"Truth or Blasphemy?"

Greetings, dear Unitics! May the blessings of Eastertide rest gently on your hearts and minds as you explore the inspirational magik of “the rest of the story!” told in this issue of News & Views.

In addition to bringing us some real fine basketball, though they did get waxed in the March Madness, Duke is also the home of one of the outstanding preachers in the Christian tradition, the Dean of the Duke Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry, Dr. William H Willimon.

In one particularly memorable Easter sharing, the good doctor invited us to think of Luke doing Easter as a Sunday evening meal with the risen Christ, while John focused on the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden. But for Matthew, Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus and an impudent angel sitting on it.

The world of Matthew’s time was in the tight death-grip of a reality system that’s still pretty much true for most folks this many years after the magik. All that lives dies a totally eradicating death. The good get it in the end. Stop dreaming. Face facts. It may be a rather somber world, but it is our world where things stay tied down and what dies stays that way. And there are few surprises. That’s it. “There is a time to be born and a time to die.” Get over it! Deal with it!

From that place in consciousness the women came out to the tomb to write one more chapter in the long sad story of death’s ascendancy, one more episode of how the good always get it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper of resignation at death’s dark victory.

And then spirit said “Shazam!” The earth heaved, an angel appeared, the stone was rolled away, Caesar’s soldiers shook, the temple veil split down the middle, all the lights went out and an angel plopped himself down on the stone in one final act of impudent defiance of death and said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. You’re looking for Jesus? He isn’t here.”

And then the angel turned to the soldiers and said, “Every idea you’ve ever had about how it is in your world has just been turned upside down. You may have noticed. You’re looking for Jesus? He isn’t here! Let me suggest, ‘be afraid!”

Nobody went home the same.

I believe it was that venerable old scholar, George Bernard Shaw, who once suggested that, “All great truths began as blasphemies.” And, I’ve got a hunch our brother, Jesus, is somewhere in the Mother’s Cosmos right now nodding His head in agreement with a fervent, “A-men!”

So, welcome to the one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-third anniversary of the day that history’s Greatest Blasphemer ran a little Trickster Energy off on Jerusalem and Rome’s power brokers and changed, forever, the name of the Game. For anyone, that is, willing to pick up His Cross and follow His Insights deep into a Kingdom of Radical Awareness that crucified ideological confusion masquerading as Divine Revelation.

For sure, more than the humanity of our Beloved teacher died on the Cross that Friday of Goodness. Ignorance died too, for anyone with ears that hear and eyes that see. Ignorance like the terrifying notion that this precious gift we call Life, this capacity to bear witness to creation unfolding, is nothing more than a fractional line of existence that begins with a physical birth and ends with a physical death. Ignorance like the tragically popular misconception that human worth, meaning and purpose is available only to those living a “lifestyle of the rich and the famous.” Ignorance like the ancient notion that human differences must be resolved by creating a deeper injury... a greater killing.

And more than the Enduring Presence of all God’s children was revealed on that long ago moment of Resurrection. An eternal invitation, carved deep into our souls from the very beginning was revealed to us that Holy Morning. It was an invitation to join Him in seeing with New Vision. An invitation to cross out, once and for all, the dark ways of doing things. An invitation to join Him in the graceful practice of embracing Compassion and Caring as the constant inspiration for every one of our acts and utterances.

It’s an Easter Party! The New Millennium’s Divine Project, and you’ve been invited...
R.S.V.P.

And, let’s not miss the grace contained in the Easter story. Spiritually understood, Easter is a revelation that God’s vision for all His Children is a total renunciation of the sorry notion that the best we can hope for is to endure a life sentence here on a wasteland full of sin and sinners praying our buns off that we jump through enough doctrinal hoops to die safely and get a crack at a heavenly reprieve.

Check it out! The undeniable focus of the New Testament is on the power of the resurrection in life NOW! Though we may well be up to our fannies in spiritual immaturity, the Good News of Easter is that a “Truth that sets us free” was resurrected through the risen Christ. A Gospel, a Teaching so illuminated it has the capacity to liberate those who practice it faithfully from all self-imposed suffering including the fear of physical death.

So, Easter is more than bonnets and Fifth Avenue fashion parades. And Easter is more than hope for life after this body packs it in. Easter is a far more profound and immediate blessing than that. Easter is a declaration that there is a resurrection power available to us at any point along our eternal time-line. A full appreciation of the potential of the resurrection moment recognizes that it empowered us to inhabit heaven and be new creatures in Christ right here and right now... the very moment we “pick up our cross and follow Him” deep into the kingdom of love for one another as way of life.

We are created and sustained by a loving Father/Mother God to live in perfect freedom in this life, right now, without waiting for the next installment of our eternal adventure. The grace of the resurrection has set us free and empowers us to...

Live with spiritually informed values, choose inspiring new commitments, express a new spirit, refine our capacities to love and forgive, seek awakened attitudes and ideals, pursue just, ethical goals, be faithful in our spiritual practice, and “rejoice and be glad” in every breath of this magical passage of time, form and circumstance we know as “life.”

Let us gladly embrace and be thankful for the Easter revelation of eternal life yet to be revealed, without forgetting to celebrate the moment that will eternally define our existence . . . the gift of here and now.

Enjoy the Grace!
~ Chad

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