25 Before Abraham Was, I Am

Sunday, October 21, 2012

25 Before Abraham Was, I Am

Today's text comes from two places in the 8th chapter of John:


John 8:25: 

"Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning."

and:

John 8:58:

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."

It is a truism that the Gospel of John is set apart from the Synoptic Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke. For one thing, it is thought that the Gospel of John was written long after the Synoptic Gospels were assembled; but the main distinction is that there seems to be a higher level of mystical content in John from the very outset:

John 1:1: 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

It is my unauthoritative opinion that the Gospel of John is much more concerned with the things that Jesus SAID as opposed to the Synoptic Gospels' emphasis on what Jesus DID. There are many more tales of miracles, and travels, and activities in the Synoptic Gospels than in John, and there may be a reason for this: it may be that the higher vibrational resonance of John is intended more for the higher level initiates than for the more popular audience of the Synoptic narratives and parables.

A good example is the subject of today's sermon, the I AM Presence, which is one of the most complex conceptual entities in the Bible, appearing prominently in both the Old and New Testaments; it is also one of the Christian concepts that appears most often in many other world religions, including the many varieties of so-called "New Age" religious philosophies. The idea that "Before Abraham was, I AM" has powerful ramifications on our own personal sense of spiritual identity, and raises many questions about the structure of spiritual reality. The Christ Impulse speaking to the people through through Jesus, the perfect God-Man, must necessarily raise the question of the character of our own anomalous spiritual personalities, and of our unique place in the vast continuum of spiritual time and space.

Our first internet commentary comes from Barnes' Notes:

John 8:58:

"Before Abraham was - Before Abraham lived, I am"

The expression I am, though in the present tense, is clearly designed to refer to a past time. Thus, in Psalms 90:2:

"From everlasting to everlasting thou art God."

Applied to God, it denotes continued existence without respect to time, so far as he is concerned. We divide time into the past, the present, and the future. The expression, applied to God, denotes that he does not measure his existence in this manner, but that the word by which we express the present denotes his continued and unchanging existence. Hence, he assumes it as his name, "I AM," and "I AM that I AM,"

Exodus 3:14-15:

"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

 Compare Isaiah 44:6:

"Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God."

There is a remarkable similarity between the expression employed by Jesus in this place and that used in Exodus to denote the name of God. The manner in which Jesus used it would strikingly suggest the application of the same language to God. The question here was about his pre-existence. The objection of the Jews was that he was not 50 years old, and could not, therefore, have seen Abraham. Jesus replied that he had existed before Abraham. As in his human nature he was not yet 50 years old, and could not, as a man, have existed before Abraham, this declaration must be referred to another nature; and the passage proves that, while he was a man, he was also endowed with another nature existing before Abraham, and to which he applied the term (familiar to the Jews as expressive of the existence of God) I AM; and this declaration corresponds to the affirmation of John 1:1-3:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

-- that he was in the beginning with God, and was God. This affirmation of Jesus is one of the proofs on which John relies to prove that he was the Messiah, to establish which was the design of writing this book.


John 20:31: 

"But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name."

Of course, in looking for commentaries on the I AM, it was no surprise to find that Martin Luther had something to say. In Luther's, as in other commentaries, I found that  much has been made of the detail about Abraham; that Jesus was descended from Abraham seems to have been of particular importance to the Jews, and this detail will prove to be not without relevance when we get further down to the subject of DNA:

Martin Luther
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent; John 8:46-59

"13. Likewise Christ also says here in replying to the Jews, that Abraham and the prophets still live and they never died, but have life in the midst of death; they however only lie and sleep in death. For "Abraham," he says, "rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad." Thus, the prophets also saw it. Where and when did Abraham see it? Not with his bodily eyes, as the Jews interpret it, but with the sight of faith in the heart; that is, he recognized Christ when he was told in Gen 22:18:

"In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."

Then he saw and understood that Christ, born of his seed through a pure virgin, so as not to be cursed with Adam's children but to remain blessed, should suffer for the whole world, cause this to be preached, and thus overwhelm the whole world with blessing etc. This is the day of Christ, the dispensation of the Gospel, that is the light of this day, which radiates from Christ as from the sun of righteousness, and shines and enlightens the whole world. This is a spiritual day, yet it arose at the time Christ was on the earth in the flesh, a day like Abraham saw. But the Jews understood nothing about such a day because of their carnal minds, and hence they reviled Christ as a liar.


14. Therefore Christ proceeds farther and gives the ground and reason why it is just his Word and not the word of anyone else, that giveth life, and says it is because he was before Abraham, or in other words, because he was the one true God. For if the person who offered himself as a sacrifice for us were not God, it would not help or avail anything, even if he were born of the Virgin Mary and suffered a thousand deaths. But the fact that the Seed of Abraham, who gave himself for us, is also true God, secures blessing and victory for all sinners. Therefore Christ speaks not of his human nature that they saw and experienced; for they could easily see he was
not yet fifty years of age, and did not live before Abraham. But with that nature by which he existed long before the time of Abraham, by which he existed also before all creatures and before the whole world. Just as he was man according to his spiritual nature before Abraham, that is, in his Word and in the knowledge of faith was he in the saints; for they all knew and believed that Christ, as God and man, should suffer for us, as is written in Heb 13: 8:

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yea and for ever;"

and in the Revelation of John 13:8:

"The Lamb of God that hath been slain from the foundation of the world."

Yet now he is speaking here especially of his divine nature.


15. But here reason is terribly offended and becomes mad and furious because God should become man; this reason cannot harmonize and understand. And this is the article of faith to which the Jews still in our day can not reconcile themselves, hence they cannot cease their throwing stones and their blasphemy. But Christ also continues on the other hand to hide himself from them and to go out of their temple, so that they cannot see nor find him in the Scriptures, in which they search daily. Again, this narrative is not a little terror to all who are so foolhardy about the Scriptures and never approach them with a humble spirit. For even in our day it happens that many read and study in the Scriptures and yet they cannot find Christ, he is hid and has gone out of the temple. And how many there are who say with their mouth that God is become man, and yet they are without the Spirit in their hearts; who whenever tested, prove that they were never in real earnest. This is sufficient on this subject."

Thus, Luther, at the same time, makes much of Jesus' descent from Abraham, and yet repudiates that descent as rendered invalid by virtue of the virgin birth; a birth which insulated Jesus from the contamination of Adam's curse. The kicker of the passage, however, is the bit about how:

"For even in our day it happens that many read and study in the Scriptures and yet they cannot find Christ, he is hid and has gone out of the temple."

According to Luther, Jesus was born a Jew, was raised in the Jewish tradition, but has left them far behind (or is it ahead, since, BEFORE Abraham, he WAS?). The truth of Jesus' teaching is a secret kept from the Jews by their own unwillingness to see it--how fortunate we are to be so gloriously conscious of it.

We read the following from the Adam Clarke Commentary:

John 8:58:

Before Abraham was, I am - The following is a literal translation of Calmet‘s note on this passage:

“I am from all eternity. I have existed before all ages. You consider in me only the person who speaks to you, and who has appeared to you within a particular time. But besides this human nature, which ye think ye know, there is in me a Divine and eternal nature. Both, united, subsist together in my person. Abraham knew how to distinguish them. He adored me as his God; and desired me as his Savior. He has seen me in my eternity, and he predicted my coming into the world.”

On the same verse Bishop Pearce speaks as follows: 

“What Jesus here says relates (I think) to his existence antecedent to Abraham‘s days, and not to his having been the Christ appointed and foretold before that time; for, if Jesus had meant this, the answer I apprehend would not have been a pertinent one. He might have been appointed and foretold for the Christ; but if he had not had an existence before Abraham‘s days, neither could he have seen Abraham, (as, according to our English translation, the Jews suppose him to have said), nor could Abraham have seen him, as I suppose the Jews understood him to have said in the preceding verse, to which words of the Jews the words of Jesus here are intended as an answer.”

I've been thinking quite a bit about the business of the Hindu/Buddhist versus the Christian religious orientation; I think orientation is really the only proper word for it; the word implies that there is more than one way of looking at things. On the one hand, it is absolutely true that, since Jesus came to my rescue as a healer way back in 1983, I have been a devout, uncompromising Christian-- I have cultivated a personal relationship with Jesus, prayed to Jesus, depended on Jesus, believed in Jesus, and enjoyed Jesus' protection and influence. However, at the same time, I must confess that I have retained certain pagan attitudes as elements of my Theology; it's all a part of my desire to stay broad-minded, and inclusive rather than exclusive.  This . . . flexibility, let us say . . . has set me apart from so many professing born-again Christians, who willingly, nay, enthusiastically condemn more than half the world, (i.e. followers of other religious beliefs), to the fires of Hell, just because they don't express their religious beliefs in the same language I do. It's not that I don't believe in Hell--I do--but I have been unwilling to condemn the rest of the world over what might really end up being a semantic disagreement. One of the things about my mother's Christianity that pissed me off, when I was young, was her   insistence that everybody that wasn't a Christian was going to go to Hell. That was something that I could not handle.

