Like a lot of youth my age, I started going back to
church after I got married in my early 20’s after a long break throughout
college and post-graduation. No one was making me get up on Sunday mornings
anymore and dragging me resentfully to a worship service that meant virtually
nothing to me. But as the churchless
years wore on I began to feel a kind of emptiness creeping into my life. When
the big dates rolled around, like Easter and Christmas, I’d drive by churches
with full parking lots and wonder what it was like inside. There was an
emotional sting that could best be described as a kind of homesickness. I had left home and gone out into the world,
claiming my little corner and holding tightly onto the youthful belief that I could solve any problem, could
master any skill, and was the master of my destination. This is, of course, both true and false. Its falsehood rested in my youthful inability
to acknowledge, or in any way appreciate that the power that I possessed for
the building of my life did not actually originate with me. I didn’t give a thought to where it came from
actually; it never occurred to me to wonder about such things. I just assumed
that my freedom and my free will was my God-given right and that no one was
going to interfere in the making of my dreams.
I dreamed of marriage and I got married. I dreamed of money and a big
house. We had money and a nice house on the beach. And somewhere in the midst of all that it just
seemed that the thing that was missing, the thing that would make the
recreation of my parent’s life perfect, would be a return to church. And we went. We weren’t there very long when
one day and older gentlemen walked up to me and stuck a
pledge card into my 24 year old hands and said gruffly, “Get with the program,”
and walked away. I do not recommend this
a stewardship strategy. My then husband
and I got the hint and stepped up to the plate but only because I was
embarrassed and felt shamed into it. So
it will not be a shock to you to hear that we didn’t stay there for long. Though I didn't know it at the time, I had been given a powerful spiritual teaching.
I didn’t recall this incident for another 20 years
until I was writing a stewardship sermon about 8 or 9 years ago. But this time,
with a lot of life experience in hand, the words fell on me differently. It wasn’t
about money at all. It wasn’t really even about the fulfilling of obligations
or someone else’s expectations – though it was at the time, make no mistake.
These last few years of my life have been about exploring this spiritual
fountain of wisdom: Get with the program. But what is the program?
It’s just a metaphor. The key here is not to take
the words too literally. It’s just a
simple but powerful metaphor. So many times this year I have said to you, “You are not a human having an occasional
spiritual experience. Rather, you are a spiritual being having a human
experience.” This is a hard truth for us
to move past the intellectual realm and into the experiential life. We have a
tendency to want to make sense of things with our mind. That’s our first
mistake. To understand this metaphor we have to feel it. Miguel Ruiz, Jr. offers this explanation as a
place to start:
"Your
name and the body it represents are empty symbols whose meaning and definition
are the expression of your intent as you live life. The true you is the living being, the point
of perception, that gives these symbols life.
Oftentimes we confuse our bodies and our names with who we really are,
and the result is suffering. You are not
your body, and you are not the label attached to it. You are life; you are
love. You are the source of love, and, consequently, you have enough love to
share with everyone along the path of your life."
These are only words on a page until you can feel
its truth in your life. What would it
take for you to feel like a spiritual being and not just a human being stuck
with all the limitations that come with it.
What would happen if you felt, for the first time in your life, that
your potential as a spiritual being was unimaginably far beyond what you know
to be true as human being? If I sound out of tune let me read you a few words
from Albert Einstein:
“A human
being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and
space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated
from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion
is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
That last bit sounds very much like the
gospel we have been called to proclaim.
Einstein also remarked
that: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” The false teachings
of the world would have us hoping against hope for miracles or worse, not believing
in them at all. One of the teachings of the birth of the Christ is that it is a
miracle. And it is. But so is everything else. Which does not take away from its
importance in the slightest. Don’t stop there. Don’t stop with a single miracle
that happened 2000 years ago and say, That’s it. We got our miracle. No. No. It’s a miracle that pure
love came into the world. That God came to be with us as one of us. It’s a miracle that we could be loved that
much. If you read the New Testament through
that lens you will see that it’s a book of miracles. If you then see your own
life through this lens, you will see your life is a book of miracles. If you
look around your world…. Look at the glass that is in these windows. Glass is sand
that has been heated until it melts. When it melts in a certain way, under
certain conditions it becomes clear. Add color and it becomes stained glass.
You say, well, that’s just basic science. Yes, that’s right. But how did we figure
that out? Now tiny glass threads carry electronic messages at the speed of
light. That’s a miracle. Have you seen pictures of snowflakes under a
microscope? That no two are alike; each is a work of crystalline art. That’s miraculous. Look at the physical shell
you have been given to care for the essence of you that resides it in. It’s
been doing the work of healing since before you were born. And you can sleep
and you will not stop breathing even though you are not telling your body to do
it because now you are busy dreaming.
That is a miracle. Which one? The breathing or the dreaming? Exactly.
It is night now. Tomorrow the sun will rise and it will be so warm on
Christmas Day that you will be able to go for a hike. It is a miracle. Have you
ever loved someone so much it filled your whole life with joy? Where did it
come from? Did that love change your
life? That is a miracle. Now use your imagination and imagine that your heart
is so full of love for every living thing that you cannot tolerate anything
that exists that runs counter to that love. Of course, the fact that you have
an imagination is a miracle too. And if you can imagine that kind of expansive
love, even if just for a moment, then you are then capable of being that love
because you are that love. Are you
beginning to understand now?
We are corrupted by the false teachings of the world
and we believe things about ourselves that instead of setting us free makes us slaves.
The truth is
that pure, unblemished, uncorrupted love came into the world to set us free. We
become free by knowing that we are a part of that love; that we are not separate
from it. That truth, that we are love is very powerful. That’s the
program. To get with the program is to begin to see where the lies of the world
begin and end and where the truth begins. But you have to feel it. You cannot
think your way there because love resides in the heart. You know this because
you are a spiritual being and everything you need to know is already in your
heart.
That is why Jesus instructs us to go straight to
action. He does not give us teachings that require written or oral exams. At the local coffee shop in town there is a
chalk board where people are invited to write whatever words of wisdom strikes
them. The other day someone wrote: “I had an excellent education; it took me
years to get over it.” We will not be
tested on our intellectual understanding of the teachings of the bible. We get
it – but we have a hard time moving past our mental facilities and doing the work
that is implied in the teachings. We’re stuck in our heads. But when we’re
doing and not thinking we begin to feel something. We feel compassion. We begin
to care. We feel a connectedness to the other spiritual beings that occupy this
planet with us. That feeling is love. That connectedness is truth.
Get with the program.
