[Dialogue] 10/08/20, Progressing Spirit: Dr Carl Krieg: Jesus and the Void; Spong revisited

Thu Oct 8 08:46:34 PDT 2020

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Jesus and the Void
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|  Essay by Dr. Carl Krieg
October 8, 2020We all are painfully aware that we in the US are living in a time of extreme violence and anxiety. What we may not know is that Jesus lived in such a time as well, and the parallels are quite striking. We suffer from a would-be dictator. Jesus actually lived under one. We experience extreme wealth disparity. In Jesus’ time, the wealthy oppressed the poor by increasing the tax burden and appropriating land when those taxes were not paid. We live with the consequences of a national history defined by racism. The Roman empire survived by the work of slaves. In both times, women are relegated to second class citizenry. We might speculate that this is the way it has always been. And we wonder why it must be so.

We know very little about Jesus prior to his public ministry. He had siblings and he possibly was a day laborer in the city of Sepphoris. We can be fairly certain that he was a disciple of John the Baptist. We know this because the gospels include the story of Jesus being baptized by John, a fact that the early church would rather not have had to explain. John’s fiery preaching by the river Jordan created converts who went back to their homes and awaited the imminent coming judgment of God. Jesus apparently assumed a different attitude and left John to preach and teach about changing life in the present, and not waiting for the end of time. Some of his friends, who were disciples of John, left with him and became his compatriots. 

And then we wonder, what happened next? What did Jesus do? Who was he such that people saw, listened, and followed? In the history of humankind, nobody has had more written about their life than Jesus, some accurate, some not. The speculation about who he was began right in the New Testament itself, with everyone having their own particular slant. Who was he? The messiah expected by the Jews? A miracle worker? A mystic? By what means did he impact people? Because he was god? Because he walked on water or fed thousands with a few loaves? Because his teaching was so irresistible?

No. No to all those questions. The disciples did not live with Jesus because they believed any of this. They did not believe in Jesus at all: they experienced him. And what they experienced in Jesus was who they really were and could become. The power of Jesus was in the truth of his humanity. Everything else listed above is speculation by those who came later. The disciples experienced a person to whom they could relate. If we need an image for this person, we can look to Popular Mechanics, where an artist uses scientific methodology to portray an image of Jesus — short, black curly hair, dark skin. Not at all the calm, tall, flowing-haired white man so popular in our culture. It was that short dark man who created his family of women and men disciples.

But how did he do that? What was the attraction? If his humanity was true, what does that mean? 

Since Jesus was Homo sapiens just as we are, are there observations that apply to him as well as to us? I think the answer is yes, and that there are at least four: 1) each and every one of us creates an egocentric worldview, 2) locked in our isolated ego we experience an absence of meaning, a void, and we fill that void with whatever suggests itself, 3) we need community, and 4) we all experience moments when that world is temporarily invalidated and we are set free from our closedness.

Considering all these together, from beginning to end our life is bombarded with stimuli, a disorder out of which we need to create order. It just happens. The chaos of sensation would be just that — chaos — without an organizing function of the brain. We need an orderly world in which to function, and so we create one, placing new information into already-existing mental categories. Your resultant world is different from mine, and neither corresponds exactly with the reality that is “out there”. Consequently, we all have a distorted perspective of which we are pretty much unaware. But there is more: we are inclined to believe that our world is the real world and that the world of everyone else is at best inaccurate and at worst, untrue. We judge others and universalize without justification.

Our egocentricity drastically impacts our ability to function openly and lovingly. Because we live in a mental construct of our own making, we have lost depth awareness of the environment in which we live and move and have our being. Essential to that loss, our communion with other people is broken. The combined result is that in the deepest reservoir our life feels empty and without meaning. This is so because, in fact, we have cut ourselves off from two dimensions of existence that offer a connection to what is: the objective world and our fellow human beings. Our egocentric world is a lonely, isolated place. We don’t like that, so we look for ways to escape that feeling by filling the void. 

All of us experience that crisis of meaning and we seek to fill the void in whatever way is enticing and available. Any activity, which in and of itself can be good and necessary, can also function as an escape. Shopping, TV, cell phones, working, eating, drinking — the list is endless and includes everything. It all depends on how it functions in our individual life.

The void, however, is not continuous. There are times in our life when the fabrication of our egocentric world is challenged, and we are momentarily set free from it. The examples here also are numerous, and include everything from the starry sky above to the conscience within. Holding a baby. Confronting death. Awed by the beauty of a field of flowers. Playing your game while in the zone. Moments come in an infinite variety, but, unfortunately, they do not last, and we return to our egocentric world, with its void and its escapes.

