The Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity. If you talk to most Lutherans, and probably to most mainline Christians, they'll know about God the Father, the Creator of everything; and they'll know about Jesus Christ, the Son, Saviour; but the Holy Spirit is likely to be only a vague concept in people's minds. When the Confirmation class and I were working on the “I believe...” statements last week, to get ready for the Confirmation service, one of the confirmands, who had worked out the sections about the Father and the Son, asked, “What is the Holy Spirit, anyway?”

If you find yourself with only a vague notion of what the Holy Spirit is about, you are in good company. Even some of the great theologians of the last 2000 years seem to say much less about the Holy Spirit than they do about the other two persons of the Trinity. For Lutherans this is reinforced by the fact the Luther was one of those theologians who wrote a lot more about the Father, and especially the Son, than he did about the Holy Spirit; and consequently, Lutheran pastors since then have tended to use God language focusing on the Father and the Son, and only mentioning the Holy Spirit as a matter of form.

So today, I would like to take a stab a clarifying the Holy Spirit and the importance of having this third person as a distinct entity in the schematic of the Trinity. First, let me emphasize what I have mentioned at other times. The teaching of the Holy Trinity is a theological construct that developed over several centuries in an effort to understand the many statements about God in the Bible. Consequently, Trinitarian teaching will always come off a little more definitive than the Bible is. The Bible's image of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is quite fluid. The theological construct attempts to offer some clarity and logic to the Bible's picture.

The Holy Spirit is the way in which God is present among us. When you experience God's presence, it is the Holy Spirit you are experiencing. When you feel Jesus being present with you, it is the Holy Spirit that mediates Jesus' presence. When God gives you clarity about something, it is the Holy Spirit that is giving you that clarity.

Basil the Great, one of the main exponents of the teaching of the Trinity back in the 300's, put it this way: “The coming of Christ? The Spirit precedes it. Christ's presence in the flesh? The Sprit is inseparable from it. Miracles and gifts of healing? It is the Spirit who bestows them. Demons driven out? In the Spirit of God... Sins forgiven? In the grace of the Spirit... Union with God? The Spirit effects it... The resurrection of the dead? It is brought about by the Spirit...” (Treatise on the Holy Spirit)

The significance of having the Holy Spirit as the imminent presence of God, is to maintain the counterbalancing understanding of God as also standing apart from, separate from the creation. When we contemplate the deep mystery of the infinite God who made all things, who is beyond all comprehension, beyond the confines of time and space, we are essentially contemplating the aspect of God embodied in the first person of the Trinity, the one we call the Father or the Creator.

Human beings tend to shape God into something that suits their fancy. Some like a high, exalted God, some like an earthy, accessible God. The teaching of the Trinity embodies both of these extremes -- and more -- holding them all in balance. For those who lean toward a distant, powerful God, the teaching of the Trinity reminds them that God is also close and personal. For those who lean toward God as their buddy, the teaching of the Trinity reminds them that God is way more than just their personal buddy.

The significance of having the Holy Spirit as the one who mediates the presence of Christ, is to avoid the temptation to downplay the physical resurrection and ascension of Jesus. From the beginning there have been those who preferred to think of Jesus' resurrection as having been a purely spiritual or even purely symbolic event. The proponents of the Trinitarian understanding sought to uphold the jarring, disconcerting, and ultimately more powerful view of Christ's bodily resurrection from a real physical death, and his ascension into the realm of heaven with his physical body.

Back then as today, there were many who had trouble with this. But for the Trinitarians, it was and is important to maintain the value and importance to God of the body and the created order, as much as of the spirit. God made the universe, and God loves the physical creation. We humans are body and spirit. Separate body from spirit, and we are no longer what God created us to be. In classic, Trinitarian orthodoxy, the resurrection of the dead is a physical resurrection, because God has made us to be body and spirit, and not just the one or the other.

Thus, the Holy Spirit mediates the presence of Christ to us, because Christ is physically in the realm of the spirit. Christ's state sounds like a contradiction, but it is a foreshadowing of the existence we will have. The Spirit's role as mediator is an aspect of Trinitarian teaching which reminds us of this.

You'll notice in the Nicene Creed that it says, “We believe in the Holy Spirit... who has spoken through the prophets.” The Holy Spirit is the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. From the beginning, there were those who suggested that the God of the Old Testament and the Father to whom Jesus prayed are two different gods. Many of the Gnostic gospels to which Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code” refers, carried just this assumption. The modern scholarship which has attempted to reconstruct the historical Jesus suggests that this version of Jesus is patently false. Jesus was firmly Jewish in his understanding of God and the scriptures.

The teaching of the Trinity picks this up by making the link between God's self-revelation in the Old Testament and God's self-revelation in the New Testament through its assertion that the same Spirit who worked to bring Jesus into the world, who descended on Jesus at his baptism, who drove Jesus into the wilderness, whom Jesus sent to be with his disciples, this same Spirit also spoke through the prophets and made God known to the ancient people of Israel.

The continuation of this self-revelation of God is in the entity we call the Church. In the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, the “holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” is placed in the third section of the creed to link it with the work of the Holy Spirit. The word “catholic” is actually a technical term describing the movement of the Holy Spirit, and thus the Church, into all the world and among all peoples. When there was only one institutional church, it was difficult for people to imagine that there was any difference between the boundaries of the institution and the boundaries of the Church created by the Spirit. During the Reformation, however, Luther was able to say, “There are some in the church who have not the Holy Spirit, and there are some outside the church who have the Holy Spirit.”

Today it is easier for us to see the difference between human institutions which carry on the work of the Church, and the spiritual reality formed by the Holy Spirit. Though we organize ourselves in various ways and with differing emphases, the Holy Spirit uses the gifts of each manifestation to bring God's presence to many or all.

What or who, then, is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is, simply put, God's presence among us. When we pray, it is the Spirit who carries our prayers into God. When we come into the presence of God, it is the Spirit who envelopes us. When we sense the power of God working among us, it is the Spirit whom we sense. When we hear God's call to go into the world, proclaiming Christ and serving others, it is the Spirit who calls us and sends us. Amen.

      Today is the Feast of the Trinity on the church calendar, the day on which, traditionally, we lift up this doctrine of the church. The word "trinity" is, of course, a combination of the prefix "tri-", meaning "three", and the word "unity", meaning "one". Trinity literally means, "a unity of three".

From the perspective of non-Christian religions, and from the perspective of agnostics and atheists, the teaching of God as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is probably the most difficult to grasp, and maybe even the most controversial, especially among our religious cousins in Judaism and Islam because they affirm vehemently that God is one. So, they find the idea of the Trinity hard to swallow, or they hear it as a kind of polytheism; in other words, it sounds to them as though we are worshipping three gods. But even for committed Christians, the teaching of God as Trinity can seem baffling, confusing, or just plain unnecessary.

I don't want to go into the history of this teaching, or the Biblical foundations for it, or any of those other aspects which you have probably heard so many times. Neither do I wish to go into the mechanics of this teaching, the so-called "economy of God". Rather, I will focus on an aspect of this teaching which I think was among the most important for those who worked it out from the 100's until as late as the 600's: the Trinity as a way of praying.

You may remember that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called the three persons of the Trinity. The word "person" comes from the Greek word prosopon which means "mask" (literally it means "in front of the face"). The ancient framers of the trinitarian teaching chose this word very intentionally. They were thinking of the ancient Greek dramas of that time in which the actors wore masks. The traditional symbol of the stage, the happy and sad masks, which we still see used by theatre groups today, is a visual reference back to those ancient Greek dramas in which the actors wore masks as they played their parts.

We can say that God plays three different roles on the stage of the universe we know; or, to put it another way, we experience God as one who reveals God's self to us in three distinct ways: God as such, God as wisdom, and God as spiritual presence.

When we pray to God as such, we pray to God who is beyond all knowing, God who is hidden from our view, who is utterly holy, who stands beyond the confines of time and space. This is God who is mighty and exalted. This is God, the hem of whose garment we are not worthy to touch, indeed, whose utter holiness and power would, so to speak, annihilate us, were we to do so. When Luther and others say that we should fear God, they are referring to God in this aspect, God in this role, whom we approach with deference, with humility, and a certain amount of healthy fear and trembling. When we experience this mask of God in our prayers, we are like mariners sailing our small boats on the open ocean, awed by the expanse of the water, and aware of how small we are.

When we pray to God as wisdom, we pray to God who comes to us to teach us, to enlighten us, to show us the way. This is God whom we perceive in the created order, when we look deeply and see there the subtle structures and energy dynamics on which the universe is built. This is also God who took human form in Jesus, and in very practical and visible ways, taught, enlightened, and showed the way to his followers. When the woman with the twelve year flow of blood touched the hem of his garment, she was made well. Instead of the word "wisdom," the New Testament uses the word "Word" (Logos) to describe this person, this mask of God. This is God who is spoken by God-as-such ("...and God said, 'Let there be light.'"); the God whom we cannot comprehend uttering that which can be perceived and comprehended. This is God who becomes knowable and intelligible. When we experience this mask of God, we are like thirsty travellers, drinking at a clear, rushing stream. We are refreshed to continue our journey.

Finally, when we pray to God as spiritual presence, we pray to God who is always with us, who is around us, among us, and within us. We pray to God who is life giving energy. We pray to God who moves over the face of the planet, inspiring people to goodness, strengthening those who falter, creating a Church of all who worship God. When we experience this mask of God, we are like gardeners, rejoicing in the rain that waters our garden and causes the plants to flourish and bear fruit.

These are not three gods, but three faces of one God. We pray to one God, but when we pray, God meets us in different ways. Sometimes God challenges us, even overwhelms us with glory, as Isaiah was overwhelmed with God's transcendent glory in the reading we heard this morning. Sometimes God instructs us in the way, as Nicodemus was instructed in our reading from John. And sometimes God simply comforts and encourages us, as Paul describes in the reading from Romans. One God, three different roles, three different masks.

One of the interesting aspects of reading the early Christian thinkers and writers we call the Church Fathers, is that they almost always speak as poets. They use the words of the Bible in poetic ways. They look for literary cues in the Bible, such as allusions, or metaphors, or symbols, or allegories, or analogies. They are often quite playful with this use of language, and when they are honest with their readers, they often preface their interpretations of scripture with the disclaimer, "it could be that...".

They do this because most of them are at some level mystics, that is, people who love God from deep within themselves, and who aspire to become one with God. Mystics of all religious traditions are always forced to speak in the language of poetry, because ordinary, analytical language simply falls short. Analytical language is flat. It does not convey the sense of inspiration. It does not do justice to the deep and life changing closeness which these people feel toward God.

