AN EMERGENT UNION
I lie awake at 2:00 a.m. addressing Jesus for the first time in many years. The insights I've received over the past few days have affected me more deeply than I would have expected. I find myself reaching out, looking to make peace with him and with myself. I sit, grasping blindly for the reason behind his coming and in the still silence it plays out in the most humbling and disarming way.
For generations beyond memory, humans looked upon the world and trembled in fear of the gods who seemingly and capriciously blessed them with abundant harvests one year and then besieged them with floods, droughts, and hunger the next. We sought to win their favor or appease them for offenses both known and unknown. We sacrificed portions of our bounty to them, our very children in mad acts of desperation, because they were an unpredictable, violent bunch.
The dawn of Judaism witnessed a radical reframing of our understandings. God is not angry. It was through love and for love he created the world. This is why it exists and why we’re here. We weren’t quite ready to accept this, but he didn’t leave us to wallow in our fear. In the interim, he codified requirements to free us from the anxiety and guilt of not knowing if we'd offered enough to atone for our transgressions. This concession was offered so our ancestors could first begin to overcome their fear and love God.
At the proper time, when this concession was no longer needed, he consummated a new covenant through Jesus, the final, perfect word on universal atonement. This was intended to free us all the more to approach and love God.
Sadly, we codified even this most wondrous and enigmatic event, forever clinging to the past and its image of angry gods. Jesus came to rid us of this thinking forever, but we’re a stubborn lot. For now and forever, let it be known God is not angry with us. He loves us unconditionally in every sense of the word, in ways we understand and ways we cannot begin to comprehend.
The most fundamental reason for Jesus' coming then is to show us how best to relate to our Father, for it is a paradox to all the animalistic tendencies to fight, to be willful, and to approach our goals with the dogged determination of a species that in its not so recent past depended upon these qualities for survival. Their impulses are still deeply engrained in our psyches, but when we speak of heavenly things our worlds get turned upside down. I must die in order to live. I must give in order to get. I must lose myself in order to find myself.
Jesus displayed this contradiction in every facet of his life and teachings. His death and resurrection are indelible reminders of what must become those committed to relationship with our Father. We must immerse ourselves in his seemingly illogical will, die to ourselves, and find new life, transformed life, perfected life in giving ourselves completely to the divine lover. Only now are we finally realizing the greatest news of the gospel, that God seeks to be one with us and lift us from the depths of history into his eternal kingdom. When we fall in love with him, the Word and creator of the universe, we enter a union culminating in all we were created to be. In finding him, we find ourselves. In submitting to him, we are exalted.