Friday, October 12, 2012

Friday, October 12, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:17-21

He was setting out on a journey when a man ran 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 shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false witness; You shall not defraud; honor your father and mother.' And he said to him, 'Master, I have kept all these since my earliest days.' Jesus looked steadily at him and he was filled with love for him, and he said, 'You need to do one thing more. Go and sell what 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.

Reflection

What if … ?

What if you woke every morning eager for the day, excited and ready to go, knowing the day held a gift?

What if you didn’t know (which you don’t) what that gift is, when it will appear or where?

What if your senses stood on tip toe, on alert, ready to receive the gift, whatever it was?

What if each day were received as a gift of life, complete with moments of joy, of tenderness, with food savory in your mouth and people who wanted to see you and talk with you?

What if you began to experience life in its goodness as a grace from the Great Giver from whose hearts flows the wonder of autumn colors, the beauty of harvested fields and the brisk bite of fall on your cheeks?

What if you experienced the simple goodness of living, of being able to give and receive love, of touching the face of someone you cherish, of seeing the smile of a treasured heart who has known sorrow?

What if you were washed over and filled to the brim by a wave of knowing that you are loved and treasured, always were and always will be, from the first day of your life until the day you leave this earth and enter the fullness of God’s grace?

What if you lived awake and utterly aware of the love of the One who is good all time, The One who loves to give and loves you? What if you breathed in this awareness until it filled your lungs with life and your soul with happiness?

What if?

You would taste eternal life. You would have the treasure of heaven, the treasure the heart wants and seeks in all it tries to accomplish and possess, the treasure we need more than any other.

But possessing, getting more--money, status, power, amusement, success, stuff--doesn’t bring this treasure. You can’t inherit this treasure. You can’t gain it or earn it. It can only be received.

This requires a dramatic shift in consciousness.

A man comes to Jesus, asking to gain eternal life. We normally think of that as something that comes when we are done with this life, and that’s not correct. Eternal life, the life of eternity, is a state we enter here and now, in this life and time, or we do not enter it at all.

Why does he come to Jesus? He comes for the same reason people sometimes come to me. They know something is wrong. Something is missing. Like this man, they need healing, but they can’t name their disease.

Their prayer life has gone dead, if it ever was much alive. Or their life is going well but there is a whole in their soul that craves filling. Or they have destructive things--or suffered such pain from others, and they want to touch and taste something, a healing, a fullness that money can’t buy and working harder can’t bring.

They hunger to know the treasure of heaven, eternal life. This is the life human hearts crave whether they can name it or not. Without it, we feel incomplete.

So what must I do? Give up everything; give it all to the poor, Jesus tells the young man, and us.

We think he must be kidding. Certainly, his words have to understood in some symbolic way. We need to live. We need our stuff to survive. We accumulate what we need and hold onto it tightly.

Too tightly, for life is not about accumulating things, and this becomes abundantly clear at the conclusion of our earthly lives.

Twice in recent weeks I have listened, shared stories and tears with those who have just lost beloved family members. As I listened, I was moved by the rich tapestry of what they shared with their loved on in decades of knowing and loving each other.

The words and stories that evoked tears, the things that were most meaningful had nothing to do with the job, wealth or accomplishments of those who had died.

What mattered, … all that really mattered was the river of love and grace, giving and care that flowed from the hearts of their loved one to them and back again.

A river of grace and goodness, giving and care flowed among them, a stream that begins in the heart of God, the Great Giver, and seeks to pull us all into its joy.

This is what the young man was missing. This accounts for the hole in his heart. His life was gift, not something gained through his strenuous effort to be good.

Eternal life, the treasure of heaven could be felt in his soul and make him truly alive only when he released what he held so tightly and surrendered to the flow of generosity coursing from God’s heart and seeking to pull him along.

When he surrendered to that holy flow he would become part of the river of grace that flowed through the conversations of those to whom I recently ministered in their grief. Then, he would know eternal life, the treasure of heaven.

Until then, all he did and his wealth and all he accomplished would be an impediment to him. You see, wealth, money and what you have accumulated can bring happiness … when it is shared and becomes part of the flow.

Our hearts know this. We feel it every time we share what we have, what we own and who we are. For when we do we know the treasure of heaven, and eternal life fills our hearts.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:23-26
Jesus looked round and said to his disciples, 'How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!' The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, 'My children,' he said to them, 'how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God.' They were more astonished than ever, saying to one another, 'In that case, who can be saved? Jesus gazed at them and said, 'By human resources it is impossible, but not for God: because for God everything is possible.'

Reflection

Jesus is having fun, and so should we. The eye of a needle might be understood as the tiny opening through which a seamstress passes thread as he prepares to sew. It is strictly a ‘no camel zone.’

But it was also the name of a low gate into the city of Jerusalem through which camels could not pass unless they got down on their knees and wriggled through, also needing to lose the payload on their backs. There was no other way they could pass through.

The camel gate speaks to me. Just more than four years ago, I returned to parish ministry after nearly 22 years doing other work, and I was carrying a load.

I carried a load of hurt and wounds from criticism and judgment endured while working in highly public positions. I carried a load of insecurity, wondering if I could still do parish work, wondering also if I really wanted to serve a congregation.

Could it be I only wanted to escape from the pain of criticism and nagging inner doubts about whether I had failed?

