We provide the readings, reflection, and a listing of music from our service each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life. If you were unable to attend or simply do not use Second Life we are delighted to share this portion of our service with you.
Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life. Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com. Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us. We meet each Sunday at 5pm EST/ 2pm SLT My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.
We look forward to having you at service!
Click on the grey bar below to hear this week's reflection:
* Text for this Reflection can be found at the bottom of the page.
The Lessons
The Wisdom of A Course in Miracles
Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you can now make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.
Psalm 107.1, 8 (NRSV)
1O give thanks to the Lord [who]…is good; for [God’s] steadfast love endures forever. 8Let them thank the Lord for…steadfast [divine] love, for [God’s] wonderful works to humankind.
Gospel Reading John 3:17
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Music
All Glory, Laud, and Honor 2:02 Mormon Tabernacle Choir Hymns of Faith (Legacy Series) Christian & Gospel
Man In the Mirror 5:04 Michael Jackson Number Ones Pop
You Are So Beautiful 2:45 Joe Cocker Joe Cocker: The Anthology Rock
Let's Work Together 3:34 Dwight Yoakam If There Was a Way Country
* Reflection Text
God’s Steadfast Love
I've been thinking about this idea of God's steadfast love. What does it mean? How does it affect our daily lives? And how do I know it's really there?
The Psalmist says that this steadfast love lasts forever and the evidence is "God's wonderful works to humankind." Some folks would use, as an example of these wonderful works, the verse that precedes our gospel lesson today ... John 3:16. Come on and say it with me now..." For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." And our gospel lesson verse 17 follows... “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
But wait a minute I was taught that if I do not believe in Jesus I'm going to hell! That sounds a lot like condemnation to me! I think we have to back up to the story of the Pharisee Nicodemus earlier in this chapter. Nicodemus came to Jesus in secret and started a conversation. He starts by making a statement about who he thinks Jesus is. But Jesus redirects the conversation back to Nicodemus. Jesus makes the over used statement "you must be born again."
And Nicodemus responds, and I'm paraphrasing here, "What?" Jesus tries to explain that he is not speaking of a literal rebirth but a spiritual rebirth. I believe that Jesus was trying to tell us that the evidence of that spiritual rebirth is our willingness to acknowledge our own belovedness. I really believe that Jesus kept trying to tell us in various ways that believing in him means believing in ourselves and acknowledging that we to0 are the beloved children of God.
This season of Lent is often spent in a “penitential posture.” We reflect on our shortcomings, our past failings, our character defects. We ask forgiveness. We engage in spiritual practices often defined by giving up something or we take on additional spiritual disciplines designed to whip our spiritual natures into shape. Lent is like a spiritual exercise gym with many of us in there working hard and sweating it.
But our readings this week make me wonder if all of that is missing the point. Many of us were raised in churches that taught us about a God who tests us and punishes us. We came away from the spiritual violence of that theology with the idea that if difficult things come to us, if suffering is encountered in life, then somehow it was our fault or at the very least we deserved it.
Our first reading today does a masterful job at articulating an alternative view. “Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you can now make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.” Even if we made choices that took us down a path of pain we will be given another chance to make better choices. And I believe this is absolutely true.
I also believe that some suffering is just inherent in human life. For instance when we choose to love someone without keeping up our guard when they die we feel pain. But God does not do this to us. This is part of what it means to be human and to love. We can learn to let go and let God’s love wash over us to comfort us. There’s a saying in 12 step groups, “Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional.” We can learn to loosen our grip on what we think we want so that we can embrace what its there waiting for us.
Our gospel lesson says, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus was one of us, flesh and blood, emotions and intellect. He spent his life telling us over and over that we are capable of all the things that he accomplished. We can choose to see the best in people. We can choose to speak truth to power. We can choose to open our hearts to God’s presence, God’s goodness, God’s love.
Believing in Jesus means believing in ourselves, believing in our own magnificence, made in the image of God. Maybe that’s what Lent is really all about. Learning to see who we really are in a spiritual mirror. When we find Jesus we find that we’re looking into the image of our own face. This image brings to mind the poem by St. Teresa of Avila.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Rabbi Tarfon said, ““It is not incumbent upon us to fix the world. Nor are we free to abandon it.” This vision of our mission for Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, is what our Christian journey is all about. We call it bringing about the kingdom or realm that Jesus preached. It’s not for us to do alone. It’s not for us to finish. We will make mistakes. We will become tired. We will make poor choices. But it is our duty and our destiny to keep working toward a goal of justice and peace in the world.
Let’s take our minds off our shortcomings and failures, our character defects and our mistakes, and concentrate on the work that is before us to do. Work that can only be accomplished by our magnificent selves. Made, like our brother Jesus, in the image of God. The knowledge of our own belovedness is what gives us strength and courage. It is what saves us. May we all get a glimpse of our own image of God in the mirror.
Amen
