“Jesus rejected each temptation in order to fulfill his divine nature to serve humanity. He sacrificed his human animal desires completely so as to serve people. He even gave his life upon a cross to satisfy the beastly nature of those who rejected him.”
~~~
Joe flushed, sipped the last of his coffee, said, “Sorry for taking to the soap box.”
“Not at all,” Willy said, “so this is why you and Pastor Elihu consider Alcoholics Anonymous as sort of shirt-sleeve Christianity? You’re saying that drinking causes you to revert to your uninhibited animal nature instead of expressing your higher self?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
Chapter 25 -Few Are Chosen
“Pastor Elihu told me, ‘There ought to be a sign over our church door, Sinners Only.’ He said, ‘This was the reason Jesus came into the world. He came to save sinners. And, of course, when we drank we were sinning.’
“Jesus said, ‘I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’
“Of course, we are all sinners. We alcoholics though, sink to such low levels, and do so much damage to other people, and ourselves, that some of us eventually do see our need for help. And we turn to God.
“This is not to say that others who haven’t hit similar moral bottoms haven’t tried to find the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of them, of course do find their way.
“But when people haven’t hit a moral bottom they only seek to find the Kingdom of Heaven in words and in reason. They study books. They attend retreats. Go to seminaries. That is good, of course. But, it usually doesn’t take them far enough.
“Pastor was reminded of John the Baptist who called sinners to change their ways: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. John told them: ‘I am only baptizing you with water; but he who is coming after me is greater than me. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’
“‘Then, too,’ Pastor pointed out, ‘Jesus disciples lived with him, followed him everywhere for three full years. But they too did not get it. Consider the parable of the epileptic boy.
“‘A man came to Him, saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.
“‘Jesus answered and said, bring him here to me.
“Jesus rebuked the demon. It came out of him. And the child was cured. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ Jesus said, ‘Because of your lack of faith.’
“Jesus tells his closest disciples that despite all he has taught them they still do not have enough faith.”
~~~
“This is amazing when you place the event alongside the episode of the centurion. The centurion too had a son who was deathly sick. The centurion’s friends asked Jesus to heal the boy.
“But when Jesus drew near, the centurion said, ‘Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. But say the word, and my son shall be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it. When Jesus heard these things, he turned, and said, I have not found so great faith, no, not in all Israel. And when they returned to the house, they found his son healed....
“So here is a soldier, a complete stranger to Jesus who asks him to heal his son, which Jesus does, but then says, ‘I have not found so great faith, no, not in all Israel.’ He dismisses his closest disciples as faithless and marvels at a centurion who is a complete stranger to him as being of greater faith than any he has found in all Israel!
“Then, too, consider the thief crucified on a cross next to Jesus who merely says to the other thief.
“Do you not fear God, seeing you are in the same condemnation? And indeed, we justly; for we receive due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing wrong. And he said to Jesus, Lord; remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said, ‘Today you shall be with me in paradise.’
“Even the thief gets it.
“Pastor Elihu said, ‘There is a lesson for us here. Quite clearly we do not need to be able to quote the Bible. Nor do we need to go to seminary. Nor must we become tonsured monks. Not even attend church regularly every Sunday. But, piety and repentance will save us.
“Now I am parroting him,” Joe said. “I can’t help it. All we must do is to humbly accept our most grievous errors and allow God to change our ways. We can’t do it on our own.
“We alcoholics have tried and tried and tried and nothing has ever worked for us. We did not get sober until we surrendered our will and our lives to the care of God.’
“I said, ‘What is it pastor, that makes it so darned difficult? When it really is simple? Why do we muck it up with our thinking?’”
~~~
“Pastor had great wisdom. He said, ‘Both Jesus and Paul allude to seeds when talking of the Kingdom. This is analogy of course, for seeds all have within them the potential of developing into a perfect plant or animal replica of what produced them. That potential which is embedded in the seed is a master pattern of what might grow forth. We take this far too much for granted.
We hardly give it any thought at all.
“‘But, just consider how many seeds are produced from any plant or animal, but how few develop into full-grown replicas of their parents. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen,’ as the Lord puts it.
“Every seed needs the proper conditions for it to take root, sprout and grow to maturity. We know that about chickens and eggs, as well as about acorns and oak trees. How few acorns though, find the right soil, moisture, and weather to grow to fully mature oak trees?
