Pondering Reality

 We all have problems in our lives – big ones and little ones.

            Usually we want to solve the problems.

But I have found after many decades 

            that most problems are unsolvable.

Why is that?

            Because we most often try to solve the problem

            with the same mentality that created the problem,

                        the same perspective, 

                        the same way of looking at the problem.

 

As long as we are human beings living on this planet 

            we will have troubles.

If we are Christians, followers of Jesus,

            we are advised to look at the problem from a new vantage point:

                                    FAITH

But the world would say, how practical is that?

 

So today in our Gospel reading we have a biblical example

            of an unsolvable problem,

unsolvable from our perspective with our knowledge and understanding 

                        of the laws of physics.

 

Here’s what we are dealing with:  

                        Jesus spends the night praying

and then walks on water as though that were just a natural thing to do.

 

Is this just a pious story to encourage faith somehow?

                        Or is it true?

            How could such a thing as walking on water be factual?

 

Yet there is a long history of such fantastic stories 

                        in various cultures and religions.

We have a long history of such stories in our own faith tradition,

                                                            in the lives of the saints:

                        miracles, healings, transfiguration, stigmata, visions…

            You really can’t just dismiss them all.

 

If it is possible that this story IS true,

            then what does that do to our understanding of the laws of nature?

Maybe these laws of nature, 

            the ways we interpret and define our perception of reality, 

                                    are not so firm and immutable.

We have had to change our understanding of science more than once                         over the centuries.

Our cosmology is no longer that of a flat earth 

                                                                        at the center of the universe.

 

Against all expectations Jesus somehow appears as light as a feather 

for walking on the surface of the water, 

            without being carried off by the wind,

and despite how the waves were battering the boat!

 

Jesus operating out of some different set of laws, spiritual laws,

            supersedes natural laws.

 

The whole spiritual realm 

is much more comprehensive, pervasive and present 

than most would expect or admit.

 

If hearing this gives you the spooks, like it did the disciples in the boat, 

that is probably a good thing.

Seeing Jesus walking on water was bound to have resulted 

in someone of those disciples needing a clean pair of shorts, 

to be gross about it.

When someone is truly terrorized, frightened beyond understanding, 

one tends to lose bodily control.

Has anyone here been in a situation that has generated that much fear?

Maybe a big earthquake, tornado, flood or wildfire?

 

So even if Jesus reveals God to us as All-Loving, 

he also reveals something to show God’s power and capacity over what may have seemed to be firm, reliable laws of nature.

 

The reality is 

that God exceeds all dependable frames of meaning reference.  

God is not safe.

God is not tame.

 

And Jesus, in a fully surrendered state of being,

                        in full realization of his oneness with God,

            is not safe either.

 

What impact might that have on us?

            It might affect how we worship.

No longer could one get away with a patronizing nod of the head 

and a vague sense of attention in saying one’s prayers.  

Rather there might be a profound bow 

                                    with the head all the way to the ground 

at the feet of such a One as Jesus,

                                    like for those disciples in the boat.

 

There would be acute attention given to the Presence of such a God.

There would be prayers from the heart offered with care 

so as not to take them for granted, 

and profound gratitude for encountering mercy and love 

flowing from the All-Powerful One.

 

To go back to the beginning of this story,

            because there are some powerful words here in the Greek text:

The setting is right at the conclusion of the miraculous feeding 

of the 5,000 men, not counting women and children.

The Greek says that Jesus immediately 

forced the disciples into the boat to get them out of there.

sending them on to the next destination in their itinerary.

 

Then Jesus sent the crowds away, got them all to go home.

            (That may have been another miracle!)

And then he went up a steep hill to a spot where he could be alone,

                        where there was no room for others to try to tag along,

and there he spent the night in prayer,

            in conversation with God.

 

I think that included meditation.

I don’t think Jesus was praying out of the prayer book all night long.

He was in intimate communication with his Abba, his Father;

            intimate communion.

Meditation is hearing,

                        listening and hearing.

 

Meditation in the Christian tradition – 

I have heard more than one person express grave considerations,             mistrust and suspicions about meditation,

 believing it to be practicing something from eastern religions, 

non-Christian.

 

This comes from just not being informed enough 

about the whole breadth of Christianity, 

            of our history and diversity, 

for meditation has been a part of our faith practice from the beginning. 

