Wisdom's Cry

Throughout my life, I have always had a special devotion to St Anthony the Abbot. I often suffer from terrible nightmares and fierce doubts. I am a living testament to the fact that the dark night of the soul is not always a once in a lifetime experience.

When I have these dark moments, it has always helped me to remember the example of St Anthony in the desert. He found faith in the darkness and his life has inspired me to do the same.

Holy St Anthony, help us in our times doubt, trial, and temptation to weather the storms that assail our spirits. Help us to endure, and cleanse ourselves so we might find God through prayer as you did. Teach us to pray. Amen.

Why did Jesus have to die? Was Jesus’ death a sacrifice to an angry God, or was it something else?

Whether or not Jesus died as a human sacrifice to a God of Wrath all blood boils down to the answer to one question very important to the answer to a single question: If there was no sin, would Jesus have been crucified?

The Orthodox answer is yes. On the Cross, Jesus stood on the threshold to mediate between us and God. Now follow me closely. On the cross, he stands between live and death, faith and doubt, hope and fear, pain and release, God and humanity. In this singular act, he mediates between all these opposites and shows the way to Life. The cross is the gate to the sheepfold.

Christ is the Word of God, nailed up as an edict from the Eternal Father for us to read and therein find the Son of Man and the Son of God pointing us to our true Humanity and the true Divinity.

Christ is the manifest book of Life in which the Mind of God is made know. “This is the book which no one found possible to take, since it was reserved for him who will take it and be slain. No one was able to be manifest from those who believed in salvation as long as that book had not appeared. For this reason, the compassionate, faithful Jesus was patient in his sufferings until he took that book, since he knew that his death meant life for many. Just as in the case of a will which has not yet been opened, for the fortune of the deceased master of the house is hidden, so also in the case of the All which had been hidden as long as the Father of the All was invisible and unique in himself, in whom every space has its source. For this reason Jesus appeared. He took that book as his own. He was nailed to a cross. He affixed the edict of the Father to the cross (The Gospel of Truth).”

This is the glory of God, that in seeing Christ crucified, all of our fears and doubts are brought out of us. We fear death, yet we look upon the one who died and yet lived. We fear pain, yet we look upon one who was nailed to a cross. We fear that God will forsake us, yet we hear God cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All of our fears become clear at the cross.

In the Round Dance of the Cross, we see Jesus after the last supper signing a hymn of praise and dancing with his disciples. In the Hymn he sings, he declares the pairs of opposites that he mediates between. It is in these paradoxes that we find the mystery of the Cross. From death, many are born.

Jesus on the the cross, returns the Tree of Life to those who will eat its fruit. This is the tree of unity, where the pairs of opposites are knit together.

The idea of Christ sacrificed for moral outrages that offend God is not an idea found in the gospels. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not the sins of the world (John 1:29). The sin of the world is that we forget God.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shewed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom 1: 16-21).

These verse are often taken out of their context to make a moralistic argument that Paul was not. The point of the text is that through Christ crucified, the knowledge of God is given through faith to those who believe. Those who do not have darkened their hearts to the light of God.

Behold, Jesus hung on the Tree of Life as its first fruit.

The Crucifixion offends our senses in every way. We like things to make sense. Why did Christ have to die? To show us the way to the Father by demonstrating the way between all of the pairs of opposites that frighten us and distract us from God.

In the Crucifixion, we see our lives and our deaths. We see all of our hopes and fear coexisting as they do in life. Peace, ground luminance, basic goodness, what ever you want to call it exists at the same time as the horror of our life.

Suddenly, we realize that when Christ called out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was singing the twenty-second Psalm. He was praising the God that would lift him up.

Once we see the way through the pairs of opposites, we sing:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain (Gal 2:20-21).

On the cross he unfurled the edict of the Eternal Father, so the invisible, unknown God may now be known.

