Wise Words for Today

Christ icon in Taizé (Photo credit: lgambett)

Set your eyes beyond the stratosphere and see a Christ who confounds the mind. This Christ is – present tense – the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ displays God’s image visible in the invisible realm, where He is seated in heavenly places at the Father’s right hand. To look upon the carpenter of Nazareth is to discover God in totality. To know the Nazarene is to know the Almighty, the one true Creator – He who was, is, and is to come.

But that’s not all.

This Christ is the firstborn of the entire cosmos, the first person to appear in creation, and He is preeminent in all of it. All things visible and invisible were created by Him, through Him, to Him, and for Him. He is the Originator as well as the Goal – the Creator as well as the Consummator.

But that’s not all.

This Christ existed before time as the eternal Son. He is above time and outside of time. He is the beginning. In fact, He was before the beginning. He lives in a realm where there are no ticking watches and clocks. Space and time are his servants. He is unfettered by them.

This Christ is not only before all things, but the entire universe is held together in Him. He is the cohesive force, the glue and gravitational pull that holds all created elements together. He is creation’s great adhesive, the hinge upon which the whole cosmos turns. Remove Christ, and the entire universe disintegrates. It comes apart at the seams. Remove Him, and creations wheels come off.

But there’s still more.

This Christ is the very meaning of creation. Eliminate Him, and the universe has no purpose. Remove Him, and every living thing loses its meaning.

But more than all this, the One who created the universe watched it fall. He saw the cosmic revolt in heaven and the wreckage on earth. Under the caring eye of the Father, the Lord looked upon His own creation as it morphed into an enemy – His own enemy. And then he did the unthinkable. He penetrated a fallen world.

This Christ pierced the veil of space-time. He became incarnate and took on human flesh. As such, He was touched with the same temptations, the same infirmities, and the same weaknesses as all mortals, only He never yielded. Christ entered into His own creation to reconcile it back to Himself and to His Father. The Creator became the creature to make peace with an alienated creation.

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Wise Words for Today

Cover via Amazon

So the great issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or by culture, are identified as “Christians” will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven into every corner of human existence. Will they break out of the churches to be his Church – to be, without human force or violence, his mighty force for good on earth, drawing the churches after them toward the eternal purpose of God? And, on its own scale, there is no greater issue facing the individual human being, Christian or not.

Dallas Willard

(from The Great Omission)

Introducing Jesus Christ – Again (Part Two)

Cover via Amazon

Mick Turner

(Continued from Part One)

It seems that over the last couple of centuries the church has become increasingly less “Christ-centered” and in doing so, has completely lost its divine grounding and its sense of direction. I remember spending time as a child on my grandmother’s farm in rural North Alabama. Whenever she wanted to fix fried chicken, she didn’t go down to the supermarket to pick up a fryer. Instead, she sent my father out to get a hen from the barnyard.

I vividly recall that my dad would decapitate the hapless bird and even without a head, the chicken would go flapping around in circles for awhile before finally keeling over. In many ways, this childhood memory is analogous to the present condition of the church. Christ is the head of the church and without a firm connection to the head, the church also runs around in misguided, uncoordinated circles before it eventually collapses. This is a reality we can ill afford in the contemporary Body Of Christ.

The remedies for this situation are multi-faceted and complex. Yet I have become convinced that whatever constellation of strategies we implement in our attempts to rectify this hapless dilemma, one thing remains constant. We must have as the central and defining element an unrelenting focus on Christ, not just as a historical or celestial figure to be worshiped. Instead, we must come to view Christ for the truly magnificent and wondrous being that he is and also come to an understanding and internalization of his role as a living, vibrant agent of transformation.

Centuries ago, for whatever reasons, the church seems to have lost sight of this aspect of Jesus Christ and his mission to this planet. In our obsessive worship of Jesus as “Savior,” we somehow managed to jettison his transformative power as an agent of personal and social change. I think this is the chief reason we see so many otherwise sincere believers walking around in a state of bafflement, aimlessness, and quiet desperation.

Last year, on this site, I posted a piece entitled, A Decapitated Church is a Lifeless Corpse. In that article I discussed these themes at some length. I also included several cogent, powerful passages from the fine book entitled, Jesus Manifesto, written by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola. It was my intention in that article and this one as well, to get across the same point made by Sweet and Viola in their excellent book. Stated simply, that point is that the primary task of the church in this challenging time is to reintroduce the world to Christ and his kingdom. And sadly enough, this mission begins with the church itself. I daresay that a near-majority of contemporary church-goers have only a minimal understanding of just who Christ was and is, much less what he accomplished and expects of us.

