Shortly after giving birth herself, author Kat Armas had new insights into the nativity through the experience of Mary: 

I’ve often said that the Bible is a book written by men, for men. Throughout the centuries most of its interpreters and preachers have been men as well. It’s no surprise then, that the story of the incarnation—and its rendering and interpretations thereafter—would glide over the messy realities of pregnancy and labor. Indeed, we’re told about the politics requiring Joseph to register in his hometown, about the shepherds keeping watch, and about heavenly hosts of angels celebrating, but we hear nothing of the blood, the nakedness, the primal groans, the fear, the strength and power of the human body, the first-time shrieks of new life bursting into the world….

Perhaps this is where we received our first antiseptic views of holiness, from a sterilized story of incarnation far removed from its reality. We’ve come to understand the concept of holiness as uncontaminated from the realities of the world, but is this truly the story of divinity? The story of God entering into our grief, our sorrows, our joys?

Like so many renderings of the narratives in Scripture, the birth of Jesus has been domesticated and dulled to make it more palatable. But there’s something subversively fleshly and carnal about Mary birthing God and her role as an active agent in the messy, material, and imminent.

I wonder, What was it like for Mary to birth God? What was it like to feel God squirm and settle as he pressed against her organs? She probably got short of breath and had trouble finding a comfortable position for sleep at night….

Armos reminds us of the real and raw birth process that Mary experienced:

This matters because a broken, refugee, brown, female, naked, stretched, hormonal, marginalized body is how divinity entered this world and where divinity still makes itself most known today….

The nativity scene, like much of Western theology, is far removed from the very bloody and very raw and very human process of birth. But these are the kinds of things that make up our faith: the naked, the primal, even the offensive. And while Mary’s story turned out the way she’d hope it would—with a newborn child in her arms—not all stories turn out that way. What the nativity scene as we’re used to seeing it fails to show us is that our faith is made of that too: the sadness, the questions, the longing, the despair, the anger. Encompassed within the birth of Jesus is the deeply difficult and deeply beautiful, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the material. Like our lives, it was fleshly and carnal—and it was also holy.

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“The Word became flesh and made his tent/Tabernacle among us.“

– The Gospel of John 1:14

This past week I was invited to give a Zoom Christmas lesson to a young adults group.  It was a lot of fun.  I decided to just “go full word nerd” on them and read through the first 14 verses of John’s Gospel and point out some unique things that happen in the original Greek text…

One of the things that stood out to me came as a result of reading John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by Father John Behr.  In that book, Behr makes the compelling case that John’s Gospel highlights Jesus as not only being God in the flesh but also the Temple itself in the flesh.

In all fairness, I had never heard that angle before and after having reread the Gospel of John recently, I am convinced that Behr was correct.  At each turn in John’s Gospel, Jesus, in his own way, critiques, overturns and replaces the Temple with his own self.

In light of Christmas, this is utterly profound to me.

The Incarnation is not only of God made flesh but also the Temple made flesh.  I am not even sure if I am able to write more about this mystery right now, I am still settling into its depths for myself!

Celebrating Incarnation

Richard Rohr describes why Christmas and celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus is foundational to Franciscan spirituality:

In the first 1200 years of Christianity, the central feast or celebration was Easter, with the high holy days of Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But in the thirteenth century, Francis of Assisi entered the scene. He intuited that we didn’t need to wait for God to love us through the cross and resurrection. Francis believed the whole thing started with incarnate love. He popularized what we now take for granted as Christmas, which for many became the major Christian feast. Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation when we celebrate God taking human form in the birth of Jesus.

Francis realized that since God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin: the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this Earth, it’s good to have a body, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of it! God loves matter and physicality.

With that insight, it’s no wonder Francis went wild over Christmas. (I do too—my little house is filled with candles at Christmastime.) Francis believed that trees should be decorated with lights to show their true status as God’s creations, and that’s exactly what we still do eight hundred years later.

And there’s more: when we speak of Advent or preparing for Christmas, we’re not just talking about waiting for the little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened two thousand years ago. In fact, we’re welcoming the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Christ that is forever being born (incarnating) in the human soul and into history.

We do have to make room for such a mystery, because right now there is “no room in the inn.” We see things pretty much in their materiality, but we don’t see the light shining through. We don’t see the incarnate spirit that is hidden inside of everything material.