What does all this have to do with Jesus? Plainly and simply, he did not create an egocentric world, as we do. He was continually aware of the divine thou surrounding him, living a continual moment, as we are not. He was totally in communion with his friends and disciples, again, as we are not. His life was filled with meaning, experiencing no void and needing no escapes, quite contrary to our lives. This is the life Jesus lived. It was who he was. And it was this person, this life, that impacted his friends and followers, because in him they saw who they really were. In him they were encountered by a humanity they knew in their hearts and could now identify because of Jesus. It was so simple: living, caring and sharing in community, overcoming narrow perspective with its attendant void requiring to be falsely filled, and being open to the Spirit — this is what life is about.

Contrast this with their surrounding culture, built on the architecture of falsely and feverishly escaping the void. The rich and powerful dealt with their void by a plethora of escape mechanisms. On the one hand, they found meaning in wealth and its accumulation and increase. On the other hand, they built their life in opposition to and oppression of others, whether they be the poor, slaves, women, or whomever “other” they chose to denigrate. The revolution inaugurated in Jesus totally threatened this established egocentric world of the wealthy elite, powerful because it was a revolution not of the sword, but of the mind.

It didn’t take long for the rich and powerful to sense that their power was being undermined. In reaction, they attempted to exterminate the threat. They persecuted the early followers, to be sure, but more insidiously they infiltrated and captivated the thinking of the group. The evidence is clear. By the end of the first century, the church had lost the revolution inaugurated by Jesus and reverted to the old way. According to 1 Timothy, slaves must obey their masters, women must obey their husbands, and everyone must obey the rich and powerful. Because of their influence in shaping cultural norms, the wealthy were able to lead the new generations away from the radical model created by Jesus and back to the old ways that sustained their power.

And so it is today. Here in the US we have millions of people so trapped in their void and looking to fill it, that they are easy prey for those seeking ever-increasing power and wealth. What is a rally of red hats other than an escape from the void? What is carrying an assault gun down the street other than a vain attempt to prove that you are a man? What is shooting a Black man other than a demonstration that you have totally lost your way and succumbed to the void? What is suppression and violence against women other than an unenlightened and dark mentally constructed world? And where do these ideas and actions originate? With those utilizing their controlling power to shape peoples’ minds. Searching for meaning, people will follow the devil. That’s where we are today. We live in a nation where the violent escapes from the void now define who we are. 

The good news is that this is not really who we are. None of us. Jesus showed us that, and we all know it in our hearts, in the depths of our being. The truth of our humanity, manifest in Jesus, requires that we dismantle the egocentricity that encapsulates us so that we can reconnect with ourselves, with one another and with God. The truth of our humanity is to embrace our fellow humans as kindred spirit and not as a threatening “other”. The truth of our humanity is to be open to the Loving Spirit that surrounds and supports us. This is who we are.

The disciples of knew. They watched firsthand as the authorities dragged Jesus away to be crucified, and they were briefly confused, afraid and distraught. But that mood did not last, for in their time with Jesus they had experienced the new life together and they now knew the truth of their own humanity. Like the apple in the garden, only now in reverse, once you taste the fruit there is no going back. The revolution continued. The authorities continued to counter the new vision, and they succeeded in part. They brought the newer generations in the church back to the old way as epitomized in 1 Timothy, back to the void. 

But the spark carried on and lives in us today. As we create good trouble, as John Lewis advised, just like the disciples we can be assured that God is alive and that love will win. The powers that be cannot overcome the power of Being Itself. Jesus overthrew the tables of the money changers in the Temple. It is our time to do the same.
 ~ Dr. Carl KriegRead online here

About the Author
Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith, and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Norwich, VT.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

How do today’s elections compare to Bishop Spong’s thoughts on the 2012 elections?