Now, none can say that they have found God, for it is through Christ that God is made manifest to us all. None can boast that they have found the truth, and they agree with the apostle:

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Gal 6:14).

We have been talking a lot about the nature of God and the most fundamental beliefs of the the faith of the prophets and mystics. Of the hundreds if not thousands of ways we could take the discussion of the nature of the Deity, I have decided to continue my posts inspired by Brian McLaren’s a Generous Orthodoxy.

In the book, McLaren describes the God he sees in creation in a simple yet profound way.

God is a:

a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love (a Generous Orthodoxy, 85).

This is a phrase for meditation and quiet contemplation in the night. We have already talked about Rabbi David A Cooper’s image of God as a Verb (see this post). This notion of God is very close to the glimpses of Providence we get in our everyday life, but McLaren has found a way to describe our encounter with the Divine.

Unified

The testimony of the Prophets reveals to us a God that is One. On the night before he was crucified, our Lord prayed:

That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:21).

It is our mission to reconcile all to God and to spread the word that we are one in Christ, and one in God. We are one human family, in fact, we are one terrestrial family. This is where our impulse for peacemaking and conservation arise.

Many people confuse the unity of God is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the history in monotheism. There is but one God, called by many names. There are no other Gods. Once we realize this, our tribalism melts away and we realize the commonality of all faiths.

Eternal

As Joseph Campbell said:

Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There’s a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. ‘All life is sorrowful’ is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.

Moyers: That’s a pessimistic note.

Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it’s great this way. It’s the way God intended it (Power of Myth).

Eternity is a present reality that we tend to ignore. Through prayer and meditation we learn to reside in this eternal now, and through mindfulness we learn to live with in it. In so doing, we are learning to practice the presence of God.

Relational Community/Family/Society/Entity

God is most clearly seen in the relations of things to one another. We see God in the heart of all living. We find God as Father/Protector, Mother/Nurturer, Sibling/Believer, and Child/Actions.

The God we see through providence is the Unknowable Father, the one whose name has never been soiled by human language.

In nature and times of trouble, we rest in the nurturing Spirit as our Divine Mother.

In every believer, we see Christ in them as our Brother and Sister in the Lord.

Through our actions and the actions of the faithful, we see God as Child, the one who is conceived in us upon conversion, and who through our lives we bring into the world.

Corporately, we as the church are the body of Christ. We see God in the hearts of all people.

This is the Living God who is with his people and frees them from fear and torment through his marvelous grace.

Saving Love

The power of God is intimate love and peace we find as we rest in the arms of the Godhead in liturgy and meditation. This Saving Love is the power of Christ to deliver us from Satan’s power.

In all things, we worship the Living God.

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain`also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent:

Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; whereof he has given assurance unto all men, in that he has raised him from the dead (Acts 17:28-31)

We have followed the star to the new born Christ, and behold the one in whom God is made manifest to the world. We stand by the river Jordan and watch the skies open as the dove descends upon our Lord. We drink the wine at the wedding at Cana and marvel at the one who produced it. We celebrate the revelation of the Lord.

This is the day when we remember the revelation of God to humankind, but how can we celebrate the revelation the one who:

Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne (PS 97:2).

This is the God of whom Solomon says:

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter (Pr 25:2).

While I do not believe that anyone can every describe or define God in any great detail, I believe that God can be found be those who seek him out. All religion is an attempt for us to put these experiences in words. God is hidden from us by the minutia of our lives. Anyone can find God by relaxing, and coming to the present moment fully aware. This is the glory of mindfulness.

Creation Spirituality talks about the four paths to encountering God. As Matthew Fox answers the question, “Where can God be found?”

In the Via Positiva. In awe, wonder, and mystery of nature and all beings, each of whom is a ‘word of God,’ a ‘mirror of God that glistens and glitters,’ as Hildegard of Bingen put it. This is Path One (Creation Spirituality 18)

This is the path most people find to God. Sitting in the awe of nature, we feel our interconnectedness with all things. This interbeing is the purest connection we have with the Divine.

