"God Within ... the Light"
Peter Eichten
Sunday, December 11th 2005

This advent we have been concentrating on the God within. Joan Riebel got us started with the theme “God within…the stillness and gave us an inspirational talk on how mysticism is transformational. Then last week we heard our new pastor Jim DeBruycker inspire us by speaking about the God Within…the messenger, and how one of the messages that Jesus brings to us is that we are all Divine, and our challenge is to bring the God that is within out of ourselves; to bring God into the world.

This week, the theme is “The God within…the light.” The wonderful thing about this time of the year when it is so dark are all the lights – I love the lights; the lights bring a sense of beauty, joy, and hope.

In today’s gospel from John we are going to hear how John the Baptist was to testify to the light, which is Jesus, and that John the Baptist is not the light. Last week we heard basically the same story about John the Baptist, but Mark’s version. The difference this week in the story about John the Baptist is the emphasis on the fact that John the Baptist is not the one to be followed. Throughout this gospel the author makes it very clear that Jesus is the one to be followed, not John the Baptist. And he does this numerous times in his gospel, not just in this story.

Before I make my comments, there are 2 things I need to make clear. First, when I talk about Jesus, I am talking about him from a “low Christology,” that is, I understand Jesus to be human, and it is because he is fully human that his followers later talked about him as being Divine. This is opposed to a high Christology, where Jesus is God who becomes human. I use a low Christology because it is the Christology of the gospels.

The second item I need to clarify is the term, “Kingdom of God.” While I don’t particularly like that term “Kingdom of God,” I haven’t yet found a suitable substitute. What Kingdom of God means is simply what the world would be like if God was in charge: The poor would no longer exist, there would not be the inequities that our societies create. It’s not that conflict would go away, but compassion would be our guiding light – not violence, greed, and the accumulation of wealth. This is what the Kingdom of God means.

Back to today’s gospel, why would John the evangelist want to make this point about following Jesus and not John the Baptist? What difference does it make? After all, they were both poor peasants trying to lift up their people; they were both wandering itinerant preachers and healers; and they both preached about the Kingdom of God. Their ministries were pretty similar. However, there was one huge difference between John the Baptist and Jesus, and that was their understanding of God.

This difference can be seen in the way they talked about the Kingdom of God.

For John the Baptist, God was the one that would bring about the Kingdom. So, you better repent now, because God is going to punish the wicked and reward the righteous and God will create the Kingdom. John’s God is a God of vengeance; we hear about this God all the time in the Scriptures.

Jesus presents a different picture of God. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is already here. God is with us, and because God is with us we have the power to create the Kingdom, we not only the power, we also have the responsibility to create the Kingdom. And that’s why we do the things we do here at St. Joan’s.

St. Joan’s often gets criticized for being too political. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The Church of St. Joan of Arc is NOT too political. We work for justice, peace, non-violence, and equal rights for all because that is how we believe the world would be if the Kingdom of God was established and God was in charge. That’s not being political, that’s being faithful to the gospel!

The God of Jesus is with us as we work to establish the Kingdom, and as disciples of Jesus we are all called to participate in the building of the Kingdom. For the author of John’s gospel it is the God of Jesus that brings light into the world, and it is this God that he wants his community to be following. So, that is why John’s gospel makes this distinction between following John the Baptist and following Jesus.

OK, let’s say some you actually buy what I’ve been talking about, I’d appreciate it, but it raises a couple of questions for me that I’d like to share with you.

First, how did Jesus acquire this new understanding of God? (Remember, we are dealing with the human Jesus, the Jesus of a low Christology.) There are many hints of this type of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, and that was clearly part of it. But I think that Jesus’ understanding of God came to him primarily because he was a mystic. And as a mystic, Jesus experienced God. You see religion tells us what to believe about God, mystics experience God, and they let that experience of God transform their lives.

Jesus experienced God, and by going within Jesus experienced the light that is God, and through his mystical experiences he came to a new way of understanding God.

The second question is; what difference does any of this make for us today?

Personally I think it makes a huge difference. Experiencing God is way different than believing what some religion tells us to believe about God.

Jesus knows God through his mystical experiences. Mystics from all different walks of life talk about their mystical experiences in a similar vein. They all say that a mystical experience helps in some way to know God, and it is usually so profound that it is impossible to put into words. They talk about how a mystical experience is transforming – reality is seen differently, and because of that ones life is changed, and that change leads to a deeper –and this is key - understanding of compassion.

Mystics from all traditions agree that compassion is the mark of a mystical experience. This is clearly the case in the ministry of Jesus. Everything that Jesus does is based in compassion. His whole ministry is a ministry of compassion.

So, if we are to be followers of Jesus, if we are to be working with God to create the Kingdom then our ministries have to be based in compassion. That is why we work to end poverty, hunger and homelessness. That is why we take on a stance of non-violent resistance to evil and to conflict. That is why we welcome those who are divorced and remarried. That is why we welcome, embrace and love our GLBT sisters and brothers. We do all of this because we are called to compassion. We do all of this because we are called to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and not followers of John the Baptist.

The God of Jesus is a God that is experienced, and when God is experienced it leads to compassion. One way to experience God is through mysticism.

On this Third Sunday of Advent the Good News is WE ARE ALL MYSITCS! We can all experience God. Mystical ways to experience God are countless – in prayer, in meditation, in the arms of your lover, in the wilderness, in the heart of the city – if we just open our hearts and our minds we can experience the God within – we can experience the light of God that is available to all of us.

Let’s see the lights that are so visible this time of year as a symbol for the God within….the light.

Editor's Note: We had a request for the reading Fr. Jim Cassidy included in his Gospel remarks. We include it here:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are we not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others. Written by Marianne Williamson Spoken by Nelson Mandella