Where Heaven and Earth Meet

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46 and an excerpt from the Gospel of Mary

Thank you for the privilege of your time for showing up today for yourself for one another and for the world we create together when we tune our hearts to love. I invite you to take some deeper breaths, breathing in peace, breathing out worry that we all might hear whatever we need to today. And I invite you as your move to join me in a spirit of prayer. God, we come as we are and we pray that you come to us right where we are. May we hear whatever it is we need to today. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I never know quite where to start telling this part of the story because one could begin by going all the way back to the cross where Jesus was executed by the empire for challenging their use of violence as the primary tool of reinforcing their position. Or I could start by telling you the story by reminding you she was never a prostitute. and that is nowhere in the Bible in spite of all of the busty penitentary Magdalene art you might have seen. Or I could start by pointing you to the Gospel of Mary and the higher level teaching that you heard a part of that is found within it. Or I could start to tell you this story by telling you why I believe it is worth investing a whole life in these stories in this mystery in this tradition that I so proudly stand within today. There are so many places to start telling this story.

So I thought I would start today by telling you why this has been hidden from you, hidden from us. And the biggest reason is because stories have power. As Harvard scholar Karen King reminds us, stories shape the structure of authority even in contemporary practices. This means that even when we are unconscious of the stories from which we are operating, our core stories are still a part of ter determining who and what has power. The stories we tell at a micro and macro level shape what becomes. And we see this very clearly now in our country.

New Testament scholar NT Wright joked recently that when Jesus appears to Mary in the Gospel of John, Jesus doesn't say, "Oh, can you go get the boys before I tell you this very important message?" He tells her right there, the first person to hear the most important thing and to be given the most important job. But the main story does not account for that truth at all. And what we see right now, this expression being magnified in the form of Christian nationalism, maleness and maleled households elevated, God's diverse design demonized, gender expansiveness criminalized, limits to the autonomy of women held up as signs of religiosity. rewriting history to erase the true stories of those who are on this land first and the 12 million who were brought here and who died who endured child slavery. This version of Christianity operates from a story that has created a paradigm where God is to be feared and obeyed.

Are you with me? In this paradigm, humans, we humans showed up here sinful and in need of redemption. And God sent Jesus to get us out of this mess. And the point of this life is to do it right in order that we might be spared from eternal flames.

Did I miss anything? That is the story of Christianity that is dominant and loud right now. And it is still deciding in 2026 who has rights, who has freedom. But this is a distorted version of the Jesus way or what I think is safe to call a pseudo faith even because it is not only far from Jesus and his teachings. It is also animated by power and control which is always a red flag.

Right?

True leaders never need to dominate. Real teachers tapping into perennial wisdom don't need to prove their rightness or to kill or cause harm to make a point. They don't use their position to hurt.

Of the many gems found in the Gospel of Mary is the idea that God is literally a goodness. In that gospel, God's name, you might remember from my sabbatical, is called what? The good. That's God's name. It's not father or creator or almighty or king of the universe.

God is a goodness that comes among us that is already here in each of us. And this goodness was so important that Jesus came to tell us about it. We can get separated from this goodness by our actions, by choosing what deceives us, what gives us short-term comfort or what strokes our ego.

But this goodness is always here waiting for us.

Another main reason many of these writings were hidden including the gospel of Mary is the power they have and I mean power on many levels by not including this gospel that tells us that God is a goodness and not simply a replication of the human construct of a father centered household or the male power structure that I would argue Jesus was actually trying to reform is not torn down but instead upheld. held the writings that challenged this idea were entirely left out. Without these writings, the the tradition gives us a lopsided story with Peter the rock, the masculine overdeveloped, and from there we not only get a male-centered version of Christianity, but also a male god, a god that is more like Santa or a distant king. And I would argue part of why we have this is because the feminine was almost entirely cut out.

