Hebrew Scripture for Sunday 16 October 2022

 Jeremiah 31:27-34        The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say:

"The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge."

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt-- a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Reflection       The prophet Jeremiah gives voice to one of my favorite scriptures. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”  What more could a woman (or man) possibly want? This all inclusive, unconditional promise is everything we humans need ; God’s law, God’s wisdom written on our hearts. What more could we possibly want?

Of course we have to ask ourselves,  if God’s law is written on our hearts, “Why do we keep tripping all over our selves and one another, aligning our will with everything but God? Why do we have so much difficulty mercifully navigating life?”

I believe the answer is simple and demanding. Instead of putting our heads in our hearts,  listening to and acting on God’s will and wisdom, we are captivated by whirlwinds of words and destructive distractions shrewdly scheming for our attention. Every day we are assaulted by our country’s ceaseless litigation over matters of law, alarming news cycles, inflammatory humor and profane politics all crafted by humans in alignment with their partisan will and ploys for power. In the midst of our dis-ordered distractions the question we keep forgetting to ask is,“What is the will or the wisdom of God?” 

According to the Hebrew Scriptures our first human attempt to record the will or wisdom of God is scratched in stone as the Decalogue, the Ten Laws given through Moses to our ancestors. (Exodus 20.2-17) But as the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, our ancestors broke the laws (which of course none of us have) and so, speaking on behalf of God Jeremiah makes a new covenant with the people of God. “I will put my law within (the people), and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

This marks an incredibly important moment in which the source of authority is reimagined. Whereas Divine Law was once understood as being external or outside of humanity, the purview of a distant transcendent  God, now we recognize it as being sourced inside our selves. Jeremiah explains, “No longer shall (the people) teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest…”  We are all meant to know God from the inside out because the will and the wisdom of God is written on each of our hearts.

New Covenant

As early as the third century Christian hermits living in the desert understood the heart to be an organ of perceptivity, the site of engagement with Divine Wisdom. The well respected theologian, Episcopal priest and teacher of non-dual consciousness, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “According to the great Christian, Jewish and Islamic wisdom traditions, the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception.” (The Heart of Centering Prayer, p54) 

When we turn our minds to read the law written on our hearts we penetrate the surface of things to access Divine wisdom and every single one of us has direct access to it.

Human access to Divine Wisdom is always available. But, driven my profit and power motives, religious and political institutions have appropriated and buried Divine Wisdom beneath doctrine and partisan politics. Still, Divine Wisdom is accessible to all us all of the time. Borrowing language from early Eastern Orthodox spiritual writings  Bourgeault counsels, “Put the mind in the heart…. Put the mind in the heart…. Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.”(p53) 

When we consciously and conscientiously endeavor to “put the mind (or head) in the heart” to actually direct our attention to experience our hearts beating, we begin to break through the constructed boundaries and barriers that prevent us from accessing wisdom. When we regularly take time to pause and plant our heads in our hearts we make ourselves available to experience Divine Wisdom. In Jeremiah’s words, “To know the Lord.” 

Every day we wake up to a world bombarding us with breaking news and boundless disaster. Our affections are disordered, our wills weakened and our patience worn thin. Rather than looking for the latest shout out telling us what we ‘need to know’ about the stock market, coronavirus, midterm elections, atrocities of war, conspiracy theories, rumors of disaster, whatever sound byte pokes our emotional buttons and puts cash in the pockets of a few, it is time to break through the noise that bars us from directly experiencing the promise Jeremiah made to humanity twenty six hundred years ago. It is time to commit to putting our heads in our hearts.

 “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, (in other words, no longer will we give priority to laws contrived by humans and our institutions…) for (we) shall all know (God), from the least of (us) to the greatest…”  We will all know God in the wisdom written on our hearts.

This all inclusive, unconditional promise is everything we humans need to live and thrive in peace.  God’s law is written on our hearts. Which is why we must turn away from media and marketing meant to deceive, distract and divide us. Here is a secret the media and our institutions do not want you to know. Whenever you experience yourself swept into a maelstorm of thoughts infused with fear, anger and judgment you can be sure your head is not in your heart and you are not accessing the will and the wisdom of God.

