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Great Thinkers in the History of the Church (no. 1)
God alone must work in thee without hindrance, that He may bring to perfection His likeness in thee. So thou mayest understand with Him, and love with Him. This is the essence of perfection.
-Meister Eckhart, c. 1260 f., www.ellopos.net/theology/eckhart_union-with-god.html
Quote
Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see His glorious face:
Then shall His love be fully showed,
And man shall then be lost in God.
(Charles Wesley, MH1933, no. 142, v. 5)
Comments
There is for the true Christian an unassailable peace and enjoyment of Sacredness. Ironically, this beatitude arises from accepting being lost. Jesus consistently gives us wisdom that catches us off guard; his technique can shock us into Reality, this is why what he says may anger us before we are willing to listen to his words. He reverses the typical evangelistic perspective that we are already lost and must be found. Notice what Jesus says: "Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it." (Luke 17.32-33, ESV) Jesus says, “Come and get lost.” Could this be a weakness of much evangelical Christianity: persons have sought to be saved without intentionally surrendering to being lost.
This is counter-logical. Jesus says we cannot follow him and accept the logic of the prevailing norms of the “world,” or culture dissociated from the Spirit. Likewise, we cannot accept the religious and spiritual norms that use God and technique and show to protect us from being lost. We cannot accept an evangelicalism that does not embrace being lost, not only as a state of persons without Christ, but as prelude to knowing Christ intimately. That is, to try to be found, ironically, is to deny the condition for salvation: getting lost in a way other than is often meant by being lost in evangelical Christianity. We are lost by nature, but we must be lost through Grace to receive newness of Life. These meanings of lost are different.
Can you see Jesus saying, if he was pastor of a congregation, “Welcome visitors, and thank you for coming today to share with us in getting lost”? Through losing the self that seeks salvation for itself, one finds Christ as his or her all in all. Again, notice the irony and shock of the Gospel: Jesus is not here to save the personality self, rather Jesus calls for the complete being lost, the full burial, the decisive death of that very self persons present for his rescue. That little ego self prays, essentially, “Lord, save me!” And the reply: “No, I am not here to save you.” Rather, that self is itself what needs no rescue and must be lost, fully and finally, forever.
I have a sneaky suspicion—no, I am convinced of this…. One of the major problems facing evangelical Christianity and the lukewarm climate of many churches is the many persons who called upon Christ to save the ego self, what St. Paul calls the “flesh,” itself that must become lost, must die. I am persuaded that many churches would be transformed and become mission outposts for Christ if all the “rescued egos” would really get lost, so the renewed Self could emerge in Christ. And, the ego selves in churches will not, for they cannot, see as Christ, for the ego self, even clothed in Christianity, is still the ego self and at enmity with the Love of Christ. Indeed, the religious small self resists the Love of God and seeks to crucify the messengers of that Love, for it oddly sees such Love as too graceful, and the ego self must live in a less-than-graceful world. The ego self is terrified of Love, Grace, and Freedom, even while it sings and talks of such. Indeed, one of the safest places on Sunday AM for the satisfaction of the ego self is a church.
That leads us to baptism. Baptism is the sacrament sealing the transition from the old life to the new life, the personality self to the Christ self. One, then, in Christ becomes Christ, by being one with Christ. Let us hear St. Paul (Romans 6, ESV):
3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized [lit. immersed] into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Notice these matters from the above passage. First, we are baptized into Christ Jesus, not into a church, except as the Church is the Body of Christ. This is a physical reality. The Church is the physical continuance of the Incarnation of Christ Jesus. All its members, not just some, or equally Christ through Christ, together with each other being Christ, in Christ. Second, we join in his death. We, really and physically, are the continuance of the death of Christ. My death, your death, is the death of Christ. Such is the profound Mystery of the Gospel! Then, this dying is to share, really and physically, in the resurrection of Christ. The word “united” is used for both sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, a self is buried and a Self is raised. The first self is lost, fully lost, never to rise up. The Self is the new self, in total discontinuance with the first self: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation [or creature]. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (II Corinthians 5.17) St. Paul is clear that a Christian congregation is not a people reformed or adjusted; rather, such a people have been reborn to a new Self and as the Body of Christ himself.
However, herein is the tension in the Gospel. The tension is the “now” and “not yet.” We are new creatures, and we are becoming those new creatures. The new Self has been born, and that Self is being born: 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3, ESV)
Therefore true Christianity, in contrast to Christendom and cultural church, will have some qualities. First, it has experienced, in and with Christ, a decisive conversion that creates a discontinuity with a former life. The former life is not mended, like an old car repaired and put on the road again. Second, this experience having a beginning in time evidences in a growth into Christlikeness over time. This new Self is one with Christ, is Christ, and is Christ all and in all, by Grace. However, the fruition of the seed of conversion unfolds over time, and at different paces and in different ways for different persons. I am certain the Universal Spirit knows each creature intimately and works with each with a personal touch particular to the one person in the Body of Christ. “Knowledge,” what the early Church called gnosis, enjoyment and intimacy with the Spirit, is the impetus and result of renewal. And, finally, each new Self participates in—or is--the Body of Christ, really and physically, as a Reality transcending of all cultural divisions. In Christ, you are Christ, who is all in all, not all in some. In Christ, you are no longer the self defined by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, … Indeed, and this the old self seeking to remain alive and un-lost in the Church cannot accept, for he or she seeks to protect the self, in the confession of Christ, that must die to itself in Christ and become Christ. That is, Christian religion itself finds itself having to die to itself, having to become lost, in order to be Christ, the Body of Christ, and to live, eternally. If the Christian religion refuses to lose its identity in purely historical terms, refuses to die to its identity that divides it into factions and natural divisions, then, that religion itself is a hiding place for the old self and its life, rather than a means of Grace to become Christ and be filled with him, renewed in intimacy with Christ, eternally.
Reflection
Christianity is only and truly Christianity in transcendence of itself as Christianity, and this is possible only in Christ.
Spiritual Exercise
Keep spending at least twenty to thirty minutes daily in Silence, resting in the Lord of Love.
Explore the website www.sacredspace.ie offered by the Irish Jesuits and do some of the meditation exercises offered at the site.
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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