CHARLES FILLIWRE--EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, TEE RISEN LORD. John 20:11-20 CHARLES.FILLMORE EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 1932.

Transcription

1 CHARLES FILLIWRE--EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, TEE RISEN LORD John 20:11-20 CHARLES.FILLMORE EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 27, THE RISEN LORD John 20:11-20 We are continuing our study this morning--and I would say to you that this is a study. We are here for a lesson, and that lesson is the resurrection of man from his material consciousness to his spiritual consciousness. Christianity is progressive; it teaches the unfoldment UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY UNITY ARCHIVES

2 of man. It doesn t exactly follow the steps of Darwin and Huxley, and that school, but it sees where they fit into the great onward march of the soul of man. Christianity includes in its soul unfoidment the body also; that the body is the home of th e soul, and the overcoming of the inertia, the inactivity, of our organisms is an essential part of the evolution of the soul of man. And the lesson this morning, t4e resurrection of Jesus from the dead, is right in line 3 with that evolution and, as I say, it is,for every one of us who is following Him in the spiritual ongoing, a special, specific lesson for us. It fits into this great scheme of soul evolution. We ark all part of the great plan, which im that what is potential in the infinite, the creative Mind, shall be expressed in each and every individual mind, and that we shall know and understand and demonstrate what God is. Easter has in it many deep and, in a way, mysterious

3 propositions, many seeming contradictions. It is not safe to tie yourself to history nor to any condition, in the study of this great event in which the soulemerges from a material base to a spiritual base. We all are going through this process to a degree every time we overcome some material concept and raise our consciousness to a spiritual concept. This is, as Paul says, "dying daily." We die to the old, and are resurrected to the new. We die to our old shortcomings, our old missing of 5 the mark, which is sin, and we rise in the understanding of the truth. Easter is derived from the barbarians. The name even, "Eastre," was one of the goddesses of those old, old races, and when Christianity began to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ they found that they had to incorporate some of the old barbarian ideas; that at this season of the year there was a renewal of nature; that nature put on the flowers and

4 6 the music and the joy of new life, and so we have a combination, in our Easter, of the barbarian, the Gentile, the natural thought, and that higher, Christian thought. One is represented in the less n today by Mary. Mary represents the feminine, which is the natural, and you will notice that around Mary, the friend and the mother of Jesus Christ, revolve all the different activities. No man appears in this 'lesson. It is everything to Mary, and Mary represents the soul; Mary 7 represents nature in the world about us. Mary represents this earth, and Jesus Christ represents the spiritual man, the I Am. Now, Mary in this attitude, we find, is the great outstanding attitude of materiality. Mary didn't understand what had been taught to her by the Master. She didn't know that He was going to overcome death, and on this sabbath morning she cane to the tomb expecting to engage in the embalming of His body; and she looked, and stooped down, and she was weeping.

5 E She was sorrowing, all of which shows that she had not taken that forward step which is the joy of the resurrection, and that is the majority of those who are still in the old thought, that death is a 'reality; that death has not been overcome, and that we must bow to that great terror, that enemy of man, which Jesus Christ plainly taught He had put out of consciousness. So Jesus was teaching Mary. He was there all the time, just as He is here all the time. He had overcome the dissolution 9 of the body consciousness. He had risen above that. He had fulfilled the promise that one should come who woulc break through this h y pnotic spell, the death and destruction of our bodies. And so, when Mary looked into the tomb, there was that risen man in His own spiritual boty; the same body, but He hrd broken into the cell life, into the atoms of that organism. He had stripped those atoms, as our modern scientists tell us. When we have accomplished this, we shall every one of NI \r C H 01 OF CHRISTIANITY UNITY ARCHIVES

