Saturday, July 9, 2016

Luke 10:30-37

Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Just like me

What makes people more likely to help each other? What makes them more likely to give money to the food bank or work with at a homeless shelter? What moves people to step out of the crowd to help someone escape the burning car or to help the person who is ill or a drunk who has fallen by the curb? 

Social scientists have well-demonstrated that all of us are more likely to help someone with whom we identify, with those who are like us in some way. The person wearing the Cubs jersey is more likely to help a person who is wearing a Cubs jersey than someone who is wearing a White Sox jersey.

Connection matters. The more I see the person in need as someone who is connected with me, who is like me in some way, the more likely I am to help. If they are from a different culture, a different race, a different nationality, a different political persuasion, a different lifestyle or profession, we are less likely to help.

Identification matters. So why does the Good Samaritan crawl into the ditch and help the beaten man? This guy was from Jerusalem, a Jew. The Samaritan was not Jewish. Jews and Samaritans loved to hate each other.  They didn’t trust each other. Being a Samaritan among Jews was like wearing a Hillary T-shirt at a Trump rally.

The others, the priest and a Levite, in other words a pastor and a religion professor, they should have helped him. They shared his ethnic group and his religion, but they didn’t identify with him.

Perhaps they blamed the guy for getting beaten up … the way all of us sometimes blame others for their problems to avoid caring. After all, getting beaten up was his own fault. Apparently, he was walking from Jerusalem to Jericho by himself.  Dumb. Everybody knew dens of robbers were common along that road.

So why … did the Samaritan get involved? Why was he moved to compassion when others were not?

Maybe he was a just a guy alone in a land that was not his. Maybe he felt the threat of being a stranger, alone, and a little afraid. Maybe he saw the guy in the ditch and saw a vulnerable human being, someone just like himself, who needed help, safety, protection.

Maybe he was simply aware of a common humanity he shared with this guy, despite the differences of race, nationality and religion that separated them. Maybe all those differences didn’t matter to him because he saw a human soul, created in the image of God, who needed the same respect and care he craved.

On Monday, I stood across the street from the decrepit, seedy, hotel that sits along tired strip of asphalt in my home town. The hotel has long been a sagging, two-story block of sun-bleached bricks. It burnt out a couple of weeks ago, an electrical fire endangering a mother and her infant twins asleep in the upstairs apartment.

When I was 17 I saw a man face down in the snow a block away from the old hotel. He lay a few yards from the railroad tracks, obviously stone-cold drunk. I didn’t know his name, never saw him before or since.

But on a freezing December night I parked the car and half-dragged this guy to the hotel, up a flight of stairs and deposited him on a moldy mattress in his dingy room. Who knows? This may have been the best moment of my life … because I saw the humanity and need of a guy whose life I’m sure I will never understand. I just saw him as a human being in need … just like me.

Maybe, just maybe, what Jesus calls to do in these times is to quit looking at all the ways we are different, to look beyond all the things that can and do divide us … and to look instead at our common humanity, our common need, understanding that we all have fears and hopes and the desire to know love and experience joy.

Perhaps we just need to look for the common humanity especially of those who are different from us, those we fear, whether that is Muslims or immigrants, cops or gang members, blacks or whites, Republicans or Democrats, Americans and foreigners.

With Jesus, there is no us and them … only us.

The Good Samaritan didn’t see a Jew in that ditch, a stranger, a rival. He saw a human being … with needs and hopes, just like himself. 

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Luke 10:25-28

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

Eternal life in a ditch

Eternal life is where Love and mercy are. Sometimes it is found in a ditch.

Seldom do we think of our struggles or our neighbor’s needs as an invitation to know eternal life, which means we fail to see as Jesus sees. Failing to see as he sees, we fail to know what he knows: the life of eternity amid the banal daily-ness of where we are and what we are doing.

The well-known and much-worn parable of the Good Samaritan follows the lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life. This story entered the popular culture in many nations long ago. It has been reduced to a moral lesson about doing good to your neighbor, launching too many lame sermons and meandering Bible studies about who our neighbor is. Next door? Across town? Half a world away? Our enemies?

