You see, The Beatles were a totally different type of sound than anything anybody had heard. Moreover, they were a different type of band. They were a completely new experience. There was a Beatles sound, and it was a different sound. The Beatles changed the world of music, but they also changed the world of fashion, and of art. They changed the way people approach art. They just changed everything. They changed the way we looked at things. Sometimes, most times, when something completely new comes along, it forces you to stop and take notice.

Today, young people can appreciate the music of The Beatles, but they can’t appreciate the profound way they changed the world, because the world has already been changed. They were born, and grew up in a different world than the world into which I was born. When these young people came along, the changes were already made. Just as I grew up in a world that already had television. I can’t know what the world was like before TV. I can’t know what the world was like before the automobile and airplane. I take those things for granted. It must have been momentous for the people who lived in the early part of the twentieth century when those things were invented. It must have rocked their world.

And sometimes we don’t see the real importance of what Jesus taught and said, because we grew up in a world that already takes much of what he said and taught for granted. We don’t realize how revolutionary his words were. And sometimes we even miss the message of his words because we take parts of his teaching so for granted that we fail to notice the message for what it was, and we look for some different message in the words. And for this reason a lot of churches have misinterpreted the message contained in many of the stories Jesus told. Take for example, this story from the Gospel According to Luke.

Jesus is talking to a crowd of people. He is warning them about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew, Parush, which means detached one. The Pharisees are the roots of contemporary Judaism. They are the beginnings of what would later be the Rabbinical Judaism as exemplified by the Talmud. The Pharisees were constantly trying to catch Jesus is some kind of blasphemy to justify arresting him. To that end, they were always asking him trick questions that would be difficult to answer without somehow saying the wrong thing. You know, “Is it not true you used to beat your wife?” sort of questions.

Jesus warned that the Pharisees kept to the laws of Moses, but failed to understand the commandments of God. While he is talking about the nature of the divine, some people try to get Jesus to condemn the Romans. This could have been the Zealots, revolutionaries who saw the potential Jesus had to stir up anger towards the Romans and incite revolution, or it could have been the Pharisees, who would have loved to hear Jesus speak out against Rome in order to use those words against him later.

The people tell Jesus how the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, had a certain group of people from Galilee killed and their blood offered with sacrificial blood and offered to the Roman gods. Rather than comment of the Romans, Jesus uses the report of this misfortune to attack traditional Jewish beliefs about God. He says, “And YOU think, because these Galileans suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! I’m telling you all, you’re all going to die, just as they did. And those eighteen people who died when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than the other people of Jerusalem? By no means! And I tell you, you will all die, just the same.”

And after this cheery news, Jesus goes on to tell one of his famous parables, “”There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’”

At the time, it was the belief in Jewish thought that God rewarded the righteous with wealth and good fortune, and that He punished the sinners with bad luck. So in traditional Jewish thought, those people killed by the Romans, or those people killed by that falling tower (there is no historical record of either of these two events) had suffered their fate because they were sinful in some way, and so were being punished by God.

Jesus is telling the people that if God were going to punish people based on their imperfections, then we’re all in a lot of trouble. Jesus reminds his followers that all of us are going to face death one day. His story of the fig tree is reminds them that even this barren tree is given further opportunity to give fruit. It is clear to Jesus that the very wicked seem to go about without any particular harm coming to them, and that good people often suffer. This is obvious to him, and it should be clear to everybody that this has nothing to do with the will of God. Things happen the way they happen. That’s all. Suffering is not the fault of those who suffer.

Now to us, this sort of goes without saying. We take this way of thinking for granted. But to the people in the ancient world, this was a radical thought. Both pagans and Jews believed that people suffered because they had made God, or the gods, angry in some way. This new way of thinking was an earth-shattering experience for them. It went against everything they had ever thought or believed. In other words, this idea rocked their world. And to many of them, at that moment, it opened their eyes. They suddenly saw that the rich and pious weren’t people to be admired. Those people weren’t the chosen ones of God. And then they listened as Jesus went on to teach that it was the people who served others, who showed mercy, who shared their wealth, that were the real chosen of God. He taught it was the poor and weak, the sorrowful, whom God loved, people like themselves. The people had once thought they were poor and downtrodden because they deserved to be. Now, they began to look at the world and their place in it in a different way.

Many Christian preachers will take this thirteenth chapter of Luke and use it to tell their flocks that it means to repent of their sins because one day they will die and then be judged. They take those comments by Jesus about the murdered Galileans and the people killed in the tower accident and use them to warn the congregation of the need to repent. They see the story of the fig tree as a reminder that they had better bear fruit before the owner decides to “cut them down”. But Jesus isn’t saying that at all. He’s saying that his listeners were no better than those people who were killed. God didn’t love those poor people any less. He’s not warning them that God is going to get them if they don’t repent, he’s reminding them we all eventually meet the same fate, regardless of whether we are sinners or saints. God doesn’t cut us down.

We fail to see how revolutionary were the words of Jesus because they don’t seem to us revolutionary any more. We’ve grown up in a world that more or less takes that attitude for granted. We can read the words of Jesus and appreciate them for what they are, but we don’t see them as the new, world changing message of love and redemption they were. And although we can never really know how shocking that message was, if we learn to see it in that light, we can appreciate the power behind it. And then the words of Jesus don’t sound so old and over spoken.

Sometimes there are songs that we’ve heard so many times, to which we’ve become so accustomed, that we no longer notice what good songs they are. “Over the Rainbow”, for example, I’ve heard so many times over the years, that it had become cliché. It wasn’t until after my friend Paul died (it was his favorite song), that I listened to it with new ears, and took notice of what a well-crafted song it is. No wonder it has lasted so long. And even thought the message of Christ is two thousand years old, and we’ve heard it over and over, it still resonates. And we still need to hear it. Bad things happen to everybody. God is not punishing us. And yet we still have people who think themselves somehow holier than others. We still have people, even people who claim to believe in Jesus, who tell us that God is punishing us with storms, or war, or disease. There are some who would tell us that God is punishing the homosexuals with AIDS. Bullshit!!! If God is punishing sinners, then we’re all in trouble, especially those who sit in judgment of others.

John Lennon was right. There was a time when The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. It was the truth, too, no matter how the world reacted to it. But that wasn’t the fault of The Beatles. It was the fault of organized Christianity for letting the teachings of Jesus become mundane. It was because people had forgotten just how revolutionary the message of Jesus was. It still is.

On the first street was a small mom and pop grocery store. The entire store, butcher shop included, was about the size of your average 7-11. Next door to them was the fire station. There was one professional fire chief, and the rest of the fireMEN, because they were all firemen back then, were volunteers. Whenever there was a fire somewhere in the vicinity a loud siren would wail and all the firefighters, one of whom was my dad, would come running. It didn’t happen too often. Next to them was the backside of a very small motel, and on the corner was the lumberyard.

On the other street there was a post office and a hardware store where I used to buy all my Marvel comic books each month. Next to the hardware store was a nice cocktail lounge. Then there was the front side of the very small motel. Across the street were the public swimming pool and a small café that was open for lunch and breakfast. On the next block, if you want to call it a block, was a small variety store (where I could buy cheap toys like balsa wood gliders), again, about the size of a 7-11. And next to them was the LARGE grocery store-about the size of TWO 7-11s. Across the street from that store was the public library and THE place to go in town for “flatlanders” (people who lived down the hill, as the locals would say), called the Yodeler. It was the only place to go in town if you wanted pizza. There were open late, until eleven. Later on, it would be a favorite hang out for bikers. Sort of tucked away down half a side street was a rock shop that opened occasionally, when the owner was in the proper frame of mind, and the elementary school. Down a little further on the main street, down on the main highway through the mountains, was the only gas station in town. You can imagine how expensive THAT gas was.

That was Wrightwood, such as it was. When I was little, a lot of local Los Angeles TV celebrities, especially newscasters, had cabins up there. My mom and dad used to go driving around the roads looking for their cabins. It was the sort of little community where everybody named their house. A local sportscaster had a cabin up there called the “dugout”. It was a nice little town and I loved it dearly. We went up there for many a Christmas and Summer vacation when I was young, And when I was thirteen, we finally moved up there. My parents hadn’t retired, but my brother had gone off to college, so they thought it was a good time to try and make the move. We lived up there, but my dad still drove down the hill to work in Los Angeles. That was a 100-mile trip each way. What a drive!

