Musings

The sacred myth of Christmas enchants us into life, birthing us as children of God. The gospel story of the conception and birth of Jesus comes alive for us again, in our own transformation from the mundane to the divine. The story is about us. It is about you and me. It is about what it is like for us to pass through the birth canal from the sleep of conventional consciousness into glorious awakening to Ultimate Reality: “…born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

In Spanish, the words for birth are “dar la luz” – to give the light. The implication is that the mother brings the baby out of the darkness of the womb and into the light. The gospel of John opens with mystical imagery: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” At Christmas, the baby is the light. Light itself is being born. A new kind of vision, a new kind of seeing, is coming into the world.

A vision expressed with stunning eloquence this very week, in Moscow, in a courtroom where Yegor Zhukov, a 21 year old university student, was on trial for “extremism”. His supposed crime? Posting youtube videos denouncing Vladimir Putin. His run for Moscow City Council caught the attention of the authorities. He was sentenced to three years probation conditional on him refraining from posting anything on social media. Here is an excerpt from his closing speech in the courtroom:

“The Russian state claims to be the world’s last protector of traditional values. We are told that the state devotes a lot of resources to protecting the institution of the family, and to patriotism. We are also told that the most important traditional value is the Christian faith. Your Honor, I think this may actually be a good thing. The Christian ethic includes two values that I consider central for myself. First, responsibility. Christianity is based on the story of a person who dared to take up the burden of the world. It’s the story of a person who accepted responsibility in the greatest possible sense of that word. In essence, the central concept of the Christian religion is the concept of individual responsibility.

“The second value is love. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is the most important sentence of the Christian faith. Love is trust, empathy, humanity, mutual aid, and care. A society built on such love is a strong society—probably the strongest of all possible societies.

“To understand why I’ve done what I’ve done, all you have to do is look at how the Russian state, which proudly claims to be a defender of these values, does in reality. Before we talk about responsibility, we have to consider what the ethics of a responsible person is. What are the words that a responsible individual repeats to himself throughout his life? I think these words are, ‘Remember that your path will be difficult, at times unbearably so. All your loved ones will die. All your plans will go awry. You will be betrayed and abandoned. And you cannot escape death. Life is suffering. Accept it. But once you accept it, once you accept the inevitability of suffering, you must still accept your cross and follow your dream, because otherwise things will only get worse. Be an example, be someone on whom others can depend. Do not obey despots, fight for the freedom of body and soul, and build a country in which your children can be happy.’

“Is this really what we are taught? Is this really the ethics that children absorb at school? Are these the kinds of heroes we honor? No. Our society, as currently constituted, suppresses any possibility of human development. [Fewer than] ten per cent of Russians possess ninety per cent of the country’s wealth. Some of these wealthy individuals are, of course, perfectly decent citizens, but most of this wealth is accumulated not through honest labor that benefits humanity but, plainly, through corruption….

"I really want to see these two qualities—responsibility and love—in my fellow-citizens. Responsibility for one’s self, for one’s neighbors, for one’s country. This wish of mine, your honor, is another reason why I could not have called for violence. Violence breeds impunity, which breeds irresponsibility. By the same token, violence does not bear love. Still, despite all obstacles, I have no doubt that my wish will come true. I am looking ahead, beyond the horizon of years, and I see a Russia full of responsible, loving people. It will be a truly happy place. I want everyone to imagine Russia like this. And I hope this image can lead you in your work, as it has led me in mine….

“In conclusion, I would like to state that if the court decides that these words are spoken by a truly dangerous criminal, the next few years of my life will be marked by deprivation and adversity. But I look at the people [who have been jailed in the latest wave of activist arrests] and I see smiles on their faces. Two people I met briefly during pretrial detention, Lyosha Minyaylo and Danya Konon, never complained. I will try to follow their example. I will endeavor to take joy in having this chance—the chance to be tested in the name of values I hold dear. In the end, Your Honor, the more frightening my future, the broader the smile with which I look at it. Thank you.”

