Monthly Archives: December 2011

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

It is in the consistency with which we do as the Master instructs in Love and the resultant actions of GoodWill and Right Human Relations that we will find ourselves moving closer to His Presence and to His Kingdom. As we know, this is a lifetime pursuit that must be practiced every day until it becomes our natural action. The Master gives us guidance in this in His saying to us that: “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back , is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). Jesus message here is that when we find the wherewithal to acknowledge and to follow the Light of the Soul, the Christ Within, we must stay the course and build ourselves through our consistency of action. Again we should remember as well that He tells us that “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13) which is to say to us not merely that we should not but that we cannot. The similarity in these sayings is seen in the idea that unless we are steadfastly seeking the Kingdom and striving toward it, that we will not have it. This can be seen here, likely for all of us through personal experience, as when one turns away and looks back to the world it becomes more difficult to look again to the Kingdom and, when we do, we find we have lost much of what was previously gained.

The Apostle James, speaking about asking the Lord for Wisdom,  sheds some Light on this for us in His writing that: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:5-8). Wisdom here should be seen as much more that that mental capacity of which we have spoken; it is the Wisdom that is from above. We have seen that Wisdom is a aspect, like Love, of God and that Love and Wisdom can be considered to be co-aspects if we can use such a term. It is Wisdom that flows from the Christ Within along with Love and imbues the conscious personality; these both come to us in the Light of the Soul. Getting back to our point we should see the idea from James in his words double minded. This is akin to looking back and to trying to do the impossible thing of serving both the Lord and ourselves in the world.

The Master has other sayings as well that, if we understand them correctly, will help us to see the idea of consistency. First there is this in caution and warning: “it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Luke 9:57-58). We should see here not only the historic fact but the teaching principal as well. We should remember here our premise regarding the sayings of the Master; there are no wasted words and all He says has a teaching quality for men in every age and, it is likely in a parable. Jesus is cautioning this man that the way will be hard and the same caution is to us who will find it difficult to shed the things of the world that we may be relying upon for the sake of the Kingdom of God. This man may say that he “will follow thee whithersoever thou goest” and so may we say the same to the Master and to the Christ Within but, will we remain steadfast when we find the road is tough and realize that there is much to give up in order to, as the Apostle Paul tells us: “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Jesus amplifies this message in His next saying: “And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:59-60). There is a dual message to be seen in this saying which is not an easy one to understand. First, in our current theme of consistency, we should see the idea clearly that whatever it is that this man wanted to do, even burying his own father, is meaningless in relation to staying consistently focused on the Kingdom. This same is true for us as everything, including mourning for one’s father, takes second place to our focus on the Kingdom and while there may be a middle ground here for us today, Jesus gave this man no such harbor. Where is the middle ground? it is in not ‘going off’ to do such and such but to do those things that one must without losing focus on the Kingdom of God. Second there are the ideas here put forth by the Master concerning death and the apparent insignificance of it even to the degree of the death of one’s father. The hidden message can be seen as that there is no real death here but merely the transition from one form of being to another; life continues and mourning someone’s death is of no use to the dead person but it is only a show of personal grief.  Our Love for the Kingdom must supersede this all.

The verse from Luke’s Gospel that we started with comes back to us here again with the lead saying from another ‘would be follower’: “And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:61-62). This is not unlike the prior saying regarding the dead father though it is about the living. This man can be referring to mother and father or to wife and children or it could be to all of them yet the Master’s reply is that this is unimportant that you tell them anything and we can say here that Jesus is alluding to the idea that they will find out somehow anyway. What is the message then to us? it is much the same, we must be willing to leave all behind….family, friends and whatever it is that we find is keeping our focus away from the Lord. We should repeat here the saying that we have at the opening of this essay: when we find the wherewithal to acknowledge and to follow the Light of the Soul, the Christ Within, we must stay the course and build ourselves through our consistency of action and to this we must add here the idea of the consistency of our focus as well.

