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Kill God Before God Kills Us

Scripture:  24th Sunday After Pentecost (the Reign of Christ), 2009 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

Upon witnessing in Egypt the same solar eclipse that accompanied the Crucifixion of our Lord, Dionysius the Areopagite, a pagan at the time, is said to have cried aloud:  “Either the world is ending, or God is dying!”

*          *            *

Well, brothers and sisters, we’ve come to the penultimate Sunday of the Church year.  Next week is the end of the line—the Sunday when we celebrate with joy the triumphal reign of Christ the King, merciful and loving ruler of the entire cosmos for all eternity!  Alleluia!

But you know how these things work in the Church, right?  Before we preach Gospel, we must preach Law; before we announce forgiveness, we must announce repentance; and before we enter into new life, we must enter into death.  The same goes for the world as a whole.  We are promised that there will be a final redemption, when all shall be set right, and Creation itself will be given a glorious new beginning!  But in order for that to happen, it must first all come to an end.  Welcome to the end of the world.

Now, frankly, the Endtimes are big business.  Huge.  The destruction of the world has proven to be a cash cow for centuries, in spheres both religious and secular.  Head out to the nearest Barnes & Noble and it won’t matter if you find yourself in the Christian, New Age, or Science isles.  All of them will have shelves of books predicting when and how the late great planet Earth shall meet its grisly demise.  Mayan calendars, Nostradamus, and even the Holy Bible are cast like bones to glean clues and details about the destruction sure to come.

Ever watch the History Channel?  They line up Endtimes theories like bowling pins to make sure we hit ‘em all.  Solar storms, asteroid strikes, super viruses, nuclear winter, the next Ice Age.  Nothing is too outlandish to possibly kill us all.

This very weekend, Hollywood’s masters of disasters have released a new film entitled 2012, yet another special effects thrill ride laying out the gory details of geocide.  Yellowstone collapses into a megavolcano that wipes out the Midwest.  The Big One finally strikes California, pulverizing the entire state into a sluice of rock and mortar.  And a massive tsunami obliterates the East Coast from Maine to Florida.

Books, movies, wall charts, seminars, tent revivals, televangelists—even street preachers with wooden placards and cardboard signs—all together generate billions in revenue, tapping into the deeply seated human conviction that soon it’ll all come crashing down.  It’s like we’re all scared of the end of the world, and yet we all want it to end.  Boy, if that doesn’t sum up the human condition, I’m not sure what does…

So what are we to do, brothers and sisters, regarding the end of the world?  At table one long-ago evening, a young student asked Martin Luther just that.  “What would you do,” he inquired, “if you knew that the world were to end tomorrow?”

Luther put down his stein of beer and replied simply, “I would plant an apple tree.”

Now that might seem a bizarre or flippant answer, but I assure you, it is not.  When God first made humanity, He assigned to us a great and noble position amongst the orders of Creation; we were to be stewards of God’s great garden of Earth.  We were to share, by grace, in the Lord’s tender acts of life-giving love.  But we threw all that away, for a taste of forbidden fruit.  Yet the breach we have torn, Christ, thank God, has mended by His Body, His Blood, and His Spirit.

The role of the Christian—indeed, the intended role for all humanity—is to live with faith, hope, and love, serving others as if they shall live forever (because they will) and living our lives as if we shall die tomorrow (because we just might).  In the face of death, suffering, wars, horror, natural disaster, cosmic collision, disease, and impending doom of a thousand different varieties—we plant new gardens.  And we populate them with service and selflessness, with hope and faith, with Jesus’ love and the sure promise that God will not give us up to the pit, but walk with us forever in this world and the next.

It doesn’t matter if it all ends tomorrow, or next year, or in 10,000 A.D.  Makes no difference to us!  We have confidence that Christ has already died for us, and so we are free to live selflessly in love with nothing to fear.  It’s the end of the world as we know it—and I feel fine.

*          *            *

See, here’s the deal.  We all know that in our Baptism we’ve already died the death that matters, and we already have one foot in Heaven.  Thus, death is nothing to fear.  Well, a lot of Christian thinkers, for thousands of years, have argued the same thing about the end of the world.  In all the ways that truly matter, they say, the apocalypse may already have occurred.  Stick with me on this one.

In our reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews this morning, the author points to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the Endtimes.  “I will put My Law in their hearts,” says the Lord through Jeremiah, “and I will remember their sins no more.”  Now Jeremiah here has always been understood by the Judeo-Christian tradition as referring to the end of time.  But then Hebrews says that in this prophecy, the Holy Spirit is testifying to us—to the Church—who follow not the old 613 laws of Moses, but the simple Law of Christ written on every human heart:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  That, for us, is the sum total of God’s Law.

Moreover, Christ has taken our sins upon Himself and washed them away with His holy Blood and the resurrecting waters of Baptism.  Therefore, the author of Hebrews argues, the promise of the Endtimes has been fulfilled in Christ.  And we, having no more to fear, are confident to enter the holy sanctuary of the one true God!