Mystics speak in the language of poetry for the same reason that romantic love is best expressed in poetry, and not in analysis. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," when Juliet ponders how the family names Capulet and Montegue keep her and Romeo apart, she says the now famous words, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..." By creating the metaphor of the rose, as though Romeo were a beautiful, fragrant flower, these words capture better Juliet's love for Romeo, than if she were to have simply observed: "If Romeo changed his name he would still be the same Romeo." Both mean the same thing, but one expresses Juliet's love, the other is just an observation. By the same token, Romeo's outburst, "Hark, what light through yonder window breaks: it is the east, and Juliet is the sun," captures his love for Juliet far better than if he had simply said, "Look, there's Juliet standing at the window."

I think the teaching of the Trinity is best appropriated as sacred poetry, as an outpouring of devotional poetry, attempting to capture the wonder, the complexity, and of course the mystery of God. It is a poetry which arose in part out of the intense life of prayer of those early Christians. Remember, although the final details of the teaching of the Trinity were worked out after Christianity was legalized, its essential outline took shape during the years of persecution. These people experienced God as Trinity as they gathered secretly in catacombs, or endured arrest and torture, or watched their friends being thrown to the wild beasts in the colosseums and circuses of the Roman Empire. They prayed and worshipped with a kind of intensity which is alien to most of us. After Christianity was legalized, many wanted to preserve the experience of this intensity by going into the desert and living a life of extreme self-denial.

I am not advocating this as a way of life for us. I am merely sharing this to give a sense of where this language and way of knowing God came from. So when we recite the creeds together, rather than recite them as legal or doctrinal statements, as though they had arisen as mental exercises for religious academics, it is better to pray them as prayers of trust. As I have mentioned before, the word "believe" in these creeds is meant to convey what today we communicate with the word "trust". The creeds are prayers of trust to the God whom we have come to know as mighty and exalted, the creator of all; whom we have come to know as the Word of wisdom who teaches and guides; and whom we have come to know as the abiding, life-giving, divine spiritual presence.

When we pray these prayers of trust, we also imply in our prayer that we do not trust in their opposites: we do not trust in the gods of our own making; we do not trust in ordinary human wisdom; and we do not trust in other spiritual presences, presences which bring evil, or sap the life out of people, or lead people into slavery. That is the practical side of this trinitarian way of praying.

God as Trinity is God in three dimensions. Praying to God as Trinity, is praying in three dimensions. God the creator invites prayer with our bodies, just as the ancient Israelites engaged in very physical forms of prayer. When we stand before God who is overwhelming in glory and majesty and power, what is the only appropriate physical response? To fall to one's knees, or, as sometimes happens in the Old Testament, to fall to one's face: physical gestures of prayer which embody. God the Word invites prayer with our minds, applying our God given rational faculties to the task of prayer. For the Church Fathers, the Word is always associated with reason, with the rational faculties. God the Spirit invites prayer from the heart, prayer with feeling and a certain amount of abandon, just as Jesus told Nicodemus that those who are born of the spirit are like the wind which cannot be boxed in or defined. If you catch the wind with a box, it ceases to be wind, and is only air.

Praying to God as Trinity is to set out in our small boats on the open ocean of the universe (just a tad terrifying); or to travel the path of life and drink from clear streams (to continue the journey on the path); or to look for the rain which waters the gardens of ourselves (and bear fruit in the world). Amen.

      To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of God is like handful of lentils that someone soaked and then cooked, and they swelled until they filled the pot. Don't remember that one? It's my own little take on the parables of Jesus, inspired by the realization the other day of just how much soup a cup of lentils can make.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that Jesus normally taught the crowds using parables. The parables of Jesus seem to be unique to him. Generally, they do not seem to be composed as allegories, although in Matthew several of the parables are interpreted allegorically to the disciples. They draw from the everyday life of the people of that time. In fact, one can imagine Jesus watching these little scenes (farmers sowing and tending and harvesting, a woman sweeping, people buying and selling, and so on), and then recognizing in these scenes some quality of God's reign.

The two parables in our reading from Mark communicate some simple yet subtle insights into God's reign. Listen again to the first one:

"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

You can go at a parable in basically two ways: you can either try to turn it into an allegory, or you can work with the dynamics and relationships within the parable. The allegorical approach is the older one, used widely by the Church Fathers, by Luther and the other reformers, and even still today. It has a lot to speak for it because it was such a widespread way of reading the parables from early on.

And yet, I think the second approach may actually do more justice to Jesus' parables. The problem with making a one-to-one allegory out of a parable like this one is that you have to decide who stands for what. Does the "someone" stand for God or for Jesus or for the followers of Jesus or for a bystander? Does the seed stand for preaching and teaching or the Holy Spirit or good works? Is the harvest a harvest of souls or people or the fruits of the spirit or something else? Each choice changes what the parable tells.

The Church Fathers freely interchanged what stood for what, as they saw the need, in order to communicate what they were getting at. This makes for a highly subjective kind of interpretation. I am currently reading some works by Maximos the Confessor, and it is amazing how in Maximos' understanding, Jesus like an ascetic and a contemplative. In the reformers' hands, by contrast, Jesus sounds more like a preacher of the word, in the Protestant sense of "preacher" and "word." And today...?

The greatest strength and at the same time the greatest weakness of the allegorical approach is that it ties the parable very much into the world of the interpreter. The allegorical approach is a powerful tool for personal spiritual reflection. It can bring the text alive to the individual person who is reading the text for spiritual nurture. But the further the interpretation moves from the life situation of the particular interpreter, the less compelling and the less convincing it is.

The other approach I mentioned, tries to let the parable stand as a totality. It looks not so much at the characters in the story, as at the interactions and dynamics in the story. This approach almost rules out a precise interpretation, and it is for this reason that I think it actually does more justice to Jesus' parables.

Jesus was using these simple stories, taken from every day life, to communicate something which stands beyond ordinary understanding. He was using the temporal and material, to talk about something that is beyond the temporal and material. This is not to say that the Kingdom of God which Jesus talks about does not have a concrete earthly manifestation. Rather, what I am saying is that Jesus was talking about things that include not only the material world of time and space, but also something else, something more, something beyond.

So what are the inner dynamics of this first parable which we heard today? There is scattering or planting; there is growth beyond the control of the one who scatters and plants; there is harvest by the one who sowed. This means that there is also a kind of cooperation between the one who sows and the forces which cause growth; or there is an exploitation by the one who sows of these mysterious forces of growth.

When set along side other parables of Jesus, it seems that one of the features of the Kingdom of God is that there is an element of it that is beyond control, that grows on its own, that provides what was not worked for or sometimes even asked for. And yet there is never pure passivity in the parables. Someone is always doing something, whether it is sowing or reaping or searching or selling or buying. There is also often an element of surprise or the unexpected or an exaggerated relationship of the first thing to its end result.

What I see in all this is that God's way of coming to us is a subtle and complex interplay of our actions and God's actions, our wills and God's will, the known and the unknown. And there is always the element of the unexpected and the mysterious working of forces beyond our control.

It could be that in John's Gospel this is communicated in the passage we heard last week: that the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going; and so it is, Jesus says, with those who are born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

I think the parables are best reflected on, meditated upon, sat with, and in this way internalized. When our interpretation of them stands out there somewhere, as a neatly packaged theological piece, then something has gotten lost in the translation, so to speak. Again, the power of the allegorical approach is in its immediate applicability to the interpreter, but this is also its greatest weakness. The second approach, let's call it the "internal dynamics approach," means that a person has to work harder and live with the parable longer before a picture begins to emerge.

Perhaps the closest analogies to the parables are some of the finer poems and icons. Poems and icons, when handled by the right person, can convey subtle and powerful "truth" in such a way that one can return again and again to them and discover ever new layers and come to ever new insights. The copy of the icon of the Mother of God of Tenderness of Vladimir which I have hanging in my office, is not simply a picture of Mary and Jesus. It is actually a subtle and complex portrayal of many different kinds of spiritual relationships: the Church and the Word, the believer and faith, the soul and Christ, and of course, Mary and Jesus as well. Between the two figures move joy and sadness, urgency, resignation, and calm. Their gestures are gentle, subtle, and symbolic. It is a sort of divine poem in picture form.

So too are Jesus' parables. They speak truth in a deep and subtle way, which I believe is best approached by sitting with and mulling over the parable. Like the sower who waited until the harvest was ready, so the reader of the parable is best served by waiting for the seed of the parable to grow within the heart and mind. Then, when the harvest is ready, the reader will reap abundantly. Amen.

      The Bible can be read in different ways, and each kind of reading yields different fruit. The earliest interpreters of the Bible read the text on three levels which they said correspond to the three aspects of the human being: the body, the soul, and the spirit. According to this method, most modern Biblical scholars and all Biblical literalists operate on the first level. They see only the body of the text. They dwell on the letter and debate the details and minutiae.

The early interpreters believed that the letter of scripture was a vehicle for conveying deeper meaning and higher insight. Ultimately, they believed, at the third level, the level of spirit, Biblical texts open a window on God as such. I don't think I'm ready to go there quite yet, and besides, this often seems to have been a matter that was shared privately between teacher and pupil, and not in a genre as general and limited as a sermon.

Nevertheless, today's passage from Mark is a wonderful text to explore the second level of insight, the level that corresponds to the soul. At this level, scripture speaks to our souls. It tells us something about the life of the soul and life in the soul. When we read today's text at the level of soul instead of the level of body, this story is no longer about some people way back when who had something happen to them which got recorded in a way which may or may not stand up to our modern legal or scholarly or scientific standards of evidence; rather it becomes a story about something that goes on all the time at the level of our inner selves. It becomes a story of the human condition, or more precisely, the condition of the human soul.

The story opens with Jesus saying to his disciples, "Let us go to the other side." This is a story about crossing over from one place to another, at the behest of Jesus. The Master says that it is time to leave the place where his followers have been, and go to another place. In terms of the soul, this is a story of following, of obeying, and of confronting trouble in the process of following and obeying.

Although Jesus has bid them cross to the other side, the journey is not smooth. It is stormy. It is dangerous. It is even life-threatening. Understandably the disciples panic. They fear for their lives. But Jesus is asleep on the cushion in the stern of the ship. The disciples are a bit miffed that Jesus does not seem to be as concerned about their own safety as they are.

This, I think, is a kind of picture of the inner life of the Christian who listens to the voice of Jesus to follow, to step out and cross the unknown sea of discipleship to the other side. Whenever we listen to the voice of Jesus to follow, to move into a deeper and more intense relationship to God in prayer and reflection, what we inevitably encounter is trouble, storms, peril; not necessarily of a physical nature, but certainly of an emotional and spiritual nature. You see, to follow Jesus by moving more deeply into prayer and reflection means to confront the demons and skeletons that lurk within us. It means to be tossed about by self-doubt, uncertainty, and doubt toward God. We may find ourselves shaking our fists at God, crying out, "God, if you are here, why do I feel so lousy about everything!?"

I think what Jesus does in this story is compelling and informative. When the disciples, in great desperation, wake him, demanding to know why he is not as worried about them as they are about themselves, he first bids the storm cease, and then asks: Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?