With that being said, it is critical that the church develop workable, practical strategies that will help its own members deepen their awareness of who and what it is they are dealing with. Sweet and Viola, for example, give us this introduction:

Set your eyes beyond the stratosphere and see a Christ who confounds the mind. This Christ is – present tense – the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ displays God’s image visible in the invisible realm, where He is seated in heavenly places at the Father’s right hand. To look upon the carpenter of Nazareth is to discover God in totality. To know the Nazarene is to know the Almighty, the one true Creator – He who was, is, and is to come.

But that’s not all.

This Christ is the firstborn of the entire cosmos, the first person to appear in creation, and He is preeminent in all of it. All things visible and invisible were created by Him, through Him, to Him, and for Him. He is the Originator as well as the Goal – the Creator as well as the Consummator.

But that’s not all.

This Christ existed before time as the eternal Son. He is above time and outside of time. He is the beginning. In fact, He was before the beginning. He lives in a realm where there are no ticking watches and clocks. Space and time are his servants. He is unfettered by them.

This Christ is not only before all things, but the entire universe is held together in Him. He is the cohesive force, the glue and gravitational pull that holds all created elements together. He is creation’s great adhesive, the hinge upon which the whole cosmos turns. Remove Christ, and the entire universe disintegrates. It comes apart at the seams. Remove Him, and creations wheels come off.

But there’s still more.

This Christ is the very meaning of creation. Eliminate Him, and the universe has no purpose. Remove Him, and every living thing loses its meaning.

But more than all this, the One who created the universe watched it fall. He saw the cosmic revolt in heaven and the wreckage on earth. Under the caring eye of the Father, the Lord looked upon His own creation as it morphed into an enemy – His own enemy. And then he did the unthinkable. He penetrated a fallen world.

This Christ pierced the veil of space-time. He became incarnate and took on human flesh. As such, He was touched with the same temptations, the same infirmities, and the same weaknesses as all mortals, only He never yielded. Christ entered into His own creation to reconcile it back to Himself and to His Father. The Creator became the creature to make peace with an alienated creation.

I think Sweet and Viola have put together a positive, creative, and pragmatic way of introducing Christ to those outside the church as well as those inside the Body of Christ who have, for all practical purposes, never met the Master in any comprehensive fashion. Granted, no one definition or description can cover all the bases when we are dealing with a subject that is vast, cosmic, and ineffable. Still, we can create first-rate starting points and I believe this definition by Sweet and Viola precisely this.

I would like to suggest a spiritual exercise that you might carry out in the near future. Using the description of Christ given by Sweet and Viola, take one line a day as a focus for prayer, meditation, and reflection. In a period of quiet time, begin by asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you in whatever way he deems fit regarding that one line. Read the sentence, reflect on what it says to you about the person, the nature, and the mission of Christ. Record what you discover in a journal or notebook that you keep for this particular spiritual practice. If possible, do this in the morning and in the evening. From my personal experience with spiritual practice, I feel confident in assuring you that you will come out of it with a deeper and more life-changing awareness of just what manner of being Jesus Christ was and is.

If the contemporary church is to be healed, this is where we must begin.

© L.D. Turner 2013/All Rights Reserved

Introducing Jesus Christ – Again (Part One)

English: the first of the Epistles to the Colossians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mick Turner

The contemporary church is in the midst of radical change and it is hard to predict just what the Body of Christ will look like even five years from now. Yet in recent weeks the Spirit has increasingly led me to see that no matter what shape emerges out of the current chaos in the church, one thing remains radically clear. We must return to a Christ-centered faith with the principle task and mission being to educate Christians and those outside of the faith about the true and spectacular nature of Christ.

Many sincere believers frequently say that it is time for us to “go beyond” Christ or to “go deeper” into the mysteries of the faith. While there is some truth in the point that we all need to deepen our walk of faith, we must not lose sight of the central figure of our faith. It is precisely because we have lost sight of Christ that the church finds itself in such a predicament as is seen today. Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet speak to this theme:

 The person who believes that a Christian or a church can graduate beyond Christ has never fully seen the Jesus that Paul of Tarsus preached and declared. Instead, such an individual has very small Christ, one who’s far less than the one who fills the pages of the New Testament.

