Just what is "Holy"?

I have been taking a course at my local Church that is centring on a relationship with the Sacred.

Our church, although Christian, is almost Unitarian Universalist in its approach to worship. Members, teachers, deacons, choir members come from many different traditions - and I don't just mean different kinds of Christians. We have Sikhs and Sufis, Buddhist and Ba'hai, Muslims and Methodists and many others.

And yet, like many Christian churches, teaching tends to centre around Jesus of Nazareth and his role in changing the world's view of God from jealous, punishing, cruel figure to a compassionate, unconditionally loving Father. I consider myself a follower of Jesus, so I have no problem with his central role in such things, but I do have a great deal of trouble with his presentation in this manner.

There are two parts to this premise, and since I have difficulty with both of them, I will address them one at a time:

1) That the God of the Old Testament (read Jewish Scriptures) is cold, judgemental and cruel.

2) That Jesus presents a NEW image of God, who he calles Abba or essentially "Daddy", as a loving, forgiving, understanding God.

First, I think the portrayal of the "Old Testament" God in such a hard way necessitates a limited and judgemental reading of the Jewish scriptures. Certainly there are some harsh moments in the Old Testament, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, the destruction of the world in the Flood, the just-a-bout slaughter of Isaac (or Ishmael) to name just a few. But this same God often presents a forgiving, merciful side that comforts, often surprises and sometimes even frustrates the human protaganists.

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 3:10-4:3)

And the Psalms continually extol the endless, relentless love and support of God: O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. (Psalm 118:29).

Secondly, Jesus does not come to repeal or soften the message of God at all - in fact Jesus uses his powers at times which seem elitist, rash and judgemental. He curses and withers a fig tree because it does not bear fruit out of season - apparently on a whim. He makes clear that his followers must keep the Law even better than the Pharisees (a point generally forgotten in Christian circles that now eat pork and shellfish with abandon). He takes existing laws and makes them tighter. First, he revokes the allowance for divorce and then tightens the law against murder and adultery.

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, "Fool", shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." (Matthew 5:21,22)

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. "(Matthew 5:27,28).

Yes, Jesus would talk of forgiveness and reconciliation, but his Way was not an easy way.

I believe Jesus, in the tradition of the long line of prophets that preceded and succeeded him, has a specific message for the people he came to. I believe that, like each of those other prophets, the core of the message was that people seemed to believe that they were doing what was right, but they were getting wrong. Each of these prophets said, like John befor Jesus did, "Repent". Originally, I believe that word had less of a connotation of regret as it does today and more of a sense of "Turn around" or to make a radical turn in direction. After that, each prophet had a different specific message and a different specific personality and approach to delivering it.

Of all them, Jesus seemed to be the most purposely obscure: "And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand." (Luke 8:10)

Jesus' particular mission, in my humble opinion, was to subvert the very notion of Holy. In this, I believe that he was the most radical of the prophets that had come up until that time, and more radical than many of those that would follow. I do not believe this was why He was elevated to the Divine status he enjoys today, but I believe that maybe it should have been.

As a Gay man I more than familiar with specific passages of Mosaic Law - specifically a nasty passage in Leviticus:

"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13) This particular passage is part of a greater set of Laws, known sometimes as the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26).

Holiness means, literally, :"distinct and set apart" from others who were NOT holy. Israel was a Holy nation because it represented God's Chosen People and a central role of this Holiness Code was to mark the Israelites as separate from other surrounding cultures.

The Temple was Holy because it was the dwelling place of God, and each concentric chamber of the Temple was more Holy as you approached the Holy of Holies - where the Arc of the Covenant was housed. Only the most ritually pure and clean were permitted to enter the Temple and to approach or enter the Holy of Holies.

One could not enter the temple if one were ritually unclean (the reason the priests and pharisees could not help the fallen man the Samaritan would later help). One could not enter the Temple if you were ill, crippled, a leper or not one of the Chosen people. Women were segregated. Samaritans were forced to worship God on a nearby mountain being unable to enter the Temple themselves.

But Jesus said: "The hour will come, indeed it is already here, when you will worship the Father either on this mountain nor in Jerusalem....True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." (John 4:21,23)

Until this moment, I have not believed that Jesus died for a purpose, but rather as a result of his dedication and integrity. But perhaps something else is afoot.