Useful discussion as far as they go, but they miss the spiritual depth of the story and blind us to the invitation to eternal life that surrounds us every moment.

Eternal life invites us into its sweet embrace every time and in every place love beckons us to help, to care, to support the struggling and diminished life of others. It coaxes us into its arms every time we hear the laughter that sparkles among human hearts truly connected and comfortable with each other.

It was not only a broken and beaten man that lay in the ditch as the Samaritan made his way down the road. Eternal life lay there, bleeding and begging him to open the door and enter.

The Samaritan crawled into the ditch to pull the man to safety and care. But both men were saved. Both were lifted into eternal life, tasting the mercy of God.

Eternal life is as close as a soul who needs you. It is as near as the sound of loving laughter. It is the flow of eternal mercy that flows from the heart of God through every moment of our lives, seeking to carry us into life.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Luke 10:25-28

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

Currents of eternity

I want eternal life this morning this morning, Lord. I want it everything morning, but some days I feel the ache more than others, and this is one.

I hunger to know the Love that is eternal life filling me with joy and expectation. Eternal life is the exhilaration of knowing an all-possessing Love completing you and surpassing every dream of joy you ever had.

It is knowing the Fullness of Love within, flowing out from soul’s depth to every challenge and task of the day and every face.

This is the life of eternity present and alive in the soul, completing and filling every corner of your being, silently whispering that it is for this that you were born, for this you are alive.

Without you, Loving Mystery, there is only this ache that countless souls have witnessed and described far better than I. They are my brothers and sisters, these parched hearts longing to be cooled and quenched in the stream of Love that the wonder of eternity might fill them, leaving room for nothing that is not you.

This blessed ache is a restless desire moving us beyond ourselves to seek, to know, to feel and to be swept away by the Wonder of the Love you are. Only then do we know the life of eternity, the breath of heaven filling our souls, stilling the ache and awakening the joy of knowing the eternal current of Love coursing through our inmost being as it flows on and on without end.

Eternal life is this Love. It is you, Holy One. It is the wonder of being filled with this Uncreated Love who was and is and ever more shall be.

And we enter the door of this most blessed world by loving such as we can, opening the door of our aching hearts to Love wherever and however the Holy One chooses to appear to our longing eyes.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 1, 2016

Luke 10:1

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

Not alone

I was moved by a recent note from Marie. She is a retired bishop in our church, who had been using a little book, Bread for the Day, for her devotions. The book has a short Bible reading and a prayer for each day of the year. I wrote the prayers for month of May.

She was struck by the beauty of my little prayers and wrote to tell me they had enhanced her prayer life. For her, the prayers were a sign of hope, and she wrote to me remembering what notes of encouragement and support have meant to her during her ministry.

For me, her note was one more reminder that am I am not alone, a reminder that in Christ I am never alone. And that is very good news.

I am joined to a community of people across the world in whose souls the Spirit of Christ’s love lives and breathes, moving them beyond themselves to bless and even write notes to people they do not know.

The Spirit of Christ in my little prayers stirred the Spirit in a person I do not know, but who, in me, recognizes a heart they know, a Love that they feel and a Presence that binds us together despite distance and every difference that separates.

I am not alone. You are not alone. You are bound heart-to-heart with every soul in whom the Spirit of Christ lives and breathes. You are connected with every heart, in every time and place, who has known the stirring of Love Immeasurable in the depth of their soul.

We share one Spirit, one Love, one joy, one hope … to know fully the Love we bear within.

We need each other. We need to share this Spirit, giving and receiving words and moments of blessing and support. For, every time we do … we experience of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus sent his disciples out two-by-two to announce to each village ahead of him that he was coming. They were sent to heal and bless, greeting each household saying, “Peace to this house.”

If their peace was returned, they remained there, sharing food and living as a little community of peace, a community of those who know and hunger for Christ and the Kingdom he brings.

The church, this communion of grace, is an explicit presence of Christ in the world, a living sign of the Kingdom the Spirit is creating. Christ unites us, heart-to-heart in the Spirit of the Love he is. Apart from the community where Christ unites us, we miss the joy we could have, the support we need and the Love we crave.