We then turn to our Gospel reading, in which Jesus warns us of famines, earthquakes, and nation rising against nation—and usually we read this as a future prediction of the world’s end.  But according to the text itself, all Jesus is doing is answering the Apostles’ question about when the Temple of Jerusalem will be destroyed!  And Jesus is exactly right.  In AD 70, Jerusalem revolts against the Roman Empire in what becomes known as the Jewish War.  And the Romans, who’ve little mercy for insurrectionists, roll in with a vast army to destroy Jerusalem, level the one true Temple of the Lord, and scatter the Jewish people throughout the nations.

For the Jewish believers, this was, in effect, the end of the world.  They had lost the land that God had promised to them.  They had lost the Temple in which God had promised to live.  Everything they had known had been wiped out in iron and fire.  But to all this Jesus says, “Do not be alarmed!  This is not the end of the world!  Rather, what you think to be the death throes of God’s promises are in fact the pangs of new birth—bouts of pain announcing new life, new relationship, new creation!  You can tear down the Temple,” Jesus cries, “but I will raise up in three days a new Temple, the true presence of God amongst Man, and My Spirit and Body shall encompass the whole of the Earth!”

Jesus is the end of the old world and the birth of the new.  That’s why, in Luke’s Gospel, it’s the angel Gabriel who comes to Mary and announces the birth of Christ—because in Jewish tradition, Gabriel’s job is to herald the end of the world.  Over in John’s Gospel, Christ is both the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.    He begins the world as the Word, and He ends the world with a word from the Cross:  “It is finished,” He says, and dies.  When Mary and Martha weep that their brother will arise in the Resurrection, on the last day, Jesus declares: “I AM the Resurrection!”  His Second Coming is not some vaguely distant promise, but is the reality of that empty Easter tomb!

You see, dear Christians, when it comes to what God is doing for us, we always get things backwards.  We thought that salvation would be all about us climbing up into Heaven, when in fact we’re saved only through God coming down to Earth.  We thought that the Messiah would arrive as a bloodstained warrior, slaying the infidel—when in fact He comes as a baby, weak and vulnerable, laid humbly in a manger.  And now we think that the Endtimes will be a wrathful God ending the world.  But in reality, the Endtimes occurred when a wrathful world ended God on the Cross.

In all the ways that matter, the world has already ended.  Christ died and rose again; the Temple fell and then rose up as the Church.  The old order passed away, and abundant new life spilled out for all.  We do not have to fear some great cataclysm at the end of time.  We do not have to fear the Wrath of God wiping out the world, which Jesus loves and has redeemed.  The final battle is over; Jesus won.

Now the end of the world is a lot like our Baptism, in that it's already been accomplished, but we await its complete fulfillment beyond the grave.  And so there will come a day, thank Christ, when this fallen, broken order will pass away.  But this is comfort, not horror.  This is promise, not threat.  This is but the pangs of new birth in Christ—and not the end of the world.

Thanks be to God in life, in death, and in Resurrection.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.

Prayers of the Church:

Gathered into one by the Holy Spirit, let us pray for the Church, for the world, and for all people according to their needs…

You call us, Lord, to trust in You

            When chaos rules the land

Grant us faith and wisdom true

            And take us by the hand

You call us, Lord, to steward Earth

            Rouse us to heed Your call

Raise Creation to rebirth

            When we cause it to fall

You call us, Lord, to work for peace

            And thus Your hope to share

Work in us, Lord, that wars may cease

            In mercy—hear our prayer

You call us, Lord, to visit those

            Who deep in sickness dwell

So like the blossom of the rose

            Bring hearts to bloom as well

You call us, Lord, to love the poor

            The lonely and outcast

That we on Heaven’s golden shore

            Might live as One at last

You call us, Lord, to reconcile

            Though we would scarcely dare

Walk with us, Lord, this holy mile

            In mercy—hear our prayer

You call us, Lord, to love our kind

            As diff’rent as we seem

So place in Christ our heart and mind

            That we might live Your dream

You call us, Lord, to celebrate

            And cherish gifts of life

Keep and guard our fam’lies’ fate

            And harmonize our strife

You call us as You called the saints

            Who rest now in Your care

Our lives with Christ You must acquaint

            In mercy—hear our prayer

Lord, long ago You spoke to us by the prophets, but in these last days, You have spoken to us by the Son.  In His most holy Name we lift before You those whom we name now, both silently and aloud… Jacob, Aaron, Jared, Denise, Myron, Linda, Bill, and Kris… for the happy recovery of those recuperating from sickness or surgery… for all parents who labor and pray for the health of their children… for the ELCA and the entire Church Catholic… for the USA and the nations of this world… for soldiers, veterans, and those in need.

And we praise and thank You, Lord, for pleasant weather, new life and new families, new celebrations and a new year of the Church!  On this penultimate Sunday, we cry with joy, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!”

Into Your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray

Trusting in Your mercy to light and guard their way.  AMEN.

Currently Blood Diamonds: Tracing The Deadly Path Of The World's Most Precious Stones By Greg Campbell see related

A Brief History of the Occult

THE OCCULT!

A Twisted History of Western Esoteric Traditions

Few words have as negative a connotation as “occult.”  The term literally means clandestine, hidden, or secret, though in modern parlance it tends to refer to knowledge of the paranormal or supernatural, as opposed to purely scientific knowledge.  Oftentimes occult is taken to mean knowledge meant only for the few, and which must remain hidden from the great mass of humanity.  Most practicing occultists, however, maintain that it is simply the study of a deeper, inwardly focused, spiritual reality that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences.

