Thursday, December 12, 2013

PERSON OF THE YEAR: POPE EVERLASTING



In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.


Welcome back. 

I took some time off recently as life swarmed upon me these past few days like angry hornets pouring out of their troubled nest. That happens a lot when you are a teacher, and so many responsibilities overtake you and sting you. But I am back where I should be.

I just love this pope!

When NBC revealed Time Magazine's possible covers for their Person of the Year--the notorious, the nefarious, and the nice--was there doubt in anyone's mind that Pope Francis would be chosen?

It amazes me the fuss over this pope as if he has brought something new into the world. He is not bringing anything new, but something that has existed since the Big Bang of creation. He is showing us what God's love looks like in a life.

Jesus did this two thousand years ago, so we are seeing nothing new. But it seems new because it comes to us as good news. Pope Francis, like Jesus, is giving us permission to love one another.

He's saying, "It's okay to be humble and kind. Go ahead.  Show love to strangers. You don't have to hate. You don't have to own the most toys. You need not prove your self worth is greater than others.  What a terrible burden that is to bear. Love one another instead as I have loved you and as your Father in eternity loves you."

Jesus of Nazareth gave us that permission two thousand years ago. This excitement over Pope Francis reveals a deep and abiding hunger for who Christ was on earth. 

He manifests to the world what the church should have been revealing for centuries everlasting.

Pope Francis is right-on when he remind us that the love of Christ is beyond doctrine.

It amazes me that Jesus-in-the-world is so popular even after centuries of distortion. Compare that Jesus to the popular theology of Jesus the Stern, Judging, Heterosexual Son of God who would never want his government to be just and fair and who will make you wealthy if you follow him--compare Him to him. 

He is more like the Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not the bloody conquering octavius-caesar-christ that John of Patmos imagined and many of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters celebrate.

We know so little about Jesus. We know not how he looked, his height, his weight, yet only what the earliest Christians wrote for us. What remains is so obscure yet everlasting.

We know all we need to know to make real our God of love in this good, beautiful, sad, cruel, indifferent, awesome world.
I love what I see in Pope Francis. Apparently, so does Time Magazine.

Indeed, I know I want to be like that Jesus whom I see in our brother Pope Francis, for that Jesus has shown our God of love in the flesh.

By the way, I haven't forgotten that I owe a post about reconciling Christianity with Monism.

Blessings...







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