The Christmas story in Luke 1-2

The anonymous gospel attributed to Luke, a missionary colleague of Paul, begins with the story of the birth of John the Baptist. Elizabeth and Zechariah are elderly and without a child. Yet Elizabeth conceives and an angel tells Zechariah that the child's name will be John. Six months later the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to explain that she will give birth to a child with the help of the Holy Spirit and to tell her that Elizabeth is also pregnant. When Mary visits Elizabeth, the older woman feels her babe leap in her womb. Elizabeth says to Mary, "Blessed are you among women . . .." Then Mary sings praises to God, in words that have come to be known as the Magnificat — words that bring to mind (for those who know the Bible well) Hannah's song of praise after her prayers for a son have been answered with Samuel's birth. (1 Samuel 2:1-10).

The story of the birth of Jesus follows. We hear of Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem, finding no room in the inn, and taking shelter in a stable. During the night Jesus is born, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, and then shepherds are directed by angels to come and adore him.

The Christmas story in the gospel of Luke gives a prominent role to women, in contrast to most of the narratives in the Bible. The story also emphasizes the humble birth of Jesus in a stable, attended only by his mother and father, and then by shepherds. At the very beginning of Luke's gospel we read the author is writing his account for Theophilus, a Greek-speaking Christian. If we know our Bible well, we also know that Acts of the Apostles is a companion volume written by the same author. Thus the story of Elizabeth and Mary, and their children born in Judea, is the beginning of a story that includes not only accounts of the ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, but also of the conversion of Saul (who becomes the apostle Paul) and of Paul's missionary work until his imprisonment in Rome.

What meanings might this birth story have had for Theophilus and the other Greek-speaking Christians of his largely Gentile church? The birth story in the gospel of Luke sets the birth of Jesus within the Roman Empire at the time of a census decreed by Caesar Augustus. When the author of the gospel of Luke and Acts concludes his narrative with Paul in Rome proclaiming new life in Christ to Jews and Gentiles, we see clearly that the “good news” of this story is directed far beyond Galilee and Jerusalem to a much larger and more diverse Greek-speaking, Jewish and Gentile community throughout the Roman Empire.

In the second century some Christians began to claim that Jesus was a divine being who merely appeared to be human. Luke's gospel became a defense against this "Gnostic" heresy, because the birth story emphasizes Mary's pregnancy and the human birth of Jesus. Yet we don't hear of a Christmas celebration in the life of the church until the fourth century, when it is listed in an almanac as the Feast of the Nativity. Most likely this feast began in churches dominated by Gentiles during the reign of Constantine, after he was converted to Christianity in 312. In the Julian calendar of that period the Feast of the Nativity was celebrated on December 25th, which was the winter solstice. As the birth story in the gospel of Luke does not mention any date, the winter solstice was undoubtedly chosen to coincide with the pagan celebration of the rebirth of the sun. Thus, Jesus was proclaimed in the Roman Empire as the "true sun."

Probably Christians in Rome were unaware that shepherds in Palestine did not tend sheep in the fields during the winter. When Christian scholars in the Middle Ages were confronted with this factual inconsistency, they concluded the shepherds had stayed in the fields because of the winter solstice. European Christians adapted the story in other ways. The manger was represented in paintings and crèche scenes as a wooden rack or "crib." In Palestine, however, it would have been a stone ledge, trough, or a niche in the wall of a stable, in which fodder was placed. In Middle English the Feast of the Nativity was called "Christes masse," that is, the mass of Christ. This eventually was shortened to "Christmas."

It is interesting to recall that after the Protestant Reformation, Christmas was rejected by most Protestant denominations because it emphasized the baby Jesus rather than the risen Christ. In 1659 the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony made the observance of Christmas a punishable offense, and Protestant opposition to celebrating Christmas continued in some denominations well into the 19th century.

The flood of immigrants to the United States turned the tide. Germans brought their Christmas tree. Irish put lights in their windows. Catholic immigrants from Eastern Europe sang their native carols and protested having to work on Christmas Day! It was the Roman Catholic Church that kept the "Christ mass" tradition alive until the holiday became acceptable to all Christians and to many others as well.

