Change begins now

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010118.cfm
NM 6:22-27
GAL 4:4-7
LK 2:16-21

What is it that guides our lives for good? Is it the rules that we desire to follow, or is it the influence of God’s presence? The rules are hard to ignore. There are the 10 Commandments which outline the sinful depths we should not slip into, a “watch” list for our behavior. There are also the Beatitudes, which describe a life full of grace; a high bar, unlikely to maintain, yet lovely and desirable. 

For most of us the rules provide a lifetime of correction and alignment. They do not, however, connect us to God, walking and living in his loving arms. Rules present a framework for holiness, but our relationship to God operates at a different level, where holiness becomes us.

The self-described Apostle Paul tells us to “put off our old self” and “put on Jesus the Christ.” Jesus said that following him, and allowing the Spirit to live in us, requires a new wine skin for a new wine. Our old bodies, our old selves, cannot expand to grow with a new, fresh Spirit-filled heart. The presence of God in us changes more than our behavior. It changes who we are.

Christians talk often about this changed person we need to become, but what happens when we are changed? What’s really taking place? In some ways, I think, we find difficulty in describing how we are different once we let the Holy Spirit take up residency. So much about us remains the same. We still struggle with the same bad habits. How do we describe the new us that now lives by the rules but does so because we are powerfully influenced by the presence of God?

The three readings from today help to identify what changes in us, each telling us a specific truth about being made new in Jesus Christ.

Galatians tells us that we will see our lives as showered in blessings. This is how we speak to each other:

The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon
you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and
give you peace!

God’s blessing don’t mean that we no longer need to brush our teeth, or that our golf game will improve, or even that the infuriating disease we carry will go away. Blessings mean that God now will “keep” us. We belong to him, and no other. We will also feel the warmth of God’s face upon us. He’s not just the over Lord, keeping tabs on our good and bad deeds. Our God is gracious, and kind and surrounds us with his peace, both when we are suffering and when we are joyful. 

Being blessed, and calling for God to bless others, is a whole lot different than being cursed, unlucky, doomed, and victimized.

In Hebrews, we are told that God includes us in his family. Not as a distant relative, but as a son and daughter. We are kin. So strong is our kinship that we are also heirs. I’m not exactly sure how an heir fares in relationship to a God who isn’t going to die and leave us some property, as we typically understand the notion. An heir to God lives in the household of God, and God enjoys who we are to him. We become pleasing to him. Kin gather for meals, confer about the big issues, check in with each other often, and share in both the bounty and struggles. How that works with God boggles the mind. 

Then, in Luke we hear about a communicating God who orchestrates every detail to accomplish his purposes. God’s announcements and proclamations reset the parameters of existence itself. He changes everything in creation with each endeavor. This talking and animated God adjusts the cosmos to show us that he loves us. He takes his own Son, a person in fullness to himself, and decides to live as one of us. Not just for 33 years, but forever. In his patient, well-timed actions he shoves evil and those who subscribe to evil into a receding corner, so that we can differentiate what is from God and what is not. He remarkably includes all of creation in his deeds. Shepherds and kings from the East pay him homage. Animals bay and breathe around him. The skies are full of his angels, singing. A faithful husband, and his teenage wife are charged with his upbringing. All hear the same message. God does all things like this in life. We are treated to fabulous announcements that portend amazing things. 

This Son, one with the Father and himself filled with his own Holy Spirit, both explains and exemplifies the blessings and gracious love of God. And then Jesus establishes how our kinship will work. As our king, he is also our brother. It makes no sense, and yet excites us beyond words. We think maybe we are being grafted to God’s holiness, but in fact Jesus does the opposite and grafts himself to us. He makes our very existence a holy creation by permeating each one of us. Most incredible, he allows us to choose him, gingerly courting us, leaving love notes and even changing things to convince us to accept him. 

A disparate group of old men meet in a bar weekly, owned by a Catholic man thrilled that we use his facility. We come from different parts of an enormous nation, pray in a format as ancient as man and woman, weep together, drive each other places, eat around a table and astound the public who watch us, and raise money for food, firewood, retreats, and cars.

These blessings, our kinship and the communications straight from the lips of God are more powerful because they are optional.

If we choose him, then what’s different about us after dropping to our knees and affirming our lives belong to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit depends upon how far we take the notion that we now walk upon an immortal path. Our lives do not stop at our death. They will go on for eternity. This is true for all of humanity. Whether we walk with the Spirit, into the arms of Jesus, and meet the Father face-to-face, or we go in another direction, we face an eternity.

Did we know the option to choose existed before we met the Spirit, or Jesus, or the Father? We might have considered the possibility of our immortality, read stories about an afterlife, and even lived years, maybe decades, cursed, sure that eternity is preposterous. Without a taste of the blessings, an interlude with his kinship, or an interaction with the communicating God, we’re pretty much unclear about an immortal, continuous life. In order to say yes to an option we’ve got to be presented with it, clearly, and consciously. 

I believe our lives are not just going to continue into an eternity. The option is not whether we’re going to live on after death to this world. The option is how we exist into eternity. This life is contiguous into the next life. We live now as we will live then. We step into our next life pretty much as we step in this one. If we live this life as a slave of earth, beholden to the principles of success here, prosperity here, fame here, fortune here, respect here, and progress through coercion, manipulation, and accumulation to attain kingship, then that’s how we’ll step into eternity. Wouldn’t we expect the same rules and gamesmanship there that we live by here?

If this life is a life of cursing, rather than blessings, that remains our perspective into the next life. If we are responsible to no one, and no one is responsible to us — we have no kin and no king, no Father and no Holy Spirit in us — then that’s how we will relate to God and others in the next life. If we hear no messages from God, no communications, no pronouncements, and physically experience no interactions from the Father, Son and Spirit, then why would we later? 

In effect, our kinship with Jesus Christ and holiness as temples of the Holy Spirit exists right now. We are already heirs as kings and queens, plagued assuredly with decay and various detriments, yet these infirmities carry no permanence unless we consider them so. If we live beyond our death then a mighty restoration must take place. Corpses do not sit at the table of the lord. Armless, blinded, diabetic, cancerous, and mentally damaged men and women do not stand as kings and queens among the angels. That’s a very bad look. 

I’ve read in scriptures that even our clothing will be amazing in heaven. I’ve imagined living with the communion of Saints. I’ve been told that God loves me for who I am. Blessings, kinship and communication are leaving their mark upon me and those whom I know have opted for the presence of God.