Photo credit: Louise Docker

Luke 12:27-28

Take the day lilies, for instance. They don’t put in overtime or work themselves to death. But not even Donald Trump, with his vast fortunes, has any chance of looking as good as they do. They bloom only for a day, and the next day they’re just fire starter. It’s no great leap of faith to see that if God cares for them, God cares for you.

With this, Jesus says that working hard to get ahead is a waste of time. Not working hard, mind you, but working hard to get ahead.

Wealth, and anything that wealth can get us, is a mirage. Temporary. Transient. As the Buddhists might say, impermanent. Striving after these things is bound just to make us old before our time (and worth nothing but fire starter), to burn us out.

Neither is there any use wearing ourselves and God out by praying for wealth. In spite of what you might hear from the likes of Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar, wealth is not a measure of God’s blessing. Never has been, never will be.

Instead, Jesus’ says, God cares for you. Now that you don’t have to work to prove how much better-off you are, you’re free to do what’s really important.

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John 17:6-19

“I’ve introduced you to the earthlings you entrusted to me. They belonged to you. You entrusted them to me. They’ve been true to your calling, and now they know that what’s mine is yours. What you told me, I’ve told them. They’ve taken it to heart, and they know that I derive from you, that you sent me.

“I’m asking for their sake. Not the world’s sake, but for those who belong to you, who you’ve entrusted to me. They’re mine and yours, yours and mine. They’ve done me proud. Now that I’m no longer able to stay on earth, but since I’m coming to you and they must stay behind, I’m asking that you protect them. Make them as much a part of each other as I am a part of you.

“While I was with them, I protected them on your behalf. I guarded them so nobody was lost – except one, and he was a hopeless case – and in doing so I fulfilled the prophesy.

“But now, I’m coming to you, and I say these things before I go so they may rejoice in each other. I gave them your instruction, and the world hates them. They’re outcasts, just like me. I’m not asking you to exempt them from trouble, but to protect them from evil. They’re outcasts, just like me. Rededicate them to the truth. Tell them the truth. Just as you sent me to the world, I send them to the world. For their sake, I rededicate myself now, so they may also be rededicated to the truth.”

This is Jesus’ last will and testament.

But instead of dividing his earthly belongings among his followers, Jesus gives them each other. And he gives them his blessing: “You’ve done me proud, now the world’s a tough place, so stick together.”

It’s all he has to give. And it’s all that really matters. In John’s understanding of Jesus, the divine word of God made flesh, the only way to see God is in the commitment to be true to the person enfleshed with you in community. The only way to experience the joy of the divine is by rejoicing in one another. The only way to get to the truth is to find it in one’s neighbor. Even one’s own health and safety depends on the well-being of the other who stands in your presence.

As Jesus and God are connected, so is all of life. It’s the Om of Jesus.

Photo credit: Vinoth Chandar

Luke 12:24

Take the birds, for instance. They don’t invest in the market, or sweat over commodities futures. They don’t have bank accounts, or investment portfolios. But God provides what they need to get by.

This is Jesus’ remedy for the “if only” syndrome.

If only I had this. If only that would happen. If only someone would come around. If only I had that kind of job (instead of this one). If only…

It can go on forever. Even if you strike it rich, some other “if only” will come up.

Birds do what birds do. Every day. There is no “if only” for a bird. There is no waiting to fly. It’s only a matter of spreading your wings and pushing off.

Photo credit: Wesley Fryer

Luke 12:22-23

He told his students, “Don’t fret about life, about what you’ll eat. Don’t obsess about body image, and clothes. There’s way more to life than dining and fashion.”

Granted, this is much easier to say when you’re not particularly worried about the immediacy of food and clothing. And yet, even the well-to-do spend a lot of time fretting over which restaurant they’ll go to, and what they’ll wear when they go there. You need only look at the racks next to the grocery store check-out to see that the vast majority of popular reading centers around diet and fashion.

Jesus takes a much simpler approach. Eat food. Wear clothes. Then get on with the important things. Some of the important things might be making sure your neighbor has something to eat and something to wear. You can tell the important things, because someone will remember what you did for them long after they’ve forgotten what you were wearing when you did it.

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Acts 10:44-48

Before Peter finished talking, God’s spirit came over everyone who heard the news.

The orthodoxy police who had come along were shocked that God’s spirit had been given so easily, even to these heathen. But they heard with their own ears how in many languages they were giving props to God.

So Peter asked, “Since these folk obviously have God’s spirit, are you still going to bar them from admittance?” He gave orders that they should be baptized in Jesus’ name, and they invited him to hang out with them for a few days.

Every community has its gatekeepers. They’re the ones, often self-appointed, who take it upon themselves to say whose in and whose out.

The trouble is, especially in religious communities, when the gatekeepers start using the wrong criteria for making decisions about people. The original Greek in this passage is more specifically about circumcision: “The circumcised believers who came with Peter.” That was their litmus test. But it could be any litmus test that depends on the sacred cows of the gatekeepers.

Instead, the right question to ask when deciding whether someone is eligible for membership is, “Does this person get what God is doing?” Another way to ask it: “Does this person share the spirit of the community?”

