Philippians 2:1-13

If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Matthew 21:28-32

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him

The Goal of Spiritual Life

Union with God

We are called to Union with God. That is the goal of the spiritual life. Union with God. Union in love, and through love.

We cannot think of God. We cannot know God through our thinking, through our discursive thoughts, the everyday traffic jam of our thoughts. But we can love God. And this love brings us into union with God, so that we can begin to see God’s unseen hand, God’s providential hand, the hand of providence that is guiding and directing us in our life. The operation of God in our lives, in our everyday life. You know, we see how God has brought us safe thus far, and God will lead us home.

And all the while we have never been separated from God. Sometimes maybe you feel separated from God. You go through the dark night of the soul. But God has never left you. You have never been separated from God.

Step to the left, and God is there. Or you step to the right, and God is there. And you cannot get away from God because there is nothing outside of God. There’s nothing outside of God. And this is union in love with the divine.

The Mind of Christ, Philippians 2:1-13

The Sustaining Presence of God

In our reading from Philippians Paul expresses the goal with these words, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” This is Union with God. It’s very difficult to talk about, and it’s a personal experience. To experience the divine right here and now, to experience this life, to experience how our life is sustained by presence, the sustaining presence of God, breath by breath, breath after breath. We breathe in. And then we breathe out. We don’t know where the next breath comes from. It just happens. It appears as if out of nothing. We breath in God, and we breath out God. And God is breathing us, and we are breathing God. And it is happening without our making it happen. To realize this is to realize Union with God, that we are not separate from God, but that God dwells in us, and we dwell in God, and there is no separation.

The difficulty of language. No duality in God.

It sounds very strange to talk about because of the way language is constructed. Language is linear and dualistic. Sentence structure is based on one word following another in time, constructing subject and object. But the contemplative experience of God is unified. It is God all the way through. There is no inside and outside. There is no self and other. There is no time, no before or after.  There is no duality. No this and that. And this does not make sense when we try to talk about it. But it is a real experience that the contemplative mystics describe. And their descriptions match up. And so when a person sets out on this course, the path toward Union with God, there are examples, there are precedents. People have done this. And they describe the experience so that we can know that it is real. And we can be encouraged in our journey.

Thomas Merton’s experience of union.

Perhaps one of the best and most accessible descriptions of the mystical union comes from Thomas Merton. Something happened to him on March 18^th, 1958, when he was walking in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. He described the life-changing experience in his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human,] a member of the species in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Awakening to the fact of this union.

This life, our life, right here, today, is a spiritual journey. We are moving toward Union with God. Or perhaps I should say, we are moving toward awakening to the fact of this union, awakening to realize we are already, just as we are, not separate from God. And at the same time, God is continually and always lovingly reaching out toward us, reaching out to bring us in, into the infinity of love that is always here, and always waiting for us, the infinite ocean of God’s love and mercy and grace. The infinity of invitation, always invitation, always waiting for us, always loving us. Never ceasing. Never giving up on us. This is God’s love. The spiritual journey is to awaken to this.

The Parable of the Two Sons, Matthew 21:28-32

In Matthew chapter 21 we have the Parable of the Two Sons. A man has two sons and he asks them to go work in the field. The first son refuses, but then, later, he goes. He changes his mind and does what the father asked him to do. The second son says he will go, but he actually does not go.

Jesus is trying to show the chief priests and elders their hypocrisy. They know the way of righteousness, but they are not following it. This way of righteousness is what Jesus has been teaching all along. How do we get to the Kingdom of Heaven? What is the Kingdom of Heaven? And in the parables, he shows the people what it is, and what it is not. He shows them the obstacles they must overcome. And we have been talking about these things this summer. The powerful emotions that separate us from God. The delusions of our ignorance. Greed. Envy. Judgement. Hatred. The ways of the world. The ambitions of the world. These are the things that prevent us from entering the Kingdom of God. They prevent us from recognizing the divine presence, right here, right now, each moment. That we are actually swimming in the very presence of God. And God is swimming in us. God flows through our veins and arteries. We breath God. We swim in God. And we are never separate from God’s love. But we do not recognize it.

And yet, there is always the possibility to change. Like the first son. He changed his mind. He had a conversion, a metanoia, an awakening. At first he refused. But later, he changed his mind.

How is God calling you? Finding union through acceptance.

Remember the spiritual goal. We come to church to be quiet, to pray, to rest our hearts and minds, and to listen. Spiritual listening is a deep listening. We listen for God’s call. How is God calling you? There is a spiritual presence, this very life, that is calling us to union. God is calling us, always, to be in union. We find this union through acceptance. Accepting everything. This is a radical acceptance. Accepting even the most difficult things. All the things we don’t like. So much of our thinking is “I like this. I don’t like that.” Accepting all of it. Accepting our weaknesses, our mistakes, our failures, our doubts, our disappointments, all the ways our life did not go the way we wanted it to go. All the things we wanted but did not get. To come to peace with these things, to accept, is the way. The way to the Kingdom of God God’s infinite love, the unconditional love that accepts us. We are accepted unconditionally.

 Urgency drops away.

You know, I have noticed a sense of urgency, now that it’s fall, and we feel the winter approaching. It’s time to get ready for the winter. And we feel it. And so there is a hurry to get everything done. But in acceptance, there is an end to urgency. The urgency ends. We accept things as they are.

I once heard Robert Thurman describe this. Robert Thurman was a great teacher of religion at Columbia University. And he had a spiritual experience of acceptance. He said that one day, he was walking along a country road, under some trees, and it was a beautiful day. And suddenly, he felt that everything was ok. Everything was ok. He said that the usual feeling he had, the feeling of being pushed forward, the urgency of being driven forward by some unexplained need, by the sense that something had to be done, that feeling that had driven him for so long, suddenly vanished. And there was no more urgency. And he came to rest in simple presence. In the eternal present.

God is the eternal present. The eternal presence. God is always here. There is no time in God. There is no hurry in God. There is nowhere else to go, no need to rush anywhere else, when we rest in the Divine Presence, and when God’s divine presence rests in us, then the searching ends. This is the great acceptance, and the goal of spiritual life.

May it be so for us.

Amen? Amen.