Sunday, December 11, 2005
For God so Loved the World
Today's reading comes from the Gospel of St. John the Beloved, Chapter 3:
(14)Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of man is ready to be lifted up (15)so that every man who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
(16)For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (17)For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world should be saved by Him. (18)He who believes in Him will not be condemned; and he who does not believe has already been condemned for not believing in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (19)And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world and yet men have loved darkness more than light, because their works were evil. (20)For every one who does detestable things hates the light, and he does not come to the light, because his works cannot be covered. (21)But he who does truthful things comes to the light, so that his works may be known, that they are done through God.
I've been very reluctant to tackle this passage, even though it has loomed large in my consciousness. This is, by all accounts, one of the most important verses in all of Christendom. This is the verse that tells us, we are told, that Jesus' death on the cross is the act by which our sinful lives are redeemed and the way to heaven is made clear. This is the passage, too that tells us how non-believers will be damned to hell for not accepting Jesus as their savior. I was moved to address this passage because of a comment from an anonymous person to one of my other posts regarding the nature of Jesus the man vs. Jesus The Christ.
The first step in understanding this passage is to understand the context in which this teaching is being given. In this story, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, who is one of His followers, and also a Pharisee, possibly a member of the Sanhedrin (temple leadership) itself. Nicodemus has come to the place where Jesus and followers are camped, to speak with Him about the opinion of Him among the Jewish religious leadership, and to get clarity regarding a previous teaching he'd heard from The Master. Again, from John, Chapter 3:
(1)There was at that place a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. (2)He came at night to Jesus and said to him,"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, for no man can do the things that you are doing unless God is with him."
What we are experiencing in this passage is something very intimate. This is an evening meeting, without the crowds, between Our Lord and a very influential member of His discipleship. As Jesus begins to teach Nicodemus about the need to be "born again," Nicodemus becomes confused:
(9)Nicodemus answered, saying to Him, "How can these things be?"
(10)Jesus answered, "You are a Teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? (11)Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak only what we know, and we testify only to what we have seen; and yet you do not accept our testimony."
Jesus is speaking here of the difference between simply reading about God by studying the Torah (or the Bible in the Christian case) and experiencing the Truth of God's presence through personal, inner experience. Jesus says that He and his disciples only speak from personal experience, and he is surprised that someone as important to the religious community as Nicodemus hasn't had a similar experience that would allow him to understand what Jesus is talking about.
So, what Jesus has said, in essence, is: "If I have to explain it, you won't understand." Therefore we, too, must realize that the teaching Jesus is revealing here, and St. John has recorded for us are some of the deepest Truths contained in Christianity. They are, however, Truths that do not reveal themselves with a casual reading of the Bible. They can only be understood through personal experience; that which the Greek Christians referred to as gnosis.
Any attempt at explaining the meaning of these words will undoubtedly miss the mark. Like Jesus and His disciples, I can only speak what I know and testify to what I have seen. As my own gnosis is far from complete, I can only explain them as I understand them, and welcome comments on the understandings that others receive.
Since Jesus has been speaking of personal experience, of "that which we have seen," I think that the word translated here as believe cannot be understood to be synonymous with "blind faith," but should be understood more like "seeing is believing." Therefore, we could read John 3:15 as "so that everyone who experiences Christ and accepts that experience as Truth will not die, but have eternal life." As someone who believes (as the early Chruch Fathers and the ancient Jews believed) in reincarnation, I believe that Jesus speaks here of the end of the cycle of birth and death, of Final Liberation, or in His own words "Entering the Kingdom of Heaven."
As I have stated in an earlier post, I believe that the Son of God which Jesus refers to (often in the third person) is not himself in the personal sense, but to the consciousness which was bestowed upon him and for which he became a totally pure doorway into the world of human ego. As Jesus says in verse 15, and reiterates in verse 16, God loves His creation so deeply, that he sent His Son, The Christ Consciousness, into the world in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of Man" so that it could be remembered and experienced by others; that through the experience and the acceptance of the experience as Truth, humanity could escape the false belief that we are the body, and therefore be free from death and at One with The Father.
The second part of this passage, I believe, holds much relevance to Christianity as it manifests itself today in America. Jesus first says that the Son of God has not come to judge people. The very next thing he says is that those who do not believe (remember, "seeing is believing") are already condemned, and that THIS is the judgment. It is not God or Christ dealing out "death sentences" to hell or commending people to heaven based on accepting or not accepting Jesus as their savior, but that some natural order, beyond judgment or values, keeps us in a state of "condemnation" (being unable to experience our closeness to God and having to experience the death of the physical body). After we experience God's Son, The Christ, an accept that experience as truth, then the condemnation is lifted and we are free.
