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To speak of Christ means to speak a Mystery. There are persons we can call transcendentalists; these tend to think of Christ as an otherworldly spirit. Other persons speak of Christ as a this worldly man, though a remarkable teacher.
However, the very term Christ has two implications. On the historical level, “Christ” is a religious and political term set within a particular historical context. “Christ” is the Greek, deriving from the Hebrew "Messiah." Often in discussion about Jesus Christ, this is missed: Jesus was a political and religious figure, like the former kings of Israel, and his death resulted from being seen as a political figure, as much as his religious significance.
Jesus referring to the Kingdom of God, or Heaven, loses its historical import if we spiritualize “Christ”; therefore, we need to hear the this worldly message of the Kingdom of Heaven, or God, as heard by the Jews and others seeking political peace in the centuries prior to and after the birth of Jesus. If we understand Christ in this manner, we cannot spiritualize the Gospel, subtracting its message from the religious and political demands we face, daily. A spiritualized Christ provides easy escape from helping bring in the Kingdom of God, by whatever more modern terms we might choose to speak, within and through the vicissitudes of history.
However, “Christ” refers to the Word manifesting in that contextual Jesus of Nazareth. The term Christ refers to the immanence of a universal, cosmic, trans-spatial, and trans-temporal Energy, or Person. There cannot be one word or name to represent, fully, this Person. The early Christians inherited language used long before; that is, Logos. Remembering this aspect of the living, universal Christ, we can more likely avoid equating Christ with our political and religious ambitions. Remembering this aspect of Christ, we cannot reduce Christ just to a specific context, or even to a specific religion. Neither can “Christ” be a term owned by liberals or fundamentalists, or anything in between.
Religion is form; Christ, though manifesting in form, likewise, transcends form. And error in thought and life evolves out of the extremes, while Jesus Christ speaks of the middle path, the Point of integration of Word and Jesus, Spirit and Flesh, Heaven and Earth, Universality and Particularity, … within our lives and systems, yet, placing these within a context transcending them. Indeed, the integration is possible for it arises from the transcendence.
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The challenge of contemplative Christianity is to honor the integration of the relative duality of Spirit and Flesh, in the one Universal Christ. However, many Christians, caught in duality alone and particularism alone, often interpret the Gospel purely from a dualistic, particularized ideology. Why? For their consciousness has not integrated to appreciate the paradox of Christ. Universality and the nondual is a higher consciousness than the particular and dual, alone. Indeed, the universal and nondual integrate the particular and dual, while the particular cannot integrate the universal or the nondual.
The very term Christ, itself, cannot remain embedded in the localized context of Judaism, nor can we capture Christ in any contextual boundaries. Christ can no more be contained in the historical Christianity than in historical Judaism. Therefore, to be in Christ is to be fully in particularity, but freed from absolute devotion and obedience to that particularity, or to allow particularity to negate universality.
Ironically, the particularization-only of Christ is a threat to the viability and future of Christianity. Christ must transcend Christianity, or Christ is the captive of Christianity. And a Christianity that can contain Christ is not a true Christ-ianity.
If we spiritualize and de-contextualize Christ, then, we reduce Christ to something not of this world; we lose the immanence of Love. If we domesticate Christ, then, we reduce Christ to only of this world; we lose the transcendence of Love.
Therefore, inclusion of the particular in the universal, or cosmic, is a pattern of the spiritual journey: a Christ pattern. The Christ pattern can be called Christo-form. The Christian contemplative is seeking a Christo-form life. To be Christ-like is to integrate in oneself both Transcendence and Immanence. Note the Jesus of St. John saying, in St. John 17:
13And now I am coming to you. I have told them many things while I was with them so they would be filled with my joy. 14I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not. 15I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. 16They are not part of this world any more than I am. 17Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words of truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. 19And I give myself entirely to you so they also might be entirely yours. (NLT)
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