Even C. S. Lewis, a man who could never be confused with a namby-pamby, or Pantheist Christian, made allowances for differences of opinion at this basic level. At the end of The Last Battle there appears the following conversation between Aslan and a Calormene soldier--a soldier who, though born an enemy of Aslan, was, at heart, a friend:

“Then I fell at his feet and thought, surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him.”

“But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.”

“Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?

The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him.

For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.

And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.
Dost thou understand, Child?

I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.

Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou shouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

In my case, I tried to do what so many New Age people do--I tried to subsume Buddhism and Hinduism under a generic umbrella of Christianity--I tried to make them equal in my mind. I included Jesus as one more in a long line of saints who are sent by the so-called Ascended Masters. The "Ascended Masters" are one of many organizations whose existence is proposed by New Age Philosophical cults; others are Scientology, Eckankar, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and Steiner's Anthroposophy, just to name a few. 

The Great White Brotherhood of St. Germaine is another (related) New Age organization--it is the one that I first came in contact with, when I started getting religion; through this organization's teaching, Jesus became, to me, one more great saint in long line of saints. Furthermore, I have to confess that I still hold to that argument somewhat. However the enlightenment that I have been getting from the Steiner lectures on the Bhagavad-Gita and the Epistles of Paul has really turned me around quite a bit; through those lectures, I can see that Christianity is a truly significant step forward in the spiritual evolution of Humankind, and that Jesus' claim to be the ONLY begotten Son of God is a whole lot more true that I used to think possible.

There are other Steiner works in which he places Jesus in a superior hierarchical relation to Krishna, Gautama Buddha, and so on; but I never saw as clearly, as I now see, that Jesus brought a new concept into the world that is of incalculable revolutionary importance; through His power as the Anointed One, and the sacrifice of His Holy Blood shed for Humankind, the kingdom of God is now available for humans to enjoy here on Earth. It is one thing to say that the human spirit is and always has been an eternal thing--that before Abraham was I AM; but to have the I AM look you in the face and proclaim His Presence in the here and now of mundane existence--THAT IS A BIG DEAL--AND A NEW DEAL.

According to Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy, life is a veil of tears; Buddhist monks spend their lives in meditation, renouncing the illusions of maya, and attempting to escape this veil of tears by sidestepping it and entering a higher world of spirit; detachment is the key--do not become attached to anything, and you will never be disappointed, and the higher vibrations of spirit will dominate your life--even if your whole life is spent in a dream as illusory as the dream of maya you are renouncing.

We all want the higher vibratory world of spirit--this is what sehnsucht  is all about; but Jesus came to teach us that the act of renunciation, the invalidation of physical life, is a negative act. I can see, now, that Jesus brought a revolutionary message to the world: the message that, although the world of the physical is Maya, is illusion, it is still an illusion created by spirit, and we can make it real by simply validating it--by penetrating the spiritual essence of it, and watching it ripen into reality before our physical eyes, just like a story becomes a myth, just like a symbol becomes an archetype. As I said last week:

"The apparent contradiction is not actually a contradiction; it's just like how, when we figure out how to say something, we're not really expressing truth as much as we are merely finding a way of articulating an expression that our puny literal consciousness abilities can appreciate. Likewise, an action is a so-called "elected invention" that is ultimately futile, but which we perform anyway, because, as Jesus says, we can see the reality even in the maya. In the Hindu philosophy all reality is maya, so all actions are maya; but Jesus says, "Yeah, it's maya, but it's also real, it's also there, and because of that we can validate it and cherish it give life to it, as yet another dimension of spiritual reality… Not a lower dimension but another dimension.

At the end of the lectures on the Bhagavad Gita Steiner proclaims the singlemost important revolutionary contribution Jesus made to the evolution of Humankind: that the Christ Consciousness is available to EVERYONE. Steiner makes the distinction between the Hindu principle that physical reality is maya, illusion, and is therefore to be transcended through renunciation, and the completely new affirmation of spirit IN THE FLESH that was the primary thrust of Jesus’ entire career. Though His incarnation and sacrifice, His blood shed onto the face of Mother Earth, Jesus ushered in a completely new epoch, an epoch of Heaven on Earth. Jesus did away with the futility of human existence by affirming the spirituality and validity of maya; of course the mundane dimension is an illusion, but, so what? What articulation of spirit does not fall short of the infinitude of its source? The fact that we are all tiny foci of an infinite personality does not make us insignificant, but rather makes us glorious realities in a universe in which levels of reality constantly intertwine and comingle! That Jesus was Man and God is our inspiration not our condemnation! Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved!"

The problem with any articulated form is that it is only an approximation, that it is only symbolic--the limits of its finite definition never allow it to go far enough to tell the whole tale. It takes the open-ended, unknowing power of faith to realize the ultimate truth of anything, and once a thing has achieved its ultimate form, we can't understand it anyway. You have heard me speak the word "mythological" many times: a story or an event becomes "mythological" when a single articulated form, or plot, or situation, becomes illuminated by the resonance of infinity; an archetypal symbol is just such a thing; an archetype is a form, dictated by the consciousness of man, that is universal enough to enter the the collective unconscious (or consciousness, take your pick) and become an element of language, while still resonating with eternal rays. For us to think of life as a veil of tears--for us to long for heaven as a better place than here-- is to deny the existence of the I AM Presence. The I AM says that now, before Abraham was in the past, now, before Abraham will be in the future, I Am. I Am now, in the present is the glory of Christianity, and Jesus' gift to the world.

Next time we will take a deeper look at how the I AM Presence interpenetrates the Eternal Now. For now let us close with this prayer: Jesus, thank you for motivating John the Beloved to invite us to contemplate the infinite. Help us stretch our minds around this inconceivable immensity, and find ourselves, at last, in your cradling arms. Amen.

24 Right Action

Monday, October 15, 2012

24 Right Action

24 Right Action

My two previous sermons have been on the truth and how it sets you free. We have determined that truth's bottom line on the mundane plane is right action; infinite freedom on earth is achieved through right actions. The question is what is right action? I mean what exactly do we do, or not do?

It's a slippery slope because, even though we want clear, steadfast rules to live and act by, the dictates of spirit in terms of right action are the same as for belief--they are different for everyone. That is not to say that the infinite, static, immutable essence of spirit is somehow fickle, and changeable, or that the Mind of God is in any way double- or triple-minded; but, rather, it is to say that the precise words, with which spirit will manifest in the human mind, will differ, from one mind to another, as much any other aspect of unique human individuality will differ from one to another; we are all anomalous little corners of the Godhead, so there will, therefore, be subtle if not dramatic differences between one person's right action and another person's right action.


From JollyNotes.com we read:

"Our actions are usually a reflection of who we are. Our actions should reflect what we profess to believe. We should act on our word. We should remember to always take the right actions even when it’s difficult – We should “walk the walk”, not only “talk the talk”.  We should think carefully before we act. We should treat others the same way we ourselves would like to be treated. Children and adults alike are watching and learning from our actions. Remember that in everything we say and do, we are ambassadors for God. And finally, sometimes God  tells us – enough with the prayers – Now I need you to ACT!"

From the same site we get the following scripture readings:

Colossians 3:23


“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

Ecclesiastes 9:10


“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”

Luke 6:45


“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth that which is evil: for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

From the web article, Bible Teaching That Educates the Mind and Directs the Feet by Sid Cates, we read:

    •    Prov. 23:7:
    •    For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

    •    Dan. 1:8:
    •    But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself.

    •    Luke 6:45:
    •    A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

    •    Rom. 10:10:
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

"These verses point out the importance of a right heart in producing right actions. These verses do not discount the importance of hearing, learning, or memorizing God's Word. Nor do they imply that a "made-up mind" cannot produce right actions. There is no doubt that someone who makes up his mind to do right can do it, for a while. They clearly indicate, however, that a purposeful heart is the foundation for right actions, not a purposeful mind.

Nevertheless, the mind plays a vital part in right actions. The "gateway" to the heart is through the mind. If we as Bible teachers want our students to walk rightly, our teaching must not only educate the mind but reach the heart."

Something must be said concerning the effect the heart has on the will. The will is a spiritual entity that we have not spoken of enough; the will is linked in philosophy with desire, and as far as it goes with the ineffable sehnsucht of C. S. Lewis; the desire for God that brings future heavenly grace into the present. Thus, the joy of right action is realized in the manifestation of heavenly desires in the earthly plane. These realizations are not possible without the action of will on the literal consciousness; there must first be a resolution of mind, and then the body will act accordingly. We have spoken of faith as a literal image that becomes enlightened with heavenly energy through the open door of the “cloud of unknowing”; perhaps the will is the mechanism by which this literal image is created?

