rishi
The Symbol of Spirit (#2 of 5)
Posted on: 05/28/2009 15:26
Today's gospel reading is the story of Jesus “cleansing the temple.” We will read it first in the Gospel of Mark, which is probably the oldest and definitely the simplest of the four gospels. Most scholars agree that the other three gospel writers used Mark's gospel as a primary source, for writing their own versions. The text in Mark reads:
Mark 11:15- 18 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, 'My Fathers house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers'.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
Now we will read the same story in the Gospel of John, which embellishes it much more, and adds some symbolic interpretations. The text in John reads:
John 2:13-22 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!” His disciples, remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jewish leaders then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They responded, saying, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they trusted the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Our final New Testament reading is from St. Paul's letter to the church at Corinth. Just as Jesus was in the previous readings, Paul is upset here, because he believes that the Corinthians should be more spiritually mature than they are at this point in their journey. Paul responds to this by focusing on the same theme we heard in the previous readings of the “temple” being a symbol of God's dwelling within us. The text reads:
1Cor 3:16-20 Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells within you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If you think you are wise in this age, you should become fools, so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”
Let's pause for a moment before the sermon. I invite you all to stop and take a few good deep breaths, as a symbol of your openness to receive the healing, transforming Spirit into the depths of your being and to send it back out, as a gift, to the world around you.
Symbols of Transformation: Spirit
(Mark 11:15-19, John 2:13-22, 1Corinthians 3:16-20)
I
The great story of Jesus “cleansing the temple” in Jerusalem. I've met several people who have told me that this is one of their favorite stories in the gospels. Personally, I'm not so sure that Jesus did the right thing here. For one thing, this incident seems to have been the “last straw” for his opposition. From this point on, the story moves rapidly downhill to the crucifixion. So, it sure doesn't seem like a wise move, at least not politically.
But why I really find myself questioning his actions here is because they seem so naïve and idealistic about religious life. I mean, what was he expecting to find when he entered the temple? Did he really expect to be greeted by a bunch of saints who had traded in their egos for halos?
It seems naïve to me, because I think we all know from personal experience that you can't just “get rid of” the human ego... that pattern of caring more about one's own self than anything else. Sure, we can restrain the ego, under the rule of law with its threat of punishment. And, often we can shape the ego positively by persuading it that, in the end, it will get more goodies, more profit and gratification, if it focuses on others' needs and interests as well. But whether it's restrained by law, or shaped up into a more “civilized” form, it's still ego. It's still more concerned with its own pleasures and pains, its own gains and losses than with anything else. Now, surely, restraining and reshaping the ego do help to make society less chaotic, at least on the surface. But those surface changes (in modus operandi) don't mean that the basic program(the modus vivendi) of the ego has disappeared. It's still “all about me.” So I question: How could someone like Jesus not understand that? How could someone so wise be so naïve?
We can build and re-build beautiful temples, as they had done in Jerusalem, with ceilings that seem to almost touch the heavens. We can fill them with holy books and glorious artistry and priests in special clothes performing special rituals.... all carefully designed to turn the mind toward that mysterious spiritual plane, where love is un-conditioned, and all of life is consciously interconnected and respected. And when people enter that sacred space... they may very well become silent and serene, filled with awe, as they are caught up in the sense of Divine Mystery being evoked there.
But let's not for a minute imagine that such an experiencemeans that the ego is gone, that these folks have suddenly become aware of their interconnectedness with all of life within God... never again to live as though life was “all about them.” In time, they will come back to their more egocentric senses, and even find clever ways of making the temple serve their own personal agendas, whether its selling sacrificial lambs in the back of the sanctuary or something less obvious. Does that sound cynical to you, or just realistic?
I don't really think that Jesus was either naïve or idealistic. On the contrary, I believe that he possessed a kind of “transcendental knowledge” -- a wisdom that was so out-of-this-world that it could appear quite foolish to people who were less developed spiritually. He was so rooted in the reality of the divine that he had eyes to see and ears to hear what others could not perceive at all. And that's why he was so upset in this incident at the temple.
II
You'll remember from last week, when we began exploring the symbol of water, we focused in particular on how the water symbol is used in scripture to describe a spiritual cleansing that happens when we experience God, like we experience water, washing over our lives. How such religious experiences wash away 'ego', wash away the false understandings of who we are, which cause so much unnecessary suffering in our lives, the lives of our neighbors, and the life of our planet. We explored how St. Paul went so far as to describe this encounter with God as Water as bringing about a symbolic death of these false aspects of ourselves, which only conceal and block our true nature as the beloved offspring of God.
