Resurrection
“The
whole message of the Christian scripture is based on the idea of
metanoia, the change of heart that happens when we meet God
face-to-face. Even a cursory knowledge of history reveals that
Christianity is a religion about change. The Christian faith always
changes—even when some of its adherents claim that it does not.”
Diana
Butler Bass (Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood
Church is Transforming the Faith)
All living things change
over time. They are born, grow to peak fruitfulness, then wither and
die, and are resurrected in a new form. Anyone who has kept a garden
even for a short time, knows the truth of this. Anything that does
not travel through these stages is not living. All of our
institutions change or they die. I heard a commentary just yesterday
about General Electric, which has been an iconic American industry
seemingly forever. It is now dissolving before our very eyes, the
reason being that it became static. It did not keep up with the
changes in the culture and so the culture moved on without it. The
church is no different.
Jesus was a change-maker.
He was a Jew who broke all the rules. He held a different view of God's
plan, and challenged the powers-that-be to the point of full-on
rebellion. He overturned the tables of the money changers, and called
the religious leaders obscene names. He ate whenever he was hungry
and with whomever he chose. He talked to women like they were human
beings and not cattle, even women who were foreign and fallen. For
that, he was killed, and resurrected as the early Christian Church.
This new church met in people's houses—mostly in the homes of
wealthy women. Neighborhood churches were the norm. Christian
communities were, (dare I say), socialistic in that they shared
everything in common. The rich shared with the poor, and even the
“unclean” and uncircumcised were part of the mix.
Over the centuries,
hierarchical religion overtook the communal church. Rules were
imposed, creeds written, and fealty to a certain set of beliefs was
required. Money changed hands in one direction only, and the Catholic
church became wealthier than any king. It acquired armies, and put to
death anyone who failed to fall in line. It allied itself with
empires and conducted inquisitions. Christianity went from small
neighborhood groupings to huge cathedrals with wealthy patrons, who
filled them with art. That assent continued until Luther ushered in
the reformation, and the Catholic church slowly lost its
constituency. Today, because of corruption, it continues to diminish.
The Protestant churches rose to power and peaked in the 1960's and
now are in steep decline. If we follow the life-cycle of living
things, the church is headed toward death and resurrection.
According to many
theologians, we are coming full circle—back to small groups of
people who share a common center of gravity and morality. I find the
movement of change to be interesting and, at times, exciting. There
are things I miss about the “good old days” but they were mostly
based on the “ignorance is bliss” doctrine. We've opened up the
world, and we are now living with the consequences. The world we've
opened up will produce a different future for our children and
grandchildren. I hope that it will be a future in which humans learn
to cherish the earth and one another enough to, once again, share the
riches that belong to us all. That way, our children and
grandchildren could know peace instead of war. That would be a very
different world—a resurrection, indeed.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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