This Sunday

Here is Part Two of our Good Friday Podcast from last April. It is a personal reflection in music and story of what I think it means to stand at the foot of the cross today, to embrace the mystics life, and that in its simplest form, is to embrace the sacred in all people and all matter. And this, of course, is open to all people, regardless of formal religious inclinations, or lack thereof.

Still, there is, on this Good Friday, an opportunity to contemplate the unique mystic tradition within the Christian faith. For standing at the foot of the cross has a particular meaning within our faith story, though the principles within it are universal.

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“If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor……. we have no king except the emperor.”

When we claim we have no king except the emperor, we claim we have no sovereign birthright, no power to bring about change, no resistance to the virus of hatred.

We claim we have no internal divine spirit as Jesus did and as we all do.

And when we claim to have no internal divinity, we are a slave to the violence others would press upon us, and worse, it would press on those less able to resist it.

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Good Morning, I hope that you are enjoying the lovely August weather and continue to stay safe and well. I will be off for the next five Sundays of August and early September. But I have gathered together the series of special podcasts from holy week this last year for particular attention.

It is often supposed that Christmas is the great holiday in our tradition, and certainly it is a cause for celebration. But Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday. . .

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In the midst of the beautiful summer weather of August, we are never the less aware that suffering continues throughout the world, the explosion in Beirut and its aftermath, much in our thoughts and prayers. We continue with our look at the parables Jesus taught as told in the gospels, and this week we are looking at the story of the labourers in the vineyard. It is a parable that no doubt elicited controversy when Jesus told it many years ago. And the same is true today. We find Jesus’ teaching on the economy of the kingdom of God the hardest of all to understand, and accept.

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We have been taking a stroll through the parables this summer – the stories taught by Jesus and written about in the synoptic gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke. In the parables we are given hints or glimpses of different aspects of ‘kingdom of God’ - what it is all about. The two phrases – the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven – are interchangeable and found 162 altogether in the first three gospels.

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What movies we watch, what books we read, what poems we share, what spiritual communities we hold as valuable, these are all choices we make through the lens of our own personal spirituality. We are free to choose however we wish. When we choose to serve others, . . .

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