6 -.break 1 0 us come into a new kind of body. You carry it here with you all the time, but you have not developed this capacity of the spiritual I Am in you to overcome. ur men of science tell us that in every atom--and our body is composed of these atoms--there is a potential energy, a locked-up force that---- Cne scientist says that if the energy in a single teardrop were at once released, it would every window within a mile of that point of release. 11 See what dynamite we have here within us; what energy; what capacity; what power! Yet we meekly give up to the inertia, the inactivity, all this wonderful life within us. Jesus taught how we might release this power within; how we might overcome the disintegration, the corruption of the I body, but there ls a soul to deal with, this subconscious, this Mary, out of which Jesus Christ cast seven devils. That means that out of the natural man, the seven planes of con-

7 sciousness have become infected with error, the evils of anger, jealousy, and selfishness, the idea that this world can be stored up in its material things_and make one happy. That is part of the Mary consciousness. Those are the devils that have to be cast out of this natural world. It is a great subject as you go into it, and we find that the lesson for every one of us is to rise out of the sorrow. Mary sorrowed at the grave. We find that the old idea 13 of sorrowing for the dead is carried out with a robe of blackness, and some people go to the extreme--or they used to--of having stationery with black borders and wearing mourning, and all that sort of thing. That was not the teaching of Christ. There was to be rejoicing when one who is in the Spirit overcomes. So we should change our whole Easter service. Let us have more flowers, more singing, more rejoicing, because there has

8 been a great victory. We have come into this new life, and that newness that we have, following Jesus Christ, is to keep on and on until these billions -of cells in our bodies are every one of them released; until they come in the resurrection. Of what? the resurrection after we are dead? Some of our Christian teachers have fallen into the thought that man shall have a new resurrected body after he is dead. Take a whole lot of theories. Some teach that we get 15 our resurrected bodies immediately after we die, and in these bodies we are transported to heaven where we eternally rejoice and sing about the throne. Others teach that we don't get our resurrected bodies until the Day of Judgment; that we sleep in our graves, and on that last great day, when Gabriel sounds the drum, we are all to grab our bodies and come into them right here in the earth. I saw once some estimates of how much room just the bones of those who have died since history would

9 16 occupy on this earth, and this mathematician said that if the bones of all the people that had died in the last thousand years were piled up on the earth, it would make a crust eighteen feet thick. You would have a problem to pick 'out your bones. We must raise all our estimates. We are rising out of this materiality. We must cease to lock into the tomb. We must look unto the risen Lord. 17 We consider it a great honor for a man tc have lived one hundred year -$ 1 but one who has lived, like this man from Asia who is visiting this country, one hundred and fifty years, is paged on our daily press; but supposing that I say to you that I know a Man who has lived nineteen hundred and thirty-two years: what would you say? still living, still going strong. i know such a Man. Who is He? Jesus Christ. How do I know Him? I have seen Him, talked with Him, and I know that

10 He is alive. And _I am not the only one. All down the ages, from the time of Paul and the early disciples that saw Him, they touched Him, talked with Him, and I read not long ago where a prominent Congregational minister said that he saw Jesus Christ walk down the aisle one Sunday morning and take a seat in his congregation. He was sure of it. Another minister, Doctor Dale, of Birmingham, England, says in his biography that it flashed on him that Jesus was 19 - alive; that he!lied been ministerina. and -preaching and praying, when sudde4y, as *an insp iration, it came to him one day, "Why, Jesud is alive just as I am alive in this body. 4 He is in this b9dy." That revelation is coming more and more to us, that He didn't die; He overcame death. He went, through the form, but we all have to go through this form. But remember, you are to overcome all this, which is of the negative. We are to rise with Jesus, as Paul plainly teaches. Read the 6th

11 20 charter of Romans. There you will find a perfect statement of the meaning of death. We, as he says, die to sin. The old carnal consciousness dies, the old man of the flesh. That is the man that cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." Jesus didn't die. Christ, the primal Man in Jesus, didn't die, but the old,carnal man died. Let it die; let it go. Let us think and live in this new consciousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, "I am the resurrection and the life." 21 Be is here right now, speaking those words to every one of us. Are you receiving them? Are you takitg into your consciousness and affirming with that Christ Am the resurrection and the life"? UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRIS TANI EY UNITY ARCHIVES