I find that all my thoughts circle round God like the planets round the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by [God]. I would feel it the most heinous sin were I to offer any resistance to this compelling force. —Carl Jung, letter, March 1955
Father Richard considers Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung a mystic who had a deep connection to the divine:
One of the major figures in my spiritual lineage is the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Although he was not a church-going Christian and said many things highly critical of organized Christianity as he saw it in his time, he laid a very solid foundation for the rediscovery of the spiritual world in an extremely materialistic and increasingly secular Europe. Jung utterly knew and believed that the inner life was the source of the outer; late in his life, he firmly and proudly replied when asked “Do you now believe in God?” with “I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.” [1]
Jung made statements that would surprise many Christians, conservative and liberal alike. For example, he saw Jesus’ life and many of the doctrines of the Church as a complete and perfectmap and guide for human transformation. He believed in the central importance of rituals, myths, and symbols, which Catholics and Orthodox Christians could appreciate. Although Jung gave Bible passages more meaning and more credibility, he was perceived as an unbeliever by most Protestants. His development of concepts such as shadow, paradox, archetypes, symbols, and the psychological character of human transformation into the Divine made him a true prophet of the soul and a teacher of deep, inner sacramentalism. [2]
Jung believed that if God wants to speak to us, God has to use words that will, first of all, feel like our own thoughts. How else could God come to us? That’s why we have to be taught how to recognize, honor, and allow that sometimes our thoughts are God’s thoughts. That internal trust and authority is necessary to balance out the almost exclusive reliance upon external authority promoted by mainline Christianity. While Scripture, priests, pastors, and the pope may be necessary, Jung recognized that they are all external to the self, and offer us a religion from the outside in. Jung wanted to teach us to honor those same symbols, but from the inside out, to recognize that there are already numinous voices in our deepest depths. If we do not have deep contact with our in-depth self, he believed we could not know God.
Jung wrote, “The whole world is God’s suffering.” [3] That is the knowing of a mystic, and it’s one of my favorite lines of his. A mystic sees thing in wholes, not just in parts. They can connect all the anecdotes and intuit the big patterns. Christian mystics recognize that every incidence of suffering is a participation in what we Christians would call the eternal crucifixion of the Christ. When we see in wholes, we can always find a place for each of the parts. [4]
Stop judging and evaluating yourself, for this is not your role. Above all, stop comparing yourself with other people. This produces feelings of pride or inferiority; sometimes, a mixture of both. I lead each of My children along a path that is uniquely tailor-made for him or her. Comparing is not only wrong; it is also meaningless. Don’t look for affirmation in the wrong places: your own evaluations, or those of other people. The only source of real affirmation is My unconditional Love. Many believers perceive Me as an unpleasable Judge, angrily searching out their faults and failures. Nothing could be farther from the truth! I died for your sins, so that I might clothe you in My garments of salvation. This is how I see you: radiant in My robe of righteousness. When I discipline you, it is never in anger or disgust; it is to prepare you for face-to-Face fellowship with me throughout all eternity. Immerse yourself in My loving Presence. Be receptive to My affirmation, which flows continually from the throne of grace.
Luke 6:37 NLT
Do Not Judge Others
37 “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.
John 3:16-17 NLT
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
Isaiah 61:10 NLT
10 I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God!
For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation
and draped me in a robe of righteousness.
I am like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding
or a bride with her jewels.
Proverbs 3:11-12 NLT
11 My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline,
and don’t be upset when he corrects you.
12 For the Lord corrects those he loves,
just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.
Jesuit scholar Harvey Egan writes about the Dutch mystic John Ruusbroec:
John Ruusbroec, “the Admirable,” [1293–1381] has been called the greatest contemplative and mystical writer in the Christian tradition. He has also been praised as the most articulate trinitarian mystic of the West, unmatched in his power to describe the unitive life. Yet, if those who know something about the Christian tradition are asked to list the great mystics, rarely is Ruusbroec named first—if he is named at all.
John was born in Ruusbroec, South Brabant, about five miles from Brussels. When he was 11 years old, he went to live with an uncle of his who was a canon [senior priest] of a Brussels cathedral…. Ordained at the age of 24, Ruusbroec spent 26 years at St. Gudula’s. There he maintained close contact with the local Beguines. At 50 years of age, Ruusbroec … retired for a more contemplative life to the forest of Soignes, Groenendaal (green valley), just outside of Brussels…. Here Ruusbroec lived the “God-seeing” life for 38 years before dying at the age of 88. [1]
James Finley recommends that we read John Ruusbroec and mystics like him with a deliberate, contemplative reading style:
When we look at these writings of this mystic, what makes him so worth reading in my mind is the poetic eloquence of his language. It’s just exquisite. There are certain passages where he reaches a certain sublime altitude. It’s his gift to put words to these very subtle unitive states of oneness with God. You can read him one paragraph at a time, outline it and sit with it, take it in, walk with it; it’s like a rich inner landscape of the awakened heart, a very carefully nuanced, rich, and grounding place. [2]
We invite you to use Finley’s instructions to sit with this passage from Ruusbroec’s famous text The Divine Espousals, in which he describes intimate union with God “without difference”:
In this storm of love two spirits struggle—the Spirit of God and our spirit. God, by means of the Holy Spirit, inclines [Godself] toward us, and we are thereby touched in love; our spirit, by means of God’s activity and the amorous power, impels and inclines itself toward God, and thereby God is touched. From these two movements there arises the struggle of love, for in this most profound meeting, in this most intimate and ardent encounter, each spirit is wounded by love. These two spirits, that is, our spirit and God’s Spirit, cast a radiant light upon one another and each reveals to the other its countenance. This makes the two spirits incessantly strive after one another in love. Each demands of the other what it is, and each offers to the other and invites it to accept what it is.This makes these loving spirits lose themselves in one another. God’s touch and his giving of himself, together with our striving in love and our giving of ourselves in return—this is what sets love on a firm foundation. [3]
Keep your eyes on Me! Waves of adversity are washing over you, and you feel tempted to give up. As your circumstances consume more and more of your attention, you are losing sight of Me. Yet I am with you always, holding you by your right hand. I am fully aware of your situation, and I will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear.
Your gravest danger is worrying about tomorrow. If you try to carry tomorrow’s burdens today, you will stagger under the load and eventually fall flat. You must discipline yourself to live within the boundaries of today. It is in the present moment that I walk close to you, helping you carry your burdens. Keep your focus on My Presence in the present.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 73:23 NLT
23 Yet I still belong to you;
you hold my right hand.
