It’s Time to Wake Up!

On May 16, 2010, in Morning, Sermons, by Richard

Listen to Readings and Sermon Easter 7 The Good News Written The Wisdom of Irwin Gregg “Our consciousness is developed and established by our attention. Whatever we give attention to becomes a part of our consciousness. If we are giving attention to the good, we’re full of the consciousness of good…Therefore, we need to take [...]

Listen to Readings and Sermon

Easter 7

The Good News Written

The Wisdom of Irwin Gregg

“Our consciousness is developed and established by our attention. Whatever we give attention to becomes a part of our consciousness. If we are giving attention to the good, we’re full of the consciousness of good…Therefore, we need to take care of our predominate states of thinking and feeling and direct them toward the good. Our consciousness provides the channel for demonstrating out here what the Presence of God offers us.”

John 17.22-23, 26

Dear Abba, I have given the world the glory that you have given me, that they may be one as we are one;

I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, May 16, 2010.

I once asked my great-aunt Gladys to explain to me how prayer works. She said, “Oh honey, prayer is just realizing that God is as close as your breath, your thoughts, your deepest desire.” And I said, “huh?”

So Aunt Gladys said, “think of it like this: One day three men were walking and got lost. They came to a large lake and needed to get across it somehow.

The first man prayed, “God, give me the strength to cross this lake.” Poof! The man’s arms and legs became huge and, therefore, very strong…and he swam all the way across the lake in about three hours.

Impressed with the power of prayer that he had witnessed, the second man prayed, “God, give me the strength and ability to cross this lake.” Poof! The man is suddenly in a rowboat and he safely crosses the lake in about two hours.

The third man sees how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed, “God, give me the strength, ability, and intelligence to cross this lake.” And Poof! God turned him into a woman. She then looked at the map, finds the bridge and walks across it in about 30 minutes.

It’s a silly story, but it does show that prayer is an art, and must be practiced, and as we become more efficient practitioners, we experience more from our prayers. If we imagine God as a far away dictator or judge or kindly grandparent, we will find our prayers feeling empty and not offering much empowerment for our lives. When we remember that God is right where we are…that it is in God that we live and move and have our being, then prayer isn’t begging a far away deity for favors, it is recognizing the presence of God already with us, and allowing that presence to do what it wants to do…which is to comfort, strengthen, guide, uplift, and renew us.

Atonement isn’t payment for our wretchedness, it is waking up to our goodness…it is discovering that we are at-one with the Source of all life; we are at-one with All Good.

Mahalia sang, “Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world…I’m going home to live with God.”

That is a powerful, affirmative prayer set to music declaring that the difficulties of life are temporary and ultimately, either in this experience of life or in another, we will wake up to the reality that we are with God and with God all is well.

You know in the book of Genesis there are two creation myths…the one we find in chapter one was written about 300 years after the one we find in chapters two and three. I tend to favor the version in chapter 1 because that is the version that states unequivocally and unapologetically that God created humanity in the divine image and likeness and that God looked at all of creation and called it all very good.

In that imaginative tale from chapter 1, man and woman are created simultaneously out of nothingness, that is, out of no thing that was apart from God. Humanity was created from God’s word, God’s thought, the very energy that God is. Our sacred value is stated very clearly in Genesis chapter 1. There is no fall, only goodness because all that God does is done very well. We are, just as we are, part of what God calls very good.

But while my bias is for the story we find in Genesis chapter 1, there is something profoundly important about the older story that we find in chapters 2 and 3. In that imaginative tale, which differs in almost every detail from the story in chapter 1, the earth-being, ‘adam, is created from the very earth. God then breathes the breath or spirit of life, the spirit of wholeness/holiness into the earth being. In this version the earth-being is male and then God puts ‘adam to sleep and removes a rib and from that rib creates woman, Eve, the mother of humanity. In this version, man and woman and the earth are all one, are all part of one another, are all made from each other, and are filled with the very breath of God.

It’s a way of saying that our bodies, our lives, our relationships, all that we are, are part of God and we are blessed by God, just as we are. Not only are we part of God, we are united with all that is within God and from God…we are interconnected and in our interconnectedness, we are blessed.

But here’s the odd thing about the older story that we read in Genesis 2 & 3: The earth-being falls asleep, but we are never told that the earth-being wakes up. We see Adam, the symbol for humanity, falling asleep but we never see Adam waking up. And after Adam falls asleep, we soon drift into chapter three where things get a little nuts…snakes talk and people eat magic fruit that makes them both smart but annoys God and then they are tossed out of the garden of God’s presence. It’s all like a crazy dream…talking snakes and the magic fruit and an angry God…and maybe it is a dream; after all, we are never told that Adam wakes up.

Neither of the two conflicting creation myths in our bible is an argument against science; they are creative ways that pre-scientific people tried to understand life and affirm that their lives had meaning. Both stories, in their different and poetic ways, affirm that however creation occurs, God is the creative force behind it, and the creator and its creation are forever united in life-giving relationship.

The first story shows this by saying everything God creates is good, and God makes humanity especially in God’s own image. The second (and older) story affirms the same truth by suggesting that people are one with the earth, one with each other, and are animated with the very breath of God. And not until the earth-being falls asleep is there any notion of separation from God. The idea of falling from God’s mercy, being separated from God’s goodness, being cast out from God’s presence is a hellish nightmare…and we can awaken from it by acknowledging what the story told us from the beginning…we are one with all life, filled with the very spirit of life…how could we ever be separated from our source?!

Jesus shows us this in the gospel lesson today. He acknowledges that he and his divine Source are one…he just claims it for himself. Can we who say we are followers Jesus be bold enough to do what Jesus did and affirm that we are one with our Source? Can we allow ourselves know that divine Love would never, has never, and will never let us go?

And Jesus prays that his friends might realize that they are one…one with God, one with each other, one with all love. “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one…” We who call ourselves the friends of Jesus can become the answer to his prayer today. We can accept that we are one with Jesus, one with all the world, one with all life, one with the divine source of life…the Source that looks at all creation and calls it very good…calls us very good…one with the creator who breathes the very spirit of goodness into us, animating us with nothing less than the divine Breath of life. It’s time to wake up to our potential, our innate dignity and sacred value. It’s time to start living from the power of our unity with All Good.

Irwin Gregg tells us, “Whatever we give our attention to becomes part of our consciousness.” For too long we have focused our intention on sin and guilt and shame and fear…and we have reaped the harvest from those seeds we’ve planted in the fertile soil of our own souls. Let’s choose today to focus instead on our sacred value…our goodness, our oneness with the One in which we live and move and have our being. If God is omnipresent, then we could not possibly be beyond God’s presence. If God is omnipresent and God is good, then the Good that God is must be wherever we are, expressing in, through, and as us.

It’s time to wake up to who we really are. It’s time to go home to be with God…of course, God is right where we are, so home is right where we are. We don’t need to wait. We just need to wake up. And we can, in this holy instant. This is the good news. Amen.

The Good News Affirmed

I am made in the image and likeness of God.

I am part of the creation that God calls very good.

I am renewed by the very Breath of God.

I am held eternally in the love of God.

I am one of God’s miracles.

And I accept miracles in my life today.

Amen!