Sermon
St. Michael and All Angels
Pentecost – May 27, 2012
Acts 2:1-21

Several years ago, I went on a mission trip to Bolivia. I was leading a women’s retreat in Cochabamba and listened as everything I said was first translated into Spanish, then into Aymaran. It took me awhile to get used to it, but I discovered a rhythm to it and learned to wait on the others. When I began to pray, the translating stopped. Everyone prayed aloud with me in her native tongue. It was disconcerting for me. I was used to one person praying at a time. All of a sudden everyone was speaking at once. I had no idea what they were saying, but I could feel their faith in a powerful way as the words rose “like burning incense” from their hearts. I came back to the United States to the “one person praying at a time” way of doing things. It sounded very empty to me after praying in Bolivia. There are moments in our prayer time at St. Michael’s when we are invited to pray out loud. Often we do that quietly, almost shyly so as not to disturb our neighbor. I sometimes wish that we would pray like the Bolivians and speak the prayers of our hearts without worrying who is going to hear us.

The Pentecost story begins with the faithful folks gathered in a room waiting for something to happen. Jesus had promised that the Spirit would come, but what did that mean? What is it we want as we gather for worship each week? Do we hope God will show up? Are we prepared to respond when that happens?

I’m guessing they were hoping the Spirit would show up…just not like THAT. Maybe a kinder, gentler Spirit…one that would quietly enter the room and whisper a message to each person that would send them comfortably back into their routines. What kind of God sends a Spirit with wind and fire? Maybe God breathed life into the followers in that way because nothing less would have worked. Does God still send wind and fire today? If so, perhaps we should have stayed home?

We come to church and we hear stories of God’s amazing power to heal divisions, to bring hope into the most hopeless situations, to take ordinary people and enable them to do extraordinary things. Somehow even though we know all that, it is easy to forget that God still blows among us in powerful ways. Pentecost reminds us that the Holy Spirit is still engaged in wild and subversive business, making possible what the world says is impossible…taking us closer to the world God has in store for us.

The Acts story is intriguing, but the power of the story is found in what happened afterward. People left that room and went out into the world to do amazing things. The book of Acts tells stories of lives opening and sharing generously with one another, of people becoming community as they worshipped together and fed one another and cared for all in need, of faith spreading like wildfire because it was so evident in people’s lives. There was no fancy marketing campaign with billboards or slogans like “Got Spirit?” The sign of God at work in the lives of the most ordinary people was contagious and the church spread to the corners of the world as a result.

The scripture tells us that a tongue of fire rested on every person, not a select few like the ones who applied for the job or the ones who chaired the committees. All were filled with the Holy Spirit. That means that land owners and weed pullers, women and men, and gulp: even children were given this astounding power to be God’s people in the world. Beware! This is not just an ancient story. God is at work among us today calling us to be keepers of the fire begun more than 50 years ago in the St. Michael’s community. This applies to Vestry members, lay pastors, ushers, founding members, newcomers, those of us who sing off key, those of us who try and hide in the crowd, those who have retired and those who are newly baptized. God’s Spirit is in us…all of us! The words “be very afraid” come to mind as we think of ourselves given this power to be God’s people in the world.

We are the vessel for God’s amazing power. It is humbling to realize that God works through us. But I have seen it. God steps into the food pantry each week and those who volunteer are human examples of the God who feeds us. It happens in Godly play as the stories come alive. We see God as children struggle to carry baskets of food to the altar during the offering. God shows up in people’s homes as volunteers carry the Eucharist to them. God works through the altar guild as they prepare the sacred meal behind the scenes. God is in the musicians who give us a taste of heaven each week. God is in us when we reach out to one another.