We can find God in music, art, or anything that instills within us a deep sense of Awe.

Where else can God be found?

“In the Via Negativa. In darkness and nothingness, in the silence and emptying, in the letting go and letting be, and in the pain and suffering that constitute an equally real part of our spiritual journey. This is Path Two (Creation Spirituality 18).”

This is the path of the Buddha- the path of silence meditation. Most of us what to reject this aspect of life, but it is an equal part of existence, and the most universal.

The Buddha himself reminds us of the only things we can ever know for sure, that we exist and that we are interconnected with all things. There is not an atom in our body that did not come from another creature, plant, or long lost star. It is in this lack of separate self that we find the Ground of All Being.

Where else can God be found?

“In the Via Creativa. In our generativity we co-create with God; in our imaginative output, we trust our images enough to birth them and ride them into existence. This is Path Three (Creation Spirituality 18).”

This is the path of Rumi- the path of art and co-creation. The Via Creativa is the very beating heart of the sacrament of Art as Meditation. In trusting our own creativity, we come closer to God. We learn how to be bearers of Christ into the world like those who came before us.

“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19),” as the apostle said, we find God through trusting our generatively.

Where else can God be found?

“In the Via Transformativa. In the relief of suffering, in the combating of injustice, in the struggle for homeostasis, for balance in society and history, and in the celebration that happens when persons struggling for justice and trying to live in mutuality come together to praise and give thanks for the gift of being and being together. This is Path Four (Creation Spirituality 18).”

This is the path of Gandhi and Dr King, the path of satyagraha. In community and common cause, when find God. As David prayed, “Yours, O LORD is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all (1Chr 29:11).” Wherever we see greatness, we see God. Wherever we see glory, power, victory, or majesty, we see God. When ever we see love, charity, grace, mercy or any of the Divine attributes, we see God.

These are the paths to God we have learned, the paths that we walk every day. They are as natural as breathing. There is nothing more simple than our experiences of God and learning to trust them.

Blessed Mother Seton is very close to my heart. When I lived in Maryland, I would visit her Shrine at least once a week. I am also the custodian of a First Class Relic of this most holy saint. Reading her Journals and other writings touches me in a very special way.

As an adult convert to Catholicism, her insights are in some ways deeper than those who grew up within the religion. He compassion and tender heart is a model to us all, and her intercession and loving protection of those who have called upon her as our spiritual mother. She is the first native born American Saint, and her family was involve in the establishment of this republic.

Holy Mother Seton look over this land and pray to the Father for us that we will live God to the world and learn to be humble and meek. Pray for us that we might become the peacemakers that Christ has called up all to be. Amen.

In Christ Jesus, the world met someone who radically challenged their views of God. The God of Jesus is something the world had never seen before.

He is our Daddy, or Abba as Jesus called him. This God is so close and dear to us that we can call him Daddy. This is very different from the aloof, distant gods the were discussed previously.

This God cares about how we treat one another, and not in a legalistic or moralistic way that previous visions of God had described. The God of Jesus judges us by how we treat the unfortunate, the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the homeless.

In Jesus himself, this caring God is met in a very real and powerful way.

Domine Iesu Christe, Filii Dei, miserere mei, peccatoris.

Lately, I have noticed that the Jesus Prayer has been spontaneously popping out of my mouth. I don’t even notice that it is happening until it is happening.

It has become so common to refer to Jesus as the Son of God that I think most of us have never stopped to consider what it means.

McLaren suggests that the phrase “Son of God” is the same as saying “Embodying God (80),” or “Embodying the Essence of God (80).” But it is almost as important to ask what the word God means before we can discover the meaning of “Son of God.”

