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HomeCommentaryIs it really worth arguing about?

Is it really worth arguing about?

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By Christi Ortiz

Scholars argue back and forth
about what Jesus really said and did.
What really happened and what is story?
Might I interrupt the argument
to say perhaps there is no need for it.
What if it doesn’t matter?

Yes Jesus did and said many wonderful things,
His message of hope and love was revolutionary.
His message a powerful one of God’s love for us.
His sermons wonderful guides
on how to live a more virtuous life.
So yes, the scriptures are alive and inspired by grace
They are good.

But perhaps there is something even more important
to grasp in his Incarnation.
Perhaps his most important message or miracle was not just on the micro level but on the macro level.

Perhaps his exact words don’t matter so much as
the fact that He was the Word.
“For in the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him,
and apart from Him nothing came into being
that has come into being”.

I think sometimes we forget that Jesus’s earthly life
does not encompass the whole of his Essence as the Cosmic Christ
that existed before all ages and never ceases to be.
The Alpha and he Omega.
In the whole story of creation,
Jesus’ life on earth was like the blink of an eye
Perhaps the message of his Life
is so much more powerful than his words.

If what he said and did for those short few years of his life were so important
wouldn’t He have chosen to come now
when everything could have been recorded and replayed exactly.
No ambiguity, no mystery. We would have it all.
Or would we?
Even if we heard his exact words, and saw his actions,
would we still miss the message?
His disciples who heard and saw him so often seemed to….

Perhaps his birth and life and incarnation is the message.
The message of Hope and Truth that calls us home to ourselves
that shakes us from our slumber and says,
“The Kingdom of God is now. The kingdom of God is here”
And not an earthly or political kingdom,
I’m talking about God’s Presence with you, in you, now.

Jesus’s message is a radical message
about who we are, our true identity.
Sometimes I think images of an earthly man
make us anthropomorphize God too much.
God created man in God’s image,
not the other way around.

It’s as if we sometimes think:
1. That God is a man with a long beard and
2. He lives in a place in the sky called Heaven and looks down at us.

On some level, it’s as if we think God was sitting there one day
dismayed by his wayward creation and said
“they just don’t get it. They don’t get Me,
they don’t get who they are.
I guess I’ll just have to come down there
and do it myself”.

And God sends God’s self into creation as Jesus
to remind us of who we really are
and to lift the veil a bit so we feel and see and recognize
the intimacy of God and the Spirit living and moving
within and around us in all of creation.

But Christ’s first movement and presence in creation
came way before the earthly Jesus.
The Word was there from the beginning.
The Word was the beginning
of God’s self outpouring of Love.

Christ was not just born
into communion with creation.
Christ is Creation,
Creator who was and is and will be forever.

Those few short words and actions
he spoke and did with a human voice and body
are just a small glimmer
of what God says and does at all times, everywhere, and always.

It’s a wake up call
but the glory and beauty
is in the Life after we wake up.
The call is important,
but so much more important to be awake.

We shan’t be dismayed that we were not alive
to hear Jesus’s words, his call.
Because the call has never ceased.
We have only to look around creation
and hear it ringing out so loudly that it’s silent.

We may want God to be
in the loud fire or thunderstorm,
but so often God
is in the
Still,
Small
Voice.

The Light came into the world
so that we might have Life.
It calls us, “cast out into the deep”
leave your nets and your arguments on the shore.
Come follow me
and in following me
I will show you who you are,
your True self and identity in me.

Jesus’s great message
is not even really about Himself, it’s about us.
A reminder about who we really are in this God
in which we live and move and have our being.
It’s not about our small selves,
God didn’t send us here to have great big, wonderful egos.
We are not our egos.
They aren’t even real or important.
When we die to this false self,
is when we find Life,
when we find our true identity.
When we realize our nothingness,
we see that we are part of the All.

Jesus prayed,
“that they may all be one,
as you Father, are in me and I in you,
that they may be in us…..
so that they may be one, as we are one….
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them”.

Like Light that hits a prism
and we can see
the multitude of wavelengths and colors,
yet it is One Light, One Source.
There is unity in the multiplicity.

In the end,
all divisions and differences dissolve,
reunite into the One.
Why get caught up in them?
Why argue about who has the best seat at the table
or who’s right or wealthy or powerful.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is the table is spread
and we are invited to the banquet.

We have been called into creation
by the God who loved and created us to be food for one another.
In that lies our true identity;
in Love,
for God is Love.

Of all that Jesus said and did,
most importantly He reminds us
of what life is really about,
what true love really is.
He reminds us we are not separate,
but one body.

When it comes down to it,
His most important message
might be hard to put into words.
Perhaps it’s wordless, formless, timeless.
Perhaps it’s not written because it’s still being spoken.
He never stopped speaking.

The question might be,
what is He saying now,
to me,
right now.

Perhaps the mystery of the Trinity,
or Creation cannot be contained
in words or understood with the intellect.
Perhaps it’s a knowing that is beyond words or form.
If God is the infinite horizon
how could we contain that?
Or own it or comprehend it?
If we can grasp it
with our small hands or finite minds,
perhaps what we’ve grasped
is only a whiff of what Is.

For when Moses asked God’s name,
“I Am” was the answer.

Christi Ortiz
Christi Ortiz
Christi Ortiz is a licensed marriage and family therapist by profession and a poet by passion.  She enjoys trying to put to words to that which is wordless and give voice to the dynamic and wild spiritual journey called life. She lives in Spokane with her husband and two children, Emmanuel and Grace. She loves the outdoors and meditating in the early mornings which gives rise to her poetry.

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