Awakened Hearts
Easter 5A
While listening to the Gorecki Third Symphony, a somber and
yet transcendent piece of music, sitting at a gate in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson
International Airport, it was hot. It was summer, and the air conditioning was
not working. People around me were hot, grumpy about our plane being late,
constantly harassing the airline representative for information she did not
have. People walking by looked angry while lugging their luggage in the humid
corridor. Suddenly, the music transported me. People looked relaxed, smiling,
at one with themselves and each other. Those walking by were once again engaged
in upbeat even gay conversation. No one was complaining. It was peaceable.
Sparkling! Transcendent! The symphony came to an end. The rough voice of blues
legend, Howling Wolf intoned, “I asked my baby for water, but she gave me
gasoline…” I looked up, and everyone was as before – grumpy, angry, hot and
unhappy.
How long had the vision lasted? I’ll never know. But it has
persisted. It remains one ongoing vision of what we call the Christ. Which is
not Jesus’s last name. It is his essence. It is what storyteller John calls the
logos, which gets translated, “Word.” But which even at the time of
Jesus logos, a word borrowed from Greek philosophy, suggests Richard
Rohr, meant something more like the “Blueprint” or Primordial Pattern for
reality. [i]
In the beginning we are told all things were created through the logos,
and that the logos is the light and the life of the kosmos, the
world, and everything therein.[ii]
What I saw at Hartsfield-Jackson International was the light
that shines within us all; within all life. This logos, this life, this light
is what other New Testament writers call christos, Christ. I’ve come to
believe this logos, this christos is what Buddhists call
bodhichitta, a Sanskrit word meaning a “noble or awakened heart.” [iii] “It is said to be present in all beings…in
difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals.” When all seems lost; when
we feel ready to give up; this, writes Pema Chodron, is the time when “healing
can be found in the tenderness of pain itself…in the midst of loneliness, fear,
feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine
heart of sadness…the genuine heart of bodhichitta cannot be lost. It is here in
all that lives, never marred, completely whole.” [iv]
The 14th chapter of John comes out of a growing sadness and
fear among the disciples. It is their last supper with Jesus. He says he is
leaving. He says that where he is going, they cannot follow right now. Peter objects,
and pledges he will follow Jesus, the logos, even unto death. Kindly,
Jesus tells him he does not know what he is talking about. And out of this John
has him say, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” [v]
Why not? Here, translation fails us. The text continues, “Believe in God,
believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it
were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”
Richard Swanson notes, in the Greek there is no question mark, and offers an
alternative translation, “If there were not many
places to stay in my father’s home, I would have said to you: I am traveling to
prepare a place for you.” [vi]The
difference is monumental. Jesus does not need to prepare a place. The father’s
house already is wide enough, broad enough. large enough, so commodious as to
host all of us, all living beings, all traditions, all of creation itself!
Jesus does not need to prepare a place for us, or anyone else. In the cosmology
of the fourth gospel, the logos, the christos, has already made room, as
we heard last week, for sheep from other flocks – all other flocks. [vii]
Let not our hearts be troubled. The very logos, the christos,
that created all that is, has placed the bodhichitta heart in us all. We need
only go to this place within, where the word that has become flesh chooses to
dwell, to live, to remain among us always, to heal our fear, our
perceived loneliness, our sadness at his seeming departure – which, is no
departure at all.
Besides, Jesus says, you know the way. This is what this
dialogue is about: The “way,” universally understood among Jesus and his fellow
Jews, is the ‘way of Torah,’ the way of YHWH, the way of the covenant life that
promises life, light and abundance for everyone and all creation. Philip says,
“But we don’t know the way!” Oh, Philip,
Jesus says. You have been with me all this time; I have been with you all this
time. I am the way, the truth and the life. I have been with you before time
itself; before creation itself; when you were a mere dot of DNA in the father’s
logos, the father’s blueprint for the entire cosmos! Then here it comes – the
source of much misunderstanding and trouble: “No one comes to the Father
except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on
you do know him and have seen him.”
Like Philip, we forget. Jesus, the logos, the christos,
and the Father are not “Christians.” The father’s house, which is the entire 14
billion light years of the universe, the kosmos, is not the church. There
is enough room for all people and all traditions. It is big enough for us all.
Be we Chrisitan, Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist, Jew, Atheist – simply, who and
whomever we are. This house is wide enough and broad enough for us all. It all
comes from the logos, the Christ.
The Church has been fixated long enough on thinking we are
the only folks in the house. It is time, Jesus then says, to get past that. To
see the light and the life in all people. Just as some mysterious portal opened
for a brief period of time at Hartsfield-Jackson International that hot and
humid day in Atlanta. Curious, isn’t it. I was in an international airport.
People from all over the world come through there. People travel from there to
everywhere in the world. “If there were not many places to stay in my
father’s home, I would have said to you: I am traveling to prepare a place for
you.” For just a moment, I could see the logos, the christos,
the light and the life within all of us troubled, and angry, and hot people
sitting at a gate – forgetting that Jesus once said, “I am the gate to the
fold.” We are not the gate keepers. He is. The Christ is.
This world, the kosmos, the father’s house has room
enough to accommodate us all. Believe this, says Jesus, and then do the things
that I do. And once you see, once you touch, the logos, the bodhichitta
heart that is within you and among you all, you will do even greater things
than I do!
That’s what this is all about: Walking in the Way. Let us
remember. We have always been on the way with the christos, with the logos.
We all are endowed with bodhichitta, with tender hearts that heal, that shine with
the true light, with true life, with noble and awakened life. The light of
Christ and bodhichitta shines through all darkness. We are to let it shine through
all we say and all that we do. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
[i]
Rohr, Richard, The Universal Christ, (Convergent, NY:2019) p.22
[ii]
John 1:1-5
[iii]
Chodron, Pema, The Pocket Pema Chodran, (Shambala, Boston & London: 2008)
p.1
[iv]
Ibid, Chodron, pp. 1-2
[v]
John 14:1-14
[vi]
Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland:
2010)p. 314
[vii]
John 10:1-10
No comments:
Post a Comment