Remember this quote from The Screwtape Letters:

"He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."

Remember, also, that spiritual manifestations, on the mundane level of the cosmic hierarchy, are essentially arbitrary, are essentially fictions which the infinite writes on the crusty, inflexible slate of time, for the benefit of Man's puny powers of literal understanding. The choices spirit makes in our sphere of comprehension are not essential, but, rather, symbolic, hence the sense of mythological reality with which all spiritual experience resonates.

The following lengthy quote is from Rudolf Steiner's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. In the shortest possible summary: the Bhagavad Gita is a poetic section of the Mahabarata, the sacred Hindu "bible", so to speak, and is a record of the conversation between the warrior Arjuna and the Hindu Christ figure, Krishna, just before the great battle between the Pandu family and the Kuru family--a battle that will unmake the world. The main thrust of the Steiner section echoes what I have just said about the essential arbitrariness of action, but draws connections between action and destiny; it also attempts to draw a parallel between the ancient Hindu text and the more recent letters of Saint Paul:


The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, LECTURE III, 30 December, 1912

"Only when we consider these life-connections do we realise how the laws of destiny work in the conceptions of the world. In the background of such great revelations, such great world-philosophies as the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we are confronted by the ruling of these laws of destiny. We might say: if we look behind the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we can see the direct ruling of destiny. How can we trace destiny in the Epistles?

We often find indicated in them that the real salvation of soul-development consists in the so-called “justification by faith” as compared to the worthlessness of external works; because of that which the soul may become when it makes the final connection with the Christ-Impulse, when it takes into itself the great force that flows from the proper understanding of the Resurrection of Christ. When we meet with this in the Epistles, we feel, on the other hand, that the human soul may, so to say, be thrown back upon itself, and thus be estranged from all external works and rely entirely on mercy and justification by faith. Then come the external works; they are there in the world; we do not do away with them because we turn from them; we join forces with them in the world. Again destiny rings out to us in all its gigantic greatness. Only when we look at things in this way do we see the might of such revelations to mankind."

[Sidebar: The subtleties of the Faith/Works dichotomy have not always been clear to me. I have not always understood how good works might not be a good thing; I have have recently come to understand that good works are kind of like good words: you may say something nice and not really mean it, and this amounts to less than nothing both for the recipient of the compliment and for you--empty words are like plastic cartons with nothing in them, and will not hold anything up under the light of honest day; I, myself, would rather not bear the weight of empty vessels than parade around displaying toy medals on my sleeve, the evidence that people need to lie to me to make me feel good; people might as well make little cooing sounds like pigeons than actually construct false sentences out of well-meaning lies. Likewise, you may do something nice for the wrong reasons and end up paying the price for that falsehood as well--in short, my conclusion is that all our thought, words, and deeds must be essentially, technically, and eventually justified by faith.

Back to Steiner:]

"First of all, a distinction is made between what men have to do in the ordinary world. It is indeed a grand situation in which the Gita places this before us. Arjuna has to fight against his blood-relations. That is his external destiny, it is his own doing, his Karma, which comprises the deeds which he must first of all accomplish in this particular situation. In these deeds he lives at first as external man; but the great Krishna teaches him that a man only becomes wise, only unites himself with the Divine Eternal if he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary; yet the wise man must release himself from them. He performs the deeds; but in him there is something which at the same time is a looker-on at these deeds, which has no part in them, which says: I do this work, but I might just as well say: I let it happen.  One becomes wise by looking on at what one does as though it were being done by another; and by not allowing oneself to be disturbed by the desire which causes the deed or by the sorrow it may produce.

“It is all one,” says the great Krishna to his pupil Arjuna, “whether thou art in the ranks of the sons of Pandu, or over there among the sons of Kuru; what ever thou doest, thou must as a wise man make thyself free from Pandu-ism and Kuru-ism. If it does not affect thee whether thou art to act with the Pandus as though one of them, or to act with the Kurus as though thou were thyself a son of Kuru; if thou canst rise above all this and not be affected by thine own deeds, like a flame which burns quietly in a place protected from the wind, undisturbed by anything external: if thy soul, as little disturbed by its own deeds, lives quietly beside them, then does it become wise; then does it free itself from its deeds, and does not inquire what success attends them.” For the result of our deeds only concerns the narrow limitations of our soul; but if we perform them because humanity or the course of the world require them from us, then we perform these deeds regardless as to whether they lead to dreadful or to glorious results for ourselves. This lifting oneself above one's deeds, this standing upright no matter what our hands may carry out, even — speaking of the Gita situation — what our swords may carry out or what we may speak with our mouth; this standing upright of our inner self regardless of all that we speak with our mouth and do with our hands, this it is to which the great Krishna leads his pupil Arjuna.

Thus the great Krishna directs his pupil Arjuna to a human ideal, which is so presented that a man says: “I perform my deeds, but it matters not whether they are performed by me or by another — I look on at them: that which happens by my hand or is spoken by my mouth, I can look on at as objectively as though I saw a rock being loosened and rolling down the mountain into the depths. Thus do I stand as regards my deeds; and although I may be in a position to know this or that, to form concepts of the world, I myself am quite distinct from these concepts, and I may say: In me there dwells something which is, it is true, united to me and which perceives, but I look on at what another is perceiving. Thus I myself am liberated from my perceptions. I can become free from my deeds, free from my knowledge and free from my perceptions."

Of particular interest to me is this idea:

". . . a man only becomes wise, only unites himself with the Divine Eternal if he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary; yet the wise man must release himself from them. He performs the deeds; but in him there is something which at the same time is a looker-on at these deeds, which has no part in them, which says: I do this work, but I might just as well say: I let it happen."

It has often been suggested that great works of art "just happen"; of course it must not be forgotten that it takes years of disciplined study and concentration to make possible that effortless divine exhalation which is the great artist's stock-in-trade, but, as Yeats says in the poem Adam's Curse:

"I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."

It must also be remembered that the moment of epiphany that illuminates the long-sought-after poetic line always comes from above--the poet would be a fool to claim ownership of the thing because he knows that he has merely opened the door in his own soul for the inspiration to flow through.

And again, as C. S. Lewis reminds us, in The Screwtape Letters:

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

It will readily be seen how this relates to sehnsucht and will: if we base our actions on the divine impulse which comes through faith, our minds open to the possibilities of the mythological dimension and merely act out a script that has already been written since before the world began.

John 1:1

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Thus, the Word of God has been dictating our actions since before we were made. As we have discussed before, this does not negate the possibility of free will, but it assures us that, if we conform our personal will to the will of the Father, we will always act from the heart, and never err in judgment or effect. The Word is the wind of spirit, whither it bloweth we know not, but it is good, it is always good. We question not, we only act, we only perform the script as faithfully as our powers of comprehension allow.

One question raised by the passage:

“he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary”

is that of “what is necessary?” Does the wind of spirit answer this question as well? I think maybe yes and no; but there is another wrinkle added by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 12:4-31

"4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.
7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.
8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:
11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
14 For the body is not one member, but many.
15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
18 But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.
19 And if they were all one member, where were the body?
20 But now are they many members, yet but one body.
21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.
22 Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:
23 And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.
24 For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked.
25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.
26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.
27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.
29 Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles?
30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?
31 But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way."

In this passage we see that right action is not always individual action; we see that sometimes we may perform the Will of God more efficiently by working together than by striking out on our own; we may come to understand that the Christ-Impulse is a binding, synthesizing power that reveals our true anomalous selves IN EACH OTHER. Thus, WHAT IS NECESSARY might be an end that we, with our individual vision cannot even perceive as a whole, but only in part. Just as we see ourselves in a glass darkly, the ultimate ends of Human evolution may not be apparent to even the most prophetic-minded of us. The necessity of an act must come from the inward impulse of the Christ pressing outward, from our inner to our outer realities. The necessity of an action can only be discovered in the script that was written for us “In the Beginning”.

We must always guard against the influence of "the crowd" in supplying us with easy group answers to difficult personal questions, but that does not mean that there is no power in joining forces with each other when the cause is just and the way is straight and clear. Sometimes the "right" in right action is so obvious that there can be no doubt as to what the proper course should be for one and all. These moments are rare, but, when they appear, the power manifested by like-minded men bound together by a single righteous purpose can be staggering and overwhelming.

