Village Congregational Church
Weekly Message
—Liza Neal
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Village Church
Perhaps you heard that the rapture, which is the sucking up into heaven of certain fundamentalist Christian believers, was supposed to come on May 21st, beginning a six month countdown to the end of the world, at least according to an 89 year old fundamentalist radio show host in Alameda, CA. Not surprisingly, at least for me, the rapture did not come and the world is apparently not ending this October. Good news for those of us who are looking forward to Halloween. Although the media does like to paint crazy extreme fundamentalists as the norm, this is not the belief of the majority of Christians across the theological spectrum.
July 31, 2011
Still people of many traditions, religious and non, do like to predict the end of the world.
I took a course in Divinity School on apocalyptic movements. We looked at world-wide religions like Judaism and Christianity, smaller more specific religions like various island peoples in the South Pacific, and political and scientific apocalypse predictors. My final project was focused on apocalyptic beliefs focused around aliens from the 1950s to today.
Often through various scenarios we imagine the world ending in a blaze of fire. Even our imagination of punishment after death is fire eternally ablaze. Fire fills our fantasies of destruction. Personally I do not believe in hell as eternal fire or even as a place of existence after death, but rather a reality that we can create here on earth every day at any time in any place when we choose evil, violence, injustice, and terror.
Truthfully, we could easily destroy the earth with our treatment of the environment or destroy our species beforehand. And just as truly, the destructive capacity of fire is not just a fantasy. "Fire departments in the United States responded to nearly 1.6 million fire calls in 2007. The United States fire problem, on a per capita basis, is one of the worst in the industrial world. Thousands of Americans die each year, tens of thousands of people are injured, and property losses reach billions of dollars." (National Fire Data Center) Fire is deadly and dangerous.
Yet in the story we heard this morning God is fire. The bush blazes but it is not consumed, and out of it God calls to Moses. Moses seems almost nonchalant in the telling. "Hey let's check this out. But I think he would have been terrified. Fire in the desert is incredibly vicious. It can burn for miles and miles leaving nothing but scorched earth. Still the Holy Spirit is often depicted as flames of fire. How is it that the Divine, the personification of all that is Good in the universe and beyond, would reveal Itself in fire?
Fire burns, and in that burning, it Is also creative, regenerative, and transformative. It is essential to the health of plants and animals. Periodic wildfires bum away undergrowth so that light and water can flow through. Misguided people have destroyed the ecosystems of certain areas by putting out all fires rather than engaging in controlled and regular burning. Within three days of a fire new plants begin growing. It actually helps replenish the soil. Fire provides us human animals cooked food and warmth that we might survive and thrive.
Fire speaks to an uncomfortable reality of the Nature of the Divine. Sometimes transformation involves burning away the old before new life can begin. Throughout the Bible it speaks of God refining us as silver and gold are refined. "The silversmith and the goldsmith start their work with impure silver and gold ore. Through the refining process they extract and mold the pure gold and silver by removing all of the impurities in the ore. This process involves fire and the close attention of the smith. The smith puts the ore in the fire to burn out some of the impurities, then takes it out and shapes it, then back in the fire. All the while keeping a close eye on this precious metal." (Linda Kruschke)
The metal is refined and made perfect. The bush reveals without being consumed. This fire is not an end in itself but leads to something, new and beautiful, more perfect and even more full of life. When Moses approaches the Holy Fire, God commands him to take off his shoes because he is standing on Holy Ground. God demands respect, and at the same time, engages Moses in the intimate connection of his very skin resting on the body of God.
Then God reveals God's self through relationship. I am the God Of Your Father, of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. I am not just a disembodied voice—here are some of the people I am connected to. Our society today tends to keep a certain distance asking first not whom we are connected to but rather what we do for a living or study in school. But those who come to know us best know us in relation to who are our friends, our family, our relationships. You can also know God by who God is connected to, through relationship. This is not something of course that you can take at face value. Not everyone who claims connection to the Divine is actually connected to the Divine. So tread lightly. Don't go by what you hear—When you are standing on holy ground, you will feel the heat on your very skin. You will find yourself on your knees.