We began this journey in ashes and today it culminates with fire. On Ash Wednesday, we were reminded that we come from dust. My friend Jan Richardson says that the story of Pentecost “bids us to remember what the Spirit can do with dust. Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit draws us together and gives us to one another so that we may hear and see and know with greater clarity. This day challenges us to open ourselves beyond the limits of our individual lives to the Spirit who sets us ablaze for the healing of the world.” (The Painted Prayerbook website: http://paintedprayerbook.com/2011/06/05/pentecost-one-searing-word/)

This week I had the privilege of joining the new members class as we asked the question “What is your yes to the Spirit?” It is a great question for them to ask as they come to the end of that class and prepare to take the next steps in their journey. It’s a good question for St. Michael’s as well. What is God doing here at this time in history? As God’s wind and fire blow through our community this Pentecost morning, what is our yes to the Spirit?

Rev. Deborah Little tells about an unusual spirit-filled gathering in Boston. “Right after my priestly ordination, I started going to Boston's main train station on Sundays, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for people who spend their days there. On Christmas Eve, I found the courage to celebrate a communion service with folks I had gotten to know. It was an unlikely setting -- a round table in the main waiting room, our prayers punctuated by announcements of train departures. Eight people were in that first gathering. Their reflections and prayers told me more about worship than my many years in seminary. I continued spending Sunday afternoons in South Station through the winter.

Then, on Maundy Thursday, I was walking back up to the Common after washing several homeless feet. I was thinking about Jesus, and how he was always going to people, being with them where they were, healing, washing, feeding. I realized this was the church, not where buildings are necessarily, but where people are. Folks I was getting to know on the street, many of whom find it impossible or are not welcome to be inside, and others -- "us" -- who want to help and learn, needed to gather in the midst of the city, in an accessible place. We needed to pray, to celebrate, to talk, and to be a presence to people who sit around or pass by. We needed to pray for the city, raise up the concerns of the streets, bring alive a presence of hope and faith and hospitality. We needed to celebrate communion.

So that Easter Sunday 1996, I led worship on Boston Common for the first time. I was quite scared. I'm really not a brave person. I just knew what I was going to do. I asked my street friends what the best gathering place was for them, and they said it was the benches around a large fountain at one corner of Boston Common. It was a bitter cold afternoon and I wore an alb and a stole over several layers of sweaters. We had sixteen communicants. More people gathered after the service to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talk.

You wouldn't believe the power of that worship on the Common, the looks on the faces of people who haven't received the sacraments for years, the witness of what felt like whole worlds coming together to pray for each other and to thank God.
That first Sunday seemed a small step, although it had been huge for me. I was a new priest and nothing was easy. As I drove home, I made notes about changes I might make if I were brave enough to do it the next year. As that week went along, folks on the street who hadn't even been there told me they'd see me on Sunday! I couldn't have imagined at the time that we would be there the next Sunday and every Sunday at 1 p.m. since. And the design of the service is pretty much the same as our first Sunday. Everyone offers prayers; and I speak for one or two minutes about the gospel lesson and then welcome anyone to speak. What we receive ranges from songs, to cries of pain and despair, to brilliant exegesis, and the most Christ-like parable stories I've ever heard.
Our third Sunday, people said we had to have a name. Someone said, "Well, this is our church." Looking across the street at the diocesan cathedral, he said, "This is common cathedral." And so we were.

Our community has grown to a Sunday average of 100 to 125-plus communicants. Many more join us during the gathering time that follows. We have volunteer nurses and lawyers, Bible study in English and Spanish after the service. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries of sobriety, and releases from jail. Homeless and housed volunteers help with setting up, serve as altar guild, bring food and clothing, and visit with regulars and newcomers. One will assist a disabled man with a housing search; another will drive a sick woman to the clinic. We visit our folks in hospitals, hospices, jails, and help them reunite with families, buy eyeglasses and winter boots. We load belongings into our cars to move them into housing. We baptize some and bury too many.

Every Sunday, we welcome people who live under bridges, people who live in suburban houses, and everyone in between. One common denominator of our church is that almost everyone would describe herself or himself in some way or another as "on the margin." So, we have our being "outside" as common ground. We also have natural elements, especially the weather, which is a great equalizer. We're all hot or we're all freezing cold. If it's noisy we are all straining to hear each other. If it rains, we are all wet.
Another common denominator is truth telling. Radical openness is the gift of homeless individuals who stand out there "in front of God and everybody," as my friend Ann would say, and tell the truth.