1st Corinthians 10:13 NLT
13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
Scholar Wendy Farley introduces the Rhineland mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg:
Little is known about Mechthild [c. 1212–c.1282], though her name indicates that she lived most of her life in Magdeburg, near the border between German-speaking and Slavic territory…. A pious child, she was twelve when her almost daily “greetings” by the Holy Spirit began. As a young woman of about twenty she moved to Magdeburg, a city where she knew only one person, perhaps a Dominican friar. She lived as a beguine for most of the rest of her life…. Mechthild’s beautiful and bold book The Flowing Light of the Godhead is among the first religious writings in Middle Low German. By writing in her native language, she makes her spiritual journey and her theological reflections available to women and laypeople. [1]
Farley focuses on Mechthild’s radical understanding of God’s power:
The church of Mechthild’s time used monarchical images for God to justify a hierarchical ordering of human society: from God descended popes, bishops, clergy, lords, vassals, and fathers. Like medieval rulers, God demands obedience and loyalty. God’s favor is to be desired and God’s punishments feared.
Mechthild uses royal imagery for God (empress, queen, or lord). But because she conceives of power as a form of love, she understands monarchical metaphors in a distinctive way. God’s majesty and omnipotence are qualities related to the divine desire for intimacy with humanity. For Mechthild, it is not sheer power that makes God divine. It is love. This play between love and power is evident in the preface of Mechthild’s book, where God claims authorship of the book. “I made [gemachet] it in my powerlessness [unmaht], for I cannot restrain myself as to my gifts.” [2] This is a paradoxical way of describing divine power. Even God is powerless to contain God…. God is powerless to stop giving gifts to humanity. Because the divine nature is love, to do so would require the unmaking of divinity itself.
Theologians such as Augustine and [Martin] Luther struggle to understand how to reconcile love and justice or divine omnipotence and human agency. This is in part because they think of power as coercive or univocal agency. But for Mechthild, God’s desire for humanity is incompatible with sheer omnipotence, not because God has less power but because it is a different kind of power. God renounces power as “might,” in favor of love….
Mechthild acknowledges that there is a kind of power that demands strict justice and leaves the guilty to languish in their prison…. But she withholds this kind of power from God. This is not because God has less power than these wielders of might but because that kind of power is a diseased and distorted power. Out of love, the Father abandons the power to perpetuate suffering because the deeper and more authentic power is what redeems, heals, and restores. Mercy is a different kind of almighty-ness which draws even those brutalized by sin back into loving communion.… Divine power allows love to displace might. [3]
The Well. by David Whyte
But the miracle had come simply
from allowing yourself to know
that this time you had found it,
that some now familiar stranger
appearing from far inside you,
had decided not to walk past
it any more;
that the miracle had come in the kneeling to drink
and the prayer you said, and the tears you shed
and the memories you held
and the realization that in this silence
you no longer had to keep
your eyes and ears averted
from the place that could save you,
and that you had the strength
at last to let go of the thirsty,
unhappy, dust-laden
pilgrim-self that brought you here,
walking with her bent back,
her bowed head
and her careful explanations.
No, the miracle had already
happened before you stood up,
before you shook off the dust
and walked along the road
beyond the well, out of the desert
and on, toward the mountain,
as if home again, as if you
deserved to have everything
you had loved all along,
as if just remembering the first
fresh taste of that clear cool spring
could lift up your face
to the morning light and set you free.
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Theologian Matthew Fox introduces the life and teachings of German mystic Meister Eckhart:
Of all the mystics of the West, it is difficult to find anyone who more profoundly articulates the journey we make into the divine and out in the world again than Meister Eckhart. His is a spirituality of passion and compassion. Eckhart, a Dominican friar and preacher, lived from 1260 to 1329…. He teaches that spiritual awakening is to lead to justice-making and compassion in the world. He practiced what he preached…. Two examples of this are his support of the Beguine movement which was the women’s movement of the fourteenth century. And another is his support of the peasants. Indeed, half his sermons were preached in the peasant dialect of his day, and at his trial he was accused of “confusing the simple people” by telling them that they were all “aristocrats,” or “royal persons.”
But this is precisely the heart of Eckhart’s teaching and the heart of the biblical tradition of creation spirituality: That humans are blessed with divine powers and beauty but also with responsibilities of justice-making and compassion that characterize all royal personhood. How do we get to such deep self-esteem and to such deep acceptance of our responsibility?…. Our awareness is everything; our waking up is everything. We need to move from the superficial or “outer self” to the true self or “inner self.” Who is this inner self? Eckhart answers this question in his treatise “On the Aristocrat,” or “On the Royal Person.”
Fox presents Eckhart’s teaching:
The inner person is the soil in which God has sown the divine likeness and image and in which God sows the good seed, the roots of all wisdom, all skills, all virtues, all goodness—the seed of the divine nature…. This is the good tree of which our Lord says that it always bears good fruit and never evil fruit. For it desires goodness and is inclined toward goodness….
The seed of God is in us. If the seed had a good, wise, and industrious cultivator, it would thrive all the more and grow up to God whose seed it is, and the fruit would be equal to the nature of God. Now, the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, the seed of God into God…. While this seed may be crowded, hidden away, and never cultivated, it will still never be obliterated. It glows and shines, gives off light, burns, and is unceasingly inclined toward God.
Fox concludes:
It is our task to cultivate this seed and give it nourishment so that the divine image in us can grow and thrive and prosper. This is what the spiritual journey is all about. Our spiritual journey consists in nourishing and watering and caring for this God-seed that is in all of us.
God’s Temple Expansion Project
Failing to read the creation chapters in Genesis as temple narratives means that we will probably interpret them with another, less accurate, lens. For example, I thought of Eden as a divine zoo when I was young. It’s where God set up a comfortable habitat to watch his naked human creatures frolic without a care in the world. Like most modern Americans, my understanding of paradise was defined by leisure. In this way, the Garden of Eden seemed more like a hippie commune to me than anything resembling a temple. Viewing Eden as an all-inclusive resort or a human zoo presents God as a puppet master and reduces humanity’s purpose to just divine amusement.
This, of course, is a terrible reading of Genesis.If we properly understand Eden as a temple where the heavens and earth overlap, and the humans as priests called to care for this bridge between God and his creation, then the garden becomes a collaborative environment where the Creator and people work together for a common goal. That goal becomes clear when we combine the seven-day temple inauguration account in Genesis 1 with the garden-temple narrative in Genesis 2-3. After creating his image/idols in Genesis 1:26-28, God instructs the man and women to “rule” over the earth on his behalf and cultivate order, beauty, and abundance everywhere. They were to “fill the earth and subdue it.” This is the very first command given in the Bible.Theologians refer to this verse in Genesis 1 as the “Cultural Mandate.” Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, explains why:The first phrase, ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, ‘subdue the earth,’ means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, and compose music.
This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations—nothing less.Moving into the next chapter about the garden with this in mind, rather than a zoo created by God to contain humans it’s evident that Eden was intended to be a base camp to launch this shared God-human project.