A more politically correct term for such a body of knowledge might be “esotericism,” and along with the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman thought, the esoteric tradition often claims to be the third great pillar supporting Western Civilization.  I’ll be honest with you: the incredibly complex and twisted history of occult knowledge is far too vast for us to do any real justice in a single sitting.  And quite frankly, this sort of thing tends to give me a headache!

Nevertheless, a Christian should explore other religions and spiritualities for several reasons: (1) to be able to share the Word of God as Law and Gospel with our neighbor in a language that he or she can understand; (2) to appreciate the uniqueness of our own Christian faith; and (3) to demystify, and thus de-fang, occult practices.  Ignorance breeds fear, neither of which is appropriate within the Body of Christ.

I.  THE ROOT RUNS DEEP:  Origins of Western Esotericism

1.  Pythagoreanism!  Pythagoras (c. 570 B.C. to c. 495 B.C.) may vie with Plato for the title of most influential Western philosopher, but he stands alone as the granddaddy of the occult.  Like most of history’s greatest teachers—Buddha, Socrates, and Christ included—Pythagoras leaves to us nothing written by his own hand, and so we must rely on the works of his disciples.  Biographical details are sketchy at best, and mainly depend on which legends one decides to accept.

A number of myths popped up around him, including that his father was Apollo, that he glowed like Moses with divine light, that he could teleport through both space and time, and that he had a golden thigh, indicating his own divinity.  We may safely assert that Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, and is said to have traveled extensively throughout Egypt, Arabia, Phoenicia, Judaea, Babylon, and even India, accruing as much knowledge as possible from a bewildering array of teachers.  Sounds a bit like Bruce Wayne, really.

Pythagoras founded a secretive brotherhood that operated partially as a school and partially as a monastery, imitating many aspects of Spartan society.  Initiates were oathbound to Pythagoras and to one another, passing through a period of probation and progressing through gradations within the organization.  Not everything was taught to everybody.  Secret symbols allowed Pythagoreans to recognize one another even if they’d never met before.  Meals were held in common, and ascetic practices included the “Pythagorean diet” forbidding meat and fish—and also, oddly, any type of bean.  Even touching beans was considered verboten.  We have no idea why.

Pythagorean thought was dominated by mathematics and the transmigration of souls.  Basically, the ultimate substance of things is apeiron, “the boundless,” and it is only by the notion of peiron, limitation, that the boundless can take form.  In other words, things only exist because there is a void between them, making them distinct entities.  When the apeiron is “inhaled” by the peiron it causes separation; instead of an undifferentiated whole, we have a living whole of interconnected parts separated by void between them.  This interspersion of thing with void cannot be done willy-nilly, however; it must be done as part of a natural (musical) harmony.  Order thus arises from chaos.

All this leads to the Pythagorean obsession with numbers, because the continuum of numbers illustrates a universal principle of reality: a series of successive terms, separated by void, and progression harmoniously.  All reality may be represented numerically and harmonically, leading to a mathematical understanding of planetary orbits and thus the famed “music of the spheres.”  Primes and multiples of 10 really excite Pythagoreans.

The God of the Pythagoreans is the Monad, referred to as the First, the Seed, the Essence, the Builder, and the Foundation.  Purification rites and rules for living enable a reincarnated soul to achieve moral purity, and thus gain a higher form in the next life.  God is to be worshipped spiritually, as the material world must be escaped in favor of the realm of mind or spirit.  Popular Pythagorean symbols include the circumpunct to represent the Monad, and the inverted pentacle (not a satanic symbol until the 20^th Century) to represent Empedocles’ five earthly elements and the void between them all.

Numerology, reincarnation, secrecy, purification rituals, and sacred geometry would all remain hallmarks of the esoteric tradition for over 2500 years.

2.  Gnosticism!  Gnosticism slightly predates Christianity, and infiltrated Jewish, Christian, and pagan communities of worship.  In the most general sense, Gnostics believe in hidden knowledge, or gnosis, which of right belongs only to a select few special people.  Details vary, but the basic Gnostic mythology goes something like this:

God is way too high up and far too perfect to be bothered with anything other than admiring His own perfect self.  (This comes from Aristotle’s concept of the Unmoved Mover.)  He creates lesser beings known as Aeons, who are basically angels or pagan gods.  One of these Aeons, Sophia, decides that she wants to try and create something without the true Creator’s help, so she gets herself pregnant.  The resulting offspring is a twisted, malformed, evil monster known as Yaldaboath.  He immediately tears his mother into pieces and uses her corpse to create the physical world (not unlike Marduk structuring reality from the sundered body of Tiamat).

For Gnostics, the Creator God Yahweh of Jewish Scripture is actually the wicked, deformed Aeon Yaldaboath, who fashioned this broken, fallen world.  Thankfully, portions of Sophia’s spirit remain embedded in the souls of certain special humans.  These chosen few may escape the hellish cycle of reincarnation by a rigorous, celibate, ascetic lifestyle, and thus return to the world of the Aeons.  “Christian” Gnostics claim that Jesus Christ is not God, but is an Aeon like Sophia, Who enters into this physical world in order to save those of us who have Sophia bits stuck in us.