Living up there full time only lasted a couple of years, but I loved it while I was there. There was something about the clean air, the crystal clear sky at nights, with the stars a jewel box in the sky. I fell asleep each night to the sound of the wind in the pine trees. It sounded like an ocean outside my window. Raccoons would look in our windows at night, and squirrels would eat out of my palm every morning. The scent of pine wafted through the breeze like an air freshener after a car wash. It broke my heart when we had to leave. I can see why mountains always make people feel closer to God.

And people have always seen mountains as holy places. Throughout the ages various religions have seen mountains as the dwelling place of God, or the gods. The Greeks and Romans had Mount Olympus. Moses went up on the mountain to receive the law from Yahweh. Abraham went up on the mountain to make a sacrifice of his son, Isaac. Taoists built their temples up in the mountains. Some say it’s because mountains are closer to the sky, but I don’t think so. There’s something about mountains, something about the air, and the quiet, that makes you feel a part of everything around you, that makes you find the divine in yourself. Deserts often have the same effect on some people. It’s easy to lose sight of the divine when you live in the city, surrounded by the busy-ness and din of day to day life.

Even Jesus went up on a mountain to pray during his ministry. He took Peter, James, and John with him. I’ve gone a little bit out of order here, because of the Lenten Season, but I’ll come back to the earlier parts after Easter. In the ninth chapter of The Gospel According to Luke, Jesus takes his three best guy pals up on a mountain. Eight days earlier, he had asked them who people said he was, and they answered with the names of various people, John the Baptist reincarnated, (an actual biblical reference to reincarnation), Elijah (presumably also reincarnated), one of the prophets. Jesus then asks who THEY say he is, and Peter answers that he believes Jesus to be the Messiah. Jesus says not to say anything about this to anybody. So, eight days later, they go up onto a mountain, and they come to the top. We can assume that Jesus leaves them alone there for a little while because the three of them decide to take a nap.
When they wake up, according to the story, Peter, James, and John see something really weird. For one thing, they see Jesus suddenly clothed in brilliant white, and the appearance of his face changes. And as if that weren’t weird enough, two guys have appeared out of nowhere and are talking to him. The two guys are Moses and Elijah, previously believed to be dead for a little while. According to the text, they are talking of the exodus he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. What is translated as “exodus he was going to accomplish” really translates better to “his departure to and what he was going to suffer in order to fulfill his destiny in Jerusalem.” But this makes for rather a clumsy sentence in English. Still, I think, the word exodus fails to convey this idea. In other words, Moses and Elijah were telling him that he was going to go to Jerusalem and there, he was going to fulfill his destiny, by suffering something (and we know what, don’t we?). The word translated as destiny can also mean the inevitable. So they might well have said, “Look, you go to Jerusalem, and they’re going to kill you, but that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Peter tells Jesus that this is a pretty cool thing to see, and says he is going to build three tents there, one Moses, one for Elijah, and one for him, too. They are shocked to hear a voice coming out of the clouds saying, “Hey! Listen up! This is my kid here! Listen to what he says!” Then it says they went down from the mountain and did not then tell anybody what had happened there, which was probably a good idea because you tend to lose a little credibility when you start telling people you heard voices come out of the sky, know what I mean? Anyway, it is right after this event when Jesus really starts to talk about how he is going to be arrested and killed, which fails to go down well with his homies.

The point to all this is that Jesus knew what was going to happen to him. He had no illusions about his ultimate fate. Let’s face it, he didn’t try too hard to be inconspicuous. And standing out the way he stood out was not a healthy thing to do in first century Palestine. He knew that what he was teaching went against what the Romans wanted people to hear, and it went against what the Jewish leaders were saying. They were trying to maintain the status quo. Jesus was teaching that people needed to change, if they wanted to find their way to the divine power that connects us all. Jesus knew his message of love, toleration, and service was going to get him killed eventually, but he didn’t let that stop him. He knew it was right. He had faith. He had faith in his message, and in his own ability to deliver it. And in the end, that’s what it’s really all about.

At the very beginning of the whole Bible story, back in the Book of Genesis, it says that Abraham had faith in God and that God counted that faith as righteousness. God is not keeping a ledger of the good and bad things we do. God cares about our faith. And you don’t have a little faith or a lot of faith. You either have faith, or you don’t. It’s just that simple. Of course, Jesus has the type of faith that comes from talking to a couple of heavenly beings. It is important to note who those guys were, Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the law given to Moses, and Elijah represents the prophets who foretold the coming of a messiah. Jesus is the culmination of the law and those prophecies, at least in his own mind and eventually in the minds of his followers. It is quite possible the entire story is meant to validate Jesus’ position as Christ. As always, it doesn’t matter if it happened that way or not.

This event happens, according to the story, right before Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin the very last part of his ministry, the part in which he is to suffer and die. Jesus was well versed in the prophecies. He knew this was to be his part to play in the scheme of things. And so he went off by himself to be with God. And you know, it seems that’s what you have to do to connect with the divine. That’s what Moses did. That’s what the Taoist monks do. And what do all the cartoons show, eh? The guru-master is always sitting on the top of a mountain. You have to go off by yourself, away from everything. The bible describes the voice of God as a “still small voice”. You can’t hear it in the midst of all the commotion of day to day life. You can only hear it in the silence. And that means you have to silence your mind, too. You have to eliminate all other distractions. But once you do hear it, it changes you. That mountain is called The Mount of Transfiguration by the Christians. Transfiguration means to change, a metamorphosis.

Why is it called the Mount of Transfiguration? Because somebody gets transfigured there. But who was transfigured? It wasn’t Peter, John, or James. They didn’t change. In spite of what they said they saw, they still run away like Anne Coulter in the sunlight at the first sign of trouble. And Peter will deny he even knows Jesus three times after his arrest. It’s Jesus who is transfigured. Jesus connects with the divine in the persons of Moses and Elijah and comes down that mountain with the faith he needs to finish what he started.

It doesn’t matter if the story happened that way. It doesn’t even matter if there WAS a Jesus. The story still means the same thing. You are important. Jesus knew what his mission was. He was to enter Jerusalem, where he would be taken, tortured, and killed. He believed, as do all Christians, that he was giving up his life in order to redeem our lives, the lives of all humankind. Through his death, we would be reconciled to God. The famous bible verse in John says, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever should believe in him, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever believes in him shall never die.” What this says is that you are mighty damn important. And at the time the bible was written, this was a revolutionary concept. Because people didn’t seem so all-important back then. In fact, life seemed pretty damn cheap. The Romans used to slaughter people for entertainment. The message is that you are important, important enough to die for.

It is easy to forget that. We don’t always feel so important. In fact, we mostly don’t feel so important. And often, the people in our lives help to make us feel even less important, our parents, our bosses, even our significant others. But, there was once a guy named Jesus who believed we were so important that he was willing to suffer and to die so that we could reconcile ourselves to the divine. Whether you think he was the Christ or not, or the Son of God, makes no difference. No matter what, JESUS believed in his mission, and was willing to sacrifice everything for you and me. The story of the transfiguration makes it clear that he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew his fate before he began his final mission in Jerusalem. He did it anyway. He thought you were worth it.

And if Jesus thought my life was so important, then how can I not consider your life and the lives of everyone else, all living things, just as important? We make a difference. We matter. And what we do can change the world. Look, one nobody, the son of a carpenter, who lived in a time before mass media, by giving a message of love, tolerance and redemption, changed the world, and his words reverberate yet today. There is nobody in the world more important than you. If we could really grasp that idea, then how could we mistreat ourselves the way we do? If we could only fully realize our importance, and the importance of everybody else, if we could just see the divine in one another, we could really make this world into a paradise. And then we could all be transfigured.

