Divine or Human? - Communion sermon Sept 20, 2015

“Divine or Human?”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Sept 20, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Psalm 8; Matthew 16:13-17; Doctrine of the Lord 29 

 I am going to say a big word.  Brace yourself.

“Christology.”

 

We learned lots of big words in seminary.  Christology was one of them. All of those big words annoyed me at first, because I felt left behind whenever someone used one.  If didn’t know the meaning, I felt stupid.  I didn’t want to have to ask, and honestly, in that first year there were so many new words, I got tired of asking what they all meant again and again and again.

Hold on. Here it comes again: “Christology.”

 

Big words are invented for a reason.  They don’t exist just to make some people appear super educated in relation to everybody else, though sometimes it may seem that way.  Big words sum up a complex concept under one name. 

For example, instead of saying, “That flower that represents love and has thorns and sometimes has a long stem,” when we want to talk about one of those things, we just say, “Rose.”

 

So “Christology” is a fancy word that just means “how we understand who Jesus Christ was.”  Was Jesus more Divine or more human?  Was Jesus more Human or more Divine?  This debate has existed since the very beginning of Christianity—yes, all the way back to the disciples.  This debate is summed up under the word “Christology” and the two apparently opposing perspectives are called, “High Christology” and “Low Christology.”  Both perspectives have good aspects and not-so-good aspects.  Listen up.

High Christology likes Jesus to be as Divine as possible.  It puts distance between Jesus and the human condition.  Baby Jesus smiles with eternal wisdom from the manger.  Teenager and adult Jesus moves serenely and calmly through his already-wise life.  High Christology art has Jesus looking mildly uncomfortable in Gethsemane and a bit unhappy on the cross.  In movies, Jesus is played with almost no emotional expression. In one movie, his hair didn’t even move when the wind blew. 

High Christology shows up in the Vertical beam of the cross. The Vertical beam represents the Divine in relationship with humankind.  God is “up there” and we are “down here.” High Christology architecture has lofty pulpits from which the preacher looks down upon the people.  The churches tend to be linear in architecture with straight-backed pews and straight lines.  The buildings are straight and narrow.  There is often high ritual, with incense and statuary, pomp and circumstance—illustrating the exalted status of God as our Divine ruler.  After all, how else does one venerate the King of heaven?  How does one approach the royal court?  What does one wear?  How does one behave?  Disapproving stares teach children and fellow church worshipers to keep themselves in order, because “heaven forbid” one should be poorly dressed or wiggle or cough when the Great King passes by.

 

While the reformation pared down the fancy dress, pageantry, and gilded accessories of High Christology worship in favor of simplicity, nevertheless it still kept God on high and humanity down low. “Worm” theology appears during this time period.  Rather than emphasizing the Glory of God, worm theology focuses on the sinfulness of humans. We are “worms,” therefore sinners, filth, excrement, and nothing but evil in relationship with God.  A lot of shame and guilt and “fear of the fires of hell” enter the discourse at this point.  Corrective doctrine, extreme reverence, and purity of life become the path to salvation.  Striving for perfection in the face of our human depravity become the stark black and white focus of this perspective.  It is so important to be in right relationship with God that service to the neighbor becomes almost irrelevant. It is in there somewhere, but it is not a big focus.

Very few churches are this extreme.  Most have a blend of High and Low Christology.  Do you have any sense of where you would be most comfortable?

The things that I treasure about High Christology is the respect and reverence for all things Holy.  I love the vaulted ceilings and soaring stained glass windows of the ancient cathedrals.  I love how the very movements of the bodies in the high ritual communicate respect and reverence for the Creator.  I love listening to Gregorian chant in a dim and cavernous cathedral. I love the way a great organ work vibrates right through my body as though the earth itself was moved to praise God.

 

High Christology produced some of humankind’s most remarkable buildings. That grandeur—that imposition of the sacred on our senses was born from a focus on the Divinity of God.  Where would we be without our great cathedrals, or even the sacred peacefulness evoked by this graceful and airy space?

A down-side to high Christology is that Jesus can be kept so Divine that his temptations become an intellectual exercise.  Feelings are too human for this most perfect man.  He was born from the Divine, walked around already Divine and went back to the Divine.  This sets up Jesus’s human experience as something other than what we experience, which misses the most fundamental significance of his incarnation. If we push Jesus too high up, there really is no “God with Us.” We must watch out for this pushing away of God. When we hold God far away, religion stays as an intellectual exercise—rather like doing jigsaw puzzles—satisfying in some way, but having little effect on how we live.