That really is the hinge on which this all turns. When we are able to trust God, the troubles seem much less. When we are not able to trust, they seem much bigger. It isn't as though the troubles are any different, rather it is that we receive them differently. When we are able to trust, Jesus calms the storm. When we are not able to trust God with our well being, the storm is terrifying and seems to go on forever.

In Lutheran theology, we understand faith to be a gift. I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that faith is indeed a gift, but a gift that is given to everyone, but also a gift that we unlearn. When we are born we come into the world with an instinct to trust. We are looking, at a primal level, for someone to focus our trust on. Unfortunately, at some point most of us learn to stop trusting because somewhere along the line we are betrayed or disappointed or disillusioned. What we then do is to also stop directing our trust to God because we have unlearned the gift of trust which God gives each of us at birth.

So, for most of us, we spend the rest of our lives wanting to trust, but not being able to. We trust in only limited and often skeptical or suspicious ways. Some of us don't trust at all.

Traditionally, lack of trust in God has been called sin. Let me fine tune that. Sin is that which separates us from God. Obviously, when we stop trusting God, something comes between God and us. It is the same in any relationship. When you stop trusting someone, your relationship to them becomes tainted and distant. So the inability to trust God can be called sin the same way that a non-smoker who worked in smokey bars all her life who then develops lung cancer can say that her cancer came from inhaling cigarette smoke. If you are not careful, it sounds as though she smoked. She didn't smoke as such, but she did get her lung cancer from cigarette smoke.

So it is for most of us with our inability to trust God. We inhaled this lack of trust from the environment around us. Gradually or not so gradually we unlearned trust. Jesus would have us relearn trust; relearn trust in God. The mistake we make is to lump God in with people. We learn to stop trusting people, but people will in the long run always fall short. We are, after all, only human. We should only trust each other with a lot of grace and forgiveness. The only one to whom our pure, given-from-birth trust rightly goes is God.

So the struggle for us, as we weather the storms of our souls, is first to relearn trust, and then to direct that trust to the right object of trust, namely God. This journey towards trust, which is the journey of every disciple of Jesus, is a stormy journey. Because we are so actively striving to trust God, we are also acutely aware of how little we trust God. So, like huge storm swells, our emotions lift us up and drop us down and we fear that the inner storm will be too much.

But Jesus is also in the boat with us. None of us travels this sea alone. In fact, all of us who are travelling this sea of discipleship are together on this journey, and Jesus is also there with all of us. Amen.

      The Gospel reading for today is a rich and complex scene from the ministry of Jesus, and it is one of the most amazing episodes in Mark's Gospel. It has a kind of realism about it. When I read it I can hear the noise of the jostling crowd. I can picture the chaos, and the way many things are happening at once. But when I read this episode, I also get a little hint at something that we don't often think about when it comes to Jesus: the way in which many of the people around him must have found him a little unnerving, a little ominous, a little overwhelming.

I get this sense from the reaction of the woman who was healed from the flow of blood. When Jesus demands to know who had touched him so that power went out from him, she is terrified. Even Mark's comment that "power went out from him" gives a hint of some of what made Jesus notably different from so many other healers or would be Messiah's of the day.

But I also get this sense when I try to picture the parents and Peter, James, and John standing there, watching as Jesus takes the seemingly dead girl's hand, says "Get up, little girl" and she promptly stands up. I think they could not have helped but be awestruck and just a wee bit unnerved by the whole thing.

I don't think that it is a bad thing for people to have had this kind of reaction to Jesus. The sensation of being unnerved by something or someone is always an indication that the thing or person possesses some sort of power or strength which is more than you or I can master or stop. I think that people came to believe that Jesus is the son of God, not just because he may or may not have said it, but because those eye witnesses encountered something in Jesus which was more, which was greater, which was... well, a bit unnerving.

In the anonymous medieval work called "The Cloud of Unknowing" the author distinguishes between two kinds of humility. The one kind he calls "imperfect humility". This is the kind which arises out of a true sense of self, out of a thorough self-knowledge. True humility in this sense is the ability to be honest with one's self, to know your strengths and weaknesses, to own them, and to make no excuses.

But the author calls this "imperfect humility" because it is based on something that is passing. When we die, everything we based this humility on will pass away with us, and a new us will arise.

"Perfect humility" for the author arises out of the experience of God's goodness and love. From our end, we get in touch with this goodness and love by directing our love toward God. For the author, prayer is ultimately about directing our love toward God, and in this way coming to recognize and experience at a profound level, God's love for us.

What happens when we encounter God's goodness and love at this interior level, is that a different kind of humility begins to arise spontaneously. You see, God's love, it turns out, is just a bit overwhelming. When we begin to become aware of it deep within ourselves, it can even be a wee bit unnerving, because it is a pure and bottomless love and a pure and bottomless goodness, and we can only receive it with a special kind of spontaneous humility. The author calls this "perfect humility" because this humility will go with us from now into eternity. I think what would have unnerved the woman with the flow of blood and the girl and her parents was not simply that this Jesus had some mysterious power to heal, but that in the experience of being made whole, they also experienced the overwhelming love and goodness of God at a deep and life changing level.

Jesus' acts of healing were normally accompanied by an affirmation of the person's faith, and an admonition not to sin again. That admonition not to sin can seem confusing, given that Jesus says, in line with Job and Ecclesiastes, that illness is not a punishment from God for sin. But if you understand sin as "that which comes between us and God," then Jesus' words mean, "... your faith has made you well; now don't let anything come between you and God again..."

What is it that is coming between us and God? When we set up mental and emotional blocks to receiving God's love and goodness, whether that be because we feel inadequate, or unlovable, or we interpret our circumstances or health situation as a punishment from God (which many people did in the time of Jesus), we make it that much harder for God's goodness to break through and overwhelm us. We set up barriers to experiencing God's unnerving goodness and love.

True wholeness for the human being (and for all creatures) is only possible when we are open to receiving God's goodness and love. True wholeness is also marked by true humility. For the sake of clarity, let me say that true wholeness may or may not mean that the physical body is in top running condition. Remember, at some point everyone's body must stop functioning, and decompose, and return to the earth from which it was made. The important thing here is that as the body moves towards dissolution, that we learn to open ourselves to God's overwhelming and unnerving goodness and love. Being open and intentionally directing our love toward God, makes everything go much differently, in that we receive everything differently through the lens of that overwhelming and unnerving goodness and love.

I think that one of the things that Jesus was doing in healing people, was softening their hearts, and opening them to receive God's love and goodness into themselves. The reading from Mark for today illustrates with great intensity how that could look. The unnamed woman is desperate for help. She is so desperate that she is prepared to believe that a mere touch of Jesus garment will do the trick. Jesus is not prepared to let the mater go. He must affirm and confirm for her that this has to do with God and with forgiveness, which implies also love and goodness. The father of the little girl is desperate for help. Many of his fellow synagogue leaders, most of whom were members of the Pharisaic movement, would have criticized him for turning to Jesus. But he does so publicly, and with great pleading. Jesus overwhelms them with the love and goodness of God. Their lives are changed forever.

Let us also open ourselves to God's overwhelming and unnerving love and goodness. Let us direct our love toward God. Let us experience the true and perfect humility that grows out of love. Let us move toward true wholeness. Amen.

      King Herod was haunted by something he had done. The memory of having John the Baptizer beheaded and having the head delivered on a platter to his step-daughter and her mother would not leave him. He felt guilty for what he had done, and perhaps also feared some sort of curse or punishment because he had shed innocent blood. Herod was haunted by this.

I use the word "haunted" because it captures the way that a negative memory can hang around us and weigh us down. The word "haunted" is usually used to refer to ghosts or spirits that are believed to be hanging around a place. If you have ever looked into the topic of haunting, you may have noted a common theme to most reported instances of haunted places: that the spirits or ghosts who are said to be haunting a place have some unresolved thing, some unsettled score, some deep grief, or some unjust turn which has brought them to remain in that place. You may also have noted that these ghosts or spirits normally stay in one place or at least in one house or field. They do not wander very far. Spirits who are said to be haunting are truly stuck: stuck emotionally and mentally, and as a sign of this, stuck geographically.

Haunting is an excellent image for what happens to us when we have some memory, some deed or event in our past which either will not let us go, or which we cannot let go of. The memory, the images, the emotions, whether guilt or fear or anger or shame, or whatever they may be, haunt us. You could go so far as to say that we are possessed by them.

King Herod was haunted by what he had done to John the Baptizer. John had been a prophet in the tradition of the ancient prophets, someone like Elijah or Jeremiah who fearlessly spoke the Word of the LORD, standing up to kings and queens and religious leaders, calling Israel to live a life faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Herod recognized this trait in John. He had a sense that even if John was saying things that made him uncomfortable, John was still a prophet of God. So Herod might imprison him to try to neutralize him, but he would not choose to kill him. That would be going too far.

But even powerful kings are only human. They may be able to command servants and soldiers to obey, but they are often unable to control themselves or their households. What's more, in the world of power games, signs of weakness can mean losing your throne to some usurper. Even if you're really weak, you have to act strong. Even if you value a life, you sometimes have to act as though you do not. Nowadays we have this sort of pretend strength in many places: on the school yard, in gangs and organized crime groups, in the board room, and even among friends (so-called friends?).

Although Herod knew that the girl's request was wrong, the text tells us that, for the sake of his guests, and, of course, because of his oaths, he granted her her wish. Herod had put himself into a bad position because he could not control himself. He had acted impulsively and foolishly. Now he was trapped in a trap which he had set, and Queen Herodias had sprung.

So Herod was haunted. When Jesus became well known, and people proposed various explanations for who Jesus was, Herod immediately latched onto the one which made sense to his haunted conscience: Jesus must be John the Baptizer come back from the dead.

When we are haunted by our memories or our deeds, we will generally interpret the world through them. A survivor of child abuse sees the world through the lens of the abuse. A survivor of war sees the world through that lens. A survivor of the holocaust sees the world through that lens. By the same token, someone not burdened by haunting memories sees the world in a different way. When we are haunted, it is easy to become emotionally and mentally stuck. We can trap ourselves in small inner prisons.

The spiritual disciplines of reflection and meditation, when practiced in their full traditional contexts, always include a hard-nosed, intentional, and ongoing self-analysis in order to come to know, come to name, and come to deal with all such haunting memories. This is a kind of gradual, self-directed exorcism of all of these sorts of things. Why? Because as long as these memories haunt us and shape the way we see the world, they also shape the way we see God. Just as our haunting memories colour our relationships to the people around us, so they also colour our relationship to God.

Jesus came casting out demons. He liberated the ones who were haunted, and, in a sense, also freed the spirits from their prisons. Herod was haunted by what he had done to John the Baptist. While Jesus might have been able to free Herod from the haunting things in his life, even the many other evils which he did, he could not see this potential in Jesus. He saw only the ghost of John the Baptist, accusing him from beyond the grave.

