Proper 26 | Ordinary Time 31
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Theme For The Day
In Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is near at hand.
Old Testament Lesson
Ruth 1:1-18
Ruth And Naomi's Covenant
This passage sets the scene for the story of Ruth and Naomi: two faithful women, unrelated to each other, who in hard times covenant to rely upon each other, despite the traditions of a patriarchal society that would have driven them apart. The relationship between them is mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, a relationship their society would have expected to dissolve at the deaths of their respective husbands. Ruth's words to Naomi, after Naomi encouraged her daughter-in-law to abandon her and return to her own people, have become a classic expression of human devotion: "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (v. 16).
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
The Shema
Having delivered to the people the Ten Commandments (5:6-21), Moses now delivers to the people the great commandment of God known as the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (v. 4). There are two basic things the people of God are to do: hear and love. This commandment is given in the context of the ongoing journey toward the promised land. The Lord instructs the people, through Moses, that they must keep this and other commandments "that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey ..." (v. 3). Obedience is a covenantal responsibility. Keep these words "in your heart," the Lord commands. Recite them to your children. Talk about them with each other. Write them on your foreheads, your hands and on your doorposts, that the law may be an ever-present part of your life (vv. 6-9). Clearly, it is not merely obedient actions that the Lord desires, but a thoroughgoing devotion that indicates an obedient heart.
New Testament Lesson
Hebrews 9:11-14
The Purifying Blood Of Christ
The author's exposition of the high priestly office of Jesus continues. Here, we have a detailed account of what the high priest of Israel did during the ritual of atonement. We see the high priest's approach into the holy of holies, the spattered blood of the sacrifice, the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer. It is a ritual that sounds utterly foreign to modern ears, but to those Christians of Jewish origin for whom this letter is intended, these words would have been fraught with meaning -- especially considering the fact that the Jerusalem temple had recently been destroyed by the Romans. The high priestly sacrifice, as the people had come to know it, would never be practiced again. Not to worry: Jesus is the replacement for all that. His blood spilled on Calvary replaces once and for all the blood of the sacrificial animals. His sacrifice has the power to "purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God" (v. 14).
The Gospel
Mark 12:28-34
The Greatest Commandment
Not every encounter Jesus has, in the New Testament, with a scribe or a Pharisee is contentious. In this brief account, we hear of a scribe who is appreciative of Jesus' scholarship and faith outlook, and he of his. Jesus has been disputing with the Sadducees based on an arcane question about remarriage and the persistence of marital ties in heaven. A nearby scribe hears the dispute, comes up to Jesus, and asks him to name the greatest commandment. Jesus responds -- as would any faithful Jew -- with the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), and adds to it the further instruction, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (v. 31; Leviticus 19:18). Theologian Emil Brunner once remarked, "The gospel that will not fit on a postcard is not a fit gospel for the kingdom of God." It was common practice in Jesus' day for a student to ask a rabbi to summarize the law in just such a concise format; how the rabbi answered would tell the observers much about his general outlook and theological acumen. The scribe congratulates Jesus on his answer, and Jesus says to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Jesus' answer is evidently a slam dunk: "After that," Mark adds, "no one dared to ask him any question" (v. 34).
Preaching Possibilities
This sermon will be preached just days before Election Day. Although this is not a presidential election year, still there has been ample opportunity, in many of the contests around the country, for voters to hear the candidates contend with one another at an event that's become a great American tradition: the debate.
We all know the drill. The candidates step up to lecterns, and someone starts asking them questions. There is time for rebuttal, and sometimes even for rebuttal to the rebuttal. Watching in the audience (and in the television audience, if the office being sought is important enough) are various commentators and pundits, all of whom are eager to give their instant analysis, and to declare a winner.
As today's Gospel Lesson opens, Jesus has been engaged in some rather contentious debate with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. First, he's had to answer some Pharisees, who asked him if it's lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Then some Sadducees presented a convoluted theological case study: about a woman who's been married and widowed so many times, she's had seven different husbands. "In the resurrection," the Sadducees want to know, "whose wife will she be?"