Low Christology sees Jesus as right down at our level. With low Christology Jesus is someone just like us, who laughed and cried, was confused sometimes, sweated, bled, and even needed the latrine. In low Christology paintings, Jesus looks like he is suffering.  In the movies he has human feelings and does human things.  He smiles, dances, laughs, and plays with the children. His hair moves in the wind.  And during the whippings and torture and crucifixion, he bleeds and he cries out in pain. Mel Gibson’s “The Messiah” is so very low in its Christology the viewer is wading in the blood and gore. The Divine purpose was so far removed from the story that the resurrection was the merest whiff of an afterthought—it is barely acknowledged.

  

Low Christology is shown by the horizontal beam of the cross.  That beam symbolizes the human plane and human interconnection—“we are all in this together.”  Where the vertical beam represents our relationship with the Divine, the horizontal beam is our call to live in good relationship with each other.  That beam represents Creation, in all its messiness and imperfection and beauty. Low Christology architecture tends to be circular and communal.  If there is a pulpit at all, it is lower or right down at ground level with the people. The circular arrangement of the pews allows worshipers to see each other’s faces as they worship together. 

In Low Christology Jesus is seen as our friend.  He is right down here in the muck with us, and completely understands what we go through in this life.  Low Christology Christianity doesn’t care so much what someone wears to church.  It tends to emphasize social justice and service to our fellow human beings.  There is a strong sense of connection to Jesus as he walked among us—with an emphasis to do as he did and live as he lived.  There is no need to hold God at arm’s length or to feel unworthy or to worry about our sinfulness.  That is not where the energy and attention go.  It goes toward service to the neighbor and toward connection and community as the Body of Christ.  It is not about whether people feel “worthy or unworthy” in relationship to God.  Helping each other is the purpose.

I treasure the warmth and, well, the humanity of low Christology.  I almost never see disapproving stares.  Having spent so much of my life in a very high Christology, the relaxed and kindly lack of perfectionism has been a refreshing and healing corrective for an overly worried and “uptight” spirit.  I love the focus on service and the easing up on the constant self-flagellation and soul-bleaching efforts that was part and parcel (for me!) of feeling forever not good enough, as a result of the long-term effects of my high Christology childhood.

A down-side to low Christology is that Jesus can become so human that we lose any sense of his power to make a difference in our lives (save).  He is so “down here with us” that He is in the same sinking boat with us, unable to calm the wind and waves.  We can make Jesus “just another human,” which loses the most fundamental aspect of this ancient story.  If there was no miraculous birth nor resurrection, he was just a really good guy, but no more special than any other great prophet.  We can become so comfortable with Jesus, that he ceases to be able to perform miracles in our lives, because we have no sense of his Divinity.

The main reason to learn about Christology is that how we understand God affects how God can come into our lives.  Any recovering addict can tell you the powerful effect of asking God into one’s life. No matter what name or face you give that Higher Power, that Love awaits your simple invitation.  God will sweep you off your feet, or move you gently along a quiet river of transformation, according to your need, but you must ask.  God will wait forever for you to ask. A simple, “Yes please,” will invite that extraordinary power down into your ordinary life.

The two beams of the Cross: the vertical beam—Divine, and the horizontal beam—Human.  Only where these two meet do we have that potent point of intersection—when the Divine breaks into our human experience.  That powerful moment, that “Big Bang,” is where it all happens.  It happens every single time we invite God into our imperfect lives.  But if Jesus is too Divine, we won’t let Him near.  If Jesus is too mortal, we don’t believe he has the power to save.

The Divine/Human tension shows up even in the two creation stories.  In Genesis 1, God thinks, things happen, and God is pleased.  It is a sort of remote-control creation—very tidy. Male and females are created in one “poof”.  God thinks, and we are, and it is very good. 

In the second creation story, found in Genesis 2, God is down in the muck, shaping things with the Divine hands.  (Notice, the Divine has hands.) God tries things out, tips his head, and then makes improvements.  It is a process, and it evolves. Humans are shaped from the dust (and perhaps some Divine spittle) and called “AdAM” (dust) because he was made from the “AdaMAH” (dust of the earth).  But the Man is “lonely.” (Did the Divine make a mistake?) So God throws together a solution on the spot.  God creates a woman from a spare piece of the man and fixes things.

