Repost: Good Friday - Mar 05
From Friday, March 25, 2005
"Jesus died for our sins." What does THAT mean? I seem to remember learning, years ago, that it's to do with the offering of live sacrifices in worship. He was the ultimate sacrifice, so we don't need to mess about with bloody lambs any more - or, from a time before that, hapless virgins.
The act of sacrifice is a powerful thing. On a basic level of understanding, it's very simple: "Hey God, we'll give you this, if you give us that." Does God (assuming He exists) (And I'm using capital letters out of respect for readers who think it's blasphemous not to, even though I don't think it's blasphemous not to) work like that? As a kind of cosmic bartering shop?
I really don't think so.
The Celts around here (The Brigante tribe who were based in and around what's now Yorkshire, but was Brigantia) apparently used to cut off their enemies' heads and throw them down wells to appease the water spirits. Their deities ran through the water, lived in the ground and the trees AND the sky. Their deities were everywhere. They believed that when they ate an animal or a plant they were ingesting its spirit and would take on its characteristics. If they killed a brave warrior they would eat him or her too, and give the best part, the head, to the water god. Sacrifice.
Sacrifice is the act of taking the best thing, the thing you really wanted or needed and giving it away. It *is* a powerful thing, and not for bartering reasons. I think it's to do with making room for something even better.
I think we've got a choice between two states of mind, either:
Greedily or fearfully striving to possess what we need, which, though understandable, locks us into an unhealthy struggle. This option doesn't allow for trust that the universe will provide for our needs, so we have to go out and get them. Push, struggle, fight, work for what we need to stay alive and safe. Earn our keep. This option assumes that if we don't fight for what's ours, someone else will take it and we'll suffer increasing hardship and eventually die a horrible death with nothing. This option leads to the increasing anxiousness that keeps rich men awake at night, because we pile up possessions out of fear for the future, and the more possessions we've piled up, the more afraid we are of losing them. Every year we have to work harder and harder just to stand still. This is the school of thought that says: "If I work extra hard and put something aside I can sacrifice it to my god/ess and s/he might give me something back in return." Cover all the bases, hedge your bets. Be on the safe side.
OR......
Just letting it go. Trust. Give away your best thing. Give away everything. Stop fighting. Stop trying. Trust. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Who'd do that? They'd have to be mad! But actually the act of real sacrifice turns a key, electromagnetically. It transforms the output from all of those buzzing circuits in our heads into something completely different. In allowing the Universe (or God, or whatever you want to call it/him) to take the driving seat, we open ourselves up to whatever the cosmos had in mind for us. Sounds wacky? Too New-Agey? But think about the science behind it. We know now that time and space don't run on the straight lines we perceive them to, but that in the Universe time and space are bendy, flexible things. You get to the edge of everything and it comes back in on itself. Past, present and future mean something different to the Universe. In fact, I think they mean nothing to the Universe, or they have random meanings. It's only us, with our birth, aging and death, who insist on pinning them down into linear concepts. In reality, the only time that means anything to the universe is the present moment. Give up worrying about the future, live in the present moment, and you're open to all of that power. Not your power, which can only be weak, but universal power. You can't control it, but it's nice to go along with it. When Jesus allegedly said "It's as difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle," I think this is what He was talking about.
So the act of sacrifice is the symbolic switching from the first way of thinking, into which we tend to sink by default, into the second way of thinking, which takes a little more effort but which ends up being an altogether more rewarding, relaxing, exhilarating place to be.
I might be being fanciful, but I always feel something on Good Friday. I wake up feeling like this is a day of grieving and death. A day of sacrifice. But what do I actually believe about Good Friday? I don't think it's likely that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on this day. We know from correlating Roman records that He was sentenced to death and that crucifixion was their way of exacting death sentences, so I'll go along with the crucifixion, but of course the festival at this time of year originally was for the goddesses of Spring: The Scandinavian Ostra, the Germanic Ostern or Eastre, Aphrodite from Cyprus, Astarte from Phoenicia, Demeter from Mycenae, Hathor from Egypt, and Ishtar from Assyria. All of these goddesses were celebrated in the spring. The origin of our word 'start' (Astarte), Easter is a time of new beginnings, new life. Evidenced by new growth and flowers in nature, it's the start of everything again. A renewal. Or, in the context of sacrifice, it's the switching of one way of thinking, to the other. Rituals, festivals, feasts and ceremonies are supposed to mark changes, I think.
