Mass Essay

               Christ-Mass Meditation        December 23 2008

Paul said not to go beyond the teaching, and I am wondering just what he meant.  For myself, I am hoping that it means not to abandon Christ.  But that the revelation of Christ will grow larger and larger, gradually encompassing everything.

You have created us all with the capacity to know that there is God; however you confined your direct and prophetic relationship to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  It its narrowest sense, this would be the Jew.  In its broadest genetic sense, it would be the Jew, the Messianic Jew, and the Ishmaelites.  In its broadest spiritual sense, it would be all people who have come to recognize the One God, who then can be called the children of Abraham, and in its liveliest aspect, those who connect to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

It is plain that you have created man in the image of God, and that within every man is the ability to recognize God.

So every people group has its stories, its myths and legends, constructs  and histories that take them back to their origins, and lead them forward to their resting.  Each tribe has its spirit tongue and you have given each according to its faith and seers.

So then Christ should be the key that fits all these locks and releases all prisoners of forms.  Christ should be the answer to every question of life, brought by priest or shaman or marsh king or terrified woman or lost child.  I put that kind of faith in Christ, especially in the place of no language.

Paul became a Jew when with the Jews, and he became a Gentile when with the Gentiles.  He did not allow cultural patterns to dissuade or disempower his faith, but instead expressed his faith through any cultural milieu.  Christ and the life of the Spirit transcend every construct and every lens imagined by man, even man in the pursuit of God. 

Principally because Jesus takes us past the grave of our present life, while we yet live.  We don't understand this--if we did, we would live differently, don’t you think?   By virtue of substituting himself; his death for ours, he removes any arguments about our own abilities as meditators, mediators, avatars, adepts, ascended beings, they are all eradicated in the superiority of his own substitution.   And the authentication of this, in rising on the third day and appearing to the twelve, and later, to more than 500 people, and then later, baptizing all those who believe in the Holy Spirit.  He yet appears.

And since he has been crucified, has descended into the nether world, and has risen, to walk again upon the earth, and then been taken up into Heaven, what could possibly stand in his way?  What spirit or power now could possibly present itself a viable rival suitor?

I understand this.  It is why I belong to Jesus.  It is why I believe in God.  But mine is not the evangelical gift; it is a quieter and more humble working gift often unrecognized and unacknowledged.  It does however afford me the opportunity to walk an interesting circuit.

My witness must be one of behavior and conversation, power of love over power of argumentation.  When pressed, I confess, it is you, Jesus, you captured me, and I am unequivocally yours.