Sometimes I think -- could this really be what the church is about? Loving this neighbor; loving this God? So wild and unpredictable and naked and hungry? A neighbor who needs everything; a God who demands everything. But then, I think about Jesus, still walking around in our hearts and minds, inviting us, showing us how to be in love with JUST THIS NEIGHBOR, JUST THIS GOD.” (Rev. Deborah Little,  http://www.ecclesia-ministries.org/ecclesia/birth_of_a_church.html)

My prayer today for St. Michael’s is that we release our grip on what is and open ourselves to receive God’s Spirit in whatever form it comes, trusting that this story is intended for us here and now. God breathes new life into us and sends us into the world to breathe life and love into each other.

May 20, 2012
In the world but not of it
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

I love the world. I love the sprouts coming up in my vegetable garden and the fresh green leaves on the cottonwoods set against the blue sky. I love good food and conversation with friends. I love climbing up the volcanoes on the West Mesa and taking in the sweep of desert, bosque, city, and the Sandias. I love my work and people I share it with. I love to love and be loved. I hope you love the world, too.

So what are we to make of Jesus today? In his final words before being arrested and crucified, he prayed I do not belong to the world. My disciples do not belong to the world. Then he prayed it again, in case his friends, who were listening, didn’t get it: We do not belong to the world.

Elsewhere Jesus makes the point more forcefully: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it. But...I don’t hate my life in this world. I love it.  

These kinds of words have given rise to all sorts of problems through history: The Gnostics, who taught that this dark world was created by Satan; medieval penitents who hated their own bodies, whipping and starving them; Puritans, who became obsessive in their reach towards moral purity; and fundamentalists, who withdraw into a tight circle and point their bony little fingers at the sinners who surround them.

I know that many of you long-time Episcopalians were sorely disappointed when the following hymn was not carried over from the 1940 Hymnal to the 1982 one:
The world is very evil; the times are waxing late
be sober and keep vigil; the judge is at the gate.
The world is very evil...

All this depressing dualism misses Jesus’ point entirely. It misses the same point that is made in every religious tradition: that it is a mistake to be too identified with this world’s dramas, its striving, its failures and successes, and its temptations. We are to be in the world but not of it.

It is obvious that we are in the world. We are creatures of the earth, physical beings, interwoven with plants, animals, the seasons and the weather, with people to love and changing conditions that affect us profoundly. There is much about this world to enjoy, and much to grapple with in the effort to to make this world a better world for ourselves, for everyone.

So we are fully “in” this world, engaged with its delights and challenges. But what does it mean to not be “of” it, at the very same time?

I’m fond of the old gospel hymns and songs from the American South of the 19th and early 20th century. They’re strong, direct, and heart-felt. They sing of this earthly vale of tears and the sweet by-and-by, and in that sense, they speak to the dualists among us.

But they also manage to communicate something more subtle, something that has to do with this business of being in the world but not of it. They do it by recognizing, as Jesus did, that while we are human and a part of this earth, we don’t completely belong to it. It can never own us.

I am a poor wayfaring stranger
wandering through this world of woe

This world is not my home, I’m just traveling through

I am a pilgrim, and a stranger
traveling through this wearisome land

Now to understand this point of view, we might think first about what it means to be convinced that we do completely belong here, and what happens when we are.

When this is all there is for us, then this takes on ultimate value and significance. Something has to. Is the world I live in making me healthy, comfortable, and free of problems? No? Then I must fix the world I live in. If and when I do, then I will be happy. But I can’t be happy until then.

So I am a slave to the circumstances of the world in which I live and to which I am thoroughly wedded. The world owns me. When its conditions are good, I am well. When they are bad, I am unwell. And so my purpose is to constantly arrange and maneuver the world to remain the right kind of world, so that I will feel at home in it.

