January 14, 2024

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4.1-6)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

To borrow the quote from Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Of course, the failure to communicate has been a primary reality for the human race since the beginning. Perhaps its greatest failure in this area is because “communication” has been falsely perceived as “words” only. Even those who understand the value and reality of non-verbal communication have a tendency to lean in the direction of “words.” All actions are bound on words, verbalized or not, or so it seems. What if, however, we saw it in reverse. By that I mean, all words are bound on actions. If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then could we not be saying that the picture itself, while valued in a thousand words, is itself the result of another’s actions attempting to communicate what words could not? As I taught non-verbal communication to high school students they were asked to investigate how they perceived the words, verbally or non-verbally, shared with them by someone else. It wasn’t a difficult request because we all are familiar with the five senses: taste, touch, smell, hear and see. When I challenged them with the possibility of a sixth sense, some reflected upon the movie The Sixth Sense and laughed saying “I see dead people.” While the class laughed, the truth of the matter was there is a sense of a “sixth sense” considered by every one of us. I identified it with the presence of the Holy Spirit. For those who clamoured for a non-religious (non-sectarian) vocabulary, I simply suggested “intuition.” We all have an intuition. We sense there is something more present than our five senses can define. We know it in our knower but we know not how or why. 

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11.1) Paul was speaking of the relationship with exists between humanity and God. It can only exists by faith. Those attempts to quantify and validate the existence of such a relationship are based on faith. The dialogue between those two entities may be expressed verbally and non-verbally but without the interpretation of the Holy Spirit there is no sustainable dialogue. That dialogue is one of faith. It is one of what we believe we know and what we have yet to discover externally or internally. And, I propose, it is the internal dialogue within the heart, mind and soul of humanity that clarifies the relationship we have or desire to have with that “higher power or reality” we call god. As mighty ones within the faith community identified in Jesus Christ who is our Lord and Savior that “higher power or reality” is called GOD. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition God is identified with many names. Each name is based on an action or activity experienced by or desired to be experienced by a person or persons with a need to rise above their present situation. We even know the true name of God which is YHWH. While I believe we bandy that name about far more than we should making it somewhat too familiar and perhaps then less sacred, YHWH, is the expressed name of God from God Himself to Moses. It was an authoritative name signifying “God above all gods; the Father of all life.” We hear Jesus call Him “Father,” Abba. As we are one in Christ and thus unified in the family of God as His, God, children, we have the right to speak to Him in such a familial way. We might even consider the possibility that Lucifer and the angels in Heaven and those who have been called through death into heavenly life may call Him Father. Okay, while God may consider Lucifer His wayward, prodigal?, son, scripture never speaks of Lucifer/Satan calling upon God as his father. Disavowed. Disaffected. Disturbed. Deconstructed. Ultimately, we have learned to call it “broken.” That is what sin does to the chain of communication between God, people and ourselves, it breaks it. The message becomes unclear, clouded, vague, unfamiliar even antagonistic.

It is here that I am urged to incorporate Paul’s “word” to the Ephesians to “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” It is not a “say so” truth that Paul speaks of. It is the word in action creating a picture of peace and community as the way, truth and life of the Church in part and in whole. It is the outpouring of living by faith which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It can only happen, this community of peace, by maintaining an unbroken line of communication between ourselves and God. It is the product of bringing all five of our senses together with “one sense.” It is that faith in God which unites in a perfecting harmony for the kind of worship God intends. It is the worship which Jesus ascribed to our future reality: to worship in spirit and in truth. And the truth is the work of the Holy Spirit, which is what we hope for, and the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is the evidence of things not seen, makes for peace. It is a peace not as the world gives, as Jesus taught the disciples on the night when He would be betrayed, but as He alone could give them. Their entire vision of Messiah was bound by the culture and climate of a “world peace.” The means by which they believed it would happen did not align with the “spirit and truth” as Jesus was manifesting it before their eyes. It would come to a bitter lesson at the cross with the epitome of authentic peace: “I lay down my life for the sheep, even those not of this flock for I know the Father as the Father knows Me.” (John 10.15-16) At the cross, Jesus completed emptied His earthly life surrendering His own Spirit into the hands of God. It allowed Him to become the true sacrifice to bring saving grace into our lives. For it, that same Spirit becomes ours and we can know authentic peace placing the needs of others before our own. What do we have to fear if we place our spirit and truth into the hands of God? He receives it and rewards it with renewal and redemption. Living a life worthy of “this” calling is intended to be our calling. We are to surrender ourselves completely to maintaining the unity of the Spirit of God so that peace rules the day and hope remains for tomorrow. Let there be no failure to communicate this truth to the world. How else will they know it unless they hear it and see it and come to experience it for themselves?

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit spoke us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit so that others may be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind that we would know that we are Your people and that You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.