Now those are words of higher consciousness piercing through the darkness of autocracy. Words of a very young man wise far beyond his years, expressing a profound Christian theology. And you can switch out the word Russia with the word America and most of it rings just as true. Pray God that more young people in America will speak out with the clarity of moral vision that Yegor Zhukov dared to express in a Russian kangaroo court, so that the fate that has befallen Russia does not befall our country as well – a fate that threatens us more acutely with each passing day.

In a dark time in Israel, occupied by the Roman Empire, with the people seething in anger and despair, a baby was born. And through him, a new narrative came to light.   Jesus gave birth to a new story for the people of Israel. A new way to take the same realities that surrounded them, and give them a radically fresh and positive interpretation.   A kingdom of love had arrived, co-existing with the kingdom of oppression that surrounded them. By seeing the light of compassion, and acting on it, that kingdom of love would become more and more manifest among them, and overcome the corruption and violence that confronted them every day.

Yegor Zhukov’s speech laid out the grim reality of Russia today, and at the same time offered a fresh and positive narrative for its future. He didn’t blow sunshine at his audience. His positive vision is rooted in clarity about the painful facts of his country’s situation. He gave the light to another vision of his country, where people will take on the true Christian virtues of responsibility and love.

What story do you tell yourself and others, about yourself? What narrative have you accepted about your life? Does this narrative serve your soul? Ponder this: there are an infinite number of stories you could tell about the same facts of your life. Innumerable ways you could string together the same realities, but each with significantly different implications and consequences. One version of your story can keep you stuck in negativity and helplessness. Another version, based on the same facts, can liberate you into creativity and hopefulness. Christmas is just this: the birth of a new narrative for the human condition – one that takes our same nitty-gritty realities and strings them together into a story that impels us toward compassion and hope and faith.

So much of my work as a church pastor, as a community organizer, and as a campus pastor has been just this: serving people as a midwife in the birth of new narratives for their lives.   Narratives that serve their souls. Narratives that give hope and purpose to their lives, leaving behind plot-lines of despair and regret and anger.

A new story for your life is on its way. Growing invisibly within you. Gestating. It’s on its way in the belly of a virgin riding a donkey toward Bethlehem. It’s knocking at your door, hoping for a welcome. Get ready! Out with the old, stale, dull, negative story of your life. In with one based on the same facts, but suffused with awe and wonder and joy and hope. One that will birth you not by the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God…. who is love.

 

I'm Looking Up

The Trojan Campfire Song
Words: Jim Burklo
Tune: ????

I’m looking up into your eyes
Alive with dancing light
Gazing as we gather round
The campfire burning bright

I’m looking up above the screens
That occupy my day
I’m asking questions of your soul
And hearing what you say

I’m looking up and listening
To heartfelt truth revealed
In honest talk around the fire
Our friendship will be sealed

I’m looking up and looking deep
In each bright face tonight
Beneath the vastness of the sky
We’re equals in its sight

As we sit and warm ourselves
Around the roaring flame
We’re different in a hundred ways
But Trojans all the same.

I’m looking up into your eyes
Alive with dancing light
Gazing as we gather round
The campfire burning bright…

https://orl.usc.edu/programs/campfires/

First, Save Democracy...

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  (Paul, Ephesians 6:12, NRSV)

There are very many ways to interpet this especially foreboding passage from the New Testament.  For our time, I'd render it thusly:

For our struggle is not against the blood and flesh person of the current president of the United States, but against the dark spiritual force that he serves and represents.

Right after the 2016 election, the Yale historian of the Holocaust, Timothy Snyder, published "On Tyranny", a concise, practical guide to resistance to the slide into authoritarianism that the new president represents.  In a recent interview, he renews his call to vigilance.  And he reminds us that if we put all our attention on the person of the president, we will fail to project a future in which democracy and truth prevail.  Yes, the current president must be removed from office by impeachment or by next year's vote.  But Snyder asks, will we have removed the conditions that resulted in his presidency?  Ultimately, our crisis is not a person.  It is systemic.  It is structural.  And it is spiritual.