These are tough questions, and Jesus handles them pretty well. But then this scribe comes up to him. He's been standing off to one side, quietly observing. He's noticed that Jesus "answered well." And so this man walks up to the Lord and pitches to him his own question: "Which commandment is the first of all?"
Compared to the other questions, this one seems a piece of cake. It's a favorite question of the scribes and teachers of the law, one they've been debating among themselves for years. Jesus has probably had reason to address it many times before. His answer begins with the Shema -- "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." Then the Lord adds to this first commandment of Judaism another biblical commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love God; love neighbor. These are the greatest commandments, he says.
Jesus' questioner agrees wholeheartedly. He commends him for answering rightly. And when the Lord hears the scribe's positive endorsement, he commends him in turn, saying, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
This is an exceedingly odd phrase. We are used to praying, "Thy kingdom come," as we do in the Lord's Prayer, then what does it mean for Jesus to say to a contemporary, "You are not far from the kingdom?" What is the kingdom of God, anyway -- this spiritual reality that sometimes draws near, and other times seems far off in the distant future?
The kingdom of God is one of Jesus' favorite topics. It's the subject of his very first sermon. Mark tells how Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." Throughout his ministry, he's endeavoring to explain what he means by the kingdom of God, often using parables. The kingdom, Jesus says, is like a treasure buried in a field.... It's like a pearl of great value, that causes a merchant to sell everything to buy it. It's like a fishing net, cast into the waves, that's hauled back brimming with fish.
It seems, from Jesus' perspective, that the kingdom of God is very close indeed -- close enough to touch, almost. It's as though it's a kind of alternative reality -- another dimension, if you will -- that in special times and places nearly breaks through to our world.
There's a famous comment by the Scottish preacher, George MacLeod, about the Isle of Iona, that holy and historic place off the coast of Scotland. MacLeod said of Iona that it is a "thin place," spiritually speaking. What he means is that whatever barrier may divide the kingdom of God from the kingdom of this world, that barrier does seem, in some very special times and places, to grow porous. The two worlds just about touch -- and we know joy.
The same is true with this encounter between Jesus and the inquisitive scribe. When the Lord sees the joy in the man's face, he comments, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Remember, also, Jesus' words to the thief on the cross, in Luke: "Tonight you will be with me in paradise." In particular times and places, there is this experience of thinness, as the kingdom of God draws near -- it may even happen in a circumstance of terrible suffering, as long as faith is there also. The important feature is God's coming to us, unlocking the door that is locked from our side.
The Lord's Table, set before us for this sacramental meal, is one of those "thin" places. It is one of those places where, for a brief and tantalizing moment, earth and heaven seem to come into close proximity with each other. It is so simple, this everyday act of taking nourishment from bread and wine -- but in this place, among these people, with Christ spiritually present among us, as our host, it is so meaningful. It is one of the few experiences in life when we are compelled to stop our frenzied activity, to silence in our minds any voice but God's own, and to open ourselves to the signs of God's nearness.
Prayer For The Day
Your kingdom come, O Lord. Your will be done. They are words we say again and again, with scarcely a thought as to their meaning. We wish for your kingdom, Lord, but we hardly know what we'd do with it if it came to us. Attune our spiritual senses to the ways in which your reign of justice and peace is already present among us. Remind us that we are citizens of that realm, and are responsible to its law of love, even as we dwell in a human society where the law of "an eye for an eye" so often seems to be the only standard. Open the eyes of our hearts, so we may see that your reign truly has come near. Amen.
To Illustrate
The kingdom of God is a concept that has always fired the human imagination. The Pharisees of the Bible have their own idea: they imagine the kingdom will result in a nation morally and spiritually renewed by strict adherence to the law.
The Zealots' vision is different. God's kingdom will only come, the Zealots believe, when Messiah appears in Israel, and reestablishes the throne of David. Then he will rule over the people in peace and prosperity. It's a frankly political understanding. It issues in an underground resistance movement, willing to do whatever it takes to drive the Roman overlords from the land.
