Hearts Raised

Matthew 14: Walking on Water

Excerpt from The Gnostic Text: Pistis Sophia

August 9, 2026

God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight. May we hear what we need to today in the name of our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In our insistence that something is factual, we can miss the truth. We can miss what is there for us to learn, to hear, to know. And this is especially so when it comes to religion and the stories that we read and tell and come to again and again. Just to name one example, like what we find in the book of Genesis, how many Christians waste their time with mental gymnastics trying to argue that what we read there is fact. That in spite of science and studies and the gift of knowledge, some double down with a creation museum. Maybe some of you have seen the pictures of this new museum and a whole variety of tactics to contend that what we read in Genesis is fact.

But what is really there are truths, ancient and abiding ones. And here is an example of a truth I see. Power comes from giving things names. realities are animated and worlds are inaugurated by giving names to things. I think that is one of the truths we read in the book of Genesis. It is a story of creation that is at the same time not based in facts but also filled with truths. Are you with me? Okay. And if we miss all of this and stay along the surface, unwilling to probe deeper, there is a lot that passes us by. And of course, people do this with many parts of the Bible. Bringing something that is a poem or an allegory into this moment and using it to deny freedom or rights or due process.

Part of why we are doing this series as we have talked about is that stories have a lot of power. Power even now in 2026. Stories that we're using from the past to shape our present. Are those the stories that we still want to give power over our future? As I shared at the beginning of this series, scholar Karen King says that stories shape the structure of authority. Even in contemporary practices, which means that even when we are unconscious of our core stories, they are still a part of determining what we give ourselves to, what we give power to. What I mean is that stories assign authority authority for us in our individual and collective lives. And you can see that playing out right now. The power of a story that says this country was meant to be driven by colonialism and white men's hopes. The story that says we don't want to make people feel bad by hearing the truth of our history. There are all kinds of stories right now that you see, some of them true and some of them not about who we want to be, who we are. I'm even seeing stories that we women are just meant to remain in certain roles, that the traditional way is for us to go back in the house to focus on raising children, cooking and cleaning, caring for elders. There is a lot of propaganda about this right now, which is very surprising to me. And it elevates the story with the notion that it is acceptable for essential societal tasks to be done with unpaid labor.

Many have already pointed out that a US senator has been supported by taxpayers to have more paid sick leave than American women received for giving birth. And maybe you know what I'm talking about without naming names. And same with a Congress person who received support for depression to be away from the office for months. both of them white men, which means we are allowing ourselves to tell a story that their health care matters.

What stories do we tell? And how are we or do we unconsciously let them define how we live?

As I mentioned when we first started this summer series, we are going back a bit to the years before the empire got its grip on Jesus teachings. With all of our studies, we know for sure that what was shared by this first century revolutionary of love was distorted to support domination rather than liberation. The story of extravagant salvation, of beautiful belonging, of good news, of the interconnectedness of all life was corrupted to ensure that these new ideas would not in fact end the patriarchal paradigm. And for the most part, it has worked. until now. They cut out the texts that didn't support the takeover. They used only the stories that perpetuated the power structure that Jesus was no longer around to challenge. They removed so much that, as I have shared in different ways, it created a religion with incomplete and faulty scaffolding, which is part of why we are where we are.

But we get to be alive for the uncovering, the unveiling, and the healing. We get to be here to tell new stories and to live from them. And I want you to feel empowered as people of faith and conscience to challenge some of the stories being told right now because many are using a lopsided version of the Jesus story to cause harm, to claim that empathy is toxic, that religion is about winning, that war is a decent way to profit and that's okay. We get to uncover old stories in part so we can help rebalance the world with a story for this time. I believe for the world that is trying to be born.

