"Resurrection"
"From Infinite Love to Infinite Love"
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Reminder that there will be a conference call tomorrow afternoon at:
1:00 PM Mt
To call in please use the following information to dial in:
Dial-in Number: 1-302-202-1106
Conference Code: 166929
The call will be less than 1 hour long and will be recorded and placed onto the LS online platform shortly after the call.
Agenda:
Welcome
Discuss process to date
Discuss Phase III of the IP process
Q and R
End
Attached is a copy of the following:
Template Rhythm of Life
Template Contemplative Solidarity
IP overview for students
Student instructions for Live Conference Call
We all want resurrection in some form. Jesus’ resurrection is a potent, focused, and compelling statement about what God is still and forever doing with the universe and with humanity. Science strongly confirms this statement today with different metaphors and symbols: condensation, evaporation, hibernation, sublimation, the four seasons, and the life cycles of everything from salmon to stars—constantly dying and being reborn in different forms. God appears to be resurrecting everything all the time and everywhere. It is not something to “believe in” as much as it is something to observe and be taught by.1
I choose to believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection because it localizes the whole Mystery in this material and earthly world and in our own bodies too, the only world we know and the world that God created and loves and in which God chose to incarnate. (Read all of 1 Corinthians 15[1 Corinthians 15:1 Now, brothers, I must remind you of the Good News which I proclaimed to you, and which you received, and on which you have taken your stand, 2 and by which you are being saved — provided you keep holding fast to the message I proclaimed to you. For if you don’t, your trust will have been in vain. 3 For among the first things I passed on to you was what I also received, namely this: the Messiah died for our sins, in accordance with what the Tanakh says; 4 and he was buried; and he was raised on the third day, in accordance with what the Tanakh says; 5 and he was seen by Kefa, then by the Twelve; 6 and afterwards he was seen by more than five hundred brothers at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Later he was seen by Ya‘akov, then by all the emissaries; 8 and last of all he was seen by me, even though I was born at the wrong time. 9 For I am the least of all the emissaries, unfit to be called an emissary, because I persecuted the Messianic Community of God. 10 But by God’s grace I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain; on the contrary, I have worked harder than all of them, although it was not I but the grace of God with me. 11 Anyhow, whether I or they, this is what we proclaim, and this is what you believed.
12 But if it has been proclaimed that the Messiah has been raised from the dead, how is it that some of you are saying there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then the Messiah has not been raised; 14 and if the Messiah has not been raised, then what we have proclaimed is in vain; also your trust is in vain; 15 furthermore, we are shown up as false witnesses for God in having testified that God raised up the Messiah, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then the Messiah has not been raised either; 17 and if the Messiah has not been raised, your trust is useless, and you are still in your sins. 18 Also, if this is the case, those who died in union with the Messiah are lost. 19 If it is only for this life that we have put our hope in the Messiah, we are more pitiable than anyone.
20 But the fact is that the Messiah has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died. 21 For since death came through a man, also the resurrection of the dead has come through a man. 22 For just as in connection with Adam all die, so in connection with the Messiah all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: the Messiah is the firstfruits; then those who belong to the Messiah, at the time of his coming; 24 then the culmination, when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after having put an end to every rulership, yes, to every authority and power. 25 For he has to rule until he puts all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be done away with will be death, 27 for “He put everything in subjection under his feet.”[1 Corinthians 15:27 Psalm 8:7(6)] But when it says that “everything” has been subjected, obviously the word does not include God, who is himself the one subjecting everything to the Messiah. 28 Now when everything has been subjected to the Son, then he will subject himself to God, who subjected everything to him; so that God may be everything in everyone.
29 Were it otherwise, what would the people accomplish who are immersed on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not actually raised, why are people immersed for them? 30 For that matter, we ourselves — why do we keep facing danger hour by hour? 31 Brothers, by the right to be proud which the Messiah Yeshua our Lord gives me, I solemnly tell you that I die every day. 32 If my fighting with “wild beasts” in Ephesus was done merely on a human basis, what do I gain by it? If dead people are not raised, we might as well live by the saying, “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”[1 Corinthians 15:32 Isaiah 22:13, 56:12] 33 Don’t be fooled. “Bad company ruins good character.” 34 Come to your senses! Live righteously and stop sinning! There are some people who lack knowledge of God — I say this to your shame.
35 But someone will ask, “In what manner are the dead raised? What sort of body do they have?” 36 Stupid! When you sow a seed, it doesn’t come alive unless it first dies. 37 Also, what you sow is not the body that will be, but a bare seed of, say, wheat or something else; 38 but God gives it the body he intended for it; and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all living matter is the same living matter; on the contrary, there is one kind for human beings, another kind of living matter for animals, another for birds and another for fish. 40 Further, there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the beauty of heavenly bodies is one thing, while the beauty of earthly bodies is something else. 41 The sun has one kind of beauty, the moon another, the stars yet another; indeed, each star has its own individual kind of beauty.