Then there's the vision of those people who look solely to the future -- because, for them, the present is filled with pain. For these oppressed believers, for whom life on this earth holds forth little promise, there is hope to be found in the terrifying prophecies of apocalyptic literature. "Thy kingdom come," for those who are seriously suffering, takes the form of a great cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, with good emerging triumphant in the end.
We can find elements of all these views in things Jesus says -- which is why it's so hard to pin him down to one interpretation over all the others. It does seem, though, that he gives a bit more preference to the kingdom as present in the here and now -- just the other side of that thin barrier that separates earth from heaven.
***
If you like, you may refuse to believe you've been drawn into the eternal party. You can't stop the party, though. You may try, if you like, to walk out on it, and look for another bar to drown your sorrows in. But it is the loneliest walk in the universe: there is no other bar, and when you're done with all your walking, you'll find you went nowhere. Jesus does seem to insist that we're capable of being stupid enough to try and stay in hell forever ... Yet even if it's the gospel truth, all of your hell will be at the party, sequestered in the nail print in the left hand of the Bridegroom at the Supper of the Lamb. To say it one last time: even your faith doesn't matter, except to your own enjoyment of what he does for you. You can trust or not trust, but it doesn't change his mind or alter the facts. As far as he's concerned, you're home free forever. That's the deal. It would be a good idea to just shut up and accept it.
-- Robert Farrar Capon, The Foolishness of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 31
***
What, in fact, could be more "political," a more complete and basal challenge to the kingdoms of this world, to its generals and its lords, both to those who hold power and to those who would seize it, than one who says that his kingdom is not of this world, and yet prays that the kingdom of his Father will come and his will be done on earth? This is an aspiration for the world more revolutionary, a disturbance of the status quo more seismic, an allegiance more disloyal, a menace more intimidating, than any program which simply meets force with force and matches loveless injustice with loveless vengeance. Here is a whole new ordering of human life, as intolerable to insurrectionists as to oppressors. It promises that forgiveness, freedom, love, and self-negation, in all their feeble ineffectiveness, will prove more powerful and creative than every system and every countersystem which subdivides the human race into rich and poor, comrades and enemies, insiders and outsiders, allies and adversaries. What could an earthly power, so in love with power as to divinize it in the person of its emperor, do with such dangerous powerlessness but capture and destroy it? It could change everything were it not extinguished, and speedily.
-- Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 49-50
***
A mother I know has a different way of asking the same question ["How was your day?"]. As she tucks her children into bed each night ... she asks them a question: "Where did you meet God today?" And they tell her, one by one: a teacher helped me, there was a homeless person in the park, I saw a tree with lots of flowers in it. She tells them where she met God, too. Before the children drop off to sleep, the stuff of this day has become the substance of their prayer.
-- Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices For Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 2001)
***
Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel -- a rebel who had seen the kingdom and knew it was the only reality. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he not merely talked about the kingdom; he lived and manifested its splendor in the beauty of his presence, in the clarity and inner coherence of his teaching, in his fearlessness in the face of opposition. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he could not be swerved from his purpose by anything, and he could not be bought by any lure, not even that of being a "master" or a "god"; his integrity was terrible and final.
Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel, too, because the vision that guided and inspired him through everything flamed from a direct mystical knowledge of God and would give him the courage to die, if necessary, for what he believed; not even torture, humiliation, and death would destroy his spirit.
-- Andrew Harvey, Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ (New York: Tarcher, 1999)
***
There are places in this world that are neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither real nor imaginary. These are the in-between places, difficult to find and even more challenging to sustain. Yet they are the most fruitful places of all. For in these limited narrows a kind of life takes place that is out of the ordinary, creative, and once in a while genuinely magical. We tend to divide life between mind and matter and to assume that we must be in one or the other or both. But religion and folklore tell of another place that is often found by accident, where strange events take place, and where we learn things that can't be discovered in any other way.