The man and woman were never supposed to remain in the garden. Instead, they and their descendants were to cooperate with God to expand the garden’s order, beauty, and abundance to fill the earth. In other words, God’s goal was for his temple to grow and encompass the whole world and everyone in it.
As we continue through the Bible, it’s this temple-expansion mission that will explain God’s calling of Abraham and his descendants (Israel), the arrival of Jesus, his death, resurrection, and ascension, the purpose of God’s multiethnic community (the church), and the vision we see at the very end the Bible of God dwelling with all of his people in a renewed earth full of his glory. And, more immediately, it will help us make sense of humanity’s rebellion against God and their expulsion from the garden-temple. Stay tuned.
WEEKLY PRAYER. from Clement of Rome (d. 99) May God, who sees all things, and who is the Ruler of all spirits and the Lord of all flesh—who chose our Lord Jesus Christ and us through Him to be a peculiar people—grant to every soul that calls upon His glorious and holy Name, faith, peace, patience, long-suffering, self-control, purity, and sobriety, to the well-pleasing of His Name, through our High Priest and Protector, Jesus Christ, by whom be to Him glory, and majesty, and power, and honor, both now and forevermore. Amen.
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This week’s meditations will explore some of the mystics of the European Rhine Valley from medieval times until the 20th century. Father Richard Rohr begins:
We live in a time of both crisis and opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious today, I still have hope, not only in God, but in the fact that many Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. It moves us beyond binary, either-or, us-against-them mentality. To be clear, nondual thinking isn’t about throwing out our rational mind or refusing to act against injustice; it’s about growing in mystical, contemplative, and unitive consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more broadly, deeply, wisely, and lovingly. We can collaborate on creative solutions to today’s problems. I’m encouraged that there’s renewed appreciation in the Christian tradition for people like the mystics who model such wholeness. [1]
My own cultural roots are in the Rhineland of Northern Europe. The Rhineland mystics were mostly German-speaking spiritual writers, preachers, and teachers, who lived largely between the 11th and 15th centuries. Their importance has only recently been rediscovered. The “trans-alpine” Church (meaning those on the other side of the Alps from Rome) always enjoyed a certain degree of freedom from Roman oversight and control, simply by reason of distance, and drew upon different sources and inspirations than did the “cis-alpine” Church of Italy, France, and Spain. The Rhineland Mystics were outstanding in their courage and very creative viewpoints.
Some of the most familiar Rhineland mystics would include the Benedictines Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Gertrude the Great (1256–1302); the Beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1212–c. 1282); the Dominicans, including Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327), Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), and Henry Suso (1295–1366); and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). A more recent Rhineland mystic I’d like to include is psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), who acknowledged the influence of Hildegard, Eckhart, and Nicholas of Cusa.
After the Protestant Reformation, the mystical path was largely mistrusted. Some would even say it was squelched because of Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) emphasis on the Bible as the only source of knowledge about God (sola Scriptura). Personal spiritual experience was considered unimportant and suspect. To be fair, Luther’s contributions led Christians to an early stage “rational” use of the Scriptures which was a necessary corrective to Catholic over-spiritualization. But within Luther’s own reformed tradition, profound mystics arose such as the German shoemaker Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) and the inventor Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
In the following centuries, German academic theology flourished, relying almost exclusively on post-Reformation rationalism. While theological study continues to be an immense gift to the world, one can easily get trapped inside of endless discussions about abstract ideas with little emphasis on experience or practice. In contrast, mystics honor the experience of the essential mystery and unknowability of God and invite us to do the same. [2]
Hildegard of Bingen: A Multi-Talented Mystic
I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. The secret Life of Me breathes in the wind and holds all things together soulfully. —Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works 1.1.2
CAC affiliate faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher describes the extraordinary life of Hildegard of Bingen:
Between the summer of 1098 and the autumn of 1179, a remarkable German woman lived eighty-one years at a time when half that long was considered a full life. The Über-multitasking Frau, this Benedictine nun founded two convents; organized the first-ever public preaching tours conducted by a woman; authored nearly four hundred bold letters to popes, emperors, abbesses, abbots, monks, nuns, and laypeople; worked as healer, naturalist, botanist, dietary specialist, and exorcist; composed daring music; crafted poetry with staying power; wrote the first surviving sung morality play; and spent decades writing three compelling theological works. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Her long resume is impressive in any age, but it pales when compared with her life, which she considered her best divine offering. [1]
Acevedo Butcher highlights Hildegard’s passion for music as a pathway to God:
A multi-faceted artist, Hildegard was not only an author and a talented visual designer, but a musician of note. Her allegiance to God through her music is one of the strongest refrains in her life. She believed music was necessary for salvation, because it was the best representation of the state of humanity before the Fall. If a person wanted to know what it felt like to be alive before the Fall, Hildegard believed holy music could take you there, as she writes in her famous letter to the Prelates of Mainz:
Music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can’t describe. When this happens, we are taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels, when he was whole in God, before his exile. In fact, before Adam refused God’s fragrant flower of obedience, his voice was the best on earth, because he was made by God’s green thumb, who is the Holy Spirit. And if Adam had never lost the harmony God first gave him, the mortal fragilities that we all possess today could never have survived hearing the booming resonance of that original voice. [2]
Hildegard’s songs often praised God’s presence in creation:
O Holy Power who forged the Way for us! You penetrate all in heaven and earth and even down below. You’re everything in One. Through You, clouds billow and roll and winds fly! Seeds drip juice, springs bubble into brooks, and spring’s refreshing greens flow—through You—over all the earth! You also lead my spirit into Fullness. Holy Power, blow wisdom in my soul and—with your wisdom—Joy! [3]
The crises of our time demand that our spiritualities no longer navel gaze. That’s the criticism, at least, of contemplation. How can we pray when authoritarian leaders grow in power, when they scapegoat immigrants and transgender people, and when the earth burns from fossil fuels? How can we pray when genocide and ethnic cleansing take place? To me, the question is: How can we not pray in times like these? The true mystics are not those who retreat from the world but who find union with it. Such people are the ones whose intimacy with God and Life itself is such that their eyes are wide open to reality and their hearts necessarily break with those who suffer.
People who chronicle the mystical life often use language of “union” to describe what they’ve only glimpsed. Evelyn Underhill says mysticism is “the art of union with Reality.” There’s even a long tradition in Christian tradition of so-called “spousal mysticism.” Sixteenth-century Spanish mystics like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila found such delight in divine love that only ecstatic exclamations of erotic, marital union could approximate their experience. Mystics from early Christianity onwards read the erotic poetry of the Hebrew Bible (yes, it’s in there!) and applied it to the soul and God: “I am my beloved and he is mine,” says the poetic voice of the Song of Songs (6:3).