I think that’s why Jesus, after being baptized by his cousin John, and keenly aware of his mission and how things would inevitably turn out, felt moved to go off into the desert by himself for forty days. According to the Gospel According to Luke, Jesus went into the desert and spent his days in fasting and in prayer. This was before he had begun his mission and he no doubt, had much to occupy his thoughts.

According to many scholars, it is believed that Jesus had spent a good deal of time living in a community of ascetics in Qumran (Koom-RAN) known as the Essenes (Es-SEENS). The Essenes were a pacifistic sect of Judaism who believed that the spiritual world, the real world to their way of thinking, was in a constant state of battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Since Jesus left this community, it can be assumed that he felt there was some aspect to the Essene philosophy that was lacking. He, no doubt, needed to find some sort of synthesis between the beliefs of the Essenes and the more traditional beliefs of the Jewish community in which he was raised. The forty days of lent which most Christians observe today, is a feeble attempt to imitate Jesus in this retreat from the company of his family and community to figure things out.

Now as I say time and time again, it doesn’t really matter if the story of his time in the desert in an accurate account of what transpired there. It rather parallels the story of Moses going up on the mountain of God for forty days in order to receive the law. There is still something to be learned from this story no matter what your belief system, indeed, whether or not you even believe in God.

It is at the end of these forty days, when Jesus certainly knew what he was going to do and teach, when, according to the story, the devil came to him in order to tempt him. The word translated here as the devil, means “one who slanders or backbites”. Certainly once any of us decides to do something, there are those around who are ready to make fun of us, or try to talk us out of whatever we are planning. It always seems to be that whenever I go on a diet there is someone around who says, “Oh go on, one little piece of cake won’t hurt you.” Anyway, it is at the END of these forty days, when Jesus is at his weakest, that the devil comes to him to tempt him three times. And those temptations the devil presents to Jesus I find to be the same temptations that come to us whenever we try to make a positive change in our lives. I like to think of them as the three Ds.

The first D is for DESIRE. After forty days of fasting I’m sure even gefilte fish and matzos must be looking pretty good to Jesus about now. He had to be hungry as hell. So, according to the story, the devil says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” To which Jesus answers, “It is written, man does not live by bread alone.” And what we see here is our desire for comfort over hardship. I can remember plenty of mornings when I was warm and comfortable in bed when the alarm went off and the last thing I wanted to do was to get up and go for a run. But somehow I would force myself to get up anyway, get dressed, and head on out the door for five miles in the cold early morning air. You try to quit smoking, but then you finish dinner and that ciggie is screaming your name. You know you want it. We all would rather have pleasure than pain, that’s for sure. But nothing is ever gained without some kind of sacrifice, and giving in to our desires all the time will just make us all fat and lazy. There is something about us that needs MORE than food and drink and creature comforts. So if we want to make any progress in our own mission, we have to learn to say no to our desires from time to time.

The second D is for DECEPTION. We love to deceive ourselves. After refusing the devil’s first temptation, Jesus is taken to the top of a tall mountain. According to the story, from here he is able to see all the kingdoms of earth in a single instant. Here, Satan says, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you will honor me.” Now it should be remembered regarding this story, that Jesus, being the Messiah, the Christ, was already guaranteed a kingship. But he also knew that kingship was going to come at a pretty high price. He would have to suffer terribly and die horribly on a cross. Satan was offering him a worldly kingship without any of the suffering, and he clearly had the power to deliver it. But Jesus was aware that this worldly kingship could only be temporary at best. He answers, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”

How many times do we try to find a shortcut to our goals? We want all of the gain with none of the pain. Look at the successful diet pill industry. Everybody wants a way to lose weight without having to go through the pain of dieting. Everyone wants to find the exercise machine that will give us the perfect body without having to go through the pain of exercise. Moreover, we all want it right now. We don’t want to weight. And deep down, we know those things don’t work, but we convince ourselves that perhaps this time, this one might actually be different. Perhaps this pill, this machine, will do as it promises. It never does.

Moreover, we lie to ourselves all the time, making excuses to do those things that are obstacles to what we want to accomplish. Well, one piece of candy won’t hurt, or I can smoke just one cigarette, or one little drink won’t hurt me. I’m too sore to work out today, or I’m just too tired to go to school tonight. There is no end to the number of lies we can use to deceive ourselves. But we just push ourselves further away from our goals. I remember taking the beginning philosophy class in college. The professor discussed the process of rationalization, the ways we convince ourselves to do things, or not do things. Even then, it seemed to me that rationalization was just a means of lying to ourselves, and if you can’t trust yourself, what have you got? You can’t keep fooling yourself and accomplish those goals you have set for yourself. If you think you can, you’re just fooling yourself, and THAT’S deception.

The third D is DOUBT. After Jesus refuses the devil a second time, Satan takes Jesus to a high tower on the walls of the city of Jerusalem and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and: ‘With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” To this Jesus reminds the devil that it is also written that you should not test God. But I’m sure it might have crossed Jesus’ mind what if he wasn’t the messiah? What if this was all in his head? Maybe he should call upon his Father to prove it to him. That way he would know he was on the right path. But Jesus WAS sure of himself. He had faith in his mission. And so the devil, defeated, finally leaves Jesus alone…at least for a few years.

The best story I can think of regarding these feelings of doubt regards my dad when he was younger. When my dad was a young man, he was a musician, and a good one. He had his own band, and he had performed on the radio. He could play the violin, the piano, but was especially good on the saxophone and the clarinet. He was good enough to get an audition to play with one of the biggest big bands of that time. To be honest, I can’t recall if it was an audition for Harry James, the Dorseys, or Gene Krupa, but it was one of those guys. Anyway, my dad told me the story that he sat in the auditorium and watched guys go up on stage to audition, and those guys all seemed so good to him, that he got up and left before he even got his chance. He just didn’t feel that he could measure up to those guys. So he never got his shot at the big time, because he lost faith in himself.

I know so many people who have not gone on to college, or dropped out, because they just didn’t think they were smart enough. I know people who have wanted to run a marathon, but have never tried, because they don’t think they could ever finish one. So many people are defeated before they ever start. I think we’re stronger than we give ourselves credit for being. We can do amazing things, if we just have the faith, and not just faith in God, but faith in ourselves. I can remember sitting in classrooms at university and thinking that I would never be as smart as those professors in front of me. They seemed to know everything. But I just kept on going, one class at a time, until I finally finished and got my diploma. And I still have a hard time believing that I’m smart at all. Maybe that’s because my brother and sister are much smarter than I am. I always felt like the dummy in the family. But then, from time to time, people tell me I’m smart. So who knows? I do know this. You can’t accomplish anything unless you believe you can.

These three Ds seem to get in the way of so much we want to accomplish. They are the same three Ds that Satan used against Jesus. And those Ds are mighty tempting. We will never amount to much of anything until we learn to overcome them. Maybe that’s what is so important about lent. We can take these forty days and exercise our ability to face our own demons and defeat them. We can use these forty days to prove to ourselves that we can be who we want to be and do the things we want to do. Whether or not this story about Jesus in the wilderness is true or not, it still contains the core of truth about the human condition. We have to overcome these three Ds in order to make the most of our lives here. There is a verse to that famous Woody Guthrie song, “This Land is Your Land” that most people never hear. It goes like this:

Nobody living can ever stop me

As I go walking this freedom highway

Nobody living can make me turn back

This land was made for you and me

Somehow I think that says it all.

The Rev. Schuller wants you to know that God wants you to be rich, rich and happy. Just believe in the power of prayer and reap the rewards of working in the vineyards of the Lord. And if you do not receive these riches, it is because your faith is not strong enough. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in the power of faith. The Rev. Schuller is not alone in this theology. He is joined by Kenneth Copeland, the late Jim Baker, the late Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and the late legendary Norman Vincent Peale. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. Of course, the Crystal Cathedral isn’t doing so well in this economy, so maybe there is a flaw in their thinking.

They are all right, of course. You can achieve anything if you have faith, no matter where you place your faith. You can place your faith in money, or in yourself, or in God, and you can accomplish great things. You can become rich and powerful. You can achieve fame– if you have enough faith. But the question is, will any of that make you happier? All of these men purport to be Christians. They claim to be followers of Jesus the Christ. Maybe we should take a look at what this Jesus has to say on the subject.