Eventually, a surge of enthusiasm swept away all resistance. Neither the moral authority of the church, nor the power of the state could prevent the celebration of Christmas. It is almost as if the spirit of Christmas has a life of its own ― undisciplined, chaotic, commercial, fantastic, seemingly irrepressible!

As the Christmas story is told in the gospel of Luke, what meanings might it have for us today? I suggest, first, that as a very human story of mothers becoming pregnant and giving birth it reminds us that life, as we know it, is the medium in which God chooses to dwell. Jesus is born and grows up in a family, before as an adult he challenges religious and political authorities, suffers, is crucified, and then appears after death to his followers. 

Second, the gospel of Luke reminds us that poverty is not a mark of human failure or divine rejection. The origins of the church are humble and poor. The gospel story shows that the kingdom of God is not for those who claim to have earned salvation because of their success in the world, but for those who have faith.

Third, this story of women, a baby in a manger, and shepherds in the fields who come in wonder to the stable, should elicit in us a renewed sense of awe and gratitude for life. Each child is a wondrous creation, and the birth of a child is cause for joy. 

At Christmas, therefore, we celebrate the birth of the true sun, the light that enters the darkness and is not overcome by it, the life we know together in Christ, and the joy we share with one another and with the world.

Robert Traer

 

Resurrection is spiritual not physical

The New Testament gospels are anonymous. The shortest gospel is attributed to Mark, a colleague of Paul. The earliest version of this gospel reports that Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Salome (another follower of Jesus), come to the tomb, find the stone rolled away, and are told by a young man in a white robe that Jesus "has been raised" and gone to Galilee, where he will meet them. The gospel ends by saying the women "fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." (Mk. 16:1-8)

In the gospel attributed to the disciple Matthew, an earthquake opens the tomb and an angel delivers to the two Marys, who come to the tomb, the same message as in the gospel of Mark. When the two women run to tell the disciples, Jesus appears and speaks to them, and the gospel says: "they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him." After the women tell the disciples what they have witnessed, the eleven disciples go to Galilee, see Jesus, and worship him. But, the gospel adds, "some doubted." (Mt. 28:17)

The gospel attributed to Paul’s colleague Luke says two men in dazzling clothes tell the two Marys and Joanna (another follower of Jesus), that he has been raised from the dead. Jesus doesn't appear to the women, but does appear to two other followers and to Peter, before appearing to some of his disciples in Jerusalem. He says: "Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." (Lk. 24:39) This gospel says Jesus eats a piece of fish, tells his disciples to stay in Jerusalem, blesses them, and then is lifted up into heaven. (Lk. 24)

In the gospel attributed to the disciple John, Mary Magdalene comes alone to the tomb and finds the stone rolled away. Jesus appears to her and says, "Do not hold me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father." He gives her this message for his disciples: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." The gospel of John also says the disciple Thomas doubts the resurrection, until Jesus appears to him by the Sea of Galilee and eats fish with him and several other disciples. (Jn. 20-21)

Paul’s resurrection account differs with all of the gospel stories. Paul tells the Christians at Corinth: "I handed on to you . . . what I in turn had received [from the disciples] that Christ appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time. . . . Then he appeared to James [the brother of Jesus, who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem], then to all the apostles. Last of all . . . he appeared also to me." (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

As Paul is writing in the 50s and the gospel authors wrote after the Jewish revolt that begins in 66, Paul’s resurrection account is earlier. Moreover, Paul seems unaware of stories about Jesus appearing to women at an empty tomb or eating with his disciples.

Paul is, however, aware that some Christians doubt in the resurrection, for he writes to the Corinthians: "how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?" Paul explains that resurrection is the fulfillment of God’s will for all creation, not merely the raising of Jesus from the dead. Christ is the beginning of the resurrection of the dead that will come for all those, he says, "who belong to Christ." (1 Cor. 15:20-23) And he argues that the resurrection of the Christians in Corinth will be the same as the resurrection of Christ.