As many feminist scholars have pointed out, when this happened, what was left was not really fully the feminine, but a fake version, a sanitized version. Because really then you just get the whore and the bride. You get Mary Magdalene and you get Mary the mom all cleaned up with all the four dogmas about the immaculate conception, how she comes in. So there's no template left for the feminine.

All of these things make sense if it is about preserving a male power structure both on heaven and on earth. The theological templates for the feminine were only the perfect, nothing else for us. And now we get the holy she.

So part of why I'm devoted to Mary Magdalene and her gospel is the power she gives us to quite literally shift the story we are telling including her invites us to reclaim and to live from even in defiance in some places from the whole story. She was absolutely a disciple and maybe the most proficient one. Even the Catholic Church now calls her the apostle to the apostles.

But we only have fragments of our gospel. And the parts we do have still, even just the pieces, have incredible wisdom preserved. Which gets me to another reason this gospel wasn't included.

The treasure we are seeking is not just in the realm beyond this one. It is something that is here on earth that is possible for us to access here and now. The whole point of this isn't just to endure or the next thing. It's to love one another, to savor this, to find joy here and now.

When the empire took over, it became about control, telling people to bow down and obey, to do it perfectly, to appease the man God on the throne somewhere else. But that's not at all what Jesus was talking about.

We are here to claim this treasure. We can choose to be awake enough in this life to notice where the treasure lies to live in such a way that we can proclaim look this is where heaven and earth meet. As Cynthia Bour writes in the wisdom way of knowing, to realize the kingdom of heaven here and now, which is what enlightenment means in virtually all spiritual traditions, is really a matter of developing a kind of X-ray vision that can look right through the physical appearance of things and respond directly to their inmost aliveness.

Mary's gospel holds this kind of heart teaching, a sutra, an enlightenment offering that is so radical when the empire got its hands on it that it reduced it down. Who needs a bunch of bishops to tell you how to do it if you can instead access a teaching that shows you how to get heaven for yourself? how to hold a spiritual X-ray so we perceive beyond the surface.

I think that is more what Jesus is getting at in these stories you get from the Gospel of Matthew in these series of teachings. The kingdom of heaven is like this and the kingdom of heaven is like this and on he goes.

Before I went to Jerusalem 20 years ago, I read this first one especially a really different way. It turns out in the area in which Jesus was speaking and offering these teachings, mustard seed grows easily and the mustard plant is everywhere. Jesus looked out on that land and saw mustard plant all over the place. The kingdom of heaven is here and here and here and here. You can't help but run into it as we heard from the Gospel of Mary. For this is where the treasure lies.

In that place where heaven and earth meet, where deep understanding arises in the heart.

The kingdom of heaven is in the heart and mind. An awareness of this, of us, of the beauty that bursts into ordinary awareness. If every single one of us lived in light of the truth that the treasure is already here for us, I know our field of possibilities would shift quicker. You will see that Mary Magdalene is showing up outside the church. A lot of people are talking about her, paying thousands to try to find her in retreats I've seen. But she's here in the church, too, and has been all along.

And she wants you to know that you have arrived here worthy, blessed, infused with goodness, and designed to be connected to that goodness that is our God. As the old paradigm shows its incompetence, its cruelty, its complete failure to support thriving of any kind, we can understand it as an extinction burst, lashing out because it has back been backed into a corner with its old ways no longer working. All that was not real or true or centered in goodness is being uncovered and is falling away, being shown for what it is. When control is the only strategy it knows, taking and breaking, it doesn't know what else to do. So all it can do is try and destroy. But that will not and cannot last. Here we are. And here we shall remain bright and true, rooted in hope, faith, and love.

Having the courage to call things by their right name, to dare to speak the truth about what is, to risk telling the whole story, which is what we are doing today.

Beloved of God, one of the reasons the empire hid this writing is so we wouldn't have all that we need to find the treasure. But may you be freed by this story. May you find all of the places and see all of the places where earth and heaven meet. Let us not miss them. The kingdom of heaven is like this, like us, like now. It is here. This is the real story.

May we live it. May we see it. May we share it. May it be so.

Amen.