Sweet and Viola go on to illustrate their point by mentioning Paul’s words to the Philippians, written in his waning years:

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:7-8)

Religious scholars and church historians are uncertain as to the exact nature of the erroneous teaching that was infiltrating the church at Galatia. Yet whatever the content of the teaching, Paul handled it in a very skillful way. Sweet and Viola point out:

What a unique way to combat error – drown God’s people in a revelation of the image of the invisible God, who delivered us from darkness, redeemed us, and made us part of His eternal kingdom.

This alone should cause us to pause in reflection. In times of crisis, the church doesn’t need rules established, laws passed, or wolves shot. She needs a seismic revelation of her Lord – the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form.

The Christ the Colossians knew was simply too small. That was why they became susceptible to chasing other things – including religious ones – in the first place…..

This statement by the authors really speaks to the situation the church finds itself in today. Over the past few decades people, many of them sincere, spiritually-sensitive people, have stampeded out of the church in droves. There are many reasons for this phenomenon and no one answer covers all the bases as to why people are leaving and not coming back. One factor is the reality that the spiritual marketplace is much more competitive than it was even fifty years ago. America is a veritable spiritual smorgasbord with all the world’s major religions are present in significant numbers and lesser known faith systems are thriving as well. As for cults, there are far too many to list.

My point here is this: there is a lot more competition these days and people are more spiritually astute. They are looking for deeper, more life-changing answers and the fact is the church is woefully inadequate on this front. Rather than giving people real bread and “living water,” most churches serve up rubber chicken at Wednesday’s potluck and 2-liter bottles of Pepsi with the fizz long departed. Rather than feeding the flock this tasteless pabulum, it is high time the church returned to offering the real thing, and I don’t mean Coca-Cola. Jesus said that he gave living water and people would not be thirsty ever again. Paul understood that the church at Colasse needed the real Jesus and Sweet and Viola describe his thinking in a very cogent manner:

Paul’s goal was to strip away every distraction that was being held before their eyes and leave them with nothing but Christ. He dared to displace all rules, regulations, laws, and everything else that religion offers, with a person – the Lord Jesus Himself. As far as Paul was concerned, God hadn’t sent a Ruler of rules, a Regulator of regulations, a Pontiff of pontifications, or a Principal of principals. He had sent the very embodiment of divine fullness. So, he reasoned, if the Colossians could just get a glimpse of the glories of Christ, He would be enough. The Spirit would electrify their hearts and restore them to a living relationship with the head of the body. So Paul threw down his trump card – the Lord Jesus Christ. He presented a panoramic vision of Jesus that exhausts the minds of mortal men.

As Viola and Sweet so cogently point out, Paul felt that if the Colossians could gain a true and accurate perspective on the nature and purpose of Jesus many of their issues would be resolved. This dire need that Paul discerned in the Colossian church is also relevant to today’s church. If those within the church rediscover the true magnificence of this being they claim to worship and follow, I am convinced the mass exodus would slow to a mere trickle. Further, if those outside the church come to understand just who and what Jesus was and is, as well as witness the true heart of Christian service flowing from a revitalized, kingdom oriented church, they will likely become less negative and critical toward the faith and more than a few might be drawn to join in the good work that is taking place.

To be continued…..

(c) L.D. Turner 2013 / All Rights Reserved

Kingdom Agenda Revisited

Heart of Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mick Turner

Jesus came first and foremost preaching the kingdom. Even the most superficial skimming of the New Testament will readily reveal this fact. Inaugurating the Kingdom of Heaven (or Kingdom of God) and laying the groundwork for its ongoing establishment on earth was his central mission and, although other things were important, everything took a back seat to this. Dr. Myles Munroe explains most cogently:

Everywhere He went, Jesus preached the Kingdom. That was His assignment. Jesus primary message was not the born-again message that dominates gospel preaching. In His entire recorded ministry, Jesus spoke only once about being born again, and that was in the middle of the night to a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus privately. Being born again is the way into the Kingdom – it is the necessary first step. But the gospel of the Kingdom involves much more……….Not only did Jesus rarely speak about being born again, neither did He make these other themes the focus of His preaching: prosperity, healing, baptism in the Holy Spirit, or many of the other things we preach so much about today. Jesus taught about those things, and He demonstrated them in His day-by-day ministry, but He didn’t preach them. There is a big difference. Jesus had only one message: the Kingdom of God. That was His assignment, and He passed it on to us. His assignment is our assignment.

