Adoption into the Spirit of Love

Romans 8:14-15

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

John 3:4-8

Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

 

I am very tired.  We have adopted a new puppy.  It feels on many levels like I have a newborn baby.  Only this baby is adopted.  This is not a human child, yet I am still completely responsible for her survival.  This adoption is an adoption in the Spirit of Love. I have been with the breeder since before conception on this journey to adoption.  Not knowing which puppy would be mine but always having faith and love that one would come to live with me. 

I also am adopted.  My adopted father chose me, he was responsible for my survival.  He adopted me because he loved me as a father loves a child. He may not have been with my story since conception, but he had faith and love enough to know it was the right choice for us both.  His father and his son, my brother, also both adopted their first-born children.   All three of these men understand the Spirit of Love, much like God adopts us all. Not as slaves but as children.

We all are adopted into the Spirit of Love. Adopted by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We love and care for each other as children of God.  In congregation (or Sangha) we adopt each other as a caring, loving family, responsible for each other’s Spiritual survival through faith, and through a Spirit of Love, we become community. And we extend our community to the world with this Spirit of Love, accepting all as adopted members of our family.

 

Jesus and Galilee

Acts 2:1-13

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

Jesus said to his disciples,” When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

 

I have a strange mantra that I sometimes say to myself: “Jesus and Galilee.” This mantra has always represented the times in my life when I have realized that you just can’t go home. Sometimes when working in a new field, the people that have known you the longest continue to look at you through the lens they had of you as a younger, less experienced person. Sometimes these are the hardest people to convince of your newfound knowledge and usefulness. 

It is those that often love us that want us to always remain that same person they fell in love with so long ago.  Our parents, spouses, siblings, childhood friends, children, and early colleagues sometimes do not recognize growth.  This happened to Jesus when he first returned to Galilee.  People thought of him as a young child that ran off to the temple.  They are doing the same with the disciples today on Pentecost.  Sometimes you have to leave home to make a new start with new people that are not judgmental based on your past, as the disciples did moving forward with their preaching.  In the Episcopal church those entering clergy must leave their home parishes for this reason.

To me this is an overlooked part of Pentecost.  Sometimes others don’t see what is obvious growth.  Sometimes we don’t see the obvious growth either. Sometimes space is needed. This ‘Spirit of Truth’ is there waiting to be discovered but sometimes it takes time.

My story of call was mystical.  I was walking on a labyrinth at the Episcopal summer camp I attended as a child.  I was there six years ago as a presenter at a Daughter’s of the King (women’s) retreat. I presented yoga, mainly in chairs, for this mixed age group.  It was well received. At the conclusion of the retreat, I took a little time for myself to walk the newly installed labyrinth.  I was wearing a red scarf and it was very windy on that day. I walked and thought about my life. At one point I took a hairpin turn in the labyrinth and my scarf blew off one side and land on me in the configuration of a deacon’s stole. At the time I took this to mean I was being called to the clergy.  But after much personal discernment, or Svādhyāya, and further discernment with my parish it was decided that clergy was not my call.  Instead, I was called to be the best yoga therapist I could be.  I didn’t see my own obvious growth, what I had just done at the retreat, and my own Spirit of Truth.  My own personal Galilee blinded me to the truth of my life.  I have continued this journey as a yoga therapist but sometimes I still have moments of Galatian blindness to my own abilities, and the abilities of others.  As well as experiencing this unrecognized growth when others that have known me a long time look at me through a lens I’ve outgrown. All we can do at these times is recognize what is happening and find compassion. Then maybe we can move forward in a way that serves us best.

Image © Lars Justinen at Goodsalt.com

 

Agape Namaste

Easter 6 Year B

John 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

Easter 7 Year B

John 17:6-19

Jesus prayed for his disciples, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

Please excuse my absence last week. To make it up this week I have presented last week’s and this week’s Gospels together.  Both are from the Gospel of John.  Historically, “The congregation [that wrote John] was engaged in the task of defining themselves with regard to other Christians, the Jews, and the world at large. There are signals that the church has felt forced into adopting a defensive and competitive posture. Still, they are committed to being a community of love in an environment where they are hated and persecuted by others.”*  The similarities to the present day is noticeable.  We are still defensive, competitive, hateful, and persecuted, yet ever striving for love.

The first Gospel, from Chapter 15, focuses on Agape Love.  From Wikipedia “Agape (Ancient Greek ἀγάπη, agapē) is a Greco-Christian term referring to unconditional love, "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God".”  In John’s timeline this chapter falls during the Last Supper. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is a foreshadowing of events to come, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the ultimate gift of love Jesus gives to us all. Yet even this does not end our evil ways.

The second Gospel is Jesus’ final prayer for his disciples.  In this Gospel it is the last time he addresses the whole group of disciples.  Jesus draws parallels between his connection to God the Father, Jesus and the disciples, and the disciples and all the people of the world. Jesus even says, “All mine are yours, and yours are mine.” The idea of agape love toward others comes shining through in these connections.  In my love of the Venn diagram I visualize this as circles all overlapping in various ways, yet all contained within one circle as Jesus’ view of a connected loving world.  No matter our religion, Jesus loves us.  His example during his life of love for the sick, diseased, male and female, prostitute, eunuch, Samaritan, Gentile, Roman, and Jew show us he does not separate people on the basis of race, sex, nationality, or even religion. Jesus loves us all. If his prayer is to be followed then we are not to be “taken out of the world” but to stay in the world, spreading and following Jesus’ example of agape love.  But somewhere along the way we as individuals always lose sight of this. We even judge and separate ourselves within Christianity.  

In my work as a yoga therapist, I don’t judge anyone on the basis of anything, and that is hard as I tend to be a judgmental person.  But when I am working all of that goes away.  You are a person worthy of my help no matter what you bring into the session.  I leave my prejudices at the door.  I am doing my part “to protect them from the evil one” by bring health and healing through yoga.

Like most people though, I fight my own prejudices outside of work.  The church I have chosen is one of the most welcoming of Christian denominations. I struggle with those that do not fully welcome all.  I struggle even with my own denomination not welcoming non-Christians to the table, although we don’t ask either (*wink wink*). I struggle with inhuman treatment of animals too. But I had to give up vegetarianism for health reasons. We live in a world where survival of the fittest is the mantra. But what if we all raised each other up and treated all with dignity?  What if we all really viewed ourselves as part of one world circle of unity rather than a bunch of sometimes overlapping circles of segregation? I don’t have any answers, but I try to lead with love. Namaste - the good in me bows and honors to good in you.

*Introducing the New Testament by Mark Allan Powell P176