We need look no further than the famous Beatitudes (Bee-AT-uh-tudes). You all know them, even if you didn’t know that’s what they’re called. They appear in both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew has Jesus saying them to open his famous “Sermon on the Mount”. Luke has Jesus opening his “Sermon on the Plain” with them. If you are a fundamentalist evangelical believer, then you probably believe that those were two separate events. But then, if you are a fundamentalist evangelical believer, you’re probably not reading this, unless you stumbled upon it by accident and if you did, I warn you now, you’re not gonna like what you’re about to read.

Most scholars believe that both Matthew and Luke are relating the same event. A careful read of both shows that both authors say Jesus went up to a high place. Luke mentions that he is standing on a flat place. The major problem is that the area in which Jesus taught is not particularly mountainous. I would suggest that both authors used the sermon as a literary device in order to put down on paper the teachings of Jesus, and that the things he said were taken from many, many occasions and all put into one definitive “sermon”. Both authors probably borrowed heavily from the famous missing Q document. It doesn’t really matter. As I always say, The Bible isn’t about facts, it’s about truth.

Since I said we would be working through the Gospel of Luke this year (except for the odd Sunday), we will use the text from Luke. Jesus has just chosen his disciples and called them to be “fishers of men” (last week), and now he’s gone to teach in the countryside. He has performed some healings, and then taken his students off to teach them. Although the text says he was standing, and most movies and paintings depict him standing, he was most likely sitting, I believe. Jewish teachers traditionally sat while delivering lessons.
Moreover, the text also says that he lifted his eyes towards his disciples, so unless Jesus was really short, I’m betting he was sitting down. Anyway, here is what he said:

Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.

Blessed are the hungry, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

I know, I know, you’ve heard these a million times. Luke has four of them. Matthew has eight. Now you have to see these words in the context of the time and culture. Within Jewish culture, it was the popular belief that God rewarded the righteous with wealth and prosperity, respect and admiration, much as our prosperity theologians mentioned above. Now here stands Jesus, and he tells them just the opposite. The people who are truly blessed are the ones with nothing. If you recall from a couple of weeks ago, his very first message, in the synagogue right before they tried to whack him, was that he had good news for the poor.
If we look at the original Greek in which Luke was written, the message is a little different to our traditional understanding.

The word traditionally translated as “blessed” is literally translated as “happy”, or “content”. The word we translate as kingdom can also mean royal power. So you may just as well say, “Happy are the poor, for they shall have the power of God.” There is a difference between being blessed (in our way of thinking) and in being content. What Jesus is trying to say here is that wealth will not give you contentment. In the real scheme of things, it is the poor who are happier.

Anyone who has lived in a third world country like México, or Nigeria, can tell you that those people have less than nothing, and yet they are happy. The more you own, the more what you own, owns you. The poor, the hungry, the grieving, those oppressed, are all blessed. Moreover, the message isn’t that they WILL be happy. The verb is present tense. The kingdom of God, the power of God belongs to the poor NOW. And the word poor isn’t just those people trying to make ends meet. The word poor here means those with NOTHING. Now, where does this leave those prosperity preachers? I thought they said God rewarded your faith with riches. Well, not according to Jesus.

Matthew tries to soften this message. He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” You can take his message in many ways. Matthew says it’s okay to acquire wealth. Luke doesn’t. Luke puts it right out there. Luke’s poor are really, really poor, and not just in spirit. And if you had any doubts about what Luke is saying, he puts in the three “woes”, as well:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort.

But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

There is no doubt as to what Luke claims the teaching is. Now, if we look at these in light of Taoist thought which claims that all things are in a state of change, you can take this to mean that you can take heart if you are poor for prosperity is coming. And you shouldn’t be too cocky if you’re rich, because you will fall on hard times eventually. Such is the way of the universe, its yin and yang. So do not despair in your hardships and do not exult in your prosperity. Both are temporary. Poverty is not a punishment sent by God, and wealth is not a reward.

There is a story about a preacher and a taxi driver who both die on the same day and both approach the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter looks in his Book of Life and finds the Taxi Driver’s name and welcomes him into heaven with beautiful robes and a lovely mansion. Peter also finds the preacher’s name in the book, but welcomes him in with a cheap, tattered robe and a rusty halo. The preacher demands to know why the taxi driver received such better treatment. And Peter answers him, “Reverend, when you preached, people slept. But when he drove, people prayed.” Poor people spend a lot more time praying than rich people. The poor have to depend on God. The wealthy depend upon themselves.

So much for the message of Prosperity Theology. Yes, you can use the power of faith to get rich and famous. But that doesn’t make you any closer to God, or whatever you want to call that power. What these men are teaching may work, but it isn’t the teaching of Jesus. There was a reason Jesus opens his sermon with these sayings. It is for shock value. He has just turned Jewish culture on its ear. Once he said this, people were going to listen. It was in direct opposition to everything the people believed. And it’s still in direct opposition to what most of the people in our culture believe today, whether Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever. And these were just the first of the things Jesus would say that would shake up the status quo. Jesus was a revolutionary, man. We will continue through this Sermon on the Plain for the next week or so. The core message of his words may just surprise you. In the meantime, it would be nice if some of these born again evangelical fundamentalists took what Jesus said as literally as they do the story of Noah and the Ark.

It is a common misconception that Lincoln came from a poor family. This is somewhat true; however, the reality is that everyone in that part of Kentucky was poor by today’s standards and Lincoln’s family was better off than most. In fact, his family was in the top 15% of the county as far as wealth goes. He was born in a log cabin; however, it was a very nice log cabin…more like the Ponderosa than something you’d make with Lincoln Logs.

Most people know that Lincoln was a lawyer and have an image of him defending the rights of the people. The reality is that he was a corporate lawyer who often as not defended the rights of large corporations against little people like you and me. He was admitted to the bar, but was never terribly good at his craft. His partner complained of Lincoln’s lack of organization, noting that he had a stack of papers labeled, “If you can’t find it anywhere else, look here.”

Many folks see old honest Abe as the great emancipator. Lincoln, however, was no abolitionist. As he wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it” The truth is that he freed the slaves only to encourage insurrection in the south of the slaves there. The Emancipation Proclamation makes no mention of freeing any slave except in those states which had left the union. He didn’t even have any belief in equality or equity. “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races,” he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. “I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” And, “Free them [ the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals.”

Well, he did hold the union together, after all, didn’t he? Well, yes, you could say he held the union together…geographically. But the type of government we had after the war was far different than the government we had before the war. Prior to the war our country was a voluntary union of sovereign states. After the war, there would be the strong central government we have now which holds little resemblance to the type of government our founders envisioned. Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t better. Still, many of Lincoln’s actions during his administration have led to the abuses of power we see in our government today. Lincoln also suspended the right of habeas corpus imprisoning hundreds of Americans without due process, without trial, for an indefinite period.

And I doubt the Native American/ Indians are celebrating much today. There is little to laud Lincoln’s policies (like my alliteration?) regarding the indigenous peoples. He was the author of the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave one square quarter mile free to any homesteader who could prove that the land had been improved and occupied for a period of five years. Unfortunately, that land already belonged to some other people who happened to be living there at the time, namely, the Sioux, who had been granted that land in perpetuity. The Sioux, as a matter of fact, had written to Lincoln to request that they be paid the 1.2 million dollars the government owed them for lands taken back in 1851. Lincoln informed them that he had no intention of paying them the money owed and sent General Pope to quell the insurrection there. Pope once said, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made.” Lincoln certainly did not challenge this statement.

The Indians were defeated. 303 male Indians were arrested and given trials which lasted an average of ten minutes each. All 303 were sentenced to death, although most were only guilty of inhabiting the land where the insurrection took place. In order to keep Europe from entering the Civil War on the part of the South, Lincoln pared the number to be executed down to 39. It was still the largest mass execution in American history. Lincoln promised to kill or remove every Indian from the state and provide Minnesota with 2 million dollars in federal funds. Remember, he only owed the Sioux 1.4 million for the land. So he would rather pay more money and kill the Indians, than pay the money owed them in order to avoid an insurrection.

