This week the Gospel passage moves to John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness.  John was sent as a messenger, as one who would prepare the people for the coming Messiah.  From a mystical point of view, I'd like to focus on this preparation happening in the wilderness, and move from there onto why the distinction between baptism with water and baptism with the Holy Spirit. But first off the wilderness: We actually have two separate descriptions in our texts, depending on where you put the punctuation.  In Isaiah 40 we read one crying out, "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord."  Whereas in Mark 1, referencing this passage it tells of one crying out in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord ..."  In either case the result is the same, John the Baptist was out in the wilderness preaching about repentance and forgiveness of sins. The wilderness was often the place where intense revelations took place.  God revealed the Torah to the Jewis...

The Season of Advent has a variety of meanings. Because of where it falls in the year, its easy to associate with preparing for Christmas. As the season progresses the readings reflect this theme. But the beginning of Advent always deals with Christ's second coming. When this topic comes up I can't help but think about rapture, pre-millennial dispensationalism, post-millennialism, a-millenialism, and all sorts of understandings. All of these concepts are designed by human beings, trying to make sense of very cryptic passages in Scripture, like the one we have for Advent 1 this year. "Then they will see `the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven (Mark 13:26-27 NRSV)." When I was a teenager many of my friends would speculate on the rapture, believing that at some point Jesus would return, and that all of the Christians w...

Along the concept of the Four Worlds is the concept of Adam Kadmon, or the primeval man. This was God's vision for creating human beings - that they would look like this. This isn't a person that you can go out and meet somewhere, rather its an idea born out of God's infinite wisdom. The way to describe such a person, or an idea of this person comes with another device - the Ten Sefirot. The Sefirot is a complicated concept. At a first glance they can appear polytheistic or pagan, but this comes from misunderstanding their nature. I like to think of them as lenses with which you can see divine qualities. When I was a boy I used to get toys with secret messages on the packaging. When I opened the package there was a decoder, basically a red piece of film with a cardboard border. Without the decoder the message just looked like a random collection of colors, but when I put this decoder over the top it filtered out everything except for one color, and then I could read...

The Four Worlds: The four worlds is a mystical concept that describes what happens in-between God and us. They are never named outright, but the closest image we have for them in the Bible comes from Isaiah 43:7 "Everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made (NASB)." An important question to ask is, why all the repetitions? Why does God talk about being called, created, formed, and made? Isn't it enough just to say that God created us in God's image and let that be that? The reality in Scripture is that everything is there for a reason. Sometimes we need to dig very deeply to get to that reason. Mystics interpret this verse from Isaiah as a way of understanding four separate worlds - a world of Emanation (I called you), a world of Creation, a world of Formation, and a world of Making or Action. The Hebrew for these worlds is: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyyah. As one ascends the four wor...

I've been interested in Kabbalah, the mystical side of Judaism ever since I first heard of it as a teenager. I can admit that it never made much sense to me until just recently, when I met Rabbi Simon Jacobson, Dean of the Meaningful Life Center www.meaningfullife.com . Since then I've seen the mystical teachings not as a separate discipline, but an integral way of understanding the word of God. But probably the most amazing, I've found that there of aspects of these teachings even in the New Testament, and have helped me understand some of the more obscure parts of Jesus' teaching. Throughout the next year, I plan to reflect each week on the Gospel passage from this point of view, and perhaps gain a greater glimpse of the Kingdom Jesus spoke of. This first post will, I hope, present some critical background material. Levels of Interpretation: When I was younger I used to struggle with a passage and ask myself, what does this mean - as if there is a single interpretatio...

I’m always amazed at how God uses aspects of my past to enrich my ministry now. Many disappointments have turned out to be learning experiences that have prepared me for what I’m doing today. But to go any deeper, I have to first make a confession – I was a teenage metal-head. By the age of fourteen I had grown my hair down to my chin, wore black to school every day, and spent most of my free time in my bedroom practicing Metallica songs on my guitar. I had a dream that I would become a guitar virtuoso, record albums, and spend my life performing around the world. Obviously that dream never happened. At some point I hit a plateau, and couldn’t quite play the way I wanted to. Every so often I pick up my guitar and play some of those old tunes, still wishing I could play them as fast and as smooth as I wanted to. A few months ago I was surfing the internet and came across a program that promised to speed up your progress. The author, Tom Hess, developed a “Geometric Approach” to ...