It's Our Birthday

 

Pentecost preserves the memory of Jesus through the Holy Spirit as our community’s faith is both restored and renewed in breadth and depth through our love for one another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love.  

David Steindl-Rast writes in Deeper than Words that The Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate courage and openness, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which allows us to know God within. 

In our Creed when we proclaim our belief in the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’ the divine aliveness within our innermost life, Here we touch upon the very core of faith. 

We are charged with remembering all that Jesus lived while he was with us. (John 20:19-23) The Spirit is the ultimate power of the Gospel through which the Word becomes flesh in us, and no longer just words on a page or our lips. We become those words and they define who and what we are, thereby setting our compass to live a God/Love centered life as Jesus taught. We remember not as if it were yesterday, but because it is today; we live the memory now and again and again. 

“When we remember, we leave the present for the past. To say it better, we bring the past into the present and give it life alongside the tangible realities we are compelled to consider. Not physical presence but love, leads us to live with this remembered person even in his/her absence. When love is strong, the memory of this may be even more dear and more real than the reality of those who are present. Our memory of another confers the present upon him, gives him further life in our life, and keeps a moment of the past from drifting away or fading into death. 

We are fed and nourished by communion of life in which our lives intersect in memory and merge into a common experience. No lover forgets. No beloved is forgotten. The memory of love is life; the memory of another becomes ourselves. So when the communion of believers remembers Jesus, Christ is present and is brought into the present with his grace by the power of the Spirit…The gift of the Spirit is fidelity to the memory of life’s mystery and confidence in the mystery of its future.”  (Anthony Padovano, Dawn without Darkness)

 

When you're awake, the things you think
Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things
Are seldom what they seem

Sometimes you think you've lived before
All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you
As though they knew the way

 

 

 

 

 

...And We Shall Renew the Face of the Earth

 

We have come to learn over the years that John’s Gospels defy literal translation and find that we must suspend our literal inclination and allow the words to become flesh in us and take them to our hearts so that we might intuitively feel their presence and know the Spirit. Padovano tells us that Jesus will never be found by those who reduce faith to words or doctrines or who limit religious behavior to moral exercises or spiritual behavior. So, in our Gospel (John 14:23-29) Jesus says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.”

Have we ever seen the Holy Spirit? This is not a trick question. Let’s think for a moment. The best description we get in the Bible of the Holy Spirit are tongues of flame or a freely blowing breeze. However, in this week's reading we get two helpful hints that offer a pretty good picture of just what the Holy Spirit looks like. 

The Holy Spirit looks like an Advocate --the one who stands up for you when you need it; the one who speaks on your behalf; the one who lends you a helping hand, takes your side, and won't leave you while you're down. 

The Holy Spirit looks like Jesus. The Spirit is "another advocate" because Jesus is the first. The Spirit, Jesus goes on to say, will abide with us and is sent in Jesus' name to remind us of what he taught. In a very real way, the Spirit affirms Jesus presence in us and through us, and helps to keep his promise that he will not leave us orphaned. You know him, because he abides with you, and lives with us 

An advocate is defined as one who upholds and defends a cause or person, and intercedes on the part of another. Yes, we've seen the Spirit many times in those who share the love of Christ, and stand up for one another. 

John’s Gospel is as relevant today as it was when it was written two thousand years ago. There are advocates for the love of God in our midst…and there are adversaries. 

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.  

Love One Another as I have Loved You

“….By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” is so familiar to us in John13:31-35 that we are inclined to wonder what else we can say about this passage that has not already been said. Yet, this simple phrase which sums up Jesus’ earthly ministry is at the very core of who we are as Christians. Jesus wants us to live the love in everything we do. Make it become the essence of who we are and how we are defined. It is a part of the human condition to love and want to be loved. Sure, it’s easy to love those with whom we agree or have a close relationship. Loving those who do not share our values or frankly dislike is a much harder proposition. 

The love that Jesus speaks of is hard because it requires that we put the welfare of others before our own, even when it “hurts.” We see this love in action when we are able to overlook the slight of a friend or able to set aside our goals to help someone achieve his or hers. Even small “gestures,” requiring the need to sublimate our ego to benefit another, not out of any sense of obligation or desire to incur favor or reward, counts. Sometimes that love requires putting aside a hurt or moving beyond disappointment caused by a friend or family member, even when it is difficult. 

Today, we are faced with the stark reality of the war in the Ukraine in which the Russians have committed horrible crimes against humanity. How do we make room in our hearts for those who cause so much pain? How can  we, in the context of these inhumane atrocities, find it in our hearts to love as Christ ask us? 

God has not promised to take away our trials, but to help us change our attitude toward them…this is what holiness really is. (Keating, The Human Condition)

My Sheep Hear My Voice

I grew up in New York City in the ‘50s. We lived in a two–family house in Brooklyn. I recall it as a carefree time of life. It was a time during which doors marked certain boundaries, but we were not so afraid of others inappropriately crossing them. It was not always necessary to lock our doors. And when we finally did, my father kept a key in the milk box on the porch or left one with our upstairs neighbor. Our ability to come and go was safe. However, in later years when both my parents worked I as the oldest of my siblings, was entrusted with that key. In time concerns for safety appeared to be heightened and more attention was paid to locking doors and security. I know I was older and more aware of the news of the day but times were changing and I guess we were a little less carefree as the world was not as safe as it was before.

While gates and doors provide protection and security, they are the means for entering and leaving a  place. In today’s Gospel (John 10:27-30)  Our frame of reference for a shepherd does not likely fit with the image of the shepherd in the time of Jesus.  Is there any more powerful artistic depiction of Jesus the Good Shepherd in our Christian heritage?  For me it is the famous painting of Jesus with the lamb draped over his shoulder that was hung on the wall in one of my grade school classrooms, and was one of the stained glass windows in the church.  Yet, when Jesus lived and John writes his Gospel, shepherds were among the most disreputable and mistrusted outcasts of society. We might consider replacing the image of the loving guardian strolling peacefully in the sunshine among his flock, with the marauding motorcycle gangs of our century or cowboy outlaws of the 19th century. Shepherds were drifters with no fixed address and as a result of their unwholesome occupation, they were perpetually unclean and, in violation of Jewish law. These outcasts are the very people John’s gospel is talking about. 

Needless to say John shocks his audience by comparing Jesus to a shepherd and then later calling this very shepherd “good.”  He challenges his listeners to look past their assumptions of where God is located and who God belongs to and who can belong to God.  We and the people of John’s time are asked to see God in those who are outsiders, who exist on the fringe of the community, who are despised and even a little feared.  The readers of John’s story are told to look for God among the despised.

When Jesus proclaims that “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me” he characterizes his role as a loving protector. We are told that there was no actual gate in sheep-folds and that the shepherd would stand, sit or lie down in the opening which allowed entry and exit. In this way the shepherd could serve as protector of his sheep.  He knew his sheep and they knew him. John purposely contrasted Jesus, the Good Shepherd, with disreputable religious rulers of his time who exploited their congregations.esus clearly spells out his role as the Good Shepherd and his Father’s steward when he says I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one