"Jesus was not a Christain???"

All of Paul

 

Paul's Conversion Experience Acts 9

’s major themes are contained in seed form in his conversion experience, of which there are three descriptions in Acts written by Luke (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Paul’s own account is in the first chapter of Galatians: “The Gospel which I preach . . . came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11-12). Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ that he met was not the Christ in the flesh (Jesus); it was the Risen Christ, the Christ who is available to us now as Spirit, as “an energy field” that we eventually called the Mystical Body of Christ, the Cosmic or Universal Ch

Paul continues, describing his pre-conversion life as Saul, who persecuted and even tried to destroy the young Jewish Christian movement, which was labeled or called “The Way”:  “I was more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers than anybody else” (Galatians 1:13-14). A Pharisee by training, Saul had achieved some status in the Sanhedrin, the governmental board of Judea during the Roman occupation. He was delegated by the Temple police to go out and squelch this new sect of Judaism. At this point, Saul is a black and white thinker, dividing the world into Jewish good guys and upstart Christian bad guys.

“Suddenly, while traveling to Damascus, just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The voice answered, ‘I am Jesus and you are persecuting me’” (Acts 9:3-5). This choice of words is significant. Paul must have pondered: “Why does he say ‘me’ when I’m persecuting these people?” He comes to the insight that there is a complete, almost organic union between Christ and those who love God. The voice tells Saul to go into the city and do what he’s told, but though his eyes were wide open, Saul could see nothing and had to be led by the hand. For the next three days he was blind and fasted (see Acts 9:6-9).

Paul realizes on the Damascus Road or shortly thereafter that, in the name of religion, he had become a murderer. In the name of love he had become hate. Paul becomes an image for all generations of religion, showing that religion can be the best thing in the world, or it can be the worst thing. That which makes us holy can also make us evil. If the ego uses any notion of religion to “wrap God around itself” it will be the source of the ultimate idolatry: God serving us instead of us serving God. That is why, for the rest of his life, Paul is obsessed with transforming people into love and forming loving communities. He is forever the critic of immature, self-serving religion, and the pioneer of mature and truly life-changing new movement labeled by the later Church as Christianity.  Jesus you see was not a Christian, He was Jewish and followed the Jewish traditions.  There are no accounts within the New Testament where he indicated an attempt to establish a new religion.  During his short life span and for some 50 to 80 years after his resurrection, His followers were known as people of "The Way".  

Here is the most important nugget for all who have the ears to hear.  God continued to love and chose Paul no matter what his past contained {persecutor, murder} to establish a transformative new movement, please do not count yourself out.  God loves you no matter what you have or have not done. Today is a new day, its your day. 

References: Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, discs 1 and 2 (Franciscan Media: 2012) CD

 

"There Is No Sacred Place?"

 

 For Those who follow the Way of Christ

"There is no sacred place, everything and everyone is sacred"

 

Learning to See
Most religious searches begin with one massive misperception. People tend to start by making a very unfortunate, yet understandable, division between the sacred and the profane worlds. Early stage religion focuses on identifying sacred places, sacred time, and seemingly sacred actions that then leave the overwhelming majority of life unsacred. People are told to look for God in certain special places or in particular events, or in special people—usually they are the ones in control of a religion.   Perhaps this is related to the need for job security of to maintain control and a sense of power, which is only natural within most religions.  Early stage religion has limited the search for God to a very small field and thus it is largely ineffective—unless people keep seeing and knowing at larger levels.

Within true Christian mysticism, there is finally no distinction between sacred and profane. The whole universe and all events are sacred, serving as doorways to the divine for those who know how to see. In other words, everything that happens is potentially sacred if we allow it to be. Our job as humans is to make admiration of reality and adoration of God fully conscious and intentional. Then everything is a prayer and an act of adoration.  

As the French friar Eloi Leclerc (1921-2016) beautifully paraphrased Francis of Assisi , “If we knew how to adore, then nothing could truly disturb our peace. We would travel through the world with the tranquility of the great rivers. But only if we know how to adore.” [1]

For those who have learned how to see fully, everything—absolutely everything—is “spiritual.” This eventually and ironically leads to what the Lutheran mystic Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) called “religionless Christianity,” in other words taking religion out of Christianity. [2] Bonhoeffer saw that many people were moving beyond the scaffolding of religion to the underlying and deeper Christian experience itself. Once we can accept that God is in all situations, and that God can and will use even bad situations for good, then everything and everywhere becomes an occasion for good and an encounter with God.  God then sees the good and bad in everyone and decides to loves us because we were meant as was all of creation, for good.

God’s plan is so perfect that even sin, tragedy, and painful deaths are used to bring us to divine union, just as the cross was meant to reveal. God wisely makes the problem itself part of the solution. It is all a matter of learning how to see clearly now, fully, and therefore truthfully.

 Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM that which I Am Seeking,  

References:

[1] Eloi Leclerc, The Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi, trans. Marie-Louise Johnson (Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing House: 1992), 72.
[2] Letter from Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge dated April 30, 1944. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 278-282.