Now, on a different note: I’m sure that there are many who come to these sermons of mine, which are filled with material from such diverse sources, many of which might easily be termed “new age”, Steiner not the least among them, and ask, “How can these sermons be Christian?” I tell you, this doubt could not be more unfounded. It is true that the writings of Steiner are replete with new age material and terminology, etheric bodies, Atlantean epochs, and so on; you can take or leave this material—it is not central to Steiner’s main message—how can a name for something immaterial come between us and the truth of spirit which defies definition or nomination?

But you have to understand this one important thing—no one venerates and worships Jesus more that Rudolf Steiner; the main objective of Steiner’s teaching is to put the various world religious beliefs in perspective, a perspective which presents the devotee with a long, long continuum of evolutionary levels to contemplate, but which centers Christianity at the culminating peak of this cosmic process.
Concerning the question of right action, Steiner points out an apparent contradiction between what Krishna says and what Jesus says: Krishna instructs us to act without desire, to act without validating the act and just let it happen, thereby allowing it to enter the mythological domain--to Krishna we are all individual pieces of a giant cosmic puzzle whose pieces must ultimately make no sense; on the other hand, Jesus tells us that, if we work together, we bestow purpose on our actions. So, on one hand, our actions are purposeless and on the other hand our actions have purpose. Both these things are true--but Jesus' slant on things is a bit more radical than any idea of reality brought forth before His time.

The apparent contradiction is not actually a contradiction; it's just like how, when we figure out how to say something, we're not really expressing truth as much as we are merely finding a way of articulating an expression that our puny literal consciousness abilities can appreciate. Likewise, an action is a so-called "elected invention" that is ultimately futile but which we perform anyway because, as Jesus says, we can see the reality even in the maya. In the Hindu philosophy all reality is maya, so all actions are maya; but Jesus says, "Yeah, it's maya, but it's also real, it's also there, and because of that we can validate it and cherish it give life to it, as yet another dimension of spiritual reality… Not a lower dimension but another dimension.

At the end of the lectures on the Bhagavad Gita Steiner proclaims the singlemost important revolutionary contribution Jesus made to the evolution of Humankind: that the Christ Consciousness is available to EVERYONE. Steiner makes the distinction between the Hindu principle that physical reality is maya, illusion, and is therefore to be transcended through renunciation, and the completely new affirmation of spirit IN THE FLESH that was the primary thrust of Jesus’ entire career. Though His incarnation and sacrifice, His blood shed onto the face of Mother Earth, Jesus ushered in a completely new epoch, an epoch of Heaven on Earth. Jesus did away with the futility of human existence by affirming the spirituality and validity of maya; of course the mundane dimension is an illusion, but, so what? What articulation of spirit does not fall short of the infinitude of its source? The fact that we are all tiny foci of an infinite personality does not make us insignificant, but rather makes us glorious realities in a universe in which levels of reality constantly intertwine and comingle! That Jesus was Man and God is our inspiration not our condemnation! Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved!

Thus, as fragments of the whole, we must cherish our relationships with other fragments of the whole, and work with them to further the ends of Heaven on Earth. This does not mean that we join with “the crowd”. In this one sense, the idea of thinking for yourself comes in conflict with the idea of banding together with like-minded people. In order for us to become one with the body of Christ, and not with the body of some false dogma, extreme care must be exercised to make sure we are in perfect agreement with our peers with whom we work and achieve. As mentioned earlier:

Colossians 3:23


“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

We are instructed here not to work FOR men, but it doesn’t say not to work WITH men. The brotherhood of Christ is a powerful union of saints whose singleness of purpose must spring from the motivation of the Christ-Impulse. Only union with our peers on a spiritual level will reveal the truth and validity of our relationships. This takes a seriousness of intent and a closeness as intimate as any marriage: friends in Christ and friends in spirit, will not experience any dissonance on the deepest spiritual levels, although they may easily disagree on the semantics of their theology. In such a case they must be willing to abandon the semantics for the faith and hope transmitted to them from the cloud of unknowing, and go forth IN ACTION motivated by Spirit, each performing his rightful part, each submitting to the higher Will of the Father, as mediated to Man by the Son.

Even in the Pre-Christian philosopher, Plato, intimations of the Son are prophesied: in Plato's Republic is to be found a description of the tripartite soul; he divides the human being into three distinct levels of structure:

1. the highest is the intellect, the reason,
3. the lowest, the physical, the carnal, he calls desire, and
2. the middle he calls spirit, the middle ground, the  mediator between one's highest intentions and lowest animal drives.

Once again, it is is not difficult to see forming in the mind of pre-Christian Man the image of the Father, the logos, the infinite mind of God, in contradistinction with the low carnal desires mediated by Jesus, the perfect God-Man, who affirms the possibility of life-everlasting in every dimension of time and space.
In conclusion, let me reiterate some of the key points of this message:

1.    The dictates of spirit in terms of right action are the same as for belief--they are different for everyone.
2.    Our actions should reflect what we profess to believe.
3.    Ecclesiastes 9:10
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”
4.    "The "gateway" to the heart is through the mind. If we as Bible teachers want our students to walk rightly, our teaching must not only educate the mind but reach the heart."
5.    The will is linked in philosophy with desire, and, as far as it goes, with the ineffable sehnsucht of C. S. Lewis; the desire for God that brings future heavenly grace into the present. Thus, the joy of right action is realized in the manifestation of heavenly desires in the earthly plane. These realizations are not possible without the action of will on the literal consciousness; there must first be a resolution of mind, and then the body will act accordingly.
6.    The choices spirit makes in our sphere of comprehension are not essential, but, rather, symbolic, hence the sense of mythological reality with which all spiritual experience resonates.
7.    .". . . a man only becomes wise, only unites himself with the Divine Eternal if he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary; yet the wise man must release himself from them. He performs the deeds; but in him there is something which at the same time is a looker-on at these deeds, which has no part in them, which says: I do this work, but I might just as well say: I let it happen."
8. Right action is not always individual action; we see that by working together we may perform the Will of God more efficiently than on our own; we may come to understand that the Christ-Impulse is a binding, synthesizing power that reveals our true anomalous selves IN EACH OTHER. Thus, WHAT IS NECESSARY might be an end that we, with our individual vision cannot even perceive as a whole, but only in part. Just as we see ourselves in a glass darkly, the ultimate ends of Human evolution may not be apparent to even the most prophetic-minded of us. The necessity of an act must come from the inward impulse of the Christ pressing outward, from our inner to our outer realities.
9. Though His incarnation and sacrifice, His blood shed onto the face of Mother Earth, Jesus ushered in a completely new epoch, an epoch of Heaven on Earth. Jesus did away with the futility of human existence by affirming the spirituality and validity of maya; of course the mundane dimension is an illusion, but, so what? What articulation of spirit does not fall short of the infinitude of its source?

Thus we close this series of sermons on right action by affirming that what we do comes from what we believe, and what we believe makes a difference. It's hard to say just what we ought to do at any given moment, and we can get pretty confused. But if we habitually turn to Jesus for direction I cannot see how we may fail to do the best we can. Even while all those around us are spinning in hellish confusion, the certitude of Jesus' wisdom and benevolence will provide a safe haven in the sea of madness.

Let us pray: Jesus, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

23 Free at Last

Sunday, September 23, 2012

23 Free at Last

23 Free at Last

Last week we enjoyed a fabulous hit list of quotes about freedom. In my opinion, no such survey would be complete without some comment on Martin Luther King Jr. I know his special day is in the winter, but I couldn't resist getting into him now, since the text from last week was:

John 8:31-32:

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

The career of Martin Luther King brings into high relief a point reiterated over an over again last week:

"We have concluded that the DOING of the truth reveals the truth to us."

In the words of St. Augustine:

"All men indeed perceive that “shall know” is the same thing as “shall understand:” but that the saying, “If any man be willing to do His will,” refers to believing, all do not perceive; to perceive this more accurately, we need the Lord Himself for expounder, to show us whether the doing of the Father's will does in reality refer to believing. . . . . ."

We have thus contemplated the moral imagination as the source of right action, and have concluded, from the above, that right action is the realization of, an outer articulation of, an inner image created in the heart by faith.

Doing the right thing automatically brings us into the realm of the mundane, since DOING implies physicality, the physicality of the mundane world; and it must be admitted that the mundane world was a primary focus of Dr. King's quest for freedom--political freedom. Below we will have cause to refer to this mundane focus as the ETHICS of freedom. However, it must also be admitted that political freedom was not the ONLY focus of Dr. King's quest; it is indeed, the blending of political freedom and spiritual freedom that is the subject of today's sermon.

All last week we discussed spiritual freedom. We discussed the truth that makes us free through:

1. right action,
2. faith,
3. prophecy,
4. giving our souls infinite space by freeing us from self-imposed bondage,
5. giving us enhanced access to the Son,
6. giving us enhanced access to Grace,
7. warning us away from the lies of the Tempter, and
8. reminding us to always look inside ourselves for the truth, and not to the         opinions of anybody else.