Gnosticism appears to be one of those perennial heresies, cropping up at regular intervals throughout Christian history.  The medieval Cathars of the Albigensian Crusade were a later iteration of Gnosticism, and the so-called Gnostic Gospels have experienced a recent resurgence in popularity.  Hidden spiritual truths inappropriate for the unwashed masses that allow for a progression to selective salvation remain favorite esoteric ideas.  Notice how Gnostic notions of reincarnation, works-righteousness, and a hands-off God continue to resurface.

3.  Neoplatonism!  Like Gnosticism, Neoplatonism flourished around the same time as the Early Church.  Founded by Plotinus as an attempt to preserve the authentic teachings of Plato, Neoplatonism become a school of religious and mystical philosophy that heavily influenced a variety of Christian thinkers—most prominently, St. Augustine.  Plotinus’ Enneads speak of God as the Monad or the One, the primeval and infinite Source of Being.  The Monad has no attributes of any kind, without magnitude, thought, or life, as the Monad is “above existence” and “above goodness.”  (In the words of Luther’s abbot, “The Father is too high!  Cling to the Son.”)

Nevertheless, the Source is constantly producing things without diminishing or altering Itself in any way.  The Source emits existence like a force or radiation.  Directly or indirectly, everything is brought forth by the “One,” and God is all in all.  Derived existence, however, is subject to a law of diminishing completeness.  Like a series of concentric circles, everything is an image and reflection of the first Source, but the further each successive stage sits down the chain of being, the less its share in true existence.  We are, basically, progressively fainter echoes of God.

The first reflection of the Source is the Demiurge, or Nous, which is a perfect image of the One and does all the work (or rather, is the energy) of organizing the material world.  The Nous is pure mind or intellect, and is completely indivisible.  The reflection of the Nous, however, is the world-soul, and while the world-soul may preserve its unity and remain in the Nous, it may simultaneously unite with the corporeal world and thus be disintegrated.  Pieces of the world-soul (i.e., individual human souls) have the free will to either turn to the Nous, or to abandon the intellect in favor of the sensual, thus losing themselves to the finite material world.  Parallels to the Christian Trinity are several.

Unlike the Gnostics, Neoplatonists don’t condemn the material world and its Creator.  So long as this world is pervaded by the soul—that is, idea governs matter, and the soul governs the body—the world remains harmonious, fair, and good.  Those souls overpowered by sensuality and lust seek to cut themselves loose from true Being, and thus assume a false existence.  Such a lost soul must turn back along the same path on which it fell.  He or she must pursue a hierarchy of virtues, a system of works-righteousness, by which the soul pulls itself back up towards God.

The civil virtues restore harmony to life, reuniting you with the world-soul.  Purifying virtues free the soul from sensuality and lead it back to itself, thus rejoining the Nous.  And finally, a state of perfect passivity and repose may bring one to an ecstatic union with the Source, Who is beyond all thought or ego.  Thus can a soul escape reincarnation and be swallowed up in the One.  Later Neoplatonic philosophers included complex systems of divine beings to help along the way.

The idea of God having multiple emanations or echoes, and these leading to various levels of reality, is an important contribution to the occult tradition.

II.  THE HEART OF THE MATTER:  Twin Rivers of the Occult

1.  Hermeticism!  Now we come to the big guns.  The stalwart trunk of occult belief in the West may be summed up in two words: Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism.  Hermeticism arose from Hellenized Egypt in the Second Century A.D., and brewed together a system of syncretistic and intellectualized pagan thought from both Greco-Egyptian mythology and Greek philosophy.  Its main texts are attributed to a character named Hermes Trismegistus, or “Thrice-Blessed Mercury.”

Now, a herm, in ancient Greece, refers to a stone pillar, post, or amulet in the shape of a phallus that demarcated boundaries and warded off evil.  It is also considered to be an instrument of communicating with the divine, thus linking it to Hermes, messenger of the gods.  While some followers of Hermeticism eschew the religious approach, considering theirs a philosophical system only, many hold that all great religious have equivalent mystical truths at their core, and share an understanding of esoteric tenets with Hermeticism.  Several Christian thinkers considered Hermes to be a prophet, and pointed to him as evidence for a prisca theologia given by God to Man from antiquity.

Hermes Trismegistus supposedly penned 40 books, but the vast majority was lost when the Alexandrian Library burned.  Three extant works make up the core texts of Hermeticism:  the Corpus Hermeticum, which records several dialogs between Hermes and God; the Emerald Tablet, which coins the extremely popular occult phrase, “as above, so below”; and the Kybalion, published anonymously in 1913.

Hermetics study “three parts of wisdom”: alchemy, astrology, and theurgy.  Alchemy, rather than transforming lead to gold, is an investigation of material existence through the mysteries of life, death, and resurrection.  It often invokes the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire.  Astrology, which Hermes claims to have been discovered by Zoroaster, teaches that the movements of the planets have meaning beyond simple physics, and actually hold metaphorical value as symbols in the mind of God.  The planets influence Earth but do not determine our actions.  Astrology seeks wisdom by understanding such influences and dealing with them.  Theurgy actually deals with two types of sorcery: white magic, accomplished with the aid of angels or gods; and black magic, conjured by summoning demons!