It appears that some among the Christians in Corinth, have asked: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Paul answers: “Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies." And he explains: "There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. . . . What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. . . . It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." (1 Cor. 15: 40, 42, 44)

The authors of the New Testament gospels ignore the earlier resurrection account Paul received from the disciples and also his explanation that resurrection is not physical. We, too, may doubt the resurrection, but there is no doubt that Paul's spiritual experience of the risen Christ transformed his life and the course of history over the following two millennia. 

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

Amazing grace will lead us home

The Pharisee Saul was persecuting preachers of the Way of Jesus until he was struck blind as "a light from heaven flashed around him." (Acts 9:3) After a follower of the Way explained the gospel to Saul, his sight was restored and his life transformed.

Writing as an apostle to the followers of the Way in Corinth, Paul explains: "But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" He answers from his own experience: "Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies . . . It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." (1 Cor. 15: 35-44)

Former slave-trader John Newton in 1772 wrote the words to "Amazing Grace" after he, too, experienced a spiritual "resurrection." The words to the first and third verses recall his personal transformation and affirm his new faith in grace and immortality.

Amazing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come,
'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

Living with love and hope

You have been raised with Christ, so set your hearts on things above. For you have died and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 2:1-4)

 

Resurrection is not about what happens to a body after it dies. As Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15, resurrection is a spiritual reality. A final hope, but now a Way of living. As Paul says in his letter to followers of the Way in Colossae, a small city near Ephesus in what is today Turkey, faith is dying to life as an everyday, material existence and being born anew in a life marked by hope and love. This is what Paul means by living "in Christ."

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

Living without fear of death

May the God of perseverance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves following the example of Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and one voice you may glorify God. (Romans 15:1-6)

Paul struggles to achieve support for his teachings in Rome and elsewhere. Paul argues that diversity can exist within the body of Christ, but his teaching is also a cause of division. He blames the conflicts on those who oppose him, but Paul's opponents must have blamed Paul. And who are Paul's opponents? The former disciples of Jesus, the apostles in Jerusalem who, we learn in Galatians 2 and in the second half of Acts, are led by James, the brother of Jesus.

The apostles in Jerusalem seem to believe that some if not all of the commandments of Jewish law must be kept by all following the Way of Jesus. As they knew Jesus during his lifetime, it is hard to believe that the historical Jesus set aside the Jewish law as Paul claims the risen Christ does. Paul never knew the historical Jesus, but he acknowledges that both he and the former disciples know the risen Lord. Why then do they differ?

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from a Roman city; the disciples of Jesus who were the first apostles were Aramaic-speaking Jews from Galilee. Perhaps their experience of the risen Christ was different, because their lives were so different. Yet, despite conflicting beliefs about Jesus, the first apostles and also Paul were transformed by their experience of the risen Christ.

In our time, thousands of survivors of near-death experiences have been transformed by the love and light that embraced them when they were unconscious and their brains were incapable of constructing perceptions, feelings, or memories. Nonetheless, these witnesses had striking perceptions, feelings, and memories. And now tell us that we all are going home. If you trust in their testimony, you too can live without fear of death.

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

 

The mystery of Christ in you: Pagels excerpt #5

Pagels writes in Why Religion? “When the author of the Gospel of Truth sets out to reveal Paul’s secret teaching, he begins by asking, What happened before the beginning of time? In answer, he offers a primordial drama of creation, telling how, when ‘all beings’ began to search for the One from whom they came forth, they couldn’t find him. Feeling abandoned, not knowing where they came from, they suffered anguish and terror, like children wandering in the dark, searching in vain for their lost parents. As this gospel tells it, what separates all beings, including ourselves, from God is not sin. Instead, what frustrates our longing to know our source is its transcendence, and our own limited capacity for understanding. Yet when these beings—or when we—realize that we can’t find our way home, don’t know where we came from, or how we got here, we feel utterly lost. Overwhelmed by grief and fear, we may rush into paths that lead nowhere, more lost than ever, imagining that there’s nothing beyond the confusion we see in the world around us.