It feeds on the negative, destructive, insidious spiritual power of fear.

White men's fear of losing economic, social, and political power to women and minorities.  Evangelical Christians' and conservative Catholics' fear of losing the "culture war" they've been waging for for decades, and slipping into public irrelevance.  Trumpublicans' fear that since they keep losing the popular vote at a national level, now is their only chance to shape the country in their image - and their fear that primary voters will abandon them if they denounce a president they secretly despise. 

Fear leads people to make rash choices.  It leads them to abandon decency and morality.  It leads them to flail and dissemble and do whatever they can to avoid the fate that frightens them.  We're watching the politics of fear in the Congress today, as Trumpublicans in the impeachment hearings blast ridiculous conspiracy-theory flak into the air to confuse voters into thinking there is no such thing as objective fact and that all politicians lie and cheat, so what Trump says and does is no news and no big deal. 

Fear leads to outrageous behavior. 

Which is why those of us who stand for truth and democracy must model the courage that we want others to embrace, by sharing our positive vision.

The vision must start with the preservation and improvement of democracy itself.  The Trumpublicans are enacting disastrous and inhumane public policies.  But dreadful as these actions are, they pale in comparison to the damage that they are doing to the institutions that guarantee our freedom.  Without an intact democracy, we'll have no system by which to correct these policies.

So we must make the distinction and keep it clearly before us.  Priority number one is to stop the current insidious erosion of our democracy, and lift up our positive vision of a stronger democracy that can resist the politics of fear that brought Trump and company into office in the first place.

We fearlessly envision public discourse and policy-making based on reality, and not on rumor, speculation, or conspiracy theories.  We will only follow media outlets that have a track record of verifying the information they disseminate, have a track record of accuracy, and publicly correct their errors.  We will seek out multiple reputable sources of information and pay attention to any inconsistencies in reporting that might suggest the need for our own further investigation.  And we'll donate or subscribe to high-quality media outlets, so that they can afford to deploy investigative journalists.  We will take scientific consensus seriously, and be skeptical of any claim that goes against it - while understanding that science is a continuous, incomplete process.  We envison a democracy that seeks facts and acts on them - not on dogma, wishful thinking, nostalgia, or confabulation. 

We fearlessly envision an enlivened civil society in which we re-commit ourselves to public life:  belonging to community organizations, showing up for public hearings, engaging in person with our neighbors about civic affairs, volunteering for and donating to non-profits, looking people in the eyes on the streets and saying hello, knocking on doors for political campaigns.  These institutions and actions form the foundations of our democracy. 

We fearlessly envision a "more perfect Union" - a modernized, more democratic, and more representative democracy.  We envision direct election of the president by a majority of all American voters, eliminating or disempowering the antiquated Electoral College system.  We envision a nonpartisan process of creating legislative districts that make geographic sense, eliminating partisan gerrymandering.  We envision people-powered rather than money-powered election campaigns.  We envision election day as a holiday.  We envision voter registration, election scheduling, and polling places designed to ensure maximum participation by all segments of society.  We envision ranked-choice voting so that elections result in a fuller consensus of the will of the people, minimizing the risk of extremists taking office. We envision a new system of choosing Supreme Court justices and other judges that will result in a much less partisan outcome.

We fearlessly envision a democracy that is ruled by the majority of voters, but with respect for the minority.  We envision a justice system that respects precedent, an executive branch that submits to legislative oversight, and a legislative branch in which the majority is sufficiently checked by a Senate in which each state gets two votes, regardless of population: we envision the end of the 60-vote Senate filibuster rule.  We envision our people being free to worship or practice the faith of their choice, or no faith at all - without letting people impose their religious beliefs on others through discrimination.  

We fearlessly envision our restored and revitalized democracy fearlessly and decisively acting on the critical challenges of our time:  taking immediate steps to reverse human-caused climate disaster, assuring that all Americans, regardless of income, have access to excellent and affordable health care, increasing economic opportunity and reducing corrosive income inequality, re-enacting and extending environmental protections, and many other tasks.