In the run up to midterm elections, emotions are high, tempers are hot and the need for us to resist the wily ways of pundits and politicians could not be greater.  If ever we needed to keep our heads in our hearts, now is the time because God’s will is written on each one of our hearts. The way we know that our will is aligned in the will of God is by the quality of our thoughts, words and actions. When our thoughts, words and actions are brimming with mercy and breathing in peace, we can be assured, our heads are in our hearts and our will is aligned in the will of God. 

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Prayer & Hebrew Testament Text for Sunday 21 March 2021

Prayer Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus the Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Reflection        Speaking on behalf of God the prophet Jeremiah declares, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  This all inclusive, unconditional promise is everything we humans need.  God’s law is written on our hearts. Which is why “God alone brings into order (our) unruly wills and affections…” God alone brings peace and joy into “the swift and varied changes of the world.”

With God’s law written on our hearts why do we have so much difficulty navigating the swift and varied changes of the world?

I believe instead of listening to and acting on our heart inscribed wisdom we are distracted by arguments over the interpretation of laws that are cleverly crafted by humans aligned with their self interest rather than the will of God. Which brings us to the question, “What is the will or the law of God?” 

Not only is it spelled out in the Decalogue given to Moses on Mount Sinai, if we are distracted by arguments over the precise application of the Ten Commandments we can find the heart of the law in Jesus’ response to the scribe who asks him, “What is the most important commandment?” Jesus answers, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mark 12.28-34)

These words are so familiar, surely they are written on our hearts. Still we flounder. How are we to love God ‘with all our heart?’ And what does ‘heart’ mean anyway?  It must be more than a bloody pump delivering oxygen on behalf of the lungs to keep our cheeks rosy. It must be more than emotions delivered on lace trimmed Valentines. 

As early as the third century Christian hermits living in the desert understood the heart to be an organ of perceptivity, the site of engagement with Divine Wisdom. The well respected theologian, Episcopal priest and teacher of nondual Christianity, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “According to the great Christian, Jewish and Islamic wisdom traditions, the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception.” (The Heart of Centering Prayer, p54) 

When we turn our minds to read the law written on our hearts we see beneath the surface of things to a deeper reality. Divine wisdom is written on our hearts and every single one of us has direct access to it. Here is the thing. Human access to Divine Wisdom has always been available. But, it has been covered up by religious institution and buried beneath doctrine. Borrowing language from early Eastern Orthodox spiritual writings  Bourgeault counsels us, “Put the mind in the heart…. Put the mind in the heart…. Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.”(p53)

If you are rolling your eyes and thinking, “That is great for ancient hermits and really religious folks, but what does this have to do with me?” the answer is, “Everything.”  Everything that has ever been missing, everything you have ever truly desired is written on your heart.”God’s law is written on our hearts and God alone can bring order to our wily wills and swiftly changing lives.  All we have to do is stop and literally put our attention on our hearts ‘where true joy is found.’ 

When we consciously and conscientiously endeavor to “put the mind in the heart” we begin to break through the boundaries and barriers that prevent us from accessing the Wisdom written on our hearts. When we regularly take time to pause and deliberately fix our minds in our hearts we make ourselves available to experience Divine Wisdom. In Jeremiah’s words, “To know the Lord.” 

We have spent a year bombarded by the ‘swift and varied changes of the world.’ Our affections have been disordered, our wills weakened and our patience worn out. Rather than looking for the latest shout out telling us what we ‘need to know’ about coronavirus, the stock market, the moral degradation of leaders, whatever news stirs up emotion and puts cash in the pockets of a few, it is time to put our minds in our hearts, to break through the noise that bars us from directly experiencing the promise Jeremiah made to humanity on behalf of God twenty six hundred years ago, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, (in other words, no longer are we to give priority to rules contrived by humans and the emotional pandering of ceaseless news cycles)… for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…” 

Listen to Cynthia Bourgeault elaborate on “Radiant Intimacy of the Heart” by clicking on the image at the upper right corner of this post. 