Just a bit later in this passage in Exodus, Moses asks God to be more specific, to be even more intimate—to give him the Divine Name. If you read it in English, the name God gives is translated "I am who I am." But in reality, there are a number of ways to read this phrase. It could also be translated as "I am that is", "I am who I choose to be", "I am becoming who I am becoming", "I shall be what I shall be".
The Divine is many things at one time, The Divine moves, ever-changing. The Divine flickers both brilliantly present and enigmatically absent. The Divine burns in order to create. Speaking for myself, that is humbling, and terrifying. Yet the bush was not consumed, neither was the metal destroyed. No matter what, no matter how bad it is, you will not be left in ashes, even if for a time you taste them in your mouth and the world seems to have come to an end.
When you yourself burn, whether with passion or despair, there is the possibility for destruction or creation. You can be consumed but you do not have to be. Keep your eyes out for the impossible. Whatever you do, make sure the ground you are standing on is Holy. Then take off your shoes. Open yourself up to intimacy with the Divine and cling to the God who is known in Love.
Let us pray. -
"Angels, Demons, and the Breath of God"
Village Church
July 17, 2011
I am much more comfortable with the idea of real angels than I am of the idea of real demons. In the past, and still in some places and communities in the world, mental illness, sickness, and disabilities of all kinds were thought to be caused by demons. Ideally now we instead understand difference with appreciation, recognize the universality of illness, and seek wellness without blame. Outside of scary movies like The Exorcist, demons have pretty much lost their corporeal nature for our modern and postmodern minds.
We do still have the metaphorical demon. Now, just because something is a metaphor does not mean it is any less difficult to escape or devastating to face, or as Dumbledore says to Harry Potter, "Of course this is happening in your head. But that doesn't mean it's not real." Each one of us has things which plague us, which drag us down, which lead us into bad decisions and pain. Maybe it is telling yourself no matter what you do you are never good enough, maybe it is crippling self-doubt, maybe it is an inability to stop consuming, maybe it is using sex or food or drugs as comfort, maybe it is a tendency to push away those who love you best, or push yourself into exhaustion. We all struggle with something.
That's why we need angels. The word angel is an English form of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Malakh. It means messenger of God. In fact originally these messengers could be human. Other than cherubim and seraphim with their six wings and burning coals, there is no mention in the Bible of your average angel having wings. These angels, sometimes human and sometimes something else, come bringing messages from God. They come with warnings in order to protect, like the men who came to Sodom. They come with good news that transforms, like when Mary and Elizabeth became pregnant. They come to challenge us like the angel that wrestled with Jacob. They come bringing sustenance, physical and spiritual, like the angel in the story that we heard today who first feeds Elijah's body and then comforts his spirit, urging, motivating, and supporting him until he is no longer suicidal.
Other religions have many angelic beings, messengers of God, who fill similar roles. In Islam, it is the angel Gabriel who reveals the Quran to Mohammed who memorizes it since he cannot read. Other angels record good and bad deeds, bring nourishment, and of course, there is the angel of death who parts souls from their bodies. In Buddhism, angels are emanations of enlightened beings who rejoice and rain down flowers on good deeds—and harass those engaging in bad deeds. Neo-paganism looks to the old religions across the world all of which include some angelic figures such as the winged figures of the Sumerians, the Valkyries of the Norse, or the Faeiries of the Celts. Modern pop culture has run the gamut on our vision of angels from the hallmark-like guiding figures of Touched By an Angel to the violent Faeiries of True Blood who can ascend to angels the purer they get.
If we think of angels metaphorically then they are that which inspires, guides, transforms, protects, heals, challenges, or sustains. Maybe for us they are a person. My partner's angel is a homeless man with a station wagon stuffed full of God knows what, and I am pretty sure my partner is an angel, though she would disagree. Maybe it is music, maybe it is the rivers that run endlessly to the ocean, maybe it is that muse that pushes you into creating, maybe it is that friend who tells you the truth when you do not want to hear it, maybe it is that book you read that saved your life because it made you feel like you were not alone.
