We Worship The Messenger

It might be a little cynical, but you could almost figure out what Jesus said by looking at our history and naming the opposite of what we did! We keep worshiping the messenger, keeping Jesus up on statues and images, so we can avoid what Jesus said.

Idols

Idols, like cultural myths, are always disguised, if not totally invisible to the worshiper. If we could see their falsity, we would, of course, know that they are not God.

Never Expect The State To Do Christ’s Work

A political culture, like the former Soviet Union, will always use power in totalitarian ways to achieve its purposes. We can never expect Caesar to do Christ’s work.

Addiction and Freedom

Our addictive society has to do what it wants to do. The freedom offered by all great spiritual traditions is quite different: spiritual and true freedom is wanting to do what you have to do to become who you are.

Alternative

One will not, of course, turn away from what seems like the only game in town (political, economic or religious) unless one has glimpsed a more attractive alternative. Jesus is a living parable, an audiovisual icon of that more attractive alternative. We cannot even imagine it, much less imitate it, unless we see one human being do it first.

Imitate Mary and Joseph

So why do we love and admire people like Mary and Joseph, and then not imitate their faith journeys, their courage, their non-reassurance by the religious system?

The Goal

We all tend to aim for the goal instead of the journey itself, but spiritually speaking, how we get there is where we arrive.

Just Say Yes

If we ourselves try to “manage” God, or manufacture our own worthiness by any performance principle whatsoever, we will never bring forth the Christ but only ourselves. Mary does not manage, fix, control or “perform” in any way. She just says “yes!” and brings forth the abundance that Isaiah promises (“ river,” “waves,” sands of the seashore). This is really quite awesome!

Matthew 25

He says in effect: “There is only one thing you have to do. You must have the freedom to recognize me where you didn’t expect me; otherwise you aren’t free. And you will be judged on a single question: ‘Could you recognize me in the least of your brothers and sisters?’

The Addiction

For Anne Wilson Schaef there is one addiction that over-arches all these quite private addictions and dependencies: our addiction to the system itself. Our chief dependency is the dependency on our hallowed explanations. Could there be a world not built on competition? We can’t imagine it. Could there be a world not built on power? On money and control? On militarism? We can’t imagine it –which shows how dependent we are on our systems.