Intersect

Matthew 3.13-15 (CEB) At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?” Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”  Luke 24.25-26 Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about. Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Acts 4.12 Salvation can be found in no one else. Throughout the whole world, no other name has been given among humans through which we must be saved.” We were moving our son into his dorm in New York recently. While we were there, we visited one of our favorite charity thrift shops. The kids are great thrifters. They’ll look at second-hand clothing, shoes, bags, and tchotchkes for hours. I look around the store more quickly, maybe trying on a shirt or two before I find s...

John 6.53-59 (CEB) Jesus said to them, “I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Human One and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me lives because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. It isn’t like the bread your ancestors ate, and then they died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. The author of  The Gospel of John  has Jesus using provocative language to stimulate the minds of his students. The language above is graphic and often riles us even today. What is Jesus talking about, eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Taken literally, this passage is like an epi...

  Philippians 2.6-8 Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. This passage from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi is a beautiful hymn about Oneness. It conveys how deeply Paul understood that Jesus was a teacher in the Jewish wisdom tradition who called his followers to a radical shift in consciousness: away from the misperceptions of this temporal reality created by mind and ruled by Ego, into the unified field of divine love, which must be perceived not only by mind, but also by body and soul. Obedience for Jesus and Paul is not subservience, it is wholeness, unity, Oneness. Experiencing it requires silencing (or learning to ignore) the constant, blaring fabrications of our minds and merely sitting in ...

PROVERBS 6.16-19: There are six things that the Lord hates, seven things detestable to God: snobbish eyes, a lying tongue, hands that spill innocent blood, a heart set on wicked plans, feet that run quickly to evil, a false witness who breathes lies, and one who causes conflicts among brethren. The  Proverbs  list of “things God hates” eventually became “The Seven Deadly Sins:” THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS lechery / lust ( luxuria  in Latin) gluttony ( gula  in Latin) avarice / greed ( avaritia  in Latin) sloth / discouragement ( acedia  in Latin) wrath ( ira  in Latin) envy ( invidia  in Latin) pride ( superbia  in Latin) “The Seven Deadly Sins” were etched into my psyche sometime while we lived in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. I was a high school junior. Because of the mixed religious background of my parents (and my own innate unwillingness to take  anything  at face value), I had done a lot of reading about different rel...

God of all existence, obliterate the carbonized crust of debilitating thought suffocating and imprisoning the luminosity of my being. Overwhelm me with love that spills into the world and eradicates the poisons holding us hostage from our cosmic, divine union. Loving, Holy One, in the manner of Jesus Christ, I empty myself to be filled with you. Transform my ignorance into awareness; my selfishness into compassion, and my anger into love. Amen.

1 JOHN 4:7-11 ( The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart) Beloved ones, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born out of God and knows God. Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love. By this, the love of God was made manifest in us, because God has sent his only Son into the cosmos so that we might live through him. Since God loved us this much, we must love each other. I love John’s sentiment and reasoning:  We should love each other because God loved us first. God is love, so if we want to know God, we must know love. Specifically, we must love each other as  unequivocally as God loves us. That’s a big ask because John argues that God loves us so much that God incarnated—and willingly died—as  one of us to show us the way to a new life in a new world.  Over the millennia this has come to be interpreted to mean that if you’re a good Christian today (whatever a good Christia...

​ Mechanism of Perception  by  Dimitri Strelkov Mark 10.46-52 Jesus and his followers came into Jericho. As Jesus was leaving Jericho, together with his disciples and a sizable crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, Timaeus’ son, was sitting beside the road. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, show me mercy!” Many scolded him, telling him to be quiet, but he shouted even louder, “Son of David, show me mercy!”  Jesus stopped and said, “Call him forward.” They called the blind man, “Be encouraged! Get up! He’s calling you.” Throwing his coat to the side, he jumped up and came to Jesus.  Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said, “Teacher, I want to see.” Jesus said, “Go, your faith has healed you.” At once he was able to see, and he began to follow Jesus on  the way. My first question after reading this story is whether it’s about  sight  or  seeing....