Well, all of that is basic to the teachings of Jesus...yes, indeed..., but that's not the whole message. The great insight of Jesus, if we phrase it in the language of symbol, was that the religion of his day had gotten so focused (fixated) on the symbol of God as cleansing water – that they were not moving beyond it... they were “stuck.” As we've seen, God-as-Water is a vital symbol, but it's not the only symbol. It transmits a vital truth, but a partial truth, not the whole of the spiritual life. If we engage only with this water symbol – making it the be all and end all of our path, our life program – we can become morbidly preoccupied with the false and the harmful and the need for it all to be washed away. When that becomes a religion's soul-focus, that religion itself becomes false and harmful. It begins spreading more guilt and shame than health and wellbeing. It becomes escapist, and often persecutory as well, because it lacks an authentic spiritual center. People can only tolerate that kind of dysfunctional religion for so long... before they either leave, or start selling sheep in the sanctuary.
Because when the ego –this false aspect of ourselves—dies its symbolic death, we quite naturally feel as though we have no center at all. Even if the ego was a false center, at least it was some kind of center. And without a center, people perish. We have no way to order our lives, no way to know what matters. So, if what religion offers to us is transmitted through the cleansing water symbol alone, then the only spiritual message we're receiving is “death to the ego...” We may very well play along with that for a while, but eventually, to preserve our own sanity, we will have to rebel against the imbalance of that teaching, often by re-centering our lives once again around the ego. It was this kind of situation that was turning the most sacred space in Jerusalem into a big game room for the ego. Jesus walks into the temple, and the only passion that he finds there is the passion of the marketplace, a passion driven by the ego. In what claimed to be the most sacred space in town, he finds no Spirit.
Spiritual symbols are kind of like the vitamins of spiritual life. We need a balanced variety of them, because they serve different purposes in our lives. One is not enough, even if it's our “favorite,” or our minister's favorite. But it was only one symbol that many religious leaders in Jesus' day were dispensing. Just Water, no Spirit. And so, much of the religion in Jesus' context became very sick. It developed a symbol deficiency.
One chapter after today's reading in the Gospel of John, Jesus confronts one of the religious leaders, named Nicodemus (John 3:1-10), and says, “How can you be a Spiritual Teacher, if you yourself have no transcendental knowledge, if you yourself have no Spirit flowing through your heart and mind and actions? How can you show other people the Way, if you yourself don't understand that it requires not just Water, but Spirit?” The spiritual life is not just a “turning away” from that false self we call the “ego.” It is simultaneously a “turning toward”one's True Self... a Self that is conscious of being the beloved offspring of God, and being vitally interconnected with others and with all of creation. That true Self, in the language of symbol, is called Spirit .
III
In one of the Church's earliest baptism rituals, which took place at sunrise on Easter morning, the person to be initiated, stands with his/her face to the West, which symbolized the region of spiritual darkness, extends his/her hand toward the West, and as the water pours over his or her body says,“I renounce Satan, and all his works and ways.” There is, in other words, a conscious renunciation of that false realm of the isolated ego, a renunciation of that harmful realm which is so disconnected from Spirit that it makes my life become “all about me.” But that is not the end of the baptismal drama. That is just the negation phase – the phase which declares that, “this ego is not who I truly am” and allows its illusions to be washed away in the Water that is God. As the initiate finishes acting out the negation phase of the ritual, by physically turning away from the West, he or she ends up facing a completely new horizon, the East, symbolizing the region of spiritual light... and with arms outstretched, enters the affirmation phase... affirming his or her true identity, which is not an isolated, completely separate, identity at all, but a spiritual identity, in which he or she is becoming consciously connected to the Source of all life and to all of creation. One ancient prayer, prayed by the initiate during this affirmation phase, reads: “(And) I surrender myself to thee, O Christ, and am baptized in your Spirit into one unbegotten being.”Having passed through the water and renounced all that is false, the initiate consciously enters the Realm of Spirit, where there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female.... where we all belong... where, just like the Trinity, we are all interconnected, as one spiritual Body, with many beautiful parts.
Now if you take a close look at our contemporary baptismal liturgies in the United Church of Canada, you will find more modern language, of course. But in terms of the meanings, you will find this very same symbolic pattern of negation/renunciation and affirmation, God as Water washing away all that is false and harmful, and God as Spirit infusing all that is true and beneficial. And we also find the same symbolic pattern in the baptismal liturgies of the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, and the Roman Catholics.