But this never works, of course. We can’t control the people around us to be the way we want them to be. We get sick, we lose things and people we love. Even the best stuff - a vacation, a moment of spiritual communion, a sweet child before they turn into an adolescent - is just about to change into something less preferable to us. The very things that we want to count on are always slipping through our fingers.

All phenomena - feelings, relationships, events, success and failure, even our life itself - is in a constant process of change and evolution. And so if we really believe that this is all there is, we will always be anxious, because this world never stays they way we want. If our preferred version of this world is where we think we belong, if we stake all our hopes upon this possibility - we will always be chasing a mirage. It will never satisfy.

So what is the alternative? It is knowing where we truly belong. I may be a pilgrim and a stranger traveling through this wearisome land, but I’ve got a home in that yonder city. And what is that city? Many say it is heaven, but that won’t help you here. “That yonder city,” if fact, is right here, right under our noses. It can be always found in the midst of all those changing phenomena that we pass through. Our home is our life in God.

I cannot describe what this home is like, or how to realize it in your daily life. If I did, it would be reduced, made into an object. This home, to which you ultimately belong, is to be sought and discovered by every seeker in different ways. It will appear to you in the way that speaks to you, and it will always give you exactly what you need.

You cannot describe or hold on to it, either, because it appears in the seeking, in the stretching towards it, when you are open and vulnerable to something beyond. This mysterious, ungraspable home is always available, always reliable, unlike the world of passing phenomena.

If we are grounded in this deeper reality, if that’s where we place our hope, then our experience of the world we’re traveling through becomes very different. Our circumstances and the other people who surround us are no longer things to desperately manage so that they will freeze into our preferred version of life. They are phenomena that rise and fall, sometimes beautiful, sometimes not, sometimes to be supported, sometimes to be changed for the better.

Though all this, as wayfarers, we are free. We are not only free from the world; we are free to enjoy it. For when the world longer carries the impossible burden of having to satisfy us, it can be what it is intended to be: an amazing, subtle, shimmering drama in which we play a part for awhile. And we become like monks that I once read described as “perched a little more lightly on the globe.”

At the end of his life, Jesus didn’t pray just that his disciples would know that they don’t belong to the world. He also sent them into it, and even promised that in it, they might find their joy. As you have sent me into the world, he prayed, so I send them into the world...so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.

And so we are sent from this place, where we are grounded in the mystery of God, where we are at home; we are sent back into the world. Perch lightly on the globe. Go as pilgrims who aren’t destroyed when things don’t go well. Go as strangers who delight in those fleeting things that come your way, and then, when the time comes, let them go. For when you know where your true home is, then you are free, no matter where you may roam.

Sermon: Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 15:9-17
St. Michael and All Angels
May 13, 2012

“The gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…”
“Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
“The love of God is this, that we obey [the] commandments…”
“Abide in my love…”
“Love one another as I have loved you…”
“You are my friends…”
“I chose you…”
“Bear fruit that will last…”

The word love dominates the gospel and I John today. Love is not so simple. The words that accompany love in these texts are: obey, commandment, abide, and lay down one’s life. Love is a verb. The scriptures aren’t telling us what to feel, but how to act.

Peter speaks to the astounded believers proclaiming that God’s love was given to the Gentiles in the form of the Spirit. Who are they to withhold baptism? The call here is to act in line with God, rather than their own limited understanding of who is in and who is out.

I’m guessing very few of you followed the United Methodist General Conference that finished in Tampa last week. Every four years, the United Methodists come together as a whole and make decisions that affect the larger body of the church. One of their big decisions was not to change the language that says, “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The suggested change would have simply stated that United Methodists disagree on that issue. Most people will likely shake their heads and go on, but I find it very disheartening. The gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the lesbian gay bisexual transgendered community. The United Methodist stance is that LGBT persons can worship in most churches, but not have their love blessed and certainly not have their call affirmed and be ordained.

