Easter VII - A

May 24, 2020

“In Christ”

St. John 17:1-11

Cosmos:  A Space Time Odyssey is a documentary show in the tradition of Carl Sagan.  Astrophysicist Neil DE Grasse Tyson narrates the program.  It is a fascinating look at how we came to be. 

One program began with Tyson standing next to a tree and announcing:

“The only difference between me and this tree are a few changes in DNA.”

The show went on to describe the miraculous connected-ness of all living things not only on earth but throughout the cosmos.  A slight variation in DNA creates a myriad of diversity in the universe. 

Although a science show it portrays a physical and mystical connection that we share with all of life.  We are indeed creatures made of stardust, water, and light.

The Gospel reading from John is a prayer that Jesus prayed just before entering into his suffering and death.  It is known as the High Priestly Prayer shared for all who followed him.

Before we enter more deeply into this Gospel reading we need to realize that there was quite a diversity of views about Jesus in the early days of Christianity. 

All too often we only see Jesus through the filter of Western Christianity.  That filter has left some significant aspects of Jesus behind.

In John’s Gospel we are hearing from an Eastern wisdom Jewish mystic Zen Jesus.  I will have more to say about that, but first a story.

“There is a story that supposedly is true about a school board in the heart of the Bible Belt wrestling with whether or not to institute a foreign language curriculum in its high school.  After heated discussion, the debate was finally brought to an end by one board member who stood up and said:

“No way!  If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for my son.””

We can laugh - but it might be a nervous laugh because we like the Lord’s Prayer and the 23^rd Psalm in the old King James Version.  If I played a recording of the Lord’s Prayer in the original Aramaic it would not only sound foreign – but some might say Islamic.

[Source: The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault, pages 13-15]

Through the centuries Jesus has been reshaped by Western Christianity.  There are some good things about that namely some Spirit led insights that kept the church going.  But there are some layers that need to be peeled away to be able to better listen to the Jesus of the Gospels.

Jesus was a Near East event – a Jewish wisdom figure who taught in parables and riddles much like any Zen master in the East.  Jesus was a Jewish teacher and a mystic.  What do I mean by mystic?

A dictionary definition:  a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.

Order and authority are important to the Western church – these two tendencies often overrode the mystical side of Jesus.  Right doctrine - right belief – about Jesus became primary in the Western church.  Oftentimes seeing Jesus only through that lens:  Son of God – true God – true man.  These doctrines or of course correct – but limiting.  Not taking into account the Jesus of Eastern Wisdom.

The church of the West is more interested in ‘right doctrine.’  The church of the East more interested in ‘right praise.’  The church of the West testing the faithful on adherence to propositions about Jesus – the church of the East measuring the faithful by adherence to the path of Jesus.

So this Prayer of Jesus is not some neatly defined doctrine that we can package and put in a text book.  This prayer of Jesus comes out of Eastern thought and mysticism – Jesus here is a Jewish mystic – praying about the connections to the Divine Mystery.  So the language is about ‘in-ness’ – God in Jesus, Jesus in God, and God in us.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

This is the prayer of a Jewish mystic teacher.

“In Christ” – what does that tell us about the path of Jesus and the path the faithful are called to take?

“In Christ” is not a doctrine to agree with, but a way of being.  Being one in God!  The divine hand is in everything.

In other words the divine connects us all together.  Western Christianity’s ‘nailed down God doctrinal types’ don’t like this.  And all too often we’ve filtered the words of Christ through that lens.

“In Christ” is about participating in the oneness of creation – realizing that only a slight variation in DNA separates us from each other and the rest of creation.  Our calling is not to control and dominate God’s good creation but rather to care for and remain in sync with the whole of creation.

In other words to participate in the oneness Jesus has with the Father.  This flies in the face of hierarchy and control and right doctrine.   

But rather takes us down a path – the path that Jesus strode – the journey that he was on of giving his life to find true life.  Participating ‘in Christ’ will give us eyes to see the connected-ness in our world and to honor such interdependence.

Another story:  This one is about Carl and was told by Herb Brokering – a sainted Lutheran author:

For years Carl had looked at a certain tiny piece of moss and imagined a rock, a tree, a forest, a mountainside, a universe.  That’s the way he thought.  But he did not mention it to anyone, for he was sure it was a strange and improper way to think.  He was sixty-seven.

One day at the dinner table he talked about the moss particle and described his way of seeing things.  All approved.  They thought this way, too.  They all looked at tiny things and saw much more.  In a little they saw a lot.  But they’d never told one another before.

Carl said that this was the way he saw the bread in Holy Communion.  When the bread was broken, and Carl saw the pieces being shared, he also saw the congregation, the hungry and the thirsty and those feasting, and all meals and harvest fields and work and factories, and the whole Church –the body of Christ.  One after another the pictures appeared in his imagination.

Carl’s mind would go on a visionary journey.  Looking at a tiny piece of [Communion] bread, Carl could be with all life and with all people.  He could move from his small spot at the communion table to the entire cosmic system.  He understood the images Jesus used.  He could see the mustard seed as a tree or watch a bird in flight and let his imagination soar all the way to the kingdom of heaven.

[Source:  Pilgrimage to Renewal by Herb F. Brokering, page 78]

“So that they may be one, as we are one.”

This prayer of Jesus opens our eyes and hearts to see just how connected we are to one another and God’s creation:

“One bread, one body, one Lord of all;

One cup of blessing which we bless,

And we, though many throughout the earth,

We are one body in this one Lord.”

Amen.