The early Eastern Church, which too few people in the United States and Western Europe are familiar with, made it very clear that the Incarnation of Christ manifests a universal principle. Incarnation meant not just that God became Jesus, but that God said yes to the material universe and physicality itself. Eastern Christianity understands the mystery of incarnation in the universal sense. So it is always Advent because God is forever coming into the world (see John 1:9).

We’re always waiting to see Spirit revealing itself through matter. We’re always waiting for matter to become a new form in which Spirit is revealed. Whenever that happens, we’re celebrating Christmas. The gifts of incarnation just keep coming! Perhaps this is enlightenment.

Saying Yes to Body and Spirit

Father Richard describes the incarnational faith of Mary:

In the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and throughout the epistles, a whole new dimension of faith becomes available to those who accept it. It is a way of living in the Spirit, which some of the Hebrew prophets anticipate. The prophet Joel speaks of this most clearly:

In the days that follow, I will pour out my spirit on everyone. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. In those days I will pour out my spirit even on your servants and your handmaids (Joel 3:1–2).

We see the Spirit descending upon Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan, and we see the Spirit again filling the apostles with power on the day of Pentecost. But the very first person who incarnates this new faith was Mary of Nazareth, who said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me” (Luke 1:38). It was Mary who responded with an unconditional yes to the angel’s announcement that she was to give birth to the Messiah.

Mary is the model of the faith to which God calls all of us: a total and unreserved yes to God’s request to be present in and to the world through us. God desires to love others unconditionally in and through us. Those who live with such a faith can truly be called God’s instruments. God wants Light to shine through us, and so our first response to this call is simply to heed it and remain open to divine grace. Mary said her yes to God, and God was able to become incarnate in her. She gave birth to Christ by being so totally open to God’s Spirit that the Christ child could be born. [1]

The question then becomes for us: How do we also give birth, as Mary did?

There is no mention of any moral worthiness, achievement, or preparedness in Mary, only humble trust and surrender. She gives us all, therefore, a bottomless hope in our own little place. If we ourselves try to “manage” God or manufacture our own worthiness by any perfection or performance principle whatsoever, we will never give birth to the Christ, but only more of ourselves. [2]

Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ. Jesus fully accepted that human-divine identity and walked it into history. Henceforth, the Christ “comes again” whenever we are able to see the spiritual and the material coexisting, in any moment, in any event, and in any person. All matter reveals Spirit, and Spirit needs matter to “show itself”! What I like to call the “Forever Coming of Christ” happens whenever and wherever we allow this to be utterly true for us. This is how God continually breaks into history. [3]

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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.“

– Carl Jung, Swiss Psychologist and Philosopher

Everything is our teacher.  Not just our friends and our successes, but our annoyances and our failures.  Perhaps it is because I am approaching 40 in December, but I have been internally shifting to the things that Jung calls the “second half of life.”  The first half is all about building our ego and sense of self, the second half is all about letting it go and learning from our failures.

It is not easy, but it is good work to get around to doing.  Keep growing.  Everything is your teacher.

God will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness.… “Now I am making the whole of creation new…. It is already done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” 
—Revelation 21:4–6, Jerusalem Bible

Father Richard finds a hopeful vision for universal restoration in the Scriptures:

It’s quite shocking to contrast these verses from Revelation with Christianity’s more recent notions of Armageddon or the Rapture. Instead of judgment and destruction, we witness God keeping creation both good and new—which means always going somewhere even better or, in a word, evolving. God keeps creating things from the inside out, so they are forever yearning, growing, and changing. Implanted in all living things, this generative force grows them both from within—because they are programmed for it—and from without—as they take in light, nutrition, and water.

If we see the Eternal Christ Mystery as the symbolic Alpha Point for the beginning of “time,” we can see that history and evolution truly have an intelligent plan and trajectory from the very start. The Risen Christ assures us that, all crucifixions to the contrary, God is leading us somewhere positive. God has been leading us since the beginning and even includes us in the process of unfolding (Romans 8:28–30). Christ is the Divine Radiance at the beginning and the Divine Allure drawing us into a more positive future. We are thus bookended in a Personal Love—coming from Love and moving toward an ever more inclusive Love. The Book of Revelation brilliantly names this “Alpha” and “Omega” (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet).