Looking at the Gospel accounts, what allegedly happened to Jesus when he was sentenced to death? There'd been a recent build-up in his popularity and fame. His arrival into Jerusalem had been marked by a public turn-out and evidence of crowd fever. He was treated like a pop star. He was a major threat to the established heads of religion, who depended on public support to maintain their positions of power and privilege. In rejecting their structure of power, in going 'straight to the top' in the spiritual popularity-stakes and unfearfully bypassing them, he marked his own card. From that point, his days were numbered. He must have known it.
They pretended to give him a fair trial, but once powerful people have decided the outcome, there's nothing fair about these things. Anyone who's ever faced any kind of a public judgment will know this. The decision is made from the start, people's minds are made up. Such trials are just pantomimes. He'd got into that position as a result of a long series of decisions he'd taken over the previous years, and my guess is that he knew where it was all leading. But the part that interests me is the legal point on which the prosecutors hung his trial: "You said you are the son of God." And his answer: "It's YOU who say that," meaning, other people have chosen to draw that inference from my words. I never actually said that. And did he say he was the son of God? I think he said things like: "We're all God's children," and he called himself the son of Man, but I don't think in the Gospels he ever stakes a claim to be the Son of God, a deity raised about the rest of us. When I read the Gospels I read about a man who wanted to liberate people's thinking, to wake them up a bit and show them what's possible, not a man who wanted worshipping like a god.
We do this transmogrification thing a lot, we humans. We're prone to setting other people up on pedestals, and turning them into gods. We do have such a tendency. The Egyptian Pharaohs: gods. The Chinese Emperors: gods. The British Royal Family - yes, our whole constitution here in England is based on the idea that they are gods: divine beings. But I think what Jesus of Nazareth was saying was that there's an element of us all that's godlike. We're all fragments of the same universal cosmic spirit, all equally capable, given the correct discipline, of a similar level of amazing abilities. I've seen things with my own eyes in Taoist training halls that are technically impossible. I've performed a few of them myself. It's a matter of technique, of belief, of training - and of sacrifice. Knowing how to flick the switch. Knowing how to work with electromagnetic energy.
Before I deeply upset any Christians, I'm not saying Jesus of Nazareth was just like us. I think he was really something special. A blazing star to follow. But I do think he was a man, and no more a god than the rest of us, but definitely exceptional. He could have chickened out of what he went through any time. It must have been very tempting to opt out, fade into obscurity, just agree with whatever his persecutors were trying to bully or trick him into admitting. I've read the theory (Caroline Myss, I think) that the switch-flicking sacrificial "It's you who says I am," the letting go and acceptance of his fate, was what gave him the energy to resurrect. Whatever did happen must have been powerful, because we're still thinking about it today. The cumulative effects of millions of people's thoughts about crucifixion seems to be enough in itself for me to wake up today feeling like somebody died. I think that so much belief can create something real, and coupled with the time of year - well, it's something. It's not nothing.
"He died for our sins." Our sins? I don't understand. How does that work? We still kill each other, steal from each other, do all of that stuff. How does one man's execution solve any of that? I'm sorry, but even if he managed to cheat death - and if anyone could, He could - I don't see how he died for our sins. I don't think he got himself nailed to a cross, stake, whatever, so that all future people could say "Oh, that's OK then. He's paid for all this sinning, we may as well do it." I don't even believe in sinning, really! But in dying like that, and allegedly coming back from that, he made himself infinitely memorable, which makes us wonder what He was all about.
He didn't seem to have possessions that he held onto for long. He didn't seem to run around earning money, dressing in fine clothes, wondering how the stocks and shares were performing. He didn't seem to bother about impressing people, or worry about upsetting them. Surely, there's a lot more we don't know, but I definitely get the impression that he was a 'here and now' sort of person, which is inspiring.
I won't be going to church today to listen to someone telling us what bad people we humans are and how much we sin all the time, because I don't believe that. I honestly think we all make the best decisions we can in every situation, and we all take the consequences of our actions. I don't want to know about how we turned an amazing man into a God and then brutally killed him. We do that all the time. The Romans crucified thousands of people, we're still righteously killing each other to this day, in Iraq, in legal courts imposing death sentences, all over the place. We sell poisonous, toxic food to each other, put deadly toxins on the land and into the air, drive fast cars which sometimes turn into killing machines... the ways we make ourselves and each other less healthy (closer to death) than we could be are many and varied. So what? What difference does it make, unless we switch on our brains and learn from it all? Maybe that's what Jesus of Nazareth was trying to say, I don't know.
posted by Gill at 7:45 AM 7 comments
"Jesus died for our sins." What does THAT mean? I seem to remember learning, years ago, that it's to do with the offering of live sacrifices in worship. He was the ultimate sacrifice, so we don't need to mess about with bloody lambs any more - or, from a time before that, hapless virgins.