 

Jesus sending all away so he could pray,             alone,             in silence, 

in meditative listening, 

a two-way conversation that reveals union, 

the intrinsic oneness of Jesus and the Father.

 

For me personally, if I might share with you,

            I have found that in sitting in silence

                        there have been changes that have occurred for me:

There has been healing of past wounds of time,

and letting go of such a tight grip on strongly held opinions 

with a softening of my own judgmentalism, 

and I found I could open to others 

with less need or concern for defending a position, 

because of greater confidence in self and trust in Jesus. 

As awakening to Christ’s love, God’s mercy, comes,

                                                            perception shifts,

            and with that also comes a growing awareness about reality,

            that every thing is not all as I have presumed.

 

Meditation lifts what is obscuring or inhibiting our own awareness

             so that we can wake to the reality of Abundant Life in Christ, 

and come to realization of our true being.

 

Jesus walking on water - Reality for him was different

His awareness of creation was such 

that he could see how it was possible to appear so light 

as to walk on the top of the water 

and yet not be so light as to be blown around by the strong wind.

 

And then there’s Peter.

Peter makes a great connection – 

if Jesus can do this, 

and has invited the disciples into the secrets

                         of the Reign of God 

and has handed them little loaves of bread 

            that feed thousands of people, 

then the disciple can attempt what the Teacher is demonstrating.

 

How this must have warmed Jesus’ heart, 

for Peter to be so bold 

as to make a claim on copying his Teacher’s actions.

And, of course, 

he doesn’t get the lesson perfect the first time out of the boat.

But he shows us encouragement for our own stepping out in faith.

 

Peter’s problem was his habitual framework of perspective on reality, 

a view of reality in which people don’t walk on water.

Those old habitual thought patterns are hard to shake.

But you can’t always trust what you see.

So how does this translate for us here and now?

How are we doing with exercising our own faith and trust in Jesus?

Maybe we too haven’t gotten the lesson perfect 

                        the first time out of the boat!

Maybe we have felt that the spectacular demonstrations of faith

            were only for back then with the disciples

                        or with the great saints of history.

Maybe we have to admit that we are not feeling ready or capable

            of stepping out onto water.

 

We get pulled back into habitual ways of looking at things, 

of perspective, of defining reality.

We are not yet habituated to the realities of the Kingdom of Heaven,

            with all its absurdity and abundance.

What are the times when we really need to get out the boat 

                        of our constricted perspectives?

That is the question to ponder

 

Another question to ask would be,

            what are the wind and waves in your lives 

that you may be creating for yourself

                        that are inhibiting and hijacking your faith?

 

Sometimes in the life of a faith community 

            it doesn’t have to be huge waves and wind,

            it can be a tiny ripple, such as a thought that judges another.

                                    Something as small as:

“They” didn’t put this back where it belongs.

“They” didn’t do this the way it should have been done.

 

We are creating our own waves for ourselves, 

when we afflict ourselves with such thoughts.

 

Instead – what if the Spirit established a new awareness, 

a new habit of perception, 

such as in how we trust one another, 

                        valuing relationship over opinion, 

opening to each other and in care for one another.

That reflects the different perspective of living in the Kingdom of God.

 

It’s all a matter of perspective, of perceiving reality,

            reality  unclouded by our doubts and fears.

 

God bless Peter.

 

Even though he didn’t get it perfect first time out,

                        or second or third time, as seems to be the case 

                        from other subsequent stories about Peter’s stumblings,

            he is still encouragement to us to get out of the boat 

                                    where we may have the illusion of safety,

                        and walk by faith

                                    trusting that Jesus is just as present for us, 

reaching out his hand in the sweetest of love and abundant mercy.

Weeding

Matthew 13, the Parable about the wheat and the weeds growing together:

         there’s more to it than meets the eye.

 

When it comes down to it, the parables are about Jesus.

And he tells them to his disciples in order to bring them into awareness 

         of the spiritual process he is working in them.

 

They most often start with “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

Here, the Kingdom of Heaven is live a man who planted wheat, 

but his enemy added seeds for the weed often called darnel. 

 

Initially when all the seed sprouted, 

the wheat and the weeds looked the same.