Let us be careful not to miss the liberating and healing power of Jesus because we are haunted by troublesome memories, whether memories of a very personal wounding, or memories of a version of Jesus or God which we found burdensome, or memories of something which we did and cannot forgive ourselves for. Jesus is not what you think he is. Just as Jesus was not what Herod thought he was, seen through the lens of his guilt, so Jesus is not the skewed version seen through our haunting memories. Rather, Jesus is the one sent to cast out the spirits that haunt us. Amen.

      Our second lesson for today has these words: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."

Who is Paul talking to here? He is talking to the non-Jewish members of the congregation in the Greek city of Ephesus. Today the city is on the west coast of Turkey, but in ancient times, and even into the early part of the 20th century, the region was solidly Greek. Paul is telling his Greek readers that they too are now a part of a great building project undertaken by God through Christ. They are now citizens of the commonwealth of Israel, and, more than that, part of the household of God, which is becoming a great spiritual temple to God built of living people, because in Christ, God is building one new, united humanity to worship the one creator of all that is.

It is a grand vision of what God is about in Christ. It is full of optimism and hope. Though Paul does not use the word in this passage, he is referring to the thing we call the Church.

Looking at the 2000 year history of the Church, and looking at the situation in the world today, it can seem as though this grand hope filled project of uniting all people in Christ has been a failure. Humanity is still deeply divided against itself, to say nothing of the divisions within the church. Wars rage here and there. Just when one area seems to quiet down after a long run at violence, another flares up. In our cities, young men who feel powerless and disenfranchised turn to violence and crime, seeking fellowship in gangs. In our neighbourhoods many families seem to be disintegrating as the parents descend into spirals of addiction and poverty, and the children seem doomed to repeat the patterns. Woe is us! God's vision for us seems to have failed.

Or has it? Recently I read an interesting article about the Sahara Desert 15,000 years ago. It seems that 15,000 years ago, what we now call the Sahara Desert was a well watered grassland where many animals grazed and migrated. Our ancestors roamed this vast grassland, hunting the game and gathering the plants. They left many signs of their long sojourn in that blessed land. It seems that during their stay on that grassland, they first learned how to herd animals. Then, about 7,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Steppe dried out. Our ancestors fled from the land that was quickly becoming a desert. They moved into a place where almost no people had lived before then: the Nile Valley. After about 1000 years there, they laid the foundations, both literally and figuratively, of the Egyptian civilization which would last for about 4,500 years.

We humans have been around, finding our way through the world, for a long time. And yet, 15,000 years in the history of planet earth is like the snap of fingers. God has a very long time line. This is good for us humans because we seem to be relatively slow learners when it comes to certain things. The Bible tells us that the first act of violence was an act of envy and jealousy. Cain the farmer killed his younger brother Abel the shepherd. Like so much of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, this is a highly symbolic story. The conflict between farming peoples and herding peoples is as old as these two lifestyles. Before that it would have been the conflict between herders and hunter gatherers. Different uses of the land, different sets of values, conflicting needs and interests have always led us to go to war with each other, whether a full blown war with armies or a feud between two brothers.

The Bible's story carries all this in it, but frames it in terms of acceptability to God. God accepted the younger brother's offering, the pastoralist's offering, but did not accept the older brother's offering, the farmer's offering. The older brother's response was to be jealous and envious. His solution to his sense of rejection was to kill. "If I can't have it, no one can." Today, the human being is still the same. We still look with envy on those who got something we wish we had but didn't. Sometimes we go further and try to get back at the person by turning the cold shoulder or making snarky remarks or plotting to outdo them some other way. The Cain and Able story is a story about the human condition. It describes sin in story form. It is a diagnosis of one of the things that trips us up all the time.

In Christ, God came into the world with a plan to reshape us. The community of those being reshaped would be a kind of living temple in and through which would come true worship, complete self-giving devotion to God embodied in love. This is what the Church is intended to become, but has not yet become, at least not in its physical, earthly manifestation. Or perhaps we could say that the Church has not yet become fully manifested within each of us.

In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, one of our Lutheran confessional documents, Philip Melanchthon writes, "...in this life hypocrites and evil people are mingled with the church and are members of the church according to the outward associations of the church's marks -- that is, Word, confession, and sacraments... [However] the church is not merely an association of outward ties and rites like other civic governments... but it is mainly an association of faith and of the Holy Spirit in people's hearts. To make it recognizable, this association has outward marks, the pure teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments in harmony with the Gospel of Christ. This church alone is called the body of Christ, which Christ renews, consecrates, and governs by his Spirit..." (Apology of the Augs. Confess. Articles VII & VIII "The Church")

Melanchthon and the Reformers made a distinction between the human institution called the church, and the spiritual reality of the Church which is the real body of Christ on earth. In doing this they were not saying anything new. Jesus' Parable of the Weeds Sown Among the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) is often understood as a sort of precursor to this view of the Church. In the parable an enemy of a land owner sows weeds in among the good wheat one night. The servants of the owner ask of they should try to remove them, but the owner says, "No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them." The workers are to let things grow until the harvest, and then sort out the wheat from the weeds.

In order to understand the nature of God's work in and through the Church, we have to understand that God forces no one. God only calls, woos, invites, nudges, and so on. In the end, everyone has to either open themselves to God's guiding or not. I think most of us here probably do a bit of both. When we're in a good and "spiritual" space (whatever that looks and feels like for each of us) then we are more inclined to cut God some slack in our lives. When we are in our self oriented or task oriented or survival oriented spaces, we take the reigns of our lives and do whatever seems right or necessary, likely without too much or any thought for God in the process.

So the Church is really an ongoing process, not just out there among people, or in here among us, but also in here, inside of each of us. I think the French Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément put it well when he wrote, "The institution [of the Church] is merely the visible aspect of the 'mystery'. Above all, the Church is the power of resurrection, the servant of the Risen One who imparts resurrection to us; the new Eve, born from Christ's open side as Eve was born from Adam's rib... In its deepest understanding, the Church is nothing other than the world in the course of transfiguration, the world that in Christ reflects the light of paradise." (Clément: The Roots of Christian Mysticism p. 95)

In other words, we are part of a new humanity being born, being brought into existence. But each of us is also a new human being coming into existence. This is expressed in different ways in different strands of Christianity. In much of Protestant preaching, there is an emphasis on changed lives, on being born again. In Luther's language, he talks about the need to die each day to self, and rise to Christ. The Eastern Orthodox express this in terms of spiritual progress. Again, Clément puts it nicely when he writes, "Spiritual progress has no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love. It has to be unselfish love founded on respect, a service, a disinterested affection that does not ask to be paid in return, a 'sympathy', indeed an 'empathy' that takes us out of ourselves enabling us to 'feel with' the other person and indeed to 'feel in' him or her. It gives us the ability to discover in the other person an inward nature as mysterious and deep as our own, but different and willed to be so by God." (Clément p.270)

The transformation or transfiguration which God is bringing about in Christ, among those who allow this to happen, is the antidote for the sickness exemplified by the story of Cain and Abel. Cain no longer looks at Abel as the one who took or got something, but looks and sees the mystery of God in the brother. The Church, the household of God, the temple of living stones which is also the body of Christ is a structure made up of those who embody this or are on their way to embodying it. This is the transformation of the world. This is the transfiguration of our species. It requires each of us and many others to allow ourselves to be transformed and transfigured by God in Christ.

In this way we each become some of the leaven for the loaf of humanity, some of the salt for the earth, some of the light shining in darkness. In this way we become the Church, and insofar as we are active in the institution called the church, it too is transformed and transfigured. Amen.

      What is wisdom? Wisdom is an elusive quality that is possible for humans, but is not inevitable. Some people seem very wise. There is something about them, about the way they handle themselves with other people, the way they respond to situations, that we look at them and say, "That person seems so wise." And yet if you were to say to such a person that they seem wise, they would probably be surprised. They might even object that they feel that the older they get, the less they know.

But wisdom is not knowledge. Sometimes we confuse the two. Someone with a lot of information in their heads can still be very foolish in how they conduct themselves and someone who has little or no formal education can still be very wise.

I have long thought about wisdom because I have long been drawn to the wisdom literature of the Bible, especially the book of Ecclesiastes. What is wisdom and how do you get it? What does wisdom look like? What is that intangible quality that a few people seem to possess and the rest of us do not?

I think there are four main factors that contribute to wisdom in a person: 1) life experience, 2) self-reflection, 3) perspective, and 4) emotional maturity. You will notice that knowledge, at least formal knowledge, is not part of this mix. It certainly can be, but as I said earlier, I don't think that knowledge leads to wisdom. Rather, to repeat myself: 1) life experience, 2) self-reflection, 3) perspective, and 4) emotional maturity.

Today's Psalm deals with the third and fourth of these. It begins with the words, "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God.'" Psalm 111, by the way, states this in positive terms. It says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom." (verse 10) This means that wisdom arises out of taking God seriously. It arises out of having a larger perspective on life.

Psalm 14 is interesting because it emphasizes in particular the foolishness of those who exploit the poor. "Have they no knowledge," the Psalm says, "all the evil doers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the name of the LORD?... You would confound the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge."

If you read the prophets in the Old Testament, you will notice that they devote quite a lot of page space to the issue of the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy and powerful. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, and others attack the behaviour of the powerful of Israel, who "join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but [them] in the land..." (Isaiah 5:8) In other words, those who drive the small landholder off the land either by driving them into debt and then taking their land from them, or by using legal technicalities to rob people of their livelihood (which, by the way, is Luther's definition of "coveting"). It is a process which has always been wherever people have owned land. It is a process which goes on today, especially in Latin America, but in many other places as well.

The perspective that is lacking, according to Psalm 14, is that those doing the exploiting do not take God seriously. They figure, if they can get away with it in the eyes of the earthly law authorities, then it's okay to do. Whose gonna stop them?

This way of seeing things, the "as long as I can get away with it" perspective, is a small, turned-in-on-self perspective which does not see beyond its own benefit. It is 1) a perspective that ignores God and God's judgment, and 2) functions at the emotional level of a 5 year old (that is of an age before full compassion, the ability to be concerned about the other apart from any self interest) becomes a real possibility. Such exploiters may be powerful, they may even be educated, high born, and have impeccable manners among their peers, but they are, from God's perspective, fools.

But let's be honest with ourselves. It is easy to point fingers at others who hold power and influence which we do not. All of us here are probably, at different times, just as foolish as the people which the Psalm describes, because we too probably, more often than not, do not take God seriously in our day to day living, and act with an emotional maturity that is less than appropriate to our age. Who has not done something, thinking, "well what they don't know won't hurt them," or "as long as I don't get caught"? Or who has not at some point, as an adult, fallen into a snit appropriate for a child, or engaged in such less than admirable behaviour as taking revenge, getting back at someone, turning the cold shoulder, or refusing to see the perspective of the other person? I would guess that all of us here in this room have done something like that at some point along the way.

The problem for most people is how to keep God in our consciousness all the time, or at least most of the time. Here is where wisdom begins, says Psalm 111. To reflect continuously on one's behaviour in light of God's perspective is a basic building block of wisdom as understood by the Bible. This wisdom is a particular kind of wisdom because beyond mere personal experience and self-reflection, it adds the element of compassion, which is a way of seeing that requires emotional maturity, and is also a Godly or God-like way of seeing.