“And then, there are some species that even have a second stage birth. A caterpillar, for example, cocoons to be reborn as a butterfly, and a rose bush creates a bud, which opens into a flower.
“We humans are also like that. We have a spiritual pattern within each of us which also can bud, develop and flower into a second birth. And, as with the rose in the rosebud or the butterfly in the cocoon, we are not talking about anything that the senses can perceive.
“Jesus and Paul speak of the soul of man in this same way, that it is within the human and it’s the potentiality of man’s soul, our spiritual side to flower when we die as the seed must die before a plant can be born. Our souls, too, will evolve, if they are given the right set of circumstances, just as a butterfly will emerge from its chrysalis and no longer be imprisoned as a caterpillar.
“Why are there so few of us who become spiritually developed and make it to Heaven? For the same reason that there are so few sperm ejaculated by a man that end up fertilizing a female ovum, and so few of them that are born and live to become adult humans, there are so few of the spiritual seeds that flower into immortal souls. Don’t ask why this is so. It just is.
“That is the plan that God has created. Those who will survive the coming End Times will be as few as there are oak trees that grow to maturity from acorns that are strewn about beneath an oak tree on the forest floor.”
~~~
Joe yawned when he stopped talking. The manager of the restaurant was now locking the back door. Willy stood up, stretched, and said, “Joe, I can see that they are closing. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you so much. I wish we had more time. But, I think I’ve kept you far too long already.”
“Thanks for listening. I’m sorry if I went on too long. I hope I didn’t bore you.”
“Not at all. I’m the one who ought to apologize, for egging you on as I did.”
Chapter 26 -The Greatest Love Poem Ever Written
Joe leaned toward Willy.
“Let me say one thing more. Would you mind if I sing it for you?” Willy was surprised, thought tried not to show it.
“Please,” he said. Then he felt a bit edgy wondering how much time this would take, with the restaurant manager now tidying up on his way up front. And what would it look like with
this stranger singing to him in such a public place?
Joe’s eyes drooped a bit, but as if gaining a second wind, he said, “We’ve been talking a bit about immortality. There are still a lot of people who have a lot of difficulty with what will happen after their last breath.”
“True,” Willy agreed.
“Not even all Christians know how great a poet we have in our tradition.”
“Poet? You mean someone like T.S. Eliot?”
“Even better. I’m talking about Saint Paul.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The thirteenth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians is about as good as it gets in writing about Love. But I’m now talking about his statements on Immortality of the soul.
I’ve said a lot about the soul in comparison to the potential oak tree in an acorn. But I am dull, very prosaic in comparison to Paul from whom I get these ideas in the first place.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Yes. I’ve learned some of the passages by heart. I have even put them to music which I sing to my audiences at times when I am preaching, though I don’t think my music is anywhere near as good as Handel’s Messiah.”
“What in the world does Handel have to do with it?”
“He was inspired by the same verses, and wrote them into his Messiah too. I’ll spare you the music and just recite the lines. Would you like to hear them?”
“Of course.”
“They are from the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
Joe was considerate. He began singing in a low, soft voice, which Willy found soothing, much like a good-night lullaby.
“How will the dead be raised?
“With what kind of body?
“What you sow does not come to life
Unless it dies.
“When you sow,
You do not plant the body that will be.
“You plant just a seed.
But God grows it a body.
“And to each kind of seed
God gives its own body.
“All flesh is not the same.
“Men have one kind of flesh;
Animals have another,
Birds another
and fish another.
“There are also heavenly bodies;
and there are earthly bodies…
“If there is a natural body;
there is also a spiritual body…
“And just as we are born
in the likeness of earthly Man;
“So we shall bear the likeness
of a Heavenly Man…
“Listen, I’ll tell you a mystery:
We will not all sleep.
“But we’ll all be changed—
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
“For the trumpet will sound;
“And the dead will be raised
--- imperishable.
“And we will be changed.
“For the imperishable
will be clothed within the perishable.
“And immortality within the mortal.
“When the imperishable is born from the perishable;
“Then immortality will be born from the mortal.
“Death will have been swallowed up in victory.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
“O death, where is your sting?”
Connect with me:
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Joe Blaylock: Alcoholic preacher Page 6
