Stopover 17

    In the Bosom of the Universe

    (Resurrection of Jesus)

    our host: St. Francis

    Our next stop, believe it or not, is the bosom of the universe. Our hosts are the risen Jesus himself and Francis of Assisi. Our planet earth, the stars, the galaxies, the supernovas—these make up our universe(s). And where is the center? Surprisingly, according to post-Newtonian physics, there is no one physical center. Rather each of us is the center. The core in each of us is also the bosom of the universe. There, according to our Faith, is also where the Spirit of the risen Lord, our present host, abides. He is our best guide for the signposts about his resurrection.

    A Kind of ‘Knowing’. How can we pierce through the veil that separates us from the next dimension? What awaits after one steps into the reaches of the after-death? Re-incarnation? Survival of the soul? Resurrection? Non-existence? Different religions and different ‘no-religions’ have different answers and no-answers. Or are the answers really different? Do they have a commonality that is beyond the ken of our simplistic laws of contradiction? I will not be one to ‘prove’ that they are or are not, they do or do not. But one thing does seem certain to me—the answers, or glimpses of them, will come less from rational speculation or from ‘blind faith’ than from a ‘knowing’ that ‘knows without knowing.’ For here we have set foot on a terrain which is beyond philosophy, beyond apologetic theology. Beyond poetry even.

    I say all this only to make known how, I suggest, we may regard the resurrection of Jesus. Anyone, like myself, who accepts Jesus’ resurrection, need not prove it. Nor even believe in it. How much personal engagement is there in deep religious ‘truths’ which you either ‘prove’ or believe in? In the long and short of it, it is neither a matter of apologetics nor (blind) faith. Rather, does it ring true? Does it resonate with the tuning fork of our best and deepest selves. Ironically perhaps, in this kind of knowing, what at first appears not to be part of the real world, turns out to be the most real.

    He Is Risen

    There are testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus. And the testimonies are simple, straightforward, almost matter of fact: He is risen. He is not here. He was raised on the third day.

    As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.’ (Mk 16:5-6)

    For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Cor 15:3-5)

    They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ (Lk 24:32)

         The testimony can also be very personal, deep and mystical. ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20).

    The Risen Jesus: God’s Vindication

    Several meanings were attached to the resurrection of Jesus. The first meaning entails the adversative ‘but.’ You killed him; but God raised him. For the first Christians, the Father’s act of raising Jesus from the dead was an act of vindication. It is the Father’s ‘yes’ to the stances and workings of this extraordinary person. Above all, it is the OK seal that validates the death of Jesus and invalidates the death-prone thoughts and machinations of the people who killed Jesus.

    We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. (Acts 10:39-41)

    And being found in human form,

    he humbled himself

    and became obedient to the point of death—

    even death on a cross.

    Therefore God also highly exalted him

    and gave him the name

    that is above every name. (Phil 2:8-9)

         The Risen Jesus: the First Fruits of the New World

    The second meaning stimulates images and hopes. They are hope-images of Jesus and of a deathless and ever-youthful world in which Jesus is the first. They are clips of a biblical scenario. Here is a replay: Is there not a future where each day will rouse us to a new world where the last enemy, death, will have been destroyed? Is not the Kingdom of God a new world where those who once slept in death would rise to new life? Well, Jesus is the firstborn of that new world! Is not the Kingdom of God like a harvest? (Mt 13:30) Well Jesus is the first fruits!

    But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (1 Cor 15:20)

    He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. (Col 1:18)

         The Risen Jesus: the Indwelling Spirit

    The risen Jesus is the life-energy that dwells in our deepest selves. That is the third significant meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus no longer has to play by the rules and regulations of our kind of materiality. He is freed from all the limitations of our kind of flesh-and-blood existence. Thus untrammeled, he can be the most intimate guest of our hearts. He is the indwelling Spirit. He is the divine element that works the alchemy of our divine sonship and daughtership. And cradled in our once-base hearts, he can – and we – utter the simple cry: ‘Abba, Father!’ That cry is worth infinitely more than all the valued metals in the universe. And if we let him, he can break through our opaqueness and impermeability and change us ‘in his likeness from one degree of glory to another.’ And if we are thus truly rooted in Christ, our loving is not an exertion but a natural fruit, a spontaneous happening. And finally, when our own days have grown older and after we too will have tasted death, ‘he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.’