Today's lesson from II Samuel gives an excellent example of a time when David, the "man after God's own heart" (which means, the man who takes God seriously in his life) briefly ceases to be a man after God's own heart, and becomes very foolish indeed. When from the roof of the palace, he sees Bathsheba bathing, he does not consider her husband or her family or God. He only thinks about getting what he wants. Then, when she tells him that she is pregnant, he only thinks of ways to try to get away with his deed. In the end David has coveted what was not his to have, committed adultery, deceived his loyal servant Uriah, and committed murder. The prophet Nathan makes David aware that God has seen and is holding him to account for what he has done.

Next week we will have the continuation of this reading, but let me read for you part of what Nathan communicates to David. "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom [a common practice in the Middle East even into relatively modern times, when someone took over the throne from an enemy], and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and of that had been too little, I would have added much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight?" (12:7-9)

This is, in many ways what we also do. We get into our small perspective. We see only ourselves and what will be to our advantage or our liking, and we act accordingly. In the process we forget all that we already have. We are like children who do not see all the toys we already have, but obsess on the one we don't have. We grumble to ourselves, "if only this or that were different, I would be happier." Would I really? Or would I then say the same thing about something else?

Wisdom begins by taking God seriously. Wisdom begins by seeing the world through God's eyes. Or, another way to understand this, is to use the insight of the anonymous 14th century author of "The Cloud of Unknowing." He says that at some point in our private prayers, when we go into our room and shut the door and pray to God in secret, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:6), if we want to move more deeply into a life filled with God, we must leave behind all our daily concerns and prejudices and wants and aspirations, leave them behind in a "cloud of forgetting" and come before God with a "naked awareness", as he calls it, that God is, and that you are, and simply rest in this "naked awareness." You must forget all the images you have constructed about God, the pictures in your mind, the attributes and qualities you ascribe to God, forget them, leave them in that "cloud of forgetting," and approach God in a "cloud of un-knowing", a place where you are aware only that you are and God is. The more you move toward this way of praying, the more that you will find God filling your mind and consciousness at ordinary times. The more you will begin to touch the essence of God in your prayers, that is, the more you will touch love.

This is another way of going at the search for wisdom, because it is another way in which a person can begin to take God more seriously in one's life, and become more continuously aware, each day, and most of the day, that God is. What's more, there is a deep wisdom in this way of praying because, like the wise person who says, the older I get, the less I know, it is also a way of saying, the longer I pray, the more mysterious and unfathomable God is. At the same time, just as the wise person becomes a quiet inspiration to others, so this way of praying leaves a subtle imprint of God's presence on a person.

But wisdom is, in the end, probably not something we can manufacture. Even though we could say that wisdom requires life experience, self-reflection, perspective, and emotional maturity, maybe even with all these things, it also requires the grace and gift of God. So, as we seek wisdom, let us also pray, "God of wisdom, give us your wisdom." Amen.

      This past week I was at our BC Synod Confirmation Camp, which, for the last several years has been held annually out at Nanoose Bay Pentecostal Camp. Confirmation Camp is always one of the highlights of my year, and it always gets me thinking. Yes, it is exhausting, it is a lot of work, but it is also inspiring, thought provoking, and often very enlightening. This year I taught Level I. Level I is for those who will begin confirmation instruction in their congregation in the fall. I had a class of eleven year olds, six in all.

I haven't taught at Confirmation Camp for at least nine years now, having instead served as chaplain or dean for most of those years, and also skipping a few years along the way. It was wonderful to be teaching again, and for the first time in over 12 years teaching Level I.

Because one of the topics which Level I covers is Communion, our class was responsible for making the bread for the big closing Communion service at the end of the week. The service was to be a kind of quasi-Maundy Thursday service with Communion, foot washing, and agape meal (the ancient Christian feast of love). So, on Wednesday morning, I gathered my six charges in the cafeteria building. I had prepared 3 large mixing bowls, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and measuring utensils. I loved my little class. They were such a wonderful, enthusiastic, spontaneously creative, and cooperative group. But, I was quite taken aback by what happened when we gathered around the table with all the baking supplies. In a flash, my little group of cooperators turned into a little group of grabby, pushy, possessive, uncooperative kids.

Once we had finally sorted out who was with whom and which bowl "belonged" to which pair, the next little fight began. I needed two round flat loaves for the Communion Service, not unlike the flat Greek style pitas we use here. But the kids were all much more interested in making shapes and faces with their loaves; all except one. One of the children, one of the quieter ones, offered to make one of the loaves from her lump of dough. I then proceeded to beg and cajole the others for the second communion loaf. That same student then offered to make both of the loaves. So, while the others made their various shapes and faces and tiny cookie shaped mini breads, the one who had offered to make the Communion loaves made two perfectly proportioned, well shaped loaves.

Once all the bread had been baked, each of the children could eat or share their bread in class, or later, out of class, as they chose. The one who had made the Communion bread, however, had none to eat or share, except as the others might share. Back in the classroom, I was happy to see that the rest did share, and share freely. Those loaves were all gone by the end of the day.

Meanwhile, the two Communion loaves sat in our classroom, in a clear plastic container, on the paten (I had set up our congregation's Communion ware as part of the small altar/classroom focal point in the classroom), as part of our class. On Thursday evening, at the big Communion celebration for the week, our class processed the Communion bread into the worship space, along with a candle, the chalice and wine, and two plates of symbolic food for our recreation of an Agape meal. The student who had made the two Communion loaves went at the front of the procession, carrying the lighted candle (her choice) while someone else processed the bread.

In our reading from Ephesians for today, Paul writes, "I... beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling... with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all."

Paul "begs" his readers to lead a life "worthy" of their calling. The marks of that life are humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace. In the classroom our little class did a good job of forming a small community in which we all, each according to our age and level of maturity, contributed to just such a community. But when it came time to bake bread, humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace went out the window to be replaced by greed, contentiousness, pettiness, stinginess, disunity, and strife.

But one student, who quietly waited out the shuffle and struggle for control, did not leave behind the spirit of cooperation and peace. Interestingly, symbolically, and perhaps appropriately, that student's bread became the bread of life at our communion service.

I think this little incident -- really, it is not an important or significant incident in itself -- but this little incident is a kind of picture of what happens to us all the time. We, as a congregation, as a community of faith, a fellowship of those who seek to follow Jesus, also have Paul's words addressed to us: the Holy Spirit "begs" us to lead a life "worthy" of our calling: a life characterized by humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace. Most of the time, this seems to go pretty well. But every so often, something happens, a situation comes up that mysteriously pushes our buttons, and we can seem to unravel from a fellowship of cooperative followers of Jesus, to a clutch of blaming, snapping, grumbling, dissatisfied, people.

Who knows why this happens? Perhaps we are being tested by the Tester (i.e. Satan). Perhaps we are being tested by each other. Perhaps we are being tested by ourselves. Perhaps this only goes to show that there really is something called original sin. Perhaps human biology is at war with the human soul, as the ancient monastics asserted. Perhaps all of these factors and more are at play.

Later in the Ephesians passage, Paul writes that the Spirit of God gives different gifts to people for the purpose of building up the body of Christ, that is, the community of those who follow Jesus. Certainly in our little Level I group, that one student had the gift of generosity, which became a gift to the whole group. The willingness of the one to be patient and the be generous, enabled the rest of the group to proceed with its job. The gift of that one then became the actual offering of our little group to the larger group.

Appropriately enough, at the Communion service for which we, or rather, that one student, had prepared the communion bread, we had a foot washing: the sign and teaching which Jesus gave to demonstrate for his disciples that they are to serve one another, and by extension, that we are to serve one another.

The Psalm for today begins with the cry: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions." It is a cry which we all can make every day, because every day we are less than we could be. Everyday, at some point, or perhaps much of the day on some days, we act not with humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace, but with other characteristics, because our minds and attention and aspirations are focused away from God. In the Gospel reading Jesus says, "the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world... I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever trusts in me will never be thirsty."

I think we slide into our less than admirable phases at least in part because we are chasing after something which we think will satisfy or fulfill; something that will make us happy. Our souls are hungry, our spirits are thirsty, and we look for nourishment in getting what we want, or being accepted by others, or ordering our world around us to our liking. But our souls and spirits will ever only be satisfied when we find our nourishment in Christ, the true bread of life, the true drink of joy.

Yes, Confirmation Camp always gets me thinking. This year it got me thinking about community and Christian vocation. May we open our hearts to God's Spirit, that our community may be one characterized by humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, and peace. Amen.

      Violence, intrigue, betrayal, revenge: today's reading from the II Samuel is part of a much longer episode in King David's life which has it all. What we heard today from chapter 18 of II Samuel is one snippet of the narrative beginning in chapter 13 and ending in chapter 20, which recounts David's strained relationship to his son Absalom. It is the story of family dysfunction, of paternal inaction, of sibling rivalry, of politics and mob mentality, and of much more that is such a part of the human condition at all times and in all places. In short, this is an account which portrays what St. Augustine and many since him have called "original sin".

But before I get to that theological construct, let me give you a brief summary of the story of David and Absalom. David lived in a society that practiced polygamy. Influential men, and especially the king, had many wives to show their wealth and status in the society. As so many potentates of that region of the world even today, many wives meant many children, and especially many sons who often became rivals with each other for their father's favour, and later for the throne.

One day Amnon, David's oldest son, raped Tamar, a daughter of David by a different wife, and also the sister of Absalom. Absalom took his disgraced sister into his house. But, as it says in the text, "When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his first born. But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon because he had raped his sister Tamar." (II Samuel 13:21-22)

A few years later, Absalom lured Amnon into a trap and had his servants kill Amnon. Absalom then fled to a neighbouring kingdom where he lived in exile for several years. When David had gotten over the death of Amnon, David's cousin Joab, who was also the commander of his army, convinced David to let Absalom come back. David forgave Absalom, but Absalom did not forgive his father.

Absalom began to build his popularity by intercepting people who were going to have their cases heard before the king, and would tell them how he, Absalom, would handle things if he were king. When all was in place, Absalom gathered his followers and rose up against his father. David had to flee Jerusalem, with his household and loyalists, across the Jordan River to avoid being captured by Absalom and his followers. The text tells us that there were many who had been loyal to the previous king, Saul, who were happy to see David go.

After much spying and intrigue, David's commanders were able to rout Absalom's troops in the forest of Ephraim, as we heard in today's reading. After Absalom was killed by Joab, quite against David's orders, David grieved so openly and blatantly for his dead son, that, as the text tells us, "the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the troops; for the troops heard that day, 'The king is grieving for his son,' so they stole into the city that day as soldiers steal in who are ashamed when they flee in battle." (II Samuel 19:2-3) Again, Joab, David's cousin and head soldier, intervened. He warned David that if he did not show some appreciation for all that his loyal troops had done, they would all dessert him.