Art by Alex Grey

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Gospel text for Sunday 11 February 2018

Mark 9:2-9        Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Reflection       When Peter witnesses the dazzling Presence of the Spirit of God and the prophets Moses and Elijah with Jesus, Peter wants to keep the Spirit with him and so suggests “let us make three dwellings.”  Here is the thing, along with countless theologians I have preached a fair few sermons chastising Peter for trying to cling to Jesus and the dead prophets by securing them in dwelling places. I have berated Peter’s notion of making an earthy dwelling for the Spirit of God as if the spiritualization of matter was not a good thing.

Here is another perspective. The Episcopal priest, teacher of our Christian Wisdom tradition and author of numerous books on contemplative theology and practice, Cynthia Bourgeault puts it this way.  “If the heart is awake and clear, it can directly receive, radiate, and reflect the unmanifest divine Reality.”*  Sounds like we (matter) are intended to be a dwelling place for Spirit. 

When we choose to turn toward God, our lives are transfigured which basically means any barriers or false notions of separation between God and us melt away. The dark cloud of unconsciousness recedes as we wake up to the truth of our being, that like the exemplar Jesus, we are aflame in the Spirit of God with us. We are both human and divine.

In order to “be” all we are intended, we must receive our full inheritance and radiate Divine fire in the way we choose to live our lives. I believe when Peter protested, “Let us make three dwellings, one for (Jesus), one for Moses and one for Elijah,” he was expressing in concrete terms a deeper spiritual wisdom and longing to “receive, radiate and reflect the unmanifest divine Reality.”

Christian life is a both-and process; receiving and radiating the Spirit of God. When we consent to our full inheritance as both human and divine beings, (which means no more justifying our less than Divine behavior professing, “I am only human,”) we wake up, fully alive and cannot help but radiate the dazzling glory of God with us. 

* Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart (Jossey-Bass: 2003), 33-35.

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Hebrew Testament Text for Sunday 29 June 2014

Genesis 22:1-14         God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

Reflection       If God really is love, shouldn’t God be telling Abraham to wrap his precious son in cotton, put him in a closet so no harm would come to him? Why is the Bible full of so many ‘hard stories?’“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away…. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away…(Matt 5.30-31) Not to mention Jesus telling at least three people to sell everything they own and follow him. These are hard words. They are particularly ‘hard’ if we read them literally. 

How do we hear these hard stories?  As Cynthia Bourgeault points out, if we hear the stories literally with our small selves, with our ego selves, our immediate response is, “No way.” (Wisdom Jesus, 51) From the perspective of our small selves, we cling to what we have. We hold onto what is literally in our hands. There is no way we would agree to pluck out our right eye, chop off our right hand, sell all of our possessions or sacrifice our child. But the ‘hard teaching’ stories are not literal instructions intended to dictate external actions. 

These ‘hard teaching’ stories are about inner transformation. To ‘hear’ the deeper level of meaning intended by these legends we must learn to listen with our hearts. Listening with our hearts we realize we do not want to cling to anything that stands between us and God. Listening with our hearts we realize that whatever stands between us and God are our idols… our Isaacs.

When all reasonable hope of having a child was long gone (he was 100 years old after all) Abraham received the unspeakably precious gift of a son. Naturallly, Abraham loved Isaac. But he had to grow into the place where he could give back to God what was God’s in the first place. Abraham had to realize that all that he had was gift and to cling to anything, even and especially that which was most precious, would seperate him from God. And so in the legend, Abraham did what was unthinkable. He handed his child over to God. And God returned Isaac to Abraham, unscathed.

The question before us is, what are our Isaacs? What are our idols? Could our idol be our family? our partner? our career? our ministry? our money? There is nothing wrong with loving our family or our partner. There is nothing wrong with having a career, pursuing our vocation or earning money. There is nothing wrong with loving our eyes or hands or our child. AND - anything good can become an idol.  Which I believe is the point of the legend of Abraham and Isaac. What is your Isaac?

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