But when the plants got big enough to start producing grain, 

then the wheat could be distinguished from the darnel.

Good and bad mixed together, 

profitable and unprofitable, 

wheat that can become useful for bread and nourishment 

and darnel that gives no nourishment, is worthless and useless.

 

Typically our thought, as expressed by the farm hands in this story,

         is about what can we do to get rid of the darnel, 

       so that just the beneficial wheat is left.

That’s what the slaves ask the householder.

 

But the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner, the one who sowed the seed, 

and he says wait.  

He is not going to risk destroying the beneficial along with the worthless, 

destroying the life nourishing along with the harmful.

It all belongs;

         and one could even say 

                  that the enemy’s action actually serves a purpose.

         It shows the reality about what all is included in creation:

                  the gentle breeze and the hurricane,

                  the butterfly and the mosquito.

Only at the end will it all get sorted out.

 

I am going to suggest to you that this parable 

         is not about a moral judgment 

       that separates the good people from the bad people.

The reason for that:

In the parable last week that immediately preceded this one in Matthew 13

the ground, the soil represented

the hearts of the people hearing the seed of the word of the Gospel.

Today’s parable is placed right after that, 

      and so there are intentional connections and parallels.

 

Jesus is the sower, proclaiming the Kingdom.

We are the soil in which grows the Word of the Kingdom 

and also words which are worthless, withering, 

diminishing to the soul growing in our soil.

The growth of the seedlings 

         is either for the expansion of the Kingdom within us, 

or for the diminishment and frustration of fruitless labor within us,

                what sucks the life out of us.

 

We look on the one hand at what in our lives promotes 

life and growth and goodness and compassion and love 

and other such characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven,

and on the other hand we look at what in our lives is diminishment,

is choosing death instead of life, is a contraction of the heart.

If we are honest, we may see that we are not at all successful 

                  in making the spiritually healthy choices,

          but that which is life-giving is a gift.

 

Now, weeds grow whether intentionally planted or naturally occurring.

         Weeds are ubiquitous and persistent.

Both wheat and weeds grow together within our hearts, 

                                                      and we are in need of help.

But can we keep our hands off and wait for the grace to work in our lives?

         Or are we going to pull up what WE guess are the weeds?

 

In last Sunday’s gospel the parable of the sower is a parable of grace, 

about the abundance of grain produced 

beyond the capabilities of each stalk of wheat, 

the abundance of fruit produced beyond human capabilities –

                thirty, sixty, one hundredfold.

 

But instead of living in this grace,

our tendency is to want to manage our own salvation,

to deal with what is unfruitful and harmful in our lives ourselves,

through self-improvement programs, 

working our own transformation,  

and putting it all in moralistic frameworks.

 

This, we may see, has limited success

and more often than not results in a lot of self-condemnation.

       “I failed, I couldn’t change myself.”

And we are back to Romans 7 from a couple of weeks ago,

                the conundrum over the propensity to sin.

- And the trouble with self-condemnation is that it often overflows 

into judgmental-ism about others, making it doubly noxious. - 

 

So we identify ourselves with our inner struggles, 

what we may call noxious weeds,                  

       but this is not the Kingdom of God.

 

If Jesus is the farmer, 

then what does he do to save, heal, transform, liberate the situation?

He purifies the hearts of his own.

                  Where do I see that in this reading?

We need to look at some other passages in Matthew’s Gospel.

 

Matthew identifies Jesus right from the beginning as the One who purifies.

 

In the 3^rd chapter John the Baptist describes Jesus 

as the one who baptizes with fire in contrast to John’s water baptism.

 

         “His winnowing fork is in his hand,” John the Baptist says in Mt 3:12, 

“and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor 

and will gather his wheat into the barn; 

but the chaff he will thoroughly consume with unquenchable fire.”

 

The process of purification in our lives gets done 

finally, thoroughly and with great purity 

                         in a poof, a flash of divine radiance,

if not in this life time, 

then when we come face to face with the Divine Radiance

                   in our last dying breath, 

         and that burden is eternally lifted .

 

Now we may have a little trouble with this, 

because of such deep involvement that we have had 

with this matter of suffering over the weeds in our lives.

 

If this is where we have had our self-identity all tied up, 

then we will actually have a hard time letting go of the suffering.

