Abba Easter letter: The Uncontainable Jesus of Nazareth

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

Greetings to the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler, in the name of Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead on the third day, and who, through the Holy Spirit, guides us into all truth.

I took the season of Lent to read through the four Gospels. As we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and prepare to remember and celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, I encourage us to take up this regular reading of the Gospels, as enjoined for us by our rule of life. I didn’t gain any great insights to bring to you from reading through the four Gospels during Lent.  However, my experience is instructive for us. Namely, I found facing Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the Gospels challenging.  The challenge was that I couldn’t make the Jesus I found in the Gospels fit tidily in my own expectations, nor in any systematic presentation of theology or morality.

What is the role of the regular reading of the Gospels for us as an order with this charism of reconciliation? I think it can vary over time, but at root it is that we are always in service to the Gospel. We read the Gospels so that we never wield the Gospel and Christian faith for our own particular ends. Rather, we read the Gospels so that we may find ourselves overtaken by the Gospel.

God in human flesh, Jesus of Nazareth, as we find him in the Gospels is not an easy human being. I can’t make Jesus conform to my own expectations or what I would like Jesus to say. Jesus isn’t subject to any theology or system. If we take seriously the full witness of the four Gospels, it is very difficult to domesticate Jesus.

I’m not sure how to understand all that the Gospels report about Jesus’ words and actions. The difficulty is in part due to the fact that the four Gospels each have their own take and interpretation of Jesus.  Yet, In reading the four Gospels concurrently Jesus of Nazareth broke through even each evangelist's own framing. Jesus insistently refuses even the evangelists own view of him.

This runs up against attempts to make Jesus a model, or someone we should be like. Making Jesus a model to follow after is itself a domestication. We as an order don’t seek to read the Gospels so that we may model ourselves after Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, we read the gospels over and over again to be transformed by our encounter with God incarnate, as we read the Gospels.  God did the thing in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. We don’t seek to appropriate that work to ourselves, rather in coming to Jesus Christ, we open ourselves up to God incorporating us into Christ.

Yes, we share in the work of Jesus Christ, but that isn’t our work. Reading the Gospels as a practice encouraged for us by our rule of life, is at base that continually have before us that we are not Christ, but that God incorporates us into Jesus Christ. In regularly allowing ourselves to come face to face with the ‘untamed lion’ who is both fully God and fully human we ever more open ourselves to the work of God in Jesus Christ, begun in baptism and sustained in the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup.

As we enter into the fifty days of Easter, I encourage us to sit with Jesus who can neither be appropriated to whom we’ve been taught he is nor to whom we’ve represented Jesus to be for ourselves. 

Mark Charles on his podcast “My Second Cup of Coffee” for Good Friday encouraged Christians, especially Christians of European descent, to not rush to the celebration of the Resurrection.  He pointed out that especially white Christian remembrance doesn’t face the confusion, the doubts, the pain, and the waiting of that first Easter.  We are not well served by reading the first chapters of Acts alongside the Gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances.  When we read accounts of the Resurrection alongside stories of the boldness of the apostolic church after Pentecost ,we can forget that Peter's preaching and the boldness of deacons Stephen and Philip and the other apostles after Pentecost came about over time (fifty days) and after the descent of the Holy Spirit..

I think Mark Charles point, as a Navajo Christian to us white Christians, is important. Part of what allowed our ancestors to commit genocide and enslave others in the name of Christ, was our assurance of our triumph and our being on the side of the truth of the Resurrected one.

If you are like me, the more I sit with the realities of institutional Christianity that has its origin in European Christianity, the more troubled I become.  I ask what is the power of the Resurrection? How do people who name the name of Christ, again and again act so confidently, and yet without any reason for that confidence as they betray the very reality they purport to serve?