Indeed, healing, prosperity, evangelism, service to others, salvation, born again themes – all of these are foundational aspects of the gospel message, but they all pale in comparison to what I like to call “God’s Great Story.” This story is the underlying theme of the entire Bible and it is ultimately the story of how God is going about setting up his kingdom here on earth. Jesus had a unique role to play in this great cosmic drama and, because of who and what he was and is, it was a role only he could play. And just as Dr. Munroe so passionately explained, Christ’s assignment was to bring the message of the kingdom to this planet and just before he went back to his celestial home after ascending higher than the highest heaven (Ephesians 4:10), he had one more surprise: he charged us with continuing his assignment here on earth.

What this means is that just as Jesus had a unique role to play in the establishment of the kingdom, so does each of us.  The problem is many of us are confused about what that role entails in both general and individually specific aspects. To make matters even more perplexing is the fact that the church, either by choice or by ignorance, seems to have abandoned its kingdom mission.

In order to rectify this situation we have to engage is serious study so as to discern exactly what Jesus meant when he talked about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. As we undertake such a project we also need to realize that the whole kingdom agenda is a multi-faceted phenomenon and does not necessarily lend itself to simplistic analysis.

I am convinced that although such a study can be carried out within the parameters of a group setting, ultimately, each of us must arrive at our own understanding of what the basic themes of the “kingdom message” of Jesus were. Perhaps the benefit of a study group would especially come in when participants came together to discuss what they had each discovered.

As to methodology for an undertaking like this, again, I think that whatever best suits the individual will be the most effective, provided of course, that it covers the territory in sufficient detail. For example, whenever I undertake this sort of study project I typically fall back on my Methodist background and John Wesley’s four-part system of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. I have never failed to find this methodology sufficient for any research task of the nature we are discussing.

The Kingdom Agenda is at the foundation of all acts of Christian service. As followers of Christ, called to give flesh to grace and make disciples in all the world, we must constantly be about our kingdom calling in ways great and small. I like the way N.T. Wright puts this into proper perspective:

……….what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are – strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God.

As Wright so eloquently reminds us, the Kingdom agenda is permeated through and through with proactive compassion. It is not enough to sit back and identify and discuss social problems from a comfortable distance. Jesus was not afraid to get his hands dirty and he certainly does not call us to detached, sterile service. Kingdom work is often unpleasant and frequently places us in circumstances that are far out of our comfort zones.

As followers of Christ in this challenging age of change it is imperative that we reorient our efforts, making certain that we are in alignment with the mission the Master has given us. The specifics of each mission will be different for each of us, but each will share a common denominator. Our particular calling, whether great or small, is grounded in love, kindness, and compassion. Each personal mission will seek to establish a just and equitable way of being in the world, solidly based on kingdom principles and deep concern for the well-being of others.

© L.D. Turner 2012/ All Rights Reserved

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• Developing a Kingdom Mindset (yourjesusmind.com)

Wise Words for Today

Andrew Wommack in Schiphol-Rijk (Photo credit: Johan Koolwaaij)

God has already moved and blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Everything we’ll ever need – joy, peace, wisdom, revelation knowledge, etc. – has already been provided. But it’s all in the spirit realm….If you can’t understand that everything God has already provided for you is in the spirit realm, then you’ll lose this truth I am communicating. Why? Faith acts like a bridge to bring what is true and real in the spiritual world into the physical world. The truth is, very few believers allow their faith to be that bridge for what God has already done to cross over into the natural realm. We just don’t see very much manifestation of it.

 Andrew Wommack

(from You’ve Already Got It)

Organic Christianity: Claiming Who You Already Are

English: End of the Second Epistle of Peter and beginning of the First Epistle of John in the same column of the codex. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mick Turner

Recently I completed reading Ron McIntosh’s latest book entitled, Organic Christianity. This was the second book I have read authored by McIntosh, the first being The Greatest Secret. I have found both of these works to be both informative and inspirational and perhaps even more significant, I have found them highly practical. The ideas presented are spelled out in such a way that they are made applicable to daily living.

In this brief article, I want to focus on a basic idea from Organic Christianity. McIntosh repeats the theme I have often stressed – that we have already been given all we need to lead a godly life and further, we have been imbued with the power to make that life a manifest reality.