The Old Testament says very clearly: "...he who is hung upon a tree is under God's curse..." (from Deuteronomy 23:23)"

What if, at that moment, God was a man, and was hung upon a tree and was so God was under His own curse?

Maybe it's a crazy idea. But what if it did happen? What would it mean for God to be cursed? It would be a violent contradiction - a sacriligious absurdity. It would mean that something that we believe about the world, about the Holy and the unholy must not be correct or this could not be happening. For if God is cursed, what does holiness even mean?

Indeed, according to the Gospels, at Jesus' death, even the natural order began to change. The sky grew dark in the middle of the day and the veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple was ripped in half. "And, behold, the veil of the temple was ripped in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks broke apart; "(Matthew 27:51)

I have been told that the tearing of the veil symbolized that the intercessory of the priesthood was no longer necessary between God and man. There is probably truth in this. However, I wonder if the tearing was not more fundamentally radical. What if the tearing of the curtain symbolized the destruction of the very division between the Sacred and the profane? What if, consistent with His life, Jesus' death would rend forever the division between the Holy and the unholy, between the clean and the unclean, between the worthy and unworthy, the Elect and the condemned.

Is this what Paul meant when he wrote, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us".

Certainly Peter and Paul would perform great works to continue to destroy of the division between those who were chosen and those that were not.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

When I was a child, I though it a perverse idea that God might set up some Divine system which required the brutal death of his own Son in order to allow human beings into Heaven. And certainly it would be. But perhaps it was never about the system of rules in Heaven after all. Perhaps it was about our own system of rules and the way we viewed them.

What if Jesus hoped that the shocking sight of his tortured and murdered body hanging there in front of us would demonstrate what He knew to be true: that there is no Holiness. What if he wanted us to see that our reflexive urge to judge was causing so much suffering in ourselves and in others.

According to the Bible we were first separated from God by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The snake promised that eating that fruit would make us like God. But has the Knowledge of Good and Evil made us like God, or has it only caused us to obsessively label things as good or bad? And how much suffering has come from this reflexive judgement of others, ourselves and our surroundings?

In the Gospel of Truth, Jesus crucificied is depicted as an antidote to that poisonous fruit - the fruit of the Tree of Life.

What if Jesus' real message was that the two categories of Good and Evil were meaningless? None are Holy. All are Holy. Both statements render the idea of "distinct and set apart" meaningless.

What if He came to tell us that creation is vast and beautiful - and not one single grain of sand could be separated from the love of God by the sharpest of swords?

Crossing into the bridal chamber

St. Teresa saw her soul "as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or a clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions." And the door of this castle is prayer. As one develops in one's prayer life one moves deeper into one's soul, toward the Principal Mansion where God alone dwells.

My Zen Master is named after Teresa of Avila and so I feel a particular affinity for her journey. What's more, as a gay man, I find her work with spirituality and gender - as many woman mystics in the Middle Ages - to be of utmost importance to reconciliation between accepting Christian communities and those who are more exclusive of those with alternative orientations or genders. John of the Cross and other male mystics would follow in Theresa's stead and would - by virtue of her logic - refer to their own soul as female in order to commune with what was seen as a male God. In fact, even today you will hear some Evangelical preachers talking about Jesus planting his Divine seed in the soul of the believer, impregnating the believer - whether that believer be male or female.

Here is a contemporary evangelical quoting from the Amplified Bible (John 3:9): "No one born (begotten) of God [deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] practices sin, for God’s nature abides in him [His principle of life, the divine sperm, remains permanently within him]; and he cannot practice sinning because he is born (begotten) of God."

This kind of fundamentalist gender play may sound bizarre - but I actually think it is a source of great hope. The tension comes from seeing the scripture through a heterosexist lens - which much of the evangelical movement still has firmly in place. But this gender turn can be traced back through the female mystics of the Middle Ages.

Although many would trace this idea of a female soul back even further, in Jewish and Christian traditions this can be traced at least as far back as the Song of Solomon which is referenced again in the New Testament and its contemporary, non-canonical Christian works.

Now Jesus said: "There are many standing at the door, but it is the solitary who will enter the bridal chamber." (Gospel of Thomas, saying 75)

The bridal chamber is - I believe - similar to Teresa's inner, Principal Mansion where God dwells. I have never been to this Principal Mansion in my own soul, although I have stood sufficiently close to feel God's presence as tangibly as the sun on my skin.

I do not know that it is possible to truly enter this Principal Mansion and live.