Rabbi David A. Cooper found the most brilliant way I have ever seen to discuss God:

“The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as ‘be-ing,’ as verb rather than noun. Perhaps we would understand this concept better if we renamed God. We might call It God-ing… [Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi] suggests that God-ing is a mutually interactive verb, one which entails an interdependency between two subjects, each the object of the other (God is a Verb, 69).

When we begin to think about God in this way, then what does that mean about Jesus as Son of God. If “Son of God” means “Embodying God,” then Jesus is the embodiment of this mutually interactive being. or as McLaren puts it:

God is “a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love (85).”

If we look at Jesus, his life and his teachings, it is plain and easy to see that he is the embodiment of this God. Nothing can ever be more clear.

You may want to skip ahead and then come back to this paragraph. I don’t want you to think I am saying something that I am not: I think heaven and hell do not play a large enough issue for the followers of Jesus.

I know what you are thinking. There he goes, I knew this was coming, Fire and brimstone, but it is not what you think. I am not talking about a hell in the hereafter to which few will fall, I am talking about the hell that we ignore everyday.

Heaven and Hell, like the Kingdom of God itself is with us even now. Look at the turmoil in the world, the wars, the famines, and plagues. As Joseph Campbell said, “Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us (Power of Myth, 39).” It is all here set before our eyes. When we looks into the war ravaged regions on the world, we are looking into hell. But even in these places, it is possible to find sights of heaven.

We forget the Good News that Christ came to tell us:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said,

The kingdom of God comes not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:20-21).

The Kingdom is here. This is the Gospel according to Christ (Matt 4:23; Mark 1:14), the Kingdom is nigh at hand.

This is the work of the faithful, to live in the Kingdom and reconcile the world. This is why Jesus’ teachings are about helping others. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world (James 1:27).” Truly, we are to save others from this present hell:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and you gave me meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you clothed me: I was sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you an hungry, and fed you? or thirsty, and gave you drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and took you in? or naked, and clothed you? Or when did we see you sick, or in prison, and came unto you?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and you gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and you visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,or in prison, and did not minister unto you?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal (Matt 25:31-46).

These are the standards of Christ our Lord. Too few Christians these days. The modern church has become obsessed with the private lives of people and forgotten about standards of Jesus.

So I do believe that we should talk more about Heaven and Hell, in the same way our Lord did.

It is hard to think about Abel without thinking about his brother and his martyrdom. I think it is more interesting to try to focus on Abel himself. This is the only person Jesus ever called righteous (Matt 23:35). We know so little about him.

“And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering (Gen 4:4):”

Other than his birth and his death, this is all we know about Abel. He simply gave the best he had to the Lord and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

Is this the only thing that made Abel righteous in the eyes of our Lord?

No, Abel is also a model of nonviolence, ahimsa, satyagraha whatever you want to call it. When he was attacked, he did not return violence for violence. Instead, he chose, like the Buddha after him, to have the the earth testify to the truth.

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel your brother?

And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?

And he said, What have you done? the voice of your brother’s blood cries unto me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand; When you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shall you be in the earth (Gen 4:8-12).

Like all the truly righteous, Abel left vengeance to the Lord. Never did he act out of hate or violence. He trusted in the Truth to avenge him, as it always does.

Holy Abel, first martyr, pray for us that we may learn humility and meekness from you. May we rely on the power of Truth to justify us, and not give into the darkness of our heart. Guide us in the way of peace, till the Kingdom comes. Amen.

I have been reading Brian D. McLaren’s, a Generous Orthodoxy, and it has really been making me think a lot about my faith. At the end of each chapter, he asks numerous questions, and I have been learning a lot about the faith I actually believe.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing with you my answers to his questions. I invite and encourage you to read the book and share your answers too. We discern the voice of the Spirit in the witness of the faithful.

McLaren begins by talking about the Many Jesuses he has known in his life. I thought I should use his labels (and one of mine) and share my own story.