The dictum “as above, so below,” teaches adherents to understand the physical, mental, and spiritual levels of reality as influencing one another, especially in a microcosm- macrocosm relationship.  Understanding oneself leads to understanding of the universe.  As with most occult systems, Hermeticism professes reincarnation, a rejection of the physical world, and the existence of both the All (God) and the Nous.  The Hermetic Creation story, meanwhile, is bizarrely convoluted and complex.

Once it fell out of favor with the Christian Church, Hermeticism went underground via a series of secret brotherhoods, and has resurfaced periodically throughout Western history.  The modern esoteric tradition as a whole is heavily steeped in Hermeticism.  Many magical systems owe a great debt to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society open to both sexes and dedicated to the teaching of alchemy, Kabbalah, magic, and “the principles of occult science.”

2.  Rosicrucians!  Between 1607 and 1616, two anonymous manifestos were published in Germany: the Fame of the Brotherhood of R.C., and the Confession of the Brotherhood of R.C.  These documents claimed to present to the world a “most laudable Order” of mystic-philosopher-doctors promoting a “Universal Reformation of Mankind” and “built on esoteric truths of the ancient past,” which, “concealed from the average man, provide insights into nature, the physical universe, and the spiritual realm.”

To say that these two works caused a sensation would be a considerable understatement.  They caused a “Rosicrucian Enlightenment,” and inspired dozens of secret societies and scores of publications all claiming to uphold the doctrines of the original Rosicrucians.

According to the Fame, a German doctor and mystic philosopher known only as Frater R.C. (later identified as Christian Rosenkreuz, or “Rose Cross”) traveled to the Middle East to study under various masters.  Upon his return, he gathered a small circle of friends and disciples into a secret society—the Rosicrucian Order—in A.D. 1407.  The eight members, each a doctor and sworn bachelor, undertook an oath to heal the sick without payment, maintain the Order’s strict secrecy, and find a replacement for himself by the time he died.  Thus had three generations supposedly passed between A.D. 1500 and 1600, a time of unprecedented growth in scientific, philosophical, and religious freedom.

Now, these two documents were not to be taken literally, and were regarded either as hoaxes or allegorical statements.  The manifestos themselves explicitly state that they “speak unto you by parables.”  Some even believe Rosenkreuz to be a nom de plume for Francis Bacon.  Clearly both books were heavily influenced by Hermeticism, and many believe that they used the language of alchemy and science to publicized their opinions and beliefs—which, in general, encouraged the Reformation.  (It should be noted that the center of Luther’s seal is a black cross upon a red rose.)  Later authors claiming the Rosicrucian title pointed toward a symbolic and spiritual alchemy rather than an operative one.  The rose cross represents the soul (a rose) crucified on the material world.

Later legend claimed that as the true Rosicrucians had arisen due to an explosion of freedom, so they then fled to the East at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War.  The “Rosy Cross” appears in literature throughout the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, and various men of science were inspired by the Rosicrucian legend to create the College of Invisibles, the direct precursor to Isaac Newton’s Royal Society.  Two of the 33 degrees in Scottish Rite Freemasonry were inspired by the Rosicrucians.

Today, Rosicrucian societies fall generally into two categories: esoteric Christian groups who associate esoteric ideas with the “mysteries” of which Christ spoke in Matthew 13:11 and Luke 8:10; and initiatory groups that follow a degree system of study and initiation, such as the Rosicrucian Order AMORC and the Rosicrucian Order of the Golden Dawn.

III.  THIS DAY AND AGE:  Witches, Nazis, and the Modern Occult

1.  Theosophy!  Founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875, the Theosophical (“god wisdom”) Society had three goals: (1) to form a nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; (2) to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science; and (3) to investigate the unexplained laws of Nature and the latent powers hidden within Man.

Theosophists hold that all religions are attempts by the “Spiritual Hierarchy” to help humanity evolve to greater perfection, and thus each religion has some portion of the truth.  Religion, philosophy, science, the arts, commerce, philanthropy, and other “virtues” help lead people ever closer to “the Absolute.”  Planets, solar systems, galaxies, and the entirety of the cosmos are all regarded as conscious entities, fulfilling their own evolutionary paths.  Spiritual units of consciousness, or Monads, may manifest in angels, human beings, or other forms; Monads are the reincarnating “unit” of the human soul, consisting of the two highest of the soul’s seven parts.  Seven is a sacred, perfect number.

Supposedly, human civilizations, like all parts of the universe, develop cyclically through seven stages.  Drawing from Hesiod’s Five Ages of Man, Blavatsky posited that that all humanity, and indeed every Monad, cycles through a series of seven Root Races.  Thus in the first age, humans were pure spirit; in the second, they were sexless beings in the now lost continent of Hyperborea; the third consisted of giants living on Lemuria, another lost continent; and modern humans finally developed on yet another lost continent, Atlantis.  Now we find ourselves in the fifth age, which belongs to those descendents of the Atlanteans, the Aryans.  The Aryans are just waiting for the other races to die out, so that Lemuria can re-emerge in the sixth age.

Guido von List merged Blavatsky’s ideas with his own brand of nationalism, creating a theory of racial evolution known as Ariosophy.  (Blavatsky herself vehemently denounced racism.)  This led to the Thule Cult Society, one of several German occult groups preaching Aryan—i.e., Teutonic—supremacy.  Both the Theosophical and Thule Cult Societies incorporated swastikas into their emblems, and heavily influenced Nazi ideology.