David put on a show of a appreciation, but there was still a second rebellion that arose, led by one of Absalom's backers. With a bit of collusion with the inhabitants of the city to which this rebel and his followers had fled, Joab was finally able to restore order in the land, and secure David's position as king.

It is a story not unlike so may in the annals of eastern Mediterranean kingdoms and empires. Even mighty Rome suffered under rivalries and rebellions like these, and the word "Byzantine" is used to mean what it does because of the complex power rivalries in the thousand year history of that empire. Some of Shakespeare's plays also highlight these sorts of intrigue-ridden royal politics.

But the Bible is not interested in history for the sake of history or posterity. Rather, the Bible's narrative always has an underlying interest in the relationship between God and humans. This narrative of David's complex relationship to Amnon, Tamar, Absalom (and, as you may have noticed, also to his cousin Joab) is also asking us to reflect on where these people remembered God, where they ignored God, and how this worked itself out in their lives. To read this and similar narratives is to come face to face with what later Christian theologians would call original sin.

Original sin is the idea that there is an underlying problem in human nature since the fall. The idea assumes that before the fall, that is, before that original act of disobedience and rebellion portrayed in Genesis 3 in the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, humans were what they were meant to be: completely in tune with and in harmony with God. By rebelling against God, the human will came into discord and disharmony with God's will. Since then we find ourselves, when all things are equal, tending away from God's will and God's hope for us, and toward something less, something destructive, something life-robbing.

The idea of original sin is a response to the realization that we seem to have to work really hard to be good in the deepest sense. We might be able to be superficially good, in the sense that we can often go with the social flow and buy into what ever is around us. But to be good when it means denying ourselves, acting counter to our survival instincts or counter to social expectations and so on, this sort of deeper goodness usually takes an extraordinary effort.

The term original sin, however, carries so much historical baggage, that it might be useful to use some different phrases to refer to it. It could be called "our inclination away from God," or the "human will's tendency to act without consideration for God's will," or "the human predisposition to seek one's own advantage."

The narrative of David and Absalom gives us some notable examples of the way that this inclination or tendency or predisposition works, and why it matters. Amnon raped Tamar because he was in love with her, even though she was his half-sister. His solution, not unlike Cain's solution to his trouble with Abel, was to use deception and force to get what he wanted. After having crossed this boundary, there might still have been the chance of his marriage to his half-sister if the king had allowed it, but once he had raped her he felt disdain for her. Again, he did not consider her or his family or his father, and most especially not God. In all this he only considered himself. It is an underlying problem of human, and in some ways especially male ways of functioning, to tend to consider one's own advantage over any compassion or consideration for others. We have to learn compassion, and I think we also have to practice it as we practice any skill.

Amnon's actions evoked Absalom's response. Absalom waited for his father to act but David was hamstrung by the emotional triangles. He loved his first born son so much that he appears to have tried the "if I ignore it, it will go away" technique of parenting. Here too, David was thinking more about his likes and preferences than what might be the right thing to do. Tamar, when Amnon was approaching her, identified the truth. She declared and pleaded: "Such a thing is not done in Israel!" She knew this wasn't right. David probably knew it too. He was quite angry, but he did nothing. The inactivity of David led Absalom to make his own plans for justice. From this point on, it is as though the die has been cast. Absalom kills Amnon and flees. David does nothing. Absalom returns and begins to gather followers. David does nothing. Absalom rebels. David flees, etc., etc., etc. It is a tragedy not unlike those of Shakespeare or the ancient Greek dramatists.

When we look at the world and see the trouble around us (the conflict in the Middle East, the conflicts in Central Africa, the deep corruption and violence in Latin America and parts of Asia, organized crime, torture, deadly neglect of the poorest and sickest in many parts of the world, not to mention the constant abuse which the earth and the many animals species of our planet must endure at our hands) we see all this mirrored in miniature in this narrative of Absalom and David. We see original sin at work.

But why is this original sin and not simply the intentional sin of some people? What if we are actually all basically good, but some people make bad choices? You could say that this is the response of the optimist to the seemingly pessimistic idea of original sin. My response is that the evidence seems to be to the contrary. It seems that we are from the beginning, from the moment of our birth, naturally inclined to seek our own way, and that we must learn to respect boundaries, to consider the feelings and needs of others. Sometimes we learn these things well, but sometimes we do not. Either way, we have to learn them. If we were basically good, which is to say, if there were no original sin, we would naturally seek the well being of the other, we would be naturally compassionate, and would have to learn being any other way.

Underlying Christianity is the understanding, expressed in different ways in different Christian traditions, that in Christ, God is at work undoing the effects of original sin, undoing this tendency away from God, undoing this predisposition to seek our own way at the expense of others. In eastern Christianity they use the slogan, "God became man that man might become God." In western Christianity we use the slogan "Jesus came to take away our sins." In western Christianity we talk about the process of sanctification, of becoming holy, that is, becoming what God intends us to be. In the east they call this theosis or "deification." But whatever the language or the metaphors, the basic process is one in which we allow God to work in us to turn us out of ourselves, to re-orient ourselves from our own interests, our own advantage, our own agendas, to seek out God's will and hope for the world.

Now consider what this means for the forgiveness of sins. When we say that in Baptism, God forgives us for original sin, we are saying that God promises to overlook that part of us that seems to fall into self-serving activity without any intention on our part. Active repentance then is the process of turning from those things which are intentionally evil or destructive or harmful. As we become sanctified, as we become deified, we come to recognize more and more where we fall short, and gradually, we begin to repent of those things in ourselves which are more deep-seated, the predisposition of original sin.

To put it another way, at first we are dealing at the level which Paul addresses to his converts in Ephesus, as we heard form today's reading, "Be angry, but do not sin... Thieves must give up stealing..." First, repentance is about controlling the more extreme aspects of sin. Don't worry about the anger, just learn to control your actions. Thieves, stop taking other people's stuff. Then one begins to go deeper, as when Paul writes, "do not let the sun go down on your anger... let [former thieves] labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." Next, begin to work on the anger itself, so as to be able to let go of it, perhaps at the end of each day, as a kind of personal spiritual discipline. As you practice this, you will begin to experience a shift within yourself. And for the former thieves, note that the emphasis shifts from gaining something for oneself, to working for the benefit of others. Sanctification, theosis, is the unlearning of original sin, and the learning of a new way of being, all with the help and guidance of God in Christ. But before the deeper unlearning of original sin can happen, the more immediate aspects of blatant, intentional harm have to be stopped.

Jesus, of course, sets the example. Jesus embodies what a life in harmony with God looks like. The undoing of the turned-in-on-self nature of original sin is the turned-out-toward-God nature of the life of Jesus. Jesus says that true fulfillment, true satisfying nourishment for the soul comes from feasting on the very being of Christ. "Whoever eats of this bread," says Jesus in today's reading from John, "will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." (John 6:51)

Quite in contrast to Amnon, Absalom, David, and Joab, Jesus does not act to grab and get and control and avenge, nor to ignore or neglect, but rather to give, to surrender, to nourish. Jesus and the Jesus life are the cure for the disease called original sin. This is not something which we can contrive or force on our own. It is rather something which can come to us when we open ourselves to it. Jesus invites; let us respond. May we open ourselves to Christ's presence within us, and allow ourselves to be led onto the path from death into life and from sin into wholeness. Amen.

      In today's reading from John, Jesus says, "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life... for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink." These words and the words around them have sparked a tremendous amount of controversy and debate in scholarly circles. Did Jesus really say these things about himself, or is this just John projecting something back onto Jesus? What exactly do these words mean, regardless of who first said or penned them? Do they refer to Holy Communion? Do they refer to some other strictly spiritual or symbolic understanding?

Each point of view has things to commend it, as well as problems to deal with. If you believe that Jesus literally said all this, then you also have to allow that to his contemporaries he may have seemed a bit dotty or even demon possessed -- it's amazing that he lasted as long as he did; or alternately, that anyone took him seriously at all! If you believe that this is a later projection back onto Jesus, then you have to deal with all the issues of scriptural authority and reliability and so on. Each position presents its advantages and problems.

I think most scholars and even the ancient interpreters of scripture agree and agreed that John's Gospel is the most highly symbolic of the four Gospels. John seems to choose his stories and images and language very carefully to communicate his message about Jesus. He even acknowledges, near the end of his work that, although Jesus said and did so many things that a world of books could not contain them, these particular words and incidents have been chosen expressly for the purposes of evoking faith in the reader (cf. John 20:30-31).

So I think in reading John's Gospel, it is important to read it, not as a critical historical narrative or a neutral newspaper account, but as a set of devotional and theological reminiscences on the life and teachings of Jesus. By devotional I mean that the writer's act of recording was an act of worship and praise. He has already come to believe, and he wants his readers to share in his faith. He has found true life, and wants his readers also to find that true life. His reminiscences of his master are seen through the eyes of deep faith. By theological I mean that John is shaping the stories to communicate a message, a sermon, to his readers.

Secondly, the writer of John has a highly developed sense of the power of God active in and through Jesus and in and through all people. In other words, he is a mystic. For him, God is active and moving in the world, shaping and transforming people and their lives, drawing all people closer to God. In John's experience this was nowhere more true than in his own encounter with Jesus, the Word made flesh. He was there. He saw and learned from and touched and ate with Jesus. He, John, was changed deeply and forever by that encounter. He has witnessed the power of God at work, especially in himself (cf. John 1:14; 21:24 and I John 1:1-4).

Thirdly, I think we cannot ignore the fact that John, though his work is more intentionally symbolic and more blatantly mystical than the other three Gospels, is also more geographically accurate and shows a deeper understanding of the cycles of the Jewish festivals held at Jerusalem than do the other three Gospels. This verifiable accuracy means that we cannot, out of hand, dismiss some of these difficult sayings of Jesus found in John as total fabrications of a devotionally oriented writer.

Having said all that, what are we to make of these words of Jesus where he says, "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life... for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink"? The danger here is to get hung up on the details and the letter and thereby to miss the spirit of this text. In the context of modern Judaism these words seem outrageous and bizarre, but in the complex, spiritually varied Jewish world of that day, Jesus' words are not so completely unthinkable.

Here Jesus (or, if you prefer, John's Jesus) speaks in the language of ancient mysticism, and he also picks up on some of the imagery of the ancient wisdom school. In Proverbs we read that, "Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, You that are simple, turn in here! To those without sense, she says, Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight (Proverbs 9:1-6)

If you are at all familiar with the sayings of Jesus, you might have caught the close similarity of these words about Lady Wisdom from the Old Testament, and Jesus' parable of the great banquet in which the host sends out his servants to compel people to come in from the streets and partake of the feast (Luke 14:15-24). In fact, there are enormous parallels between the teaching and ministry of Jesus, and the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament. Furthermore, certain aspects of that wisdom tradition seem to be direct sources for the more mystical and cosmic aspects of the way the New Testament talks about Jesus (cf. Raymond Brown's useful article in Appendix II to his commentary on John, vol. 1, from "The Anchor Bible").