We live in a society that preaches independence, urging us to insist on our rights and stand on our own two feet. Those of independent mind and spirit are prized and celebrated. But our culture takes these values too far, denying the truth that we need each other and that our deepest joy and fulfilment comes by living in loving community with others, sharing what we have and receiving what we need.

The church, the community of grace we share, is a living sign of our truest needs as human beings. In our gathering, we touch and know, again, that we are connected heart-to-heart with every soul who has ever known the Love Immeasurable who wants us all.

We are never alone.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Exodus 3:2-5

 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 

Holy ground

Several days ago we laid Ginny to rest atop a knoll in a cemetery a couple miles south of this room. I recited lines from a poem:
Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware        (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Ginny knew. She saw, and I loved her for it.

There was a day in October when I visited her at Tabor Hills where she was recovering and building her strength. She sat in her chair and looked out a west window on a sun-kissed day. The late afternoon sun lit a million golden leaves in the full flush of color, alive with a beauty beyond the capacity of any human artist to paint.

Seeing the light and color, she struggled for words to describe what she saw, not just out her window but in the depth of her heart, “I don’t know how to say what I feel.”

But she continued in words that revealed a mystic intuition. Hers was a heart and mind aware that her life and the life of that tree sprang from a Source more loving and beautiful than she could say. She knew both she and that tree … and all that is … are breathed into existence by a Love, a Source, a Mystery that is beautiful and bountiful and beyond her capacity to name.

She knew … the golden flush of leaves, so vibrant and alive, were singing the praise of God and inviting her to feel that same song in the depth of her heart … that she might sing along.

She knew … everything she saw out her west window was holy ground, just as surely as Moses did as he stood before his burning bush.

We talked, and I knew Ginny better that day than any other. She had a knowing heart. The eyes of her soul saw beyond the trees, the light and color. She saw beneath the surface of things and knew the One, the Loving Mystery we call God in the depth of what she saw.

As we talked, the 30 years between us melted away. Our conversation became an expression of that Beyond, that Love speaking to Ginny in the golden leaves and the depth of her soul.

We celebrated communion that day. As always, Ginny held out her hand to receive the body of Christ, telling me again that she would receive communion every day if someone would bring it to her.

Holding the bread in her hand, she knew she held the Love who spoke to her in the western trees, in her secret soul and in this body and blood of Christ. She was holding the Love that was the Source of her soul, a Love she could no more describe than we could find words that captured the golden light that held us in a holy embrace.

Ginny knew what Moses in ancient times knew as he took off his shoes. She understood what old Simeon felt the day in the temple when he held the infant Christ in his hands. She knew … she stood on holy ground. She knew she held this holiness, this Love Mystery and Blessed Source in the depth of her soul.

She knew she held the Love who had held her every day of her life … and holds her now.

And I loved her for who she is, for what she saw and for taking the chance to talk to me, fumbling for words to describe the presence of God she felt and saw with the eyes of her soul.

The best of all she is flowed from that soul—her beautiful voice, her creativity and artistic eye, her love for her family and friends.

In seeing, she shined with the light of God that spoke to her from every leaf on the golden oak that graced her window.

Now, she sees face-to-face. She stands in the presence of the Loving Mystery who spoke to her on that golden autumn day. And she has joined the song of leaves, the anthem of the saints, praising the Love who holds all of us ... now and forever.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Galatians 2:16

[Y]et we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

Receive the day

One cannot earn what cannot be earned. One cannot pay for that which is freely given. And to offer payment in any form for a gift dishonors the heart of the giver.

And God’s heart is free and full, giving before any request can be made.

We are given life without asking to be born. We are given every new day without a prayer being offered. We receive the mystery of the person we are, shaped by forces of genetics, time and history, as a gift we continue to open up through the end of our lives.

Gift, grace, giving, giver. Oh, I should say, Giver.

No one can justify themselves to God, for God is Giver of all life and all that is, including this crazy life into which I wake each morning.

