Source is as source does

“Source is as source does”

Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 27, 2022

2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32, Psalm 32

First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho

Pastor Andy Kennaly

Do you know what a dozer house is?  A dozer house?  It’s a house that someone once lived in but is now sold to another.  The new owner decides not to spend their energy and focus on dealing with issues of deferred maintenance, outdated pluming and electrical, foundation cracks and sloping floors from rotting joists underneath.  Maybe there’s mold, asbestos, lead paint, or other hazards that would complicate remodeling efforts.  The new owner hires a bulldozer to level the place.  A dozer house.

Time for a fresh start, new construction.  They could, potentially, have moved into the old house.  But starting with a hole in the ground allows fresh footings, a stronger foundation, and new walls that are sturdy, plum, and well insulated.  Even better, it could be a smart home, energy efficient, based on solar energy and water conservation.  Yet even with so much potential within our human capability, these efficiencies are still non-conventional building practices, even though they’re what’s needed to change the world away from fossil fuels.  But they’re not required, nor practiced, by most builders.  Look at the places going in around here.  Brand new old systems.

The scriptures this morning go beyond conventional teaching at foundational levels, and invite us not only into something new, but something more authentic, soul-shaped based on our True Essence.  They play with our assumptions on key aspects of faith.  But fair warning if you want to enter this newfound freedom, this transformation can be no less traumatic than a dozer house.

For example, when Paul uses the word, “Reconciliation” most Christians today interpret this through a fall/redemption model that assumes original sin and that humans are essential guilty and separate from God.  This presumes God is an external entity.  On that foundation, this reading forms a structure of thought that takes the church and tradition in the direction of seeing Jesus as divine in a way that we can’t touch.  This is the “human point of view” that even Paul admits to having used to filter his knowledge of Christ.  But then Paul the mystic had a spiritual transformation that disrupted what he thought was strong a foundation.  Now he proclaims nothing less than an entirely new creation, in Christ, and that “everything old has passed away” and “everything has become new.”

“Reconciliation” in Christ through this new lens is not based on original sin, not a fall/redemption model, as if God needed to send Jesus to fix the mess we made.  God creates humanity as part of the creation story, and calls this good.  In Christ this original goodness is always there, and reconciliation restores us, and trespasses are not counted against us.

We are invited to open to this divine goodness at our core.  In Christ, we become the righteousness of God.  “Righteousness” means everything is working as it’s created and intended to be.  In Christ, we are new creations.  What we’ve done wrong, and what we’ve done right, are not what define us.  Who we are, in Christ, is our relational footing as human beings, for Christ is in all things, and all things are in Christ.

The story from Luke illustrates this.  It gives a dramatic representation of Paul’s theological reflections.  It has characters, two brothers, a father, a slave, and others involved in the drama.  This story is archetypal as it represents the human struggle and how we all participate as all the characters.  We have all made mistakes, had moral failures, and had to learn the hard way.  We’ve all been on the inside track, felt justified and outraged at those who challenge us in the systems we’ve come to depend on.  We’ve all abandoned other judgements to allow love to flow through us.  We’ve all had things we’ve noticed and things we just can’t see.  We’re products of the cultural context we live in, and yet invited to be more than this as we welcome spiritual transformation through God’s grace.  There’s a lot going on in this story, and there’s a lot going on in life.

Danger comes when we think we’re not all the characters.  Perhaps we overidentify with one while we resist the others.  For example, maybe we assume we’ve been enlightened, gone through the dark night of the soul, and are freed by Christ’s saving presence in our heart.  Or perhaps we’re content with the system, the structure, the security of tradition, the historic moral teachings of Christian faith.  Religion has served us well and we’ve checked all the boxes on our way to heaven as good people who haven’t squandered like that one, immoral brother in the story.

Paul in his letter to the Corinthians and this story in Luke both hinge on “point of view.”  Through whatever character, both passages show the energy of judging and comparing, and they assume a timeline to play out.  But, both passages dive deeper than this because our judgments, perspectives, and opinions, even our sense of time, or counting to keep score, can’t carry the weight of glory or the burden of sin.

God is our Origin, our Source.  Capital S, Source.  “Source is as source does” comes from Cynthia Bourgeault’s blog post about Jean Gebser and his exploration of Christian faith.  Source is as source does.  We are the source with a lower case s, yet it’s the same word.  We live as carriers of source within us, or as Paul puts it, “ambassadors for Christ since God is making his appeal through us.”  Paul speaks not from perspective at all, not in a cause and effect way that’s limited by linear time, but from a new foundation.  Paul describes this as “in Christ.”  It’s what “Gebser calls, originary presence.”  In German, this is “Ursprung.”  God’s “springing forth” as action more than noun.  (https://cynthiabourgeault.org/2021/01/18/integral-as-theotokos-2/)

Raimon Panikkar puts it this way, by saying, “I am one with the source insofar as I, too, act like a source, by making all I have received flow again.” This is the point of the two sons in Luke’s story.  They both receive, but the younger one learns how to let life’s love flow through him.  The older brother, who seems successful “from a human point of view,” resists this flow of Ursprung.  Yet the Father tells him this very thing, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”  Source is as source does.

I’d like to read Psalm 32 as a conclusion to this reflection as it embodies the younger son and the joy of living “in Christ,” as Paul puts it, of allowing Source to flow, to be as we are created and intended to be, as human beings.  The younger son is freed from sin’s burden, united in covenant Love.  There are lines of dialogue in this Psalm.  As its read, let us celebrate new creations in Christ:

Psalm 32

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,

whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity,

and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,

and I did not hide my iniquity;

I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’,

and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Therefore let all who are faithful

offer prayer to you;

at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters

shall not reach them.

You are a hiding-place for me;

you preserve me from trouble;

you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,

whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,

else it will not stay near you.

Many are the torments of the wicked,

but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD.

Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous,

and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Peace and All Good be with you.  Amen.