Unity Church of Castro Valley
Sunday Message for March 7, 2010
Taking the World by Calm
This month we will be talking about, understanding, and embodying STRENGTH. The color we will be wearing is Spring Green. What color that actually is, I don't know, it's open to your interpretation.
The spiritual Power of Strength may not be exactly what you expected it to be. For when we go within to the Christ consciousness, we learn to develop real strength in the quietness of our own souls. Real strength is found in being still.
Pelagius wrote, "We contradict the Lord to his face when we say, 'It is hard, it is difficult; we cannot, we are men; we are encompassed with fragile flesh. O blind madness! O unholy audacity! We charge the God of all knowledge with a twofold ignorance, that he does not seem to know what he has made nor what he has commanded, as though, forgetting the human weakness of which he is himself the author; he imposed laws upon man which he cannot endure.'"
It is only when we get confused about who and what we are that our strength is expressed in violent or domineering ways. Out of our soul's stillness, we are able to express the qualities of true strength: patience, tolerance, steadfastness, and balance.
Henry Ward Beecher said, "The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way."
WHAT IS STRENGTH?
So... What is Strength? Everyone has a different idea of what Strength means. From a limited physical viewpoint we could say that strength is rigidity, muscles, stubbornness, force, pressure, firearms, and outer movement. This concept is represented by strong police forces, strong armies, strong locks, strong jails, strong muscles, strong bank vaults, strong alarms, or strong fists.
We haven't updated our definition of security to a Truth level. It's still a wild, west way of resolving conflict, insults, and disagreements. It's the need to prove who is stronger, faster, or better. "Step outside." "Draw." "Make my day." God is always on our side, our team, our national symbols and our songs. Only sissies and wimps run from a "good fight." "Eye for an eye." And the folk heroes of this outer concept of strength: Rambo, John Wayne, and James Bond. The strong person of the Bible was Samson
A greater conception of what true strength is: would be quietness, inner confidence, poise, the ability to keep peace, non-resistance, refraining from retaliating in kind, to love your enemies, negotiation, giving good for evil, and forgiveness rather than fights. When you have inner confidence, when you know who and what you are - you have no need to strike out against anything. The strength of a nation is not in how many arms and wars it has, but in how we care for all people, the environment, and work together with others of the planet. It is in education, sanitation, good housing, decent work, safety, child-care, and freedom for all people. It is conflict resolution. Talking it out rather than hitting or bombing. Non-violent defense. And the folk heroes of this concept of strength are: Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and the Dalai Lama. The strong person of the Bible is Jesus.
STRENGTH IS FOUND IN STILLNESS
Strength is found in stillness. As it said in this morning's scripture reading "For thus said the Lord God, ...: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. ..."
Quietness, like mercy, is twice blessed - it blesses the one who is quiet, and it blesses those around him. Talk is good but, there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. It is in silence that many of life's sweetest blessings come. An Italian proverb says, "He who speaks does sow; he who holds his peace does reap."
There is a quietness toward others which we all should cultivate. There are many words spoken which shouldn't have been. There are people who seem to exercise no restraint whatever on their speech. They allow every passing thought or feeling to take form in words. They never think what the effect of their words will be. Then friendships are broken, and injuries are inflicted - which can never be repaired. Careless words create such grief in people.
Scripture tells us to "love one another, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, so that you may behave properly towards others."
THE STRENGTH OF PATIENCE
There is a strength in patience: Patience is calm, centered endurance. It is persistent courage. Whenever you need to be courageous in a situation, you need to become still. Get still inwardly and quiet courage will come forth through your consciousness as patience and the ability to meet any situation with strength and to act from strength. This is an inner strength that comes from God.
THE STRENGTH OF TOLERANCE
There is a strength in tolerance: Strong people are tolerant. Weak people are intolerant. Tolerance is our ability to be fair, open and just with those with whom we don't agree. This gives freedom from bigotry and sees diversity as a blessing not a curse. We are all different. We have to learn to respect differences and to function cooperatively together as partners, families, classes, organizations, businesses, churches, and society. And that tolerance starts within ourselves. Are you tolerant of yourself? Or are you judgmental with yourself?
THE STRENGTH OF STEADFASTNESS
There is a strength in steadfastness: Steadfastness is another way of strength and a way we benefit by placing God at the head of our lives. It is our ability to stay centered and focused in spite of appearances, setbacks, and disappointments. It keeps us firm in purpose and mission. It keeps us from the fickle "on again, off again" cycle. It allows us to "hang in there" and "stick with it." The affirmation for steadfastness is "Be still & know that I Am GOD." The scripture from Exodus that I've always loved says, "Fear not, wait & see the salvation of the Lord, which He will perform for me today, for the fear I see today, I shall see no more for ever. The Lord will fight for me, and I shall hold my peace. I will stand firm."
THE DISCIPLE ANDREW PORTRAYS STRENGTH
The disciple Andrew portrays strength. Peter and Andrew were brothers, showing that faith and strength are very closely aligned. Faith and strength help us see the bigger picture and meet all challenges successfully.