When I was a child I used to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons. Whenever Bugs Bunny was trying to make a decision a tiny haloed angel would appear on one shoulder and tiny red demon would appear on the other shoulder, and then they would whisper their arguments into Bugs' ears. As silly as that is, I can relate to that tug o' war of forces inside of me. There are those who believe we were born purely good and those who believe we were born purely bad. I tend to think we were born with the capacity for both, and the trouble is that most of the time there is no color coding. Angels and demons are not visible. The world is not haloes and horns, white robes and red robes. Mostly it is this murky swirl of colors and possibilities and ethical dilemmas. And we have to make our own way in figuring out how to live out our own higher natures.
Sometimes I am my best self, most of the time I am something of a muddle, and sometimes I am lost entirely. I want to be my best self but often I am not sure how to do it or I don't have the strength or the courage. There is too much distracting me, there is too much confusion, too much pulling at my time, my thoughts, my being. That is where the still small voice comes in.
Within each one of us there is a still small voice that will never lead us astray. This is not the voice of the angels that inspire or the demons that tempt, it is a deep inner voice, given to us by God, instilled within us with our breath. This is the voice that cuts through our confusion, the voice that cuts through our technology, that cuts through our fear and pain, that cuts through all that pulls us this way and that; this is the voice of discernment, the voice of clarity, the voice of strength, the voice of peace. But it is rarely the first voice we hear, or the second or third sometimes. It is still and small, so it can only be heard when there is silence. "Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence." That is where he found the Divine.
How do we move into that sheer silence when our lives are filled with so much noise? When I go to the ocean and the waves crash against the shore grinding cliffs into sand and seagulls cry hunger and freedom, I can find that silence. If I am out in the desert with the sky stretching endlessly above and the coyotes howling, I can find that silence. If I am out in the woods with the light streaming through green leaves and the dark dirt blanketing my footsteps, I can find that silence. When I dance with my whole body, I can find that silence. This is prayer, not speaking but paying attention, offering, and listening.
Mary Oliver writes, "It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." Let us pray. - Matthew 2:1-12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Recognizing Wisdom
January 2, 2011
Village Church
It is easy to mistake wisdom, to search for it in all the wrong places. Just look at the wise men. These men are deeply knowledgeable, learned in the latest math, science, and philosophy of the day, and deeply spiritual. They know so much that they have been able to come from faraway lands to the very place of the Messiah's birth. They know so much that "wise" is part of their title. And yet, who do they assume will know where the Messiah is born? The king. They assume that wisdom is held within the power structure of society. They assume that the powerful will know what is true and what is false. They assume the government will know what is to come.
The wise men assume not only that the king will know where the Messiah is to be born but also that he will care. They suspect nothing when Herod tells them he wants to worship the child as well, and had planned to go back to report Jesus' location.
They assume that the king will have the best interests of the people at his heart. They know that this new child has been created by God, come to bless and save the people, and so naturally the leader of the people will also be eager to greet him. They assume this even though Herod is in the midst of redecorating the temple to such a lavish extent that it is stripping the people financially, even though Herod is a tool of the Roman Empire. Of course they are strangers so they would not necessarily know these things. Still they seek wisdom in the place the world tells them it should be found—with the wealthy and powerful.
Herod also mistakes wisdom for power. When the wise men tell him that the king of the Jews has been born, he knows enough that it is the educated—the priests and scribes—who will know where the child should be. However, he does not understand that this child has come to be a spiritual leader. Herod immediately assumes a threat to his throne, and puts a plan in place to respond to that threat. First he tricks the supposedly wise men. Then, when they are warned not to return to Herod in a dream, he orders his soldiers to kill every child under two years old. He does not understand that Jesus' power is much more long term than any one government or earthly rule or lifetime. He does not understand that Jesus' power is revealed in weakness.