Lincoln used much the same tactics against the Navajo. In 1863-64, General Carleton and his subordinate, Colonel Kit Carson, invaded the Navajo land, especially those concentrated in the Canyon de Chelly area. Crops were burned, innocents were murdered, women were raped and general chaos was rained upon these noble people simply because, like the Santee Sioux, they demanded from Lincoln what they had been promised; their land and to be left alone. General Carleton, believing there was gold to be found in the area, stated: “This war, will be pursued against you if it takes years until you cease to exist or move.” Again, there was no protest of this policy from Lincoln, his Commander in Chief.

The Navajo were forced to march over 300 miles to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Over 200 Navajos died on this march and, eventually, over 2,000 perished before a treaty was signed in 1868. While at Bosque Redondo, the Navajo suffered under horrible conditions; bitter water, no firewood and poor growing conditions for crops. The soldiers and the Mexican guards subjected the women to rape and humiliating treatment. Children born at this “concentration camp” were lucky to survive their first few months of life.

Well, he was at least honest, wasn’t he? Well actually, he most likely stole the election of 1864. He sent federal troops to areas where he was unpopular in order to intimidate votes to vote “correctly”. Even the Homestead Act of 1862, which was so bad for the Indians and supposedly so good for the little guy gave all the best land to the wealthy railroads.

But we like the fantasy. It is hard to imagine standing at the Lincoln Memorial and NOT being moved. I so want to believe that all those things he said in the Gettysburg address were real, and perhaps they were, but not in Lincoln’s heart. They are real in the hearts of Americans everywhere who want our country to be all it promised to be, because it is such a good promise. And just because the fantasy isn’t real doesn’t mean that we can’t MAKE it real. But that part is up to us. It is our job to make this country what its founders told us it could be. Maybe they were lying. Maybe they didn’t mean a word of it. But that doesn’t make the fantasy impossible. And when we finally get that through our thick skulls, then maybe we, the people, can build a government that is by the people and for the people. And when we do, we must continue to be vigilant so that government does not perish from the earth.

That is what I learned from running marathons. You don’t have to be fast to finish. You just have to put one foot in front of the other…for a very long time. Every marathon starts out the same. There is excitement and enthusiasm when the race begins. And those good feelings continue for the first ten miles or so. Then the legs start to get a little tired. By the time you get to mile twenty, the legs are shot. The human body is only built to run twenty miles, after that, you start to break down muscle tissue. You keep running. Your legs begin to scream. You see the vans parked along the course waiting to take home those poor souls who decide it isn’t worth it and give up the race, but you continue. And those last six miles of the race seem like the longest six miles of the entire race. But if you just hang in there and keep putting that one foot in front of the other, you will see the finish line looming up ahead. And by the time you get in that home stretch, you begin to sprint. You cannot even say from where you pull that last bit of power. You did not even know you had it. And then you cross that line, and they put a medal around your neck, and you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment that cannot truly be described. And even if you’re the last person across the line, you feel like a winner.

That’s the lesson about living I learned from the marathon. You don’t have to cross the line first and get all the glory. That’s nice, I suppose. But all you have to do is keep plodding along, and you will still cross the finish line. And your accomplishment is just as great. Greater in fact. For the winner of the marathon will put in about 95% effort for a little over two hours. But as a back of the pack runner, you will be putting in 95% effort for four hours or even more. I never ran one under five. If they were to measure success by the amount of effort exerted, the back of the pack runners would win every time. And I think that’s what life is all about. You don’t give up. You just keep going, no matter what. You just keep going.

I’m sure Peter felt like giving up. According to Luke, Peter and his brothers had been out fishing all day long, from sun up to sun down. Imagine what it must have been like out on that lake, the Sea of Galilee, with the hot sun beating down on you relentlessly, throwing your nets out time and time again, and finding little or no fish in them. Then to finally come to the conclusion that you would be bringing nothing in today, rowing the boat home to shore, tired, disappointed, worried (this was their livelihood, after all). You get your boats to shore, drag the nets out of the boats and start to clean them, while that Jesus fellow you just met a couple of days ago goes and stands on your boat and begins talking to the crowds there who had followed him there to listen.

And then, once you have your nets all clean, this Jesus fellow steps down off the boat and walks up to you and tells you to take your boat out again into the deep water (which is not close to the shore, Jack) and drop your nets again. You immediately protest. You say, “We have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” Which is pretty nice of you, considering that this guy healed your mother in law of some sickness just the other day. Really, it’s the only reason you do what he says. You kind of figure you owe him one, and besides, your wife will kill you if you don’t. So you do. You schlep the nets back in the boat, row all the way out to the middle of the damn lake and throw your nets over just as he says, but this time, the nets are so filled with fish that you need to call another boat over to help you drag them in. You fill two boats with fish. Is it any wonder you drop to your knees and say, “My Lord! Leave me because I am a sinful man!” Anybody might feel a little undeserving under the circumstances, especially since you thought he was cracked to tell you to go out again.

Who knows why they caught so many fish this time out? Perhaps Jesus knew something about the feeding habits of these fish. Perhaps he knew where they were feeding. Perhaps it was a miracle. Or perhaps Jesus just understood that you don’t give up. You keep trying until you succeed. It doesn’t say in the story how long they waited out there in the deep water. You could get the feeling from the story that they caught those fish right away, but they may have been there for hours, as far as the text goes. Perhaps the whole point of this story is to tell us to keep on keeping on.

And for us, it’s not just the things we try to accomplish that we sometimes feel like quitting when times get tough. Sometimes we quit on each other. Sometimes there are people that you love, that begin to wear you down. And there are times you feel like you just can’t stand them anymore. And then, sometimes, you quit on them. You decide they just aren’t worth the effort. And who knows what you may have lost when you do. I have known some people longer than some of you reading this have been alive, and I know that there were times when I felt like quitting on some of them, but the love was there, and I held on. And in time, things got better, then they got worse, then they got better. That’s the way life is. But these long term relationships I have I treasure above all things, and the love I have for these people is deeper and stronger than I can possibly describe.

And there have been some people I haven’t liked very much, but for one reason or another, have been forced to work with them over a long time. And a funny thing happens after you work with someone for years and years; you get to know them. And the better you know them, the more you accept them. In the case of at least one person I know, it took about twenty years; but I’ve finally grown to love him.

And then other times, we give up on ourselves. We try to make changes in our lives. It happens every New Year’s Eve. We decide we are going to remake ourselves. We are going to drive out every demon (figuratively) that is dragging us down and keeping us from being what we want to be. We try to change all those bad habits we know we need to change. We’re going to start saving money. We’re going to lose that weight, begin exercising, start living healthy. We’re going back to school. We’re going to quit that go nowhere job and find something we really love doing. But along the way, things get hard, and then we give up. And we think that if we should happen to fail one day, it’s all over. But, as Muhammad Ali said, failure isn’t falling down, it’s staying down.

And then some people have given up on God. Perhaps they prayed for something once, and things didn’t turn out the way they had hoped. Or perhaps they tried going to church once, and found the service just too sappy, or too judgmental. Perhaps they listened to some hellfire and damnation sermon and decided they didn’t want any part of any God like that. It’s easy to look at the people who believe in God, whatever the religion, and decide they are too simple, to judgmental, too violent. Churchy people can be hard to hang with. First of all, most of them are so square. Or maybe the stories they’ve heard about God are just too much for a rational mind to buy. All these stories of miracles, healing the sick, rising from the dead, are a little hard for anybody familiar with even the most basic scientific facts to accept. That was a problem even in the Apostle Paul’s day. Even he had to explain to the Corinthians that there were some 500 people who had seen Jesus after the crucifixion, most of whom were still alive, and they could ask them if they didn’t believe him. When I was a young man, I was far too cynical to accept the idea of miracles, or of a loving God. But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve seen, the more I’ve come around to not finding those ideas more likely than they are unlikely.

