{"id":16717,"date":"2018-05-07T09:54:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T13:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16717"},"modified":"2018-05-07T10:39:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:39:34","slug":"reality-is-communion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16717","title":{"rendered":"Reality Is Communion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SagXdu70yF4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>Reality Is Communion<\/strong><br \/>\nSunday, May 6, 2018<\/p>\n<p>In the beginning God says, \u201cLet us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves\u201d (Genesis 1:26). The use of the plural pronoun here seems to be an amazing, deep time intuition of what Christians would later call the Trinity\u2014the revelation of the nature of God as community, as relationship itself, a Mystery of perfect giving and perfect receiving, both within God and outside of God. The Body of Christ is another metaphor for this bonding. \u201cReality as communion\u201d is the template and pattern for our entire universe, from atoms to galaxies, and certainly in human community.<br \/>\nWe come to know who God is through exchanges of mutual knowing and loving. God\u2019s basic method of communicating God\u2019s self is not the \u201csaved\u201d individual, the rightly informed believer, or even a person with a career in ministry, but the journey and bonding process that God initiates in community: in marriages, families, tribes, nations, schools, organizations, and churches who are seeking to participate in God\u2019s love, maybe without even consciously knowing it.<br \/>\nCommunity seems to be God\u2019s strategy and God\u2019s leaven inside the dough of creation. It is both the medium and the message. It is both the beginning and the goal: \u201cMay they all be one . . . so the world may believe it was you who sent me . . . that they may be one as we are one, with me in them and you in me\u201d (see John 17:21, 23).<br \/>\nThomas Merton wrote, \u201cThe Christian is not merely \u2018alone with the Alone\u2019 in the Neoplatonic sense, but he is One with all his \u2018brothers [and sisters] in Christ.\u2019 His inner self is, in fact, inseparable from Christ and hence it is in a mysterious and unique way inseparable from all the other \u2018I\u2019s\u2019 who live in Christ, so that they all form one \u2018Mystical Person,\u2019 which is \u2018Christ.\u2019\u201d [1]<br \/>\nThere is no other form for the Christian life except a common one. Until and unless Christ is experienced as a living relationship between people, the Gospel remains largely an abstraction. Until Christ is passed on personally through faithfulness and forgiveness, through concrete bonds of union, I doubt whether he is passed on by words, sermons, institutions, or ideas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Church as Living Organism<\/strong><br \/>\nMonday, May 7, 2018<\/p>\n<p>The Apostle Paul\u2019s teaching is deeply incarnational, yet this has often not been recognized. Paul sees that the Gospel message must have concrete embodiment, which he calls \u201cchurches.\u201d Jesus\u2019 first vision of church is so simple we miss it: \u201ctwo or three gathered in my name\u201d (Matthew 18:20), \u201cand I am with you\u201d (which is just as strong a statement of presence as in the bread and wine of communion). This is surely why Jesus insists that the message be communicated not by the lone evangelist but sends the disciples out \u201ctwo by two\u201d (Mark 6:7). The individual alone is not a fitting communicator of the core message, and I am not either. (I am blessed to be part of a supportive Franciscan community that gives me the structural and financial freedom to teach and write. Through editing and technology, the Center for Action and Contemplation fully brings my messages to readers and listeners. I certainly could not do it alone!)<\/p>\n<p>During Paul\u2019s lifetime, the Christian church was not yet an institution or a centrally organized set of common practices and beliefs. It was a living organism that communicated the Gospel primarily through relationships. This fits with Paul\u2019s understanding of Christ as what we might call an energy field, a set of relationships inside of which we can live with integrity. Today\u2019s support or recovery groups are good examples of these relationships.<\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is \u201cthe Body of Christ\u201d: \u201cJust as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all those parts make up a single body, so it is with Christ\u201d (1 Corinthians 12:12). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the whole community, although each in different ways, is \u201cthe love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit\u201d (Romans 5:5).<\/p>\n<p>This Spirit is itself the foundational energy of the universe, the Ground of All Being, described in the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:2). Union is not just spiritual poetry, but the very concrete work of God. It is how God makes love to what God created. Paul writes that it is precisely \u201cin your togetherness that you are Christ\u2019s Body\u201d (1 Corinthians 12:27, JB). By remaining\u2014against all trials and resistance\u2014inside this luminous web of relationship, this vibrational state of love, we experience a very honest and healthy notion of salvation. If you are trying to do it alone and apart, it is not salvation at all, but very well disguised self-interest.<\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s communities are his audiovisual aids that he can point to inside of a debauched empire (where human dignity was never upheld as inherent), to give credibility to his message. To people who asked, \u201cWhy should we believe there\u2019s a new or different life possible?\u201d Paul could say, \u201cLook at these people. They\u2019re different. This is a different social order.\u201d In Christ, \u201cthere are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus\u201d (Galatians 3:28, JB). This is not just a religious idea, but a socioeconomic message that began to change the world\u2014and still can.<\/p>\n<p>For Jesus, such teachings as forgiveness, healing, and justice work are the only real evidence of a new and shared life. If we do not see this happening in churches and spiritual communities (but merely the conducting of worship services or meditation sits), religion is \u201call in the head\u201d and largely an illusion. Peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not some kind of ticket to heaven later. They are the price of peoplehood\u2014the signature of heaven\u2014now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p> Jesus Calling&#8230;&#8230;..MAY 7 IF YOU LEARN TO TRUST ME\u2014really trust Me\u2014with your whole being, then nothing can separate you from My Peace. Everything you endure can be put to good use by allowing it to train you in trusting Me. This is how you foil the works of evil, growing in grace through the very adversity that was meant to harm you. Joseph was a prime example of this divine reversal, declaring to his brothers: \u201cYou meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.\u201d Do not fear what this day, or any day, may bring your way. Concentrate on trusting Me and on doing what needs to be done. Relax in My sovereignty, remembering that I go before you, as well as with you, into each day.<\/p>\n<p>Fear no evil, for I can bring good out of every situation you will ever encounter. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. \u2014ISAIAH 26:4 <\/p>\n<p>As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. \u2014GENESIS 50:20 NASB <\/p>\n<p>Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. \u2014PSALM 23:4<\/p>\n<p>Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling &#8211; Deluxe Edition Pink Cover: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (Jesus Calling\u00ae) (p. 134). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reality Is Communion Sunday, May 6, 2018 In the beginning God says, \u201cLet us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves\u201d (Genesis 1:26). The use of the plural pronoun here seems to be an amazing, deep time intuition of what Christians would later call the Trinity\u2014the revelation of the nature of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16717"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16717"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16722,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16717\/revisions\/16722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}