The Christmas story reveals that wisdom is not to be found in the places where we expect it. Wisdom is not to be found with the wealthy and powerful or those who are learned, who the world has deemed knowledgeable. Wisdom is to be found in the places where we least expect it. Wisdom is found in a woman with an illegitimate child. Wisdom is found in a man who works with his hands and takes on a responsibility that is not his own. Wisdom is found in a cave surrounded by animals and dirt. Wisdom is found amongst people with no education who spend most of their time alone wandering in the hills. Wisdom is found amongst the overlooked. Wisdom is found with the unimportant, the simple, the outsiders, the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the stranger, the sinful, and the outcast. Wisdom is found with those who are looked down upon, who have nothing to offer this world, who go unnoticed living lives of ordinary beauty.
Is that where we look for wisdom today in our world? Somehow I think not. Some of us are like the wise men—trying to follow the truth but still looking to the wealthy and powerful to interpret it for us. For some this is the government, for others it is corporations, the academy, celebrities, media, television, advertising, all those people and places and things to whom we look for indications of what is popular, what will make us happy, how we will be able to succeed, how we will be able to have money, to become ourselves wealthy and powerful, and therefore, wise.
Some of us are like Herod—seeing the wise as a threat to the status quo, or as a threat to our own position. We know that it is not the respected pundits who are wise but we go along with them anyway. To align ourselves with those who are actually wise would mean to go against popular ideas, to go against popular wisdom, to let the short term power go in favor of the long term truth, to stand and then to fall with the weak. And that is really really really hard. It sent Jesus to the cross after all.
Sometimes I wonder what Mary and Joseph did with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that the wise man brought. Those are wonderful gifts, fitting for a king. Not particularly useful for a family struggling to get by though. I wonder if they might not have preferred some goats or one of the camels, or for the wise men not to have come at all since it put their family in so much danger they had to flee to Egypt. Still they accept these mistakes with graciousness, and in doing so, they reveal God.
God accepts our mistakes with graciousness. God knows the good intentions of our gifts even when they are foolish and worldly. God forgives us when we seek wisdom in the wrong places. God sends us signs of true wisdom again and again to redirect us onto the right path. Dreams, stories, ordinary people living ordinary lives of wisdom, and prophets and saviors who live and die in the dirt alongside the weak and unimportant, alongside you and I. So let us look—not to the bright—let us look instead to the dirt.
Let us pray. Unexpected and Unlooked For
Village Church
December 24, 2010
Nothing is as it seems to be. When I hold up my hand and wave, we see skin and flesh, something solid and usual. And yet, this hand is not made up of anything solid at all but the flowing liquid of water and blood and chemicals, tiny organisms, individual cells in constant motion shifting and dividing, living and dying, and at the same time millions of infinitesimal molecules, atoms, elements zooming around in their orbit, with empty space in between exchanging space with the molecules of the air around this mysterious thing I call my hand. Granted, we cannot see these things because they are too tiny for us, they have to be magnified over and over again by ever more powerful tools to see. Yet they are there all the same.
Even when we do not need a magnifying lens to see what is in front of our face, we still see only what we expect to see. There is a very famous scientific experiment which illustrates this reality on you tube. A group of people are throwing basketballs to each other as they move about a circle. You are told to count how many passes the people wearing white shirts make.
Most people will count the number of passes fairly accurately, give or take a few. However, they will have completely missed the gorilla. Yes, you heard me correctly, I said the gorilla. While they are counting passes a person in a gorilla suit walks right out into the middle, beats its hands on its chest, and leaves. Most people never see the gorilla. Now that I've told you about it, you will probably be able to watch the video and see the gorilla- as most people can once they know and are therefore expecting to see it. Yet even then with the gorilla seen, other major changes happen in the video that go unnoticed because the viewers are not expecting them. I won't tell you what they are in case you want to look up this startling video.