A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong
 Dear Reader,In the two recent conventions it was clear that women are a crucial voting block that must be wooed. The rhetoric was far more positive than the platforms, however, which in the Republican case reflected issues not debated in America since the 1950’s. Both campaigns featured women. Both showed off their elected female senators, governors and representatives. Both listened to magnificent speeches made by the wives of the presidential nominees. I have a hard time imagining Pat Nixon or Bess Truman giving a speech!As I look at America today, it seems to me that we are in a dramatic period of consciousness raising. It began to be visible in the campaign four years ago when among the serious and viable candidates for the presidency were a woman, a Hispanic, an African-American, a Mormon and a man who had been married three times. None of these would, in all probability, have been taken seriously twenty-five years earlier. Consciousness breakthroughs always raise up a hostile reaction from those who feel displaced by the broadening of those who are considered acceptable for leadership. We are living with that reaction. The real issue to be measured in this year’s election is how rapidly we, as a people, will be able to embrace this new consciousness. One party says it focuses on individuality and freedom, the other on the quality of our corporate society and the corporate good. One party is rooted in the quality of leadership coming from traditional sources and it does not appear to be welcoming to newcomers. They value merit, ability and the kind of competitiveness that produces wealth. The other is rooted in a wider demographic pool, stressing openness to rising minorities. One party is conservative because it values and wants to conserve the virtues of the past, which, it argues, have made us the great nation we are. The other party is liberal because it believes that all people must have equality of opportunity that will allow a steady influx into leadership of those, who have not been born into wealth and privilege, enabling merit to rise to the top of our political, economic and social pyramids. I think both emphases are needed. Conservatives need the challenge of new ideas and new people lest they become quickly dated and irrelevant. Liberals on the other hand, need the witness of the traditional values that conservatives espouse lest they become wide-eyed and kill the goose that lays the golden egg.The nation is healthiest, I believe, when elections are close. The minority must be strong enough to challenge and to rein in the excesses of the majority. Progress should come through the hard task of compromise. We are in danger of losing that in today’s polarized politics. Someone once observed that “politicians are like underwear, the only way you can keep them clean is to change them regularly.” In the last 52 years of American history, the Republicans have controlled the White House for 28 years, the Democrats for 24. That balance is part of what makes our nation great.~ Bishop John Shelby Spong

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Origins of the New Testament, Part XI:
Resurrection as Paul Understood It