“At this point, the Gospel of Truth turns toward a drama of cosmic redemption. When the Father sees his children terrified and suffering, ensnared by negative energies, he sends his Son, ‘the hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ,’ to show them a path and bring them back ‘into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infinite sweetness.’ And although, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, ignorant and violent ‘rulers of this world’ tortured and crucified Jesus, the Father overturned their conspiracy, transforming even their hideous crime into a means of grace.

“To show this, the Gospel of Truth reframes the vision of the cross from an instrument of torture into a new tree of knowledge. Here Jesus’s battered body, ‘nailed to a tree,’ is seen as fruit on a tree of ‘knowing the Father,’ which unlike that tree in Paradise, doesn’t bring death, but life, to those who eat from it. Thus, the author suggests that those who participate in the Eucharist, eating the bread and drinking the wine that, symbolically speaking, are Jesus’s flesh and blood, ‘discover him in themselves’ while he ‘discovers themselves in him.’

“After years of contending with familiar Jewish and Christian sources, I found here a vision that goes beyond what Paul calls ‘the message of the cross.’ Instead of seeing suffering as punishment, this gospel suggests that, seen through the eyes of wisdom, suffering can show how we’re connected with each other, and with God; what Paul’s letter to the Colossians calls ‘the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory. No wonder, then, that Christians called their sacred meal a mystery (mysterion), a Greek term later translated as ‘sacrament’ (from Latin sacramentum).”

“The author of the Gospel of Truth rejects images of God as a harsh, divine judge who sent Jesus into the world ‘to die for our sins.’ Instead, he suggests, the loving and compassionate Rather sent Jesus to find those who were lost, and to bring them back home. So rather than see the writing on the cross as any death sentence—whether Pilate’s or God’s—this author suggests instead that Jesus published there ‘the living book of the living,’ a book ‘written in our heart’ that teaches us who we really are, since it includes the names of everyone who belongs to God’s family.”

 

Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? (pp. 200-201). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Secret teachings: Pagels excerpt #3

Pagels notes that Bishop Irenaeus, engaged in missionary work in Gaul in 160-180, “insists  that Jesus and Paul never offered secret teachings.” Yet, she writes, “Mark’s gospel says that Jesus, like other rabbis of his time, spoke a simple message in public, but explained its meaning only to his closest disciples when he was alone with them, saying, ‘the secret of the kingdom of God is given to you—but to those outside, everything is in parables,” so that “they may listen, but not understand’—although Mark tells nearly nothing of what he taught in private.

 

Furthermore, while researching the Gospel of Truth found at Nag Hammadi, Pagels “discovered a different Paul—and a different message. Its anonymous author, most likely Valentinus, the Egyptian poet and visionary, who admires Paul, sees the apostle as teacher of secret wisdom whose vision of grace includes everyone.

And writing to the church in Corinth, Paul adds that while teaching the simple gospel, he also shares with some a secret wisdom: “We do teach wisdom among people who are mature—not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this age. Rather, we speak the wisdom of God hidden in mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory—which none of the rulers of this age knew—for, had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Pagels asserts: “I was intrigued to see that here, in his own words, Paul hints at a different version of the gospel—not that God ‘sent his own son to die’ as a human sacrifice, but that ignorant and violent people, or the spiritual powers that energized them, had killed Jesus.”

“Fascinated,” Pagels continues, “I realized that the anonymous author of the Gospel of Truth writes to answer that question, and to reveal that secret wisdom—or, at least, his version of it. He begins with the words ‘The true gospel is joy, to those who receive from the Father the grace of knowing him!’ Plunging into that mystery, he says that the true gospel, unlike the simple message, doesn’t begin in human history. Instead, it begins before this world was created.

“What happened, then, not just ‘in the beginning,’ but before the beginning, in primordial time—and how would we know? To answer this question, the Gospel of Truth offers a poetic myth. For around the time this author was writing, some devout Jews, and some non-Jews as well, loved to speculate on questions about what God was doing before he created the world. Often they looked for hidden meaning in poetic passages of the Hebrew Bible, like that opening line from Genesis, which tells how ‘a wind (or spirit, ruah) from God moved over chaotic deep waters.’

