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Prayer
Father, as you proceed from yourself as the Son, make us always your Child in union with the same Word;
Son, as you are given birth to by the Father, eternally, may we become your body by the same glorious birth;
Spirit, as you come forth from the Father, eternally, may we proceed outward to the world from the same Love;
That the Will of God might become expressed through the union of our will with the will of the Word and Spirit.
You have always been and are and will be forever, in, through, and beyond the Church!
Amen.
Story
A confused member of the parish visited her priest. She spoke, “Pastor, why is our church dying?” “The flame, like all creatures, exists to give light to others. The flame turned in on itself denies the very oxygen that allows life. Creatures are formed to give of themselves, not maintain themselves. What denies the purpose of its formation dies, for purpose and formation form one essence, and what affirms the purpose of its formation lives, again, for purpose and formation form one essence.”
Scripture: St. John 12.24-26 (NAB)
24Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. 25Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.
Comments
The purpose of the Body of Christ, like Christ and as Christ, is to give life, the life of God. However, in giving we enter a paradox contrary to our socialization, indeed, contrary to existence only in the first birth, the birth of ourselves biologically. The aim of the first birth, alienated from Original Blessing, is survival. The spiritual message of Jesus is that survival, ironically, leads not to surviving, to death. The Passion and Resurrection of Christ pictures for us, in dramatic fashion, this truth.
Original sin itself can be defined as the cutting of biological existence, the first birth, from the purpose of that existence. The divorce of biological existence from the sacred purpose of it results in spiritual death, or a separation of purpose from the will of Spirit for each of us. Therefore, spiritual death is not a punishment or penalty imposed on us; spiritual death is a natural consequence of cutting ourselves off from the purpose of existence and, thus, from the Creative Source whom that purpose perfectly inheres in and is to be enacted in the sacred drama of our lives individually and collectively. There is no part-life and part-death spiritually; either we are living or dying spiritually. And, the first birth turned on itself is its very suffocation, while turning outward it both gives and receives breath and, thus, life, and the Holy Spirit is that breath, that breathing, the Life giving life.
God, in the image of Meister Eckhart (b. c. 1260), a Dominican, wrote of the Godhead, or God as inaccessible to human reason, as One who “swells up” in the Trinity and, then, overflows life, goodness, and love into all Creation. Likewise, Eckhart used the image that God “boils over.” Also, this Effulgence of God makes the incarnation of the Son of God possible as Son of Man, or God-Incarnate. Further, this Effulgence, or Self-Giving, makes possible the birth of the Son in the heart of godly persons. (Praying with Meister Eckhart, Ed. Wayne Simsic, in "Companions for the Journey")
Is this not amazing: the Incarnation is the Self-Donation of God, without God losing any of God? Indeed, God lives for God is Self-Donation, and God would not be God otherwise. Though, God chooses to give, for God is free, a freedom reflected in our freedom to choose life or death.
Jesus is not irrational or advising a spiritualized masochism in speaking of losing and hating our lives in this world. Jesus is showing that human reason must be grounded in the Nature and Ways of Divinity Itself. What appears foolish might well have a deep meaning of profound truth, and truth is always sourced in the Nature of God.
What does it mean to “lose” and “hate” your life “in this world”? The two mentions of “his life” and “his life” hold the key to this enigmatic saying of Jesus. Yesterday, I wrote of the relational nature of Body of Christ, or what the Greek Fathers of the Church referred to as synaxis, and the Greek Church still uses that Greek word for the synergy of the Church.
However, of import is that the essential nature of person and Creation cannot lack complementing the nature of the Creator. Therefore, the Church is to be the restored Image of God and the perfection of Creation will be the full restoration of that Image. What, then, is the core of that Image?
The core of the Image of God is what I said yesterday: relationship, union, synaxis, synergy, integration, interdependence. Therefore, individuality is the denial and refusal to be what person is to be and be becoming: an intimatic process, or a person living in intimacy with other sentient beings and God.
Therefore, notice again what Jesus teaches us. We must despise “his life” or “her life,” to preserve life. “His” and “his” in the text speaks of the holding of life apart from the only context in which life can be preserved. The seeking to preserve “my” life means I lose that very life I am seeking to preserve. To “hate” or “despise” is not in regard to life as it is meant to be lived and enjoyed, as an expression of the Image of God, who is Communal in being; rather, such harsh language refers to the denial of that very life that is other than the pulling inward of life around the “self” that denies rather than affirms life. That is, “my” life is such a self-destructive and life-denying, and godless, existence that it, like rancid trash, is odious to the sweet scent of true Existence, which goes out of itself and, thus, preserves itself precisely by not seeking to preserve itself.
Jesus is not giving a precisely spiritual teaching, or religious teaching, if we mean by “spiritual” or “religious” something that is unnatural and reparative of the natural truth and way. Rather, the acts and words of Jesus in the Gospels are revelations of what we have forgotten, and essentially say, “You have forgotten the way to Life, to be truly person, and I am seeking to help you remember the truly natural way to live and to life.”
Then, what is this going out, this boiling forth, of which Meister Eckhart speaks to us? The early Church identified it with the word Love. Love is not, then, an emotion: though we might have “loving feelings.” In the emotion many call love, we might, indeed, be very unloving, very selfish, and “love” dearly our own lives. Love, as Jesus speaks of it and the early teachers of the Church, is itself the self-giving, the going outward, the centripetal expression of good and generosity to the other, even the one who sets himself or herself as my enemy.
Therefore, the life we are to claim in Christ is the life that, like the Son of God, incarnates in compassion and celebration in the created order. Being “in Christ” I sense Christ being in the other and summoning me to disown my life in the giving of life and, through this, I find life and know life.
Therefore, to my Christian friends, I say: The maintenance and dying of a congregation is like the maintenance and dying of a Christian. That is, a Christian can cut himself or herself off from the in Christ life. This choice eventuates, in my thought, to a totally being separate from life. The Christian, no different than anyone, can choose to remove himself or herself from Christ, either by conscious choice or a process of pulling life to himself or herself and, thus, denying the vows of Christian service and love that he or she vowed into entrance into the fellowship of the Church or local church. Therefore, the only way to remain in Christ is to keep loving, keep going outward as Love, for this is the sole natural process of preserving life by giving life. To repent of seeking to preserve “my” life means the converse of dying and death becomes true: I am given life and am living.
God goes out of God to each of us, and we return to God in the same manner: by Love. However, as God goes out to us through the Community of Persons inhering in God, we only return to God through community. Outside communion, there is no process of the Image of God, there is no being the Body of Christ. The loss of this consciousness is at the root of much sickness and death in our churches, and churches cannot politically restore themselves, rather, they must die to the life of “my” and “our” church in order to enjoy being the Church.
Reflection
What are some insights from the reading for today that encourage you to view your faith in a deeper or wiser way?
How might you apply the writing today to your life? … to participation in the Church?
What difference is there between viewing a church as a socialized family of Christian religion and an organic manifestation of the life of Christ in the world?
Where is Christ? Explain your answer.
What is Love? Explain your answer.
Spiritual Exercise
Consider, if you are not already, sponsoring a child through Compassion International. You can find out more about Compassion International by going to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
To contact Brian, write briankwilcox@comcast.net .
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