Some major points from last week include this point:

"We must concern ourselves, as much as possible with our own personal truth, expressed in out own personal language, and avoid coming to any verbal conclusions about anybody else. We must look into the cloud of unknowing with minds uncluttered with verbalizations about the world, and allow the light of heaven to spill into our hearts. Only when the light in our hearts shines through our mouths will we speak the truth, and know the truth, and share that truth with others."

and this major point:

"The Son sees the future, and, by leading us in right action, He sets up a chain of causality that affirms spirit manifesting through faith. Thus truth is prophetic. Right action is like hope: it not only brings spirit into the present by enlightening the eternal now with heavenly energy, it affirms the promised future descent of spirit into mundane reality by virtue of the essential nature of karmic causality; I mean: right action is motivated by the moral imagination which is unbounded by time, but right action still generates repercussions which spread out like waves through time endowing past, present, AND future with the radiance of truth manifested in the step-by-step progression from one plane of spiritual hierarchy to the next; I mean: every right action leads to another right action, and another, and another blending all the dimensions of time into a single implicate (enfolded) order."

Notice how the idea of truth as prophecy is linked to truth as right action--right action in the mundane world. Today we must go further into the subject of how spiritual freedom relates to freedom in the world of men.

First let us review the famous lines at the end of Dr. King's speech:

"when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city,
we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The old Negro spiritual which is part of “American Negro Songs” that was written by J. W. Work:"

"Free at last, free at last
, I thank God I’m free at last, 
Free at last, free at last, 
I thank God I’m free at last

Way down yonder in the graveyard walk, 
I thank God I’m free at last, 
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
, I thank God I’m free at last

On my knees when the light pass’d by, 
I thank God I’m free at last,
 Tho’t my soul would rise and fly, 
I thank God I’m free at last

Some of these mornings, bright and fair, 
I thank God I’m free at last, 
Goin’ meet King Jesus in the air, 
I thank God I’m free at last."

The following online article Free at Last by Pamela Rose Williams provides these these introductory words:

"As we compare what Jesus was saying and what Dr. King preached, we see that indeed, they were both talking about the same freedom; freedom from sin.  They were both talking about the same truth; the truth that is found only in Jesus the Christ.

This is the time of the year when we remember the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He is best known for his involvement in the Civil Rights movement and his stirring speeches on racial equality.  When I read today’s verse I am reminded of one of Dr. King’s great speeches when he lead the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963.  In that speech he quoted an old Negro spiritual when he said “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”"

Dr. King was a spiritual man, and in fact he was a Baptist minister.  In his lifetime he fought for the freedom of the minority and his speeches and sermons were full of truth and passion.  He gave his life to the fight for freedom!

In today’s passage we read about what Jesus was telling the people.  Specifically, he was speaking to the Jews who did not understand that He was the Messiah; The Lamb of God sent to make them free.  When you continue on and read a little more of the passage, you can see that these Jews truly did not understand what Jesus was saying at all.  They understood freedom and bondage only as to be a slave or a free man.  They believed because they were of the seed of Abraham that they were free already.  Here is how Jesus explains:

John 8:33-38:

"[33]They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?
[34] Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 
[35] And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.
[36] If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
[37] I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
[38] I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father."

Notice that when the truth "hath no place in you" you perform wrong actions. The opposite conclusion is irresistible: if the truth has a place in you, you will perform right actions. It is also an irresistible implication to suggest that heavenly truth motivates action worthy of heaven, whereas infernal lies motivate worldly crimes. How many infernal crimes have been committed in the name of some false truth or other? How many of us have put our thinking ahead of our hearts in matters of philosophy or morality?

The experience of the world as a mythological reality necessarily brings heaven down into the mundane dimension, while the experience of the world as a cold reality reduces all action to not only heartless but mindless madness; the heart informs the mind, not the other way round; as St. Augustine said:

“If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.”

What is the meaning of this,

“If any man be willing to do His will”?

But I had said, if any man believe; and I gave this counsel: If you have not understood, said I, believe. For understanding is the reward of faith.

Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand; since,

“except ye believe, you shall not understand.” Isaiah 7:9"

The mind can suck the truth, the joy, the absolute reality out of anything it pollutes with its self-limited definitions and borrowed literal-minded opinions. We have agreed that language creates consciousness--the same consciousness that cost Adam and Eve their home in paradise. God, please let us resist the temptation to go down that road, and think ourselves into Hell!

The following an excerpt from a sermon preached by Pastor Gregg Bitter on November 4, 2007. It purports to be a comparison between the freedom to truth equations of Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr. As you will see, this Lutheran minister does not think much of the political freedom sought by Martin Luther King Jr., and the piece dwells mainly on Martin Luther. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. is only mentioned once in the whole thing. Nevertheless, it is a good sermon, and will lead us around to some more salient comparisons between political truth and spiritual truth:

"This is the Word of our Lord.

Dear friends in Christ, fellow saints of God:
My two younger children tend to get these two men mixed up:
Of course, it's not the pictures that confuse them, but the names. Martin Luther King Jr. and simply Martin Luther. It's especially confusing in January when the hear a lot of talk about Martin Luther King Jr. at school. They associate with that name, since we go to St. John's Lutheran Church.

Now we could call both men freedom fighters. But they fought for very different kinds of freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for the kind of freedom we call civil rights. In the 1950's and 60's, he wanted to make sure that African-Americans had the same rights in public that white Americans had. He wanted to free them from segregation and second-class citizenship.

Martin Luther, on the other hand, was concerned about slavery -- not physical slavery to human masters, like Israel in Egypt or the slaves in the South before the Civil War. He was concerned about a far worse slavery. For you see, physical slavery, even the worst kind filled with abuse and beatings, physical slavery ends at death, but not the slavery that troubled Martin Luther. Rather than freeing a person from this slavery, death brought a whole new level of pain and torture, namely hell.

A. Free from slavery to sin
1) Who has been chained by slavery to sin?
What was this slavery that troubled Martin Luther? It was the same slavery that Jesus talks about in the text. Slavery to sin. And this slavery isn't confined to Martin Luther or to a certain race of people. This slavery chained us all. I tell you the truth, Jesus said, everyone who sins is a slave to sin  (John 8:34 NIV). And who sins? Remember what the Second Lesson said,

Romans 3:20-23:

"Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather through the law we become conscious of sin . . . There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Every one of us sins. This slavery chained us all.

2. What cannot free us from this slavery?
Now one of our greatest sins is to think that our sin isn't all that bad, at least not now anymore. That's why some in the crowd so strongly objected to Jesus saying that he would set them free.

John 8:33:

"We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"

They knew that Jesus was talking about spiritual freedom. Abraham's descendants had often lost political freedom. They had been slaves in Egypt. At various times while they lived in Canaan one nation or another oppressed them. They had been carried into exile by the Babylonians. And even then in Jesus' day, they were under the domination of the Roman Empire. But as descendants of Abraham, they claimed spiritual freedom as their own.

Didn't they have the commandments from God himself given through Moses at Mt. Sinai? Didn't they have the temple as the one place of worship for the Lord God? Didn't they have the priesthood and the sacrifices as God had prescribed them? And hadn't they meticulously kept the traditions handed down to them? So they were spiritually free, so they thought. How could Jesus claim to set them free?"

[Sidebar: I can't help noticing the glare of pride embedded in the attitude of the pharisees on this point. They claim the rights of royalty attributed to the descendants of Abraham, and insist that this pedigree gives them freedom from subjection--all this while they are taxed, manipulated, and herded like cattle by the Romans. They are clearly fuzzy-minded when the subject of freedom is introduced: they think they are free because, in their tiny parochial society, they have power over their lessers, and yet, in the wide world, the Romans push them around like serfs at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They can't be talking about spiritual freedom, because spiritual freedom has nothing to do with being descended from Abraham! They seem to think that spiritual freedom is something you inherit, like property! And yet they are slaves not only to their dictatorial masters, they are slaves to pompous, arrogant, psychological postures whose only support is the hot air of their own babble. In fact, they are so dominated by the madness of their inherited attitudes that they spin round the yard like chickens in a pen, and lash out at anyone who stands in their path. People like Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. have a habit of getting in the way of hysterically gyrating madmen; there are hardly ever enough of the good guys to divert the current. Not at first, anyway. This is why we have sacrifice--this is why we NEED sacrifice.

Back to Greg Bitter:]

"That's when Jesus points out the truth:

John 8:34:

"Everyone who sins is a slave to sin." 