Yes, I think the secret to life is living it. I think the key is not giving up, being persistent. Just put that one foot in front of the other and keep going. You never know what is going to be around the corner. Yeah, it could be horrible. But it could be wonderful, too. I think Peter and his brothers understood that then. That’s why they dropped everything to go follow this fellow Jesus who said, “Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men.” It’s easy to give up on things, but not very satisfying. So I do my best not to give up on the things I try to accomplish. I try not to give up on the kids I teach. And I try not to give up on the people I know. I try never to give up on myself. There is always hope. Everyday, live life to its absolute fullest, every minute, every second. Never give up. Never turn back. When you feel tired and broken and beaten, go back out in the deep water, and throw your net in again.

When I was a child of eight or nine, I used to watch a children’s show every afternoon hosted by a man we affectionately called Engineer Bill. He used to wear a train engineer’s suit, and the theme of the entire show revolved around trains. Engineer Bill showed cartoons and talked to the kids and encouraged us to drink our milk. He had a game called green light go. He would tell us all to go get our glasses of milk, which we all dutifully did, and then he would say, “Green light, go!” We would all drink our milk, and had to keep drinking until he said, “Red light, stop!”. I think I nearly choked to death a couple of times. Engineer Bill was such a kindly, gentle old guy and we all loved him. He had this machine called the way-back machine…no, wait, that was Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman. Well, he SOME kind of machine, and we would send in cards and letters. Engineer Bill would draw some lucky kid’s card from the drum, and then he would go to the machine and pull one of the knobs. If the machine made the right noise, the kid got a great toy prize, like an Andy Guard Dump Truck.

One of the great things about Engineer Bill was that he would go around to various shopping centers and we could get a chance to go to the center and meet him, the REAL Engineer Bill. I always wanted to see him. Then one day it happened. Engineer Bill announced he was coming to a shopping center near us. My parents said they’d take us, my best friend, Phil, and me. We were going to get to see the REAL Engineer Bill, my first celebrity. I was so excited. So we went. And we stood in line. And we stood in line, for a long time, for long, long time. We stood in line for a long time, but soon we were getting near the front. Each kid was going to get a chance to pull the knob on the whachamacallet machine. If it made the right noise, we would get a prize, just like the television show. And then it was our turn. We got to the front, and there he was, my hero, Engineer Bill. And then I was standing in front him, looking up at him, with eyes filled with awe and wonder, and Engineer Bill looked down at me from under that engineer’s hat and said, “C’mon, kid. Move along, keep it movin’!.” And I pulled the handle and it made no noise at all, so I got nothing at all, and I kept moving. And I never played Green Light, Go again. I was so disappointed.

I think the people listening to Jesus talk in their synagogue in that story from Luke must have felt the same way. If you remember the story I told you last week, right after his baptism, Jesus goes to his local synagogue and reads from the prophet Isaiah. He reads Isaiah’s prophecy that the blind will see, and that the all those broken and oppressed will be comforted. He says that it is the year acceptable to the Lord. And then, after closing the scroll, he looks at the crowd and says that this prophecy is fulfilled in their hearing. At first, people look at him and are amazed, and then they realize that this is Mary and Joseph’s kid and start to complain. And that is where the story picks up this week.

The men in the synagogue started to grumble at him. Jesus says to them, “You quote the proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. You want me to perform all those miracles you’ve heard so much about. I tell you that no prophet is appreciated in his hometown! Back in those olden times, in the days of Elijah, during those times of drought and famine, God sent his prophet to the pagans, not to you! And back in the day of Elisha, when there were all those people had leprosy, it was Naaman the Syrian that God healed, not you people!” And you know, for some reason, this didn’t assuage their anger. Instead they followed him out of the synagogue with the thought of throwing him off a cliff and bashing his head in. But for some reason, they didn’t. Perhaps it was a miracle of some kind, or perhaps it was just out of respect for Mary and Joseph. We don’t know, the book doesn’t say. It just says Jesus walked through the crowd and they didn’t touch him. But what was it about that message he delivered that pissed them off so much?

Perhaps part of it was that they all knew him, as I mentioned last week, and that they didn’t appreciate being preached at by someone they knew. But one thing Jesus says gives us a clue. Jesus says they want him to perform the miracles he performed in Capernaum and some of the other villages around. This suggests that he was already famous. As I said, Mark places this story much later on in Jesus’ ministry. Luke moves it towards the beginning. The people of Judea had a very specific idea in mind of what the Messiah was supposed to be. They wanted a king, a military leader, who was going to kick the Romans’ collective asses and return their land to them, along with all its wealth. They wanted someone who was going to free them from Roman rule and taxation. They wanted to be a great nation again, as they were in the times of King David and King Solomon, a thousand years earlier. Instead, this son of a carpenter tells them about freeing the oppressed, serving one another, loving their enemies, leaving behind material possessions.  Not only that, he as much told them, “You people think you’re so special, well, you’re not.  God came to pagans in the past before he came to you!  What makes you think you’re so righteous?!”  People don’t like having their hypocrisy pointed out to them.

This was not the Messiah they expected. More importantly, this was not the Messiah they wanted. Why, this Jesus didn’t even pass his time with the important people, the priests, the scribes, the wealthy, the good, churchy people. He spent his time with whores and pimps, tax collectors and the other refuse of society. He hung around with sick, unclean people, and the poor. They wanted a message of power and glory, or at least, of how to behave; Jesus brought them a message of love. So, naturally, they wanted to kill him. He wasn’t the kind of holy man they wanted, and the kind of God of which he spoke, was not the kind of God they wanted either. Funny thing about God, though (or, again, whatever you want to call that power, I like to call that creative spirit God because…well, that’s the culture with which I grew up, and, more importantly, it’s only three letters). God, being God, will be exactly how S/He wants to be regardless of our expectations. Jesus makes it clear that what God cares about is love. That is the nature of God, love. But what is love?

The people of Corinth, in the days of the early church had a hard time with that, too. And the apostle Paul, sent them a letter in which he tells them all about love. And the love he is talking about is not that romantic love we feel toward our partners, but the love which permeates the universe, the love we are called to be. Paul says, “If angels speak through me, but I don’t have love, then I’m nothing but a bunch of noise. If I can see the future, if I understand everything, all of life’s mysteries, if I have enough faith to move mountains, but I don’t have love, then I have nothing. If I give all I have to the poor, and even give my life for the cause, but don’t have love, then I gain nothing.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not vain. Love is not conceited. It is not rude. It is not selfish. It is not quick-tempered. It does not hold grudges. Love rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Everything else will pass away. Only faith, hope, and love remain. And the greatest of these is love.” (official Big Daddy translation)

So many people choose this to be read at their wedding. I know we had it at ours. And every time I read it, it brings me to tears. If only I could live my life that way. I want to. I really do. But I fail all the time. But then, it’s good to have something to work towards. This is how I want to live my life. And all those churchy people who spend so much of their time judging the rest of us might want look at this again. It is my greatest hope that if people could just look at what the message of Jesus was, that their hearts might be touched, and we could see a rebirth of the kind of faith and love that could bring our world back from the edge of disaster. Because there is nothing in that message about rules, or laws, or obligations, or with whom we share our beds, or even who the true God is.

The message is simple. Love one another. Serve one another. Righteousness and holiness might be all well and fine, but what matters most is how much we love. In the end, that’s the only thing that lasts. Even so many of the people who believe in God spend so much of their time praying for better jobs, and more money, or success. I wonder how many pray to be more loving? When we look at all those attributes we admire, courage, faith, responsibility, power, strength, honesty, kindness, perseverance, intelligence, it’s important to remember, “the greatest of these is love.” The Beatles told us. The word is Love. I don’t know if that’s the God we expect, or even want. But that’s the God we got. I guess God is an old hippie after all.

I know that I often hear a close friend complain of one thing or another, back pain, for instance. And I will tell them that of all the remedies I have tried, acupuncture seems to work the best. Then they usually give me some story about being afraid of needles, or preferring to use traditional approaches, and both of us being polite and well mannered, the subject is dropped. Then, some months later, they will tell me that they were advised by a complete stranger to try acupuncture, so they did, and now they are much better. And once upon a time, I might have pointed out that I had made the same suggestions some months ago, at which they scoffed. But I know it will do no good. There seems to be something about us that doesn’t trust those who are closest to us. Perhaps we know them too well. We know our friends and all their faults all too well. We prefer to trust people we don’t know so well. We haven’t had the opportunity yet to see their failures.

