Status Updates From The Universal Christ: How a...

“As long as we employ any retributive notion of God's offended justice (required punishment for wrongdoing), we trade our distinctive Christian message for the cold, hard justice that has prevailed in most cultures throughout history.”

“At best, the theory of substitutionary atonement has inoculated us against the true effects of the Gospel, causing us to largely "thank" Jesus instead of honestly imitating him. At worst, it led us to see God as a cold, brutal figure, who demands acts of violence before God can love God's own creation.”

“I know the theory of substitutionary atonement is central to the faith of many. But the questions of why Jesus died and what is the meaning and message of his death have dominated the recent Christian narrative, often much more than his life and teaching. As some have said, if this theory is true, all we needed was the last three days or even three hours of Jesus's life.”

“I hope to address how our commonly accepted atonement theory—especially as accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Jesus—led to some serious misunderstandings of Jesus's role and Christ's eternal purpose, reaffirmed our nar-row notion of retributive justice, and legitimated a notion of "good and necessary violence" all the way down.”

“The early church never heard of this… Until we see this explanation of why Jesus had to die for what it is and what it isn't, we'll struggle to liberate our notions of both Christ and Jesus and to see them as a revelation of the infinite love of the Trinity, not some bloody transaction "required" by God's offended justice in order to rectify the problem of human sin. ”

“This theory of atonement ultimately relies on another commonly accepted notion-the "original sin" of Adam and Eve, which we were told taints all human beings. But much like original sin, which we considered earlier, most Christians have never been told how recent and regional this explanation is, and that it fully relies upon a retributive notion of justice.”

“Christians say, "Jesus died for our sins," but in recent centuries one theory did take over. … referred to as the "penal substitutionary atonement theory," especially once it was developed after the Reformation. Substitutionary atonement is the theory that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished in the place of us sinners, thus satisfying the "demands of justice" so that God could forgive our sins.”

“Scholars say that ceremonies normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things… whereas true ritual offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named…. In the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies. Most masses I have ever attended are about affirming the status quo, which seldom reveals and often even de-nies the shadow side of church, state, or culture.”

“Feminine power is deeply relational and symbolic—and thus transformative—in ways that men cannot control or even understand. I suspect that is why we fear it. ”

“Today on many levels, we are witnessing an immense longing for the mature feminine at every level of our society—from our politics to our economics, in our psyche, our cultures, our patterns of leadership, and our theologies, all of which have become far too warlike, competitive, mechanistic, and non-contemplative. We are terribly imbalanced.”

“In Mary; humanity has said our eternal yes to God. A yes that cannot be undone. A corporate yes that overrides our many noes.”

“If Christ and Jesus are the archetypes of what God is doing, Mary is the archetype of how to receive what God is doing and hand it on to others. In art, she is invariably offering Jesus to the observer or inviting us to come to him.”

“Mary is the Great Yes that humanity forever needs for Christ to be born into the world. Even Paul McCartney immortalized this idea in his song "Let It Be," although on the first level he was talking about his own mother, Mary: "Mother Mary comes to me, Speaking words of wisdom, Let it be." ”

“I have often said that many Catholics have a poor theology of Mary but an excellent psychology: Humans like, need, and trust our mothers to give us gifts, to nurture us, and always to forgive us, which is what we want from God. My years of work with men's groups have convinced me of it. In fact, the more macho and patriarchal a culture, the greater its devotion to Mary.”

“We always had the feminine incarnation—in fact, it was the first Incarnation, and even better, it moved toward including all of us! Mary is all of us both receiving and handing on the gift. We liked her precisely because she was one of us and not God!”

“She then hands the second Incarnation on to us, while remaining in the background; the focus is always on the child. Earth Mother presenting Spiritual Son, the two first stages of the Incarnation. Feminine Receptivity, handing on the fruit of her yes. And inviting us to offer our own yes.”

“Mary became the Symbol of the First Universal Incarnation.”

“This archetype had already shown herself as Sophia or Holy Wisdom (see Proverbs 8:1ff., Wisdom 7:7ff.), and again in the book of Revelation (12:1-17) in the cosmic symbol of "a Woman clothed with the sun and standing on the moon." Neither Sophia nor the Woman of Revelation is precisely Mary of Nazareth, yet in so many ways, both are-and each broadens our understanding of the Divine Feminine.”

“In the mythic imagination, I think Mary intuitively symbolizes the first Incarnation—or Mother Earth, if you will allow me. (I am not saying Mary is the first Incarnation, only that she became the natural archetype and symbol for it, particularly in art, which is perhaps why the Madonna is still the most painted subject in Western art.) I believe that Mary is the major feminine archetype for the Christ Mystery.”

“We all know reverence because it softens our gaze. Any object that calls forth respect or reverence is the "Christ" or the anointed one for us at that moment, even though the conduit might just look like a committed research scientist, an old man cleaning up the beach, a woman going the extra mile for her neighbor... ”

“I doubt if you can see the image of God (Imago Dei) in your fellow humans if you cannot first see it in rudimentary form in stones, in plants and flowers, in strange little animals, in bread and wine, and most especially cannot honor this objective divine image in yourself. It is a full-body tune-up, this spiritual journey. ”

“"Truly, you are a hidden God," Isaiah says (45:15). God is hidden in the dirt and mud instead of descending from the clouds. This is a major transposition of place. Once you know that the miracle of "Word made flesh" has become the very nature of the universe, you cannot help but be both happy and holy. What we first of all need is here!”

”What I am saying in this chapter is that there must be a way to be both here and in the depth of here. Jesus is the here, Christ is the depth of here. This, in my mind, is the essence of incarnation, and the gift of contemplation. We must learn to love and enjoy things as they are, in their depth, in their soul, and in their fullness.”