The United Methodist Church is talking about me. My parents met in a United Methodist Sunday school class. Instead of a three-legged stool that the Episcopal Church uses to discern God’s will, I was born into this church that talks about a quadrilateral…scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. I was baptized and confirmed in this church. I experienced a powerful call to ministry on a youth retreat with my United Methodist Church. I was educated at a United Methodist college and seminary and it was there that I met amazingly gifted gay and lesbian people who had been called to ministry just like me. Back then I thought I was straight, and it never occurred to me that I was “one of them.” I simply couldn’t understand that the church would deny ordination to people who were so gifted, just because of their sexual orientation. At that time, I decided that I would stand in solidarity with the folks who were denied ordination by the United Methodist Church and not seek ordination myself. This didn’t work so well. The call was strong and eventually I realized that if I wanted the United Methodist Church to become more inclusive, I would have to work from the inside. I moved to Oregon and was ordained. The congregation I served was a Reconciling Church – a safe place for LGBT folks - and it was clear that God was moving among us in powerful ways.

Life became more complicated when I moved to New Mexico and fell in love with a woman. This was news to me! I really had no idea that my passion around the issue of an inclusive church had anything to do with me. It also left me with some hard choices. I could not be open about my life with Anne Marie, Max and Maya as a minister in the United Methodist Church. Coming out at age 40 really changed the direction of my life. I felt a deep resonance with the Episcopal Church and struggled with a call to be ordained here, but the time wasn’t right in this Diocese. I became UCC and was welcomed without condition.

I am only one person. There are thousands like me. Years ago, I had the poignant experience of witnessing the Shower of Stoles project. This project is a collection of stoles from over one thousand LGBT clergy and leaders from thirty-two denominations. The stoles represent the gifts of so many that have been excluded from leadership because of their sexual orientation. It is powerful to stand before each stole and the person it represents.

It may seem too personal to describe my own experience this morning, but I cannot read these texts about pouring out the Holy Spirit, being chosen, bearing fruit, obedience to the commandment to love one another and forget where I came from. And the news this week reminds us that this is not just my story. It is the story of LGBT folks in North Carolina and throughout the country. The texts are about love in action: Don’t just treat love as a feeling and love when we feel like it; don’t think of love as an intellectual exercise and love those we deem worthy. It is a call for us to understand that love is a verb… it is what we DO as God’s people in the world. We simply love and continue to extend welcome to all… even the Gentiles, even the LGBT community, even those who stand at stoplights asking for money, even the ones who vote differently than we do, even the ones who live with disabilities, even the people we despise, even us.

The Episcopal Church has struggled with this issue as well. I don’t know where all of it will come out, but I know there is a great desire to share Christ’s love with all of God’s people. As we broaden our questions about who is our neighbor at St. Michael’s, I wonder where we need to extend our love. We are listening to those around us and seeking God’s call to love our neighbor in new ways. God’s Spirit has been poured out on people beyond our peripheral vision. Who are we to deny them love? Instead, we are called to look beyond our comfort zone and extend love into the farthest corners.

Passages about love often call forth a sweet, almost nostalgic response from us. But love isn’t always sweet and it certainly isn’t always easy. There is this word obedience that shows up today. Can’t we just talk about love and leave it at that? We all know we are supposed to love. Isn’t that enough? We aren’t slaves. Can’t we just be reminded that love is what we are about? Obedience is not something we care to add to the mix. Our culture doesn’t place a high value on obedience. But there is an invitation in these passages to see ourselves in relationship and the truth is obedience is part of being in relationship to one another. We are subject to one another.