-- Thomas Moore
In Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is near at hand.
Old Testament Lesson
Ruth 1:1-18
Ruth And Naomi's Covenant
This passage sets the scene for the story of Ruth and Naomi: two faithful women, unrelated to each other, who in hard times covenant to rely upon each other, despite the traditions of a patriarchal society that would have driven them apart. The relationship between them is mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, a relationship their society would have expected to dissolve at the deaths of their respective husbands. Ruth's words to Naomi, after Naomi encouraged her daughter-in-law to abandon her and return to her own people, have become a classic expression of human devotion: "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (v. 16).
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
The Shema
Having delivered to the people the Ten Commandments (5:6-21), Moses now delivers to the people the great commandment of God known as the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (v. 4). There are two basic things the people of God are to do: hear and love. This commandment is given in the context of the ongoing journey toward the promised land. The Lord instructs the people, through Moses, that they must keep this and other commandments "that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey ..." (v. 3). Obedience is a covenantal responsibility. Keep these words "in your heart," the Lord commands. Recite them to your children. Talk about them with each other. Write them on your foreheads, your hands and on your doorposts, that the law may be an ever-present part of your life (vv. 6-9). Clearly, it is not merely obedient actions that the Lord desires, but a thoroughgoing devotion that indicates an obedient heart.
New Testament Lesson
Hebrews 9:11-14
The Purifying Blood Of Christ
The author's exposition of the high priestly office of Jesus continues. Here, we have a detailed account of what the high priest of Israel did during the ritual of atonement. We see the high priest's approach into the holy of holies, the spattered blood of the sacrifice, the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer. It is a ritual that sounds utterly foreign to modern ears, but to those Christians of Jewish origin for whom this letter is intended, these words would have been fraught with meaning -- especially considering the fact that the Jerusalem temple had recently been destroyed by the Romans. The high priestly sacrifice, as the people had come to know it, would never be practiced again. Not to worry: Jesus is the replacement for all that. His blood spilled on Calvary replaces once and for all the blood of the sacrificial animals. His sacrifice has the power to "purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God" (v. 14).
The Gospel
Mark 12:28-34
The Greatest Commandment
Not every encounter Jesus has, in the New Testament, with a scribe or a Pharisee is contentious. In this brief account, we hear of a scribe who is appreciative of Jesus' scholarship and faith outlook, and he of his. Jesus has been disputing with the Sadducees based on an arcane question about remarriage and the persistence of marital ties in heaven. A nearby scribe hears the dispute, comes up to Jesus, and asks him to name the greatest commandment. Jesus responds -- as would any faithful Jew -- with the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), and adds to it the further instruction, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (v. 31; Leviticus 19:18). Theologian Emil Brunner once remarked, "The gospel that will not fit on a postcard is not a fit gospel for the kingdom of God." It was common practice in Jesus' day for a student to ask a rabbi to summarize the law in just such a concise format; how the rabbi answered would tell the observers much about his general outlook and theological acumen. The scribe congratulates Jesus on his answer, and Jesus says to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Jesus' answer is evidently a slam dunk: "After that," Mark adds, "no one dared to ask him any question" (v. 34).
Preaching Possibilities
This sermon will be preached just days before Election Day. Although this is not a presidential election year, still there has been ample opportunity, in many of the contests around the country, for voters to hear the candidates contend with one another at an event that's become a great American tradition: the debate.
We all know the drill. The candidates step up to lecterns, and someone starts asking them questions. There is time for rebuttal, and sometimes even for rebuttal to the rebuttal. Watching in the audience (and in the television audience, if the office being sought is important enough) are various commentators and pundits, all of whom are eager to give their instant analysis, and to declare a winner.
As today's Gospel Lesson opens, Jesus has been engaged in some rather contentious debate with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. First, he's had to answer some Pharisees, who asked him if it's lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. Then some Sadducees presented a convoluted theological case study: about a woman who's been married and widowed so many times, she's had seven different husbands. "In the resurrection," the Sadducees want to know, "whose wife will she be?"