Organic Christianity is more about renewing our minds to who we already are than trying to become who we aren’t. Remember, we’ve already been given everything we need for life and godliness (see 2 Peter 1:3). We’ve already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm (see Eph. 1:3). We already have in us everything to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond what we could ask or think (see Eph. 3:20. We are complete in Him (see Col. 2:10). The problem is we haven’t become fully persuaded of who God is, what he has already done, and who He has made us to be.

McIntosh then goes on to describe the path whereby we may become fully persuaded, the truths of which are housed in Romans 12:2:

1. Be not conformed to this world.
2. Be transformed.
3. Renew your mind.
4. Prove the perfect will of God

He then goes on to describe a process whereby the invisible kingdom may become manifest in our world:

Incubation (meditating on God’s Word)

Plus

Revelation (the result of meditation)

Plus

Impartation (bestowing or intertwining revelation in our lives)

Equals

Manifestation (the invisible Kingdom becoming visible in our world.)

In describing the power of biblical meditation, McIntosh states:

Meditation allows us to focus on something until we are fully persuaded of truth (or a lie for that matter), until it is imbedded in our conscious and subconscious minds. It becomes a part of the makeup of our being until it is our nature to act accordingly.

Here McIntosh touches on a fundamental and salient truth regarding the Christian walk of spirituality: in order for any spiritual principle to be personally transformational, it must become internalized.

These are just a few thoughts I have after reading McIntosh’s latest book and I wanted to share them with you. I apologize for the brevity of these comments, but my recovery from the recent surgery remains somewhat slow. I recommend this book and encourage you to take the time to read it. You will be blessed by its content.

© L.D. Turner 2012/All Rights Reserved

Related articles

• Spiritual Transformation from a Christian Perspective (Part One) (lifebrook.wordpress.com)

Engaged Spirituality: Radical Compassion and Selfless Service (Part Two)

English: page with text of the Gospel of John 16:30-17:8 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mick Turner

Continued from Part One

It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.

In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-O. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.

This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:

 What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.

It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17^th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:

Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;

Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

  Proactive Service

Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for enlightenment is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.

 In the Christian faith as exemplified by Jesus, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13^th Chapter of the Gospel of John.

Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….

The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.

The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21^st verse the Master says:

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

 In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)

 Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:

And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)

Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.

(c) L.D. Turner 2012/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

English: Icon of the Resurrection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What the earliest layers of the gospel record reveal, and to some extent the later layers as well, when sifted through a higher Christology, is that Jesus was wise. He was charismatic, a gifted speaker, and a teacher of wisdom. He taught the “narrow way” as opposed to the broad way of convention and tradition. Both his life and his message were subversive and modeled the metaphor of death and resurrection as a way of life. Discipleship was not about knowing new things or subscribing to theological statements or positions, but about the never ending process of dying to an old self and being reborn into a new one. The evidence for this rebirth was not a clever argument or allegiance to a certain rabbinical school. It was made obvious by a new way of being in the world. Good Friday and Easter are therefore not isolated events. They are the twin polarities of wisdom – as we constantly die to the bondage of blindness and are reborn in the light.

Robin Meyers

(from Saving Jesus From the Church)

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Engaged Spirituality: Radical Compassion and Selfless Service (Part One)

T2i – Infinity (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Mick Turner

The ultimate goal of walking the spiritual path is to awaken in ourselves the desire to make a positive contribution to the world. Ideally, each of us should strive to find ways in which we can bring light, joy, and relief to others. It is no overstatement to say that the entire framework of engaged spirituality, regardless of the tradition, is to place ourselves in a state of being where we can not only be good – but good for something.

 Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.

Just as Christ would later set an example for his disciples to follow, the Buddha also would serve as the divine prototype for the essence of “metta,” or “loving-kindness.” In Metta, there is an internal manifestation and an external manifestation. Internally, increasing feelings of loving kindness give rise to a vital sense of compassion that is also based on the realization of the oneness of all things. These internal states of loving kindness and compassion result in the external manifestation, which is proactive service to the world.

 This eventually gave rise to the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva. On a theoretical level, one can accurately say that the ultimate goal of the Bodhisattva is enlightenment and to some extent this is true. However, on a highly practical level, the Bodhisattva’s highest goal is selfless service. Personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially.

Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.

In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:

Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.

In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:

…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.

 In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.

The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:

To see a World in a grain of sand,

And Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the sooner frustration will disappear from his or her life.

to be continued……

(c) L.D. Turner 2012/All Rights Reserved