But anyone who cares about the world, or even their neighborhood, today is painfully aware how far we are from union. Our cultural, political, and moral landscapes are filled with wounded division, the grossest abuses of power, groupthink, vitriol, scapegoating, and attribution of evil to the other. It’s almost enough to give up on unity. What can the mystical vision possibly offer such a world? How can there be true oneness without justice for all, especially for those who suffer most? And if we take sides, say, with the poor or immigrant person, or the incarcerated person, or the transgender person, does that mean we are giving up on oneness because certain other neighbors will be upset? If we are concerned about what’s happening to democracy in the United States, and stand against the President’s assault on longstanding legal norms, we are necessarily generating conflict, indeed a type of division rather than oneness, with the way things are. What’s a compassionate, everyday mystic to do?
I once heard speaker and author Brian McLaren talk about three stages towards union, or “unitive consciousness.” First, he said, there is naïve oneness, followed by duality, which eventually gives way to a more mature and heterogeneous oneness. Naïve oneness, on the positive and innocent side, is the undifferentiated union of mother and baby in utero. But out of the womb, naïve oneness often takes a harmful turn: it’s the narcissistic claim of the white, privileged person doing yogic breathing and heralding “oneness with the universe”—but while spinning COVID misinformation and demonstrating no awareness of systemic racism.
Bible readers will recall the desired “one language” of the builders of Babel’s tower, the imperial claim of powers to make the world in their image: “Look they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do” (Genesis 11:6). Instead of a oneness that values diversity, naïve oneness is the ego doing the self-preservation that the ego usually does. When naïve oneness meets institutional power and privilege, it clings to it at all costs.
Duality and separation are a fact and not negative in themselves. We order our lives by binaries. For instance, I’m grateful for the code that wrote the program to build the computer on which I’m typing this post. I drove to the library today and made a binary, either-or choice to stop at the stop light when it turned red instead of crashing into the oncoming car. We necessarily differentiate from our parents in order to become our individual, adult selves. We are constantly choosing “this” and not “that,” and that’s good.
The holy and ordinary mystic knows how to operate in a world of binaries but also sees that reality is always more than two. A consciousness that has moved beyond dualism understands and participates in a wide and inclusive reality beyond Black/white, male/female, LGBTQ+/straight, Christian/non-Christian, citizen/undocumented immigrant. Compassionate wholeness holds a consciousness that is more than dual or what some writers call non-dual.
But just what is such a nondual or “unitive” consciousness? It’s far easier to name what it’s not than to articulate what it is, but you know it when you see it. The elderly person with a unitive heart who has nothing to prove, shines authentic joy, and speaks with just as much sparkle to children as to adults. The person who awakens the passion of being alive within you and makes you laugh more than you thought possible. Union is when I hunker down by my local brook and the incessant gurgle and flow of water cracks open something spacious inside me. Nondual or “unitive” consciousness is the elusive oneness that emerges only after learning from and even loving duality and difference.
First-stage, naïve “oneness” is really another word for domination and homogeny. When white people in the United States nurse resentments and grievances against “those” people, it festers into white nationalism and supremacy. It is “oneness” only for the few. Mega-corporations who sell the world their products may seem to be bringing people together but the brand façade often hides the injustice of Babel all over again. The world uses Google to search the internet and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram to share their lives—but whatever nondual consciousness is, it is more than digital non-intimacy and a platform for oligarchy. Instead of homogeneity and echo-chamber scrolling, unitive consciousness is, paradoxically, an oneness that includes difference. It is the spacious ability to honor multiple truths and identities without falling prey to the postmodern trap that would have us believe that multiple truths and identities are all there is.
Jesus lays claim to a spiritual fact of unity when he says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and then prays “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). But Jesus also shows in his life and ministry that the oneness he experiences with the Father is anything but naïve. The oneness he experiences with the divine is the same oneness that he enacts with everyone around him—whether eating with tax collectors, healing lepers, hanging with the poor, or delivering the demon-possessed. “You will always have the poor with you,” he tells his followers (John 12:8), not because he is insensitive to the pain of poverty, but because Jesus followers are the ones who are united with those who suffer.
The mature mystic understands that the excluded can form a cast of saints rather than a deviation from the binary code. The degree of solidarity we demonstrate with people who suffer mirrors the degree of growth in true unity.
This is an adapted excerpt from my book The Holy Ordinary. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope it might be a resource for you to discover divine depths, even in these times.
Father Richard considers the transformative impact of people who live within the cosmic egg:
The person who lives within the total cosmic egg is the mystic, the prophet, the universal human, the saint, the whole one. These are people like Mahatma Gandhi, St. Bonaventure, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Henry Newman, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Julian of Norwich (my favorite mystic). These are the people who look out—with eyes wide as saucers—at the smaller pictures because they observe from the utterly big picture. These are the ones who can both honor and listen to smaller, personal stories, and also live in the final state of affairs, already, now. They are often called seers because their perspective contains many eyes, even, somehow, the eyes of God.
Great “seers” operate beyond mere group loyalties; beyond any simple, dualistic thinking that always puts them on the “right” side; beyond winners and losers, good and bad. They are somehow able to live by universal principles while still caring for the specific; honoring cultural norms, yet making room for the exceptions. They have seen in a contemplative way, beyond the shadow and the disguise, beyond the suffocating skin of the private self and the self-serving egotisms of group. The contemplative mind integrates and gives focus to all our calculating and controlling. Without it, there is only civil and self-serving religion.
True reconstruction will be led by those who can engage reality at all four levels simultaneously. They can honor the divine level and live ultimately inside of a great big story line. They appreciate the needs and context of our story and other stories and don’t dismiss them as mere cultural trappings or meaningless traditions. They won’t say that my story is not important, either. They won’t demean or dismiss people who are working on personal issues or addressing the important identity concerns of the first half of life.
Most importantly, we cannot separate personal healing from societal healing. It’s not sequential, but simultaneous. Many in our therapeutically focused society think they first must find healing and integration personally and then they will be free to serve groups or search for God. Yet it seems to me that it all happens in a spiral. In fact, there is a natural ecology of checks and balances between the four domes of meaning. I was lucky and blessed enough to have good family, religion, community, helpful therapy, and time for self-knowledge—overlapping one another like waves from an endless sea. Most people emphasize only one or the other, but those who honor all four levels have transcended the limitations of a single story. True transcendence frees us from the tyranny of I am, the idolatry of we are, and the scapegoating of they are. When all four stories are taken seriously, as the Bible shows us very well, we have a full life—fully human and fully divine.
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5 On Friday; John Chaffee
1.