And as we said before, that means you and me. Don't rely on your Lutheran heritage, like some high-school trophy sitting on shelf gathering dust. That doesn't make you free. Don't rely on the fact that you got confirmed or have a Bible at home. That doesn't make you free. Don't figure that since your a member in this church you have your own ticket to freedom. And don't think that since you're not as bad as some of the people out there that you're free from sin. For if you think you have set yourself free, then you cannot, you cannot have the freedom Jesus brings.

3. What must we confess about our own power and ability?
Rather like Martin Luther stand convicted that you cannot free yourself. Martin Luther tried what a thousand years of church tradition had evolved as a way to free yourself. He became a monk and then a priest. He prayed hard, studied hard, worked hard, even afflicting his own body. Yet the harder he worked, the more he hated God for demanding so much. The harder he worked, the more the thought of death and standing before an angry judge terrified him. The harder he worked, the more he felt the chains of sin biting into his soul, holding him fast in slavery, just like a choke chain bites deeper the harder a dog pulls against it.

"Fast bound in Satan's chains I lay;
Death brooded darkly o'er me.
Sin was my torment night and day;
In sin my mother bore me.
Yet deep and deeper still I fell;
Life had become a living hell,
So firmly sin possessed me."


That, too, is your confession and mine. Examine your heart against God's Ten Commandments. Have you always loved him more that you've loved your friends, your children, and your pleasures? Have you always placed his Word and command first? Have you always trusted in him, refusing to worry or complain? Has love for others filled you so much that there is no trace of selfishness, conceit, lust, bitterness, or envy in you? No, you and I are sinners who cannot free ourselves. The record of our own thoughts, feelings, words, and actions testify against us. Why add to that record by robbing God and claiming some credit for freeing ourselves?

But if freedom could not come to Martin Luther from his own works or from following church rules, how could he be freed? How could you or I be freed? Jesus gives the answer,

John 8:31, 32, 36:

"If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free . . . If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."

Martin Luther knew how important God's Word of truth is. That's why he translated the Bible into the language of the people. That's why he himself kept studying that word no matter how learned others thought he was. That's why he preached and taught throughout his life. That's why he wrote the Catechism as a summary of the truths that God's Word teaches, so that every family could learn it in their own homes."

[Sidebar: (Wikipedia) Luther's Small Catechism (Der Kleine Katechismus) was written by Martin Luther and published in 1529 for the training of children. Luther's Small Catechism reviews the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, the Office of the Keys and Confession and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is included in the Book of Concord as an authoritative statement of what Lutherans believe. The Small Catechism is widely used today in Lutheran churches as part of youth education and Confirmation.]

"Stay in the Word as a true disciple so that you do not lose your freedom.
So we've seen what sets us free from slavery to sin. The truth. We've seen where to find the truth. God's Word, the Bible. We've seen what to do with the truth of God's Word. Stay and remain in it. But what is this truth that sets us free, this truth that God's Word reveals, this truth that we want to remain in? What is it?

3) What is the truth that God's Word reveals to set you free?
Consider Jesus last words in the text,

John 8:36:

"If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

The truth that sets you free is the truth that points you to the Son, Jesus Christ, our God and Savior.

And what do you see as the truth opens your eyes and the light of Jesus shines in? We see that Jesus is God the Son who came from the Father to rescue us, to deliver us, to set us free from slavery to sin. Jesus had been telling the crowd this. That's why some believed in him. He had told them,

John 8:23-24 :

"You are from below; I am from above.
You are of this world; I am not of this world.
I told you that you would die in your sins;
if you do not believe that I am he,
you will indeed die in your sins."

He came from above, from the Father, for he is God the Son who the Father sent to set us free from death and slavery to sin.

Jesus pointed the crowd to his coming death on the cross as he told them,

John 8:28:

"When you have lifted up the Son of Man,
then you will know that I am He." 

Jesus is that sacrifice of atonement as the Apostle Paul teaches.
Only his holy blood, the blood of God, could redeem and ransom us. Only his bloody sacrifice and death could turn God's anger away from us and make us at one with God by the forgiveness purchased with Jesus' precious blood. That's the truth the sets you free.

For just as surely as the crucified Jesus came back to life, so surely has our God freely justified you. For Jesus' resurrection declares that God has counted Jesus' righteousness, his perfectly right life, on your record. Therefore, God the just judge gives the verdict that you have been acquitted based on the record of Jesus' righteousness. This is the righteousness that comes from God. This is the righteousness that is apart from the law and all that we do. This is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that the truth reveals through God's Word to set you free.

Jesus has broken your chains. Jesus has set you free. Sin can no longer condemn you who believe. This is the truth the Holy Spirit led Martin Luther to see in Scripture and to believe and teach it. Listen again to what the Apostle Paul wrote,

Romans 3:21-25:

"21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;"

That's the truth that set Martin Luther free -- set him from slavery to sin, free from the terror of death. That's the truth that sets you free. Cherish it. Remain in it. Shout out: Free at last! Free at last! Thank Jesus Christ, I'm free at last!"

Now this sermon, for all its virtues, begins with a somewhat narrow-minded generalization--the sweeping blanket statement:

"Now we could call both men freedom fighters. But they fought for very different kinds of freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for the kind of freedom we call civil rights.

Martin Luther, on the other hand . . . was concerned about a far worse slavery. For you see, physical slavery, even the worst kind filled with abuse and beatings, physical slavery ends at death, but not the slavery that troubled Martin Luther. Rather than freeing a person from this slavery, death brought a whole new level of pain and torture, namely hell."

It is an obvious point: Martin Luther spoke and wrote about spiritual freedom, Dr. King spoke and wrote about political freedom. But I think, in Pastor Bitter's breezy analysis, he is forgetting a couple of things:

1. on the one hand, Martin Luther King Jr., as a devout Christian, never lost sight of the spiritual motivation behind the simple RIGHTNESS of racial equality--he was always conscious that it was the inherited prejudices of the White South in 1965, just like the inherited prejudices of the Jews in AD 33, that were the cause of so much perverted, wrong action; thus, his political campaign was directed at obtaining freedom for his people by ending the wrong actions of the white aggressors;

2. on the other hand, Pastor Bitter seems also to have forgotten the 95 Theses Luther nailed to the door of the church in 1517, that brought about one of the most profound social changes in the history of Europe, if not the world; the Reformation had deep, deep social repercussions, it cost many, many lives, (at least as many as the war for civil rights), and brought about far-reaching consequences that had a direct impact on, for instance, the history of the United States. I'm going out on a limb here, but you might even say that the social revolution brought about by Martin Luther had a direct bearing on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.!

So, to say that Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. fought for different kinds of freedom, is an oversimplification at best, and a lying, prejudicial distortion of the truth at worst. Freedom from the slavery of sin MUST encompass both inner and outer manifestations of spiritual bondage. Perhaps the distinction can be made that spiritual freedom is a personal freedom that just touches the subjective reality of the individual; but remember what we said last week:

"Truth separates you from the crowd; giving up your preconceptions leaves you without props. Truth is not silent, nor is it passive; even if we try to keep truth a secret, it shows on our faces, and betrays us to men. This is why Jesus could not have escaped the cross even if He had wanted to: the truth excites the vengeance of people who are committed to their own private or group lies, and they WILL revenge themselves on those who threaten the comfort of those lies. Jesus threatened the Pharisees' complacent self-righteousness--it was a fated conflict written in the stars; and the outcome was pre-ordained."

Dedication to the truth sets you apart, and often sets you in opposition to flagrant violations of right action. Consider all the martyrs who died for a truth that was invisible or perniciously threatening to some parochial group of self-deceivers. As I said above:
People like Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. have a habit of getting in the way of hysterically gyrating madmen; there are hardly ever enough of the good guys to divert the current. Not at first, anyway. This is why we have sacrifice--this is why we NEED sacrifice.

The following is a excerpt from sermon by Pope John Paul II on the ethics of freedom:

Life in the Spirit Based on True Freedom

Continuing his weekly catechesis, the Holy Father addressed the following message to the numerous pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Hall.
1. St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Galatians:

Gal 5:13-14:

"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" 

We have already dwelled on this enunciation. However, we are taking it up again today, in connection with the main argument of our reflections.
Although the passage quoted refers above all to the subject of justification, here, however, the Apostle aims explicitly at driving home the ethical dimension of the "body-Spirit" opposition, that is, the opposition between life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit. Here he touches the essential point, revealing the anthropological roots of the Gospel ethos. If the whole law (the moral law of the Old Testament) is fulfilled in the commandment of charity, the dimension of the new Gospel ethos is nothing but an appeal to human freedom. It is an appeal to its fuller implementation and, in a way, to fuller "utilization" of the potential of the human spirit.