The preacher at  the Maundy Thursday service for Saint John’s Episcopal Church (Chicago) encouraged us gathered to sit with the realities of the Three Days leading up to Easter Sunday. To sit with Jesus’ command to Love as Jesus loved, to not run ahead though we know the ending.  This is also the challenge of Easter. As we celebrate the fifty days we know the Holy Spirit will come with power. We know that the cowering small band in the upper room will boldly go out and preach the Gospel and turn the world upside down.  Yet, that wasn’t the feeling of that first fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.

First, there was doubt and attempts to explain the empty tomb. Then there was joy, but also fear and confusion.  In Luke, Jesus takes time to expound the Scripture to two disciples, who don’t really understand anything Jesus says until Jesus blesses and breaks bread with them, and then disappears.

The resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, the one crucified and raised to life on the third day, can’t be contained: Jesus appears and disappears, walks through walls and eventually bodily ascends and passes away from sight into heaven. At first, Jesus’s followers don’t know what to make of any of it.

Let the celebration of Easter open up questions for you. Don’t rush to the answers. Sit with the bewildered, joyful, doubtful, and overwhelmed disciples.

Do not let the celebration, blind us to the lamentable reality of the reason Jesus Christ was crucified. Let us remember that Peter, the beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene, all close and dear to Jesus of Nazareth, were baffled and dismayed and continued to weep on that first Easter Sunday.  Jesus meets his disciples ,and us, not in celebration and triumph, but in bewilderment and grief.

On the Second Sunday of Easter we recall the deep integrity of Saint Thomas the apostle whose doubt refuses any erasure of the terror of crucifixion. “Unless I can put my fingers in the wounds of Jesus, I will not believe!” The Resurrection of Christ, doesn't erase the lamentable state of our humanity, nor are we called to excuse and downplay evil that continues to be perpetuated in the world, especially when done in the name of Christ.

Let Easter be complex. Sit with what is lamentable in our world, even as there is joy. Be bewildered by this Jesus of Nazareth, who isn’t easily contained, who walks through our barriers and containers. Embrace Jesus, who appears to us and just as suddenly disappears from view. Jesus Christ the incarnate word doesn’t belong to us, but we can be gathered under her wings, like chicks to the mother hen. Our comfort is not in understanding, but in being held by the God who so loved the world that God sent God’s very own, one like an only heir, the word made flesh, Jesus Christ, that we might have life and be whole.

In the name of the one who raised Jesus Christ from the grave,

Abba Basil Irenaeus, OJCR

On God's Weakness: Christmas letter to the Order of Jesus Christ Reconciler

 

Feast of the Holy Innocents

Greetings in the name of God Emmanuel, incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ,

As we celebrate the season of Christmas this year, we are in still in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic.  Though the vaccines brought about some form of a return to normalcy, for a variety of reasons the virus has continued to spread and mutate: wealth and poverty differentials between nation states, vaccine hesitancy among poor and marginalized groups, the refusal to get vaccinated by anti-vaxers, and the nature of viruses to rapidly mutate. The latest major mutation of the virus leads to a more virulent strain of COVID-19, though the rate of hospitalization and rate of mortality is still unclear compared to other strains. This isn’t all we are dealing with as we celebrate Christmas.  There is the political turmoil in the U.S. and many nations. The world order of the Pax-Americana is strained if not waning. Then there are, most likely, things in our personal lives, which may leave us feeling less than celebratory.

I, Abba of the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler, feel quite overwhelmed. As I write this I don’t know what wisdom or insight I might have to share with us this Christmastide.  As I continue to recover from my fall off a ladder over a year ago now, and grieving the death of my mother, and dealing with all the logistics and economy of a person’s passing, I don’t feel up to being Abba of an order. I’m stumbling along without any great sight into what is to come, or where we might be going as an order.

Even so, as we remember that in the person Jesus of Nazareth, God comes to us as Emmanuel, God with us, isn’t this what we celebrate, God meeting us in our weakness? Christmas isn’t about human achievement, or human celebration, or human insight. Rather, God comes as one of us inn our very weakness and vulnerability, as a fetus and then an infant! The deliverance that Mary proclaims in her Magnificat, comes not from God coming with force like God did when delivering Israel from bondage in Egypt, but God becomes human flesh, starting out in the deep vulnerable dependence at the beginning of a human life.