“Distrust anyone in whom the desire to punish is strong.“
Lutheranism surrounded Nietzsche in his younger years. His father was a Lutheran pastor. And, although he is understood as a strong critic of religion and Christianity in particular, there are ways in which he was critiquing the dominant religiosity with what Christianity already taught him.
From my Lutheran upbringing and seminary education, it was a central point that God is not punishing. God might prune us, but that is not the same as punishment. I cannot help but think that this quote above is in complete harmony with what Lutheran theology teaches.
Here is the thing: Our image of God creates a moral limit for us. If God is allowed to punish, then we are allowed to punish. If God does not punish but seeks to restore, then we should not punish and should seek to restore. If God’s mercy eventually runs out, then we are permitted to, at some point, become merciless with others.
Do you see what I am getting at?
If we do not trust a false god who is quick to punish, then perhaps we should stop trusting figures who are also quick to punish.
2.
“Whether this is the first day of the Apocalypse or the first day of the Golden Age, the work remains the same… love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.“
In other words, this is the work of the Tikkun Olam. I have mentioned this idea many times in the past, but it is just that good.
Tikkun Olam is the “ongoing repairing of the world.” It is a task that none of us can complete, and none can abdicate. We are all called to participate in and help the world heal, no matter our life circumstances.
The Tikkun Olam is the work of Divine Love.
3.
“The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.“
It feels like the simple life is less and less valued in today’s culture. It feels as though people are chasing after being complex or multifaceted. We want to stand out by being masters of all things and to chase after the endless treadmill of being unique “enough” to be loveable.
However, the idea that God is simple and invites us into simplicity is attractive.
In the past month, I have debated not just deleting all social media but the accounts altogether. I have wondered what my life would be like if I had more quotes coming to me from Jesus rather than Trump. How might my life look if I intentionally downsized my life’s activities so that I could have more time to be slow and intentional? What could my life look like if every moment was grounded in presence rather than distraction after distraction?
If Teresa of Avila is correct here, I wonder if our pursuit of complexity and increase is also a way of running away from God.
The idea that peace must be fought for or that violence must happen and that there might eventually be peace is a common one. We all know the adage, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Some history buffs might also know about the Pax Romana, a Latin phrase meaning “The Peace of Rome.” The Roman Empire indeed produced a lot of peace for its citizens. However, it came at the cost of obliterating anyone who opposed Rome. The Roman Empire would crush and destroy any foreigner or civilian who opposed its rule. Hence, there was “peace.”
AJ Muste put it simply, though. “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” It is not that we must fight to have peace; if we want peace, we must learn to practice it now rather than in an imagined or delayed future. It means that we must disagree and even argue with one another peaceably. Peace itself IS the way.
5.
“The Gospel of liberation is bad news to all oppressors because they have defined their freedom in terms of slavery of others.”
To all the kings and pharaohs and presidents of the world, the true Gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive. It means that those at the bottom are worthy of being treated with dignity and respect and that God turns a special eye to them. In Liberation Theology, this is the “preferential option for the poor.” In Jesus’ verbiage, “Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters you do for me.” (Matthew 25:45)
To those at the top of the hierarchies of the world, the “Gospel” benefits them when it only cares about sins but not about structures of oppression. They want the “Gospel” to be about forgiving people when they disobey their government.
To any oppressors who stand upon the backs of poor peasants and slaves, it means that their little empires deserve to crumble. God is not willing that any human empire be built upon the backs of forced labor; that is a significant theme of the Book of Exodus, and yet we miss it!
It is fascinating, though, that the Greek word for Savior is Σοτερ (Soter), and it also means “Liberator.” Conservatives love to focus on Christ as a Savior of Sinners, and Liberals love to focus on Christ as a Liberator of the Oppressed. Our task is to hold Christ fully as both Savior AND Liberator.
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story. —Linda Hogan
Cofounders of the Wild Church Network, Victoria Loorz and Valerie Luna Serrels are passionate about helping people reconnect to the sacred wildness of the earth and recognize how it connects us to the story:
The wisdom we need for this time of great unraveling will be gained as we remember that we are not separate from nature. The voices we need to listen most closely to at this time are the voices that the dominant culture has overlooked, dismissed, ignored, or silenced. The voices of Indigenous peoples who have never forgotten our place in the web of belonging. The voices of women, of communities of color, of those from the queer community who have suffered the impact of a dominant culture of supremacy for generations. Voices from the Southern Hemisphere, from religions outside our comfort zone whose perspectives are essential to even see our own blindness. The voices of the trees, the storms, the cicadas, the rivers, and the tiny viruses whose interconnected suffering and resiliency is essential in this time of dramatic change. The wisdom we need at this pivotal time in our history will be found there, outside the edges of the dominant culture. And by listening, we mean practicing kinship, intentionally entering into relationship, through respectful and authentic conversation and presence.
This kinship is at the core of wild church. Kinship is recognizing that our beloved community includes the whole, alive, interconnected world…. It is falling in love again with the world, considering the well-being of all the sacred others in our decisions. It is taking on the suffering of our beloveds and engaging in their healing. It is an embodiment of a Hebrew concept known as tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”—the whole world.
As we learn the language of leaves and the banter of berries and then share these little moments of poetic wisdom with one another, we are re-storying our place. We are creating new stories that can guide us into a new and yet ancient way of being human…. Re-storying our relationship with Earth as sacred kin provides a spiritual and emotional foundation of belonging we need to support all the layers of work ahead of us. [1]
Earth has her own rituals, expressed in stories of glaciers, seasons, spring blossoms, anthills, wildfires, and birdsongs. As we listen with affection to the stories the land tells, we are compelled to integrate their stories into our stories. To remain alive, our old narratives need to be connected with new meaning particular to our geographies and context. A beloved myth or story from a sacred text or scripture carries deep wisdom that comes alive when it is reoriented to our own time and place. [2]
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Sara Young Jesus Calling
Jesus Calling: February 20 Learn to live from your true Center in Me. I reside in the deepest depths of your being, in eternal union with your spirit. It is at this deep level that My Peace reigns continually. You will not find lasting peace in the world around you, in circumstances, or in human relationships. The external world is always in flux–under the curse of death and decay. But there is a gold mine of Peace deep within you, waiting to be tapped. Take time to delve into the riches of My residing Presence. I want you to live increasingly from your real Center, where My Love has an eternal grip on you. I am Christ in you, the hope of Glory.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Colossians 3:15 NLT
15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
Colossians 1:27
27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
Philippians 4:6-7
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
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Embarking on a 21st-century Freedom Ride in the southern United States, writer-activist Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove shares how civil rights icon Vincent Harding encouraged the riders to honor their own stories and those of others.