Impeachment is an unfortunate necessity.  Campaigning hard for new leaders is essential.  But unless we contend with the spiritual force of fear, overwhelming it with courageous vision for the kind of country we want to create, we will not prevent this current debacle from happening again. 

The Desert from the Air

"Harqahala Mtns, AZ" - rusty metal on beaten copper - by Jim Burklo

 

(Notes taken while looking out the window during a flight over the desert Southwest)

 

Abrupt mountains

Sinuous draws

Scrapes of roads and mines

Splatter patterns

Spreads of salt

Alfalfa circles

Dots of scrub

Shades of sand

Tangled meanders

Stains of sediment

Fans of sand

Solitary promontories

Cracked lakebeds

Stretched shadows

Staggered strata

Smoothed sinews

Squared rangelands

Sharp stream-heads

Etched drywashes

Ascending aspens....

 

 

Prince of Peace, Cross of Gold

William Jennings Bryan, right:   Scopes Trial, July 1925

 

Imagine Bernie Sanders' public policy prescriptions woven into a fundamentalist Christian religious tract.

Does that idea hurt your head?

Well, it’s not a new one. 

Let's scroll back to July of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.

Sweat ran down the high dome of his bald head as he declaimed against the threat posed to civilization and Christianity by the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools. The days of what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial were long and hot. And the media attention was heavy. The lawyer defending fundamentalist six-day creationism was William Jennings Bryan. His prime as an iconic American political figure had long passed. This was his last stand. And firm he stood, his arguments eloquent, cooling himself with a big hand fan as he made his case. In the end, the teacher accused of promulgating the offending theory was fined $100. Bryan won the battle.

But he lost the war. He and his fellow fundamentalists were widely mocked as country bumpkins, out of touch with the forward march of science and culture. Bryan died shortly after the trial. The Scopes case was later nullified on a technicality, and the teaching of evolution in schools rapidly spread throughout the country. Fundamentalism in America went into a long period of relative quiescence.

And then it came roaring back into public significance. And the evidence of its resurgence is abundant today. The Attorney General recently gave a speech at Notre Dame University, repeating the right-wing trope that there is a “war on religion” – specifically Judeo-Christian religion - in America waged by progressives and secularists who are to blame for the country’s ills. I am a very religious person and feel no threat whatsoever to the practice of my faith.   So why is this fear being stoked when the Cabinet is heavily populated by the same kind of fundamentalist Christians that prevailed in the Scopes Monkey Trial? How can William Barr whine at Notre Dame about a threat to his faith when a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court are Catholics?

The answer to this conundrum is found in a study of American history since the days of William Jennings Bryan. Opposition to teaching evolution in public schools translated into a distrust of taxpayer-subsidized education generally.   There is a straight line between the Scopes Monkey Trial and Betsy DeVos, “ScAmway” heiress and privatizer-in-chief of the nation’s schools. Many of the folks who opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools were also white racists. In the 1970’s, when Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status because it did not allow interracial dating, the court decision stirred evangelicals to political action. The Republican Party married itself to this demographic, stirring up fundamentalists against this supposed governmental over-reach. The consequences have endured, with our current president getting overwhelming support from white evangelicals. The struggle of fundamentalist Christianity with secular culture was cynically co-opted as a tool for radicals to dismantle government - and now to dismantle democracy itself.  

But this same demographic, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, voted for a self-professed democratic socialist by the name of William Jennings Bryan. He was nominated three times for the presidency by the Democratic Party. He gave the unforgettable speech at the Democratic convention of 1896 in which he railed against the capitalist class for imposing an inflexible gold-standard fiscal policy that ruined farmers around the country. “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” he roared, and the crowd literally went wild. He railed against the excesses of the “robber baron” capitalists of the Gilded Age. He was called the “Fundamentalist Pope” for his unabashed employment of religious language in support of leftist political positions.