A real estate tycoon by the name of Robert Ringer used to use this side of human nature to great advantage. He would never try to sell a building in his own city. He always traveled into a different city where he was unknown and behaved like the “expert from afar”. And since he behaved like an expert, and since nobody knew anything about him, they naturally believed in him. So in the end, he always ended up talking people into selling their multi-million dollar buildings, for which, Mr. Ringer would earn massive commissions.

Jesus ran into the same problem. According to Luke, right after Jesus is baptized and is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he walks into the synagogue in his hometown. When it is time for the reading, Jesus rises and goes to the front, and opens the scroll to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Literally, in the original Greek, these words could just as well be translated as “I feel moved by that creative spirit, I am compelled, to bring good news to those who feel beaten down, to let you know that you don’t have to fight anymore. I come to open your eyes and raise up all those of you who feel broken and crushed by depression, and to tell you all how important today is.” These were the words of the prophet Isaiah. Then Jesus looked out upon the people in the synagogue and said, “Today, as you hear these words, they have come to pass.” And then everybody looked at him. Some people were really impressed by what he had to say. But there were others, who looked at each other, and then at Jesus, and said, “Wait a minute…isn’t this Jesus, the son of our neighbor, Joseph the carpenter?” And they sort of wrote him off.

They knew him too well. They looked at him and they assumed that he couldn’t have anything important to offer them. Hadn’t they known him their entire lives? How could he have anything special to offer? They had seen him as a child. They had watched him grow up, many of them. They put the messenger ahead of the message. We do the same thing. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I write these Sunday blogs. A lot of people have seen the sort of people who talk about the bible and about Jesus, and want nothing to do with Christianity. And let’s face it, if Jesus called upon us to be more like Pat Robertson, Jim Baker, Billy Graham, or even the Pope, you’d have to be nuts to follow his teachings. Luckily, he didn’t. That’s why I try to write about the things he DID say, so that people can forget about the teachings of the church, and listen to the teachings of Jesus. A lot of people look at the violent actions of a minority of extremist Muslims, and assume that there is something wrong with the teachings of Mohammed. But I say, look at the words of the prophet (and sometimes they may well be written on subway walls and tenement halls), look into the face of the prophet, and you will see the truth. One thing I have learned from these twenty plus years of teaching elementary school, is that sometimes, I am wrong, and a ten year old child is right.

Luke moves this event to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Mark’s gospel placed it towards the end, just before Jesus goes to Jerusalem. Mark points out in his version, that Jesus was unable to heal anybody, raise any dead, work any miracles at all there because of the people’s lack of faith. And I always like to point out that it is faith in the message that matters, not faith in the person. Those people could not believe in the message because it was Jesus who spoke it, as if that had anything to do with the truth contained therein. Why is it we think that someone we don’t know is any wiser than someone we do?

Luke was trying to make this event, in which Jesus is rejected by his hometown, a foreshadowing of his eventual rejection and death at the hands of the people of Israel. Although it seems to me that it was really the leaders of the people who rejected him, more than the people themselves. Luke was writing to Christians, some of them second and third generation. So Luke puts more stress on the rejection, and less on the reasons for the rejection.

And as I mentioned earlier, for some reason, we place the opinions and thoughts of some people above those of others. But all people have something to offer. We all have something to teach. Paul, the apostle, said that we are all parts of one body, and no part of the body is any more important than any other part of the body. He said that the eye cannot say to the hand, you are not part of the body. The hand needs the eye. The eye needs the hand. We all need each other. And God, or whatever you want to call that power, is a part of the body too. We need God, and S/He needs us too. The Buddhists go further, and say that all living things are a part of the body, not just humans. As such, we can learn from all living things, can see the truth in all living things. The Native Americans, the Indians, go further than that. They say the earth itself, the entire universe, is part of the body, and that we can learn from all things.

And as much as we need to look and listen to all things, all parts of the body, it is important to remember that the truth, the answers we seek, are within each of us. The truth is contained deep in our hearts. We only have to look within, but then of course, without a mirror, he must look to your face to understand my own. When I have lost something, the car keys, for example, I always look for them where I would expect them to be, and I never find them there (for if they were there, they would not be lost, would they?). I only find them after I finally open my mind and allow myself to look in places where I would not expect them to be. And so it is with any answer. Often it is found where you don’t expect it to be.

So it’s important to listen to what other people have to say. And sometimes, even though we know our friends might be full of shit, they still might have some good advice also. It’s the message that matters, not the person bringing it. I wouldn’t ignore a letter because I didn’t think much of the mailman. The message was that there was good news. You don’t have to stay beaten down; you are free, if you want to be. God, or whatever you want to call God, is always with you. Those were the words written down in the book. They were not the words of Jesus. They came long before him. If only those people had listened to the words.

Whenever I do find my car keys, or cell phone, or whatever it is I’ve lost, I usually find it in some surprising place I would have never thought to look. The same is true of great truths. Sometimes you hear it from someone or some place you would never expect, perhaps in a song, or in a comic strip, in a blog, or perhaps even from the poor son of a carpenter.

Martin Luther King was far more complex than the man who stood in Washington D.C. and revealed his dream to the thousands upon thousands standing in hope there. His dream went far beyond racial equality, equal rights and equal opportunity. It must be remembered that when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, he was a very disliked man. The F.B. I. had been watching him and tapping his phone. What was then called “the silent majority” despised him for the civil unrest he encouraged. We must remember that Martin disrupted the business as usual mentality.

I find it interesting that the same people who say they look up to Martin Luther King and believe him to be a great hero are often the same people who complained about the demonstrations at the WTO meetings in Washington a few years ago. Trust me, if Martin had been alive, he would have been at those demonstrations, would have been a part of those demonstrations.

When George W. Bush was president, he said of Martin, “Throughout Dr. King’s life, he continued to trust in the power of those words [ life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—from the Declaration of Independence, BD], even when the practice of America did not live up to their promise. When Martin Luther King came to Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1963, he came to hold this nation to its own standards, and to call its citizens to live up to the principles of our founding. He stood not far from here, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. With thousands gathered around him, Dr. King looked out over the American capital and declared his famous words, “I have a dream.”—At the groundbreaking for the MLK memorial, Nov. 2006

Well GW could afford to praise Martin because he’s dead. Trust me, if Martin were alive now, Bush would hate his guts. Martin would be protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and pointing out that it is people of color and poor whites who make up the largest part of our volunteer army. He would point out how the vast military expenditures are crippling our economy and making life worse for those least able endure the recession, the poor and middle class. Martin would be speaking out about the loss of civil liberties and the criminal, yes, and criminal actions of our leaders. And if Martin were alive, you could bet that he’d be raking President Obama over the coals just as he would any president that failed to improve the lives of the poor and disenfranchised.  If Martin were alive today, they’d kill him again.

Here is what Martin had to say about labor, “A Society that performs miracles with machinery has the capacity to make some miracles for men if it values men as highly as it values machines.

This is really the crux of the problem. Are we as concerned for human values and human resources as we are for material and mechanical values? The automobile industry is not alone a production complex of assembly lines and steel-forming equipment. It is an industry of people who must live in decency with the security for children, for old age, for health and cultural life. Automation cannot be permitted to become a blind monster which grinds out more cars and simultaneously snuffs out the hopes and lives of the people by whom the industry was built.” –Speech at the UAW 25th Anniversary Dinner, 1961

Remember, Martin was killed while working for striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Here are some more of his words on labor: “”The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.”
—Speech to the state convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO, Oct. 7, 1965

Here is what he had to say about war: Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”

You can be certain that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today and making speeches, people like John Mc Cain, Romney, Bush, Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Anne Coulture all would be attacking him. You can bet that it wouldn’t be long before someone silenced his voice again because unlike so many people talking today, people listened to Martin. He had the knack of getting people to do something. That was why he had to be killed back in 1968. He was a threat to the power structure and the status quo.