Freedom linked with command to love
2. It might seem that Paul was only contrasting freedom with the law and the law with freedom. However, a deeper analysis of the text shows that in Galatians St. Paul emphasizes above all the ethical subordination of freedom to that element in which the whole law is fulfilled, that is, to love, which is the content of the greatest commandment of the Gospel. "Christ set us free in order that we might remain free," precisely in the sense that he manifested to us the ethical (and theological) subordination of freedom to charity, and that he linked freedom with the commandment of love. To understand the vocation to freedom in this way ("You were called to freedom, brethren": Gal 5:13), means giving a form to the ethos in which life "according to the Spirit" is realized. The danger of wrongly understanding freedom also exists. Paul clearly points this out, writing in the same context: "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another" (ibid.).

Bad use of freedom
3. In other words: Paul warns us of the possibility of making a bad use of freedom. Such a use is in opposition to the liberation of the human spirit carried out by Christ and contradicts that freedom with which "Christ set us free." Christ realized and manifested the freedom that finds its fullness in charity, the freedom thanks to which we are servants of one another.

In other words, that freedom becomes a source of new works and life according to the Spirit. The antithesis and, in a way, the negation of this use of freedom takes place when it becomes a pretext to live according to the flesh. Freedom then becomes a source of works and of life according to the flesh. It stops being the true freedom for which "Christ set us free," and becomes "an opportunity for the flesh," a source (or instrument) of a specific yoke on the part of pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. Anyone who lives in this way according to the flesh, that is, submits—although in a way that is not quite conscious, but nevertheless actual—to the three forms of lust, especially to the lust of the flesh, ceases to be capable of that freedom for which "Christ set us free." He also ceases to be suitable for the real gift of himself, which is the fruit and expression of this freedom."

I find this whole piece to be very, very deep, especially the part about:

"Christ set us free in order that we might remain free," precisely in the sense that he manifested to us the ethical (and theological) subordination of freedom to charity, and that he linked freedom with the commandment of love."

As we have seen repeatedly, our practical theology manifests in relative levels of hierarchy, just like everything else in the implicate order of the universe; thus, it is no surprise to see the words: "subordination of freedom to charity". The sense, here, is not that charity is more important than freedom, but merely that CHARITY MUST COME FIRST, just as faith precedes belief, and belief precedes understanding. Just as the Father precedes the Son. But let us remember that all these spiritual precedents lead to a final thing: right action; let us, in imitation of the Christ, perform what is right, as dictated by the communications of Jesus from the heart of God to our own hearts. Let us see, once again, that our whole argument revolves around the pivotal point of Jesus, who sets us free through His mediation between our puny human minds and the mighty Word of the Father. Let us find our true freedom in that.

Let us pray: Jesus let Your Word be our sword and shield. Let us be slow to attack what we don't understand, and let us be quick to uphold the truth that flows from Your mouth to ours. Though we be punished by the wicked and accused by Satan's lies, let us exult in the truth, and cherish the freedom of right action, in an ecstatic eternal moment, even though the blows of evil men may strike us down in the next. Amen

22 And the Truth Shall Make You Free-1

Sunday, September 16, 2012

22 And the Truth Shall Make You Free-1

John 8:31-32

"31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

We have extravagantly bandied about the word truth in these past many sermons. We have pondered what it is, how to say, and it how to feel it.  We have concluded that the DOING of the truth reveals the truth to us.

In the words of St. Augustine we have learned:

"All men indeed perceive that “shall know” is the same thing as “shall understand:” but that the saying, “If any man be willing to do His will,” refers to believing, all do not perceive; to perceive this more accurately, we need the Lord Himself for expounder, to show us whether the doing of the Father's will does in reality refer to believing. . . . . ."

We have thus contemplated the moral imagination as the source of right action, and have concluded, from the above, that right action is the realization of, an outer articulation of, an inner image created in the heart by faith.

Robert Brault:

"Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was."  

Truth, experienced through faith, is an inarticulate feeling to be found only in the "cloud of unknowing". Its resonance is at a spiritual depth that cannot be fully appreciated by reason. So how does it make us free? In order to answer this question, we must first examine its parameters, beginning with some articulate estimation of the character of freedom.

It sounds easy at first: freedom is the ability to do anything we want, to get anything we want--well duh. Freedom is the absence of restriction--nothin' is stoppin' us from nothin', nosiree! But what do we really want? And how do we know what we really want? Many of us spend our lives chasing after goals which, when achieved, turn out to be less rewarding than what we thought they were going to be, or, worse, to be the OPPOSITE of what we thought they were going to be. In The Screwtape Letters, a new arrival in Hell plaintively admits, "I now see that in entire life I never did what I OUGHT or what I LIKED." Clearly, the truth of this man's deepest desires was unknown to him until it was too late.

Perhaps it is truth, our own personal truth that allows us to really know what we want, and thus it is that the mere knowing empowers us to get it--what we want. But the question of what we want bears directly on the question of our relationship to the Son, and through Him to the Father. Do our puny little human brains ever truly know what we want, or are we led, hypnotized, from one glittering bauble to another, always tempted by the illusions of materiality, always fooled by the false truths of the world? Is freedom the realization of a dream, or is the dream one more articulate idea that, like light  reflected on the surface of a puddle, makes it appear deeper than it really is?

Perhaps freedom is like identity and will--the more we surrender, the more we find our true selves. This is the principle that C. S. Lewis propounds over and over again: that the giving over of our personal will to the will of the Father, rather than diminishing us, simply makes us more and more our true individual, anomalous selves. God, as a "super-personalized Personality" subsumes us all under a single implicate (enfolded) umbrella. And thus, we find our true personal freedom in doing the Father's will. Do-be-do-be-do; identity and action are so intimately linked--who we are is what we do. And what our true identity is, is a single link in a long, hierarchical chain of  identities leading to the identity of the Father. Doing His will is doing our own will if we only knew it. It is the truth of this that makes us free.

CS Lewis:

"Hell is full of people who said "My will be done". Heaven is full of people who said "Thy will be done."

"Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither."

Thus freedom is attained through right action--and DOING what is right is only possible when our individual will conforms to the will of the Father--a Will made plain to us through the moral imagination.

Isaiah 45:19:

"I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, `Seek me in chaos.' I the LORD speak the truth, I declare what is right."

The expression "What is right," implies action; thus, to "declare what is right" is to DO what is right. Infinite freedom of action is bestowed on the soul who experiences the infinity of spirit.

Now the concept of "infinite possibilities" may be overwhelming to man's fumbling, squamous mind, but the Son, being a finite focus of the infinite Father, has no trouble choosing one action over another, because that is what the Son is all about--finite manifestation of infinity in the flesh. as we read in That Hideous Strength:

"To those high creatures whose activity build what we call Nature, nothing is "natural." From their stations the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs, with the willful beauty of a jest or a tune, from that miraculous moment of self-limitation wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of Himself the positive elected invention."

Thus, the infinite made manifest in the finite is the essence of right action. As Ramana Maharshi says:

"There is no Truth.  There is only the truth within each moment."

  
"There is no truth", meaning that truth, like a photon, cannot be pinned down to a single moment of time, but is always evolving through a kaleidoscopic continuum of "elected inventions," always choosing, yet never chosen.

To continue this hit parade of "truth definitions" John 14:6 says:

"Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me."

[Sidebar: When I was first converting to Christianity, I got a terrific insight into this text from a doctoral thesis written a long time ago by a friend of mine in California--the insight has to do with the dual nature of Jesus as human and divine. My friend made the comment that the divine personality of the Son of God was a finite focus of the infinite God personality; he said that when Jesus speaks of Himself as the Son of God, as the ONLY way, truth, and life, it is not Jesus the man speaking, but the spirit of God, the I AM Presence, speaking THROUGH Jesus. Thus the Messiah is not necessarily a human God, but a merely man POSSESSED by the spirit of God. This argument made a lot of sense to me back then, when I was still quibbling about the impossibility of all those little miracles in the Bible--when I was still unaccepting of many of the basic tenets of Christian theology, like the virgin birth, Lazarus rising from the dead, and everlasting life.

Now, of course, these miracles are not in the least troubling to me, and I can still live with them or without them--I find  there to be no difference between the mythological truth and the actual truth. The mind-boggling idea of the infinite focussed in space and time cannot be understood, but only experienced through faith in the cloud of unknowing. The agnostic may well question the divinity of Jesus, a man who appears to emerge at an arbitrary moment in time; but if we consider that, "In the beginning was the Word", and that the term I AM is the name of God that Moses learned way back in:

Exodus 3:14:

"God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, `I AM has sent me to you.'"

it is a lot easier to accept the concept that the Messiah has ALWAYS existed, and that His choice to manifest in human focus, at one time rather than another, does compromise the basic mystery of the event, nor its power to open the gates of heaven.]

Psalm 45:8:

"The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth."

John 1: 14 :

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father."