Vincent Harding [1931–2014] taught me to pay attention to the holy ground that we often forget in the American story. An African American colleague and co-laborer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Harding was also a historian who saw the world through the eyes of faith…. Dr. Harding believed, as Revelation reprises from Psalm 46, that “there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” (46:4). That great river flows through history, connecting people of faith to the Christianity of Christ. Dr. Harding’s life’s work was to baptize people into that river….
Dr. Harding taught us that every pilgrimage toward freedom begins with attention to our basic identity. “Where did you spend your childhood?” he asked each person, even the ones who were still children. “And where did your maternal grandmother spend her childhood?” Each of us comes from a household and a story, Dr. Harding knew. “Tell me her name,” he said, leaning forward with his gentle smile.
Before our freedom ride was done, “Uncle Vincent” had adopted us all, inviting us into the freedom family that stretched from the Hebrew midwives in ancient Egypt to the enslaved mothers of Southern plantations to “Ella’s Song” in the twentieth century. [1] “We who believe in freedom cannot rest” became our anthem. But our voices, though they could be joined in harmony, were not the same. We had to wrestle with the stories we’d heard at our grandmothers’ knees—with the ways each of our fathers’ households had taught us something about who our people are.
I watched young white people on that freedom ride unpack their so-called privilege, questioning basic assumptions about success and faithfulness. Our liberation was tied to that of young undocumented sisters and brothers who were also questioning the American dream—how the future it promised did not include their own parents. A formerly incarcerated African American man stood tall, celebrating a newfound pride that he was the son of women and men who had shown America what freedom means….
The other half of history doesn’t erase everything we ever thought we knew about ourselves and our God, but it does invite us to see all things in a new light. As pilgrims in a strange land, we leave our people and place for a country as yet unknown in order to see and name the holy ground beneath our feet. This cannot be a solitary journey because it entails the sharing of very different and often painful stories. But in the people who bear those stories, we meet the beloved community that both prefigures and prepares us for the country we’ve not yet been. The other half of history is an invitation to live into another story.
Do you have uncertainty? I LOVE Jesus, but my faith is wobbly at best. Is your faith ever wobbly?
-Donna
Dear Nadia,
How do we increase our faith?
-Jason
Dear Donna and Jason,
For most of my life I thought that the only physical exercise that “counted” was going for a run, or working out at the gym – those sorts of things. And there were times in my life I would do just that for 30 minutes a day and then be sedentary for 23 ½ hours.
But I have started wearing a fitness tracker and am stunned to see how on days I don’t “workout” I still walk 10,000 steps a day just living my life. Just doing things like housework and grocery shopping – things I never thought counted as “fitness”.
So Donna and Jason, you probably have a lot more faith than you realize.
Because when it comes to spiritual fitness – sometimes in our lives we can hit the God Gym so to speak, and sometimes we just can’t and in thoseseasons, try and trust that there are a lot of spiritually unassuming parts of our lives that have an element of faith to them and that those parts really do add up.
Here’s an incomplete list:
If you dream about a good future for your children, that’s a form of faith.
If you are moved by the faith of your ancestors, that also counts.
If you have doubts – that is also a form of faith because at least you’re still engaged in the question.
Do you hold those you love in your heart when they are suffering? And even ask God to come to their aid? Faith.
Do you, as you say, LOVE JESUS? …totally counts.
Do you see the inherent dignity of other human beings – also faith.
Have you asked someone to pray for you because you just can’t pray right now? Faith.
Is there a feeling of gratitude for anything at all in your life – I mean AT ALL? That’s a kind of faith.
Here’s a good one: do you ever complain or tell God off? In the Bible, that’s called a lament – and you know what? It’s a form of faith.
All of that is to say, all the faith you need is already there no matter your thoughts and feelings at any given moment.
My own faith morphs and shifts into things that my Sunday School self would never recognize.
I guess I just no longer think of faith as intellectually assenting to theological propositions, or as regularly confirming in myself that I believe all the wildest stories in the Bible are literally, factually, historically accurate. Faith functions in my life as something closer to gravity than ideology.
So, as I’ve been known to say, if you are straining to touch a faith that feels out of reach and judging yourself for falling short please know this: God always puts all the best shit on the bottom shelf.
I promise.
So maybe your prayer for today doesn’t need to be Lord, increase my faith, but Lord increase my awareness of what faith already looks like in my life.
Using the language of the cosmic egg, author Felicia Murrell shares her experience of growing up with a strong sense of our story that was limited by the power of other stories:
I never questioned the world in which I grew up. I followed the rhythms set for me by those around me, understanding the world and how to situate myself in it through the lenses and lives of those in authority over me.… In the small rural North Carolina town of my youth, Blacks lived on one side of the tracks and Whites on the other…. Nothing about this life seemed abnormal. This was our story.…
No one talked about race. No one expressed discontent or named things aloud. No one mentioned the way things were. We didn’t buck the system. We kept our heads down and did what we were supposed to do. Success and advancement were others’ stories, for people across town on the other side of the tracks. We were to stay in our place and follow the natural order of things, which I did until I no longer could.
Like matryoshka dolls nesting within one another, my story as a small child was a fragmented, compartmentalized part of our story. In the shadow of dominant voices, my story felt less essential, even unnecessary. Without a clear understanding of the whole, my story was incomplete. But my story was all I knew until I was exposed to other stories.
Murrell highlights the importance of allowing other stories to draw us into intimacy with one another and into the union of thestory.
When we remain stuck in the loop of our story without consideration of other stories, particularly when “our” is framed in (or lived in response to) a Eurocentric, patriarchal, dominant paradigm as the standard of measurement for all other stories, we are left with an incomplete model. Exposure to other stories is an invitation, a gateway to knowing. But it’s merely that—an opportunity to know. A welcoming and acceptance of diversity may create familiarity, but it’s not the same as knowing. Deep, intimate knowing empowers agency, offers reciprocity, and, through mutuality, affords us the opportunity to be the custodians of our own story without being othered as an aside or a concession to dissent….
How do we move toward each other in love, the truth of our authentic power? Perhaps, we welcome change instead of resisting it. To expand my worldview beyond the paradigm of Southern, Christian, rural or working poor to a larger cosmic frame that is inclusive, universal, affirming, and accepting, I needed to see the parts and the whole in all their majestic splendor and their messy complexity.
Transcendence is not a denial or detachment from my story or our story. It is an arduous commitment to truth-telling; to fully seeing; to empathetic listening that requires the work of living and be-ing in the world; of deep, intimate knowing; of moving beyond our theories and maps into relationship building.
“Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.” Job 2.8
“Christ is a shard of glass in your gut.” Christian Wiman
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The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness.
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Psalm 19.10: God’s words are honey not only because they are sweet but also because they are slow and sticky.
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Difficult passages of Scripture are like gastroliths—the gizzard stones toothless birds need to digest what they’ve eaten. If we cannot stomach the hard words in the Bible, we will get no nutrition even from the chewable ones.