    And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ (Gal 4:6)

    And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:18)

    and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. (Eph 3:17)

    But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Rom 8:9-11; also Phil 1:19; 1 Cor 15:45)

         Keeping Intact the Kingdom Perspective

    Cross and Resurrection. Sometimes the resurrection is paired with the cross to form one important saving event. This is a fourth meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has obtained atonement for sin and has given humanity the Spirit. The cross-and-resurrection of Jesus has been called the paschal mystery. Just as the paschal lamb and its blood on the doorposts saved the ancient Hebrews from Pharaoh’s terror during their march out of Egyptian slavery (Ex 12:11-13), so the sacrificial blood of Jesus brings salvation from sin. For ‘Christ, our paschal lamb has been sacrificed’ (1 Cor 5:7). The salvation that Jesus has wrought consists in (1) the atonement for sin; (2) the outpouring of the Spirit; and (3) the consequent attainment of eternal life and salvation.

    who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. (Rom 4:25)

    For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God. (2 Cor 13:4)

    For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. (Rom 14:9)

         Old and Central. The cross and resurrection of Christ is central in Christian faith and theology. And its centrality is rooted in very ancient tradition. Even before Paul, we already had a formulation of faith: For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-4). We also find it in the very ancient hymn, expressing belief in Jesus’ obedience unto the cross and his exaltation by God quoted by Paul in Phil 2:6ff.

    The Kingdom-Focus. In contemporary Philippine Christianity, however, we must not let the prominence accorded to the paschal mystery obscure another and older focus of the Christian faith. In the history of Jesus and early Christianity, there was a focus which pre-dates the paschal mystery. This is the Kingdom-focus. The heart of Jesus’ pre-crucifixion mission and message was the Kingdom or the new world where God, justice, peace, joy, full life reign.

    Elbow Room for Jesus. There is a form of narrow Christian spirituality which focuses almost exclusively on Jesus’ death. Thus: ‘Jesus died for my sins and he is the indwelling and sanctifying Spirit in my heart. He is my personal savior.’ This spirituality, though good and biblical, as far as it goes, is too narrow. It does not give Jesus enough elbow room. It ignores the Jesus who proclaimed a new world, a new history, a new humanity already begun and culminating at the consummation of history; the Jesus who proclaimed good news to the poor; the Jesus who identified justice-compassion-fidelity as the weightier matters of religion; in short, the more complete Jesus who poses questions to our Christian living today. The Second Look spirituality I used to know was of this kind.

    The Fundamentalist Jesus. This kind of spirituality is at the base of certain fundamentalist sects today. ‘God loves you and me. Jesus died for you and me. He is my personal savior and yours. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.’ Around this one hub spins the whole of religion and life, salvation and damnation, making a caricature of the biblical message and revelation. Some go further and give the label ‘atheists and communists’ to other Christians who, like Jesus, proclaim good news to the poor. Frequently, these sects, knowingly or unknowingly, have financial support from the economic and political goliaths of the First World.

    Before the specter of complacency slips in, we may reflect that fundamentalist theology is by no means the monopoly of so-called fundamentalist sects. It is also the possession of our institutional Church – with a difference. The fundamentalists often exhibit zeal, concern for persons and a sense of community belonging which are not always found among us.

    Kingdom-Religion: Inner World and Vast Stage of History. The almost-exclusive preoccupation with the paschal mystery has given birth to a certain type of religion. Religion is played out only in individual souls, doing good and avoiding evil, hoping one day to scale the heights to heaven. It is a psycho-spiritual drama of the individual soul seeking personal salvation. And Christian ministry is understood by them as helping others to seek the same salvation. Jesus’ religion, the Kingdom-religion, is very different. It is played out, yes, in my inner being, but also in the vaster stage of history, of the socio-political order, of people, of life-blessings, of our earth, in fact, of the universe….

    The Risen Jesus: The Cosmic Christ

    He Fills, Animates and Binds All Things. The risen Jesus has shaken off the shackles of mortality. The Pauline epistles unveil another profile of the risen Jesus. The risen Jesus, now having ascended back to the bosom of the Godhead, is the Cosmic Christ. Based on the Greek word for the universe, ‘cosmos,’ we speak of the risen Christ filling the entire universe as the Cosmic Christ. This is a fifth meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. Thus the letter to the Ephesians:

    He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things. (Eph 4:10)

    … which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Eph 1:23)

         Having broken loose from the limitations that our flesh is heir to, he has passed on to another dimension. There he has become the divine Energy that permeates and compenetrates all of reality. Just as a room can be saturated with sounds or colors or odors, so the Cosmic Christ fills the vast, vast universe with his animating presence. What is said of Yahweh is now said of Christ. ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ saith Yahweh (Jer 23:4). ‘One God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all’ (Eph 4:6).

    The Energy ‘fills all in all.’ The universe vibrates. It is alive.

    Early Christian hymns also celebrate the Cosmic Christ as the cohesive energy that holds things together, without which they cannot stand. 85

    He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:17)

    He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Heb 1:3)

         One Ocean of Energy. There are at least three significant groups that celebrate a beautiful reading of life in our vast universe. They say that all things in heaven and on earth are one ocean of energy. The universe is alive. So attest the eastern religions, the indigenous religions and contemporary physics.

