2513AFC040425 – Spirit and Life 😀 ← PODCAST LINK
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John 6:63 – 63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Ezekiel 37:14 – 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”
Psalm 130:5 –
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
Romans 8:8-9 [1] (GNT) – 8 Those who obey their human nature cannot please God.
9 But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to — if, in fact, God’s Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Romans 8:11 – 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
John 11:1-2 – 1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May the Spirit of Almighty God accompany us and guide us in the disciplines of Truth. Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! I HAVE CHOSEN THE READING FROM Year A for the Third and final Scrutiny this coming Sunday. We trust in the Lord because he is The Logos and everything he speaks is only what the Father speaks through the Holy Spirit. From CCC 254 – “He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son.” They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.” The divine Unity is Triune.
This is hard to grasp, to comprehend, to capture in our minds and hearts. But it is as True as Love is True, because God IS Love. It follows then that whatever God speaks is Love because the Word, the Logos, who IS God speaks word of Spirit and Life through and in the Holy Spirit. WOW! That’s a big chunk of Mystery to process! Where do we start? It is always best to begin at the beginning, so “In the Beginning …” The entirety of Creation was spoken into being by the Trinity. It was the Spirit, the ruach – the Breath of God – that shaped the Earth, the Cosmos, the creatures of sea, air, and land. It was the Spirit that sought, originated, and Gifted Life to a lump of clay who was the First Earthling. All of these acts were originated in, by, and through the Word. It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.
We believe in the presence of the Spirit – don’t we say we are “body, mind, and spirit” when we search for our true identity? HE HAS GIVEN US HIS WORD: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” God plants us in the place he chooses because that is where we can bloom into the blessedness he created us to become, to be, and to share with him eternally. We are, as he has said, created in his image and likeness. An aspect of that likeness is that we are created to be eternal as he is Eternal. It follows, then, that we must strive to become Love which for us is Life, and that Life is ours because “God so loved the World that he gave his only Begotten Son …” He is Gifted to us because as the Word of God He IS spirit and life. We say out loud, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. That Hope is extraordinary because it is a Hope that envisions a Truth beyond the flesh of the life we hold on the Earth.
Nonetheless we know this Truth, that we do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to — if, in fact, God’s Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. If indeed it is true that the Spirit of God lives in us as the Word, the Logos of God, then ALL of God dwells within us, and that is … incomprehensible. And yet, “We follow and rejoice” (↔ Music Link) because that indwelling is the Word of Life, the Bread of Life, which sustains us until we may enter into Eternal Life with God in Three Persons, the Blesséd Trinity. And just why are we so certain that this is True?
It is because we know, and believe that If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. That is his promise. He gave us his Word on it, and in it, and through it. So, then on this Sunday, as we listen to the very familiar story of Lazarus return to life from death, we must listen for the points in that account which are affirmations of Jesus’ declaration The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. In the Gospel Key Verse for this post we have a restatement of the episode when Mary of Bethany broke open a phial of expensive spikenard and anointed Jesus feet and dried them with her hair. This is an interesting chronological transposition since the event is described in Chapter 12 of the Gospel of John – after the resuscitation of Lazarus when Jesus said “Lazarus! Come Forth!” (↔ Music Link). This is one indication of how the oral Sacred Tradition of the Gospel preceded the written Gospels.
Mary and Martha know that Jesus is the Messiah, and that their brother will be reunited with them at the final Resurrection. What they do not know is what Jesus will do next. If indeed our minds, our lips, and are hearts are open to the flow of The Word, then we have Spirit and Life because “Your words, Lord, are Spirit and Life” (↔ Music Link) . 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. (See Ephesians 4:4-6) All who know the name of God know that God is Holy for His name is HOLY. (↔ Music Link). And whenever we are with him, then he is with us, and together we and he testify to the Truth of Charity, which is Love, empowered by FAITH – being Fully Aware I Trust Him “Whom all the world cannot contain Comes in our hearts to dwell.” When we are in The Word, we are where Love is, so that with HIM wherever we go there is Love Eternal in Three Persons – Blesséd Trinity – Wholly Holy God entirely in Unity because God is – as in CCC 255 (↔ Click Link) – “Because of that unity the Father is wholly (entirely) in the Son and wholly (entirely) in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly (entirely) in the Father and wholly (entirely) in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is wholly (entirely) in the Father and wholly (entirely) in the Son.” AMEN! The Word IS Spirit and Life because The Word IS! That is why we say he is I AM.