Which of these stories would you say aligns with high Christology and which with low Christology?  It is a pretty big difference, and most people are not even aware that there are two creation stories.  And yet the tension between the different ways we understand God is right there, at the beginning of the Bible—one might say, “From our very creation.”

These two general perspectives, these two ways of seeing the Divine, are not meant to oppose each other.  Like the left and right sides of the body, we need both all the time and we function best when they are balanced and working as one.  Like maleness and femaleness, High and Low Christology can often seem to be completely different animals, and it is only from the point of their union that the Divine can burst on the scene with transformation and new life.

The Divine IS Human.  The Human IS Divine.  When we invite God into our run-of-the-mill lives day after day after day, our very ordinary lives increasingly sing of something Divine.  When we allow God’s transformative love to crack us open, we become increasingly ready to say, “Yes please!” again and again to the Divine, drawing closer with each encounter.

As we celebrate the Holy Supper following the sermon, I encourage you to invite the Divine into your life, however you might understand that.  Each one of us that comes to this table understands the symbolism differently.  Whether you believe the elements are truly the body and blood of Christ, purely symbolic, or some version of a blend of those, you are welcome at the table.  You are not just welcome, God waits, God asks, God desires to come into your life through the bread and the wine.  However you understand it, the Holy Communion is an enactment of the Divine entering into its beloved Creation. It enacts the Infinite touching the finite, with all the impossibility of that.  As you feel the bread and wine change your body, know that God desires to change your life for the miraculous, that you might be blessed.

Welcome to Christology.

The Readings

Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place, what is humankind that you are mindful of them, or human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Matthew 16:13-17

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven has revealed it.”  

The Doctrine of the Lord #29

a.       The Lord from before time, sometimes called Jehovah, took on a human body to reconnect with the human race and turn us back to goodness. 

b.      The Lord turned that human body into something Divine because He was Divine.

c.       The Divine became human by taking on human mortal temptations through that body.

d.      He then completed the uniting of the Divine with that Human by the last and fiercest temptation which was the passion of the cross. 

e.       Step by step, through his life on earth Jesus transcended the merely physical/animal aspect of human nature, and this way united his human body with the Divine within Him. This is the Divine Human, and this is what we call the Son of God. 

f.       This is how God became fully Human, from the most initial elements, all the way down to this very flesh and blood existence.

Welcome Home - sermon for Sept 13

“Welcome Home”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Sept 13, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Exodus 29:28-46; John 14 portions; Heavenly Secrets 10153 

Welcome back!  Welcome home!

It is a wonderful feeling, this feeling of coming home.  Humans need a sense of home more than we need anything else.  After any trauma or even just after a rough day, our first instinct is to go home—home, where we are safe; home, where we can rest and heal; home, where we can be truly ourselves; home, where we are loved exactly the way we are.

We all know this truth about home, and this is the home we all long for at the end of a long day.

Unfortunately, many people in this world do not get to have that experience of “home.” From foster children who are bounced around our social system, to families struggling with troubled dynamics, to the terrible plight of today’s Syrian refugees, there are many are in this world who have no consistently safe home to which they can go at the end of the day. 

Home.  In the human hierarchy of needs, home is foundational.  It is a level one need to have shelter and physical self-care. It includes the level two need for safety and security as well.

There is a primal human need for home.  “Home” is where we go to be restored and to find our center both naturally and spiritually.  We need to return to ourselves, to gather ourselves, to rest in safety and prepare for the coming day. That is why we feel such a strong need to go home when we have had a hard day.

Just this past week a friend was voicing her distress over the plight of the Syrian refugees.  You see, she knows what it is like to be a refugee. She fled Eastern Europe as a child all those years ago.  Her family had only a suitcase and the clothes on their backs.  She remembers to this day what it felt like, and feels keenly for these Syrians.

Can you imagine having to leave your home and country forever, not knowing if you would ever come back?  This is not selling your home to go to a new one.  This is walking away from the only home you have. I have heard from several friends in California who have been going through something similar, having time to grab only a few possessions before fleeing the wild-fires; not knowing if they will ever see their home and possessions again. Most of us cannot even imagine the scope of the rootlessness and sense of disorientation such a leaving can cause. 