Jesus' final statement in this passage speaks of our desires in the world and our love of materiality, and how this prevents us from experiencing The Christ. An important word to pay attention to here is evil. According to Neil-Douglas Klotz in his book "Prayers of the Cosmos," the Aramaic word which means evil also means unripe or "not yet ready to be harvested." Understanding this, the whole last part of the passage becomes illuminated, and could just as easily say:
When we love darkness more than light (when we are more interested in the world than in God), then everything we do will be incomplete. As long as we love the world more than God, we're avoiding God's love, and damning ourselves. We don't come into the light of God's love because we know that our faults will be illuminated and we'll have to change them, but we love our faults too much to do that. However, when we live in Truth, coming to God is easy because we aren't ashamed of anything, and we see that God is truly the source of all things, the only true "doer."
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Giving Thanks (and recognizing the sameness of all people)
Photo from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
For Thanksgiving this year, my wife, four friends, and myself decided to expand our sense of thankfulness, or sense of community, and get out of our comfort zone. After a small meal together in the afternoon, we spent the evening feeding the poor in front of the Salvation Army and the alley behind Loaves and Fishes Shelter in Sacramento. My wife and I prepared for this by going to Safeway and buying enough bread, lunchmeat, and sliced cheese to make 60'ish sandwiches. Our friends Neal and Penelope made a huge pot of potato soup. The effort, for us, was twofold.
First, it was an exercise in extending our sense of who we included in our definition of "community." For many people, community is their family, their school or work friends, members of their church or spiritual group, and for some, their neighbors. While the poor and homeless are a visible part of our urban landscape, most wouldn't consider these people a part of the "community." We have a sense that community means those we socialize with, those who vote, those who make "positive contributions" to the economy of our city. I too, was paralyzed by these closed concepts of community. While I am aware of the homeless in our neighborhood, and sometimes give food or money to those who live near the shopping center where we work, I hadn't given that much thought to their part in the community. While I gave them money or food, I never really placed myself in a situation where I would be forced to recognize these people as people... as a part of my community. Until Thanksgiving.
As we handed out the food, Penelope led the way in getting us to break down the barriers still separating us from the people who were right there in front of us, out in the cool Sacramento night. She dove in, and used the food as a opening, for dialogue, and for her heart and mind. She began to probe them, engage them in questions about their lives, their friends, their feeling of community. As I listened, I began to see what community really is, and how intimately we are all connected to one another.
At the Salvation Army, Nicole began talking to a guy in a wheelchair who had separated himself from the group, who were waiting in line for a free movie which was going to be shown later in the evening. His leg was held upright and straight in a brace, and he said that he'd already had one surgery on his knee, and was waiting on a second surgery, which he hoped would come before Christmas. He said he was a truck driver, and that since his injury prevented him from driving, he was forced to live on the streets till he could work again. He also said "I'll NEVER go without medical insurance AGAIN!" This was a pretty normal fellow. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't crazy or a drug addict. He was just a regular guy; a guy that had a piece of bad luck and was now stuck. What struck me about him was his sense that he was a "short-timer." He didn't plan on being there long, and sincerely felt that he'd be back on his feet (both literally and figuratively) before the year was out. Talking to this man made me realize how close to this life so many people are. If something were to happen to me that prevented me from working, I could very well be right were he is.
The other lesson gained from this experience was realizing the preciousness of my ability to choose what kinds of food I eat. I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I found myself laughing at how buying ten pounds of cold cuts and a tub of mayonnaise must have thrown off my Safeway Club Card customer profile (and they thought they had me all figured out). Handling meat is not something I'm keen on, but it made me appreciate my power of choice. I don't consider myself wealthy by most American standards. I'm working-class. I have a "white collar" job, but make "blue collar" wages, and don't drive anything near a new car. But, I can choose to be vegetarian, and even vegan! That's not just a choice toward health (as I usually see it), but also a choice toward cutting out the staples of caloricly dense foods. Top that off with my usual abstinence from bread, and I've pretty much eliminated the majority of Americans' caloric intake. What is left are expensive, nutrient-dense (but caloricly light) foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if we can afford them), meat alternatives such as Seitan and Tofu, and filtered water. All these things I take for granted, but being able to choose and afford a diet such as this puts me in a very exclusive club! I have SO MUCH to be thankful for.
So, I started off talking about our Thanksgiving trip to feed the poor and ended up talking about my own diet. What's the point? The point is that while we were supposedly serving others, it seemed that the ones doing the serving were given an enormous gift in return. Being out there in the cool night air, sharing the company of those I would've never had the opportunity to meet otherwise, I felt so blissful. It wasn't a sense of self-righteousness, or of pride. It was a feeling that THIS was what human beings were put on the earth to do... To Love and Serve each other.
So, I advise all who read this to take an opportunity to serve those in your community who have no place to live and no consistent source of nutrition. I KNOW, I KNOW. You can't afford it. What little you could do wouldn't really make a dent in the problem. The truth is, if you can afford to take your family out to dinner and to a movie once in a while, if you can afford to lavish each other with gifts on Christmas, then you can afford an experience like this now and again. We plan on doing this more often, and at a time OTHER than Thanksgiving, as all the people we talked to had eaten pretty well in the days leading up to that one. They were most grateful for our chicken sandwiches, as they said they couldn't possibly eat more turkey! We spent a total of about $75, and with it, we were able to give a sandwich to every single person we met who wanted one (some even got two). Perhaps this didn't put even "a tiny dent in the problem," but for us, it was $75 very well spent on an amazing experience in unconditional love and gratitude.