Sunč Richards writes: "The first real friend that Jesus had was Andrew, and the strength he showed was primarily strength of character. Like Peter, his brother, for whom he worked, he was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. Andrew was called 'the introducer,' for it was he who introduced his brother to Jesus, as soon as he knew that this was the true 'Messiah.' He brought before him the little boy with the loaves and fishes, when Jesus fed the 5,000 hungry people. It was he who introduced the first of the Greeks to Jesus - it is believed that when he went to bring his brother, Peter, to Jesus, John went with him and called his brother James. Andrew was there when John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the River Jordan."
Andrew is the strength of the mind that rejoices greatly when it finds the inexhaustible Source of all strength, and exclaims, "We have found the Messiah" Andrew symbolizes the strength, while Simon Peter symbolized the faith capacity, of the mind. When strength finds faith, and they are brothers consciously in the mind, a bond of unity is established that carries us along, even though we may run into the worst types of experiences.
Strength is the energy of God; freedom from weakness; stability of character; power to withstand temptation; capacity to accomplish. Strength is physical, mental, and spiritual. All strength originates in Spirit, and then through spiritually expressed thought and the word it becomes the manifestation.
According to the Gospel of John, Andrew (along with an unnamed other) was the first person to become a disciple of Jesus. In later Christian tradition he was often referred to as the "first called."
Little is known of Andrew's youth other than that he apparently grew up in a town on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, just east of the Jordan. He was probably born sometime in the first decade B.C. The city had a considerable Greek population and Greek names such as Andrew were not uncommon. The town's older name, Bethsaida, meant "house of the fisherman," an obvious fit for Andrew and his brother Simon Peter, who both grew up to make their living fishing the Sea of Galilee.
At some point the brothers apparently moved three miles west across the Jordan to Capernaum. They formed a fishing partnership with a man named Zebedee and his two sons, James and John. Andrew lived in a house with his brother, who was married and whose wife's mother also lived with them. Archeologists believe they have discovered the ruins of that or a similar house - an extensive structure with room for a clan of several families.
How Andrew came to be a disciple is told in two different ways, in the Gospel of John and in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. John describes Andrew as first a disciple of John the Baptist. Before he ever heard of Jesus, Andrew, like many Jews of his day, was filled with expectation of the coming of a Messiah. When reports of John's preaching reached Capernaum, Andrew went with the multitudes to hear him. But unlike most, Andrew stayed with this new prophet and became devoted to his powerful teachings along with a circle of other disciples.
Everything about the Baptist excited the religious expectations of the times, but John himself revealed to those around him that he was not the Messiah. One afternoon Andrew and another disciple were standing with John when Jesus walked by and John said, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" - a metaphorical reference to the Passover lambs. Andrew and his unnamed companion were intrigued by John's statement and followed Jesus. When Jesus noticed them, he invited them to come to his house, and they spent the rest of the day talking.
The encounter so impressed Andrew that he concluded that his religious quest had been fulfilled. Almost immediately he went to his brother Simon with the news, "We have found the Messiah", and brought him to meet Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark provide another account of Andrew's call, emphasizing the authority of Jesus' summons. Both Gospels introduce Andrew and Peter as they are fishing with casting nets along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus approaches and says simply, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Without a word they left their nets and followed Him.
Through most of the Gospel narratives, Andrew simply shares the experiences of the other disciples and does not stand out as an individual. A few episodes, however, highlight his presence. It was in his house, shared with Peter and his wife, that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law. When more than 5,000 people were hungry in the wilderness, it was Andrew who found a boy who had five barley loaves and two fish that Jesus used to feed the throng. When certain Greeks who were in Jerusalem wished to see Jesus, they came first to Philip and then to Andrew, the two disciples with Greek names, who then informed Jesus of the request.
After Jesus' death and during the early years of Christianity in Jerusalem, Andrew labored with the other apostles, but little is known of his ministry. Many legends about Andrew grew in the second century, and a long, didactic tale called the Acts of Andrew was composed. It told how the apostle preached in Greece, rescued Matthias from cannibals, and traveled through Asia Minor and northern Greece working fabulous miracles and preaching celibacy. Finally, it told how Andrew was crucified by a Roman proconsul whose wife refused conjugal relations after Andrew had converted her.
Still later tradition attributed to Andrew the founding of the church in Byzantium (which was later Constantinople) and in Russia. The supposed bones of the apostle were kept in Constantinople (though an arm was taken to St. Andrews, Scotland) until Crusaders brought them to Italy in 1204. The X-shaped cross was linked to the tradition of Andrew's crucifixion sometime after the seventh century. But the tradition that Andrew died on an X-shaped cross is unlikely.
So we look at Andrew and his life as a representation of Strength. He is our ideal of strength and we grow to be like that which we idealize. Affirming or naming a mighty spiritual principle identifies the mind with that principle; then all that the principle stands for in the realm of ideas is poured out upon the one who affirms.
"Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might" is a great strengthening affirmation for ourselves and for others. Never let the thought of weakness enter your consciousness, but always ignore the suggestion and affirm yourself to be a tower of strength, within and without.
I would like to close with a quote from Anna Eleanor Roosevelt who said, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Pelagius (ca. AD 354 - ca. AD 420/440) was an ascetic Celtic monk
Twelve Powers In You David & Gay Lynn Williamson & Robert Knapp
Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 - March 8, 1887) was a prominent, Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century.
Isaiah 30:15
Ecclesiastes 3:7
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Psalms 46:10
Exodus 14:13-14
John 1:41
John 1:36
John 1:41
Matthew 4:19
Ephesians 6:10
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