Last Thursday morning, my kids and I were driving down the street going to school. The heavens had just given us a fresh blanket of magnificent white. And the sun was shining brightly on the snow. My daughter Isla then shouted, “Look daddy, there are stars in the snow, stars have fallen from the sky!” The glistening light from each snowflake was like a star from heaven resting on the earth.

Just like the stars that Isla saw, in our gospel this week (Mt. 16), Peter also sees a glistening star from heaven- he sees the Christ star in Jesus. And then Jesus tells Peter that he was able to recognize the Christ in him, not because of blood or flesh, but because the father in the heavens had bestowed it on him, had given him the revelation that The Christ has come down to earth. Peter’s recognition of the Christ in Jesus is like a glistening star fallen from heaven.

Dear Friends, The work of the Christ follower, the work of the True Christian is to learn to see like Peter. For every time we recognize the Christ in one another, every time we see the light of heaven on this dark earth,  God’s church is built. God’s church is built, not of blood and flesh, but of star-light. Church is not a building, not an institution, the true church of God comes into being whenever we behold the shining of the Christ at the Altar, in one another, in all things.

What’s In The Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.

It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.

They’ve been frightened–sat on ’till the spirit cried ‘uncle’
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know He’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found,

But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can’t talk about God and make any sense,
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don’t build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained.
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building.

Buildings crumble.
It’s the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

~ Tom Barrett ~

After the baptism, where the spirit of Christ first descended into Jesus, He was immediately driven out into the desert. There He was tempted. We hear this week in our gospel that He then said ‘no’ three times to the adversary. It is striking to notice that the very first ‘word’ that the Christ spoke on Earth was three times ‘no’.

In this way, we can see that ’No’ is a very special word. And we follow Christ by learning to speak the sacred word ‘no’ in the right way, at the right time, to the right being.

And yet, just like Christ we can only speak the sacred ‘no’ if we learn at the same time to say ‘yes’- if we learn to say ‘yes’ to the will of God. In overcoming the tempter on Earth, Christ had also to say ‘yes’ to the will of God three times.

Just the other night, two of my dear friends arrived in New York City flying in from overseas. They were picked up by someone in the Spring Valley congregation. Half way home, the radiator burst and fluid was leaking into the driver’s seat. They pulled over to a parking lot in inner city Harlem. It was dark and getting late. Looking under the hood, they didn’t know what to do. And then, a man came walking toward them seemingly out of the darkness. He was tall, and shaking a bit; he had no teeth. He asked them if he could help. At that moment my friend knew he had to trust, something told him he needed to say yes- say yes to trusting this toothless man. But to do this, my friend had to say no to the temptation of fear and prejudice. 

At the same time as this was happening, bizarrely, they were surrounded by a gang of bikers, circling them again and again, popping wheelies, and revving their engines. After about twenty minutes of this otherworldly scene, the jittery toothless man lifted his head from under the hood with a beaming smile, no longer shaking, having fixed the radiator hose. My friend gave him 30 dollars, the bikers disappeared and they were on their way again.

To become truly human, it is our sacred destiny to learn to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Driving home the other day, I had an unusual experience. Racing along Highway 407 we were suddenly hit by an intense storm. Snow and hail were swirling and pelting, the road was turning white, I could hardly see the lines. But the unusual thing was that through the storm, perhaps some miles further down the road, there was blue sky. I could see the sun shining in and through the storm. And this changed my journey; the light and warmth of the sun rayed into my destiny with the storm.

Every human being, each one of us, must meet with unexpected storms. Just like the storm on the 407, our destiny storms often hit us out of nowhere as illness, conflict with others, difficult karma. We can often feel, there is no off-ramp. We can often feel, it is our destiny to meet and bear this storm.

And yet, more and more in our time, healing will not mean that our illnesses are suddenly cured, our difficulties cleared up. More and more in our time, Healing will mean to be able to feel the peace of the Christ Sun in and through our journey with the storm.

Dear Friends, to be a Christian means pray to feel His Sun no matter what the weather is like in our lives. For in connecting with His peace-filled rays we are made whole, even if our dwelling is sick. This is why we pray at communion “sick is the dwelling into which You are entering, but through Your word, my soul becomes whole.”

Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Christ, grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive-
and it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned.
And it’s in dying that we are born to true life.
Amen.

Saint Francis of Assisi

“Though sickness is so familiar a thing, we are by no means clear in ordinary life about what it is. We recognise pain and discomfort or limitations in the use of the bodily powers as tokens of its presence. We ascribe it to outer causes or to inner disturbances of the emotions — but still we have by no means grasped what it is in itself; a living process in some way out of harmony with the other living processes of the body as a whole — yet having a curious, independent life. This uncertainty is only part of our general uncertainty about the relation of body and soul. We live in this body, profoundly unaware of the immense variety of processes through which it can be the instrument of our thought, our feeling and our willing.