The act of sacrifice is a powerful thing. On a basic level of understanding, it's very simple: "Hey God, we'll give you this, if you give us that." Does God (assuming He exists) (And I'm using capital letters out of respect for readers who think it's blasphemous not to, even though I don't think it's blasphemous not to) work like that? As a kind of cosmic bartering shop?
I really don't think so.
The Celts around here (The Brigante tribe who were based in and around what's now Yorkshire, but was Brigantia) apparently used to cut off their enemies' heads and throw them down wells to appease the water spirits. Their deities ran through the water, lived in the ground and the trees AND the sky. Their deities were everywhere. They believed that when they ate an animal or a plant they were ingesting its spirit and would take on its characteristics. If they killed a brave warrior they would eat him or her too, and give the best part, the head, to the water god. Sacrifice.
Sacrifice is the act of taking the best thing, the thing you really wanted or needed and giving it away. It *is* a powerful thing, and not for bartering reasons. I think it's to do with making room for something even better.
I think we've got a choice between two states of mind, either:
Greedily or fearfully striving to possess what we need, which, though understandable, locks us into an unhealthy struggle. This option doesn't allow for trust that the universe will provide for our needs, so we have to go out and get them. Push, struggle, fight, work for what we need to stay alive and safe. Earn our keep. This option assumes that if we don't fight for what's ours, someone else will take it and we'll suffer increasing hardship and eventually die a horrible death with nothing. This option leads to the increasing anxiousness that keeps rich men awake at night, because we pile up possessions out of fear for the future, and the more possessions we've piled up, the more afraid we are of losing them. Every year we have to work harder and harder just to stand still. This is the school of thought that says: "If I work extra hard and put something aside I can sacrifice it to my god/ess and s/he might give me something back in return." Cover all the bases, hedge your bets. Be on the safe side.
OR......
Just letting it go. Trust. Give away your best thing. Give away everything. Stop fighting. Stop trying. Trust. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Who'd do that? They'd have to be mad! But actually the act of real sacrifice turns a key, electromagnetically. It transforms the output from all of those buzzing circuits in our heads into something completely different. In allowing the Universe (or God, or whatever you want to call it/him) to take the driving seat, we open ourselves up to whatever the cosmos had in mind for us. Sounds wacky? Too New-Agey? But think about the science behind it. We know now that time and space don't run on the straight lines we perceive them to, but that in the Universe time and space are bendy, flexible things. You get to the edge of everything and it comes back in on itself. Past, present and future mean something different to the Universe. In fact, I think they mean nothing to the Universe, or they have random meanings. It's only us, with our birth, aging and death, who insist on pinning them down into linear concepts. In reality, the only time that means anything to the universe is the present moment. Give up worrying about the future, live in the present moment, and you're open to all of that power. Not your power, which can only be weak, but universal power. You can't control it, but it's nice to go along with it. When Jesus allegedly said "It's as difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle," I think this is what He was talking about.
So the act of sacrifice is the symbolic switching from the first way of thinking, into which we tend to sink by default, into the second way of thinking, which takes a little more effort but which ends up being an altogether more rewarding, relaxing, exhilarating place to be.
I might be being fanciful, but I always feel something on Good Friday. I wake up feeling like this is a day of grieving and death. A day of sacrifice. But what do I actually believe about Good Friday? I don't think it's likely that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on this day. We know from correlating Roman records that He was sentenced to death and that crucifixion was their way of exacting death sentences, so I'll go along with the crucifixion, but of course the festival at this time of year originally was for the goddesses of Spring: The Scandinavian Ostra, the Germanic Ostern or Eastre, Aphrodite from Cyprus, Astarte from Phoenicia, Demeter from Mycenae, Hathor from Egypt, and Ishtar from Assyria. All of these goddesses were celebrated in the spring. The origin of our word 'start' (Astarte), Easter is a time of new beginnings, new life. Evidenced by new growth and flowers in nature, it's the start of everything again. A renewal. Or, in the context of sacrifice, it's the switching of one way of thinking, to the other. Rituals, festivals, feasts and ceremonies are supposed to mark changes, I think.