 

Think about this in your own life – 

         what events have indelibly defined you?

                                    marked your identity from that time forward?

Very often it is those events that caused us much suffering.

 

More than once Jesus had to ask a person who came to him for healing 

if they really wanted to be healed, 

if they really wanted to let go of their suffering.

If they said yes, then poof, it was done.  

They were healed, and life had suddenly changed radically for them.  

No more identity with lying by the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years, 

no more blind begging by the side of the road in Jericho.

Jesus baptizes us with a fire that cleans out the chaff in our lives.

 

But this is not a fire to fear, unless we are afraid of a shift in our identity.

The chaff, the weeds are about our self identity.

         We may discover that what we have built our self-identity around 

       is what gets burned up 

       when Jesus shows up with all his fiery radiance.

 

The fire baptism of Jesus gives us a new identity in him.

 

This is what Paul wrote about in Romans 

         that all creation waits with eager longing 

         until we are refined by this fire baptism 

                  and realize new identity in him – as children of God.

 

John’s baptism was of repentance, action that we do.

Jesus’ baptism is of fire and the Holy Spirit.

He does all the action.  

His baptism is the sum of his irresistible work in us.

This is good news!

 

Now, this matter of the second half of today’s Gospel reading, 

the part in which the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable.

 

The key verse in this part of the reading is verse 41.  This translation reads:

“The Son of Man will send his angels, 

and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 

(Matt. 13:42) and they will throw them into the furnace of fire…”

 

Now here is a more basic translation closer to the Greek:

“The Son of Man will send his angels, 

and they will collect out of his kingdom

all those things that are stumbling blocks, snares, traps,

and the ones operating out of lawlessness.”

                  Lawlessness, walking in the way of Torah.

 This is another way of saying they are not doing the will of the Father.

They are out of sync with the created order around them.

         They are out of harmony with the whole flow of the Spirit.

         They are, one could say, a spiritually ecological mess.

 

But the righteous, those purified by the fiery baptism of Jesus, 

will shine like the sun, 

will be ablaze in this fire with divine radiance, 

will be transfigured and appear like Jesus did in his transfiguration.

 

So what do we do with this parable?      How do we apply it to our lives?

 

This is a parable that reminds us that all is a gift of grace,

         that God has taken care of it all,

         that we can’t even come close to saving ourselves.

But can we cooperate with the Spirit of Jesus at work burning within us

         through a willingness to let go of what is noxious and weed-like 

                  when we see it rear its ugly head in our lives,

                  when we get convicted by our conscience?

 

That is, can we recognize, can we let come to conscious awareness, 

         that which is deadly in our lives,

and then turn to our Lord for dealing with it 

         and let the Spirit’s purging process work?

 

When we recognize the weeds,

         don’t ignore them, acknowledge that they are there,

         and ask for that abundant mercy 

                  which is always there for us.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the One who plants good seed in his field.

         It’s all about Jesus.

 

And he says, “Wait.

        It won’t be your own action that will save you and change you to the good.

         Wait, it all will get sorted out.”

 

So where are we focusing?  What are we identifying with?

         with our problems and suffering?

         or with Jesus?

  

Archetypal Horror

 God said to Abraham, “Take your son, 

         your only son,                  Isaac,         whom you love,

and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

 

Hearing again the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac

         is not what most of us would want.

Yet here it is,

         showing up on a fine summer Sunday morning

                  so that we have to look at it and not avoid it.

 

The horror of it all!

Do we really want to go there?

The horror of what is being asked by God for the testing of faith!

Would you read this to your children or grandchildren 

         as a bedtime story?

It is beyond all reasonableness.

Way beyond.

Reasonableness gets left out completely.

Is this what we’re in for – this sort of testing of faith?

 

If your mind works anything like mine does,

         one might picture some horrific real life news stories

         of aberrant parental behavior –

                  abuse and victimization and murder.

 

I’ve had to deal with that pastorally

         and it’s some of the hardest work I have ever done.

And it leaves its mark.

 

Or all we need to think of is war – 

         the bizarre way in which we send our sons and daughters off 

                  to be slaughtered 

         or to return home damaged in body and mind and spirit,

a huge cost, humanly speaking,

         with dubious rewards.

 

We have to back up and see how Abraham and Isaac come to this place;

         we have to remember, or learn, the context for this story.