It is not only the one who is ill who is involved in the inner struggle to build the body afresh. Those who are close to the patient through love or friendship, or who are helping to nurse or treat him, are involved in it too, more or less deeply. It can be one of the profoundest links between human beings to share in the struggle with a bodily handicap, and what is won in this way is not simply restoration of the health that was there before, but a new power. The soul has gained a new connection with the archtype of the organ which was affected; and so have the people who have loved and helped. It is the God in us, the heavenly Self, in which there lives a spark of the Divine creative fire from which man is sprung. Where people unite in concern of a patient, their heavenly Selves are joined in supporting him.”

Human Needs and Cosmic Answers
Rev. Adam Bittleston

“Rightly understood, chronic diseases can bring about a wonderful maturing of our innermost nature. Prolonged illness can have its compensations in that it makes us more mature than those who are aways well, who are perhaps so full of vitality that one could almost call them ‘unhealthily healthy’. What comes into being through suffering rightly borne could even be described as an inner sun-element. Some such force of spiritual egohood must have been ripening in the sick man at the pool of Bethesda. Christ appeals to this ego-force by asking, ‘Have you the will to become whole?’

Healing in the Christian sense is making whole, transforming the sick, disintegrated human nature into the wholeness which is true Man. It is the mystery of rebirth out of the state of being sick and weak with sin, into the new life that is born of the health-giving Spirit.

Every day in each lifetime is a step forward, a standing still, or a step astray from the straight path. The way is long and full of effort… The road of salvation is trod with courage and a clear sense of purpose. Over it shines the star of Christ, pointing the way, sending the grace of warmth and enlightenment into human hearts.”

~ excerpts from the writings of Rev. Emil Bock and Rev. E.F. Capell

“One of the greatest difficulties, when we attempt to understand our personal destiny, lies in the rigidity of our thinking. We have grown accustomed to judging a particular event in our habitual way; and it is in our nature that such habitual judgments often have a negative colour. Nothing is to be won from them directly; they need to be transmuted. What is in the background when a human being holds rigidly to his circumscribed thinking?  Generally it is because he has a motive whose character he does not fully acknowledge or understand.

Wherever we are rigid in thought, we are liable to cruelty, however little intended; and the way to transmutation of thought is through a fire of sacrifice, which prepares us to accept radically different conceptions of the world, whatever their consequences for ourselves may be. In personal life we can test our judgments for their gold content; whether they are positive, whether they are selfless, whether they have the quality that really comes to meet the person or the thing with which they are concerned. If they fail to pass these tests, then they are to re-enter the fire of purification.”

Human Needs and Cosmic Answers
Adam Bittleston

1^st Epiphany
Matthew 2: 1-12

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their country by another way.

Epiphany
January 6, 2019
Matthew 2:1-12

Evil seeks to destroy. Herod tries to destroy the Child and cuts a wide swath. Although the bodies of the innocent children had died, their souls and spirits form a living crown of supportive life. They form a living sacrificial crown around this one Child who will one day sacrifice himself in service.

Today Christ wants to be born and operate within every human being. He wants to be seen working in the world. And today, evil still seeks to destroy the innocent. Recent deaths of innocent people are a prompt to us. They prompt us to fulfill the conditions within ourselves that allow Christ’s work to be seen and experienced in the world.

Those innocent souls want to encourage our open reverence before the mysteries of the world.

They want to encourage our empathy and compassion for all who suffer, including those caught up in evil through their own illness.

They want to stimulate our conscience, that is, our knowing and acting on our part to play in the remedying of the world’s ills, starting with ourselves.

The world cries out for redemption. It needs men and women of selfless selfhood, men and women of good will, so that Christ can work His salvation through them. Only thus can His Being of Love operate on the earth.

Rev. Cindy Hindes, Devon PA

Last week many of us attended The Shepherd’s Play. The play is of course the story of the shepherds hearing the good news from the angel and finding Jesus in a manger. But it is also the story of Mary who journeys with Joseph to give birth to the Christ child. And I was struck again that in order to give birth to the Christ, Mary had to follow the call from the angel and give birth to the Christ in a most unexpected place. Mary gave birth to the holy child in the humble discomfort of a stable.

At Advent time we are reminded that within each and every human soul, within each one of us, there is also a Mary – an inner Mary who is pregnant with the spirit child. For to become a real Christian, to become who we are meant to be means to give birth to Christ in us. And for this to happen, just like for Mary, our souls too must follow the call we, too, must find and accept the stable.

And the Mary in us knows that to follow the call means to take up our inspirations, the things we love, and walk the journey of our lives. It means to hear the soft voice of God in our hearts that says, ‘become’ – become through our work in the world, whatever that work may be. ‘Become’ through creativity and art, through counseling, through teaching and parenting, through farming. Not only are we called to become in and through our passions and joys, but the Christ comes alive in us simply whenever we cultivate more love, hope and faith in human hearts.

But dear friends, let us also never forget, that the Christ child is born in a stable. Therefore, like Mary, let us pay close attention when our destiny brings us an unwanted place. Let us feel that when our destiny brings us something cold and uncomfortable, something difficult to accept, that the stable has come. Let us always remember that when our lives bring us to our knees in humility, in powerlessness, like Mary, it is there that the Christ can be born.