This is the follow up to a 14 part piece. Start here to read it through:
As I reread my entire piece today, I am struck by such a sense of inadequacy of these words. I am earnestly attempting to live out the commission to "follow me." I read these commands compiled so succiently, and I get a lump in my throat. I do not dine as equal with the poor, I have not sold everything and given to the poor. Both my hands and both eyes are still in place, though they most assuredly cause me to sin. I focus on the temporal, I serve non altruistically, I forget to remain a child, and I bear a yoke that does not come from my teacher.
It would be easy to see the weight of these commands and walk away, content to live in a "Spiritualized" reading of the text. It would be easy to look here and say, "I am saved by grace, admission paid for entrance into heaven." and feel no obligation to be affected by these words. It would be easy to reduce "Love your enemies" to a statement on church politics, while supporting the military industrial machine that works to obliterate it's enemies. It would be easy to support "Love Your Neighbors" looking around my suburban neighborhood at homogeneity of neighbors like me, while oppressing those around the nation and world who do not worship, marry, eat and earn like me. It would be easy to "Be Born of The Spirit" if this is about a tingly feeling from the rhythmic pulsing music of the worship band while ignoring that the Spirit of God first led Jesus to a wilderness to suffer and ultimately to a death as an insurrectionist against the state. It would be easy to make these words moral platitudes rather than face the reality that this is the clear action required for being discipled relevant to the here, the now, this place of time, space, and matter.
I offer this follow up as a bridge-way. Tomorrow I intend to continue on, looking at the "Prayers" of Jesus. I believe that if we don't come to speak the words and heart of the Christ, back to the father, who's Spirit rested on Jesus, then we will never experience a sense of God's "doing" in the world. Our commission as the followers of Jesus is to Love God, Loving People, preserving and illuminating the world with the divine light that fills new creation and proclaims resurrection the the places and things destroyed as casualties to this empire.
Here What The Spirit is Speaking, Let Jubilee be sounded!
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