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. When the body is “sown,” it decays; when it is raised, it cannot decay. 43 When sown, it is without dignity; when raised, it will be beautiful. When sown, it is weak; when raised, it will be strong. 44 When sown, it is an ordinary human body; when raised, it will be a body controlled by the Spirit. If there is an ordinary human body, there is also a body controlled by the Spirit. 45 In fact, the Tanakh says so: Adam, the first man, became a living human being;[1 Corinthians 15:45 Genesis 2:7] but the last “Adam” has become a life-giving Spirit. 46 Note, however, that the body from the Spirit did not come first, but the ordinary human one; the one from the Spirit comes afterwards. 47 The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 People born of dust are like the man of dust, and people born from heaven are like the man from heaven; 49 and just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, so also we will bear the image of the man from heaven.50 Let me say this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, nor can something that decays share in what does not decay. 51 Look, I will tell you a secret — not all of us will die! But we will all be changed! 52 It will take but a moment, the blink of an eye, at the final shofar. For the shofar will sound, and the dead will be raised to live forever, and we too will be changed. 53 For this material which can decay must be clothed with imperishability, this which is mortal must be clothed with immortality. 54 When what decays puts on imperishability and what is mortal puts on immortality, then this passage in the Tanakh will be fulfilled:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.[1 Corinthians 15:54 Isaiah 25:8]
55 “Death, where is your victory?
Death, where is your sting?”[1 Corinthians 15:55 Hosea 13:14]
56 The sting of death is sin; and sin draws its power from the Torah; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah!
58 So, my dear brothers, stand firm and immovable, always doing the Lord’s work as vigorously as you can, knowing that united with the Lord your efforts are not in vain.] where Paul keeps saying this in many ways.)
We all want to know that this wonderful thing called life is going somewhere good. It is going to someplace good because it came from “original innocence” instead of “original sin.” “I know where I came from and where I am going,” Jesus says, “but you do not” (John 8:14). So he came to tell us!
The Alpha and the Omega of history have to match, or our lives have no natural arc, trajectory, or organic meaning. The end has to be in the beginning, as T. S. Eliot said in his Four Quartets. The Book of Revelation (1:8, 21:6, 22:13) states that Jesus is the Alpha of history, which Duns Scotus called “the first idea in the mind of God,” and also the “Omega Point,” which is the final allurement of history into its future, an idea taught by Teilhard de Chardin.
If the original divine incarnation was and is true, then resurrection is both inevitable and irreversible. If the Big Bang was the external starting point of the eternal Christ Mystery, then we know Creation is being led somewhere good, and it is not a chaotic or meaningless universe. Alpha and Omega are in fact one and the same.
The Cosmic or Universal Christ is the divine lure, a blinking, brilliant light set as the Omega Point of time and history that keeps reminding us that love, not death, is the eternal thing. Love, which is nothing more than endless life, is luring us forward, because love is what we also and already are. All life is inexorably drawn to the fullness of its own existence. “Like knows like” and, similar to an electromagnetic force, Love is drawing the world into a fullness of love. I firmly believe we will finally be unable to resist the allure. Catholics tried to visualize this human resistance in a rather clumsy way in what they called “the fires of purgatory.”
But have no doubt, Love will always win. God does not lose.
Gateway to Silence: Alleluia, alleluia, amen!
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 86-88, 92-93.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation for Monday, 8 May 2017: "Grace Is Key" from the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
"Resurrection"
"Grace Is Key"
Monday, May 8, 2017
(Feast of Lady Julian of Norwich)
The goodness of God fills all the gaps of the universe, without discrimination or preference. God is the gratuity of absolutely everything. The space in between everything is not space at all but Spirit. God is the “Goodness Glue” that holds the dark and light of things together, the free energy that carries all death across the Great Divide and transmutes it into Life. When we say that Christ “paid the debt once and for all,” it simply means that God’s job is to make up for all deficiencies in the universe. What else would God do? Grace is what God does to keep all things God has made in love and alive—forever. Grace is not something God gives; grace is who God is. If we are to believe the primary witnesses, an unexplainable goodness is at work in the universe. (Some of us call this phenomenon God, but the word is not necessary. In fact, sometimes it gets in the way of the experience, because too many have named God something other than grace.)
Death is not just our one physical dying, but it is going to the full depth, hitting the bottom, going the distance, beyond where I am in control, and always beyond where I am now. No wonder it is scary. Such death is called “the descent into hell” in the early Apostles’ Creed, while in other sources, “the pit,” “the dark night,” “Sheol,” or “Hades.” We all die eventually; we have no choice in the matter. But there are degrees of death before the final physical one. If we are honest, we acknowledge that we are dying throughout our life, and this is what we learn if we are attentive: grace is found at the depths and in the death of everything. After these smaller deaths, we know that the only “deadly sin” is to swim on the surface of things, where we never see, find, or desire God or love. This includes even the surface of religion, which might be the worst danger of all. Thus, we must not be afraid of falling, failing, moving “down.”
When you go to the full depths and death, sometimes even the depths of your sin, you can always come out the other side—and the word for that is resurrection. Something or someone builds a bridge for you, recognizable only from the far side, that carries you across, either willingly, or even dragging your feet. Something or someone seems to fill the tragic gap between death and life, but only at the point of no return. None of us crosses over by our own effort or merits, purity, or perfection. We are all carried across by an uncreated and unearned grace—from pope, to president, to princess, to peasant. The tomb is always finally empty. There are no exceptions to death, and there are no exceptions to grace. And I believe, with good evidence, that there are no exceptions to resurrection.
Gateway to Silence: Alleluia, alleluia, amen!
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), xx-xxii.
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Read the spring edition of CAC’s spiritual, literary journal Oneing:
Transformation
featuring Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault,
Wm Paul Young, David Whyte, and others
Limited copies of past issues are available:
Evolutionary Thinking
Perfection
Innocence
Emancipation
Evidence
Transgression
Ripening
Purchase individual editions of Oneing at store.cac.org.
Copyright © 2017
Center for Action and Contemplation
Center for Action and Contemplation
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PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
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