    The First Look joins this chorus. For us Christians, one name for the ocean is either God himself (1 Cor 15:28) or the Cosmic Christ. It is this Spirit-Lord that binds and bonds us and the rest of creation, ‘all things in heaven and on earth.’

    With telescopes, contemporary science looks up and sees the energies of our present universe in uninterrupted communion with the energies of all reality, beginning with the present homo sapiens—back through the first mammals, to the first living cell, the birth of the sun, the birth of the milky way, the first elements in the galaxies—to the original burst of stupendous energy 15 or so billion years ago. We are connected! The same contemporary science, this time with microscopes, looks down and peers into the sub-microscopic world, inquires into the basic building block of reality and discovers not lifeless bits of matter but living energies; the universe is made up of relationships of energies, forming one continuous communion of energies, or simply, energy. We are connected!

    Eastern mystical religions report the experience of the interrelatedness, inter-dependence, and basic oneness of all things and events.

    Many indigenous communities know we are all part of the web of life. ‘We are all connected to each other’—as a popular song goes—‘in a circle, in a hoop that never ends.’ The earth is not just a dead commodity with a price-tag; every rock and tree and creature has a life and a name.

    Francis of Asisi, our host, did not believe in this. He knew it. Brooks, butterflies, mice, flowers, weeds and humans—brothers and sisters are. And the earth, our mother.

    So why ‘conquer’ nature? Why use and abuse it for recreation or profit?

    Reconciliation and Harmony of Creation. Not only is the universe animated and upheld by the Cosmic Christ, it is also reconciled through him. Jesus’ saving death not only brings about salvation and reconciliation between God and humans (Rom 5:10-11; 2 Cor 5:18-19) and among humans, making Jew and non-Jew into one body (Col 3:11; Gal 3:27-29; Eph 2:13-16); it also brings about harmony and reconciliation to the rest of creation. The blessings of salvation and well-being are meant not only for us humans but also for our mother, the earth; for our ancestors, the rocks; for our relatives, the mammals.

    So why abort nature’s right to well-being? Why pollute the rivers and the air? Why kill the fingerlings and the corals? Why rape the forests and the seas?

    … and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col 1:20) This harmony in nature is probably to be correlated with the defeat of evil powers, which biblical religion speaks about. It is tempting to find incarnations of these evil powers in our time. The neo-liberal ideology of globalization and its minions perhaps? He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. (Col 2:15)

    … who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him. (1 Pet 3:22)

         Songs of Creation. Before the final and complete rout of those ‘principalities and powers,’ the created universe is ‘groaning in labor pains’ until it is ‘set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Rom 8:18-23)

    Many indigenous peoples hear the voices of the mountains.

    Our host, Francis of Asisi, must have heard them too.

    Modern science, particularly physics, has an ear for the ‘music in the spheres.’

    Eastern religions listen to sounds in their way of communing with the universal unity.

    Paul hears the plaintive song of creation.

    I wonder, are they hearing similar songs? Or are they hearing the same song? Different parts of the same song? Are they parallel adventures or are they converging experiences? It may take a few years or a few millennia for us to realize that they converge. But they have to.

    Past and Future. The Cosmic Christ, who presently animates, upholds and reconciles the universe has a past and a future. In the past, he had a hand in the birthing of the universe. In the future he will bring the universe to its final consummation.

    In Creation at the Beginning. The Hebrew Scriptures had earlier waxed enthusiastic about Wisdom as the intimate partner of God in the creation of the universe. When he had not yet made earth and fields … when he established the heavens, I was there … when he made firm the skies above … when he established the fountains of the deep, then I was beside him, like a master worker … (see Prov 8:22-31).

    Now, it is Christ that the New Testament exalts. In and through him the universe came to be.

    He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:15-17; Rom 11:36)

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (Jn 1:1-3)

         In the Consummation at the End. Finally, at the climax and closure of human history, ‘after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power’ (1 Cor 15:24), the grand design of God will be realized: to sum up all things in the heavens and on the earth in Christ, with the cosmic Christ as head of all creation (ana, up; kephale, head). Francis, our host, will be there. So will the littlest quark. So will the most mammoth of galaxies. And we will not only be together. We will be one – as we always have been and are. he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1:9-10) Not ‘Theology’ But Contemplative Sightings. What are we talking about? Here we are not talking about the ‘theology of the Cosmic Christ,’ if by ‘theology’ is meant a disquisition by the rational mind. So understood, the Cosmic Christ is ‘explained,’ psychologized, analyzed with conceptual constructs, not to mention speculative ones. No. First, it is best to take the four experiences we have described above—eastern religions, indigenous spirituality, contemporary science, the Cosmic Christ —as sources of wisdom. Then their testimonies are best taken as sightings of the contemplative spirit. These sightings, gifts of non-rational contemplation, are second nature to eastern spirituality. And they grasp more of the essence of reality than the surface ruminations of Western philosophy. 86

    Be Still and Know …