Refugees are lucky if they even have time to stuff a few things into a suitcase.  Everything else gets left behind.  Now imagine that you must throw even that one suitcase of belongings away to save someone else.  Into the tossing waves or the fires go your most precious books and keepsakes—the family treasures, the spare clothes, important papers—everything.  You have nothing left but your life and your clothes, and if you are lucky, your family.

 

Do you feel that?  That compassion that you may be feeling is the presence of God within you.  That sympathy and that heartbreak are the Holy Spirit speaking in your heart.  God hurts when we hurt.  We are created such that we hurt when others are hurting.  That basic human empathy is the fabric of our souls—it is our birthright—to feel joy with and for others and to feel shock and sorrow with and for others.  That energetic movement—that e-motion—is the stirring of your spiritual blood, for you are made of love.

I think of all the thousands of people who stepped up to help at ground zero in the days and weeks following the 911 attacks.  Their sense of empathy and connection compelled them to give aid any way they could. Massage therapists and trauma counselors, volunteers to deliver water and sandwiches, truck drivers and hands that unloaded trucks, each heart found a way to serve according to their call. Each one was equally valuable and needed, yes, from the elite trauma and bereavement counselors all the way down to the Porta Potty service workers who made sure the hordes of volunteers had somewhere to, um, “go.”

Somewhere to go.  Yes, even including the euphemism, isn’t that what home is all about? 

We need a home to go to.  We need repeatedly to go home.  This church is a home for many of us here, and we don’t know what we would do without it.

Home. Home is where we are safe. Home is where we can rest and heal. Home is where we can relax and be ourselves and are loved anyway. Home is the place where we belong.

I hope this church feels just that way for each person here.  If you see this place as your home church I hope it feels safe and healing, accepting and supportive.  My experience is that this congregation does pretty amazingly well at these things for each other.  My experience is also that a few among this group are excellent at welcoming spiritual refugees. Several make an effort to invite new people back to their homes to build a better sense of welcome and inclusion. For those who do, well done!

In the deepest spiritual sense, God is our home.  The God of Love is what we have come from and to whom we will return. As our truest home, God ought to be our number-one go-to haven to Whom we bring all our hurts and all our trust. Is it true that God is the One to whom you turn when you need to rest and heal? Is it true that God is the One with whom you can be truly and completely yourself knowing that God loves you exactly the way you are?  Do you live and move and have your being in God?

Does that describe your relationship with God?  Does that describe your abiding inner emotional experience of God?

If so, you are among the very few and very lucky.

If not, you are like most people. Your answer may have been closer to, “Well, not exactly….”

Just for the record, while I know with my whole head, that God is my safest haven, I have trouble remembering that and acting on it.  I have trouble trusting that it is really true.  I have trouble living that truth.  (Some might say that that disqualifies me from being a good pastor.  But from within my socks and shoes, I think it at least makes me an honest pastor, and a pastor that knows what it is like to struggle to remember the genuine reality of God’s love.  What is the old saying? “Them as can’t, teach?”)  Even Mother Theresa struggled with her faith, so maybe I’m in good company.  And so if you are like me, you are in Mother Theresa’s company too.

 

Why is it that we have so much trouble making God our home, or what is the same thing, making our home in God?  Why don’t we simply trust God and from then on live in “the peace that passes all understanding”?

Swedenborg would say that our difficulty being able to sense and believe in the Divine presence is the natural result of our being temporarily stuck in physical bodies.  He would say that while we all have spiritual senses that will awaken after this physical body dies, meanwhile those senses are dulled, bogged down, or even switched off while we are conscious in these dense physical bodies. These physical eyes and ears are designed to see and hear physical things, not spiritual things.  And when we are plugged in to this physical reality which is so very, well, REAL to us, it is well-nigh impossible to believe in anything else. It is a bit like being a fish, with eyes and ears and senses designed to work in water.  While we live in the water, we have almost no idea what is going on above the water and may have trouble believing such a reality even exists.

Not only are our spirits cloaked in physical bodies, it often seems that when we need God the most, God is nowhere to be “seen”!  Of course we lose faith!  It takes training to learn to see God in the midst of the darkest times, and often our own anger and disappointment and sense of abandonment create a block to our inner senses.  We become so disillusioned about God that we don’t even want to hear an explanation of where God was when we needed Him/Her.  But if we look at our mortal condition through the eyes of love, it is hard to feel judgment for our understandable struggle to believe.  Of course we doubt and look elsewhere for security and comfort! It is only, well, natural.