I think when Jesus is talking about "eating his flesh" and "drinking his blood" he is also picking up on this tradition, but as in so many other places, is intensifying the message. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus several times takes a commandment and intensifies or deepens it. Jesus says, "You have heard it said, You shall not commit murder...' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment..." And again, Jesus says, "...you have heard it said... You shall not swear falsely...' But I say to you, do not swear at all..." And again Jesus says, "You have heard it said, Love your neighbour...' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." and so on (Matthew 5:21-22,33-34,43-44).

Here too, in today's reading, I think Jesus is taking something from the Hebrew Scriptures, the scriptures which formed the Bible of his day, and heightening, deepening, and intensifying them. Whereas in Proverbs, Lady Wisdom had said, "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed," Jesus takes this a step further. Jesus implies that this wisdom from God is he himself.

At the beginning of his Gospel, John has made it fairly clear that he associates Jesus with personified wisdom in the tradition of the Old Testament and related writings of that time. In the Wisdom of Solomon, a book we Protestants lump into the Apocrypha, but a work which was very much a part of Bible of the Jews living outside of Palestine at the time of Jesus, the author prays to God, "Wisdom... knows your works and was present when you made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according to your commandments. Send her forth from the holy heavens, and from the throne of your glory send her, that she may labour at my side, that I may learn what is pleasing to you." (Wisdom of Solomon 9:9-10)

In the book of Baruch (4:1), another book which we Protestants relegate to the Apocrypha, but which was in wide circulation at the time of Jesus, Lady Wisdom takes on physical form in the "book of the commandments of God," in other words, the Torah. "All who hold her fast," it says, "will live..."

In the book of Enoch (42:2), a more controversial book, but also one widely used in the time of Jesus, it says, "Wisdom came to make her dwelling place among the children of Adam and found no dwelling there."

All of these themes are echoed in John's Gospel, with Jesus assuming the role of Lady Wisdom, but expressed with the masculine word "Logos", meaning "Word." I think it is not unreasonable to understand Jesus in today's text from John asserting his connexion to Divine Wisdom, but going a step further. If Lady Wisdom says, "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed," Jesus says of himself, "I am that food: my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink; I am what Lady Wisdom offers; I am wisdom embodied and the wisdom you take into yourself."

Holy Communion, from this perspective, then becomes a ritual action which portrays and reinforces the inner spiritual process of having our spirits feed on the wisdom which is Christ. Here, again, is the mystical side of John. In our prayer and devotion to God, God enters into us and we enter into God. In our prayer and devotion to Christ, Christ enters into us, and we enter into Christ. Jesus talks about "abiding" in connexion with the image of the vine and the branches. He says that those who abide in him abide in the Father, and the Father abides in all those who abide in him (John 15:1-11). I think Jesus' language of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, although it certainly has strong Holy Communion associations is also another way of talking about the mystical coming together of God and humanity in Christ, the Word made flesh, Wisdom embodied.

How do we feed and drink as Jesus bids? To use another set of images from Jesus, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks, receives; and everyone who searches, finds; and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7-8). Amen.

      What a poignant moment, when many of Jesus' followers are leaving him because his teachings are too hard for them to accept, and he then turns to his inner circle, the so-called Twelve, and asks them, "Do you also wish to go away?"

   It is as though in this little passage, John's Gospel anticipated what would happen again and again in the centuries that have followed.  But perhaps that's because the same sort of thing happened again and again in the centuries before that as well.  There have always been people who have turned away from following Jesus or, before Jesus, from following God's commandments, because it was too hard to internalize, too hard to own and to live by.

   In the last 50 years we have seen, in the prosperous western and northern world, a great walking away from the Church.  Whereas before in our now post-industrial societies, the majority at least made some effort to be Christian, and this seemed to mostly get passed on from generation to generation, now it seems that each new generation has fewer who adhere to official Christianity than the generation before.

   What is often cited by those who are asked, is that what they see in churches has no real bearing on what goes on in their lives.  There just seems to be this disconnect between the issues they face and what the people in the churches are talking about.  It is easy for us to think that maybe we are doing something wrong, or they are doing something wrong, when maybe this is part of a larger societal cycle that must at different times and places repeat itself.

   So perhaps Jesus would look at us now and ask, "Do you also wish to go away?"  And maybe we would mostly be able to answer as Peter did, "Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

   The committees that line up our Sunday readings made an interesting choice today.  They left off the last two verses of the chapter.  These two verses say the following: "Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve?  Yet one of you is a devil.'  He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him."

   This makes this moment in Jesus' ministry all the more poignant.  Some have walked away.  But there is another who will actively betray Jesus into the hands of people who want to kill him.  I made the comparison just a moment ago between those who walked away from Jesus then, and those who have left off thinking of themselves as followers of Jesus in the centuries since then.   So are there also betrayers in our midst today?

   I think there are, and I think you and I are such betrayers every time we make a mockery of what Jesus taught and embodied.  Every time we embody the opposite of love, forgiveness, kindness, or integrity, while we insist on calling ourselves Christians, followers of Jesus, we play into the hands of those who would like nothing better than to see Christianity just go away, or maybe they already imagine that it is on its way out. At the same time we become a stumbling block to those who might believe.

   You see, although from one perspective, Christianity has become quite easy today, really it is no easier than it ever was.  It's just that the places of friction and effort have shifted.  It used to be that you had to do all kinds of stuff: fast before taking communion, give 10% of your income, refrain from working on Sundays, go to church every Sunday, etc. etc. etc.  We don't have to do any of that anymore. Most of that is human made anyway, and even of keeping the Sabbath, Paul says, "Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.  These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." (Colossians 2:16-17)

    And it is that substance that Paul is referring to, Christ, which now as then is both light and easy and life giving, but also hard to internalize and to live.  It is one thing to say, "I am a Christian" or "I am a believer," but it is another to then live so that people say, "Look, that person is so loving and kind and compassionate and forgiving and has such integrity, I wonder if they are one of those Christians."

   But here is the secret of this way of living.  It is not a life which we make by our effort.  Rather it is a life which we invite with our prayers.  So many have striven like warriors or athletes to force themselves to be good, when ultimately, the Jesus life comes to us as a gift when we open ourselves, surrender ourselves to God's working within us.

   This is why the ancient image of the Church is Mary.  In my office I have one of the classic and most ancient of Christian icons of Mary, the one called "The Mother of God of Tenderness".  We Protestants see these ancient pictures as pictures of Mary, but they were understood as symbols for the Church.  The message behind this icon is that Christ is born to us, not by our forcing Christ to be born, not by storming heaven with our effort, but simply by surrendering to the process which God lays out for us.

   In Matthew's Gospel (11:12) Jesus makes the interesting statement, "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force."  I think this is what we end up doing when we try to climb Jacob's ladder into heaven: we try to take heaven by storming it with our good works and effort.  But the message is always one of letting God work in us.  Our work is simply removing the hindrances within ourselves to that working.  Our work is to stand in God's presence.

   Even in the very active image of putting on armour, which we heard from Ephesians today, the active part of the image, the sword, is the Spirit, in other words, it is God.  Or consider the Psalms.  They never ask, O Lord help me to fight my enemies.  Rather they ask, "Lord, you are my strength, subdue my enemies."  It is always God's work, and our trust in that work.

   The life of being a Christian really is a life of following Jesus, of letting Jesus take the lead, of letting God set the agenda.  Of allowing the Spirit to work in us.  So compare Peter's confession in our reading for today, with his more famous confession.  Here, Peter says, "Where else could we go.  You've got it all, Jesus."  In that other famous passage, Peter first makes a similar affirmation, but then, when Jesus announces that he must die, Peter attempts to intervene and shield him, and Jesus scolds Peter for getting in the way of God's work (Mark 8:27-33).   Our task is merely to follow.  And it is in following that those signs of love which are the hallmarks of the follower of Jesus begin to show themselves.

   So Jesus also taught his disciples to pray, "Our Father... your kingdom come, your will be done..."  As Luther rightly pointed out in his Small Catechism, the kingdom of God comes with or without me, but here I pray that it may also come to me.  In other words, here I surrender myself into God's work of bringing the kingdom to or revealing the kingdom on earth.

   I think one of the reasons Christianity may seem irrelevant to to many today is that so much of the Christianity we present is merely a religious version of making your way in the world.  In other words, the so-called Protestant work ethic, or Catholic guilt, or so many other two dimensional caricatures of Christianity are just a religious version of life in general, so it seems extraneous or superfluous.  "I can be good without God or Jesus," as it were.

   But really, Christianity is not about being good, even though goodness emerges from it.  Rather, it is about opening oneself to God, the One who made all and is in all, and especially to Christ, who embodies God-as-love.  It s really a radical departure from ordinary living, even though on the outside not that much may seem to change.

   Now I hope you do not walk away for what I have said.  I hope rather that you will all the more be able to confess about Jesus, "Lord to whom can we go?  You have the words of life in its fulness.*  We have come to trust and know deep down that you are the Holy One of God."  Amen.

* In John's Gospel, the Greek phrase zoë aionios, usually translated as either "eternal life" or "everlasting life" has a qualitative sense.  This is not merely a very long life, but rather one which participates fully in the life which is God.  So although it is without end, more importantly, it is a life of a very special nature.  For the sake of contrast and example, if one were to imagine a life of eternal damnation, that life would also be a life without end, but of a very poor quality.  Thus, my translation "life in its fulness" conveys especially the qualitative aspect of the life described in John's Gospel.  Jesus has the words which lead us to this life.

      As you probably know very well, Jesus and the Pharisees were often at odds with each other.  The Pharisees would often question or criticize what Jesus was doing, or what his disciples were doing, and he in turn would challenge or critique what they were doing.  Many scholars have pointed out that this was probably an argument from within.  The Pharisees were not an alien group to Jesus.  He likely had many relatives who were Pharisees, so he would have grown up familiar with their movement, their way of dealing with things, and their approach to faithful living.  And as you probably know as well, arguments from within are often more more intense and polarized than arguments from without.  To put it in terms which apply immediately to us today, the disagreements we, the ELCIC have with the Lutheran Church - Canada (the "Missouri Synod") have a much more intense and emotional quality than the disagreements we have with other Protestant denominations.  It's a family feud, as opposed to a neighbourhood spat.

   So Jesus and the Pharisees were involved in a kind of family feud where Jesus was a sort of black sheep of the family.  Jesus spoke against the majority position, though not on everything.  Jesus seems to have agreed with the Pharisees' teachings on resurrection, and in Matthew's Gospel even affirms their important role as teachers in Israel (Matthew 23:2).  But Jesus and the Pharisees seem to have been most deeply divided on a matter which still marks a significant difference in modern schools of thought.

