When all the people asked John,
What must we do then?
He answered,
If any one has two tunics,
He must share with a man who has none,
And the one with something to eat must do the same.
There were tax collectors too,
Who came for baptism.
And these said to him,
Master,
What must we do?
He said to them,
Exact no more than your rate.
Some soldiers asked him in their turn,
What about us?
What must me do?
He said to them,
No intimidation,
No extortion.
Be content with your pay.
A feeling of expectancy had grown among the people who were beginning to think that John might be the Christ.
So John declared before them all,
I baptize you with water,
But someone is coming,
Someone who is more powerful than I am,
And I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn.
But the chafe he will burn in a fire that will never go out.
As well as this,
There were many other things he said to exhort the people and to announce the good news to them,
The Gospel of the Lord.
It's common decency what John spoke to the tax collectors and to the soldiers,
Don't take more than what is owed to you.
And yet we live in a society where it is an example almost that is said to us,
Where the people that we trust to look after us are not necessarily the ones who do so.
We see that governments do whatever they want to do to enrich themselves on a personal level.
We see that those who are struggling are left to fend for themselves.
And yet this is not the message of the Christ.
This is not the message that John the Baptist came to share.
You who has two tunics should give one to somebody who does not have.
I struggle with this a lot because I started clinging to that,
You know,
Just give and give and give.
So my focus for many,
Many years has been on just the second part of that message.
Give to somebody who doesn't have.
And it ended up where I sat with no tunic because I see the pain that others are going through.
And I think maybe in some sense,
I went through a healing crisis,
A spiritual crisis of my own,
Always going through some crisis on spiritual level,
Which is beautiful because that is where we grow.
But in that time,
I forgot equality.
And it is such a beautiful thing to see how there is a consciousness growing,
Consciousness that far transcends borders.
There's a consciousness of humanity that is growing.
It is very small at the moment.
It is like this very small ember still struggling to take hold and blast into this beautiful flame of consciousness.
But it's there.
And this consciousness is of equality.
Where people are moving,
Even though there's this great resistance to it,
People are starting to recognize that God is everything.
God is every way.
And God is in everyone.
And that's where the balance comes in.
Many people struggle to see God in somebody else.
And that is why they will take.
They have unfortunately allowed ego to designate themselves as God,
Which is true.
This is where it gets so fascinating because it is true that God is within each of us.
So we contain God and God deserves the best.
So they focus on the first part of the message,
Having two cloaks,
Having more than enough to eat.
And they forget the second part.
And then you get the schmucks like us who see the second part and they give away everything and they forget that God is in everything.
God is inside each of us,
Which means that God is inside me too.
And I deserve the best just as everybody else deserves the best.
Now what is the best?
Does that mean that we all need to have millions in the bank?
Not necessarily.
I think that's a very big worldview about wealth equating to money and earthly possessions.
Wealth is not necessarily that.
It can include that.
But it's not always just that.
Wealth is being in communion with God.
Now I was chatting to a fellow student before or early this morning and something hit me again.
It's almost a message that comes over and over,
But God transcends religion.
And that is something that is also a small ember of awareness that is slowly growing and it is slowly bursting out of the or breaking out of the mold of the traditional man-made concepts of God and about Christianity and about religion as a whole.
God is not linked to religion.
A couple of years ago,
I might have been burnt at the stake for saying something that is such a heretical statement,
But it is true.
Why then do we still have religion and why would I stand here as a priest and say that God transcends religion?
Because we all need a spiritual expression that leads us to God.
We all need to have some way of trying to understand this mystery that we can't.
Try and understand this mystery.
That's where the magic comes in.
And the important part is God is everything.
God is every way,
But we cannot fathom that.
God is every when.
Our human minds can't grasp that at all.
So how do we then bring everything together?
The message of John the Baptist,
The fact that today is a day of joy.
And here I go and talk about separation.
The day of joy to me is the fact that when Jesus was born,
When the Christ was born,
The message came to our planet,
To earth,
Saying that the separation that you think was does not exist.
That the differences that we have between each other,
Skin color,
Religion,
Countries,
Finances,
They're all just transient things.
They're all just things of here,
Of our current expression and it's of our current understanding and experience.
Those things are important for us to experience,
But it doesn't define us.
And that when Christ came to earth,
With him came the breaking down of these illusions of being separate.
With him came the breaking down of the illusion that success and wealth is necessarily linked to finances and possessions.
And that is why today is a day of joy,
Because we are preparing for the coming of Christ.
We are preparing for God to break down our egos,
Our perceptions of disconnect.
And so when we go into this week,
Those of you who join us on Facebook live will know that I ask this constantly of everybody to go into this week and to recognize each and every being,
Not just human beings,
Every living thing on this planet as being part of God.
Can you imagine how different your week will be if you recognize God in all and everything and you honor God in all and everything?
So when we get together for our next celebration of the mass,
I truly pray and hope and wish that your experience of God in that time will be phenomenal and that you will experience the pure love and the connection of communion with God.
Amen.