“What was there, then? Others claimed to find hints of what happened in a famous poem in the biblical Book of Proverbs, in which divine wisdom (hohkmah), identified with God’s spirit (ruah), tells how she worked with God to create the world. Since both ‘spirit’ and ‘wisdom’ are feminine terms in Hebrew, she speaks as the Lord’s feminine companion, or perhaps as his beloved daughter, who participated with him in creating the world, when first she swept over the deep ocean waters:

“When he marked out the foundations of the earth, I was there beside him, like a little child, delighting him daily, always rejoicing before him, and rejoicing in his world full of people, delighting in the human race.”

 

Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? (p. 197-198). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Light seen leaving body: Cook excerpt #14

Nick Cook writes about experiencing light around those who are dying: This light phenomenon has been reported by almost all near-death experience (NDE)  researchers, including psychologist and physician Raymond Moody MD, who coined the term ‘near-death experience’ in his 1975 best-selling book, ‘Life After Life’. In his book on shared death experiences, ‘Glimpses of Eternity’, Moody cites a large number of witnesses to light phenomena amongst relatives and carers of the dying. One, Sharon Nelson, told Moody about her encounter with the light at the death of her sister. ‘About one week prior to my sister’s actual passing, a bright white light engulfed the room. It was a light that we all saw and a light that has stayed with us ever since.’

In another case, Moody was approached by two sisters, Maria and Louisa, at a medical conference in Spain who told him about a ‘brilliant light’ that filled the room at the death of their father. ‘The light stayed for maybe ten minutes after he died,’ said Maria, ‘We saw no forms or figures in the light, but it seemed to be alive and have a personal presence.’

And this from a hospice nurse in North Carolina, who, having had a deep fear of witnessing her first death – that of a Mrs Jones – told how she heard Mrs Jones’s voice in her head calling her into the room: ‘I saw her draw her last breath. Right then, a light that looked like vapour formed over her face. I never had felt such peace. The head nurse on duty was very calm and told me that Mrs Jones was leaving her body and wanted me to see the dying experience. I saw a luminous presence floating near the bed, shaped somewhat like a person.’ The experienced nurse witnessed the light in the room, but not Mrs Jones’s ‘presence’.

Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One’s Passage from This Life to the Next, Raymond Moody Jr., MD, PhD, and Paul Perry, SAKKARA Productions Publishing, 2010.

Nick Cook is an author of 20 fiction and non-fiction book titles in the US and the UK. A former technology journalist, he is well-known for his ground-breaking, best-selling non-fiction book, The Hunt for Zero Point. He has also written, produced, and presented two feature-length documentaries for the History and Discovery channels. In 2021, Cook was amongst 29 prize winners in the BICS institute’s essay competition on consciousness. His essay is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Extraordinary Experiences: On Our Way Home

I begin my book by relating life-transforming experiences of scientists. After struck by lightning, surgeon Tony Cicoria heard music “from Heaven” and became a pianist to play it. Biophysicist Joyce Hawkes, after her near-death experience, heard a voice calling her to be a healer, studied with indigenous teachers, and became a cell-level healer. No longer agnostic, Cicoria and Hawkes now trust in the Source of life many call God. Some scientists, such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs, acknowledge extraordinary intuitive experiences revealing the secrets of nature. Other scientists report life-transforming healings, visions, and dreams. 
 
Stars, water, and life are natural phenomena but remain fundamental mysteries that may generate extraordinary human experiences. I explain why in chapters on Consciousness and Subjectivity, the Origin and Evolution of Life, a Creative Universe, Purpose and Meaning, Ethics and Ecology, and Nature and God.
 
These wondrous experiences offer evidence that we have come from and will return to an eternal dimension of reality, as unbounded by time and space as quantum reality. Some call it Heaven, the Other Side, or Cosmic Consciousness. Knowing this truth makes everyday life on earth extraordinary. And whether we know it or not, we are on our way home.
 