The truth is we see only what we expect to see. Everything else we exclude from our perception as if it were never there. And then we base our beliefs about reality on what we see- as if our senses were full proof, as if our brains were not constantly making choices about what bits of the world to let our conscious mind in on. We are sure that we are right and others are wrong, that black is black and white is white, that our bodies are solid, and that there is not a giant gorilla beating its hand over its chest right in front of our eyes while we stand idly by engrossed in our own important tasks.
Joseph saw something he was not expecting to see. He planned to divorce Mary since she was pregnant and the baby was not his. Just in case we are feeling judgmental about Joseph's choice, the author tries to make sure we know Joseph is a good guy by telling us that even though he thinks Mary has betrayed him, he is going to divorce her quietly so as not to expose her to public disgrace. Presumably then, she would either have gone to a midwife for herbs to cause an abortion or got shipped off to distant relatives to give birth to the baby where no one would know about it. But then an angel comes in his dreams and he changes his mind. He stays married to Mary and commits to raise Jesus as his own.
Now two things strike me about this. The first thing that strikes me is that when an angel comes to Mary to tell her that she is pregnant she is wide awake. How come Mary can see the angel while she is awake and conscious, whereas Joseph has to be asleep to see the angel? Certainly neither of them was expecting an angel. But for some reason Mary was more open to it. Mary was more alert to seeing the unexpected in the midst of everyday life. Joseph had to have nothing else going on. His eyes closed. His body asleep. His consciousness submerged. Maybe the angel came to Joseph while he was awake and he never noticed it. Perhaps he went on about his tasks making his carpentry, planning his wedding, while a messenger of God stood before him waving its wings. Perhaps the angel finally realized that unless it came in Joseph's sleep, Joseph would be too distracted to ever see it.
I think most of us are more like Joseph than we are like Mary. We need to have our everyday life completely shut down before we can take notice of anything too unusual or unexpected. Even then, it is pretty easy for us to dismiss.
Which brings me to the second thing that strikes me. Joseph wakes up from his dream, and believes he has been visited by an angel of God. He does what the angel has told him, stays married to Mary, and raises Jesus as his son even though he is not his biological son. If it were you or I, we might have woken up and said- well, that was a weird dream, and went right on with our lives just as we had planned before. Joseph is a regular enough guy that he is not going to see an angel walking up to him on the street, even if it does. However, he is an unusual enough guy that he takes his dreams seriously. He may not be able to recognize the unexpected in his conscious life, but he recognizes its importance in his subconscious and he is willing to change his life because of it. Could you say the same?
When Joseph and Mary come to Bethlehem, there are thousands of others who have also poured into the city to be counted in the census. All of the inns are packed full. Yet it is only the shepherds- rough, illiterate, poor, smelling of sheep and desert- who see the angels, angels so full of power and light that they are terrifying. The shepherds were not that far out of town. That kind of light and noise would have carried, and yet the rest of the busy world continued on its way unknowingly. The shepherds were not looking for God, but they were open and they left everything to go and see. When they arrived, they might have just seen a newborn baby in a manger with a bunch of animals and parents too poor to even have a midwife with them, or they might have seen God.
There is more going on in the world, right in front of our faces, than we may ever allow ourselves to know. There is more going on inside of us than we may ever be willing to embrace simply because we do not expect it to be there. Still our subconscious takes it all in. Our subconscious sees the changes, the gorillas and the angels.
What our conscious mind sees depends not on what is there, but on what we believe. As the elf in the Santa Clause says, seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing. The question then is do we really want to see reality as it is, or is that too frightening? Would that require too much of us? Would we rather see things as we expect them to be, rather than how they truly are, or how God would have us see? And if we do want to see whatever is there however it changes, then how can we make our conscious mind ready and willing to expect the unexpected?
Whatever you imagine to be the truth about the world, whatever you imagine to be the truth about God- that is only what you expect. And therefore that is only a small part of what is actually here. There is an angel in this room beating its wings, and tonight God is coming into the world. Will you be able to see?