In the Quran, Moses asks God to show Himself to Moses. God refused, but showed Himself to a nearby mountain that was instantly vapourized by the experience.

Part of a Zen Koan says this: A Buddha made of wood cannot pass through fire. For if it does, it will surely burn." If it does, there will be nothing left but the burning, nothing but the fire. The Buddha will be obliterated.

I begin to suspect that this is true across traditions. The Principal Mansion, the bridal chamber, the fire is always receiving those who seek and find entry. But whatever beings that enter are entirely obliterated as individuals. Inside, there is only God.

I think it is no accident that this Principal Mansion is likened to a bridal chamber. Of marriage the Bible says this (Genesis 2:24): "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh". When one day I cross that threshold, I will not survive the crossing as an individual separated from God in any way. I will be united with the Ground and Source of All Being. I will vanish like salt in water.

In a sense it would be a death - not permanent, but certainly transformative. Such a death is nothing to fear (although I confess, I do fear it). It is in fact a promise to be embraced with great joy. "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)

In fact, I believe that this is the only way to truly know God. For I cannot hope to understand God as I might understand any other being. I cannot say with any meaning that "God is this" or "God is that". For God cannot be experienced as object - only as subject. I cannot experience God except as I AM.

The potential for a new beginning

In the beginning there was nothing, but not in the sense we think of that word. There was a potential more powerful than anyone can yet imagine.

There were no things, no air, no eyes or ears.

There was no time. Nothing might have lasted a billion years, an hour and 42 minutes or no time at all. Any of these concepts are equally meaningless. For how can you count a day when there is no sun and no earth to turn. Time would come into being when being became something rather than nothing.

Most religions today, including science, believe this to be true - although they would all describe this instant differently.

In the beginning there was a void, a darkness. Science is largely silent on this because time, math and measure have no bearing there. Religions as a rule speak of God being all there was. The faithful tend to get itchy if we say God was nothing, or that he didn’t or worse doesn’t exist. But He is not a thing - not a paperclip or even a planet - so in a way, saying he existed before existence is just as foolish as saying he didn’t. Early religions spoke of murky gods that rose up from the depths of the void - they got more specific once the ooze had begun to take shape. The Buddha spoke very little about it what happened at the beginning at all - for there was nothing to be said. We used to say nothing happened in the small town I grew up in. In that small town this was a tedious half-truth, but saying nothing happened before the dawn of time is both meaningless and profound.

And then, for some uncertain reason, being began to be something. And at that meant that something had happened.
And here everyone disagrees.

First, with things, came time. So how long did things take? Billions of years? Seven days? Did things unfold into a grand plan of a sentient Being? Did matter just fling willy-nilly into the depths of this new thing called space. How, really, could you tell the difference?

At some point this particular rolling ball of molten rock, on which I now sit typing, cooled into a grand globe covered mostly with water and collected an atmosphere made of a certain magical blend of gasses. Here again disagreement on how and why things on this rock began to live and grow and reproduce. Disagreement seems to be integral to what was happening. It wasn’t long before these new living things began to eat each other.

Eventually, some of these living on this cooling ball of molten rock beings began to speak, picked up smaller rocks and killed others of their own kind.

Rocks were only the beginning. Eventually these warm, living things would start wars that would cover this new grand globe. In these wars, beings having the ability to speak to each other devised secret codes so that their enemies could not understand them. It would be harder to kill the others if they knew what thier enemies were talking about. Before those world wars ended, millions and millions were dead.

Eventually, I arrived here this evening. A warm room, a cold glass of water, corn chips that everyone likes to eat but nobody wants to. Far from nothingness, matter has become something that likes to hang on to people’s hips.

I am typing on a small machine more powerful than computers that broke the unbreakable codes used by foreign powers in one of those great wars. That great war is already sinking into the forgetfulness of human history and becoming the stuff of legend. There is disagreement on what happened, on who died and who profited.

No wonder there is so much disagreement today about the very beginning. There are still people alive who were here for the Wars, although few. But who was here at the beginning? Well who can we all agree was here?

Nothing, in the most profound sense of the Word.

I don’t care what you call it. That Nothingness is still here under all this somethingness. And when we are all gone - even if the entire universe is consumed in a great rain of fire - it still will be.

And so will be the same infinite potential for anything to happen will be there in the end - as it was in the beginning and is now - the potential for a new beginning.