   The Pharisees seem to have accepted the underlying assumption, put forward by the very popular Pharisaic teacher Hillel, that when it comes to God's relationship to people, and therefore people's relationships to each other, behaviour was the most important thing.  If you got the behaviour right, if you followed the rules, if you did all the right things, it was enough, and God would be pleased with you.  In modern terms, the Pharisees were behaviourists.

   Jesus, on the other hand, seems to have appropriated or affirmed the teaching of a less popular Pharisaic teacher named Shimei, which said that what was most important was the heart.  God wants to have our hearts, and as long as there is any dark or destructive tendency in the heart, no matter how much you try to regulate people's behaviours, they will inevitably act to harm or destroy.  We are also to embrace each other with our hearts.  To try to be good externally when internally there has not been any turning over of the heart to God only leads to hypocrisy; the very thing which Jesus is always pointing out to the Pharisees.  In modern terms, Jesus was a developmentalist.

   Today's reading from Mark gives voice to this debate.  The Pharisees point out that Jesus' disciples aren't doing the right thing, as they understood it.  He retorts that external practices are hollow because it is ultimately what comes from the heart that matters.

   This debate between Jesus and the Pharisees, which I was already aware of from historical, theological, ritual, and anthropological perspectives, came into much sharper focus for me this past week at the course I was taking, taught by the clinical psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.  Although his work is strictly scientific, based on 30 years of hard clinical research, and the pulling together of the research of other developmentalists since Freud and Jung, up to today, I could not help but see again and again in this scientific theory of human development, Jesus' teaching and practice.

   I don't want to try to summarize 27 hours of lectures in a 15 minute sermon, and indeed I couldn't and still do justice to Dr. Neufeld's work.  I do, however, want to look again at Jesus, his practice and his message, and see again some of the salient features through the lens of developmental psychology as summarized by Dr. Neufeld.

   First, note what Jesus always does with those whom the Pharisees  consider lost to God: he does not set up a series of "if you...then I" statements of consequences (our modern euphemism for punishments); rather, he comes along side the person, loves them, receives them, forgives them, shows them that they are completely accepted by God.  This profound experience of unconditional love, or to use Dr. Neufeld's language, of stable and reliable attachment, softens the hard hearts of these people, and evokes unexpected change for the better.  Some key examples are:

1) The woman who washes Jesus feet with her tears at the house of one of the Pharisees (note that Jesus also ate with his opponents).  The Pharisee condemns her for her bad behaviour; Jesus accepts her and forgives her.  Her act is an act of gratitude, not a good deed to try to earn Jesus' favour.  The punch line of the story  is when Jesus says, "her sins, which were many, have been forgiven, hence she has shown great love..." (Luke 7:36-50).  In other words, her heart has been changed because she experienced true, gracious love.

2) Zacchaeus the dishonest tax collector.  Jesus invites himself over to the house of this man who was hated by all in his town.  Jesus' presence and acceptance of this exploiter soften Zacchaeus' heart and he is moved to return all that he has taken dishonestly, and even repay four times the amount stolen.  Jesus did not say, "you will be forgiven if you do this."  The change came after the acceptance and embrace of Jesus.  (Luke 19:1-10)

3) Jesus' love and acceptance of his disciples after they had all abandoned him to his death.  In Matthew's Gospel we even have the sense that Judas is forgiven and accepted, for the love and grace  of God receives back all the lost, as Jesus so often tells in his parables. (cf. Matthew 27:3-4, and all of the crucifixion narratives in the Gospels)

4) The woman at the well, whose course of living condemned her to be shunned by most in that society.  Jesus sits and chats with her, and offers her spiritual renewal.  He never sets out "if...then" demands on her, but offers God's gifts as a gift.  (John 4:1-42)

5) Many of Jesus parables proclaim that God seeks out the lost, comes along side the wounded and rejected, and wishes to embrace them with unfailing love: the parable of the Great Dinner in which the master of the house sends out his servants to "compel" people to come and enjoy the banquet (Matthew 22:1-14); the parable of the lost sheep, in which the shepherd does not abandon the stray, but seeks it out and brings it back (Matthew 18:10-14); the parable of the lost coin, in which the woman sweeps the house until she finds the one coin she lost, and then celebrates with her friends and neighbours (Luke 15:8-10); and most importantly, and I think most strongly portraying this way of functioning in our relationships, the parable of the prodigal son and his grumpy older brother, in which the father waits with open arms to receive back his wayward son, and the responsible older brother complains to the father that this is bad parenting practice, but the father says, "we had to celebrate, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found." (Luke 15:11-32)

   The work of Dr. Neufeld quite coincidentally demonstrates how Jesus had the right instincts about reaching people, about breaking through our hard defenses and all of our built of relational garbage.  I would say that Jesus was in some ways the greatest developmentalist who ever lived.  We do not get through to people by punishing them or abandoning them or cutting them off.  We get through by loving them, by finding that compassionate place in ourselves for them, by being curious about them, coming to know them, and being there for them.

   How sad that so often official Christianity has bought into the Pharisaic or behaviourist way of going about things.   To use Luther's language (another great developmentalist, although he didn't realize it) God's love is pure grace, a pure unearned gift.  God's kingdom is the domain of pure grace and forgiveness, and where there is grace and forgiveness there is life.  By contrast the kingdom of this world wants to convince us to live in conditional love: if you do this, I will love you, if not, I will not.  This is not love, this is the law.  There is no forgiveness here, because you always have to work off your guilt.  This is the realm of death. This crushes the human spirit, makes us numbed out and emotionally absent or it makes us angry and resentful.  In this way we pass this on to our children.

   When we look around us at all the acting out, all the destruction and bullying in our society, what we see is deeply wounded individuals, acting out of their underlying agitation and inner sense of being alarmed.  They become hard in their hearts and highly reactive in their behaviours.  But the behaviours are the symptom, not the disease.  The cure is not the law of "if...then", but something deeper.  The disease lies in their wounded and defended hearts.  There is only one cure: love.  Jesus knew this, taught this, and lived this.  Let us follow in his way.  Amen.

      The wisdom of God is the way of the cross.  The wisdom of this world is the way of the club and the cudgel.  When I say club and cudgel, I do not mean merely overt aggression with weapons; I mean the entire human project of asserting control by force.  The more advanced our civilization becomes, the more options we have for asserting control.  The sticks and rocks of primitive warfare are supplemented and supplanted by dollars; mechanical, electronic, and chemical technologies of all kinds; control and manipulation of information; religious dogmas; and anything else that will help one group of people control another, or will help humans to force the planet to function as we desire.

   But the wisdom of God is the wisdom of the cross.  When I say cross I do not mean merely the literal act of sacrificing ones life for one's friends as happened in the crucifixion of Jesus; I mean the entire way of being which loves and serves the other, even at the cost of one's life.  I wonder if, as our civilization becomes more advanced, it becomes ever more difficult to follow the way of the cross, the way of God's wisdom.

   In the readings for today we have several passages that speak directly about God's wisdom.  The reading from Proverbs presents the image of Lady Wisdom calling people to heed her words.  God's wisdom is always available, but will any avail themselves of it?

   The reading from the Wisdom of Solomon, a book which we Protestants assign to the Apocrypha, but which is one of the ancient books of the Church, describes God's wisdom, again in the personification of Lady Wisdom, as "a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, an image of his goodness."  As I laid out in a sermon a few weeks ago (see sermon Sunday XX Pentecost B 2006 - August 20), various parts of the New Testament make a very strong link between Lady Wisdom, who, as the Wisdom of Solomon says, "reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and... orders all things well," with the Word, through whom all things were made, and who is the light of all people [John 1:1-5; Colossians 1:16] (again as in our reading from the Wisdom of Solomon in regard to Lady Wisdom), and who is the perfect reflection of the Father [John 14:8-11; Colossians 1:15-20].

   As a Christian, that is, as one who believes that Jesus is the one who is the fullest manifestation of God among us that we have yet experienced, I look to the life and ministry of Jesus to fill out and clarify the picture of God which is presented to us in the rest of the Bible, and also in other traditions.  In other words, Jesus is the lens through which I see God active in the world.  The wisdom which is portrayed then in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, is manifested more concretely, for me the Christian believer, in Jesus.

   When I then look at Jesus as the clarification of the path that is God's wisdom for humans, I see above all the way of the cross.  But as St. Paul writes, the way of the cross appears as foolishness to the world (I Corinthians 1:23).  In our world where aggression, assertion, control, are the norm, the way of the cross, the way of self-emptying love, seems silly.

   On the other hand, those who have seen through the foolishness of the way of the club and the cudgel, recognize the divine wisdom which lies behind the way of the cross, and not only among Christians.  His Holiness the Dalai Lama, forced from his country, living as an exile at the mercy of whatever country will welcome him and his people, has become a modern day embodiment of the way of the cross.  Earlier in the XXth century, the most notable example of a public figure who lived the way of the cross was Mohandes Ghandi with his practice of non-violence.  How ironic, or perhaps how telling, that in the last 100 years the two most well known people to have embraced the way of the cross have been non-Christians.

   But it is not in the nature of the way of the cross to strive for fame or notoriety.  It must necessarily be that most of those who live the way of the cross will quietly go about bringing love and goodness into the world.  The most important place for this to happen is in our own homes, so that it can flow naturally out into the public shpere from our life in the private shpere.  But even before it can happen in our homes it must happen within us.  To move from the way of the cudgel and club to the way of the cross on the outside means first making that move on the inside.  "Cleanse the inside of the vessel, and the outside will become clean," (Matthew 23:26) says Jesus.  Be transformed within, and your actions and behaviours will be transformed as well.

   Wisdom is a good image to use here because wisdom doesn't come from the outside, but rather arises from within when you do the inner work that leads to wisdom.  So too, the way of the cross arises within us when we begin the lifelong journey of turning ourselves over to God.

   St. Francis of Assisi was a well known Christian, highly regarded in the Church, who was also very much a person who embodied the way of the cross.  It is fitting then that the prayer associated with him is also a verbalization of the way of the cross: "Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, let us sow pardon," and so on, ending with the statement, "it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."  Although popular piety might interpret this last line to mean primarily that when we die we go to heaven, it is actually a much profounder and this-worldly statement which echoes what Jesus says in today's Gospel reading, namely, that to follow Jesus, to live the way of the cross, is a dying of an old self, and a rising of a new self which, although it is still very much alive in this passing world of cudgels and clubs, lives a life of eternity, of timelessness, here and now, a life of unjudging love which brings into the here and now the kingdom of God, the kingdom which Luther describes as the kingdom of forgiveness and grace.

   For the sake of our world, for the sake of humanity, leave behind the way of the cudgel and club, the way which seems so wise and inevitable, but leads only to our mutual annihilation, and begin to walk the path of surrender to God, the way of the cross, the life which is the wisdom of God, the salvation of our humanity and this planet.  Amen.

      "Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom... the wisdom from above is [among other things] gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy." (James 3:13,17)

   Gentleness is an important quality for us to nurture in ourselves.  James associates it with God's wisdom.  Paul associates it with love and with Christ's example.  And in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says of himself, "Take my yoke upon you and learn form me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you