I Behold the Christ In You

Transcription

1 I Behold the Christ In You Today, in advance of Valentine s Day, we celebrate Friendship Sunday. It is an opportunity to share our love of one another by inviting others to hear the words and feel the acceptance that makes such a difference in our lives. Unity s philosophy is different than many traditional Christian explanations but we are far from alone in our views. Teillard de Chardin, Matthew Fox, and Bishop Spong come from those traditional faith perspectives and yet they also speak of our relationship to the Divine in much the same way Unity does. Unity s most fundamental beliefs might be distilled as this: There is only One Power in all, the Divine and that power is in each one of us. Our statements about the activity of the Divine, the power of prayer and the need to practice what we believe; all those statements arise out of the two fundamental beliefs. I behold the Christ in you. I d like to outline three steps to being able to make that statement from a place of understanding and alignment with our true beliefs. Step ONE: Recognize that you are created in the image and likeness of God. There is the spark of the Divine in you. This is not blasphemy or a demeaning of God; rather it is a statement of the creative nature of God out of which we are shaped. It is an idea found in many faith traditions yet it is a truth we fear. If we separate ourselves from God and make ourselves small, then we reduce our potential and our responsibility. If, in fact, we are the powerful expressions of the Divine, we are responsible for the world and experiences we create. In Genesis 2 we may find, then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. We live as the breath of God. In Celebrate Yourself, Unity writer Eric Butterworth says, You are the center of the universe, the center of God. This is not a point to be made egotistically, but transcendentally. There is that of you which is centered in God and which is a point of God activity flowing forth into expression as you. There is no limit to God or to one in God consciousness. In Unity, we refer to this individualization of the Divine in each of us as the Christ of our being. This is because Unity was founded on the teachings of Jesus, not so much as interpreted or shaped by various religious organizations, but as interpreted from the scriptures available to us. 1

2 Jesus referred often to his relationship to God. Jesus was raised in the Jewish tradition of mono-theism or belief in only One Divine Power and he believed not only did he derive power from that intimate relationship with God, but that everyone could discover and acknowledge their own relationship with equally astonishing results. Step TWO is realizing that we are all unique expressions of One Power, and therefore individualizations of Oneness. Let me give you this example. I love tea cups so imagine 7 billion different tea cups. Cups of every size and shape, color and design. Now every cup is used to dip a cup of water out of the ocean. It is the same ocean yet you cannot say that every cup is the same. You also cannot say that one cup is better than another because they contain the same essence. One God, 7 billion unique sparks. Again in Celebrate Yourself, Eric Butterworth says, Listen to the voice of silence within. It is saying to you, You are a unique and wonderful individual. You are important. You are not just a statistic, but a vital part of the universe. Truly you live in its center. You are its center. You are God s living enterprise. God has something wonderful to say through you which can only be said as you. The cosmos can never be quite complete without you. I do not tire of reading this. As much as we would sometimes like to minimize our potential by putting ourselves in the context of volume (1 out of 7 billion), there can be no denying we contain a divine power to make a difference. And we must recognize that this is the truth for each and EVERY one of us. In the Hindu tradition, this is acknowledged by the greeting, Namaste or Namaskar. The verbalization is accompanied by a Mudra or hand gesture of placing the palms together in front of the heart and a slight bow. The greeting is based on the Sanskrit words, nama or to bow and te or you. I bow to you is an acknowledgment of oneness in our Brahman nature. There is a Sanskrit blessing that says, I honor the place in you where Spirit lives. I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Truth, of Light, of Peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, then we are One. Most of us find it fairly easy to exchange such greetings at church. Or in other gatherings of like-minded friends. Why, then, do we find it so difficult to be able to say this with honesty and integrity with others? 2

3 Step THREE: We must train the eyes of our heart to look beyond the outer appearances to see the Divine in ourselves and in all others. As soon as I say the word see, our mind moves to its usual experience of interpreting visual images it receives from our retina and optic nerves. Those images are processed through our bank of prior images and the associated experiences. Yet to see with the eyes of our heart implies a different vision. In John, chapter seven we read, Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment." Many studies have confirmed the power of prior experience in processing current visual images. No matter how we want to believe we act upon our convictions, research says it still requires a conscious effort to override the power of conditioning. In my Diversity Awareness training, I have a series of visual images and questions that prompt us to not only assess our initial reaction but then formulate a deeper response. Ironically, the same vengeance with which we judge others, is the way we judge ourselves. When we see only our mistakes and our challenges, we are unable to see the Divine in ourselves. When we cannot see the Divine in ourselves, it is difficult to recognize it in others. We must learn that we get to choose the level at which we connect. We can look in the mirror and see the appearances (which may look wrinkled or hungover or weary) or we can look with the eyes of the heart and see the Divine, full of potential. We can look at others and see the appearance and behavior of that person or we can look with the eyes of the heart and see the Divine. Butterworth says this; We can t control the actions or behaviors of another person, but most certainly we can regulate what we react negatively to. When we discipline ourselves to turn quickly to a higher level of perception, we may be amazed at how rapidly other persons begin to interact with us on the higher level. Judging by appearances says we only see the teacup. Bigger cups hold more; fine china is more valuable; cups with chips and cracks are worthless. Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest who lectured at Harvard and Oxford and who died in 1996 unexpectedly of a heart attack. His final years were spent not at any place of higher education or in the lap of learned adoration but in the community of L Arche Daybreak in Canada. L Arche Communities around the world began in the 1970 s when a French priest, Jean Vanier, invited three men from a mental institution to share his home. His philosophy was that a 3

4 community was about sharing and mutual support and that each one offered something valuable. Henri Nouwen s last book was titled, Adam, God s Beloved and it chronicles his relationship with and care for a young man who was profoundly impaired and ultimately died as a result of a difficult to control seizure disorder. Henri Nouwen, who had spent so much of his life devoted to an intellectual distillation of his many spiritual challenges and contemplations, found some of his greatest revelations in relationship with those who were without his intellectual process. And in the end, he came to understand the value and enormous contribution these individuals gave to him in their acceptance of him. It was not so much through the nature of their humanity but through a connection to their divinity that he began to see the wholeness of his own divinty. There were no lesser cups; no cups which did not contain the Divine essence. In another book, Life of the Beloved, Nouwen said this, I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Selfrejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. And it is the truth of each one of us. So our steps are: ONE: recognize there is that essence of the Divine in you. TWO: acknowledge that we are all unique and individual expressions of that Oness. THREE: chose to connect at the level of our Divinity by seeing beyond appearances. In that process we will be able to say with honesty and sincerity to anyone, I behold the Christ in you! And that may be the most loving statement we can make. Next week we will talk about a tool to assist us in being able to see beyond appearances; the tool of forgiveness. Now I would like to invite Joie Barry, one of our beloved Licensed Unity Teachers, up to lead us in a meditation as we prepare by singing, When I Pray. 4

5 5