The answer to that question will nearly always, as in this case, be obvious. Chances are, God is much more ready to extend the spirit of the community than we gatekeepers are. Truth is, those who have the spirit will have a good time with it, even if the orthodoxy police are shocked by it.

The sad irony is the ones who end up self-excluded are the gatekeepers.

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Luke 6:45

If you’re good inside, you’ll do good things. If you’re bad inside, you’ll do bad things. And what you say will give you away, one way or the other, every time.

Sure, you can fool some of the people some of the time. But it won’t take long for people to figure you out. They may not say anything, but they know.

Chances are, the only person you’re really fooling by trying to say something different than what you’re really thinking is yourself.

Best practice: tell the truth. And if the truth is ugly, don’t bother with band-aids. The only real fix is to fix the you that’s on the inside.

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John 15:9-17

I loved you just like God loved me. Stay in my love.

This is how you stay in my love: do what I say. I do what God says. That’s how I stay in God’s love.

(I’ve told you all this so my happiness can be your happiness. Be completely happy.)

And this is what I’m telling you to do: Love each other, the way I’ve loved you. The ultimate love is to give your life for your friends. If you do this, you’re my friends. Not just my employees with no vested interest in what the employer is doing, but friends with a personal stake in, and a first hand knowledge of, the business.

You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you. Now go and do what’s worthwhile, something enduring. On my account, God will give you what you need to make it happen. Do it for the love of one another.

It’s been said, “Love is a verb.”

In this passage, it is both a noun and a verb. It’s received and stayed in (perhaps even basked in) as a noun, and it is given as a verb. It is something both felt and done.

On either end of the love transaction, though, in this passage, what is paramount is that love is something that, both in the giving and the receiving, requires a personal stake.

You can be good to your employees. You can be a good employee. But you can only love a friend.

You can be in a business for the money, or to make a living. But you can only be in love when you’re committed to a project or a person with your life.

Noun or verb, Jesus says love as a personal stake means two things:

First, you can only really be happy – completely happy – when you’re in love. Which is to say, you can only really find that which truly fulfills you when you’re willing to risk giving yourself away.

Second, the project or person worthy of that kind of personal devotion isn’t something that you decide upon. There is no “going away to find yourself.” Rather, it’s something (or someone) that chooses you. It is not finding, but allowing yourself to be found that matters.

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Luke 6:43-44

You don’t get bad fruit from a good tree. You don’t get good fruit from a bad tree.

Every tree bears a specific kind of fruit. You don’t get figs from thorns. You don’t get grapes from briars.

Here’s another koan.

It may be tempting to use it as a measure for assessing the good and bad in others, and to try to figure out what kind of “tree” they are.

Avoid this. The koan is not about anyone else. It’s to help you figure out what kind of tree you are.

Image credit: Kevin Dooley

John 15:1-8

I’m the real network, and my creator is the network administrator. Wherever there is a dead node in the network, she disconnects it. She tunes the nodes that are useful, to make them even more powerful. What I’ve told you has already made you good conductors. Just remain a part of me, as I’m a part of you. A node on its own is just a wire, unless it’s part of a network. By yourself, without me, you won’t get very far. I’m the network. You’re the nodes. Those who remain in the network can accomplish anything, but outside the network, you can’t do anything. Outside of me, you’re just so much scrap wire off to the trash heap, gathered up and sent to the smelter to be recycled. If you stay with me, and hang onto my words, whatever you wish for will be possible for you. My creator is proven right when you accomplish great things by really following me.

In Jesus’ original agrarian setting, a vine was a tangled mess of stuff that only grew and thrived when it stayed connected. There was no sense in pulling the vine apart to try to make it more orderly, or to understand exactly how it worked. It just “all hangs together.”

In our world, we love to talk about networks. We gather for “networking” sessions. We are wired together through tangles of communication lines we can’t make heads or tails of. But it works. It works because in some way larger than we can understand or keep track of, it “all hangs together.”

In the 4th gospel, Jesus claims to be that real network that connects us with the resources we need to accomplish anything. If the idea of a single person being an entire network seems strange, it is no less strange to us than it was to those who first heard the concept. How can one person be going in so many incomprehensible directions at once?

But, in the theological understanding of this gospel, Jesus the person is always the incarnate logic of the Universe. If you understand and take part in what Jesus the person is about, you are part of that universal logic. You can move with it, or you can get swept into the recycle bin of history by it. Your choice.

Powerful? You bet.

Image credit: Hartwig HKD

Matthew 13:45

Here’s another way to say it: The goal is like a company’s purchasing agent, looking for the next great thing. She finds the deal of the century and uses every penny of the company’s reserved assets to buy it.

Like yesterday’s koan, you still need to be aware enough to recognize what is really valuable, and you still need to be courageous enough to act on what you know.

But unlike yesterday’s koan, this koan makes a subtle shift. Instead of the goal being the thing that is sought and bought, the goal is now the person doing the seeking and buying. In other words, the goal is no longer obtaining or having something, but being someone.

Put the two together, and you get – yet another koan. The goal is the object of the seeker, and the goal is the seeker of the object.

Did that blow your mind?

Exactly.