“Perhaps love without obedience is not really love. Perhaps this is what Jesus is confronting us with in his own life—that love is never love on its own terms. Love is always tied to obedience because obedience is tied to hearing, recognizing and bending ourselves into the will and desires of the one who’s before us.” Brian Bantum, Christian Century May 2, 2012)

The phrase “bending ourselves into the will of the one who’s before us” isn’t telling us to be dominated by another. It calls us to really be in relationship with one another. Jesus’ image of friendship is comfortable for some and a bit too intimate for others. Maybe that is because we remember that a friendship is not one-sided.  We have been chosen for a friendship with Jesus. A loving friendship bears fruit. That will require obedience to the one who has chosen us. In some strange way, that obedience sets us free. I have asked myself many times who I am obedient to… is it the United Methodist Church? Is it the Episcopal Church as I seek ordination in this denomination? Is it to the One whose call has sustained me for thirty years? I found a way to bend my will to the United Methodist until it required me losing my soul. My call is alive and it seeks a home to love and bear fruit.

The call to love and bear fruit is for all of us. The fruits of love and compassion naturally grow out of a life grounded in God. I believe that they are contagious and not limited to the giver or the receiver. Somehow they make their way into the very culture we inhabit. I pray that it is so. As we move further into this election year names are called, fingers are pointed, and lines are drawn in the sand. Jim Wallis says that the 2012 election will be the ugliest one in many years. It is sad that the political process often involves trashing other candidates more than looking around at the needs in our world and asking how we can be part of the solution.

Who is speaking about abiding in love? What fruit is born of this form of politics? We are asked to see one another through the eyes of love. We cannot do that when we are too busy showing that we are right, we are entitled, and it is others who should bend to our will.

This text calls us to abide in a love more generous than we can imagine. Abiding in this love bears tremendous fruit. If we are abiding in God’s love, we don’t catch ourselves counting the cost of giving. We open our hands freely and find that there is more than we dreamed. For John there is only one measure of our place in the community of faith – to love as Jesus loved. When we do that, a whole new world opens up to us and we begin to glimpse the world as God sees it. As we see the world through God’s eyes, we treat the world as God treats it, and we bear fruit that lasts.

In order to more deeply realize the presence of God, the Psalmist tells us “to be still and know that I am God.” God is always in our midst, so let’s be still for a moment.

I have a question for you. Do you still carry a special remembrance in your heart and mind? Perhaps a time with a friend, at a play, a concert, something read in a book, a sunset, a sunrise, some meaningful, unforgettable experience? Our lives are shaped by such moments. I want to share such an experience with you now.

When I was in seminary many years ago, I went with several fellow seminarians to a play. The play was “A Sleep of Prisoners” by Christopher Fry. I was so moved by a piece of poetry in the play that I wrote it down, and have kept it in my remembrance all these years. Listen to the poetry:

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to meet us everywhere,
Never to leave us ‘till we take
The longest stride of soul man ever took.
Affairs are soul-size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.

These profound and powerful words still speak prophetically to me, and I believe they speak to our country, to the nations, the peoples and the religions of the world. I believe they still challenge and speak to our very souls, yours and mine, right here, right now. Certain words are particularly haunting – “Till we take the longest stride of soul man ever took,” “affairs are soul-size,” and, “exploration into God.” We hear this word “soul” tossed about in sermons, songs, scriptural studies and discussions, sometimes in common talk. But what is this mysterious soul that resides within each of us?

Recall the biblical book, Genesis. Our journey begins here. “When there was nothing but God, God began to create the heavens and the earth, and God’s Spirit, Like wind, like breath, unleashed his creative power, shrouded in mystery and wonder. In the midst of this life-giving power, his Spirit created human beings, persons, and all created life began to evolve. And it was good.” This is where you and I literally begin!

Each one of us is born a living soul, a spirit-filled creation with self-consciousness, making us aware that we are able to have a living relationship with God our creator. We are, then, “children of God” and we will have the ability to remember that relationship, and who we really are as our lives unfold. Each one of us here today is a unique “Child of God.” This is our real “I.D.,” the only one that really counts in the long run! No one can ever take that away from you! To “know God,” as the Psalmist wrote is to remember who you really are, and that relationship will define your life and your life’s journey forever, even longer. Remember who you are!