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Jer. 23.29: God’s word is the hammer and you are the rock it shatters—into bread.
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Jesus lets his father die. The Father lets Jesus die. That “letting” is the room created by the infinite love of God so we can grow up into the fulness of Christ.
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It’s tempting to think God wants us to be Christians and that he wants us to make other people Christians—as many as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s tempting to believe God wants us to be Christian, believing as we should, living as we should. But no, what God wants is for us to be Christ’s, not just devoted students but dear friends and confidants, his nearest co-conspirators. And God wants something infinitely more even than that—for us to be Christ, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
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The boundaries of our understanding are never the same as the borders of the faith.
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It is better to have received mercy than never to have needed it.
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The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness.
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Finally, a house blessing:
Sweet Jesus, the Spirit who made all things
was at home in your body
as you were at home in your Mother’s.
Bless us with your presence
and make this house a sanctuary
for us and for anyone
who shares the road with you.
Amen.
Keep praying for me!
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Fr. Richard Rohr uses the metaphor of a “cosmic egg” to explain how stories offer us meaningful connections to ourselves, one another, and the divine:
If we are going to be the rebuilders of society, we need to be rebuilt ourselves. A healthy psyche lives within at least four containers of meaning. Imagine four nested domes. The first is called my story, the second is our story, the third is other stories, and the fourth is the story. This is what I call the cosmic egg. It’s the unique and almost unconscious gift of healthy religion. Much of the genius of the biblical revelation is that it honors and integrates all four, while much of the weakness of our deconstructed society is that it often honors only one level at best. The whole/healed/saintly person lives happily inside of all of them.
The smallest dome of meaning is my story. The modern world is the first period of history where a large number of people have been allowed to take their private lives and identities seriously. There is a wonderful movement into individuation here, but there’s also a diminishment and fragility if that’s all we have. This first dome contains my private life. “I” and my feelings and opinions are the reference point for everything. This dome is the little stage where I do my dance and where the questions are usually, “How do I feel? What do I believe? What makes me unique?”
My story isn’t big enough or true enough to create large or meaningful patterns by itself, but many people live their whole lives at this level of anecdote and nurtured self-image, without ever connecting with the larger domes of meaning. They are what they have done and what has been done to them—nothing more. This self becomes fragile and unprotected, and therefore constantly striving, easily offended, and fearful.
The second dome of meaning is our story. This is the dome of our group, our community, our country, our church—perhaps our nationality or ethnic group. We seem to need this to contain our identity and security as social beings. It’s the good and necessary training ground for belonging, attaching, trusting, and loving. If we don’t have a supportive family, group or community with which we can bond, we create people who struggle to bond. Fortunately, most of us have multiple memberships: family, neighborhood, religious affiliation, country. These are schools for relationship, connection, and almost all virtue as we know it.
This second dome of meaning gives us myth, cultural heroes, group symbols, flags, special foods, ethnicity, and patriotism. These tell us that we’re not alone; we’re also connected to a larger story. We might understand that it’s fanciful, but it is shared meaning and that is important. Regrettably, a lot of people stop at the level of this shared meaning because it gives more consolation and security to the small self. In fact, loyalties at this level have driven most of human history up to now.
The Cosmic Egg: Other Stories and TheStory
Richard Rohr continues to explain the cosmic egg, focusing on the next two domes of meaning: other stories and the story. Read about the first two domes of meaning—my story and our story—in yesterday’s meditation.
The third dome of meaning is what I call other stories. The term “other stories” illustrates the significant but sometimes painful recognition that our story is not the only frame, not likely the most important frame, and maybe even a frame with a lot of shadow and bias. This is the great advantage of studying history, literature beyond our own language, anthropology, world cultures and religions, and experiencing some world travel, whether by opportunity or necessity. This is also the invitation modeled by Jesus to move beyond my story and our story, and to stand in friendship and solidarity with other stories.
As we encounter more and more of the world’s other stories, many people are broadening their wisdom, while others are broadening their fear. There is only one thing more dangerous than the individual ego or my story and that’s the group ego that insists that our story is the measure of all things and so seeks to label other stories as ignorant, dangerous, or inferior. It looks like it will take us some time, perhaps centuries, to resolve the human drive to exclude, to scapegoat, to judge, and to dismiss other peoples’ stories.Only nondual thinkers, mystics, and some saints seem capable of such universal capacity. [1]
The fourth dome of meaning, which encloses and regulates the three smaller ones, is called the story. By this, I mean the patterns that are always true. This is much larger and more shared than any one religion or denomination. All healthy religions would, on some levels, be telling the story, as the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council authoritatively taught. [2] For example, forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether we are Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, although it reveals its wisdom in countless ways. It is part of the story. Also, there is no specifically Christian way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth. Love is love, even if the motivation might be different.
The biblical tradition takes all four domes seriously: my story, our story, other stories, and the story. Biblical revelation is saying that the only way we dare move up to the story and understand it with any depth is by moving through and taking responsibility for our personal story, our group story, and other stories. We have to listen to our own experience, to our own failures, to our own sin, to our own salvation, and we’ve got to recognize that we are a part of history, of a culture, of a religious group, for good and for bad. We cannot heal or honestly examine what we do not acknowledge.
TODAY IS THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
The season of light ends soon — there are only two more Sundays in the Epiphany cycle. Ash Wednesday is March 5, the beginning of Lent.
This year, the contrast between epiphany — the manifestation of God’s dominion of love — and evil — the iron grip of hierarchical domination of power — has never seemed more obvious or pointed. In both the scriptures and in the headlines.
The birth of a Child, the Prince of Peace, opened the way for a contest here in the world. Love and light spread, yes. But not without resistance from the powers that rule this world.
Where are we in this struggle? Following the Star, journeying a different way home toward a Dominion of Love? Or, do we remain subjects of Herod and Caesar, pawns cowering under their murderous schemes of Domination of Power?
Epiphany has raised the spiritual and theological stakes. As it is written in John 1, “in him was life,and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
To extend the biblical metaphor, the light is brighter than ever. The darkness deeper. We live on the edge. Do we keep lighting candles and walk into the territory we can’t quite see? Or not?
The lectionary today — readings from Psalm 1 and Luke 6 — draws clear lines between God’s dominion and worldly domination.
Psalm 1
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Luke 6:17-26
Jesus came down with the twelve apostles and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”
This week, every sermon in America wrote itself.
Here’s a tweet from Elon Musk (quoted on Bluesky by Bruce Wilson, who writes on authoritarianism and Christianity, to make sure readers get the point), wherein the man now running the United States government (and who is illegally dismantling food and medical assistance programs) calls the poor “parasites.”
