52 Good Friday
“Today we usually spend some time thinking about Jesus’ last steps on the way to the cross how he is weighed down by the sins of the world, failing under the heavy load he must carry, and so on. But the teaching is not just about the cross, it has little meaning in itself unless we see it in the light of the resurrection. And I feel we’ve had too much of the cross without the resurrection. In my encounters with people over the years I’ve met so many who are suffering in life because all they’ve ever known is the cross; and it’s not as though the resurrection hasn’t been taught, so I feel it stems from the fact that with an ever-increasing materialism in the world we no longer believe in miracles – if I asked you all now: ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ You would all answer ‘no’ wouldn’t you? And you would do so without even enquiring into the meaning of the word, or what the reality of it might be, and the reason for that is that this particular conditioning is so strong. We live in a mechanistic universe, victims of an outlook governed by economics.
The word miracle simply means ‘a wonder’, and I feel it’s been this sense of wonderment that has been the main casualty of the increase of materialism. There is a feeling that everything either has been, or can be, explained, an idea that words comprehend a thing rather than simply point towards it. If you look back on the development of this attitude you can see that the loss of wonder follows on the scientific revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the description of a thing and the power that that gave became more important than the thing itself; and it also coincides with the move from an agrarian to an industrial society, with its alienation and specialisation, at which time ordinary people started to lose contact with the earth and the miracle of nature. Because of this, I feel that if we are ever going to regain this sense of wonder there has to be a change both in our philosophical outlook, and in our connection with the world around us. First of all we have to give more respect to the thing than to the word, to the actuality than to the description; and secondly people have to get back in touch with the natural world, and with their own bodies and minds as a part of it.
These two things go hand in hand, and I’m sure if you’ve ever planted a seed simply out of love, and watched over the days and weeks and months as it pushes its way out of the ground, grows and gets stronger, and becomes a flower, a tree, or whatever, that is the miracle of the resurrection, a seed that planted in the ground, dies, and comes to life again, transformed. Don’t you see the wonder of this? Are you not astonished that such a thing can happen? Where has your innocence gone? And not being able to wonder at the resurrection in a seed, how will we ever know the wonder of our own resurrection? We are so conditioned by this materialistic outlook and so we no longer have faith in the miracle of the resurrection, instead what do we do? We want to reason it out, to rationalise it, or to dismiss it, which is exactly what we do in regard to the universe itself! But if we didn’t try to think about the resurrection, but just stood in awe before it, then we might find that we have opened our hearts in regard to it, and what was once simply a story may become a present reality, where we have gone beyond the mind and its calculations, and are in the presence of the spirit, which has the power to bring life into our own dead souls as well.”
Christ in you!
Christ in you!
O don’t you know
the Christ in you?
cast off the chains
and look within
you’re now unbound
there’s no more sin
wake up! wake up!
O please wake up
O can’t you see
Christ lives in you?