Let us pray.- Matthew 3:1-12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Presumption and the Unquenchable Fire
Village Church
December 5, 2010
John the Baptist did not mince words. He did not hold back. He was not afraid of how he would be received. He was an extreme man, living out in the desert with other men, spending all his time in either prayer or preaching, wearing camel's hair, and eating locusts and honey. He did not call others to live the same lifestyle. In fact we barely hear about his lifestyle in the Bible and most of what we do know about his particular sect of Judaism, the Essenes, comes from history. What he does do, though, is call people to reflection.
John is not out there looking to baptize people so he can gain followers. He is not looking to baptize people so that they can prove something. John wants people to reflect on themselves, to look deeply and honestly into whom they are and what they have done. He tells them to cast away any presumption they might have. Do not presume that you are good based on your status in society. Do not presume you are good based on what country you are from. Do not presume you are good based on who you are related to. Do not presume that you are good based on what race you are. Do not presume that you are good based on what religion you profess. John tells us that "God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." We might do well to consider this when we imagine that the fate of the world rests on the fate of the Christian Church.
Goodness, righteousness, is not based on identity or belief. It is based in actions. John shouts, "Bear fruit worthy of repentance!" If one has repented, then it should show up in one's actions. It is not enough to talk about living rightly. It is not enough to talk about compassion. It is not enough to talk about justice. If one has repented, if one has been baptized, if one has presented themselves before God as one in search of God's ways, as one of God's followers, then one's actions must demonstrate this.
There was a sign last year put out by an Atheist organization that read "Be good for goodness sake" Their point was that people should, and could, be good just because it's the right thing to do rather than out of fear of punishment. And I think that is true, not for all people, but for many. Still, doing the right thing, or even more importantly, living an ethical compassionate life, is—at least for myself—a 50/50 proposition. Sometimes I do not do the ethical thing. Sometimes I am filled with hate. Sometimes, I stand by and do nothing.
I am not a bad person. And neither are you. I am not a good person either. Jesus himself said, "Do not call me good. No one but God in heaven is good." I am a person, which means I am a mix. I do good things and bad things, beautiful things and terrible things. I grow and I change. I am wonderful and amazing precisely where I am as I am, and I can be better than I am now.
In the Christian Church, we get baptized once to demonstrate the fact that when God has washed away our sins, we are always clean. And this is true. God loves us always, at all times, no matter what, as we are. We are always God's children, and there is nothing we or anyone else can do to change that. And yet things happen in our lives- things we do and things that happen to us that muddy up our lives and our souls. We get lost and hurt, and we need to feel that cleansing again. In the time of John the Baptist, whenever that happened people would get baptized again. The Church instituted confession to take the place of this, but for me it does not hold the same rich symbolism and powerful ritual. Not to mention the Protestant church has pretty much dropped it all together as anything but a solitary practice.
Yet we need to be cleansed. Not because there is anything fundamentally wrong with us, but rather because living is dirty and dehydrating- physically and spiritually- and we need God's living water. John's water cleanses so that we made be made pure for the entering of the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit. John prepares the way, and Jesus brings the Spirit. In a sense, John clears the land, so that Jesus can them come and plant the seed.
The question for us then is what do we need to clear out in our own lives? Last week we talked about the question of how to prepare for God's coming. John tells us we must first clean out our soul. We must thoroughly examine ourselves, honestly and without fear or flinching.
The fire of justice and the fire of redemption are unquenchable fires. All actions have consequences even if we are slow in seeing them. Every action is a seed that bears fruit and the question is what kind of fruit we want to bear. What do we want to see when we look back on our lives? For most of us, looking back is a mixed bag, but we do not have to be afraid. It is never too late and God is always ready. John has presented us with a call to look into the darkest corners of our own soul. Jesus will give us the light to see by and the strength to face and conquer our own demons. Have courage, be cleansed, and get ready to be baptized in fire and spirit.
Let us pray.