Otherwise it will make no sense,

         and it will be abhorrent parental behavior of the worse kind.

 

Abraham, the one who would be known as the father of faith,

      was called by God to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process

                  of personal transformation.

Actually we all are –

         we all are called by God 

                  to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process

                           of personal transformation.

 

The thing with Abraham, 

         and why we have chapter after chapter of stories about him 

                  in the book of Genesis,

         is that Abraham listened and cooperated.

So God took him deeper and deeper into spiritual transformation

         that would bring him to his full potential as a human being.

 

First, get up and move to a whole new land and culture and people,

         God told him.

No matter that you are 75 years old.

 

And Abraham did so.

 

Look at the stars of the sky, God told him.

Countless, right?

So will your descendants be.

Despite the fact that you and Sarah have no children.

 

Well, Sarah thought and thought about that one.

If she was barren, how could they have even one child,

         let alone a vast dynasty?

There’s the old custom of the surrogate.

               Give Abraham Hagar, her slave girl, and claim the child as the heir.

Bad move.

Scripture records so clearly 

         some really rocky family dynamics that happen because of that.

                                                      (last week’s Old Testament reading)

The next step in this spiritual process – 

         the travelers at the oak of Mamre,         angels of God

bringing the message that a year from now they would have a son.

Sarah laughed, and Abraham too.  

                  She was 90 years old, for goodness sake.

Nevertheless God was true to the promise.

And they named this impossible son Isaac,

         a name that means laughter.

 

This is an important point,

         that we have expectations about how things should work,

but God’s actions are unique – the impossible happens.

God’s joke on us – and it’s a good joke, one we can laugh at too.

 

God was working with Abraham, 

         showing him a solid basis on which he could set his faith and trust.

With God the impossible happens, always surprising and unique.

 

See how the sacrifice was interwoven with all this prior history?

 

God was now taking Abraham to a place of final surrender.

Final surrender – for that is what faith ultimately is.

If Abraham was to become the prime example of faith,

         it had to come to this:

to the place where the promise remained 

         but his expectations about this were surrendered,

and there only remained the unique actions of God.

 

Isaac, God was telling Abraham, is not for you.

Our children are not our own.

 

You may be familiar with these words of the poet Khalil Gilbran:

 

“Your children are not your children. 

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 

They come through you but not from you, 

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 

For they have their own thoughts. 

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, 

not even in your dreams.…

… You are the bows 

                  from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.…”

 

Isaac was not Abraham’s to own.

 

Isaac in fact would get up off the altar 

         as though resurrected from the dead,

and would be the replacement for Abel,

         who was slain by his brother over rivalry and envy 

                                                                        because of a sacrifice,

Abel who sacrificed to God from his flock of sheep.

And a wandering ram from someone else’s flock of sheep 

         tangled hopelessly in a thicket,

                  waiting certain death from some predator,

         now provided by the unexpected action of God.

 

Isaac would rise from the altar, 

         and walk back with Abraham.

He would have flocks and herds, and dig deep wells for water.

 

Abraham would never see with the eyes of his body 

         the descendants countless as the stars 

                           or the grains of sand on the seashore.

But he completed the spiritual process 

         of going beyond his own thoughts,

         beyond his own awareness of what could happen.

He surrendered in trust to God’s promise.

 

And we have this heritage from him.

This is a huge archetypal story of our own spiritual process of faith.

 

Are we his children of faith?

Are we willing to be taken beyond our own thoughts?

                                                      Where is God taking us?

Emerging from the pandemic 

and with the world around us in one crisis after another

                                    we have good cause to ask this question.

Where is God taking us?

         Beyond all reasonableness

Beyond all reasonableness, obviously, in our own lives,

         but where God is taking us is in this process of becoming 

                                                      our full potential as human beings.

 

God was working with Abraham, 

         showing him a solid basis 

                           on which he could truly set his faith and trust.

God shows us a solid basis in Jesus, whom Isaac foreshadows,

         the One on whom we can truly set our faith and trust,

                  Son of Man and Lamb of God.

 

Faith is a crucial and essential element of life.

 

Will you let God take you beyond

         your own littleness of reasonability?

The promise is made solid in Jesus

         and fullness of life beyond expectation

                           is waiting for you.