The Conservative Protestant Jesus

I grew up in a Baptist home. My grandfather and great grandfather were both Baptist ministers. I used to go up to talk about the Bible with my great grandmother all the time. I would read the story and we would talk about the text. In many ways, some of my happiest and most disturbing memories of religion come from this period of my life.

The happy memories are all with my family and Brother John. The disturbing ones are memories I don’t like to dwell on for very long. I attended a Baptist school… the teachers prided themselves on scaring the children. They constantly threatened us with corporal punishment, and gruesome stories about the tortures of hell that awaited us if we did not behave exactly as we were told… The other more despicable things they did, I will not go into.

The Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus

The next phase of my life started after we moved to Maryland and I saw Pat Robertson on the TV for the first time. I was young, and the God he talked about was God of Magic and Might. It was easy to how this cosmic Super Savior would appeal to a young kid. This Jesus is not only superheroic, but he will include you in his circle of super friends. It was like magic, and I wanted that magic so bad. There was only one problem: I am gay.

I have known this since I was about 7 or 8, but I never new what the word for it was until Pat Robertson defined the word and said that all people like that were going to hell… Imagine my horror. The Baptist school I used to go to had burned images of hell into my mind.

This initiated what was for me the worst period of self-loathing, an act I was assured made me pious. I often thought about killing myself. If God hated people like me, maybe God would reward me if I took myself out. It all seemed so natural.

One night, I decided to do it. I went into the kitchen to get a knife to do the deed, but luckily I met:

The Roman Catholic Jesus

Over the silverware drawer, I found a copy of a book my cousin gave me, The Secret of the Rosary, by St Louis de Montfort. The preface of the Black Rose promised that even the darkest sorcerer with one foot in hell could be saved if they said the Rosary faithfully. So instead of killing myself, I prayed the Rosary for the first time in my life.

It was amazing. I began to pray it everyday and read the other works by St Louis de Montfort. Soon I was asked to leave the small nondenominational church that I attended for wearing a crucifix. I started taking classes and walking to church every Sunday for Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.

I would often go up to the Shrine of St Elizabeth Anne Seton to pray.

The Charismatic Catholic Jesus

One summer, I went to live with my sister in Pennsylvania to watch my niece. While I was there I encountered the Charismatic Catholic movement. It was amazing. I will never forget the profound experiences I had that summer.

Imagine the ritualism of Catholicism and the exuberance of Pentecostalism mixed together into a single thing. This summer changed my life.

The Eastern Orthodox Jesus

By the end of the Summer I found the Philokalia and the Way of the Pilgrim. I began saying the Jesus Prayer in addition to the Rosary, and hunting down more books on the Eastern Orthodox faith.

What impressed me the most was with the way one book answered the question: if Adam and Eve had never tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, would Jesus have still been crucified?

The answer was amazing to me. Yes, it is in the crucifixion that Christ was hung on the border of faith and doubt, hope and fear, life and death- at the very transit of every pair of opposites and points the way to God through it all. Wow! The Crucifixion as a love letter to humankind. How refreshing.

The Liberal Protestant Jesus

As was almost inevitable I began my own quest for the historical Jesus. I read everything I could get my hands on. The numerous gospels and works of the early church. I began studying the various expressions of the early church as it struggled to express their encounter with the Risen Christ.

I was amazed that doctrine was regional. Creeds varied so much from place to place as did the books that were considered Scripture. I began to see these expressions as a mosaic. The more disillusioned I became with the church, the more attracted I was to the God of Paul Tillich, Bishop Spong, and Marcus Borg.

The Jesus of the Oppressed

Then I discovered Matthew Fox. His writings about the Cosmic Christ and Creation Spiritually completely transformed me and my faith. In his call for a new reformation, I found my spiritual home. This Jesus speaks with the same voice as the one I meet in the gospels, and helps me to Live God into the world every day.

These are the Seven Jesuses I have known in my life. They are different from the ones McLaren met in his life, but the lessons that I took away are very similar. It left me looking for a relational Divinity who is truly present with me in my life.