This is why I end the book by recognizing that the first line of the Lord’s Prayer is as compelling now as it was two millennia ago. Abba, may your kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Abba is the Aramaic word for father that Jesus used, and Paul in his New Testament letters also refers to Abba. Source of all life and forgiving love, may we open our hearts to You during our extraordinary lives on earth. Amen.

 

Available in paperback ($8) and Kindle ($1) editions at https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Experiences-Our-Way-Home/dp/B09JDX8ZLV/.

Home Alleluia

Audio computer-generated music with vocal by Robert Traer

https://christian-bible.com/songs/contemporary/home-alleluia.html

Abba in heaven and with us on earth. Guiding us every day as from our birth.

We pray for everyone going back home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Mary our mother you show us the way. Being more humble and patient each day.

Holding our hand as we make our way home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Healing our conflicts may help us to see, sharing with others will set us all free.

Forgiving those we fear brings us all home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Dark is the valley but you are our light. Your fire within us burns all thru the night.

Bright stars above showing us the way home. Alleluia.       Refrain   

Sisters and brothers now join in this song. Love one another until we’re all gone.

Amazing grace you are leading us home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Refrain  (Sung twice after each verse)

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Child's death reversed by deceased Catholic nun

“My name is Bruna Reyn and I live in Canada. Born in Vienna, Austria, from the age of two to seven I was a ward of the court in the care of The Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross. When my mother remarried, my brother and I were returned to her. From a young age I have been drawn to seek information about what happens at death. I had a ‘dream’ as a child that is as vibrant today as ever. In my ‘dream’ I was floating in outer space towards a brightly lit figure. The figure was Jesus Christ. He was dressed in robes of brilliant white and blue. Both arms were at His side and were directing ‘souls’ floating towards Him to pass Him, some to His right and others to His left. This was a brilliant scene in the black space where I was floating towards Him. I now believe this was my near-death experience when I was three. As a very young child (under 10), although my mother was not religious, when I was sent to bed, I would both pray and try to understand God and eternity. I recall one amazing moment where everything made sense—the fact that there was no beginning and no end, the existence of something beyond my environment—then it was gone.

 

“In 1994 I received a strange phone call form my mother. My mother said The Sisters of the Holy Cross had contacted her to say that they had been looking for me. The reason: on a hot August day, when I was 3 years old, I had been found drowned in a cistern in a small yard in Laxenburg. The cistern was a very large cement tank for collecting rainwater. They knew I was underwater at least 6 hours. Attempts at resuscitation by the nuns who found me, as well as the doctor in attendance, failed. The doctor pronounced me dead and left. But, following passionate prayers directed towards Sr. Maria Theresia, the founder of the Order, I opened my eyes. I had a very high fever for 3 days.

“I was told that everyone who was present for this event, including the doctor, was asked to provide a written description of what they had witnessed. Besides having no explanation for this, the doctor also cautioned that they must be prepared as there would be brain and/or organ damage. This did not occur. Once the fever broke, I appeared to be fine. This event was documented, and made its way through various levels until it reached the Vatican. In 1994 the Vatican declared this a miracle. I was invited, together my husband, to attend the 1995 Beatification Mass for Sr. Maria Theresia Scherer, and receive a medal.”

 

P. M. H. Atwater, Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of the Story (Hampton Roads, 2011).

Evolving: a cosmic life, a divine life, life on earth

Biologist Charles Birch (1918-2009) in A Purpose for Everything writes: “Either we and the rest of the creation have no permanent value or else we may say that there is a cosmic life, a divine life, able to appropriate and retain as experiences in its life our lesser lives and that of other individuals of creation. Either we and the rest live for what transcends ourselves or we live without ultimate meaning and ultimate purpose."

"To have self-determination is to exhibit mind. It is to have some degree of freedom, no doubt minute at the molecular level. I am not saying that having investigated the life of the cell and its molecules biologist have found mind. What they have found is more consistent with the proposition that the cell as an entity and the DNA molecule as an entity have internal relations."