But, “so what?” you might ask. The more important question is not what the various churches have officially written down on paper... but what we experience when we, like Jesus, walk in and find out what actually goes on there. Do we experience the same upsetting scene that Jesus did in the Jerusalem temple?... puffed up egos, striving and competing and playing games to get more power and glory.... deflated egos, worrying about following long lists of rules to avoid punishment? Or... do we feel the Divine Spirit, whose hallmark is a love (caritas) that heals and transforms? Do we experience Spirit moving through people's words and actions toward one another, touching even the strangers and the outcasts in our midst? That's the real question.... because...Water is not enough. There is just no adequate solution to the problem of human ego without that kind of transcendental knowledge that Jesus possessed, without that Divine Spirit flowing back and forth through our hearts and minds and actions (lex orandi lex credendi lex operandi est). Together, Water and Spirit, can take us beyond ego and into the very heart of God that is beating, even now, deep within us all. And that seems to be what Jesus was expecting to find when he walked into that temple in Jerusalem. We today, in the temples of ourlives, should expect nothing less.
IV
As we pause for another moment of silent reflection, I invite you all to take a few good deep breaths, as a symbol of your openness to receive this healing, transforming Spirit into the depths of your being and to send it back out, as a gift, to the world around you.
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Comments
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 06/04/2009 09:33
Consider the matter of the busyness of the temple with profit rather than fair trade! When there is a continuum in a mortal space going on in this way; is it like a worm in an apple ... the whole thing eventually dies except perhaps for a wee seed that escapes like a thought? Is this relative on the larger scale?
Such is distinctly philosophical like the ID, Ego and something on a larger tier when balanced like Sophie ... something given something returned! In the Superego is something revealed in the pits that a simple Ego cannot contrive? Does the infinite (God) have a sense of humour about the aboriginal "potlatch" ... ides a given ... like the beauty in the stone, one has to have a creative spirit above the destructive one. It is cause (Eros) for ascention (Eris) into the imaganary realm. Ever deal with dreams or out of body syndrome as you drift off ... as a fall to the centre chaos? Go figure, that's a cunning term eh! It gives formt o the mystery with the stroke of a penne ... or is that key (qui/what)?
RevLGKing
Posted on: 02/04/2010 14:58
WE MUST INSIST ON HAVING A MORAL AND ETHICAL BANKING SYSTEM OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE AND BY THE PEOPLE--based on the principles of democracy.
Take a look at John 2:13-25--THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.
Take note that in John's Gospel this event takes place at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, not in his last days on earth, as in the other Gospels. It is apparent that this issue of having a moral and ethical banking system was so important to Jesus that he laid his life on the line to bring it about. He began and ended his ministry by cleansing the temple of the economy.
Note, also, the sequence John gives us: He begins his gospel by announcing that, even before there was anything; before there was nothing but chaos and darkness, there was the light or consciousness of God. This light, full of grace and truth was always available, even to the prophets in all lands, but it became especially clear in Jesus--the word of God in the flesh. Yes, we are free to remain in the darkness, but light, grace and truth are available to all who repent. Baptized by the Spirit of GOD Jesus gathered his first four disciples. With them and his family he attended the wedding at Cana. But then there was the
CONFERENCE AT CAPERNAUM
Now take note of verse 12. John tells us that right after the wedding in Cana: "Jesus and his mother, brothers, and disciples went to Capernaum and stayed there a few days."
Sounds to me like they went to Capernaum, not just for an hour or two, but for a number of days. They took a lot of time to confer with one another and make plans as to the next thing, and best thing, to do. By the way, I am willing to speculate that if Jesus' mother was involved so were so were other women.
It would be really interesting to know what was said at the conference. I am also willing to speculate that Peter and Andrew were advocates of taking violent action against the Roman oppressors.
What came out of that time together is clearly stated in John 2:13-22 "The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here!"
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KEEP IN MIND THE FOLLOWING IS JUST A SKETCHY OUTLINE. MUCH MORE DETAILS CAN BE ADDED.
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How much do we really know about the politics and the economics of Roman Empire, including Palestine, at the time of Jesus?
Was the Roman Empire a theocracy?
The following is an excellent source of information. Reading this will give us some idea of the kind of raw power, and often corrupt power, Jesus and his disciples had to face and deal with:
http://www.unrv.com/government.php
Here is a summary: "The Roman government (in its entire history from founding to fall) was a strange mix of a democracy and a republic [Here I add: But, obviously, not for slaves. In practice, only for the powerful and privileged few got the right to have theis say.] An interesting fact is that the people of Rome took many of their ideas of government from the Ancient Greeks.