I just finished his slim 1909 volume, “The Prince of Peace” – more a tract than a book, outlining his personal faith convictions, with his political views implied.   As a progressive Christian, I would dispute many of his theological assertions. But I found myself having great admiration for the commitments that underlay them.   His main objection to evolution was that “survival of the fittest” was in contradiction to Jesus’ law of love. Now we know that the law of love is woven into nature, and has “survival value” for populations. But in his time, this wasn’t understood. “The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate – the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” Indeed, at the time he wrote, many “mainstream” cultural figures were abusing the theory of evolution in support of “eugenics” and untrammeled capitalism. It was a handy scaffold upon which to promote the idea that the economically successful were exemplars of the natural “survival of the fittest”.  

So it is intensely ironic that, today, so many of the people who still believe in six-day creation have allied themselves with the politics of untrammelled, “winners take all”, social-Darwinist capitalism. “If this [evolution] is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward toward the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love,” wrote Bryan. Were he among us today, and could see what has become of Christian fundamentalism in America, he’d be worked into a sweat and fanning himself once again.

Things changed after his day.  Things can change in ours.

His was not the common fundamentalist view that the approaching “end-times” eclipsed any need for Christians to take action for progressive social change. “In former years many thought to prepare themselves for future bliss by a life of seclusion here; we are learning that to follow in the footsteps of the Master we must go about doing good… I am glad that He, who is called the Prince of Peace – who can bring peace to every troubled heart and whose teachings, exemplified in life, will bring peace between man and man, between community and community, between State and State, between nation and nation throughout the world – I am glad that He brings courage as well as peace so that those who follow Him may take up and each day bravely do the duties that to that day fall.” To this, may Christians of all theological persuasions join in a hearty “Amen!”

 

 

Christianity, Incubated

Let us prepare our souls to receive the sacred myth of scripture. 

Breathe deep, keep a moment of silence; release any preconceptions you might have about the meaning of the passage, open your heart to new revelations that may arise. 

Then read aloud:

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;  it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”  He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.  (Jesus, Matthew 13: 31-33, NRSV)

Read it aloud again a few times.

Let the seed of scripture sink into the soil of your soul.

Let the yeast of scripture knead its way into every fiber of your being.

Let holy mystery, enveloped by scripture, incubate within you until it transforms you as you most need to be transformed.

Christianity is a tiny, hard, round mustard seed, packed densely with scriptures, writings, doctrines, art, music, liturgies, history, and practices.  Amazing to behold.  But observing this seed, you won't necessarily see the selfless compassion and sublime wisdom that can grow from it after it is planted in the human soul.  Christianity is a pinch of smelly yeast: messy, strange, complicated - outrageous in so many ways.  But folded into the human heart, and with the right nurture and conditions, it can swell into divine goodness. 

Christianity, in and of itself, is funky.  Christianity, incubated, empties itself into new being.  Some folks wear crosses on chains around their necks to mark them as members of the Christian tribe.  There's nothing wrong with wearing the cross.  But until the cross wears us, until we incubate the myth of the crucifixion and resurrection within our souls, we're not letting the sacred story liberate us from self-absorption. 

Christianity is not a knick-knack to show off on a shelf.  It's not a special club for the cool kids.  It is a packet of seeds meant to be planted within us.  It is a packet of yeast meant to be folded into us. 

Within the mustard seed is a structure called the apical meristem, consisting of stem cells, each of which has the potential to morph into any specific cell in specific organs of the future mustard plant.  The whole Christian religion is an apical meristem.  It has no fixed meanings.  Each myth and story and hymn and liturgy and artwork within it has infinite variable potential to positively transform the human soul, if nudged and nurtured in that direction. 

Open your heart to the mustard seed.  Let it drop all the way in.  Water it with time and contemplation.

Make way in your soul for the pinch of yeast.  Warm it with open, mindful, prayerful attention.  Let it be whatever it is, on its terms.  Wait for it to do whatever it does within you.