It must always be remembered that to follow Dr. King is to go down an unpopular road. People will hate you. People will abuse you. People will call you a traitor. It should also be remembered that as we look across the nation, the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. has yet to be fulfilled. Although race relations are better than they were, people of color still make less money than white people. People are arguing today, forty years after the death of MLK about whether a black man can be elected president of the United States. People are still making “lynch” jokes. No, I would say we still have a ways to go before that dream comes true.

The best way to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. is to live out his words. Be peaceful, but fight against injustice. Stand up to protect those rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Help fight to take back our government from the multinational corporations. And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll be free at last, free at last, great God almighty, free at last. Have a good holiday everybody.

Becky and I decided we wanted our wedding to be different. So, we went down to México and purchased white cotton embroidered dresses down there for the bridesmaids. I purchased guayaveras (Méxican wedding shirts) in various colors for the groomsmen. There would be no tuxedos at this wedding, no formal gowns. We purchased Becky’s wedding dress from a little shop down there. It was a beautiful traditional Méxican wedding dress. Instead of a veil, she wore a crown of spring flowers. It was just beautiful, and very colorful. Half of the Bible readings were in Spanish. We designed the whole ceremony to be bi-cultural.

Our party was nice, too. There were scads of people there. Our wedding was the social event of the year at work, and among all the members of my kung fu club, let alone our families. A friend loaned us the use of their condominium recreation center. One of my kung fu brothers-friends offered his services (but mostly the services of his wife) to do the catering. The food was good, a little odd, but good. We had Black Forest ham sandwiches and pasta, as I recall. She also served this traditional Italian treat made from communion wafers (unconsecrated, of course) that consisted of a wafer topped with marzipan and an almond. The cake could have been better. My wife still teases me about it. Something amiss had happened during the baking of the cake, so it came out looking more like Ayres’s Rock in Australia. On top of this somewhat lopsided lump of cake sat seven peach halves, right on top of the white frosting. I still refer to it as our seven-breasted fertility goddess cake. But more importantly, we had lots and lots and lots of champagne. We purchased several cases from Trader Joes. And it was good stuff, too. You just can’t have a good wedding party without a lot of wine.

Today, the church celebrates the third event in the Epiphany (thought you were getting out of it today, didn’t you?). The church likes to do things in threes, and multiples thereof. Three is one of those symbolic numbers I have mentioned before, standing for the divine. Those wise guys from the east were only the first part of the Epiphany. The baptism of Jesus was the second. And today marks the third, the wedding feast at Cana. Just as the presence of the Magi, (those kings from the east) only occurs in the gospel of Matthew, the wedding feast is only mentioned in the gospel of John. John’s is the odd man out gospel. It was the latest written, and very different from the other three. The gospel of John is very theological in nature, and much less an attempt at a biography of Jesus. Poetically, it is the most beautiful of the four, but that’s just my opinion.

Scholars like to say that this gospel alone may have actually been written by the person in the title, John. John did live to be a very old man, so there is a possibility that he did, indeed write it. It is the only gospel that DOESN’T mention the name of Jesus’ favorite disciple. All the other books say that Jesus liked John the best. John just says “the disciple Jesus loved…”

According to John, Jesus goes to where John the Baptist is baptizing people, which is what you do when you’re called “the baptist”, and he begins to collect his entourage. If you were to believe John’s gospel, he gathered three that day, and two the next, in Galilee. Then three days later (three days, get it?) he is invited to a wedding. Well, his mom is, anyway. All we know from the story is that there is this wedding in Cana, and Jesus’ mom is there. John is the only gospel that never refers to Mary by name. She is always referred to as the mother of Jesus. You might think that was because John didn’t know her name, but supposedly, it is John to whom Jesus hands over care of his mother from the cross. Anyway, Jesus is also invited, so he is there with his buddies (I’ll bet the bride and groom were happy about that). We can probably assume that this wedding is for a family member. What follows is a very interesting exchange between Mary and Jesus.

Mary discovers that the wedding party is short on wine, so she goes to Jesus and says (quite understandably), “They’re running out of wine.”

Jesus responds, “Woman, was has that got to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

Mary ignores what Jesus says and simply turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”

So Jesus tells the servants to gather together these six stone jars, jars that were meant for ceremonial washing, and tells them to fill them with water. The servants do this, and then Jesus tells them to take some of the water out and take it to the guy in charge of the banquet. He tastes the water, and announces his surprise that the wedding party saved the best wine for last. The usual practice was to serve the good wine first, and then after everybody’s drunk, you serve the cheap crap. This is the very first of the miracles performed by Jesus. It is the third manifestation of his divine nature (first to the Magi, second at the baptism, and now this miracle), rounding out the Epiphany. Remember, the word Epiphany comes from the Greek word for appearance.

The exchange between Mary and Jesus shows both her incredible faith in his abilities, and in their relationship. In spite of what Jesus says, she knows that he will not let her down in request, and he doesn’t. So in spite of it not yet being “his hour”, he is compelled to help her out. Whenever I’ve read this little exchange I’ve always thought Jesus comes off a little harsh to his mom. It’s not quite so bad in the original Greek. In Greek, it’s more like, “Woman, between you and me, what of it?” The word, “woman” was a common way to speak to any married woman at that time and place, kind of like the Spanish word, “señora”. In any case, Mary knew that if she asked, Jesus would come through, and he did.

The story is also a foreshadowing of the theology behind the entire mission.  John baptized with water.  Jesus changes water into wine, wine that is, he will later say, his blood.   Notice that Jesus instructs the servants to use stone jars that were used for ceremonial washing. Then the water is changed into wine. Later on, at the Last Supper, Jesus would tell us that the wine he was holding was his blood. The church would later tell the people that it was the shedding of this blood that washed away the sins of the world. As I always say, these books were not concerned with facts; they were concerned with truth. The ceremonial washing, the wedding, it all ties in with the relationship of the Divine spirit and humankind. Israel is often referred to as a bride. Even today, within the Catholic belief, the church is the bride of Christ.

And for all those evangelical born against who say that drinking is a sin, I like to point out that the very first miracle was changing water into wine. He didn’t change it into grape juice. Some of the tight-assed anti-liquor people try to tell us that the wine back then wasn’t fermented, but were that the case, this story would make no sense. You serve the good wine first, so people won’t notice the cheap stuff once they’re drunk. Moreover, the reason the disciples keep falling asleep later on, when Jesus is arrested, is because they had been drinking wine at dinner. They were a little drunk and sleepy. No, it was real wine all right. And obviously God has nothing against it. Moreover, this first miracle happened at a wedding, which shows that God has nothing against sex and human activities. This was a party. We are not supposed to be miserable all the time. We are supposed to enjoy life and each other. God wants us to be happy. Moreover, this is a wedding.

You don’t go seeking out a wedding party; you are invited to it. The wedding feast at Cana is trying to show us our relationship with the divine. We are family. We are invited to be part of the celebration. Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is within us. God is not some far off thing for which you need go off and search. That name in the prophecy, Emmanuel, means God is with us. That’s the message. We are not disconnected to God. God is all around us, in the face of every person we see, and in ourselves. That is the message of the Epiphany. First, Christ is revealed to the world, not just the Jews, but to the non-Jews as well, in the story of the wise men. Then Christ is revealed to the Jews and unites them with the divine through the baptism in the river Jordan. Finally, we are all invited to the marriage of Christ to humanity in the wedding feast at Cana.

And if these explanations of these books are starting to sound redundant, then good! That’s the whole point. These stories all teach the same message. Once you read all these stories and start to see that they just teach the same message over and over and over again, you start to see the truth behind the message. Then you find out that the Bible isn’t inconsistent at all, because the message never changes. And it’s not about any set list of rules and regulations. It’s not about not doing this or not doing that. Those things are all symbolic and only have whatever meaning we choose to give them. It’s all about being connected to the divine through our love and service to one another. This is the key to real happiness. This is the meaning of life. We’ve all been invited to the wedding, so let’s have a good time. And be sure to drink the wine. It’s good stuff.