These are tough questions, and Jesus handles them pretty well. But then this scribe comes up to him. He's been standing off to one side, quietly observing. He's noticed that Jesus "answered well." And so this man walks up to the Lord and pitches to him his own question: "Which commandment is the first of all?"
Compared to the other questions, this one seems a piece of cake. It's a favorite question of the scribes and teachers of the law, one they've been debating among themselves for years. Jesus has probably had reason to address it many times before. His answer begins with the Shema -- "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." Then the Lord adds to this first commandment of Judaism another biblical commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love God; love neighbor. These are the greatest commandments, he says.
Jesus' questioner agrees wholeheartedly. He commends him for answering rightly. And when the Lord hears the scribe's positive endorsement, he commends him in turn, saying, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
This is an exceedingly odd phrase. We are used to praying, "Thy kingdom come," as we do in the Lord's Prayer, then what does it mean for Jesus to say to a contemporary, "You are not far from the kingdom?" What is the kingdom of God, anyway -- this spiritual reality that sometimes draws near, and other times seems far off in the distant future?
The kingdom of God is one of Jesus' favorite topics. It's the subject of his very first sermon. Mark tells how Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." Throughout his ministry, he's endeavoring to explain what he means by the kingdom of God, often using parables. The kingdom, Jesus says, is like a treasure buried in a field.... It's like a pearl of great value, that causes a merchant to sell everything to buy it. It's like a fishing net, cast into the waves, that's hauled back brimming with fish.
It seems, from Jesus' perspective, that the kingdom of God is very close indeed -- close enough to touch, almost. It's as though it's a kind of alternative reality -- another dimension, if you will -- that in special times and places nearly breaks through to our world.
There's a famous comment by the Scottish preacher, George MacLeod, about the Isle of Iona, that holy and historic place off the coast of Scotland. MacLeod said of Iona that it is a "thin place," spiritually speaking. What he means is that whatever barrier may divide the kingdom of God from the kingdom of this world, that barrier does seem, in some very special times and places, to grow porous. The two worlds just about touch -- and we know joy.
The same is true with this encounter between Jesus and the inquisitive scribe. When the Lord sees the joy in the man's face, he comments, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Remember, also, Jesus' words to the thief on the cross, in Luke: "Tonight you will be with me in paradise." In particular times and places, there is this experience of thinness, as the kingdom of God draws near -- it may even happen in a circumstance of terrible suffering, as long as faith is there also. The important feature is God's coming to us, unlocking the door that is locked from our side.
The Lord's Table, set before us for this sacramental meal, is one of those "thin" places. It is one of those places where, for a brief and tantalizing moment, earth and heaven seem to come into close proximity with each other. It is so simple, this everyday act of taking nourishment from bread and wine -- but in this place, among these people, with Christ spiritually present among us, as our host, it is so meaningful. It is one of the few experiences in life when we are compelled to stop our frenzied activity, to silence in our minds any voice but God's own, and to open ourselves to the signs of God's nearness.
Prayer For The Day
Your kingdom come, O Lord. Your will be done. They are words we say again and again, with scarcely a thought as to their meaning. We wish for your kingdom, Lord, but we hardly know what we'd do with it if it came to us. Attune our spiritual senses to the ways in which your reign of justice and peace is already present among us. Remind us that we are citizens of that realm, and are responsible to its law of love, even as we dwell in a human society where the law of "an eye for an eye" so often seems to be the only standard. Open the eyes of our hearts, so we may see that your reign truly has come near. Amen.
To Illustrate
The kingdom of God is a concept that has always fired the human imagination. The Pharisees of the Bible have their own idea: they imagine the kingdom will result in a nation morally and spiritually renewed by strict adherence to the law.
The Zealots' vision is different. God's kingdom will only come, the Zealots believe, when Messiah appears in Israel, and reestablishes the throne of David. Then he will rule over the people in peace and prosperity. It's a frankly political understanding. It issues in an underground resistance movement, willing to do whatever it takes to drive the Roman overlords from the land.