"There is but one theory, known to me, that casts any positive light on the ability of brain cells to furnish us with feelings. It is that brain cells can feel! What gives brain cells feelings? It is by the same logic that we may say—their molecules. And so on down the line to those individuals we call electrons, protons and the like. The theory is that things that feel are made of things that feel."

"Because of the unity of life, human love is something that can be extended to the whole creation. The humanist loves his fellow humans and appreciates nature. The ecological model of life implies that human love is to be extended to the rest of nature in the sense of sympathetic identification with the life of other sentient organisms."

"The old notion of a divine being controlling the universe from outside is no longer credible. The relevant question now is, in what sense, if any, is there divine activity in the universe."

"The power of the Christian gospel is the experience of divine love that transforms life. We experience God first and then spend the rest of our lives trying to understand that experience and its relevance to the whole world. The God of the universe touches us as we experience life in its fullness. But God is vaster than our experience. When I go down to the ocean and swim on its shore, I get to know one part of the ocean—its near end. But there is a vast extent of ocean way beyond my ken that is nevertheless continuous with that bit of the ocean I know. So it is with God. We touch God at the near end, yet that same God extends into the farthest reaches of the universe and there too is pervasive love. This is the full meaning of incarnation. The universe exists by its incarnation of God in itself. It is the sort of universe in which God can be incarnate. God could not be incarnate in a machine! The divine Eros works in the universe through influence (literally meaning inflowing) as its universal mode of causation."

"To see the universe as a whole in this way, with the same God working in the universe at large, and in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of all of us, was put in highly symbolic language by the apostle Paul in his letter about the ‘Cosmic Christ’ in Colossians 1. In verse 4 is the phrase ‘In him all things hang together.’ This affirmation is repeated no less than five times in this chapter. It was Paul’s conviction that the same spirit which was in Jesus animated the whole universe. The universal principle of reality is the free act of experiencing. For many people in his time the world was a dualism. Not so for Paul. God is the God of ‘all things.’ Nature as well as human history is the theater of grace."

 

Charles Birch, A Purpose for Everything: Religion in a Postmodern Worldview (Twenty-Third Publications, 1990).

Sharing self-forgetting is like a glimpse of heaven

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant, essayist, novelist, poet, and author of an autobiographical account, Born on a Blue Day. The American Library Association in 2008 praised the book about his life with the Asberger syndrome as a "Best Book for Young Adults."

"Many people are surprised when they learn that I am a Christian. They imagine that being autistic makes it difficult or impossible to believe in God or explore spiritual issues. It is certainly true that my Asperger’s makes it harder for me to have empathy or think abstractly, but it hasn’t prevented me from thinking about deeper questions concerning such things as life and death, love and relationships. In fact, many people with autism do find benefits in religious belief or spirituality. Religion’s emphasis on ritual, for example, is helpful for individuals with autistic spectrum disorders, who benefit greatly from stability and consistency. In a chapter of her autobiography entitled “Stairway to Heaven; Religion and Belief,” Temple Grandin, an autistic writer and professor of animal science, describes her view of God as an ordering force in the universe. Her religious beliefs stem from her experience of working in the slaughter industry and the feeling she had that there must be something sacred about dying."

"Like many people with autism, my religious activity is primarily intellectual rather than social or emotional. When I was at secondary school, I had no interest in religious education and was dismissive of the possibility of a god or that religion could be beneficial in people’s lives. This was because God was not something that I could see or hear or feel, and because the religious arguments that I read and heard did not make any sense to me. The turning point came with my discovery of the writings of G. K. Chesterton, an English journalist who wrote extensively about his Christians beliefs in the early part of the twentieth century."

"Chesterton was a remarkable person. At school, his teachers described him as a dreamer and ‘not on the same plane as the rest,’ while as a teenager he set up a debating club with friends, sometimes arguing an idea for hours at a time . . .. He could quote whole chapters of Dickens and other authors from memory and remembered the plots of all the 10,000 novels he had evaluated as a publisher’s reader. His secretaries reported that he would dictate one essay while simultaneously writing another by hand on a different subject. Yet he was always getting lost, so absorbed in his thoughts that he would sometimes have to phone his wife to help him get back home.”

