Jim Weller
Pacific School of Religion
Berkeley, California
29 October 2008
Idou! Pay attention!
Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to
Galilee, preaching the gospel of
the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
In the Gospel According to Mark, Chapter 1,
Verses 14 and 15, this is what Jesus did and said first in his Galilean
mission, on his way to Jerusalem, and the cross. The Evangelist, in Mark,
wastes no words. He must have considered this proclamation to be of primary significance.
I understand this as the concise expression of the gospel, the Good News of
God.
In other words, “God is Present, In You! Here
and Now, and Forever, in the
Eternal Now. The time is ripe for you to realize
your holy identity as an earthly incarnation of the Supreme Being, a beloved
child of God, a living manifestation of the power of the ultimate reality that
is God Eternal.”
Re-pent! Meaning, “Think again.” “Turn your head
around.” “Transform your mind.”
Metanoia is the Greek word used by the author.
It signifies a spiritual conversion, a turning around, to face the Reality and
the Presence of God – in the mirror, as it were!
Christ has no body now but yours;
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Teresa of Avila put it that way. In Mark, the
Evangelist wrote, “Believe in the good news of God!”
How did Jesus arrive at this exalted state of
being, to begin his holy mission of salvation, which we emulate? Here is a
literal translation of the Greek text. It is as brief as a recitation of poetry:
And it was in those days, came Jesus from
Nazareth of Galilee,
and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And immediately going up from the water, he saw being
torn the heavens, and the Spirit as a dove coming down upon Him. And a voice
there was out of the heavens:
You are the Son of Me the Beloved, in whom I
take delight.
And instantly the Spirit Him thrusts into the
desert.
And he was there in the desert days forty being
tempted by Satan,
and was with the wild beasts, and the angels
ministered to him.
Throughout the four gospels, accounts of Jesus’
teaching by parables are retold in various settings. And I regard as well the
gospel authors’ accounts of various vignettes of the life and ministries of
Jesus as parables, composed for our learning, in which the figure of Jesus
himself, in relation with God, is symbolic of the possibilities for our
relationships with God.
If you were Jesus in the Jordan (and I do
believe the Evangelist means for his hearers to identify with Jesus as the
protagonist in his gospel) how would you respond? Like, “Wow! Who, me? Oh, my
God!”
At the moment of his baptism, it seems to me,
Jesus suddenly realized who he was. And he understood immediately the Name of
God, given to Moses by the bush that burned and yet was not consumed:
Yod-Hay-Vav-Hay (YHWH) pronounced Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh; “I am that I am!”
Jesus must have fallen on his knees in the
river. “Oh, my God!” – I imagine the revelation washing over him, transforming
him, converting him; “I am God!”
It was just as it is written in the Upanishads,
the holy book of Vedanta, in that ancient
Sanskrit wisdom utterance known as the Maha
Vakya, the “Great Saying”: Tat Tvam Asi, “That Thou Art!” In this saying,
“That” refers to Brahman, the Ultimate Reality; “Thou” refers to Atman, your
innermost Self; thus, Atman is Brahman – “You are God!”
And thus, Jesus became Christ, the Anointed One,
the incarnate Son of God the Creator – the living manifestation of Being
Itself, in intimate relationship with the One Being Eternal and Infinite, by
and through the Holy Spirit, that constant communion between Creator and
Created, the carrier of prayer and transcendence.
I believe that we human persons, you and I, are
living realities profoundly connected with one another in God, the Ultimate
Reality – just as mountain peaks are connected in the
continents upon which they rise, and the
continents are connected in the planetary sphere, of which they are topological
features. We personal beings are topological features, as it were, of Being
Itself. That is why it is true to proclaim, “Thou Art God!” And God is that
eternal reality upon which our temporal reality is utterly dependent.
We are, all of us, living embodiments,
incarnations, manifestations of God Eternal. Just so, each of us is a beloved
child of God, made in the very image of God – but too many of us refuse to
believe this, the Good News of God. The time is fulfilled. The time of self-realization
has come! The words of the Christ now reach our ears. Let those with ears to
hear, listen!
The kingdom of heaven, God’s realm, is present
here and now – in the eternal now,
where we all are living. No one lives in the
future; the future is not a reality. The past is but a memory. Reality is here
and now; eternal life is lived in the eternal now, in Christ consciousness, fully
human, fully God – this is the self-realization of Jesus Christ at baptism. The
gospel, God’s good news, as Jesus proclaimed, is that eternal life is ours –
now!
Protestant orthodoxy assures us that the gospel
is good news of God’s love and merciful forgiveness. Our appropriate response
is faith – trust in God’s promise of salvation and eternal life, called forth
by the Holy Spirit – and by grace, received through faith, we are reconciled to
God, redeeming us from the state of sin.
Some Christian theologians teach that what is
meant by “sin” is a state of spiritual estrangement from God. It is a state of
imprisonment of the alienated self, isolated in its finitude, born with a death
sentence into a brief life of bondage to suffering, travail, and ultimate
demise.
As the poet A. E. Housman wrote,
And how am I to face the odds / Of man’s
bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid / In a world I never
made.
The truth, for me, is that in all our
existential anxiety, despair and doubt, we are deluded.
The Holy and Eternal One Whose Essence is Existence
Itself and Whose Self-Realization Is All-Encompassing Love brings us into being
to praise and glorify the holy self we recognize in one another, and to answer
the love that gives us being with a love for one another, for all beings, and for
being itself!
Now, knowing the truth of this gospel, what will
I do with the rest of my one holy and
beloved life?
This one, the one I’m living here and now. What, then?
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