2.  Thelema!  Aleister Crowley, once denounced by the Church as “the wickedest man alive,” had a series of bizarre experiences in 1904, culminating in what he claimed to be the dictation of his Book of the Law via a non-corporeal being named Aiwass.  A Hermetic practitioner who broke Golden Dawn’s code of silence, Crowley founded his Thelema (“will”) occult society upon the dictum “Do what thou wilt” from Rabelais’ 16^th Century satirical work, Gargantua and Pantagruel.  Sir Francis Dashwood had likewise adopted the saying for his mysterious Hellfire Club, which Benjamin Franklin supposedly attended, in 18^th Century England.

A Thelemite believes that the True Will is one’s calling, or niche, in the universe, and that one should do whatever possible first to discover, and then to fulfill, that calling, with regard neither to divine aid nor moral constraints.  The goal is self-realization.  For this, the desires of the subconscious must overcome socially instilled inhibitions, especially those of a sexual nature.  Crowley identified the True Will with a guardian angel or daimon unique to each individual.

Thelema draws its principle gods and goddesses from ancient Egyptian paganism, and teaches a system of physical, mental and spiritual exercises known as magick.  Crowley altered the spelling in order to differentiate “real” magick from stage magic.  He often discussed sexual magick and sexual gnosis, and advocated the removal of any restraint that would inhibit a magician from seizing his True Will.  For this the ego must be completely relinquished, lest the unprepared aspirant become a Black Brother.  Such a failed adept slowly disintegrates, preying upon others for his own self-aggrandizement.

3.  Kabbalah!  A school of mystical, esoteric Jewish teachings, Kabbalah seeks to explain the relationship between an infinite, eternal and essentially unknowable Creator with the finite and mortal universe of His Creation.  Though its roots stretch deep into the Middle Ages, and Kabbalic lore claims that such esotericism originated in Eden, Kabbalah has gained a recent resurgence in popularity, especially amongst the Hollywood crowd.  Kabbalah interprets the Torah on at least four levels and takes biblical numerology very seriously.  The basic idea is that since each Hebrew letter has a numeric value, the numbers themselves contain some sort of divine code.  Shades of Pythagoras!

One of Kabbalah’s most controversial aspects begins with the notion that God has two aspects: an infinite, unknowable aspect completely beyond all human comprehension; and a revealed aspect that created, preserves, and interacts with the universe.  From here surfaces the Neoplatonic idea of all Creation existing as emanations from God.  This leads to the notion of Sefirot (singular, Sefirah).

Sefirot are the ten understandings of God by which He creates the universe.  They should not be understood as ten different gods, but as ten different ways in which the one God reveals His will.  It is not God Who changes, but our ability to perceive God that changes.  Each Sefirah, moreover, corresponds to a level of Creation.  Again we find the esoteric concept of reality being multilayered, like some great cosmic onion.

The Sefirot are often represented on a graph known as the Tree of Life.  Sefirot on the right hand side are supposed to be masculine, positive emanations/aspects of God, while those on the left are feminine and negative.  Those in the middle mediate.  With its numerology, layered realities, “spheres” of God, tendency towards dualism, and (in some cases) ideas of reincarnation, Kabbalah is generally rejected as heretical by orthodox Jewish theology.  After all, wrote Rabbi Leone di Modena in the 17^th Century, if Jews can believe that God is Ten and yet One, why not just confess Him as Three and yet One?

IN CONCLUSION!

Frankly, much more could be said regarding this topic.  Not only could we go on for many more pages regarding Spiritualism, Wicca, the New Age Movement, Neopaganism, &c., but also any one of the above summaries easily could be expanded into an entire series of Christian Education Forums.  Still, we must stop somewhere, mustn’t we?

It should be clear by now that the Western esoteric tradition stands as an umbrella term for a vast array of beliefs, rituals, philosophies, and magical practices, most of which share certain basic (and very old) tenets:  divination via astrology, numerology, sacred geometry, and the like; an emphasis on spiritual beings of various sort which may be contacted or used; a cycle of reincarnation that must be escaped; a self-salvation system of works-righteousness, personal fulfillment, and individualism; secret knowledge of the complex, hierarchical, and hidden layers of reality; the casting of spells and use of both white and black magic; and a God Who is, at best, detached from everyday life, and, at worst, nonexistent.

Viewed in this light, we come to realize that there’s nothing terribly mysterious or frightening about the occult.  Like the Eastern religions from which it is drawn, the esoteric largely seeks divinity and salvation within oneself.  By better understanding the origins of these ideas and the needs that their practitioners are seeking to fill, we pray that we may better preach the Gospel to a needy world.

“For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed!”—Luke 8:17

In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.

Currently Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (America's Past) By Frederick Douglass see related

On Love and War

I've been wearing mine next to my wedding band, and I've already gotten a lot of admiring comments.  Of course, out here anything with runes on is enough to warm the cockles of these Scandinavian hearts.  Roughly translated, it says, "Think of me; I think of thee.  Love me; I love you."  Surprisingly sentimental, coming from a culture whose very alphabet looks violent.