Recall the sermon by St. Augustine we read recently:

"Therefore, to speak briefly, beloved, it seems to me that the Lord Jesus Christ said, “My doctrine is not mine,” meaning the same thing as if He said, “I am not from myself.” For although we say and believe that the Son is equal to the Father, and that there is not any diversity of nature and substance in them, that there has not intervened any interval of time between Him that begets and Him that is begotten, nevertheless we say these things, while keeping and guarding this, that the one is the Father, the other the Son.

But Father He is not if He have not a Son, and Son He is not if He have not a Father: but yet the Son is God from the Father; and the Father is God, but not from the Son. The Father of the Son, not God from the Son: but the other is Son of the Father, and God from the Father. For the Lord Christ is called Light from Light. The Light then which is not from Light, and the equal Light which is not from Light, are together one Light not two Lights."

Remember that the truth of the Son is the truth of the Father; therefore, the mediation of our prayers by Jesus Christ is the surest way to obtain wise counsel when difficult choices of right actions are to be made.

John 1:17:

"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Between grace and truth there is a subtle but deep connection--just as truth originates in the cloud of unknowing, manifesting as faith, so grace is a mystery--a flow of nonjudgmental love spilling into us not from the mind of God, but from the heart of God.

The next few scriptures bear on the quality of truth and warn us that Satan may tempt us with false truths all the time. From this pulpit I have constantly cautioned us against using verbal structures as the basis for right action. Words are never more than pretty lies, and all lies originate in Hell.

John 8:44:

"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

1 John 1: 6:

"If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth;"

1 John 1:8:

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

We heard this C. S. Lewis quote recently, as well:

 "For there are two things inside me...they are the animal self and the diabolical self; and the diabolical self is the worst of the two. That is why a cold self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute."

Let us beware our own devil who delights in lies--lies that offer all the glamor of a glimmering, hypnotic appearance, lovely and fetching in all ways except for the fact that they won't hold up under the scrutiny of infinity. Another of my favorite sayings of Jesus, on this subject is the following from Mathew:

Matthew 11:16-17

16 But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows,
17 And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.

I love this passage because the image of kids sitting around PRETENDING is so funny! It's too bad that people who base their actions and attitudes on make-believe can do so much damage.

W. Somerset Maugham:

"Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage.  He lives... by make-believe." 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

"We do not err because truth is difficult to see.  It is visible at a glance.  We err because this is more comfortable." 

Simone de Beauvoir:

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.  Take which you please - you can never have both."

Neale Donald Walsch:

"There is no truth except the truth that exists within you.  Everything else is what someone is telling you."


William James:


"The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths."  

We must concern ourselves, as much as possible with our own personal truth, expressed in out own personal language, and avoid coming to any verbal conclusions about anybody else. We must look into the cloud of unknowing with minds uncluttered with verbalizations about the world, and allow the light of heaven to spill into our hearts. Only when the light in our hearts shines through our mouths will we speak the truth, and know the truth, and share that truth with others.
  

John 16:13:

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come."

The Son sees the future, and, by leading us in right action, He sets up a chain of causality that affirms spirit manifesting through faith. Thus truth is prophetic. Right action is like hope: it not only brings spirit into the present by enlightening the eternal now with heavenly energy, it affirms the promised future descent of spirit into mundane reality by virtue of the essential nature of karmic causality; I mean: right action is motivated by the moral imagination which is unbounded by time, but right action still generates repercussions which spread out like waves through time endowing past, present, AND future with the radiance of truth manifested in the step-by-step progression from one plane of spiritual hierarchy to the next; I mean: every right action leads to another right action, and another, and another blending all the dimensions of time into a single implicate (enfolded) order.

The next collection of quotations deal with truth in nature. The manifestation of God may be felt permeating the essence of all His created works.


Martin H. Fischer:

"Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature." 

Charles Lamb:

"Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford... but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her."

Robinson Jeffers:

"Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it:  consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth."


Werner Heisenberg, from Physics and Philosophy:


"It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth."

 Remember the Englishman, ‪Anselm of Canterbury‬ whose so-called "ontological proof of the existence of God", (proof of the existence of God based on WHAT IS), relies on reason, but not language-based reason, but rather, faith-based reason:

"Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand."

From Wikipedia:

"Anselm held that faith precedes reason, but that reason can expand upon faith. The groundwork of Anselm's theory of knowledge is contained in the tract De Veritate, where he affirms the existence of an absolute truth in which all other truth participates. This absolute truth, he argues, is God, who is the ultimate ground or principle both of things and of thought. The notion of God becomes the foreground of Anselm's theory, so it is necessary first to make God clear to reason and be demonstrated to have real existence."

Clearly, there can be no more "real existence" to the human mind than existence in nature, and yet to speak of "real existence in the human mind" reminds us not of nature, but of the many logical quandaries of Kant who was never satisfied with the evidence of his senses, but who put many filters between his sense experience and his inner psychological experience. As we have seen, in the authors quoted above, ontological materialism does not cancel out a sense of spiritual wonder at creation, this sense of wonder that cannot be contained by any science. 

The next group of quotes concern themselves with the effects truth may have on us when seen by the world. Truth separates you from the crowd; giving up your preconceptions leaves you without props. Truth is not silent, nor is it passive; even if we try to keep truth a secret, it shows on our faces, and betrays us to men. This is why Jesus could not have escaped the cross even if He had wanted to: the truth excites the vengeance of people who are committed to their own private or group lies, and they WILL revenge themselves on those who threaten the comfort of those lies. Jesus threatened the Pharisees' complacent self-righteousness--it was a fated conflict written in the stars; and the outcome was pre-ordained.

Arthur Schopenhauer:

"Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.  In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident."  


Galatians 4: 16:

"Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?"


Shoseki:

"Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas."  


Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"Truth is the breath of life to human society.  It is the food of the immortal spirit.  Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid."

James A. Garfield

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." 

Aldous Huxley:


"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad." 


Many years ago I wrote this little parable for a completely different purpose than the one for which I am using it here; it was about muscular tension in violin playing. Nevertheless, the idea of walking with an unnecessary cane my apply to the mind as well as to the muscle:

 The Land Where Everybody Walked with a Cane

     Once upon a time, in a far country high up in the faraway mountains, there was a land where everybody walked with a cane.  The reason they walked with a cane is unclear: maybe there was an old grandfather in their distant past whom they imitated out of respect, or perhaps it had started out as a disguise against foreign invaders.  Anyway, for centuries, in this isolated country the people had all walked with canes.   The little toddlers had their baby canes,  then they graduated to their kindergarten canes, their middle school, high school, and college canes, and then their walking-down-the-aisle- to-get-married canes. They never thought about it because this is how they had always done it, and life went on with everybody hobbling around leaning on a stick.
     One day an explorer appeared on the horizon, lost in the mountains, and strode down into their little world on two feet.  They took him in, fed him, befriended him, and tried to give him a cane since they noticed he didn't have one. He told them,  "Thank you very much, I don't need a cane, and by the way why are you all leaning on them?"
     They didn't quite know what to say, since no one had ever asked this question before. "Well, uh, gee, we, uh, always walk with our canes, we can't walk without our canes, if God had meant us to walk without canes He would have given us three legs, we can't walk without our canes, WE CAN'T WALK WITHOUT OUT CANES!"
     Well, this explorer wasn't buying it: so one night while they were all asleep, he crept into everybody's room, grinch-like, and stole all their canes.  When they woke up in the morning, they had to crawl out of bed and struggle to the street on wobbly legs to discover the meaning of this catastrophe. There in the square stood the explorer standing before a great bonfire, where a great pile of canes was cheerfully crackling up in smoke.  The people were enraged, they were hysterical, they were petrified. 
    But as they approached the fire to try to save some of their equipment, somebody noticed, "Hey, we're walking!" "Hey, we're walking without our canes!" From a wobbly perspective they looked around and saw each other for the first time standing upright on two legs with both hands free.  It took a moment, but in almost no time all they were dancing, and prancing, and striding about the square on unencumbered happy feet, free at last!

This is how the truth makes you free--by liberating you from the shackles you think you need.

Now the act of giving up your cane is not a trivial one--it can hurt like nothing your imagination can possibly prepare you for; but sometimes throwing off your self-administered shackles, like tearing the scab off an old wound, is the only path to freedom. Lean on Jesus and you will get some support, but, as C. S. Lewis says in The Screwtape Letters, you must ultimately do it on you own:

"Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."

To me, it is not a question worth asking, "Does truth really make us free?" Rather we should cherish the choices we have made dictated by faith. We must accept the freedom of the cross to which we have been pre-ordained, and plunge into the glory of the narrow path of infinite freedom.

The benediction today is by Rabindranath Tagore. Let us pray:

"Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.
You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.
I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.
Take, oh take–has now become my cry.
Shatter all from this beggar’s bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence."Amen.