There was also a load of pride that made me anxious to share what I had done, who I’d met and the places I’d been. I was eager to be taken seriously because of past accomplishments and significant events in which I’d participated.

But this mattered far less to the new faces I met than I wanted. Few cared much about where I’d been or what I’d done.

I was disappointed by this. I wanted something different, some measure of acknowledgment from them. No more. Today, I remember this, and a strange but most welcome wave gratitude washes through my soul and fills me, bringing tears of thanks.

Realizing, however slowly, that past deeds and victories mattered little to those I had come to serve, I began to drop my load and realize that life is now and here, not then and there.

I began to learn to live … again. (Do we ever get it right?).

Learning to live meant being where I was, letting go of the anxious need to secure my identity and reputation by what once was. It means seeing and attending to what is front of you, no longer interjecting the load of the past into the present.

Being present, being in the now, the wounds of yesterday begin to fade, the self-imposed weight of needing to be taken seriously falls away and one finds freedom, the freedom to receive and share the grace and need of the present.

One enters a new way of being and living called the kingdom of God, which is always the kingdom of the present moment, which invites us to receive what is, to be open to what comes, knowing the love of God is in this moment no matter what else comes.

To know and find such love is to enter God’s kingdom and taste sweet salvation right here and now.

The kingdom is here and now, as I discovered it once more … when I dropped my load.

Pr. David L. Miller











Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Tuesday, October 8, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:17-21

He was setting out on a journey when a man ran 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 shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false witness; You shall not defraud; honor your father and mother.' And he said to him, 'Master, I have kept all these since my earliest days.' Jesus looked steadily at him and he was filled with love for him, and he said, 'You need to do one thing more. Go and sell what 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.

Reflection

Commentators have spilled a great deal of ink saying Jesus wasn’t demanding that it isn’t necessary to give everything away to follow him.

But maybe he was, at least to this man.

Perhaps Jesus read enough of his heart to know that accumulating and possessing wealth was at the center of his soul, and only radical surgery could free him from his addiction.

He called the man to radical reorientation of his vision, a new consciousness in which acquisition was no longer the purpose of living.

There is nothing to suggest the man was greedy. Had we known him we likely would have considered him just and decent, a well-off guy who was careful about living a just life and keeping God’s commandments.

But living the kingdom would always be second or third for him, just as it is for most Christians today, perhaps especially in developed Western countries.

Knowing God, loving God, worshiping and giving yourself to the purposes of God are spare time activities, done when there might be a spare moment.

It is too easy to distance oneself from this wealthy man, thinking that I … that we are not like him. But radical surgery is needed for all of us sometimes and most of us much of the time.

The shift in consciousness for which Jesus called is to seek him and the kingdom in all things, at all times. Knowing life is utter gift and the love of God is always ours, we need earn nothing but only respond to the central reality of life.

That reality is the wonder of God, the miracle of a love who makes worlds and places us among them to know and share the beauty and joy of being alive, human and aware of the gift of one’s life and all that is.

In modern life, a thousand forgettable, insignificant elements of living soak up our time, divert our attention and commandeer our souls so that this central reality no longer shapes our hearts and days.

Life is not about getting more, Jesus says, whether that is more education, money, status, success or amusements. Life is awareness of the giftedness of all things, the joy of receiving and sharing the love that emanates from the Infinite Source from which we receive our breath … every moment.

All that hinders such awareness makes us poor, no matter how much we’ve got.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 08, 2012

Monday, October 8, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 10:17-21

He was setting out on a journey when a man ran 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 shall not kill; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false witness; You shall not defraud; honor your father and mother.' And he said to him, 'Master, I have kept all these since my earliest days.' Jesus looked steadily at him and he was filled with love for him, and he said, 'You need to do one thing more. Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.'

Reflection

Some days are designed to alter your consciousness. This is what Sabbath is to be, a day to re-enter your right mind so you might dwell there through the week. Autumn days, too, seem intended for this change of mind.

We travel streets of fading color, reminded that the beauty we are and see does not last forever. It beckons the eye to linger, to take in the best show in town that comes for free.

While it carries the melancholy awareness that summer ends and we do, too, it speaks a deeper truth.

The beauty that surrounds us, the beauty we each are, is given. Life and color comes without our asking as the first and original blessing of the One who loves to bless.

Autumn days and Sabbath time bring awareness that we do nothing to gain life’s goodness. We can only receive with gratitude from the One whose goodness is spoken in every leaf on every tree and in every breath we take.

Awareness of the towering goodness of the One who is all good, and the good in all, arises with each conscious breath. It comes in each moment of awareness that we are surrounded by splendor we did not make.

Each conscious breath: Jesus calls us from sleep to consciousness awareness that there is One who is good and who is giver of life. Look at that One. Look for that One. Feel that One in every … single … breath. Touch that One every moment that love and beauty touches you.

Be amazed that you are alive and your skin can feel the brisk bite of autumn days. Hear the whisper of the breeze. It awakens awareness of the love of the One who is good. Breathe it in until it fills your lungs with life and your soul with happiness.

Awakened souls know: You do nothing to inherit life, and you do nothing to inherit the treasure of heaven. All is gift from the One who is good.

Look and pray to see the wonder of it all.

Pr. David L. Miller