It's almost funny, I stared at the text today trying to find some deep meaning and got nothing - nada, zip, zilch.  At the same time, an email arrived in my inbox from www.meaningfullife.com  about their 60 day journey.  The lesson for today told the story of Moses desiring to see God's face, and God instead put him in the cleft of a rock, covered Moses with His hand, and passed by.  Moses was only able to see God's back, not His face.  In essence the story was God's way of telling us, "You will see me when you are not looking." This Sunday's text from Hebrews describes many heroes of faith, who underwent suffering.  They endured beatings, fire, lions, being sawed in half, persecution, etc. etc.  Then the text has a curious shift: "Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40 NRSV)"...

It's been a while since I've written here but I wanted to return to this project.  In these three verses we have a definition of faith, that it is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  We are told that by faith the worlds were prepared by the word of God and that what is seen was made by things that are not visible.  I'm paraphrasing here from the NRSV version of the Bible. What's worth noting is that the author describes worlds being made.  Literally the Greek refers to Eons, which is translated as worlds.  The question remains why is it in the plural rather than the singular?  Surely someone writing two thousand years ago would view the earth as a singular thing. I've written before about the four worlds of Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Assiah.  The idea is that the final world, Assiah is the one we live in, while the other three are the plans and the intentions for this world.  Through mystical experiences...

Because of several pastoral emergencies and other duties I have fallen behind in my posts.  I didn't want to skip  3 Epiphany since it has played a pivotal role in how I understand Jesus Christ as someone who was quite steeped in the mystical tradition.  The reading describes Jesus as he begins his public ministry -"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news (Mark 1:15 NRSV)."  Something worth noting is that neither the phrase "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven" appears anywhere in the Old Testament.  If you refer back to my post on Levels of Interpretation , you'll see that the Kingdom of God can neither be understood from the simple or the allusion level.  To understand it we need to look deeper into the Midrash or Kabbalah.  According to the Midrash, Kingdom could refer to the Messianic Age, when the world would be set right and the righteous would have the opportunity to study Tor...

This week we hear the story of Jesus' baptism.  According to the text, some curious things happened which deserve our attention. 1 - The heavens opened up (Mark 1:10) 2 - The Spirit descended on Jesus in a form that looked like a dove (Mark 1:10) 3 - A voice from Heaven said to Jesus, "You are my Son, with you I am well pleased (Mark 1:11)" What we see in this story is the coming together of Heaven and Earth - the Spiritual and the Material fuse as one.  Classical Christianity has always, since the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., stated that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human.  In Him we see this perfect fusion of Spirit and Matter.  Sometimes it may seem like that's easy for Him, since He is God incarnate, but what if that was the goal of spirituality for everyone - joining and integrating the spiritual and the material.  Or even more challenging, what if the purpose of human beings is to be like Christ in this regard, integrating the mate...

There are always two options for readings on Christmas - The Nativity Story from Luke , and the more esoteric poetry from John .  Each tells the story from a different perspective, and both work together to help us understand the significance of Christ's birth. The main message that both Jesus, and John the Baptist preached was that the Kingdom of God had come near.  The Hebrew word translated as Kingdom is Malchut, which is also the name of the tenth sefirot in Kabbalah.  The significance of Malchut is that it is the receptical of all the other aspects.  Will, Wisdom, Understanding, Justice, Mercy, Compassion, Endurance, Splendor, and Foundation are all poured into Malchut.  On it's very surface, Malchut is about sovereignty, kingship, or on a very basic level - dignity.  The Gospel story is good news because it raises up ordinary people to the level of dignity that a king would have. In the story from  Luke  angels appeared to shepherds...

I initially thought this would be part two of Advent 2, but looking at the Gospel for Advent 3 I find that they're very similar.  One tells the story from the point of view of Mark, the other from John. The story from John begins by talking about John the Baptist, being a witness to the light - he himself wasn't the light, but he witnessed to it (John 1:6).  If we back up a few verses, we read that the light is life (1:4) and that it shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not recognize it (1:5). In the Kabbalah, light was often used as a metaphor for God's very essence.  We also learn that God created the Heavens and the Earth through a process of concealment, or in Hebrew, Tzimzum.  According to Rabbi Isaac Luria, the infinite, all powerful God withdrew himself in order to create a space where finite creation can exist - otherwise creation would be overwhelmed by the intensity of God's existence.  The light would have been too intense, so to speak. ...

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...

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...