Now we will take a look at one of the Judges in the Bible. Let’s start by recalling that the term “judge” is more than what we think of today – a person in a long black gown seated on an elevated platform and discerning the Law as a couple of lawyers try to convince her/his mind that one of them is telling the truth and the other is not. In the Bible, these persons were military leaders called by the Hebrew word שָׁפַט shaw-fat’, which means to judge as in to administer justice, govern, vindicate, punish. They were the Sheriff, if you will, or perhaps like Marshall Dillon who kept everyone in line. Gideon was called by God to deliver Israel from the Midianites – descendants of Abraham through his second wife, Keturah. She bore for him (see Genesis 25:2) Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Sometimes the Midianites were allies and sometimes enemies. At this point in history, they were one of the enemies. This is the story of Gideon. (↔ Video Link!) The least of the least became the best of the Best!
The Israelites at that time were deeply immersed in the idolatry of the surrounding nations. God allowed the oppression of the Midianites – who raided villages, stole crops and herds, and women of the Midianites – who hated Israel because they had slaughtered their rulers and taken many women captive – used their “feminine wiles” to entice Israelites to be unfaithful to Adonai – ha-Shem – and, despite being direct descendants of our Old Friend Abraham, were never regarded as part of the “Covenant People.” The exploits of Gideon are found in the Bible in Judges 6-8, was originally named Jerubbaal and/or Jerubbesheth. That was the name given to him by his father after he and 10 of his buddies took a very strong bull and pulled down the altar to Baal his father had built.
Chapter 6 contains The Call of Gideon ( גִּדְעוֹן ghid-ohn’ his name means “hewer” or “one who cuts down”) He was threshing wheat in the winepress instead of the threshing floor (to hide it from the Midianites), and as we read in Judges 6:11-12 – 11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites. 12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.” One of the most famous episodes featuring Gideon is the test of a sheep’s fleece. He laid it out and the dew welled up around it but not on it; then laid it out again and the dew was on the fleece but not around it. I certainly would not test God in that way! Nonetheless, by this Gideon was convinced that he had been called to defend and deliver Israel.
I encourage you to read Judges 6-8 because it is a fascinating account of bravery, strategy, and the merciful intervention of God. The most famous story is when Gideon ended up taking a mere 300 Israelite soldiers against the enemy. He started out with an army of 32,000 and God whittled that down to the 300 armed with trumpets, torches, and jars. God had Gideon test the soldiers by how they drank water. Those who lapped the water like dogs (putting their hands to their mouths) were chosen, while those who knelt to drink were sent away. That’s in Judges Chapter 7.
Throughout the history of Israel, whenever they disobeyed God and committed idolatry, God chastised and corrected them by allowing someone or something to oppress them until they cried out to him, changed their ways, and got back to living in, with, and for his Spirit and Life. Belovéd, let us commit to never testing God like Israel did so many times. HOWEVER, since we are indeed broken, sinful people like them, let us resolve to employ the Gift of metanoia, then Repent and believe the Gospel! And having done so, return to the true and original SNL – Spirit and Life. It’s no joking matter, and nothing we should forget or ignore. God IS Spirit and Life and those who trust, love, and obey him as he explicitly commands will experience the fullness of Gracious Glory originally intended for us: Life in his presence forever. Wouldn’t that be so much better than the alternative the Israelites kept choosing? Keep on the Sonny Side, always on the Sonny Side. Keep on the Sonny side of Life. It will help you every day, it will brighten all the way, if you keep on the Sonny Side of Life! (↔ Music Link) I Love you, but our Triune God Loves you infinitely more! Believer, COME FORTH! You are a MIGHTY WARRIOR!
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[1] Passages marked (GNT): Good News Translation (GNT) are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition)© 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.
