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Isaiah
9:6
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government
will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called "Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
John12:44
And Jesus cried out and said, "He who believes in me, believes
not in me but in him who  sent
me. 45 And he who sees me sees him who sent me. 46
I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not
remain in darkness. 47 If any one hears my sayings and does
not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world
but to save the world. 48 He who rejects me and does not
receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his
judge on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own
authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what
to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment
is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden
me."
Dr. Holmes in the Science of Mind (1926) references Matthew 5:5
"the meek shall inherit the earth." This
is a teaching of non-resistance. War lords and plunderers of human
possessions have come and gone. Kingdoms have risen only to
crumble in dust and become numbered with past events. Passion and
lust for power have strewn the earth with destruction. It would
seem as though the meek had lost out in the gigantic struggle for
temporal supremacy. In the midst of this drama of human existence,
Jesus declared that the meek shall inherit the earth.
<SOM>
Countless numbers of people will go
to churches this Sunday to celebrate Easter and the Life of Jesus.
Most will see Him as coming off a cross after dying for their petty
little sins ... but if that is their understanding ... they don't
understand Him at all ... and here we are in 2005 ... isn't it time we
understood the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach us? He went
through the process of crucifixion, death and resurrection ... to teach
us that this is what we will all experience ... to some degree in this
Life and perhaps even beyond. His Great Lesson was that God Is the
Only Power ... that as we connect with God ... we connect with this One
Power that sustains and maintains Life ... God's Life ... as expressed
by ALL of us. All that there IS ... IS GOD ... everyone ... our enemies,
our friends, those we love and those we hate ... EVERY ONE IS GOD
EXPRESSING LIFE ... and this LIFE will always be God's Life ... and God
will always retain Power over IT ... no matter what our foolish ideas
may be about it.
Jesus' teachings were so simple ...
He said even a child could understand ... but the masses of us have lost
sight of what He was teaching as we have believed in the "world of
effects" more than we have believed in God. We have given our
power to the infidels who have clothed themselves in the robes of the
religious and the political. Always remember it was the people
with the seeming power who wanted Jesus crucified ... not the seeming
powerless. The religious and the politicians gained their power in
the times of Jesus by separating the people ... by calling some good and
some evil ... but the true evil was in the hearts of those who clothed
themselves with self-righteousness and crucified the Radical Rabbi who
had the evidence of what they thought was hidden from the world ... and
they murdered Him for fear He would reveal the true nature of those who
worshiped the false power of the world. "Be in the world, but
not of the world," He cautioned ... but those who were "of the
world" ... murdered Him.
We will never experience true
peace in the world until the love for peace is greater than the love for
power. Our religions and our political organizations have yet to
evolve to this understanding. As long as religion separates
people, condemns the image and likeness of God in whatever form ... it
will hold us in bondage to false ideas ... ideas that crucify the soul
of all those who feel the impulse to express God's Life differently than
what the world calls "normal." Even the word
"normal" has a certain morbid-ness to it ... as it creates a
"limitation" that we must "mold" our Life into in
order to comply with the false idea of it. Jesus was not
"normal" ... and He was not "supernatural" ... He
was steadfast and immovable in His desire to give us a greater
understanding of who we are and Who we represent, but in order to do so
He had to "demonstrate" what He was teaching ... and He did.
He realized to the very core of His being-ness that His Life was the
Life of God in expression ... and He told us to believe that our Life
was too!
The
greatest tribute we can make to the Greatest of Rabbis is to take our
"stuff" to God ... declare that we are "healed" ...
and "resurrect" the Goodness, the Wholeness and the Love that
is within us ... "love one another" ... and cultivate a deep
conviction of peace in our hearts ... for all people and in all ways.
And
So It Is!
Maximum Love,
Rev.
Hank Bates
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