A scribe then approached and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’
Matthew 8:19-20
Like this scribe, our soul knows the divine when it sees it. We hear it calling to us and we feel the very honorable desire to live large and express noble values. This guy was lucky – Jesus didn’t just say, “Great, OK.” Instead Jesus issued him a wise warning. He told the scribe that this soul-longing of his was going to cost him everything he had thought important. Jesus wasn’t advocating material poverty, he was simply noting that living from your inner life, doing what matters most, requires a radical re-orientation. You will no longer live from the outside in, but from the inside out. And that means letting go and plunging into what you cannot control. It means letting your inner life, your Christ spirit, guide the way.
That’s where we are right now in our country and in our world. In this time of transformation we are changing our sense of what has value, meaning, lasting worth–what is truly worth giving our life to. We are changing our sense of who we actually are—realizing we are so much more than “producers of goods”—we are life itself! We are changing our sense of who other people are—not objects to be used, but true brothers and sisters to be loved. We are becoming awakened to deeper spiritual values and so we approach life in a new way—participation instead of survival. We are learning to give, not from obligation or “one-down” or “one-up,” trying to change others, but from the vastness of our own richness. We know we have a Divine Father-Mother and we can literally afford generosity. We realize we have innate value and worth.
There’s an old tale about a prisoner who’s shackled in front of a door, whose captor asks, “What do you want? Do you want to be executed or do you want what’s on other side of that door?” The prisoner reflects for a long while, takes a deep breath, and lets go. He decides he is ready to take his chances. The prisoner replies, “I want what’s on the other side of that door.” As his captor opens the door the man, to his grateful amazement, sees blue sky and an open road. No longer a prisoner, he walks into the freedom of a new day.
This is what’s before us friends. Our soul as an individual, as a country, and as a world is calling. Let our response be “yes.” Let us walk into the freedom of a new day.
In the Love and Light of the Christ,
Rev. Anna