But as our Genesis story unfolds, human kind chose not to remember its heritage – “Children of God.” Instead the choice was “to go it alone” to be as gods, “full of ourselves.” We ill take charge of our own life-journey and deal with those good and evil issues along the way. So “God, don’t call us, we will call you.” (I think that is what many people now call prayer!) But, even as in the beginning God’s love was boundless; it’s still the same, always within us, but not forcing the relationship.

But in the midst of a beautiful world God called “good,” what have been the consequences of “going it alone, full of ourselves,” taking charge? Let me tell you a story: One morning in the year 500BC, Buddha addressed his community of monks. “Monks,” he said: “All the world is burning. Burning with what? It is burning with the fire of greed, burning with the fire of hatred, burning with the fire of delusion.” How could Buddha say the whole world is burning? Because it is inhabited by human beings, “full of ourselves,” which is why we all have some experience with greed, hatred and delusion. But here is my quick snapshot of each:

Greed: At a press interview with a very wealthy New York financier, a young reporter asked him a question: “Sir, how much money does a man need to be comfortable?” He replied: “Young man, just a little more, just a little more.”

Hatred: Jonathan Swift, Anglican priest, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, 1713, “author of Gulliver’s Travels said “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to love one another.”

Delusion: Have we the habit of inverting the divine equation to mean that God exists to do our bidding?

From the beginning of human history, greed, hatred, delusion, have all been, and are, the source of all human misery. What in the world shall we do? “Affairs are soul-size. Our enterprise is exploration into God.” If each of us wants to find out, we have to journey deeper into the presence of God who already resides within our souls as well as beyond our souls. Let’s now imagine we are standing together with Jesus’ first disciples and some other folks gathered around:

“Then to all Jesus said: If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will find it. What gain is it for a man to have won the whole world, and to have lost or ruined his very self? (Lk. 9:23)

But what kind of talk is this, and what does it mean? It means Jesus is offering a new and unexpected way to continue your life’s journey. Now imagine yourself standing around with Jesus and other folk:

“He was setting out on a journey, when a man came running up, knelt before him and put this question to him, ‘Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You must not kill, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not defraud, you must honor your father and mother.’ And he said to him, ‘Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days.’ Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, ‘There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.” (Mark 10:17)

The young man in our story really wanted and expected Jesus, the wisdom teacher, to give him an additional “religious study program” which would at last qualify him for eternal life. He would gain the knowledge he desired without leaving the community, perhaps going to Jerusalem from time to time. His present lifestyle would not change, there would be nothing to give up, but he would still gain the assurance of eternal life. Instead Jesus cut to the core of his life. He was discovered by Jesus love, and the young man sadly walked away.

The apostle Paul, a law-abiding Pharisee, was cut to the core by Jesus on the Damascus road. But he chose the disciple’s road, following Jesus. He left his religious tribalism behind, shouldered his invisible cross, and began his new life, his journey of transformation. In his life of personal struggle, as well as shepherding new communities of Christians, he came to know what “full of yourself” self-love really was as well as what self-giving love really is. Listen to a portion of his letter to the new church in Corinth. It is a letter addressed to all of us.

“If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.” (1 Cor. 13:1)

And Paul can tell us something about self-giving love as well:

“Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love never ends.” (1 Cor. 13:4)

We are nearing the end of our journey. But, as has been said by others, “in our end is our beginning….” Our souls forever echo the unending love-call – “you are a child of God.” God brings us that love-call in Jesus, that human face of God’s love, as well as the road we are called to travel with our invisible self-giving cross in companionship with him, on the road he has already traveled. In our life’s journey, Jesus reminds us that because he is The Light of the world, each of us is called to be a light in the world. Our light is to shine in the darkness of life, the darkness of greed, of hatred, of delusion, that destroy and deface the world that God created good. But our lives, like our invisible cross of self-giving, must be like candles. For a candle to be a shining light, the wax must empty itself for the light to shine. Our souls were created by God for self-singing love through our lives – your life, my life – for the sake of all life. “It is the longest stride of soul one can ever take!” So –

Remember who you are! “Affairs are soul-size!” “The enterprise is exploration into God” Get on with your life’s journey and “Shine!”