Teachable Moments

The Spiritual Journey we take during Lent is just as important as Easter Sunday itself because the process of preparation that we go through during the Lenten Season provides us with everything we need to fulfill our true nature and to allow us to experience and express more of God. So while we celebrate Easter Sunday, the spiritual journey just as important, if not more so. Because without the preparation, there is no resurrection. So we prepare ourselves for a new life, a deeper understanding of and a new relationship with God.
Prepare

Jesus did not come to die for us. He came to teach us how to live--how to live as the sons and daughters of God, to grow in understanding and in the ability to demonstrate the Truth in our lives. He used precepts and parables to teach us, to open our eyes. And it's interesting, I believe, that He used simple, everyday examples and symbolism to point the way to understanding. He would tell us a story and then say "but this is what it means," which gives us a Bible which is the Living Word of God.

The Bible is not words and rules cast in stone, but words with meaning just as relevant today as when they were written down. The underlying principle is eternal, yet applicable to our everyday lives--the Living Word of God. The Bible has layers of meaning and the more we commit ourselves to personal growth with a willingness to work through the layers, the more we recognize what is really there. The more we long to find a way to apply His teaching to our lives the more we open up to our full potential in the here and now.

During the period when Jesus was born, Israel was so hooked into the letter of the law and a whole system of rules under which the people lived, that they had lost the meaning and message that God is our Father, that He created us in His image and likeness. And that continues to happen today when churches get so lost in the structure of religion, that they forget the teaching and the Teacher.

Jesus came to shift our focus from the letter of the law to the spirit of the law. To shift our focus from a vengeful, tyrant God to a Father who loves us and wants to lead us back to a clear, pure experience of joy. When we long for understanding, our lives become filled with a richness and a love that nothing in the outer can ever take away from us. We can go on working in the world, but we are working from the center, the Presence of God. As Gandhi said: My life is my message. The life that we choose is the life of Truth, a life based upon the Teachings of Jesus and the Father who loves us--not a Father who controls us and dictates our actions, not a Father pulling a puppet's strings, but a Father who has given us free will and the right to choose. When we come to a place where we can live our lives from an understanding of God in our lives, we live a life where love shines through and attracts others to His Word. When we have that inner peace and purpose, people are drawn to it.

The first story this Sunday is the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12, not the Rich Young Man--that's another story.

The ground of a certain rich man yielded
plentifully. And he thought to himself, saying,
'What shall I do, since I have no room to
store my crops?
I will do this: I will pull down my barns
and build greater, and there will I store all
my crops and my goods.'

And then I will say to my soul,
'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many
years; take your ease; eat, drink and be merry!'

But God said to him,
'Fool! This night your soul will be required of you;
then whose will those things be which you have provided?'
Luke 12:16-20

Again, Jesus is reminding us that possessions can possess us, because we need places to keep our possessions safe, we focus energy on guarding them and counting them. But, when it's time to go, they're just stuff! Some of our things may have value to someone else, but in the end, it's just stuff, stuff we've used to build walls around us, to insulate us from the Kingdom.

One of the things I've learned is that there is no free ride, no coasting--just because I've done good in the world in the past is not enough. In the first lesson of the Lenten Series, John the Baptist challenged the Pharisees for believing that their heritage from David and strict adherence to the Mosaic Law was all that was required of them. But yesterday's good work's only count for yesterday. What you are doing now, today, is what counts. If you're not growing and learning and giving, you're dead on arrival. And that feels pretty harsh.

Ironically, or not, I planned for my retirement by setting aside a separate retirement fund, apart from my pension. I made plans for a second career which required a lot of study and preparation, including start-up expenses. But guess what happened to those investments last fall when the markets came tumbling down? And that second career? Okay, the best laid plans.... When my Mother asked me what I planned to do now, I said: "Mom, I'm not planning anything anymore!" Lord have mercy on me! Show me the way, teach me the way you want me to go and I'll do it!

I certainly had not planned for nor anticipated taking on this ministry last year, and yet, here I am! Obviously, God had plans which took priority over mine and what I thought I ought to be doing. So now I'm doing Meals on Wheels and Volunteer Chaplaincy at the hospital and I'm working on quilts for a hospice and I'm enjoying myself while I wait to see what God has planned for me. Now maybe this doesn't sound like responsible behavior, but I've already tried responsible and I didn't like the results I got!

Now that brings us to a series of verses in Luke 12:22-34 which are among some of the most well know and oft quoted in the Bible. The title of this section in my Bible is 'Do Not Worry' and I'm going to break it into sections to make it a little easier to handle.

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about
your life, what you will eat;
nor about the body, what you will put on.
Life is more than food, and the body is
more than clothing.
Luke 12:22-24

Now think about it--the Rich Fool built bigger barns to store all his stuff. All it would have taken was a fire or a flood and all he had would be lost. People in other parts of our country are experiencing precisely that right now. If we think about the manna in the Wilderness in symbolic terms, then the rule allowing the Children of Israel to gather just enough for one day at a time makes sense. They were on the move with no storage and no way to preserve more than a day's worth of food--more would have created problems.

God provides! But not until we get ourselves, our lives in harmony with God do we experience that abundance. This is not an easy understanding to come to, but I think Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, expressed it well in Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters:

When we develop our soul and express its
talents and capabilities in loving service to God
and mankind, all of our temporal needs will be supplied
in bountiful measure.

Life is not about accumulating stuff, it's about understanding our spiritual resources in God and putting that to work in our world. Life is about finding ways to make a difference, and finding ways to give and to express more of God. That gift, flowing through us, energizing and healing us and giving us that extra little spark, keeps us going and growing.

And which of you by worrying can add

one cubit to his stature? If you then are not able
to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest?
Consider the lilies, how they grow; they
neither toil nor spin;
and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
Luke 12:25-27

Again, we're looking at physical appearances versus the spiritual, the outer life versus the inner life. It is so easy to stand on the corner, praying to be seen rather than going alone into the Silence with the Father. For children in school, everything is about what they're wearing rather than what they are supposed to be learning. Adults are no different; we're just old enough to know better. When we lose ourselves in worrying about how others see us, we lose the connection with our inner being, our true self.

And do not seek what you should eat or what
you should drink, nor have an anxious
mind. But seek the kingdom of God,
and all these things shall be
added to you.
Luke 12:29-31

This is probably easier to believe on Sunday morning here together than during the rest of the week. But if we seek God within first, before we go out and take on the world, we can hold to what we know to be true. The Kingdom of Heaven is a feeling, a Presence, within us and when we acknowledge that Presence we can take ourselves into life and do what we need to do without getting hooked into the craziness. We can access the Power and Presence of God within to find strength, to find joy and meaning in life.

Do not fear, little flock, for it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Sell what you have and give alms;
provide yourselves money bags which do not
grow old, a treasure in the heavens
that does not fail, where no thief
approaches nor moth destroys.
For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.
Luke 12:32-34

Remember what if feels like to fall in love and lose your mind and all sense of limitation and lack? Fall in love with God and feel that same overpowering feeling of joy! Let the love of God be the treasure of your heart and live again!

Excerpt from Sunday Lesson
Rev. Claudia Naylor

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