The Roman state was described as the republic (respublica) and its consuls, or chief magistrates, continued to be appointed even after the establishment of one-man rule under the empire, but in its pure form it lasted only until the beginning of the first century B.C.
At the creation of the republic, supreme power probably resided with a popular assembly, but early on the Senate became very influential, and the traditional formula, which survived for centuries, was S.P.Q.R. - Senatus Populusque Romanus - the Roman Senate and People acting together."
Now and then, the Roman emperors introduced theocratic elements into their dictatorship. Some tried to rule the religious, political and economic lives of every Roman citizen and slave. Roman coins were minted in the Temple of Juno Moneta (from which we get the word money). Juno was the wife of Jupiter, the supreme god in the Roman heaven. Obviously, the ancient military and the political dictators, in cooperation with the priests, used the ancient temples as repositories of their wealth. That is, they used the temples as banks.
JUDAISM AND THEOCRACY
For information on this, check out:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2184/jewish/Is-Judaism-a-T...
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Ancient Jews were also theocrats, in the sense that there was a yearning within them for the one and true God to give his will to them. This was bound to create conflict between them and their Roman masters. And this brings up the matter of the moneychangers at the Jerusalem Temple. What do we know about their role as part of the Jewish central banking and money system located in the Temple?
The short answer is, not much. Obviously, for Jews, there was a Jewish theocractic element at play--in much the same way it was for the Romans.
TEMPLE CURRENCY, IDEALLY SPEAKING, WAS EXPECTED TO BE INTEREST FREE
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HONEST WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
All the great prophets called for the use of honest weights and measurements. in ancient Jerusalem devout Jews, like Jesus, his family and disciples, no doubt, used interest-free and pure Temple money. It was a local and complementary community currency (CCC) in the form of gold, silver and bronze metal coins.
Keep in mind that all coins, including Temple and foreign ones went by weight, not by denomination--numbers on the coins. An ounce is an ounce, right? And, on this basis, they circulated parallel to one another.
But was the Temple system an honest system?
The Temple coins bore the stamp of the sacred temple, not the image of pagan gods like that of the Roman emperors, which were found on the Roman coins. Such images were thought of as abhorrent to pious Jews. Naturally, devout Jews expected Temple coins not be debased, like many foreign coins were. Take note of this: By the time the Roman Empire collapsed, Roman gold coins were mostly lead, dipped in gold.
Now use your imagination: Just like today, greedy people with criminal minds found many ways to beat the system. For example, the moneychangers were suppose to check the purity of foreign coins. How? They were supposed to melt it down--that is, render it--and make sure it was pure. But did they?
In addition, when they found pure metals, did they make sure it stayed that way? Just think of the temptation to debase the good coins and make money in the process. Sound like what happened in the toxic and sub-prime mortgages scam.
Take the time to go behind the story of why Jesus--on the day Christians call Palm Sunday--turned over the tables of the cheating moneychangers, who he called thieves--and you will get some understanding as to why he was arrested by the henchmen of the greedy, the rich and shameless. Of course they wanted to get rid of him. He blew the whistle on their scam, didn't he? And it cost him his life. Talk about wisdom, and courage!
Meanwhile, check out what THE FAMILY LIFE FOUNDATION--a registered charity is doing to spread the word. It is a GOD and spiritually-based, non-sectarian fellowship of people. It was founded in 1973 with the purpose of helping individuals and their families be holistically healthy--physically, mentally, spiritually and economically.
http://www.flfcanada.com
http://www.torontodollar.com
Check out what the financial writer, Hazel Henderson, has to say about the nature and function of money.
https://fp.auburn.edu/tann/hazel/index.htm
Professor Bernard Lietaer, a graduate of MIT, once worked for a central bank.
http://www.transaction.net
Tom Kennedy
is a retired teacher. He is devoting his retirement years to educating people on a new way of looking at the creation and use of money.
http://www.cyberclass.net
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 02/03/2010 08:48
And Linds ...
Such action with heavy coin probably leads us to the old saying ... does it take a God to change lead into gold or is that just a corruption of thinking?
On the other side of such timely comment is true currency a golden pool ... like a shining example in the temple over riding the dark desires ... shadow of the mind in doubt? Then there is the story of on Golden Pond ... pure wastage of love without the word to pass IT across time? Yah gotta love IT before you can pass ID on ...
RevLGKing
Posted on: 02/04/2010 02:49
Note the new history information I added to my last post.