Actions, deeds, our works, however good … or evil … do not and cannot start or stop God’s self-giving, for the Holy One is a Loving Mystery who pours out Love and welcome to all that is, wanting only that we should receive with joy and live with generosity.

There is no way to justify yourself, to put yourself in proper relationship with such Love except by saying, ‘Thank you,’ and to sharing the Love who finds you on the journey.

Receive the day. It’s a gift from a great Giver you will never understand, except as you learn to love.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Acts 2:14-17a

 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ….

Crazy and free

It is amusing to me that witnesses to Pentecost thought Jesus’ disciples were preaching under the influence. I assume they were happy drunks, joyfully prattling on, syllables cascading across their fumbling lips and falling on ears barely able to separate out they were saying.

In vino veritas, the Romans say. In wine, truth.

For wine evaporates inhibition and sets the tongue free that hidden hearts might reveal themselves and buried truth might breathe.

So, I suppose the disciples were drunk or at least a bit tipsy. Their fears and inhibitions dissolved as they were filled with awareness of a Love who shatters all human expectations.

Speaking in every language of one truth, they told of Jesus, who shattered the ancient curse of separation from God and each other. They were one, one with him, one with the Love that filled them, breathing the Spirit of the One who was creating a new humanity with new hearts and minds.

We are called to this oneness, to know the infilling of the Spirit who is the Presence of the Love God is, a Love that never dies, that evaporates fear, that awakens hope, that makes you a little crazy and free so that some might wonder if you have been nipping at the bottle: Crazy and free to cast away every sadness and speak the Love we know, the Love who is, the Love who always will be.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Luke 24:44-53

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Another world

When I imagine this scene I think Jesus disappears from their sight into a cloud, but it might just as well be that he walked away and somehow stepped into another dimension, another universe parallel to our own.

It all seems too fantastic to believe except that our physicists now suggest parallel universes are likely not the figment of feverish imaginations. And who knows what time and space are like in those universes, or if time and space exist at all.

They may wrap around or penetrate this world in ways that affect our time and space. Perhaps the boundaries between our universe and others are thin.

It’s all beyond my feeble mind, but some things are not.

Jesus is received into the fullness of the Mystery from which he first came. With gentle ease, he enters that universe beyond our own because he is of one being this Mystery. He belongs to it. It is in him, dwelling deeply in him without separation.  

Everything he ever did or said expresses a dimension of reality, the truth of the universe from which he came and into which he passed when his time here was done.

When he passed from our dimension back into the one from which he came, he left with hands raised, palms out, blessing his friends that they might wait for the life that was in him to fill them. Then they were to take that blessing to the ends of this earth that our world may be infused with the wonder of a new world waiting to be born in us and every earthly place.

That was their job. And it’s still not done.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 28, 2016

John 14:23, 27

Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. … Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.’

One word

There is only one word in your vocabulary, Holy One. Love is the word, as Love is your nature, and we are to keep that word, the word that you are.

A successful day is any day where love is known and awakens the Love Who Is within us. All other days are lived far from the peace you alone give.

Funny that I should use such a word, success. I don’t really like it, and it is not typically considered a spiritual word. In fact, American visions of success are often defined by pursuits that hinder the spiritual life, wealth, fame, power, influence and status.

Jesus criticized making these things the focus of our lives, telling us instead to seek the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. His words and life define that righteousness.

He poured water in a pan and washed his friends’ feet, an act of humble loving service. This is the word we are to keep.

Keeping that word, we find that there is a Love in us we did not create but discover in our depths. This is the indwelling of God, and it is this indwelling that moves us to love in the first place. But in living this love we discover the Loving Mystery living in us.

It is a circle you can enter any point. You can discover Love living within and then live that love, or you can give yourself to this crazy world in acts of love and discover the Love Who Is was always there, in you, waiting to be known and cherished.

And to know you within, Holy One, to know the Love Who Is, is to enter the peace that Love alone can give.

The day is still new. Sleep has not yet fallen from my eyes. Coffee is yet required. But already I know you, and I know that I will enter the land of your peace this day. For you speak the one word you are in every love I meet and every love I feel.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, April 25, 2016

John 14:23, 27

Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. … Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.’