May the delicious aroma of fresh bread rise from the sacred story planted deep within you.  May birds of the air make nests in that which sprouts from your incubated Christianity... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Progressive Christian News Flashes

 

COSTA MESA, CALIFORNIA:  Autumn Rose did not set out to get ink for progressive Christianity.  She was invited by Fairview Community Church in Costa Mesa, CA, to read stories for children at a monthly event.  It was no big deal until loud protests began outside the church.  Autumn Rose is a drag queen, and the protesters objected to her potential influence on children.  One, at the entrance to the church parking lot, cried out:  “This driveway is an open gate to a sepulcher!”  A security team was organized to contain the disruptions.  The incidents were covered prominently in the LA Times on 9/21/19, which described the long-standing progressive orientation of the congregation, including its full affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQI people.  The pastor, Sara Halverson Cano, performs same-sex marriages in the church.

 
SOUTH BEND, INDIANA:  Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the most “out” progressive Christian running for the presidency.   Applying Christianity to politics “is going to point you in a progressive direction”, he says.  His father was, for a while, training to become a Jesuit priest. Both parents taught at the Catholic university, Notre Dame.  He is now an active member of the Episcopal Church, in which he and his husband were married.  Buttigieg regularly calls out the hypocrisy of politicians who tout their Christianity while cutting public benefits for the poor.  He said in a recent interview:  "There is something going on that is so much bigger than party politics right now. It’s a kind of stirring or, or reawakening. I try to speak about this with a certain kind of humility, because there’s been this kind of progressive dimension to religious activism for much longer than I’ve been on the scene. But it seems to be asserting itself in new ways, and it should be. Because what’s happening is I think a real affront to many of the principles that faith counsels us to uphold when we come into the public square."

WASHINGTON, DC:  Ben Carson, US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, puts out a newsletter to his friends and supporters.  Here is the opening of a recent issue:  “Dear Carson News Reader:  There’s a terrifying term being thrown around these days, and if you’re anything like us . . .You might be scratching your head every time you hear it, wondering . . .“What the heck is a progressive Christian?”  First off . . . Don’t be fooled. It’s not someone who adheres to the true roots and beliefs of Christianity . . . Instead it’s a veiled disguise for anti-Christianity that’s rampant in Washington…” 

Thanks, Ben, for the confirmation that progressive Christianity is thriving!

 

JIM BURKLO

Website: MINDFULCHRISTIANITY.ORG   Weblog: MUSINGS   

Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloSee the GUIDE to my articles and books

Sr Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

This Is Our Flag

 

(It is my fervent hope that all of us who are resisting the current slide toward tyranny in America will wave the flag vigorously at every public demonstration and event we attend.  Far too few flags are visible at too many of our gatherings.  It is OUR flag.  We're the patriots.  Let's claim and wave the symbol of democracy and freedom!  Here's a hymn to the flag to share freely --)

 

(Tune:  Finlandia)

Words:  Jim Burklo

 

This is our flag, inviting every nation

To human freedom and democracy

Red, white, and blue: we sing out our devotion

In harmony from our diversity

Our creeds and tongues and points of view are many

We stand as one defending liberty

 

This is our flag: its stars and stripes are many

As we have gathered from so many lands

Into this tapestry we're sewn together

Raising our flag, and all for which it stands

Our Constitution binds us all together

Under our flag, in humble unity

 

This is our flag: it waves for all our people

Who gave their lives extending liberty

It waves for votes in free and fair elections

It welcomes migrants yearning to be free

It stands for truth, the rule of law, and justice

Long may it wave, held high by you and me!

 

The Way of Emptying

 

painting by Bardia Soltani

 

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
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,
so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:2-11 NRSV)

 

Christians follow an empty man, and strive to become as empty as he was.

A child is at once both greedy and selfless: crying until fed, but in the next moment enraptured in ego-free awe while watching a butterfly pass by. Adults may be more subtle in their expressions of it, but the polarity remains. Humans are full of themselves. Each of us must contend with the propensity to presume that we are the center of the universe - that at the mention of my name, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess my glory.