Many do not feel a need for creation to have any form, direction, or purpose. After all, many scientists do not seem to ask such ultimate questions. Evolutionists observe the evidence and the data and say the universe is clearly unfolding and still expanding at ever faster rates, although they do not know the final goal of this expansion. But Christians should believe that the overarching vision does have a shape and meaning—which is revealed from its inception as “good, good, good, good, good” and even “very good” (Genesis 1:10–31). The biblical symbol of the Universal and Eternal Christ, standing at both ends of cosmic time, was intended to assure us that the clear and full trajectory of the world we know is an unfolding of consciousness with “all creation groaning in this one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22). [1]

Authentic mystical experience connects us and keeps connecting us at ever-newer levels, breadths, and depths “until God is all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). “The world, life and death, the present and the future all belong to you, for you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:22–23). Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal connecting. Our word for that is “heaven.” [2]

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December 31, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

The last day of the year and is it me or is God really organizing my thoughts and vision of a fresh look at life in the New Year? Is He sorting things so that I see and feel His hand on my past and on my future?

And God says…”Your culture and the pervasive communications around the New Year event have prepared your mind for the fertile seeds of hope for tomorrow. It is right inside this cultural field of hope that the Holy Spirit can operate inside your heart and mind and that of many, many others. Be aware that many are looking for the very hope that lives within you and shines on your face. Be sensitive and available to share your hope. The hope you have found in Christ Jesus.”

Becoming Agents of Change

Arab-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye recalls a transformative, unexpected occasion of generous acceptance:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal … I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. “Help,” said the flight service person. “Talk to her.… We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment.… I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother … and would ride next to her.… She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought … why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages … and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

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“The best way to stay hopeful is to do hopeful things.“

– Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit Priest, Poet, and Activist

This past week I revisited a book called Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings.  It is marvelous.  I have not finished it yet, but his poetry and prose have claimed my imagination.  Over the years, I have come into contact with people who knew him personally and said that he was the real deal.  He fought against the Vietnam War, mopped hospital floors on his days off, protested, prayed, wrote poetry, and so much more.

In many ways, he was one of the best examples of what a Christian could look like in the modern age.

He was also known for saying, “If you follow Jesus, you better look good on wood!”  By this, he was referencing that if you follow Jesus, you better expect to be crucified for it.  Dan seemed willing to take his joke seriously.

Mending the World

CAC teacher Mirabai Starr writes of Judaism’s affirmation of tikkun olam—human participation in the world’s restoration: 

There is a kabbalistic story in which the boundless, formless, unified Holy One wished to know its Holy Self, and so it contracted and poured itself into vessels. But the Divine Radiance was too much for these limited containers, and so they shattered, scattering shards of broken light across the universe, giving birth to all that is.

This sounds like modern cosmology, which also asserts that the universe expanded from an exceedingly high-density state, resulting in the full spectrum of material phenomena. I’ve dubbed this vessel-shattering version of the origins of the universe “the Jewish big bang.” It comes from a teaching Rabbi Isaac Luria offered in the sixteenth century to illustrate how form arises from formlessness, how light gets trapped inside darkness, and how the Holy One needs us to participate in the unfolding goodness of creation. Humans, as the teaching goes, were created to excavate and lift the shards of light from the dense predicament of existence and restore the vessels to wholeness.

In mystical Judaism, this teaching is known as tikkun olam, the mending of the world. How are we to do this? The answer is: with every act of chesed (loving-kindness) and tzedakah (generosity). It means observing the directives found in the Torah…. It means cultivating a contemplative practice to nurture intimacy with the Divine, making an effort to welcome the stranger and care for the Earth. It means bending close to listen for what it is our sisters and brothers on the margins might need (and being willing to forgo our notions of what “helping” looks like, since our preconceived ideas of service sometimes get in the way of authentically serving). It means pressing our ear to the land to hear the heartbeat of the Mother, learning to read her pulses, diagnose her ailments, intuit healing remedies. It means slowing down enough to let the pain of the world all the way into our hearts, allowing our hearts to break open, and acting from that broken-open space. It means stepping up with humility, with curiosity, with love. [1]

Starr encouraged students at the CAC’s Living School: 

Our task is to mend the broken world. This is our job: to mend this shattered vessel, to repair the brokenness of the world. How do we do this? You might ask yourself this every single day, if you’re anything like me. We do this through every act of loving kindness, every act of chesed. And we do this through every act of tzedakah, which is, for lack of a better translation, generosity, hospitality. It’s sometimes translated as charity; it’s an offering of ourselves, even when it’s not convenient and not comfortable. The nice thing about Judaism, and this is true in Islam as well, is that our loving, kind thoughts count too. The actions [count], certainly, of course, but our loving thoughts make a difference. They help mend the world. [2]

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“We do injury to children if we bring them up in a narrow Christianity that prevents them from ever becoming capable of perceiving the treasures of purest gold found in non-Christian civilizations.“

– Simone Weil, French Philosopher

Only an insecure faith is incapable of seeing the good beyond its own borders or boundaries.  A faith that is grounded and charitable is able to notice the beauty of another way of life.