I love you, hon.  Some day we'll actually have time together.  When we're retired.  Or dead.  Whichever.

Currently A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens see related

Into Ages of Ages!

 

• The Golden Age of peace and harmony, when Man lived amongst the gods and the Earth spontaneously produced fruits and honey for them to eat.  After a long and fulfilling life, a man would lie down to sleep and die peacefully, never having known the rigors of age.  This Age ended after Prometheus brought fire to Man, and Zeus wiped out the Golden race by unleashing Pandora's Jar.  (Yes, it's a jar, not a box.)

• The Silver Age, when humanity fell to fighting one another and refused to worship the gods.  Thus Zeus wiped them out in a great Flood.  That should sound awfully familiar.
  

• The Bronze Age of violence, passion, and unrelenting warfare.  This is also when mankind starts building shelters (of bronze), indicating recognizable civilization.
  

• The Heroic Age of heroes, monsters, and demigods, notable both due to its lack of an associated metal, and also because it is the only Age not to be a diminution of its predecessor.

• The Iron Age of modern Man, marked by complete depravity, the total destruction of morals, impiety, fratricide, the dishonoring of parents, and the breakdown of the social contract.  Sounds pretty accurate to me!
  

Currently Odd and the Frost Giants By Neil Gaiman see related

Spilling Gore Upon the Shore

Scripture:  23rd Sunday After Pentecost (the Reign of Christ), 2009 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

If you ask me, one of the greatest movies of all time is the Adventures of Robin Hood!  Not the recent versions, mind you, but the old 1938 swashbuckler with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone.  Folks, it doesn’t get any better than that!

Everybody knows the story, right?  Good King Richard of England, Richard the Lionheart, has nobly gone off to do battle with Saladin in the Third Crusade.  But while he’s gone, his weasely younger brother, the dastardly Prince John, usurps the throne and crushes the British Isles under merciless, unjust taxation!  Thankfully, the people have a hero in Robin of Loxley, an outlaw noble who resists John’s tyranny, and who robs from the rich to give to the poor, ever fighting the good fight until that hoped-for day when the true King shall return from the East to restore justice and rectitude to the land.

So Robin fights, Richard returns, John is deposed, and Maid Marion gets wooed.  Roll credits, close curtain, all’s well that ends well, right?

Sure.  In the movies.  But alas, the true story does not end there.  Reality isn’t quite so rose-colored as Hollywood would have us believe.

There really was a Richard the Lionheart, of course, but he wasn’t quite the Good King of legend.  His father, Henry II, had married the gorgeous and powerful Eleanor of Aquitaine, thus creating the famed Plantagenet Empire, with as much land in France as in Britain.  At his mother’s behest, Richard and his siblings spent much of their young adult life waging war against their own father in order to seize the throne.

When he himself became king, Richard had naught but disdain for the swampy British Isles, much preferring his mother’s duchies in France.  A francophone himself, King Richard never bothered to learn English, and complained bitterly that he’d have sold England if only he could’ve found a buyer!

That said, Richard did indeed have the heart of a lion, insofar as he showed peerless strength and savagery on the field of battle.  Upon taking up the Crusade, his ships sailed for Acre in the Holy Land, and as they arrived they beheld the shoreline thick with Muslim archers and warriors right up to the sea.  Fearlessly, monstrously, Richard rammed his boat headlong onto the shore and leapt alone off the prow, single-handedly hacking down the Saracens to clear a beachhead for his troops.  Acre was taken by sheer brute force.

Islamic chroniclers record an incident from another battle, in which Richard fought so fiercely and thrust so deeply into the Muslim ranks that he soon found himself alone and completely surrounded, his men having been left behind.  His horse was soon cut out from beneath him, and on foot he fought so savagely that all the enemy soldiers pulled back several steps, leaving him alone and spattered with gore inside a circle of scimitars and spears.

One Saracen noble, offended that a lone infidel should strike such terror into the warriors of Allah, charged Richard on horseback, attempting to lance the king on the spot.  But Richard’s sword struck the rider on the shoulder, cleaving straight through his armor and passing diagonally through his torso, literally splitting the knight in two with a single blow.  The Muslim soldiers cried out in shock and horror!

Saladin, ruler of the Islamic forces, had been watching from afar.  Upon seeing his mounted noble split from collar to hip, he pointed at Richard and said to his aids, “Give that man a horse and send him home.”  He had earned it.

This, my friends, was the King for whom Robin Hood was waiting!  This indomitable, unstoppable, godlike warrior.  Little wonder his people called him Lionheart.  Prince John, meanwhile, was known as Softsword—a name as embarrassing then as now.  Weasely little John didn’t stand a chance.

Eventually Richard did get home, and John was booted just like in the movies.  But it wasn’t quite your “happily ever after.”

You see, the first thing Richard did upon his return was to re-conquer all those castles that had rebelled against him in his long absence.  During one such siege he boastfully rode out beneath the castle walls, daring them to attack, when a young boy shot him through the shoulder with an armor-piercing crossbow bolt.

Richard’s surgeon botched the job and he lost the arm, his wound rapidly growing gangrenous.  Knowing his injuries to be fatal, Richard nonetheless soon cracked the castle and had the young boy who’d shot the quarrel brought before him.  “Why,” he asked the child, “have you slain your own king?”