You will hear more from our member Judy Wise in the session that follows this. So just briefly the text known as the pistoia is one that has left even scholars confused. So if you heard that and you're like whoa fear not. It's offering a sort of cosmological system that we are to by the way understand without much explanation of the terminology. Jesus speaks in terms of a spiritual hierarchy within this cosmology where faith wisdom is sis Sophia below the 13th eon which you might remember in Greek is the ages and over the course of the writing much beyond what you have in an excerpt today pistopia is depicted as descending from her place of origin down and down into the chaos which in ancient Greek the The word chaos meant an abyss, an empty spot, a void. And so, as you heard, we have a teaching about having hearts raised, about if we can understand the teaching, which I admit is very challenging, we can be elevated when others are descending, we can rise even when others sink. Or as Michelle Obama says, we can go high when the world is going low.

As you he read here, Jesus the compassionate answered and said unto Mary, "Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse, and openness, whose heart is raised to the kingdom. You are blessed and blessings will come from raised hearts. And I don't know about you, but I really need this teaching right now about how to keep my heart elevated. How about you?

It's a time to be dragged down really easily. It's easy to be fooled into thinking it's all decided and that it's hopeless when there is the sense from the highest office in the land that there is no common good, that there are no morals, no rules, no laws, no accountability, no need to follow agreements or norms or any sense of being a steward of a mutually beneficial arrangement. The energy of the collective has been dragged into the gutter. Maybe you feel it too. And some of it we can't avoid.

But here is the good news for us today. Much of it we can. We can do what we need to in order to keep our hearts raised. The word raised in Greek is to be roused from death, to be revivified figuratively and spiritually. And that is what we need now. to let every parts of ourselves not go numb, not to be dragged down.

Our hearts, minds, and souls must not wither, must not grow weary.

Let us be aroused from our slumber.

Let our hearts awake.

Let us choose to operate on an elevated plane.

We can opt out of the anger club. We can choose not to participate in the trend of being quick to express discontent or to make an assumption to think someone is an enemy because they think differently. We can choose not to default to the notion that our covenants don't matter or that showing up with good intentions is off the table. We could just join what so many others are doing. But I don't want to and I don't think you do either.

We can just turn those who are different into something other than human, which is the only way some of this can happen. We can say that Jesus just really meant to love family, even though he said neighbors. We can say that God is on the side of just some and not all. That is the easier path, but not the true one. I believe on our own and together, we can help each other raise our hearts and live above the chaos. We can refuse to be afraid and to be reduced by the fear that is being used as a tactic to pit us against each other. I thought that this story in the lectionary from the Gospel of Matthew Matthew that was included in the Bible is a perfect pairing for this piece that wasn't because Peter is elevated doing what he needs to. He's walking on water and then what happens? Why does he sink? Fear. Exactly.

And I am seeing and in my own experience, whoa, what a quick way to sink. When we humans are told we need to be afraid, our amygdala activates. When we build a story or a policy or a decision from something based in fear, we can really sink fast, falling from our true north, our true self, our true calling as human beings on our own and together. When I asked Judy the core meaning of a heart being raised with all of her work on Pistis Sophia, I figured I would receive one of her detailed and exquisitely researched responses. a long email infused with her always valued insights, perhaps a bibliography attached or a book that I needed to find before today. Instead, she wrote back with one line from Charardine. This is what it means to be elevated. Joy is the infall infallible sign of the presence of God.

We can root in joy together and individually. How can we live with raised hearts? How can we live knowing joy is the sign of God, not judgment or anger or opting out of good arrangements?

In our insistence of our certainties, let us not miss the truths showing up for us to learn, to hear, to know.

Let all who have ears to hear.

Let us know that a sign that we are living with raised hearts, evidence that we are operating not from fear that sinks, is a joy that elevates.

Let us follow that. Let us be summoned to a higher place. Even when the collective is being dragged down, let us live from stories that bring joy.

Let us help one another keep joy. How can we help each other not fall into the chaos, the abyss, where there's no kindness, where rules don't matter, where agreements are off the table.

What a gift. What good news that we can choose to move with hearts raised. Praise God.

May it be so. Amen.

REFLECTION QUESTION