For Simone to connect this sentiment with the formation of young children, drives home the point even more.  Tribalistic approaches to Christianity that exclude and demonize the Other are the antithesis of being Christlike charity and hospitality.

Joan Chittister, Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, writing from their traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, believe we all share equally in God’s image, even amid our joint history of violence. 

All our traditions—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—teach that the human race and every human being are created in the image of God. Rabbinic midrash says that when Caesar puts his image on a coin, each coin comes out identical—but that when the One who is beyond all rulers puts the divine image on the coin of every human being, each “coin” comes out unique.…

Today, the various Caesars of our planet insist that we must fit into a single mold, the mold of uniformity and death.… The pain of these deaths and of this destruction drives some of the children of Hagar, through Ishmael, and some of the children of Sarah, through Isaac, to forget that they are all children of Abraham. That we are all children of Noah and his wife, Naamah, who suffered through the danger that human violence imposes on all who dwell on our planet.…

If we are to celebrate [the Infinite God], we must in the same breath resist the idolatrous Caesars who think to impose upon us their murders. In our banks, our kindergartens, our picket lines and voting booths, as we worship in our graceful sacred buildings and in our quiet forests and on our frenzied streets, through the seasons of our joy and of our sorrow—in all these, we must remember to welcome ourselves, each other, and all who begin as strangers into the Tent that is open to all. [1]

Richard Rohr describes how each person is created in the Divine image, and is called to participate in the process of growing into God’s likeness: 

What does it mean that everything created—everything our eyes can see or have ever seen—is somehow a partial reflection of the image of God? How can something be diverse as all of creation, and at the same time say that reality is more one than many? We say it of God, and we say it of everything our eyes have ever seen.

If we don’t view everything as created in the image of God, what happens? We start picking and choosing: well, that’s created in the image of God, but that is not. But everything, everything, is created in the image of God.

What, then, does likeness mean? In the early centuries of Christianity, the Church Fathers concluded: image was our objective, unquestionable creation as a child or image of God. Likeness was our personal appropriation of that reality. Two people might equally be images of God, but perhaps only one chooses to become kind, forgiving, inclusive, accepting, and patient, full of the great virtues. We already have image, but we grow in likeness. There is a dynamism toward growth, universality, and an infinite love that we can’t get rid of. [2]

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“What is difficult or impossible in one paradigm is easy, even trivial, in another.“

– Joel Barker, Author and Futurist

Over the years, I have come to appreciate the various developmental theories that study how we change and grow throughout our lifetimes.  More than a few focus on our worldviews/value systems and reaffirm this comment from Barker…

Sometimes what we need is not so much a quick fix, but an upgrade on the way that we see the world around us.  Upgrade the way we see things, and the solution may have been blatantly in front of us the whole time.

Imagine you have a screw that needs tightening, but you have no screwdriver.  Perhaps your worldview demands that you find the right screwdriver.  However, if you upgrade and are willing to use something other than a screwdriver, perhaps you can use the dime in your pocket or the knife in your drawer to tighten it.  Turns out, you didn’t need to have a screwdriver to tighten the screw!

Richard Rohr affirms God’s plan to draw all of creation into the intimacy and celebration of Love: 

Jesus often uses the metaphor of a wedding to describe what God is doing—preparing and drawing us toward deeper intimacy, belonging, and union. The Eastern Fathers of the Church affirmed this belief; they called it the process of “divinization” (theosis). They saw it as the whole point of the incarnation and the very meaning of salvation. The much more practical and rational church in the West seldom used the word divinization. It was just too daring for us, despite the rather direct teachings from Peter (1 Peter 1:4–5; 2 Peter 1:4) and Jesus in John’s Gospel: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:20–21).

Jesus came to give us the courage to trust and allow our inherent union with God, and he modeled it for us in this world. Union is not merely a place we go to later—if we are good. It is a place of deep goodness that we naturally exist inside of—now.