This work of God is known to women, the poor, shepherds, and foreign astrologers from outside of the Roman Empire.  God doesn’t become human by being born to an imperial, royal, or patrician family.  The incarnation is largely unnoticed, insignificant in the realm of empires, rulers, and the wealthy.  Thus, God’s deliverance and liberation aren’t readily noticed, nor easily recognized.  It is hidden in God being with us in our most human vulnerable spaces.  God comes among those who have the least reason to celebrate.

The season of Christmas begins with three feasts following up on Christmas day. These feasts invite us into the messy and mystical dimensions of this season.  On the 26^th the second day of Christmas we remember the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, Deacon and First Martyr. On the Third day of Christmas we celebrate the Feast of Saint John Apostle and Theologian, who points us toward the loving dance of the Holy Trinity. On the 4^th day of Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents, remembering those infants slaughtered by King Herod. These three feasts invite us to see Christmas as something other than a “happy” celebration. God come in human flesh stirs up a reaction: those who seek to control the world are confronted with something beyond them, and death and oppression are used in an attempt to regain control. This reality is reflected in today’s feast as well as our current headlines. The celebration of Christmas embraces a great deal.

To the mind overtaken by thoughts and impulses of control and power over others and the cosmos the incarnation is hidden from view.  Even those who suffer at the hands of the wealthy and powerful, God’s coming in human flesh being joined to creation can be hard to see its relevance or how it can free from oppression (This is especially so when the oppressor claims the name of Christ and Christian).

This is not to say that there is no way to see and find the work of God in Jesus Christ in our world and circumstances. But it can be very difficult. Following after that work of God in Jesus Christ, while it liberates, also often leads us into difficult situations in which we are facing death.

In the first four days of Christmas we are confronted with human responses to the mystery of God with us. God comes to us in God’s Glory, which isn’t the glory of human power and wealth. These responses are often violent and following Christ doesn’t necessarily preserve us from suffering under that violence.

In the mystery proclaimed by St John the apostle, we need to confront our own violent and sinful reactions to God come to us in this way, where God gives up control and power over others and circumstances. There is something liberating in letting go of the idea that we can control anything. But it also, leaves things feeling unstable and uncertain. I know that in myself there’s something that rebels against that instability. There is something dissatisfying in the focus on what today will bring, rather than some grand scheme that I can live into and execute. Yet, rarely does a long range plan become fully implemented. While we want to believe that we or some human we admire or elect might have such ability to see all possibilities and plan accordingly and keep things stable, history tells a different tale of human ability. Even when we believe ourselves to have the knowledge to plan and implement security, things soon fall apart.

In the midst of suffering and oppression and genocidal violence, the question of where is God arises. In moments like that of the slaughter of the infants and toddlers in Bethlehem, God with us feels like abandonment. God with us flees as a refuge dependent on human parents to keep them safe.

So then where is the hope, If God is with us and for us, but in being so has also relinquished a type of control and power over the world? Are we left to the power of death and desire to have power over others? The answer to this question isn’t found in the coming of God to us as the infant Jesus of Nazareth.  The answer comes in whom Jesus is, Jesus’ whole life and his death, resurrection and ascension.

But God’s ultimate answer to death and violence begins here.   And so with the shepherds, the magi, and Mary we can contemplate and celebrate even as things aren’t yet fully unveiled. At Christmas we are contemplating a portion of the mystery of our faith and God’s revelation to us in Jesus of Nazareth. God with us comes to us vulnerable and relinquishing control and power over others. In this we learn something of God’s love, power, and glory. The longer we  live with this revelation the more unsettling and disconcerting it becomes.

In the love an grace of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel,

Basil Irenaeus

Abba

Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler