|
“God has a body,” writes Episcopal priest Brian C. Taylor (Setting the Gospel Free). What is this body? The body is “the manifested universe and everything that it does.” Indeed, Taylor notes, “All things seen and unseen are filled with the pulsing, ever recreating life of God. There is no dividing line between spiritual and physical, for all physical matter is nothing but energy, and energy is spirit, God’s spirit of life.”
No, this is not naturalism, rather, this is the ancient teaching of the Church amplified by modern science: God’s omnipresence. God does not just include all, but Spirit pervades all things and is the Active Agent acting on and within Creation. What is possibly most problematic for us to trust and live is that we are the universe that God enfolds and inhabits!
Therefore, our theology cannot rest content within the boundaries of defining Body of Christ only as referring to the Christian community. Yes, historically, a meaning of Body of Christ is those who have committed themselves to follow Jesus Christ. However, Body of Christ means, likewise, the manifestation of the eternal Word as the Creative Energy of God manifesting the Cosmos.
The universalizing Potentiality manifests in a unique way in Jesus of Nazareth, as a decisive amplification of the Energy. However, this Word did not begin with Jesus, as is clear from the Gospel of John (cf. John 1). Indeed, the Gospel of John observes that the Word is the source of all Creation.
The particularization of the Word, a Word spoken of in pre-Christian mysticism long before the 1st Century AD, witnesses to the eternality of the Creative Wisdom of God. And, thus, the historical Body of Christ, particularized in the followers of the Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ, witnesses to the Body of God, which is the universe as a manifestation of the Potency and Love of the Spirit.
Therefore, to know Jesus Christ personally is to enjoy a particularization of this energy that manifests as the Body of God. We Christians can celebrate the full Body of God. To enter into Christ is to be initiated into a particularization that opens to the Omnipresence of God, not just a theology, but as lived awe.
A Christian might say, “But are you not advocating a position that would result in losing the distinctiveness of Christianity?” Well, no, I am writing of a view that allows the Church and Body of Christ to open to its potential to realize in itself the Life, which is the Life of everything. I am urging Christians to let God be God, rather than a Christian God. Likewise, I am not advocating the loss of the distinctiveness of Christianity; however, I am contending that much that goes under the distinctiveness of Christianity closes itself off as separate from the Body of God, and that cannot be a good or loving thing.
Would such a view as I am writing about mean a decline in Christianity? No. Rather, persons would be drawn to such an enlightened view, for in the heart of every human is the desire to serve the Sacred as opening us to an inclusive love and union with all, rather than shutting us off into a special class of persons who feel ourselves to be special and set apart to ourselves. Indeed, if God is omnipresent, then, we cannot be set apart, and to try to be will mean our decline and, finally, demise.
Yes, it is through my experience of the particularization of the Word in Jesus Christ that has led me, over time, to celebrate that it is much more than I was taught and more than I can fathom. In this celebration of the full Body of God, if anything, I am not less Christian, I am becoming fully Christian.
Spiritual Exercises
1. In what ways did the above article challenge your thinking?
2. What in the above writing were you uncomfortable with?
3. What in the above article were you comfortable with?
4. What is meant by calling Spirit “universalizing Potential”?
5. How is modern science helping us refine our understanding of ancient teachings of the Church?
6. Which of the following statements do you agree with?
a. Science and religion are separate disciplines and need to be kept apart.
b. Science and religion relate to the same Reality and, thus, need to inform each other.
7. Can a person maintain that some of the particularization of the Christian faith results from the limitations of understanding at the time of the writing of the Scripture, or not? Explain your answer.
8. Do you feel that Christ needs to be seen as larger than just Jesus, or not? Explain your answer.
9. Is creation something that happened at a certain time? Or, is creation something that is happening all the time? Explain your answer.
Prayer
God, I am so limited in my thinking. Help me to trust a Truth greater than my theories and a Love that accepts the sincerity of my seeking. Amen.
*Brian K. Wilcox
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
The People of the
United Methodist Church
|