Contrast that with Jesus in Luke 6. Almost as if he’s subtweeting the world’s richest human:
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
and don’t forget his follow—up:
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.*
As we say in my church, “Here endeth the reading.”
Pretty much says it all.
* * * * * *
When Christians think of the Beatitudes, they usually recall the version found in the Gospel of Matthew:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
No doubt about it, but Matthew’s got a gift for poetry. He placed this sermon on a hillside, making this Jesus’ central teaching in what is called the “Sermon on the Mount.” Indeed, the setting matched the prose. There’s a lyrical lift to Jesus’ words — the couplets elevate readers, freeing our souls to spiritually soar. We find ourselves up on that mount with Jesus, eagerly awaiting the blessings coming from heaven to those denied them here on earth.
Luke is blunter. There’s no rhapsodic rhythm in his words. Indeed, Luke’s Jesus delivers the truth straight up, like a good scotch:
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
In Luke’s account, Jesus isn’t on a hill. He has just come down from a mountain and is in a “level place.” New Testament scholars call this the “Sermon on the Plain,” in contrast to Matthew’s mount. The stage is flat; any sense of hierarchy — that “up” and “down” of human social structure — is gone. All the characters are standing equally with Jesus. We don’t soar. Instead, we look at Jesus face-to-face: Blessed are you who are miserable right now because the kingdom is with you.
And it wasn’t enough for Jesus to insist on this seemingly elusive reality. He added that oppressors aren’t really as powerful as they believe:
But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
Nothing is as it seems, Jesus insisted. The playing field of human relations is far more equal than we think — and in God’s kingdom, the poor are blessed and the rich are cursed.
Blunt, even kinda brutal.
And “blessing” and “woe” aren’t vaguely spiritual words whose import is only about some distant, promised reward or punishment.
“Blessing,” μακάριος (makarios) in Greek, means happy, fortunate, or favored. I wrote about the Beatitudes in Grateful:
Blessing is not just happiness, but favor. In the Christian scriptures, the word specifically means God’s favor, often called “grace” or “abundance.” “Favored are the poor” or “Gifted are the poor” would be equally valid ways of making sense of makarios.
The sense of the Beatitudes is not “If you are poor, God will bless you” or “If you do nice things for the poor, God will bless you.” Nor is it “Be happy for poverty.” Instead, “Blessed are the poor” could be read, “God privileges the poor.” If you are poor, you are favored by God. God’s gifts are with you.
As is the case with us today, people in the ancient world thought that the rich were blessed. Indeed, the word makarios itself had a more popular, slangy use: It also meant “god” or someone who was “elite.” Basically, a blessing wasn’t just something you had (or might get), it was who some people were. They were the Blessed. Caesar was makarios.
Today, you might say that Elon Musk is Chief of the Blessed. God-like. The makarios.
The “Blessed” were the big shots of the ancient world, the upper crust, those who lived above all the worries of normal existence. The poor, “the losers,” had to live with shame. Even back then, the blessed were the rich, not the poor. [An added aside: you might even say that the poor were “parasites.”]
In the Roman Empire, the world in which the Beatitudes were first preached, the richer and more powerful you were, the more valor and virtue you possessed, the closer you were to the emperor at the top of the social hierarchy, the more blessed you were, the more blessings you could seize for yourself, and the more blessings you could (if you chose to) bestow on those beneath you. [An added aside: typically “blessings” were bestowed to control underlings.]
When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” he overturned the hierarchical structure of blessing.
But maybe Luke thought that Matthew was being too subtle. (Luke was written after Matthew.) And so, Luke lowered the sermon from mountain to plain — and made his point plainer, too.
Blessed are you who are poor…Woe to you who are rich.
There’s nothing “spiritual” or uplifting here. This is worldly, tough, prophetic.
“Woe,” οὐαί (ouai) in Greek, is an interjection of grief or a denunciation. In the New Testament, Jesus used it to pronounce judgment on the wicked. The explanation of this term in Strong’s Greek Lexicon is chilling:
In the ancient Near Eastern context, expressions of woe were common in both secular and religious texts. They were used to lament misfortune or impending doom and were often part of prophetic literature to warn of divine judgment. In the Greco-Roman world, such expressions were understood as serious pronouncements, often linked to the moral and spiritual failings of individuals or societies.
Blessed are you who are poor…Woe to you who are rich.
Again, there’s nothing “spiritual” or uplifting here. This is worldly, tough, prophetic.
It is a holy denunciation. From Jesus himself.
Jesus repeated warnings like this throughout his career with harsh rebukes and threats toward the rich. This is one of the major themes in Luke’s gospel. He began his book with Mary’s prophecy of the rich being cast down, it runs through Jesus’ parables about Good Samaritans, rich fools, and sending the privileged away, and ends with Jesus’ poorest followers sharing meals of gratitude to overcome their grief.
Luke’s next book, Acts, opens with the early Christian practice of communalism — “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
The poor are NOT parasites. It is among the poor that the commonwealth of God is made manifest. The poor are favored by God. The poor are closest to the heart of all compassion.
We can have political and policy discussions about how our societies — especially societies shaped by some vague commitment or memory of biblical ethics — treat the problems of poverty, inequity, and poor people themselves.
But there’s no question about how Jesus saw the poor. Or how he treated them. Blessed are the poor; woe to the rich.
That’s the Bible. Jesus got these “radical” ideas from the Hebrew scriptures. Ancient prophets, like Jesus, warned that societies who neglected or abused the poor stand under God’s judgment. Leveling the economic playing field between the rich and poor was the intention of Sabbath. Jesus was born among the poor; Jesus was poor. His teaching challenged the hierarchy of wealth and power. The early church was built on common property. Period. Full stop.
Any teacher or leader who denies this, denies the Lord. Any politician who believes that the poor are “parasites” clearly violates the central moral teaching of Jesus — and a political movement based on such beliefs puts a nation in jeopardy of God’s judgment.
That’s the politics of woe, the politics of the wealthiest man in the world, the politics of MAGA — demeaning and abusing those whom God favors.
The poor are not parasites. Blessed are the poor.
Nothing could be clearer.
Here endeth the reading.
*”Consolation” means “comfort.” The Common English Bible translates this verse: “But how terrible for you who are rich, because you have already received your comfort.”
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This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
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Failing to read the creation chapters in Genesis as temple narratives means that we will probably interpret them with another, less accurate, lens. For example, I thought of Eden as a divine zoo when I was young. It’s where God set up a comfortable habitat to watch his naked human creatures frolic without a care in the world. Like most modern Americans, my understanding of paradise was defined by leisure. In this way, the Garden of Eden seemed more like a hippie commune to me than anything resembling a temple. Viewing Eden as an all-inclusive resort or a human zoo presents God as a puppet master and reduces humanity’s purpose to just divine amusement. 