Dear All of Us,
So, how about this?
It's a cloudy night.
No moonlight, no starlight at all.
There are seventy-five thousand of us.
We've filled the field and stands at
Yankee Stadium for a rally.
There's a power outage in New York.
Ink dark.
That's an image of our world
and life just now.
It's a black out.
What can ordinary people
like us do about it?
We feel powerless, stymied, stuck.
We can't stop the slaughter
in Ukraine.
We can't get Donald Trump
to stop lying about The Big Lie.
We can't deflate inflation.
We can't get insurrectionists
to be constitutionalists.
We can't get social media
truth tuned.
We can't root out racism.
We can't get Congress
focused and functional on
The Common Good.
We can't reduce the risk of
nuclear devastation.
We can't discount pandemics.
We can't reverse
wholesale earth abuse.
We're just little people
in a big bad world.
We can't do anything about it.
Oh yes we can!
Father James Keller used to say:
"It's better to light one candle
than to curse the darkness."
One candle can be seen
in darkened Yankee Stadium.
When each of us little people
lights a candle, deadly dark
Yankee Stadium glows
Candle Bright
So it can be with us
and our world.
A lot of little
means a lot.
Lots of "lit" little people
mean a lot of light
in a dark world.
But how do we ignite?
How do we get the light?
"I am the light of the world;
the one who follows me
will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life."
Matthew 5:16
We don't have to find the light.
We just need to follow the
"light of the world"
right where we are,
just as we are.
Sharing that in community
defies dark in
a blaze of brilliance.
That's what real Church is.
To follow the leader is to live
"The Light of the World"
to
"...have the light of life."
Jesus gives us a tutorial on
the how's, way's and why's
of following him,
of living The Light.
It's simple and clear.
It's counter cultural.
That means it's difficult.
That means it's divine.
That means it's brilliant.
The tutorial is shared in
The Sermon on the Mount.
Matthrew 5-7
Jesus "enlightens" us,
his followers, his disciples.
Jesus spotlights:
- attitudes, stances, approaches
on how to "be" real -
The "Be"attitudes
- Us as "salt" and "light"
for others
- Anger
- Adultery
- Divorce
- Oaths
- Retaliation
- Love of enemies
- Giving to the needy
- Prayer
- Fasting
- Heart treasure
- Seeing clear eyed in the light
- Can't serve two masters - we get
what follows from
who/what we follow
- Worry
- Judging others
- Profaning the holy
- Ask, Search, Knock
- "The Golden Rule"
- The narrow gate
- "Thus you will know them
by their fruits"
- Self deception
- Hearers and Doers
Talk about
"spirituality for the street"!!
Jesus puts a lot of flesh
on the bones of concept!
All of it is living The Light,
personal, practical, communal.
In short, loving God, neighbor, self
with all we've got -
high voltage!!
A couple of suggestions and
a few comments.
This one has a sharp point -
hopefully helpful like a good pencil.
Beware of large parts
of organized religion.
Having "Been there, done that"
for well over fifty years of pastoring,
I sadly see that too many sectors of
church are sanctuaries to Empire.
The ideal was to convert Empire
to the beautiful life of Christianity,
but a lot of Christianity
got converted to the controls
and evils of Empire.
Be clear and honest about
what's what ,
just how genuinely tuned
to the Gospels a church is.
And there are many of them.
Many of the many
are simple and small.
Most of all and always,
"By their fruits
you will know them."
Jesus
Watch out for a watered down Gospel,
one that is conformed (deformed) to
comfy, casual, "Christianity Lite"
(not "The" Light).
Dietrick Bonhoeffer warned against
"cheap grace."
He penned the price
of genuine discipleship in
"The Cost of Discipleship."
He paid the price with his life.
For those ready for a
Spring Retreat,
a weeks long dwelling with
The Sermon on the Mount
(Mt.5-7)
would be a blessing.
What is Jesus saying,
how do we live that light
in our circumstances?
If there is interest and energy,
a parallel reading
of a standard translation and
The Message translation
would give a fuller sense of
all that Jesus shares and invites.
The Message translation is
online and free.
Twice Plus blessed if we do this
with one or more others.
Lastly
(thank you for hanging tight),
a masterful commentary is
Richard Rohr's book,
Jesus' Plan For A New World Order,
The Sermon on the Mount,
franciscan media, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1996.
We'd have to go far to find better.
Speaking of going, let's!
How good for us together
to glow bright.
"You're sons of Light,
daughters of Day."
1 Thessalonians 5:5
John Frank
******
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spirituality for the street
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******
Happily we don't have
to leave our world in the dark.
See you next week.
******
So, how to?
There is also Jesus is the Light of the World.
He wants to spark us, brighten us, enflame us.
He is pure bright - brilliance.
He is actually, in practice, "the way, the truth and the life" -
the way to go about life
the truth in which to do that
the life to live.
the Love that doesn't know how to go out.
put poetically 1 Thess
In our day to day world and life
we can get depressed and curse the dark
OR
We can also be a
Candle Bright