“Reading Chesterton as a teenager helped me to arrive at an intellectual understanding of God and Christianity. The concept of the Trinity, of God as composed of living and loving relationships, was something that I could picture in my head and that made sense to me. I was also fascinated by the idea of the Incarnation, of God revealing Himself to the world in tangible, human form as Jesus Christ. Even so, it was not until I was twenty-three that I decided to participate in a course at a local church . . .. At Christmas in 2002 I became a Christian."

"My autism can sometimes make it difficult for me to understand how other people might think or feel in any given situation. For this reason, my moral values are based more on ideas that are logical, make sense to me and that I have thought through carefully, than on the ability to ‘walk in another person’s shoes.’ I know to treat each person I meet with kindness and respect, because I believe that each person is unique and created in God’s image."

“There are many beautiful and inspiring passages in the Bible, but my favorite is the following from 1 Corinthians: “Love is patient . . .. So faith, hope and love abide these three. But the greatest of these is love.”

With his gay partner Neil, Daniel write with Neil: “All of a sudden I experienced a kind of self-forgetting and in that brief, shining moment all my anxiety and awkwardness seemed to disappear. I turned to Neil and asked him if he had felt the same sensation and he said he had.” Like a “glimpse of heaven.”

Daniel Tammet, Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (Free Press, 2006), 223-226.

A Prayer

O God of Love. 

May your grace and peace come, may your will be done, on earth as in heaven. 

Keep us healthy and humble 'til our time has come. 

And as we forgive those who've done us harm, forgive us for the harm we've done. 

And keep us safe from temptation and evil. 

For you are the Way, the Truth, and the Light, now and forever. 

Amen.

A New Testament Prayer

O God of love,

may your grace and peace come,

may your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Keep us healthy and humble ‘til our time has come.

And as we forgive those who’ve done us harm,

forgive us for the harm we’ve done.

And keep us safe from temptation and evil.

For you are the Way, and the Truth, and the Light,

now and forever. Amen.

Eben Alexander's NDE - 3

“I was in a place of clouds where flocks of transparent orbs flew and produced a huge and booming sound like a glorious chant. Seeing and hearing were not separate in this pace. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way.

“Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

“I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. An orb that was living and almost solid, as the songs of the angel beings had been.

“My situation was, strangely enough, something akin to that of a fetus in a womb. The fetus floats in the womb with the silent partner of the placenta, which nourishes it and mediates its relationship to the everywhere present yet at the same time invisible mother. In this case, the ‘mother’ was God, the Creator, the Source who is responsible for making the universe and all in it. This Being was so close there seemed to be no distance at all between God and myself. Yet at the same time, I could sense the infinite vastness of the Creator, could see how completely minuscule I was by comparison. I will occasionally use Om as the pronoun for God because I used that name in my notes after my coma. ‘Om’ was the sound I remembered hearing associated with that omniscient, omnipotent, and unconditionally loving God, but any descriptive word falls short.

“Through the Orb, Om told me there is not one universe but many—in fact, more than I could conceive—but that love lay at the center of them all. Evil was present in all the other universes as well, but only in the tiniest trace amounts. Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growth—no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be.

“I saw the abundance of life through the countless universes, including some whose intelligence was advanced far beyond that of humanity. I saw that there are countless higher dimensions, but that the only way to know these dimensions is to enter and experience them directly. They cannot be known, or understood, from lower dimensional space. Cause and effect exist in these higher realms, but outside of our earthly conception of them. The world of time and space in which we move in this terrestrial realm is tightly and intricately meshed within these higher worlds. In other words, these worlds aren’t totally apart from us, because all worlds are part of the same overarching divine Reality. From those higher worlds one could access any time or place in our world.

Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2012).

Compare the apostle Paul’s transcending experience: “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” (2 Cor. 12:2-4) As an educated Jew, Paul knew of the tradition in Jewish mysticism of seven levels of heavens. (Note in the NRSV, The Oxford Annotated Bible.)