What truly is

Christian faith is inherently mystical. There is an indwelling presence we can know and be aware of as we walk through our days. 

This is the Presence of the One who dwells in the inmost soul, and in some sense is that soul, for we are the human, physical manifestation of the Great Soul of the One who is Love.

Our prayer and worship, our times of sharing our lives together help awaken awareness of what is true in every moment. We are never separate from the Holy One, who dwells in our utmost interior.

We ‘keep the word,’ living in relationship with Christ and those who seek and love him that we may enter and dwell in the truth of ourselves and of God.

Dwelling there, we know there is One we cannot fathom who has chosen, in utter love and gift, to dwell within us, to make the divine home in us. Knowing … a knowing that is awareness of Love’s dwelling within, we experience the peace the world cannot give.

We know we are not alone … and never will be, for we live in this Love and this Love lives in us.

Our despair and sadness come when the struggles of living, the disappointments of our lives, pull us from the awareness of what truly is. Those times come.

But just when it seems our true nature and the Presence of Love abiding feel lost forever, just when joy and hope are disappearing, just then another soul in whom Love dwells speaks a word, takes our hand, becomes the voice, the friend and companion who awakens our hearts once more to the Love who abides.

And again we know, we abide in a Love who never ceases to find ways to restore us to what truly is … and always will be.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Revelation 21:1-3

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; 
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.’

Moments ...

I ache today, O Lord. I ache to know you, to find and feel your nearness in the eyes and hearts of others with whom I share this work, this faith, this struggle to know who we are in you and what we are to be.

I get weary of feeling alone sometimes. Cut off from friends who breathe life into me. Ignored by those I serve as if what and who I am make no difference, a wall flower at a party where I do not belong and at which no one really wants me, an irrelevancy, lost in world that has passed me by.

I hunger for community, to be touched, known, loved, treasured, and to belong to this new city, a soul community that is the home of the Loving Mystery who is the only true home we ever have.

Yes, I want to be home in the Love you are, a Love that lives in the eyes and hearts of those who truly know you. You live in communities where hearts can breathe the fresh air of freedom only Love truly provides.

I long for the city of God, a place, a time, even a moment, where being is all that is needed, where every breath draws in the Love who is the soul’s true home.

Send, O Lord, these timeless moments, of knowing.

Pr. David L. Miller

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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

John 10:27-30

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Knowing ...

There is so much of life that is not lived in the joy, quiet or boisterous, of knowing.

Knowing the Mystery you are—the inward awareness of being with and in you—this is life far beyond the mere fact of existence and its assortment of activities.

I sit and listen. I touch a hand or look into the eyes of want or love or pain, emotions truly expressed, and I am, at times, rendered speechless. There is nothing I can say because, in the moment, I know this Mystery, this Love. You.

I am inside, sharing in the Life who is the Source of all existence, pleased to enter a world about which I knew nothing until my hair turned, a world where I am one with the Love whom I know and feel, one with the One whom I see and hear in the depth of others’ words and feelings, if only they could see and hear and know.

We carry the Loving Mystery in our depth, creations of the One Love who is before time. And this Love never casts us out. Nothing can or will separate us from the Loving Mystery within, the One from whom we live so far even though this One is so close.

We are one with the Father. This is the deep truth of our lives though we live far from it … and far from the joyful awareness that Jesus knew every moment.

So help us hear your voice, Jesus, the voice of oneness with the Father, that we, as you, may share the joy of eternal life, today.

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Sunday, April 3, 2016

John 21:4-8

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

Love sees

Only Love truly sees.  Love alone opens our heart to see the truth and need, the pain and joy of another human heart. Only love, a truly Great Love, evaporates our defenses so that we may be seen for what we are, in all our beauty and brokenness.

So it is not a surprise to me that it is the one you especially love who first recognizes you, Jesus.

When you are greatly loved … and greatly love …your senses are tuned to any and every sign of the Heart whose presence brings you joy.

The abundance of fish is a sign of the abundance of your love and life. But it is the one with whom you shared closest intimacy that sees beyond the outward sign to you. Your love of him … and his of you … opens his eyes that he may know you beyond, behind and within this moment at the shore.

