64. Effects of the Mission of Jesus

Jesus’ ministry is taking place at a time when a major confrontation with the Romans could erupt at any moment. Tensions are high. Disagreements as to how to deal with the Romans are heated. Into that situation Jesus brings a powerful and controversial message bound to inflame the situation even further.

Some of us can think back to the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War. It was impossible to be neutral about the rightness or wrongness of that conflict. And whatever stance you took, it was guaranteed to align you with half the people you knew – both inside and outside your family – and alienate you from the other half.

65. The Signs of the Times

Jesus is admonishing his people to pay attention and to start making links between cause and effect.

It’s hard to read this passage and not ask: what are the signs of our times? They are reported on daily. Global warming. Deforestation. Depleted oceans. Species loss. Ground water pollution. World hunger. Terrorism. Weapons of mass destruction. The list goes on.

But not all the signs are negative. There are communication networks that span the planet and create possibilities for global dialogue. There’s new information that validates our common evolutionary history and the interconnectedness of all life. There’s greater human maturity and wisdom. And there’s a blossoming realization that to survive, we must all learn to get along.

As we read the signs of the times, which future will we choose to nurture?

66. Warnings of National Disaster

Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator in Judea, and we can conclude from the passage that he was responsible for some pretty brutal punishment of the Jews, presumably for resisting Roman rule.

Jesus instructs his listeners not to view Pilate’s actions as isolated events, brought about by especially egregious behavior on the part of those punished. In fact, just the opposite should be concluded: That unless the Jews cease their antagonism toward the Romans, all can expect a similar end.

67. Teaching About Reliance on Wealth

Jesus message here is pretty clear: the measure of our life is not in how much we possess, but in how rich we are toward God. In other words, how conscious we are of life’s larger purpose and meaning.

It’s interesting that our culture preaches exactly the opposite message. Each of us is hammered daily with snake-oil assurances that our self-worth can be found in what we wear, own, live in and belong to. And what’s really scary is how quickly these messages have gone global, driving the ambitions of billions of human beings around the world and bringing our life-support systems to the brink of collapse.

Multiplied by several billion, a value system that preaches laying up treasures upon the earth simply cannot be sustained by the earth.

So what does Jesus recommend? That we lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Make the relationship with God primary. It is the one relationship that is permanent and that no one can take from us. It hearkens back to Jesus’ parable about building a house upon rock, rather than sand.

And what does it mean to make the relationship with God primary? We have been given the requirements: To love God with all our soul, mind, heart and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The commitment to love must be total -- no man, having put his hand to the plow, and turning back, is fit for the kingdom of God. See our own humanity clearly. Deal with our anger and resistances. And do right by everyone, even our enemy.

It would seem that as we become more conscious of all that has been given to us we cannot help but be overwhelmed with gratitude. And if anything best describes what it means to be rich toward God, it is the feeling that “my cup runneth over” – so much so that there is no possibility that we would yet greedily clamor for more.

Understanding, appreciating and being satisfied with how much we’ve been given are what growing up is all about. Teenagers often have little appreciation for all that has been done for them. The take it for granted. But one day, when they’re older, they look back and say, how could I have been so blind?

Perhaps we as a species are on this cusp between adolescence and adulthood, where finally we can see that we have been given more than enough, and can now turn our attention to what we can give back.

[See also “Teaching About Reliance on Wealth” (Commentary 12-67), “God vs. Mammon” (Commentary 13-75), “Relation of Possessions to Eternal Life” (Commentary 14-85), “The Rich Publican of Jericho” (Commentary 14-88).]

68. Saying on Light and Darkness

“The lamp of thy body is thine eye” – how clearly do we see? Perception is everything.

When the eye sees clearly that there is one spirit of which we are all made – God’s spirit of truth and beauty and goodness, to borrow from the Greeks – then the light will extend to our whole body. We will in totality respond to the will of God.

But if thine eye does not perceive clearly, if it does not see “what spirit ye are of”, then thy body is full of darkness. In our ignorance we will do terrible, hurtful and harmful things. To the planet, and to each other.

69. Limits of the Kingdom of God

There are two passages where Jesus refers to entering by the narrow door, or the narrow gate. Other passages convey a similar constraint:

“If thine eye be single.”