“You killed my brother,” the boy replied defiantly, “in one of your endless wars.”

“Give this youth a satchel of silver and set him free,” ordered the King.  “Everyone else in the castle is to be hanged.  And let it not be said that I am without mercy!”

Thus perished Richard the Lionheart.  His brother John retook the throne, legitimately this time.  And all of Robin Hood’s many adventures proved to be for naught.

“Put not your trust in princes,” sings the Psalmist, “in mortals, in whom there is no help.  When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”

This has sometimes been called the antigovernment psalm.  But it does not apply only to heads of state.  “Beware the teachers of the Law,” Jesus says this morning, “who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!  “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.  They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Yes, brothers and sisters, place not your trust in politicians, and certainly not in religious authorities with long robes saying windy prayers.  We are thieves and brigands.  And not the nobly folkloric sort either.

I’d like to say that such condemnations apply only to other people, to blustery televangelists who make millions by prophesying that Jesus wants you to put $10 in the box!  But this falls on all the clergy, self-righteous as we are.

According to the Law of Moses, money was collected by the religious leaders for the purpose of caring for widows, orphans, foreigners, and other vulnerable peoples upon the fringe of society.  But money, like all forms of power, corrupts.  In our Gospel this morning, with 1500 years between Moses and Jesus, the Temple institution no longer gives to powerless widows, but instead devours their houses.

Furthermore, a poor widow, with nothing to live on but two copper haypennies, gives all she has to the very Temple intended to provide for her.  The most vulnerable are being used by the greedy and power-hungry, who then, as now, hide behind a veil of respectability and pious self-righteousness.

Adding insult to injury, this poor widow is often used once again in the modern day, when preachers hold her up as a model for giving all that you have to the Church—as if poor people of limited means should suffer for the very institution established to care for them.

True stewardship involves earning, saving, and spending, as well as giving.  The Church’s job is to feed the hungry, both spiritually and materially.  No one, then, should have to go hungry so that the Church may prevent hunger.  It’s nonsensical!  That’s right up there with destroying the village in order to save it.

Christ does not want us to be poor.  Poverty is an evil to be fought, not an ideal to pursue, and certainly not a mechanism for salvation.  But we indeed are to give out of our abundance so that we may love our neighbors as ourselves.  Not more than ourselves—not less than ourselves—but as ourselves.  In this we must be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, just as Jesus commands.

So in this day and age, brothers and sisters, when so many princes and preachers claim to be Robin Hood, while they in fact they take from the poor to enrich themselves, do not place your trust in mortals.  Even the good ones, the ones who truly mean well and work for a better world, will falter and fail, if for no other reason than that they are human.  Secular messiahs make for terrible saviors.  They arise from the East only to be cut down once more.

But instead, place your trust in Christ Jesus, Who, as we heard in Hebrews, has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and Who now appears in the presence of God on our behalf.  For He Who bears the sins of many will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.  And we do not wait in vain.

We pray to God that we may be rightly guided in the proper stewardship of all the gifts provided to our households, our communities, and our congregations.  And we pray to God that He guide us in just and proper governance, for the Lord appoints princes over the people not that the masses be ruled, but that the needy be served.  Christ grant us wisdom to act with love in such earthly affairs!

But ultimately we know that people may fail, money may run short, but Christ will never leave us.  He is the true King for Whom we wait.  He is the true Lion of Judah.  And when Church, State, and all other rulers fail us—Jesus never will.

Thanks be to Christ, our true High Priest, and King of all Creation!  Alleluia!  AMEN.

Prayers of the Church:

Gathered into one by the Holy Spirit, let us pray for the Church, for the world, and for all people according to their needs.

Lord, we pray for veterans,

            For soldiers in their work and life

Violence the planet rends

            As mortals pour out bowls of strife

Remind us all, O Prince of Peace

            That You call armies to protect

That murder might be stemmed and cease

            And harmony thus resurrect

Let the sword be last resort

            An instrument of mighty care

We stand before Your holy court

            Lord, in Your mercy—hear our prayer

Gold and silver, patient God

            Are ever idols in our heart

Let us not in greed defraud

            The vuln’rable who stand apart

Possessions, Lord, You do protect

            By Your Commandment not to steal

Yet in hoarding we neglect

            The poor who then to You appeal

Give us wisdom with our money

            None can take it with us there

To Jesus’ land of milk and honey

            In Your mercy—hear our prayer

Lord, Your Church does oft devour

            Those for whom we’re meant to live

Teach us that Your godly power

            Is the selflessness to give

Ev’ry man from king to peasant

            Stands the same before Your Throne

Though divided at the present

            All are one in Christ alone

Let us see in ev’ry human

            Jesus Christ, Your Son and Heir

Give our vision Your acumen

            In Your mercy—hear our prayer

Lord, we pray especially for those we name before You, both silently and aloud… for Myron, Jacob, Aaron, Linda, Bill, and Kris; for the Arno and Perala families; for soldiers and their loved ones, especially the victims of Ft. Hood; for a just and merciful peace; for Your Church in all Her divisions; for families wounded by money woes; for all children undergoing medical care; and for all who dare not pray to You.

Into Your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray

Trusting in Your mercy to light and guard their way.  AMEN.