He sees and knows … you are the Eternal Abundance of Love and Life who fills his heart as full as the net he hauls to the boat … and always will.

You are the fullness of God’s heart seeking to catch us all in your great net, bringing us home to the Love who is and was and ever shall be.

Moments come when I feel and know exactly what he knew that day on the shore. He saw and knew … you. And for the rest of his life, that is all he truly needed.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, April 1, 2016

John 21:1-4

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

The moment

I hold my breath, anticipating the moment, Jesus. Your friends will soon see you truly alive. Their hearts will burst with joy. Excited shouts will explode from their lungs as they race toward you, knowing … the Heart they most want and need is right there … with them.

They returned to their old life, fishing. It was what they knew. They could do it without thinking. Their arms and legs instinctively went through the motions.

But their minds were far away in another place and time. Their hearts bled for the One, the Great Love they had seen and known, the Loving Mystery for whom the world had waited through long, brutal centuries.

They had eaten and drank, held and kissed the cheek of the One, the only One who could soothe their aching eyes and fill them with the Great Love who is and was and ever will be.

They had walked and talked with the Holy Love who embraces all that is … and them, despite all the ways they failed him. Of all men and women who have ever lived, they were the most blessed … and the most wounded, for having betrayed him and watched his awful death.

Now, they go on, returning to something they know, trying to find a way to live without the One who is Life.

And I hold my breath, for I know: you are there, waiting at the shore. Always. The moment will soon come, and joy will fill every chamber of their aching hearts.

He stands there, waiting.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, March 28, 2016

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

I order you, O sleeper to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise up from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

We are one

Good and gracious God, this voice crosses many centuries to appear on the page of my prayer book.

I have no idea who wrote this sermon. The name and face are lost to history, but I recognize the voice. It is your voice, your truth and love speaking to the troubled and conflicted places in my heart.

You speak and heal me with a Love that awakens tears of joy and knowing what only the heart can.

I feel the worlds as much as I read and see them in my mind. I feel and know: you would not have me living in the hell of unknowing for even a single moment. Hell is not to know, to feel far off as when our sins and conflicts separate us from knowing the Love that is ours always.

So I turn from all that is petty and negative, from all that is dark and hurtful to the heart. I turn the eyes of my heart to what is light and love, to beauty and grace, and there I know you, shining like the sun, eyes lit with a love who wants and treasures me, removing all sin and shame, lifting every sadness and doubt.

Seeing you within, hell is banished. It cannot stand the joy of such Love unbounded.

I enter heaven and am blessed once more, knowing that we are never separate one from another. We are one person, your love living deep within my own love for you. These are not two but one.

All that I am is in you, encompassed in this great sea of love, and everything you are pours in and through me, leaving no room for anything but the love you are … and that we are … together.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

      I     Isaiah 65:23-25

They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Hope

Bring peace, O Lord, the peace that only you can bring. We have seen enough of death and killing, hatred and destruction. We ache for the peace of your kingdom where loving kindness fills the earth as water covers the sea.

This hope is not our own, Holy One. It is your gift, your Presence at the center of our souls. We carry you within. You are the Soul of our souls, the soul of the Universe who evermore presses forward in hope for the fulfillment that comes when the Love you are infuses every heart, every moment and every act.

This is not the world in which we live. The world of the morning news bleeds once more with stories of bombs and killing and death. The poison of hatred again denies the truth that the human family is one and when one bleeds we all bleed.

Your hope is that we may all be one, one with each other, an oneness that comes only as we are one with the One Love you are, one with the Love from which we come, one with the Love that is our truest and deepest soul, so denied whenever we hate.

For you are not hate; you are the Love the hopes even when the smoke of destruction fills the halls of airports and trains stations, even when poisoned souls regret that the death count is not higher.

Even then, you press on toward the hope to which you call us, the hope for which you made us. And so, we, too, must hope and press on, seeking to know and become the Love you are, the Love we are. For your Soul burns in our own, and that is why we hope … an ache that drives us evermore to you.

Pr. David L. Miller