Then there's the vision of those people who look solely to the future -- because, for them, the present is filled with pain. For these oppressed believers, for whom life on this earth holds forth little promise, there is hope to be found in the terrifying prophecies of apocalyptic literature. "Thy kingdom come," for those who are seriously suffering, takes the form of a great cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, with good emerging triumphant in the end.
We can find elements of all these views in things Jesus says -- which is why it's so hard to pin him down to one interpretation over all the others. It does seem, though, that he gives a bit more preference to the kingdom as present in the here and now -- just the other side of that thin barrier that separates earth from heaven.
***
If you like, you may refuse to believe you've been drawn into the eternal party. You can't stop the party, though. You may try, if you like, to walk out on it, and look for another bar to drown your sorrows in. But it is the loneliest walk in the universe: there is no other bar, and when you're done with all your walking, you'll find you went nowhere. Jesus does seem to insist that we're capable of being stupid enough to try and stay in hell forever ... Yet even if it's the gospel truth, all of your hell will be at the party, sequestered in the nail print in the left hand of the Bridegroom at the Supper of the Lamb. To say it one last time: even your faith doesn't matter, except to your own enjoyment of what he does for you. You can trust or not trust, but it doesn't change his mind or alter the facts. As far as he's concerned, you're home free forever. That's the deal. It would be a good idea to just shut up and accept it.
-- Robert Farrar Capon, The Foolishness of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 31
***
What, in fact, could be more "political," a more complete and basal challenge to the kingdoms of this world, to its generals and its lords, both to those who hold power and to those who would seize it, than one who says that his kingdom is not of this world, and yet prays that the kingdom of his Father will come and his will be done on earth? This is an aspiration for the world more revolutionary, a disturbance of the status quo more seismic, an allegiance more disloyal, a menace more intimidating, than any program which simply meets force with force and matches loveless injustice with loveless vengeance. Here is a whole new ordering of human life, as intolerable to insurrectionists as to oppressors. It promises that forgiveness, freedom, love, and self-negation, in all their feeble ineffectiveness, will prove more powerful and creative than every system and every countersystem which subdivides the human race into rich and poor, comrades and enemies, insiders and outsiders, allies and adversaries. What could an earthly power, so in love with power as to divinize it in the person of its emperor, do with such dangerous powerlessness but capture and destroy it? It could change everything were it not extinguished, and speedily.
-- Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 49-50
***
A mother I know has a different way of asking the same question ["How was your day?"]. As she tucks her children into bed each night ... she asks them a question: "Where did you meet God today?" And they tell her, one by one: a teacher helped me, there was a homeless person in the park, I saw a tree with lots of flowers in it. She tells them where she met God, too. Before the children drop off to sleep, the stuff of this day has become the substance of their prayer.
-- Dorothy Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices For Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 2001)
***
Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel -- a rebel who had seen the kingdom and knew it was the only reality. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he not merely talked about the kingdom; he lived and manifested its splendor in the beauty of his presence, in the clarity and inner coherence of his teaching, in his fearlessness in the face of opposition. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he could not be swerved from his purpose by anything, and he could not be bought by any lure, not even that of being a "master" or a "god"; his integrity was terrible and final.
Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel, too, because the vision that guided and inspired him through everything flamed from a direct mystical knowledge of God and would give him the courage to die, if necessary, for what he believed; not even torture, humiliation, and death would destroy his spirit.
-- Andrew Harvey, Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ (New York: Tarcher, 1999)
***
There are places in this world that are neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither real nor imaginary. These are the in-between places, difficult to find and even more challenging to sustain. Yet they are the most fruitful places of all. For in these limited narrows a kind of life takes place that is out of the ordinary, creative, and once in a while genuinely magical. We tend to divide life between mind and matter and to assume that we must be in one or the other or both. But religion and folklore tell of another place that is often found by accident, where strange events take place, and where we learn things that can't be discovered in any other way.
-- Thomas Moore