Exactly.

I almost wonder if God designed our mortal condition the way it is to encourage us “grow up” spiritually.  How many of us would ever leave the comfort of God’s arms if we weren’t drawn irresistibly away?  How many children would learn to walk or run or do things for themselves if they never left their mother’s lap?  Looking back over my spiritual evolution, I strongly suspect that I would NEVER have left the spiritual nest or learned to fly if God hadn’t gently but firmly pushed me out.

Perhaps we cannot truly appreciate God as our safe haven until we have lived for a long time without that presence?  Rather like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, perhaps we need to go somewhere very different for a while, because the struggle to find our way back teaches us to value what we had all along.  Perhaps it is the way God sets us down a few steps away and then beckons with parental arms and an encouraging smile, “Now come back to me!  You can do it!” and waits to sweep us up in joy when our faltering steps make our haphazard way back to the Divine embrace.

That is how we grow stronger.  That is how we learn to become spiritual adults. And God sets us down again and again, inviting us back. And we grow stronger with each step.

Before we end, I will just dip briefly into the gems of the internal meaning of John 14.  John 14 starts with, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”  It starts with, “Don’t worry so much!”

The rest of the chapter is about finding our way back home, which is couched in a discussion of the Father and the Son being one.  Father is “concept” and Son is “action.” Father is “intention” and Son is “fulfillment.” These two things MUST become one in our lives, or they are without meaning or power. When Jesus commands, “You believe in God, believe also in Me,” he is saying, “You love the idea of God, now realize that you must walk the path I set before you to find your way home.  You’ve got the ideas; now start living them.”

But Philip (representing us) says, “Show us the father and we will be satisfied.”  “Philip” means “a lover of horses.”  “Horses” in the Word always symbolize our understanding, so “Philip” is our love of ideas.  Philip is saying, “Isn’t if good enough if we just think and talk about the ideas?”  This shows our reluctance to make changes in our way of living.  WE are satisfied by just having shiny and interesting ideas.  We balk at allowing God’s teachings to transform our feelings and lives.  This is rejecting a lived theology (Jesus).  There is a part of us that is happy to keep God as a concept, far away, up in the sky, not right here, down on the ground, in this moment and in this choice.

Jesus says, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?”  He is saying, “I have walked with you and asked you to walk with me.  I have loved you and asked you to love me, and still you are saying, ‘I’d rather just keep it all about ideas, okay?’”

The only possible answer to that is, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  Keeping the commandments means allowing the golden rule to guide us. It means that the learning we do in this space shows up in a transformed life out there.  It means that we become more aware day by day of how we are not as kind as we might be, or not as trusting as we might be, or not as wise as we might be, and we make small changes. It is in these moment by moment wobbly choices that we take our baby steps back to our true home.  God’s love and wisdom find their home in our lives through small, daily changes.

John 14 ends with, “Let us arise and go from here.”  Jesus is saying is time to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. It is time to move on towards our true spiritual home, which is with God.

The closer we draw to this state of spiritual homecoming, the closer we will get to that place where we feel most alive and most ourselves.  Yes, it takes work, but the more we do the work, the better the work feels, until the life of heaven becomes something we love and which gives us joy.

May you continue to walk towards your truest home, for as you do, the more clearly you will hear and feel God’s message in your hearts:

“Welcome back. Welcome home!”

The Readings

Exodus 29: 38-46 portions “Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs of the first year, day by day continually.  This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet you to speak with you.  I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God.

John 14: 1, 8-9, 18, 23, 27, 31 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me.

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 

“If you love Me, keep My commandments; and My Father will love you, and We will come to you and make Our home with you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 

But that the world may know that I love the Father, I live as he commanded me. Arise, let us go from here.

Heavenly Secrets 10153. 

The statement, “And I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel” from Exodus is describing a spiritual dynamic. It is describing the way the Lord flows into and is present within the loving-kindness of those “in heaven” and those “in the Church.” “In the midst” is describing those things that live most deeply inside us, which always starts out good because it is from God.

The Lord flows into and is present within a person’s kindness and good intentions, which are always from the Divine Love. This goodness is each person's true self, for each person’s character is made of good desires. “Goodness,” here means what we love; everything we love we call “good” anyway.