Pebbles of Love

(Message delivered to First Congregational Church of Eugene on Dec. 31, 2023)

Message Bible John 14: 11 “Believe me: I am in God and God is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. 12 The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to God, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. 26 The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you.“

My heart is your heart!

 How’s your heart today? How is it?

My name is David. Together with you, we are here to slay the Goliath of War. 

I intend to drop a pebble of hope and love into the ponds of your hearts and help the ripples spread and connect with other ripples until a tsunami of love sweeps away the culture of control, domination and violence, which is our status quo today.

The greatest threat to the status quo is not war,
nor pandemic,
nor famine, nor revolution,
nor inflation
or depression,
nor collapse of the corporations or the government, not even overheating of the planet.  

All of those things just increase the struggle to solve problems. The greatest threat is: 

that we might love each other
as brother and sister,
and love our planet.  

Our planet.

Love would sweep away and overturn
all the roots and foundations of the status quo,
set free the oppressed,
heal the sick and wounded,
quench the thirsty,
feed the hungry,
shelter the homeless, and
set everyone dancing for joy.

Love is dangerous;
love is now suppressed;
love is exiled from thought, word and deed.  

Open your heart just a bit
to let a drop of compassion pour out onto the world, and your heart will overflow.
It will not empty,
it will expand exponentially….

to the 5th power, love upon love, because

1. Love makes us better listeners, which builds empathy, creating the space for the collaborative problem-solving necessary for the stable security which is peace. Love is practical.  
2. Love’s perceptions, emotions and actions are not driven by external personalities or situations when we accept ourselves as imperfect and unfinished students of love. LOVE becomes an acronym for Letting Old Vanity Evaporate. Then we see that our neighbors, and even our enemies, are like us, unfinished, imperfect students of the same love. Love is internal and personal.  
3. Love knows the transformation of global society only needs one person who is released from the violence paradigm, because they are far more creative and “outside the box” when it comes to empowering others to re-arrange not just their thinking but also their behavior. Love is powerful.  
4. When Love changes our inner world, our external behavior shifts to match, and we become a creative source of systemic change. Love directs all one’s thoughts, feelings and actions to the mission of peace. Love is passionate.  
5. Love does not count the days or years until peace is achieved as a measurable event. Love knows that the desire for peace can be drawn forth from within the hearts of all people, and that moving out of despair interrupts the repeating cycle of violent behaviors immediately, not in the future. Love is patient.  

PEACEMAKING is our personal work, to create connection and belonging in the very presence of that conquer-and-divide system — that culture of isolation, separation, control, domination and violence that is perpetuated by national governments that need war to justify their existence. That system will literally start to dissolve when we let go of our internal culture of control, because our friends and family will secretly wonder how we relaxed into a more satisfying lifestyle. When they figure out how to let go of isolation and control, then everyone with whom they come in contact will see how much sense it makes to let go, and the ripples of social change continue to spread. 
You don’t have to trust or believe what I am saying, just experiment with letting go, do it in whatever way you can, and see for yourself what happens.  

The hope that this is possible for ourselves and others is the ground on which resilience stands, the vision that builds bridges over vast chasms of despair, the rocket fuel for social change, and the end of war.  

Wars will end when soldiers refuse to fight.       

It is our refusal to believe in that possibility that enables war to continue. However, if we accept that the evolution of humankind necessarily includes threats to survival in order to force a search for better strategies for thriving, if we accept that there is no growth without difficult challenges, and that the nature of a world that works for our collective benefit is to constantly present us with new challenges to “boldly go where no human has gone before,” then these wars and disasters of the present moment are precisely the crises that we need to teach us what we need to know, to go beyond all the solutions we’ve tried before, beyond all the beliefs, dogma, and hierarchies of our culture.  

This is exactly what Jesus was telling his disciples, to let go of their rigid ways of thinking. Jesus was a radical, revolutionary anarchist who insisted on freedom from external culture. He taught obedience to the authority of that voice that constantly speaks to us from within.  

When Jesus said to Philip, “I am in God and God is in me,” I believe he meant that our hearts leap for joy when our head, hearts and hands begin to resonate and align with the pattern of God, the Kingdom of God, the Christ light, the Divine Human Prototype – call it what you will – that is embedded within all of us.  

If we focus on allowing and accepting God’s revolutionary presence within us we would be more than amazed.  

We would feel safe, supported, and loved beyond anything this world can offer. It is in this place of safety that we can truly, wildly and freely risk being ALIVE, dynamically expanding and growing, just as God intended.  

Jesus was telling Philip how he trusted God, utterly and completely, so that he could embody the generosity of the God of Love. If he could do it, as a physical human being, then Philip and the rest of us can also do it. Jesus said, “I am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing.”

You have probably driven in foggy conditions, right? This morning! Consider that to be an example of how we already know how to move forward with our lives in spite of the lack of visibility. We really can’t see very far ahead but we go ahead, every day, anyway. We’re constantly committing ourselves to going beyond where we’ve been before.

Doesn’t this describe how Jesus lived, in complete trust? However, the acts of Jesus have become extolled as so extraordinary and perfect that it is assumed to be far beyond our reach. We have made Jesus into the “other” in spite of his assertion that his Christ spirit continues, hidden within each and every one of us. The culture which surrounds us bombards us with the message that not only do we lack the ability to do as Jesus did, any attempt to embody his example is so disruptive to the status quo that it is dangerous and taboo. Yeah, you could be assassinated. It’s not OK to feed the homeless, shelter the poor, and restore the criminals to society. It’s not OK.

Let us break that taboo!

Let us join the ripples of our hearts into a single wave through a practice of using the Aramaic language of Jesus to create a closer connection or resonance with the original context within which he spoke.

There is a phrase in that language that uses key words from John 14: “Abba Abada Haimanuta Alaha”

The word “abba” refers to the Creator force of the cosmos. The word “abada” points to the divine creation continuing through our actions and the way we live our lives. The more conscious we become of this process — we’re doing it all the time anyway, whether we know it or not — the more the divine can consciously work through us. It’s a matter of focusing our attention. The word “haimanuta” is the word for “faith” and “Alaha” refers to the divine.

All together, this phrase translates as: “Uniting our own creative ‘works’ with the creating Source, together with grounded trust in Sacred Unity.”

It is a sung prayer, a reminder to ourselves, to allow our hearts to become a channel for God’s generosity, to become a flowing river of love.

PRAYER CHANT

Let us pray together in the manner of a Taizé, repeating that phrase, “Abba Abada Haimanuta Alaha.”  

I will sing it first, so you can hear the melody. The third and fourth repetitions begin on a higher note. Listen:

Let us chant the entire phrase for several minutes, then I will signal a change to stay with just “Haimanuta Alaha.”

Finally, we will then soften our voices until we drift into a period of silence, and close with “Alaha.”