The Psalmist captures the contradiction:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
    mortals^, that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under their feet…

(Psalm 8: 3-8 NRSV)

Could it be that this dichotomy in human experience, and the mythical biblical poetry that describes it, are mirrors of the structure of the cosmos? The universe once was congealed into an infinitely dense center. Then it emptied itself in every direction instantaneously. Then its contents congealed into local centers called stars and galaxies. Then planets congealed around the stars. Then on the planet earth, life-forms congealed, yielding human beings with their congealing consciousness of self and cosmos.

The cosmos may well slow and stop its expansion and congeal again into the center, and empty again, and congeal again, and empty again, out of and into infinity. Each emptying creates microcosms that can be mistaken for the whole. Each set of planets circling a sun can seem like all there is. And each locus of consciousness can fall into the same illusion.

So when a human being named Jesus emptied himself, and served others so radically and selflessly that he was emptied of life itself on a cross, a model was set before humanity, showing us how to raise our consciousness. The gospel myth of his life and death models for us the emptying way. What makes us most human is not to glorify our own small-“s” selves. What makes us most human is not to advertise our awesomeness on social media. What makes us most human is out-of-ego expression of awe, wonder, and compassion. By getting ourselves out of the center, and becoming fully other-oriented, we are crowned with glory and honor. True for Jesus, and true for us.

As the staggering natural creativity surrounding us on earth and in heaven resulted from the emptying at cosmogenesis, so all the most beautiful human creations flow from emptying our self-centeredness into other-centeredness. In following Jesus, our ontology recapitulates our phylogeny.  In walking the way of emptying, we mirror in our souls and actions the origin of the universe, and consciously participate in its evolution.

The Sacred Myth of the Gospel

 

"A reading from the sacred myth of the Gospel of Matthew (or Mark, Luke, or John)...." 

I've been introducing scripture passages this way from the pulpit for decades.  At first I was a bit nervous about speaking my mind in such an unambiguous fashion.  But when I discovered that hardly any parishioners blinked, I lost my trepidation.  (More about fearlessness from the pulpit here...)  People in churches are generally relieved to hear straight talk from the pulpit about the non-factual nature of much if not most of the Bible.  They value the Bible and the Christian tradition, and so do I, and that is what matters most to them.  They want to hear the stories and they want to explore their meaning and significance.  It turns out that hardly any of the meaning found in the Bible is dependent on whether or not its stories actually happened. 

If something in the Bible or the wider Christian tradition looks mythical, we do well to assume that this is the case.  The myth test is pretty simple.  If the details of the story fly in the face of common sense and what we know about science, then it is best not to take it literally.  But just because something didn't really happen doesn't mean it isn't true.  There is factual truth, and then there is the truth about life that can be embedded in a fanciful story.

To be sure, not all myths are equal.  Some are meaningless.  And some are even harmful, like the false narratives that motivate people to refuse to vaccinate their children.  But the mythology in Christianity is pregnant with transformative spiritual power.  Very little in the Gospels in the Christian Bible has any historical validity.  But the myths of his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection reach into the depths of our souls and energize us with love and hope.  They are made sacred by the ways they evoke the divine realm in our hearts.

Embracing the mythical nature of the Gospel, seeking the deeper truths within its non-factual narratives, letting them resonate in the inner sanctum of our consciousness: this practice of Christianity wipes away a huge swath of frustration.  We're no longer looking to the Bible for facts.  There is no more conflict between science and faith.  There is no more fear of eternal hellfire as a punishment for our inability to reconcile what we read in the Bible with our God-given good sense.  Faith becomes a fearless way of living, rather than being a lot where we park our brains while trying to believe the unbelievable. 

The Gospels are myths to live by.  We preachers will do our church members a great service by being clear and explicit about the mythical nature of the Christian Bible and tradition.  We don't need to mince words.  It just frustrates people when we dance around the topic like it is too hot to handle.  On the contrary, we need to lift up the precious value and power of our Christian myths.  It does not make any difference that Jesus did not literally walk on water.  But it makes all the difference to share the story, because it teaches us how to cross over the troubled waters of our lives. 

 

JIM BURKLO

Website: MINDFULCHRISTIANITY.ORG      Blog: MUSINGS       Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California