The Mystic Christian Reader

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 35-37:

The rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, "He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God." Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him some wine, they called out, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself." Above him there was an inscription that read, "This is the King of the Jews." Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us."

How many of us in the educated, liberal-thinking community have not jeered at the idea of devout religion? I know that in my past, I have subscribed to an attitude of superiority over those who would put faith in God over science and education. Today, however, I see God as the fountainhead of Science, the instigator of education. In these verses, as Jesus is jeered by those who would seek to secure their own beliefs by belittling those of Jesus' followers, I see myself, and many of my contemporaries. We must remember that when we mock those with strong faith in God, we are mocking God and Jesus themselves. That is not to say that we shouldn't have religious dialogue, but there is a poem by the Sufi mysic Jalalladin Rumi called "Moses and the Shepherd" in which this attitude is attacked by God to Moses:

You have separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever?

I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge. What seems wrong for you is right for him. What is poisonous to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me.

I am apart from all that.Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things.the Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise, and it's all right. It's not me that's glorified in acts of worship. It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility. That broken-open lowliness is the reality, not the language! Forget phraseology. I want burning, burning.

(As translated by Coleman Barks)

Therefore, if our criticizms are meant to strenghten someone's burning for God, to bring them closer to Love, then OK. If what we are doing is out of spite or ideas or right and wrong, then we are doing them for the wrong reasons. God is Love. Those who Love are saved.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 34:

They divided his garments by casting lots. The people stood by and watched.

Michael Baigent, one of the co-authors of 1982's Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the major source material for Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code) has a new book out, rehashing the same old material. The Book is called The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Coverup in History. Salon.com has a review here. I'll let you know what I think after I read it.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 34:

Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

To me, this is one of Jesus' difinitive statements. If only I could live my life at a fraction of this level of Saintliness, I'd be garanteed a place in eterity. The guy is hanging on a cross, in the most excruciating pain a person can endure, and he asks God to forgive the people doing it to him. The only recent thing I can think of to parallel this is when Dick Chaney shot that guy in the face and the guy came on TV to appologize to Chaney for all the problems it caused the VP... But that's a whole different can of worms...

Luke 23:34 is one of those sayings of Jesus' which I think can be used as a summation of his entire life and teachings. If we only knew this one verse from the bible, and followed it to perfection, we could reach enlightenment in this lifetime.

This is a letter from Bishop John Shelby Spong's weekly e-letter. In it, he addresses a question from a reader on the similarities and differences between Fundamentalist Christiantiy and Evangelical Christianity.

To subscribe to Bishop Spong's weekly e-letter, click here.

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Pat Clark from Anniston, Alabama writes:

"I'm not sure of the difference between Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. Are they the same or different in political activism and social concerns? I think of Albert Mohler as a fundamentalist because he is so narrow, while Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis call themselves evangelicals and there is a world of difference between them and Mohler. Campolo and Wallis seem to concentrate on living by the teaching of Jesus, rather than on theology."

Dear Pat,
It would be better if you would ask a fundamentalist and an evangelical to draw this distinction. You are correct between Albert Mohler who heads the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners Magazine, there is a great gulf. Yet they would overlap in places.
Neither evangelicals nor fundamentalists have yet discovered the critical biblical scholarship that has graced the western world for at least the last 200 years. When I last was on a television program with Albert Mohler, it was painfully obvious that he was not in touch with any of the contemporary biblical scholarship of the past century. Both camps seem to me to operate with pre-modern images of the universe as well as God. Evangelicals and fundamentalists like to call themselves conservative Christians, as if there is something called conservative or liberal scholarship. There isn't. There is just competent and incompetent scholarship. To call ignorance 'conservative' is a clever ploy, since conservatism is a legitimate political perspective, but that word does not translate well into religious categories. My sense is that the difference between those who call themselves "conservative" Christians and those they call "liberal" Christians is more about being open or closed to ongoing truth than it is about anything else. J. B. Phillips once wrote a book entitled, "Your God is Too Small." That is the peril into which I fear both evangelicals and fundamentalists fall. Deep down I find that almost every person seeks security in some form of literalism or unchanging certainty, both in religion and politics. I find little difference between those politicians who talk about 'strict construction of the constitution' and those preachers who talk about the Bible as 'the inerrant word of God.' Perhaps it is fair to say that evangelicals draw the line at what must be viewed literally a tiny bit more loosely than do fundamentalists. The difference, however, is very, very small. For example some people are literal about Adam and Eve; some about the Virgin Birth; and some about the physical Resurrection. I do not believe that any prepositional statement about God can be literally true. I think people should take the Bible seriously but never literally. Literalism is finally and always idolatry. Someday, all Christians will recognize that.
-- John Shelby Spong

(Picture from the film "Passion of the Christ")
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 33:

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one at his right, and the other on his left.

There it is, a mere three words, which are one of the two (along with the resurrection) defining moments for most Christians: "...They crucified him..." What would be more physical pain than any of us living could possibly imagine is filed away in only three words. Crucifixion was a long, agonizing death. Often, the person's eyes and tongue were pecked out by carrion birds while the victim was still alive. The weight of one's whole body would be hanging from two nails, driven into the wrists. The cause of death in crucifixion, however, was suffocation. This position of hanging forced the abdominal muscles and the diaphram to support the whole weight of the body. Eventually, as the midsection became fatigued and finally exhausted, the diaphram could no longer lift to inflate the lungs, and the victim would no longer be able to breathe.

The cross has become the symbol of the Christian faith the world over. In the first three centuries of the faith, however, the preferred symbol was the fish (often seen on cars today) or the "good shepherd." Why was the cross not used then? There are many possible reasons. First, it could have been that the crucifixion was not an important event. In the first century of Christianity, many different groups of Christians existed, with many beliefs. Some held, as I do, that the crucifixion/resurrection was not as vital to Christian life as Jesus' teachings themselves. They believed that by following his example and living the life he called us to live, that we save ourselves from sin. He lowered the drawbridge leading to heaven, but he isn't paying your toll.

Another thing to consider is that in the first couple centuries of the Chruch, Christians were still dying by crucifixion on a daily basis. To wear a cross around ones' neck would be incredibly morbid. The cross and crucifix did not become a symbol of the faith till long after the suffering had become a thing of the past. In fact, by the time Jesus' crucifixion had become a subject of art, the very mechanics of crucifixion had been forgotten, which is why we always see the nails and nail marks in Jesus' palms.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 27-32:

A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.' At that time people will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!' for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?" Now tow others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.

Many people in the apocalyptic Christian movement consider this speech of Jesus' to be a foreshadowing of the coming "Day of Judgement." While I do not deny that Jesus is doing some soothsaying here, I think his foresight was looking more into the near future. Jesus is foreshadowing the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in 70 CE. This was a time of great suffering for the Jewish people. Some biblical scholars even consider the Revelation of St. John to be a telling of the destruction of Jerusalem, rather than a tale of the end of the created Earth.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verse 26:

As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus.

Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 24 and 25:

The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted. So he released the man who had been imprisioned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.