“Anyone who is angry is in danger of the judgment.”

“Love God with all your soul, mind, heart and strength.”

None of these statements leave much wiggle room.

In today’s anything-goes world, where we assume the right to do what we please as long as it does not “hurt” anyone else, how do we interpret such a teaching? Well, it forces us to rethink our rights in terms of our responsibilities. Someone once put it this way: “Love God, and do what you want.” The meaning: If you love God, you will automatically do the right thing.

The gate or door is narrow because there is ONE spirit to manifest: the spirit of love and mercy and compassion. It is the sprit that leads to life.

When Jesus says ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets, and yourselves cast forth without, what does he mean? Perhaps he is saying that Jesus’ generation has broken “the golden thread” – they are not fulfilling their potential as God’s chosen people, to bring the light unto the world. The thread will be passed on to others, who come from the north and south and east and west.

[See also “Discourse on the Kingdom of God” (Commentary 7-34), “Time of the Kingdom of God” (Commentary 13-79) and “Essential for Entrance into Kingdom” (Commentary 14-84) and “Time of the Kingdom of God” (Commentary 14-89).]

71. Teaching in Criticism of Anxiety

Jesus understood that as human beings, we have a true, created nature – just as birds and flowers and everything else in creation have a true, created nature. Fulfilling our true nature is a natural outcome of meeting the necessary conditions for growth. For plants, that would be good soil and the right amount of rain and sunshine. Importantly, and one of Jesus’ points in this passage, everything we need to fulfill our true nature has been given to us – it’s embedded in the fabric of reality.

But as a species, we have lost touch with that truth. As we moved out of jungles and into civilizations, we have created cultures – made up of customs and laws and belief systems -- to help us get along and increase our chances of survival. While this has had many benefits, it has also created a fundamental problem. We have mistaken the map (culture) for the terrain (reality). We have made the mistake of believing that our enculturated self is our real self. And so we have become over-identified with our clan, or religion or nation, and not enough identified with the underlying reality that gave birth to us and all we see around us. We see our enculturated identity as something to fight and die for, when in truth our enculturated self is like clothing, to be put on and taken off and changed as the situation demands.

This mistaken understanding of who we are leads to anxieties and pre-occupations that are neither necessary or healthy. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Understand the true requirements for life to continue, and fulfill those. From that, everything else follows.

72. Teachings at the Table of a Pharisee

This passage is about motivation. Why do we do the things we do? For approval? Acceptance? Status? Jesus would say that such motivation is doing things “that they may be seen of men.”

What would be another motivation for our actions? In an earlier passage, Jesus instructs: “Do these things in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee.” Why does Jesus recommend that motivation? What is the recompense we can expect?

Doing things for God is by definition acting for the good of the whole: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” When we do things that lie outside our ego-driven interests, we expand the boundaries of our identity and establish a more conscious relationship with the larger system of which we are a part, with God.

73. The Costs of Discipleship

The language is extreme, but the meaning is clear. To enter into the kingdom of God, we must first detach completely from everything temporal. The religious scholar Huston Smith noted that the one teaching common to all of the world’s great religions is this concept of detachment – of renouncing all that we have; of surrendering completely to the will of God.

Why is this a condition, or a cost, of being a disciple? Using today’s language, Jesus is talking about an evolutionary leap in consciousness, and like all evolutionary leaps, it cannot be made halfway. Creatures cannot adapt to the land if they never leave the water. Or master the skies if they never leave the earth. A relationship with God is an environing relationship; it molds us spiritually, as the Earth has molded us physically. But for the environing to work, we must submit completely.

And to what are we submitting ? A will greater than our own that permits us one response: To love all. That means we cannot love some part of creation more than we love the whole of creation. If we do, both will ultimately perish. Look at the Israelis and the Palestinians. Each is acting in what it perceives to be its own best interest, but the outcomes serve the interests of neither. Only when each acts for the good of both will a true resolution be possible.

Attachments always place the interests of some part above the interests of the whole, and as a result threaten the existence of both. Detachment places the interests of the whole above the parts, and serves the well being of both.

[See also “Some Costs of Discipleship” (Commentary 10-49), and “Some Tests of Discipleship (Commentary 11-57).]