The implication in all this is that it is extremely difficult to follow the Christ and to focus only upon the things of the Kingdom and so it is. But, it is only difficult until one discovers that those things that are to be given up are things that do not matter quite as much as we originally believe that they do. They are all things of the flesh and of the carnal consciousness. We explored this idea a some detail in In the Words of Jesus part 130 where we discuss the Parable of Counting the Cost. That there is a cost to being His disciple and a cost to being accounted worthy of the Kingdom is a fact that the Master points us to in the statements that we interpret as consistency above and in other places which we have discussed before. Jesus never tells us that these things are easy though some may mistake His saying that: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30) as telling us that it is. Here, however the Master is telling us that if we are overwhelmed by the things of the world we can find rest in Him whose yoke is easy because in Him, in the Light of the Soul, there are no longer the cares of the world. We still however have to overcome the ways of the world and we still have to pay that price of forsaking the things of the world.

The Master makes the difficulty clear for us in many other statements as well; not to the understanding of consistency as we have in these but in the more basic idea of doing. Let us look at these sayings from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew:

“For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:35-38). We start here with the idea of strife, of variance, with and between members of one’s own family; in that day, we should see this as the conflict in one’s house when a family member decides to fall away from the traditional beliefs of the family and go out after the Master. Looking deeper we can see the present day and the idea of a man ‘finding the Lord’ and then going out after Him as is possible on many levels. For us, it is yet deeper as we see the context as discipleship and as we are turning away from the father and the mother and the wife and any of the household to focus on the Lord and His Kingdom. This engenders bad feelings from those who cannot understand or do not wish to; to them the aspiring disciple is likely deemed foolishly going after a goal that they cannot see nor appreciate.

The Tibetan tells us this about the difficulties that arise in pursuing discipleship: difficulties arise from various causes:—a. The disciple’s lower self, which rebels at being transmuted. b. A man’s immediate group, friends, or family, who rebel at his growing impersonality. They do not like to be acknowledged as one with him on the life side, and yet separate from him where desires and interests lie. Yet the law holds good, and only in the essential life of the soul can true unity be cognized. In the discovery as to what is form lies much of sorrow for the disciple, but the road leads to perfect union eventually***.

Continuing with the text from Matthew we come to the Master’s words that should say to us all that we must come to a realization and to a point in our spiritual pursuit where we understand the temporal nature of all that is of the world. That nothing should take our focus away from the Kingdom and the Christ, not even blood relatives. Finally He tells us that we must take up our cross and follow; this too is a hard saying as we know not what is meant by the cross except in relation to the crucifixion. Vincent helps us here to get around the ideas that the Master is referring solely to the crucifixion, he tells us that: This was one of those sayings described in John xii. 16, which the disciples understood not at the first, but the meaning of which was revealed in the light of later events. The figure itself was borrowed from the practice which compelled criminals to bear their own cross to the place of execution. His cross: his own. All are not alike. There are different crosses for different disciples. The English proverb runs: ” Every cross hath its inscription” –the name of him for whom it is shaped ⁴. From Vincent’s thought we should see that for each of us there is a thing or there are things that we must accomplish in order to be disciples of the Master and in the context of all that is in this segment, we should see that this cross is the cost of discipleship and whatsoever it is that we must ‘give up’ for the Kingdom.

Luke makes this a bit clearer for us by tying the similar sayings of the Master above with the Parable of Counting the Cost. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:26-28). In this saying we need to see two things; first is the idea of hate which most bible commentators regard as to ‘love less’ so as to be in line with the saying from Matthew above. We can accept this as we can be sure that the Master is not telling anyone to hate as we understand the word today. Second is on the idea of counting the cost as the parable then relates this concept to the sayings that precede it; this loving less of family and of one’s own life in the world plus the idea of taking up one’s own cross are to be counted as the cost of discipleship.

We end today with a look at another difficult saying by the Master but one that clearly portrays the idea of the cost of discipleship as one of forsaking those things that are thought to be important. He says: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:29). We must see this as true today for us as well and we must see forsaking for Him, forsaking for the Kingdom, and for the reign of the Christ Within in our daily lives as the Way. This saying found again and expanded upon in the Gospel of Mark: “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). We see here some expansion of the idea from Matthew but also we see the sometimes misinterpreted idea that we will reap ‘things’ in this world. Misinterpreted from the perspective of what would one do with an hundredfold return on mothers and sisters. The thought here should be that whatever we do forsake, whatever we do leave, is to be counted small as compared to what we gain in the Kingdom of God.

This was not the intended topic for today; perhaps we can get to that in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day