For persons—and for creation—transformation must be real and in this world. Paul’s most used phrase, “en Christo,” suggests a shared embodiment. The Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12) then takes the form of a meal so we can be reminded frequently of our core identity (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). [1] As Augustine preached, “We are what we eat! We are what we drink!” [2]

I am convinced this development of unitive consciousness is the true Second Coming of Christ. Our union with God will finally be experienced and enjoyed, despite our relentless resistance and denial. When God wins, God wins! God doesn’t lose. Apokatastasis (universal restoration) has been promised to us (Revelation 3:20–21) as the real message of the Universal Christ, the Alpha and the Omega of all history (Revelation 1:4, 21:6, 22:13). It will be a win-win for God—and surely for humanity! What else would a divine victory look like?

The clear goal and direction of biblical revelation is toward full, mutual indwelling. We see this movement toward union as God walks in the garden with naked Adam and Eve and “all the array” of creation (Genesis 2:1). The theme finds its shocking climax in the realization that “the mystery is Christ within you, your hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). As John excitedly puts it, “You know him because he is with you and he is in you!” (John 14:17). The eternal mystery of incarnation will have finally met its mark, and “the marriage feast of the Lamb will begin” (Revelation 19:7–9). History isn’t heading toward Armageddon or a “Left Behind” conclusion. Jesus says, in any number of places, it will be a great wedding banquet. [3]

Love Now and Later

CAC staff member Mike Petrow connects God’s plan for the universal healing of the world with the prophetic work we do: 

Father Richard often reminds us that the CAC’s Living School was conceived of as “a school for prophets.” For him, this idea is the beating heart of our curriculum…. While prophecy is often defined as “speaking truth to power,” this is an incomplete notion, being merely social criticism. Prophecy is speaking truth to power on behalf of a divine vision of wholeness. This vision comes from contemplation and the love it reveals. 

Tracing our alternative orthodoxy back to its roots in the prophetic tradition, we see that action and contemplation are, in fact, inseparable. They are the inhalation and exhalation of divine love. Contemplation calls us to active love. Our Jewish family identifies this as the tikkun olam, the fixing of the world. The early church termed it the apokatastasis, or the restoring of all things.

The Living School [and the CAC as a whole] teaches that this begins with us individually. If it is true that hurting people hurt people, then it must also be true that healing people heal people. Origen (185–254 CE) claimed the skandala—the scars and scandals in our lives—dig out the deep meaning. Our hurts become “health-bestowing wounds,” the source of our individual spiritual genius, which shapes the unique work we are called to do in the world. It’s our wounds that lead to wisdom and teach us, ultimately, how to love and heal the world.

Like Kintsugi—the Japanese method of repairing pottery using gold, silver, or platinum to fill in the cracks—this doesn’t hide our brokenness but makes it beautiful. Thus, we all work to repair the world in a similar way. [1]

Richard emphasizes the importance of beginning with a healing and hopeful image of God:  No one can be more loving than God; it’s not possible. If we understand God as Trinity—the fountain fullness of outflowing love—there’s no theological possibility of any hatred or vengeance in God. Divinity, which is revealed as Love Itself, will always eventually win (John 6:37–39).

(We could read this and the rest of Jn 6 here and discuss…. djr)

We are all saved totally by mercy. God fills in all the gaps. A “geographic” hell or purgatory are unnecessary, though this doesn’t mean there is no time or place for change, growth, and reconciliation.

Knowing this absolute truth ahead of time gives us courage: we don’t need to live out of fear, but from this endlessly available love. Love, grace, and mercy are given undeservedly here, so why would they not be given later as well? Do we have two different gods? One who forgives and teaches a 70 x 7 policy before death, but then counts and punishes every jot and tittle afterward? It just does not work! As Jesus puts it, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living—for to him everyone is alive” (Luke 20:38). In other words, growth, change, and opportunity never cease. [2]

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“Jesus wasn’t talking about how to be good within the framework of a domination system.

He was a critic of the domination system itself.“

– Marcus Borg, NT Scholar and Theologian

One of the things that is subtly interesting to me is how people understand the relationship of Jesus to Empire.

For some, Jesus wants people to be good citizens who pay their taxes to Caesar.  For others, Jesus teaches people to push back against oppressive regimes in creative, non-violent activity.  It is possible that both can be true, but the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teachings ought not be overlooked.

