The incarnation of the Great Spirit into Her “very good” creation did not begin with the rescue of humans from God’s wrath as Christians envisioned. Jesus, our Rabbi, never taught such a thing.

“It began with She who was the light, first conceiving…giving birth to the notion, and then speaking—” let there be light” — her self into where there had been no need before…and there was light-Her light, Her self. Divine rescue is not the primary purpose of […] Christian faith. Rather than marking the beginning of human salvation, Christianity [and Jesus] can be understood as a high point in a divine initiative [to encourage humans into a Love relationship with Spirit] that goes back […] millennia. It is not an exclusive Christian claim; we discern parallels in all great world religions.”

—O’Murchu 2008, Incarnation. 144-49.

Because of my own dismay with the failure of Christianity, both as a socially helpful institution and as a collection of dusty dogmas unacceptable and distasteful to a faith-filled, thoughtful adult follower of Jesus, I have given much thought to the paradox of the Christian community over the years. While I harbor a sentimental longing for what I imagine it could be or might have been, based on one positive experience as a youth. What I witnessed (and never saw again) is far from the church’s current reality. Christianity is no longer a credible witness to the Spirit’s initiative in creation or to the teaching of Her prophets, Her Mystics, Messiah Jesus, the Prophets of Israel, and, in the misguided claim on truth exclusive of the Buddha (600 years before Jesus), the wisdom writers of the Upanishads and the mythology of the Gida (some 3,000 years before Jesus), or the secular and deeply spiritual Wisdom of the Tao de Ching, or ‘the Classic of the way and it’s power’ by Laozi, pronounced Lao Su (3,000 years before Jesus). My point here is that the ‘Perennial Wisdom Tradition,’ in which I find my home, is much, much older than Christianity and affirms the teaching of our good Rabbi that belongs to the tradition. The Holy Spirit has been active in the hearts and minds of the human kind since the beginning of human consciousness.

Passerby, I want to be clear here. I measure the worthiness of all things when compared to the teachings and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. He is, and always has been, my guy, my teacher, and my authority. The church is far more interested in preserving itself for its own sake than in being ‘the Light to the World’, as the followers of Jesus, but as our good Rabbi taught, “If you seek to save your life, you will lose it (Matthew 16:25),” the church is losing its life.

“The narrow reductionism of the formal Christian era is increasingly seen as a dangerous, myopic, sectarian dead end. It is much more about human imperialism than the liberating power of divine grace.”

—Diramuid O’Murchu, Incarnation. Pp 39-40.

I entirely appreciate O’Murchu’s sentiment about the unhappy state of Christianity in the above statement. His language elsewhere describes what the prophet Jesus was calling into being. What exists in my experience is not it.

As I have noted, the church is not in need of a reformation. It is in need of resurrection! And obviously, nothing is resurrected until it first dies. There is much about the current institution that must die for the vision of its namesake and his father’s vision to live. I have spoken elsewhere at length about the errant wrong turns to the left or the right taken by the church in its adolescence. Now let’s talk about what resurrection for the people of the way might look like. Several points must be addressed. I briefly suggest how each may be realized. And reference what I accept as a teaching of Jesus (convinced that all sayings attributed to Jesus in the multiple gospels are not actually Jesus).

Claire had a prophetic dream in which she was called upon to speak a ‘word from the Lord to a large congregation. At first, she didn’t know what to say, and we decided that she should say what came to her once the opportunity presented itself. When it was her turn in the pulpit, the Spirit gave her few words. “You are gonna have to die.” she stepped down from the pulpit and left the building. Met outside by one of the church elders, he lamented, “But, I’m so old…” “Yes,” she said, “and it is time to die.”

Practicing or believing error for a very long time does not justify it. We must learn to say no—and no more—to many things we once blindly accepted. And we will need to say yes to things once shunned.

• • •

No to Power Over, Yes to Fully Submitted to One Another’s Healing

The first to die must be the desire for Power. Power over others is the foundation of political Empires. In this case, the Roman Empire. Power became the foundation of the Christian church when the church became the Empire instead of the Jesus movement, and Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, became the ‘head,’ or power over the church. A condition that remains today in many expressions. For example, the king or queen of England remains today the head of the Anglican Church, and Lutheran, the state religion of Germany, supported by the state, and so on. To justify these unholy compromises, the concept of the divine rule of the monarch (monarchs rule over the church by the will of god) was conceived, derived from the shaky history of Israel’s monarchy. The nefarious relationship of Israel’s state religion with its kings is a longer conversation for another time.

As I discussed at length previously, Rabbi Jesus taught exactly the opposite. He had control over no one, even when it was offered (Matthew 4:1-11, Jn 6:15), and likewise, we are to exercise power over or control of no one even if it is offered to us. So…how might a community of Jesus followers be when, following the teaching of our Rabbi, no one “lords it over” any other one?

Mutual Submission

I could invite all to a relationship of being mutually
and fully submitted to one another’s healing.

And that would be friendship, and friendship is what Paul was encouraging the Ephesians to embrace (Ephesians 5:21); and what Jesus extended to his followers when he said:

“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

—John 15:15

Western culture imagines friendship as a lower-level relationship.
For Jesus, friendship was the highest order of connection.

Friends are equals, and they meet in the emotional and cultural middle, where there is no question of power over or hierarchy, ever, or it is not friendship. It is something else entirely. The foundation of friendship, as defined by Jesus, is submission. Each intentionally and materially, not theoretically, puts the needs of the other above their own. Literally, your friends eat before you do. This is precisely what Jesus showed by the life he chose to live and the death he chose to die.

Mutually beneficial submission produces true equality. The common and mistaken thinking about equality assumes that excellence must go unrecognized and all must be reduced to the lowest common denominator, like in communism. But, in the reign of the Spirit, the best of us conclude they are one with the least of us in all things, and there is equality.

• • •

No to professional clergy, yes to
“equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.”

The professional clergy established power over the people by teaching that only they could administer the sacraments, and receiving sacrament was access to god’s forgiveness—Yes, to an unmediated relationship with Holiness.

The Spirit will raise up from the midst of the followers, shepherds, leaders, teachers, and organizers as needed (Ephesians 4:11). We will need to continue to educate those called to teach and shepherd, not as authority figures but for the purpose of “equipping the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12).” We followers will need to grow up and get over the misguided notion of placing the responsibility for the quality of our relationship with Holiness on the shoulders of a patriarchal appointee. I used to advise young appointees to be careful;

they will put you on a pedestal if you please them,
and they will take the ladder away.

It’s a lonely way to die.

No to mandatory belief systems or Dogma as the condition of inclusion.

When one of Claire’s cousins expressed an interest in attending a local fundamentalist congregation in her hometown, she was presented with a 45-page document detailing what she must affirm before she might become a member. She didn’t read it. She was looking for friendship and found precisely documented exclusion instead.

I propose one aspiration:

followers become friends by means of
a shared affinity for the teachings of Rabbi Jesus.

No mandatory belief systems or Dogma as the condition of relationship. My intention is the inclusion of anyone and the exclusion of no one. I initially read this minimalist understanding, which I whole -heartedly agree with, in the book by Brian McClaren, ‘The Great Spiritual Migration,’ which documents the ongoing exodus of ‘members’ from their churches. Brian is the dean of faculty at the CAC.

No to Sacrifice as the means of right relationship with Her.

Passerby, I recently did a quick search for Bible texts that state that YHWH did not initiate sacrifice as the means of forgiveness and, thereby, relationship to him. I got 33 hits. Here is the list.