The Zen Priest
Offers an Advent Meditation
James Ishmael Ford
For no good reason beyond the fact this is Advent and I’m thinking about Jesus and the religion of and about him, I’ve recently found myself thinking about the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
It’s added in at the end of a collection of parables compiled by the author of the Gospel of Matthew. It isn’t repeated in either of the other two synoptics. And the John gospel contains no parables.
So, a stand alone thing.
It’s also not much of a parable. It begins with an image, the sheep and the goats, but quickly moves into a description of how one can recognize one of Jesus’ followers.
My paraphrase of the central part of the parable goes:
“They asked the good rabbi who would inherit the new world?
He said you will. Because I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.
They said, we did not do these things.
He replied, when you cared for the stranger and the naked, the sick and those in prison. When you served them, the lost and the left behind, you served me.”
First why a paraphrase. I am innocent of Greek. Although I do have a seminary degree and am a bit more than passingly aware of scriptures. But, for me this is a bit of a discipline. Elaine Pagels once noted how in some early Christian communities, one was not admitted as a full member until they could write their own gospel.
My Buddhist gospel continues a work in progress.
Now where I write “new world,” it’s a substitution for the phrase “Kingdom of God.” It probably doesn’t work. But kingdom is more than a bit awkward term for our Republican times, not to mention a sensitivity to the limitations of gender usages, with endless unprofitable preferences given to masculine terms.
At the same time the term Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven has long precedent in Jewish usage. Although not a regularly used phrase. But Jesus seemed to use it a lot. “Seemed” because some contemporary scholars, such as those gathered as the Jesus Seminar are suspicious as to whether Jesus had much interest in eschatological matters.
I personally find it much more likely he was completely about an end-times. The whole structure of the Middle Eastern mythic world view had beginnings and endings. And the suppression of the Jewish people under Rome’s heel, led in that moment in which he lived to any number of wandering mystics calling out the evils of the times (and specifically Rome) and promising succor. Healing. Hope.
Now well more than two thousand years later, there’s no way to know with certainty who Jesus was and what he was about. First, almost everything canonical has been washed through Paul’s Greek style mysticism, and fairly quickly a central promise of eternal life for those who call on Jesus’ name.
However, it doesn’t take a lot of digging to see that probably wasn’t what Jesus himself was about. The gospels themselves, at least the synoptics, were based on what appear to be two oral collections. One containing his miracles. The other his sayings. Beyond that what he was about is not at all clear. Each of the canonical gospels, not to mention those outside the canon, offer their own angle.
All that noted. As I read the sayings of the good rabbi, while he had little use for Rome, and not much more for the established religious leadership in Israel, it seems he cared a lot about the poor and the downtrodden.
And he did preach about this mysterious kingdom. A lot. It was a place where the rich were rebuked and the hungry were given nourishment.
But it was more than that.
I’m particularly taken with the various lines that suggest this kingdom was on the one hand yet to happen, although soon. But on the other hand, seemed already to exist, both within individuals and among them. Luke 17 offers a direct assertion the kingdom is within. Although many modern scholars translate the Greek word as among or in your midst. I appreciate the sentiment, but the weight of scholarship seems to go with the “within.” The controversial but, certainly for me, compelling Gospel of Thomas covers this matter in logia 3, having Jesus say this kingdom is both within and among.
I’m profoundly taken with this.
And while I have a more complex relationship with the evolved Jesus into what is sometimes called the “Christ of faith,” I am deeply called into this place where the sacred, the holy, God, is both within and among. And in some other way, yet to be realized. Instead, a promise. But offered with urgency.
I get that sense of urgency. I look around me, and how the world is, and I see Rome. And, I see the poor. And, I wonder which side I am actually on.
That this place that is promised, and is among, and is within, looks a great deal like my understanding of Mahayana Buddhist sunyata, boundlessness, matters a lot to me. And I have a Buddhist midrash on what it is and how it is. It is promised, because trapped in our ordinary dualisms, we cannot see that bigger thing. What we have to do is surrender our certainties, let go of owning, put down concepts great and small.
However, then, with that, well, the pearl of great price, the peace that passes all understanding. Awakening. Enlightenment. The Pure Land. Heaven.
But what makes it even more compelling for me, is how this awakening is never fully private. I realize it. Although I realize it by letting go of that I which I’ve held as an idol of the heart. And what I find when I let go is a word of encounter, of intimacy, endless realms of subjective meeting of others who are not me, and yet are not completely not me.
Not one. Not two.
And then, in this telling of the ancient story of not one and not two, is that the awakened heart is called as an alignment with the lost and the left behind. Specifically, this awakening is to our identity with the hungry and the poor.
In the absolute realms there are no distinctions. In the relative realms there are many. And, in this world, we must make choices. Among them, with whom do we stand?
It is found in an anticipatory story of this strange messiah in Matthew’s gospel. The angel tells Mary she is to have a magical child, a deliverer of the people.
And her response, in my paraphrase, a call from the depths.
Mary sang.
My heart magnifies the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God who carries me to the farther shore.
The mystery of it all choses from the least of all people,
and with that grace all generations will forevermore call me blessed.
For the mighty has raised me, holy is his name.
Her mercy is on all who surrender into the great heart,
generation following generation.
The strength of the savior scatters the proud
In the imaginations of their hearts.
The beloved pulls down the mighty,
And raises up the poor.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich she has sent away.
The Lord calls in the people to mercy,
As she has endlessly over time beyond time.
I read the words, I recall my own encounters on the intimate way, and I find a calling to ponder these mysteries…
(The image is “Annunciation Quilt” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS.)
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