Easter, 2017 (1)
Apr 16, 2017
Easter, 2017 (1)
“Father, forgive them,
For they do not know what they are doing.”
Luke 23:24 (NIV)
I will take a break from the Sermon on the Mount and talk about Easter. It may seem strange to quote Jesus words from the cross for Easter, when we are celebrating the resurrection, and not the passion and death of Jesus. But we need to understand who and what Jesus was doing to appreciate the resurrection. I will be talking about the death of Jesus and how he approached this critical moment in life from the viewpoint of Jesus, the human point of the Christ, at this particular moment on history.
What I am saying may seem like heresy, but is a long accepted “Alternative Orthodoxy” taught by the Franciscans since the 13th century. This minority view of the life and death of Jesus was articulated by Bonaventure (designated a ‘Father of the Church’) and John Duns Scotus (who argued extensively with Thomas Aquinas), both from the 13th century, where they articulated the force behind the life of St. Francis of Assisi.
The Christian church had been usurped by the Emperor Constantine in the year 312, and went from the basic teaching of Jesus that served the poor and the “out” folks (the bottom up approach) to the kingly and emperor approach (the top down approach) where it by and large has remained unto today. We have treated Jesus as King, even though he strongly disagreed with that, even going so far as vanishing when they tried to make him king by force. (“Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.” – John 6:15) Jesus came to serve, not to be served.
Jesus never said worship me, but follow me. As I have said before, it is easy to worship Jesus, but exceeding difficult to follow him. I will make an even bolder statement: Jesus was not God. Only when combined with the nature of the Christ, in the Trinity, to dance the dance with what we have named the Father and the Holy Spirit; it is in the combined nature of the Trinity we find the God we have proclaimed as the All in All (see 1 Corinthians 15:28). We have spent two millennia trying to make Jesus God, so we would not have to follow him. Following Jesus requires us to change our very nature to be one with the Jesus on the cross, who said to his crucifiers (and to all of us), “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Jesus thus became the victim, the lowest of all; spat upon and treated like a criminal, even though all he did was tell us we must change our behavior and our very thinking process to reach the kingdom of
God. The greatest crime Jesus did was refuse to be their physical king, someone who would lead them to victory in a physical battle and war over their oppressors, which would glorify the ego. We are superior to them! Not, as Jesus said, we are one with them; all are one, no one is superior.
Jesus came to tell us that it was time to start to change our thinking, to look at the beauty and wonders of our world and see the presence of God in every portion of creation. It is that presence in all of creation that we call the Christ, from the big bang of the start of the universe 13.7 billion years ago to the fading of the universe 100 billion years in the future.
The death of Jesus became the moment of joining his physical being with the universality of the Christ, and that moment was summed up by the words of forgiveness, as all of creation was lifted up into the Christ to become one, as the gospel of John tells in the last discourse (see John 17). Time is not of essence, and all of creation, from the Big Bang to the dissolution of the universe, was joined in that moment.
This Jesus became Jesus the Christ, or Jesus Christ for short.
This cry of eternal forgiveness is the call for us to choose to become, not just in a subconscious way as we are today, but consciously, to be one with all, to see that indeed we are only one spirit, joined with the Christ for eternity. Physicality is a time to choose, to wake up as to who we really are. We are, as is all of creation, one with the Christ, part of the light that came to illuminate the world as stated in the opening monolog of John’s gospel.
It has taken 2000 years for humanity to move to the point where these words can begin to make sense. Almost all can now read, communication is plentiful, and the seeds of the word are spread throughout the world in many forms, not only in Christianity.
It is time for those seeds sown 2000 years ago “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” to become real in our world. We need to stand with all who see the wonders of our world and all it proclaims, no matter if they believe in a God or not, or how they address the God of their understanding, and shout together:
FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY K NOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.
Maybe, just maybe, our numbers will grow in time, so that indeed, the kingdom of God will be seen by all.
Meditation
Oh great Wisdom, I bow before your patience and Love. You have waited 70,000 years for this moment to occur. 4000 years ago You began the great awakening, and 2000 years ago You introduced the one who would plant the seeds. It is only today that conditions have joined together to make possible to start of the unlocking of the Wisdom that is in our world. I am filled with gratitude for all that has occurred, and am grateful for the opportunity to see the beginning of the next evolution. I ask only to see Your Love that fills all, to let my eyes be opened to the Kingdom of God that lies within and without. I am grateful for all, and I thank You for life, life extraordinary.
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