As a member of the Jewish people in a region that was under Roman speaking occupation, it is no wonder that his followers originally believed he would help evict the Roman Empire from the Holy Land.

However, Jesus is not interested in exchanging one dominating empire for another, even if it is one that he is put in charge of.  At every turn, Jesus shows no interest in being a dominating, violent king who replaces Nero.

The Kingdom of God (βασιλεια του θεου) is one that is built upon Beatitudes rather than bullying.  The Kingdom of God is a Pax Christi that includes even enemies rather than a Pax Romani that obliterates opposition.  The ethics of Jesus absolutely critique dominating systems and empires.

CAC teacher Brian McLaren identifies awe and wonder as essential to encountering creation: 

The first pages of the Bible and the best thinking of today’s scientists are in full agreement: it all began in the beginning, when space and time, energy and matter, gravity and light, burst or bloomed or banged into being. In light of the Genesis story, we would say that the possibility of this universe overflowed into actuality as God, the Creative Spirit, uttered the original joyful invitation: Let it be! And in response, what happened? Light. Time. Space. Matter. Motion. Sea. Stone. Fish. Sparrow. You. Me. Enjoying the unspeakable gift and privilege of being here, being alive…. 

The Creator brought it all into being, and now some fourteen billion years later, here we find ourselves: dancers in this beautiful, mysterious choreography that expands and evolves and includes us all. We’re farmers and engineers, parents and students, theologians and scientists, teachers and shopkeepers, builders and fixers, drivers and doctors, dads and moms, wise grandparents and wide-eyed infants.  

Don’t we all feel like poets when we try to speak of the beauty and wonder of this creation? Don’t we share a common amazement about our cosmic neighborhood when we wake up to the fact that we’re actually here, actually alive, right now?… 

The romance of Creator and creation is far more wonderful and profound than anyone can ever capture in words. And yet we try, for how could we be silent in the presence of such beauty, glory, wonder, and mystery? How can we not celebrate this great gift—to be alive?  

To be alive is to look up at the stars…. and to feel the beyond-words awe of space in its vastness. To be alive is to look down from a mountaintop … and to feel the wonder that can only be expressed in “oh” or “wow” or maybe “hallelujah.” To be alive is to look out from the beach toward the horizon at sunrise or sunset and to savor the joy of it all in pregnant, saturated silence. [It’s] to gaze in delight at a single bird, tree, leaf, or friend, and to feel that they whisper of a creator or source we all share.  

Genesis means “beginnings.” It speaks through deep, multilayered poetry and wild, ancient stories. The poetry and stories of Genesis reveal deep truths that can help us be more fully alive today. They dare to proclaim that the universe is God’s self-expression, God’s speech act. That means that everything everywhere is always essentially holy, spiritual, valuable, meaningful. All matter matters…. 

Genesis describes the “very goodness” that comes at the end of a long process of creation…. That harmonious whole is so good that the Creator takes a day off, as it were, just to enjoy it. That day of restful enjoyment tells us that the purpose of existence isn’t money or power or fame or security or anything less than this: to participate in the goodness and beauty and aliveness of creation.

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A Note from Bethany….from Sarah Young

It is my prayer that I may learn to walk in love with friends, family, coworkers, strangers, and those who are difficult to love – the ones who have a lot of rejection or the world see as unloveable. 1 John 4:11, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

In closing I thought I would share something that I have pinned next to my mirror. It’s written on a random piece of paper from over a year ago. At the time I didn’t fully believe the words but oh, I so wanted to. I’m not exactly sure where I got it from, I believe it wrote it down while listening to a particular broadcast on the radio my mom recommended. I treasure the things that I write on random pieces of paper the most. It’s believe it’s the most authentic expression of our heart cry. I’m happy to say that in a year’s time my belief has caught up to my longing. Christ is my everything. You can take away whatever you want, including my body, but nothing will touch what I carry inside. My love relationship with my Savior.

• Christ is my significance
• Christ is my self-worth
• Christ is my security
• Christ is my life

Dear Lord, thank you for giving me life and all that I need to experience it fully! Teach me to always draw my life from you. Amen

I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, and You gave them to me.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) is known for his prophetic action and commitment to “radical amazement.” Theologian Bruce Epperly explains: 

Heschel lived out a holistic balance of delight and awe, radical amazement, and prophetic challenge.