Looking at the Gospel accounts, what allegedly happened to Jesus when he was sentenced to death? There'd been a recent build-up in his popularity and fame. His arrival into Jerusalem had been marked by a public turn-out and evidence of crowd fever. He was treated like a pop star. He was a major threat to the established heads of religion, who depended on public support to maintain their positions of power and privilege. In rejecting their structure of power, in going 'straight to the top' in the spiritual popularity-stakes and unfearfully bypassing them, he marked his own card. From that point, his days were numbered. He must have known it.
They pretended to give him a fair trial, but once powerful people have decided the outcome, there's nothing fair about these things. Anyone who's ever faced any kind of a public judgment will know this. The decision is made from the start, people's minds are made up. Such trials are just pantomimes. He'd got into that position as a result of a long series of decisions he'd taken over the previous years, and my guess is that he knew where it was all leading. But the part that interests me is the legal point on which the prosecutors hung his trial: "You said you are the son of God." And his answer: "It's YOU who say that," meaning, other people have chosen to draw that inference from my words. I never actually said that. And did he say he was the son of God? I think he said things like: "We're all God's children," and he called himself the son of Man, but I don't think in the Gospels he ever stakes a claim to be the Son of God, a deity raised about the rest of us. When I read the Gospels I read about a man who wanted to liberate people's thinking, to wake them up a bit and show them what's possible, not a man who wanted worshipping like a god.
We do this transmogrification thing a lot, we humans. We're prone to setting other people up on pedestals, and turning them into gods. We do have such a tendency. The Egyptian Pharaohs: gods. The Chinese Emperors: gods. The British Royal Family - yes, our whole constitution here in England is based on the idea that they are gods: divine beings. But I think what Jesus of Nazareth was saying was that there's an element of us all that's godlike. We're all fragments of the same universal cosmic spirit, all equally capable, given the correct discipline, of a similar level of amazing abilities. I've seen things with my own eyes in Taoist training halls that are technically impossible. I've performed a few of them myself. It's a matter of technique, of belief, of training - and of sacrifice. Knowing how to flick the switch. Knowing how to work with electromagnetic energy.
Before I deeply upset any Christians, I'm not saying Jesus of Nazareth was just like us. I think he was really something special. A blazing star to follow. But I do think he was a man, and no more a god than the rest of us, but definitely exceptional. He could have chickened out of what he went through any time. It must have been very tempting to opt out, fade into obscurity, just agree with whatever his persecutors were trying to bully or trick him into admitting. I've read the theory (Caroline Myss, I think) that the switch-flicking sacrificial "It's you who says I am," the letting go and acceptance of his fate, was what gave him the energy to resurrect. Whatever did happen must have been powerful, because we're still thinking about it today. The cumulative effects of millions of people's thoughts about crucifixion seems to be enough in itself for me to wake up today feeling like somebody died. I think that so much belief can create something real, and coupled with the time of year - well, it's something. It's not nothing.
"He died for our sins." Our sins? I don't understand. How does that work? We still kill each other, steal from each other, do all of that stuff. How does one man's execution solve any of that? I'm sorry, but even if he managed to cheat death - and if anyone could, He could - I don't see how he died for our sins. I don't think he got himself nailed to a cross, stake, whatever, so that all future people could say "Oh, that's OK then. He's paid for all this sinning, we may as well do it." I don't even believe in sinning, really! But in dying like that, and allegedly coming back from that, he made himself infinitely memorable, which makes us wonder what He was all about.
He didn't seem to have possessions that he held onto for long. He didn't seem to run around earning money, dressing in fine clothes, wondering how the stocks and shares were performing. He didn't seem to bother about impressing people, or worry about upsetting them. Surely, there's a lot more we don't know, but I definitely get the impression that he was a 'here and now' sort of person, which is inspiring.
I won't be going to church today to listen to someone telling us what bad people we humans are and how much we sin all the time, because I don't believe that. I honestly think we all make the best decisions we can in every situation, and we all take the consequences of our actions. I don't want to know about how we turned an amazing man into a God and then brutally killed him. We do that all the time. The Romans crucified thousands of people, we're still righteously killing each other to this day, in Iraq, in legal courts imposing death sentences, all over the place. We sell poisonous, toxic food to each other, put deadly toxins on the land and into the air, drive fast cars which sometimes turn into killing machines... the ways we make ourselves and each other less healthy (closer to death) than we could be are many and varied. So what? What difference does it make, unless we switch on our brains and learn from it all? Maybe that's what Jesus of Nazareth was trying to say, I don't know.
posted by Gill at 7:45 AM 7 comments
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