For Thanksgiving this year, my wife, four friends, and myself decided to expand our sense of thankfulness, or sense of community, and get out of our comfort zone. After a small meal together in the afternoon, we spent the evening feeding the poor in front of the Salvation Army and the alley behind Loaves and Fishes Shelter in Sacramento. My wife and I prepared for this by going to Safeway and buying enough bread, lunchmeat, and sliced cheese to make 60'ish sandwiches. Our friends Neal and Penelope made a huge pot of potato soup. The effort, for us, was twofold.
First, it was an exercise in extending our sense of who we included in our definition of "community." For many people, community is their family, their school or work friends, members of their church or spiritual group, and for some, their neighbors. While the poor and homeless are a visible part of our urban landscape, most wouldn't consider these people a part of the "community." We have a sense that community means those we socialize with, those who vote, those who make "positive contributions" to the economy of our city. I too, was paralyzed by these closed concepts of community. While I am aware of the homeless in our neighborhood, and sometimes give food or money to those who live near the shopping center where we work, I hadn't given that much thought to their part in the community. While I gave them money or food, I never really placed myself in a situation where I would be forced to recognize these people as people... as a part of my community. Until Thanksgiving.
As we handed out the food, Penelope led the way in getting us to break down the barriers still separating us from the people who were right there in front of us, out in the cool Sacramento night. She dove in, and used the food as a opening, for dialogue, and for her heart and mind. She began to probe them, engage them in questions about their lives, their friends, their feeling of community. As I listened, I began to see what community really is, and how intimately we are all connected to one another.
At the Salvation Army, Nicole began talking to a guy in a wheelchair who had separated himself from the group, who were waiting in line for a free movie which was going to be shown later in the evening. His leg was held upright and straight in a brace, and he said that he'd already had one surgery on his knee, and was waiting on a second surgery, which he hoped would come before Christmas. He said he was a truck driver, and that since his injury prevented him from driving, he was forced to live on the streets till he could work again. He also said "I'll NEVER go without medical insurance AGAIN!" This was a pretty normal fellow. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't crazy or a drug addict. He was just a regular guy; a guy that had a piece of bad luck and was now stuck. What struck me about him was his sense that he was a "short-timer." He didn't plan on being there long, and sincerely felt that he'd be back on his feet (both literally and figuratively) before the year was out. Talking to this man made me realize how close to this life so many people are. If something were to happen to me that prevented me from working, I could very well be right were he is.
The other lesson gained from this experience was realizing the preciousness of my ability to choose what kinds of food I eat. I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I found myself laughing at how buying ten pounds of cold cuts and a tub of mayonnaise must have thrown off my Safeway Club Card customer profile (and they thought they had me all figured out). Handling meat is not something I'm keen on, but it made me appreciate my power of choice. I don't consider myself wealthy by most American standards. I'm working-class. I have a "white collar" job, but make "blue collar" wages, and don't drive anything near a new car. But, I can choose to be vegetarian, and even vegan! That's not just a choice toward health (as I usually see it), but also a choice toward cutting out the staples of caloricly dense foods. Top that off with my usual abstinence from bread, and I've pretty much eliminated the majority of Americans' caloric intake. What is left are expensive, nutrient-dense (but caloricly light) foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if we can afford them), meat alternatives such as Seitan and Tofu, and filtered water. All these things I take for granted, but being able to choose and afford a diet such as this puts me in a very exclusive club! I have SO MUCH to be thankful for.
So, I started off talking about our Thanksgiving trip to feed the poor and ended up talking about my own diet. What's the point? The point is that while we were supposedly serving others, it seemed that the ones doing the serving were given an enormous gift in return. Being out there in the cool night air, sharing the company of those I would've never had the opportunity to meet otherwise, I felt so blissful. It wasn't a sense of self-righteousness, or of pride. It was a feeling that THIS was what human beings were put on the earth to do... To Love and Serve each other.
So, I advise all who read this to take an opportunity to serve those in your community who have no place to live and no consistent source of nutrition. I KNOW, I KNOW. You can't afford it. What little you could do wouldn't really make a dent in the problem. The truth is, if you can afford to take your family out to dinner and to a movie once in a while, if you can afford to lavish each other with gifts on Christmas, then you can afford an experience like this now and again. We plan on doing this more often, and at a time OTHER than Thanksgiving, as all the people we talked to had eaten pretty well in the days leading up to that one. They were most grateful for our chicken sandwiches, as they said they couldn't possibly eat more turkey! We spent a total of about $75, and with it, we were able to give a sandwich to every single person we met who wanted one (some even got two). Perhaps this didn't put even "a tiny dent in the problem," but for us, it was $75 very well spent on an amazing experience in unconditional love and gratitude.