At the heart of Heschel’s mystical vision is the experience of radical amazement.… Wonder is essential to both spirituality and theology: “Awe is a sense for the transcendence.… It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine.” [1]

Wonder leads to the experience of radical amazement at God’s world. Created in the image of God, each of us is amazing. Wonder leads to spirituality and ethics. As Heschel noted, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel.” [2]

Heschel considers the significance of a worldview of radical amazement: 

The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.

All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. 

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery. 

Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. 

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [3]

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1. Teaching

An interesting thing happens in the United States when we cross the calendar threshold of Thanksgiving.

We enter the unofficial season of Frenzy.

Beginning with Thanksgiving, we pack this time of year with loud and outgoing festivities: Black Friday, tree lightings, visits to outdoor malls blasting Mariah Carey, the Christmas holiday itself (often filled with people and yearly rituals), and then we cap it with the raucous New Year celebration.

All with the steady drumbeat of “buy-buy-buy” texturing the energetic soundtrack of the season.

But if we pause, we might notice something else happening: nature all around us is constricting and pulling in, protecting and quieting down.

In this context, it makes sense so many of us feel frazzled and anxious during this season of Frenzy. 

Because we, too, are a part of nature, also made cold by the wind and in need of holding ourselves close.

And yet, we’ve manufactured a season of busyness, social obligations, and energetic outflow, disconnecting ourselves from the softness of our animal bodies.

There is a tension in this – in striving to keep pace with the season of Frenzy while our bodies yearn for slow movement, quiet evenings, and the soft glow of warm fires. 

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2. Questions

1. What is this time of year like for you? How does this tension, if present for you, show up in your body?
2. How were you taught to see yourself as separate and distinct from “the natural world?” What experiences do you have that have broken down or challenged this sense of separateness?

Author Judy Cannato (1949–2011) emphasizes the importance of amazement as the starting point for contemplation.  

In The Silent Cry German theologian Dorothee Sölle [1929–2003] writes “I think that every discovery of the world plunges us into jubilation, a radical amazement that tears apart the veil of triviality.” [1] When the veil is torn apart and our vision is clear there emerges the recognition that all life is connected—a truth not only revealed by modern science but resonant with ancient mystics. We are all one, connected and contained in a Holy Mystery about which, in all its ineffability, we cannot be indifferent.

Sölle maintains that radical amazement is the starting point for contemplation. Often we think of contemplation as a practice that belongs in the realm of the religious, some esoteric advanced stage of prayer that only the spiritually gifted possess. This is not the case…. The nature of contemplation as I describe it here is one that lies well within the capacity of each of us. To use a familiar phrase, contemplation amounts to “taking a long loving look at the real.”…

The contemplative stance that flows out of radical amazement catches us up in love—the Love that is the Creator of all that is, the Holy Mystery that never ceases to amaze, never ceases to lavish love in us, on us, around us.

Cannato names the difficulty we face trying to recognize and hold on to what’s “real”: 

Contemplation is a long loving look at what is real. How often we are fooled by what mimics the real. Indeed, we live in a culture that flaunts the phony and thrives on glittering fabrication. We are so bombarded by the superficial and the trivial that we can lose our bearings and give ourselves over to a way of living that drains us of our humanity. Seduced by the superficial, we lose the very freedom we think all our acquisitions will provide. When we are engaged in the experience and practice of radical amazement, we begin to distinguish between the genuine and the junk. Caught up in contemplative awareness and rooted in love, we begin to break free from cultural confines and embrace the truth that lies at the heart of all reality: We are one.

The invitation to be contemplative is nothing new, but it now carries with it an urgency particular to our time. This call to live contemplatively is offered to everyone. Often we want to relegate such a practice or lifestyle to the “religious” or “spiritual” in our midst, but the simple truth is that we have all been given eyes to see. We simply need to choose to live with vision. What is becoming more apparent by the day is that we must all become contemplatives, not merely in the way we reflect or pray, but in the way we live—awake, alert, engaged, ready to respond in love to the groanings of creation.

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“If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”…..– Rumi

There have been dark times in my own life in which I wondered if there was any good happening.  This line from Rumi rather pierced me as I read it.  Not necessarily because it affirms that I was the light in those situations, but that I MIGHT be the light.

You might be the light in your situation!

And, if we aren’t yet, then there is always the chance to re-orient and to re-ground and become the very light that we think is needed!