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 31, 2009It is quite easy to see how one could read Paul, especially those epistles known as I Thessalonians and Galatians, and come away believing that Paul saw the resurrection of Jesus as a literal miracle in which a deceased body, quite physically, was restored and walked out of a tomb alive and once more was part of the life of this world. That distortion in understanding Paul is the all but inevitable result of reading Paul through the lens of the later gospels, especially Luke and John, in which this understanding of resurrection had clearly come to be believed. Paul, however, had never seen and would never see a gospel. He died before the first gospel was written. His view of resurrection, as a matter of fact, is quite different from what most suppose.Nothing makes this as clear as an examination of other writings that are authentically from the pen of Paul. In Romans (1:1-4) Paul writes: God declared (or designated) Jesus “to be the Son of God” by raising him from the dead. That does not mean physically resuscitating him back into the life of this world, as many have argued. If it did the words attributed to Paul in Colossians would make no sense. In this epistle Paul is made to suggest that the resurrection was the account of Jesus being raised into the presence and eternity of God: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Please be aware that the story of Jesus being at the right hand of God is a reference to the resurrection, not the ascension, since the story of the ascension, against which these words are misinterpreted, would not be written for almost thirty more years. The word “raised” in Paul’s mind embraced both dimensions of what would later be separated into the dual activities of “resurrection,” that is, being raised from death and the grave, and “ascension,” which meant being united with God in heaven. For Paul those two actions were one thing. Jesus was not resuscitated back into the life of this world; he was raised into being part of who God is. It was not resuscitation, it was transformation. This interpretation is confirmed once more in another text from Romans that we quoted earlier in this series. There Paul writes: “Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again, death has no more dominion over him — the life he lives, he lives to God.” A person raised physically back into the life of this world would surely die again. That is the universal law of life — all living things ultimately die. It is clear that resuscitation back into the physical life of this world is not what Paul had in mind when he spoke of Jesus “being raised.” Again in Romans, Paul suggests that “As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.” That is, in this Christ figure a new dimension has been added to our lives that is not subject to death. Paul later speaks of being raised to the “new life of the spirit.” He says that the one (Jesus) “who was raised from the dead, and who is at the right hand of God,” has been enthroned as part of the life of God, understood as dwelling above the sky, external to the life of this world. Still later Paul writes to the Romans: “Who will ascend to heaven to bring Christ down?” In the mind of Paul, resurrection raised Jesus into the presence and being of God. Paul argues in 1st Corinthians that “flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He is so obviously not talking about the physical resuscitation of the body of Jesus so that he could return to his former life. It is not for this life that we have hope. Resurrection was rather the transformation of who he was to a realm or to a state of consciousness beyond the boundaries of time and space. That is why Paul goes to such lengths to make a distinction between our natural bodies and something he called “a spiritual body.”We have trouble envisioning what this is all about for two primary reasons. The first is that we are using human words that are bound by both time and space to describe an experience that, if it is real, is beyond time and space. Second, our minds have been corrupted by later understandings of resurrection, shaped primarily by the last two gospels to be written, Luke and John. In those gospels the physicality of the resurrected Jesus is emphasized. The portrait of the raised Jesus drawn in these two 9th and 10th decade pieces of writing is a body in which death has been reversed. He asks for food to demonstrate that his gastrointestinal system is functioning. He is portrayed as both walking and talking to demonstrate that his skeletal system, his vocal chords and his larynx are functioning. He is interpreted as teaching and opening their minds to the meaning of scripture to demonstrate that his brain is functioning. He is said in Luke to have argued that he was not a ghost and to have urged the disciples to touch his very physical flesh to demonstrate that he was in fact fleshly. In John he is pictured as inviting Thomas to examine his wounds. Of note is the fact that only in Luke and John are resurrection and ascension portrayed as separate events. As two distinct acts resurrection and ascension have very different meanings. Resurrection gets Jesus physically back into the life of the world; ascension gets him back to his origins that were thought to be in God, God’s self.What we need to embrace is the oft-forgotten fact that Paul was a Jew and that he thus processed everything that he experienced in and through the life of Jesus in terms of the Jewish traditions. So to hear Paul’s words in this proper Jewish context, we have to look at the traditions of the Jews for examples of people being raised from life or even being “translated” from death into God’s presence. In none of these cases was this act conceived of as a physical resuscitation back into the life of this world. There are three such episodes in the Hebrew Scriptures and each one of these three finds itself referred to in the Christian story. It is clear that these Jewish stories served as the examples that were destined to shape not only Paul’s thought on the resurrection, but also informed all early Christian thinking.The first one of these Jewish stories involved a man named Enoch, whose story is told in a single verse in the fourth chapter of Genesis. He is identified simply as the father of Methuselah, who was presumed to be the oldest person in the Bible, having reached according to the Bible the ripe old age of 969 years. Of Enoch it was said that he “walked with God and was not, for God took him.” Enoch was considered to have lived a life of such goodness and holiness that his virtue was rewarded by being lifted beyond death into the immediate presence of God. Later much mythology gathered around the figure of Enoch, and during the inter-testament years he was said to have authored a book that described the realm of God as only an eyewitness could do. This “Book of Enoch” found a place in writings called the “Pseudapigrapha” and from that position exercised great influence on the developing Jesus story.The second of these Jewish stories described the final events in the life of Moses, the greatest of all the Jewish heroes, the founder of Israel and the father of the law. The death of Moses is recorded in Deuteronomy 34 with great care, but also with much mystery. Moses was said to have died in the wilderness of the land of Moab with only God present. God was said to have buried him in a grave that God had prepared, the location of which is “unknown from that day to this.” God was portrayed as writing an epitaph that presumably was designed to eulogize this gigantic figure. It was not long, however, before the tradition began to grow that Moses had not actually died, but had been transformed and transported into God’s presence and was now himself an inhabitant in the dwelling place of God.The final figure in this Jewish trilogy was Elijah, probably second to Moses alone in the hierarchy of Jewish heroes. Elijah was deemed to be the father of the prophets and thus of the prophetic movement in Judaism. When the Jews defined Judaism, it was in terms of its twin towers — the law and the prophets, or Moses and Elijah.The story of Elijah’s death is told in II Kings, again with details that are full of wonder and mystery. In effect the narrative says that Elijah did not really die at all. He was rather transported into the presence of the living God by a magical, fiery chariot drawn by magical, fiery horses and propelled heavenward by a God-sent whirlwind. In that new status, as one who shares in the presence of God, Elijah was portrayed as dispensing a double portion of his spirit onto his single disciple, Elisha, who had been chosen to be his successor. When Luke wrote the story of Jesus’ ascension in the book of Acts, he borrowed many of the details from this story of the ascension of Elijah. In a revealing interpretive clue, Mark, Matthew and Luke all relate the story of the “Transfiguration” of Jesus in which it was said that Jesus conferred with Moses and Elijah, both of whom had transcended the limits of death and were already dwelling in the presence of the God of life.These were the things that the Jewish Paul had in mind when he said that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The resurrection was for Paul the act by which God affirmed the life of Jesus as holy by raising him at death into the eternal life of God. Jesus was thus able to offer to his followers a pathway through himself into the eternity of God. The raised Jesus was thus the mediator of this access, the way into eternal life for all who came through him. The resurrection of Jesus in its earliest formulation thus had nothing to do with empty tombs, physical resuscitations and apparitions. Those expansions would all come later in the developing Christian story. This is, however, where Paul was and this is what the resurrection of Jesus meant in the primitive Christian community.When this series resumes, we will look at Paul’s most systematic work, the Epistle to the Romans.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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