those who have just experienced a MAJOR paradigm shift,
emerging from a tight, confined life space
into a whole new world of experiences
for which they do not have any words,
no way to express what it is they are experiencing yet.
Those who followed Jesus around listening to what he said,
to all the outlandish things he was saying in parables,
got jolted into whole new ways of looking at things.

They were shedding all the overlays of enculturation, of sophistication,
of all the commonly held beliefs about how life is supposed to work.
They were going through a MAJOR paradigm shift
about what their religion and faith practice was all about,
all revealed through Jesus. Infants.

So Jesus says,
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father;
and no one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

And this is the direct context for the familiar words that follow,
which will tell us how the Son reveals the Father to us.

"Come to me, all those spent with labor and burdened,
those for whom life isn’t working out,
and I will give you rest.
- literally, I will cause you to rest, to come to a stop.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am meek and humble in heart,
- meek! Jesus meek?
In Greek the word means unassuming or without ego investment,
gentle, kind, forgiving, humane
and so totally absorbed in Divine Presence
that there is no violence, no aggression at all within him – meek
- and humble, lowly,
meaning that there is no pride or focus on self in Jesus,
and so he opens the way, gives accessibility to the Father -
and you will find rest for your souls.
- in the Greek literally it is a place of rest
where is this place? in Jesus' heart, a place of open access to God -
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Rest is promised.
We have dreams of Jesus soothing our brow,
taking our hand and patting it, saying,
"There, there. Put your feet up."

Rest is promised, but it’s a strange way to get rest:
"Take my yoke upon you…"
Take up a yoke, an instrument for bearing more work and burden.

Take my yoke … and learn from me…" enter into discipleship with me.
This is how the Son reveals the Father to us.
Through the learning process of a yoke, our submission.
By submitting to a yoke of obedience,
one will have the Kingdom of God open into your awareness.
You don’t like that word submission? Too bad.
There’s truth here. Just be with it.

But this yoke is not a yoke of work or effort, of striving and exhaustion,
The rest Jesus offers is in a yoke of obedience and with a burden to carry;
it is in this discipleship, he says, that you will be led to rest and refreshment.

Why do we make it such work then?

We generally don't get it about discipleship;
we may think it must be a heavy load.
The point being made here is that it's not hard,
and it's actually refreshing and restful.

Submission and discipleship actually are very liberating.

By now it should be apparent
that the access point is the heart, not the head,
because we are speaking paradoxes here, not logical sense.
It has to be revealed to us by the Spirit of Jesus through grace
a whole new perspective to address this confusing, frustrating way
in which we habitually live.

We all can to some degree or another identify with
St. Paul’s classic description of the human predicament
described in the Epistle reading from Romans for today.

To paraphrase, I want to do what is right, but find that I can’t,
because there is such disharmony within me
that one part of me is at war with another part of me.
Paul realizes that it is only through intervention beyond himself
that he is saved out of all that.

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free
from the law of sin and of death,” Paul states.

The yoke of the Spirit of life in Jesus has set you free
from the wearisome burden of struggle
to extricate yourself from the deadening and life-draining labor
of living life all on one’s own.

“Come to me, all you that are weary…
…my yoke is easy…”

It comes to me that this is all another way of saying,
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.”

The result is the same – the revealing of God.
The yoke helps us to be guided into harmony, alignment,
so that this reality of the divine comes into focus for us.

The yoke is easy; there is no effort, no striving.
Someone Else is doing the heavy work.

May it not be said of us what Jesus said to the crowd,
“To what will I compare this generation?
It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”
Why won’t you come play my game with me?

“Come to me,” Jesus says to us, “all you who are weary,
and I’ll bring all your striving to a stop,
and in sitting still, in obedient submission
all the treasures of heaven will be revealed,
the Divine Presence will be in your awareness,
and then you will find rest for your soul.”