Parakalein

 When serving as a pastor here in Albany, Pineview Community Church (1986-1995), my focus was always on loving and caring for people, introducing then to the peace of God that passes human understanding, and offering this as a witness to God’s love to transform, through faith in Jesus, anyone’s life into “abundant living”.  I still believe all of that and live and preach it.   At the same time I do not believe that anyone has the right to define the “Jesus way” as any particular ecclesiastical or theological way that is itself exclusive, excluding, and elitist.  Jesus was none of that.  Jesus was inclusive, including and humble to the point of sacrificing his life rather than to win a point and thereby to make a point.  The point Jesus made is often lost in the ecclesiastical and theological garb in which we religiously robe ourselves.  I did.  I met Jesus in the most deeply painful places of my life and learned that it is about being “willing to sacrifice” all my agendas and all the conditions I want to put on how God works and witnesses to people.  To not restrict or define how God leads people to a life of sacrifice, surrender, and serenity.

The Jesus way is the way of sacrifice, surrender, and serenity.  The Jesus way is the way of inner peace, that leads me to live in peace with all people that is serenity.  It is also the way the surrenders “my way, however I define my way” to “the way” which is the way of “peace and love”.  This way is a way of unconditional love and agenda free loving.  Compassion without conditions and without agenda is not religious as much as it is spiritual.  Spiritual can be assisted by religion but religion does not produce spirituality.

John Lennon sang a song, “Imagine”.  In it here asked us to imagine “no religion” as a way to imagine living in love and peace, "living as one".  The reason behind that line is that religion is so often a part of the hostility in the world.  In the name of “truth and right” we have become untruthful and wrong.  Not in what we believe but in what we believe about others who believe differently.

I used to believe that my belief, about who Jesus was and is, was correct and I had to correct everyone else who had a wrong or at least faulty understanding of Jesus.  I was sincere in my love and concern for the “lost”.  What I was blind to was that I was lost in being right and correcting others which fed my ego needs more than clearly represented a God of love.  The God of love and peace, sent Jesus in love and peace into a world of anger, violence, and blindness.   Jesus confronted the people who thought they were right about what they thought about God and yet lived inconsistent with what they knew.  In the 21^st Century I believe Jesus is again asking us to, set aside the parts of us that feel like our theology or ecclesiology are right, and embrace the an inner peace that is agenda free, a love that is unconditional, and a belief system that welcomes everyone regardless of anything into a community of faiths that embrace these three qualities of God and of Christ.  Namely, the qualities of serenity, sacrifice and surrender are the way of love and the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus is not some particular ecclesiastical or theological or religious way.

The Jesus way is the way of being willing to sacrifice, surrender and serenity.  Many if not all religions of the world teach this way but do not call it the “Jesus way”.  This may actually be because we who hold to faith in Jesus have represented the Jesus way in such a narrow exclusive and self-serving way that the true Jesus was unrecognizable.