You
won't understand anything in the Bible until you know what the book
seeks to tell you about. It is a Creation story, but not of the
physical world, of Life. And the Creation story presented in the
Bible is not and does not seek to be scientific. Indeed, its purpose
is precisely to call your attention to an aspect of Life that cannot
be explained sufficiently with the language of science.
You
will not understand anything that Jesus says until you accept certain
premises about who He is and where He comes from. The idea is that
Jesus is God incarnate. Before you go and affirm that this is
impossible, know that this affirmation is born of your mind, and that
your mind has been molded, trained in a way. This molding and this
training is not necessarily complete and you might want to practice
some mental flexibility by considering hypotheses which, at first,
seem quite unlikely and seeing what these hypotheses produce within
you if you follow them to their conclusions. You will find that text
like the Bible work in this way: they render you the proof of
the Nature of the Truth they profess. You either accept or do not.
You either put in the effort to understand or do not. You either
believe or do not.
To
accept a premise and to believe that it is true are two very
different things. To accept a premise and see where it goes is simply
responsible intellectualism. It is also respectful to
he/she/they who created the story and/or argument. To some humans of
this modern era, accepting the requisite premises of Sacred Texts is
an exercise in intellectual humility for many are exorbitantly proud
of human achievements until now. And, almost all of these
achievements lay outside the domain of Faith. They seem to provide a
view of Life such that Faith and her stories seem lies better suited
for gullible children.
Recalling
that Jesus Christ is God incarnate will help you to
contextualize any and everything that comes out of his mouth.
Remember that He speaks of the Kingdom of God and that his purpose
is, in effect, to remind men of spiritual values in a serious way. He
does not address men and woman as the common man does (an imperfect
creature of mortal flesh to another imperfect creature of mortal
flesh), but as a perfect, eternal living spirit addressing other
perfect, eternal living spirits ( the Aramaic "aba" was used in the sense; see Dr. Errico Rocco). Jesus does not think of Life as the
common man thinks of Life. He does not think of Death in the common
way, either. He is here to talk about the Eternal. He is here to talk
about God and the truth of God and everything that he does revolves
around this singular purpose. He is not just talking about this
stuff, either. He is living it.
Finally,
the Bible is a powerful argument not only for the existence of God,
the Kingdom of God, and the relationship between common man and the
divine, but for the simple Value of Belief and the need for the
awesome Power of Belief to be aligned with something that is
Eternally, Fundamentally and perfectly divine, in the human flesh, ergo Jesus Christ.
The
Body and Blood of Christ
The
Eucharist/The Lord's Supper/Holy Communion
Bread
is a chemical substance. Those chemicals, when examined under a
microscope, are molecules and the molecules have atoms. When we look
at the bread this closely, we see that is is mostly what appears to
be “empty space”. The nuclei of the atoms are so small and far
apart, like the space between the sun and a planet. If we were to see
it with our naked eyes that way, we would not think that it was
bread, nor would we see the color of it (it would not reflect light)
nor would we perceive, with any other physical sensation, that it was
the bread we know bread to be.
Scientists
today say that bread is energy. I mean, the say that everything is
energy. They say that even the nucleus of the atom, which was the
smallest physical thing for a long time, is also actually just
another form of energy. No actually solid stuff. Yet it is so easy to
grab a piece of bread, eat it, taste it, and then say, after we ate
it, “I just ate bread”. Despite Science's fanciful description of
physical and chemical stuff, there is no argument about the reality
of the experience of eating bread. The experience had effects like
touch, taste, and so forth. Certain effects can be measured the the
human organism itself. But can we feel how many miles 4 slices of
bread will permit us to walk? No, this would take a more holistic
analysis of what bread, according to chemistry and physics is. We
would have to interpret bread as a type of energy and not simply as
the bread the human organism so unhesitatingly accepts as Real.
Understanding
that Bread is Energy To Do Stuff is the the same Variety of
Reasoning employed in talking about God and Jesus. Bread is energy,
and bread, from some perspectives, from certain microscopes and eyes,
is a miracle. When you stop shoving it in your face along
with other stuff (the substances of which are also unknown to you)
and you actually sit and contemplate that bread – that plain old
boring bread – you find that you are wrong: the bread is neither
plain nor old nor boring. You find that it is molecules you can't
see, energy that you can taste and burn and use to move your physical
body. The bread gives your physical body Life. Seeing the truth about
bread might help you see the truth about what Christ.
The
same logic is used to understand the blood. The body and blood
constitute our physical presence here. What we do, what we consume,
and how we use that energy we consume and seed our environments with
that energy after it has passed through our human organism.
Water
into Wine
Who
wants water when you can have wine? I met a guy in the Italian Alps,
in a small town called Chamois in the state of Val d'Aosta. He was 73
and the only guy who was born and raised up there in that village
which, when I was there, had all of about 13 people. He said he never
drank water. Only milk and wine. Because he was a man.
Now,
Jesus turned water into wine. How did he do it? Jesus said, “look
at the water.” Then he said, “what
is it?” You thought about where it came from. A fountain somewhere.
And then continued thinking about the origin of the water in the
fountain, maybe even the fountain, itself. The water came from a
mountain on which it rains occasionally. The rain came from a cloud
and the cloud from the ocean and the water from the ocean got lifted
up to the sky and turned into a cloud because of the heat of the sun
and some wind and air pressure and a few other of Nature's phenomena.
The water as two constituent molecules. It is soft and seems to have
pretty much no flavor. Who made the water? Why do I know to drink it?
Why is it so good for me? I think when you understand the water, and
then you drink it and feel how real it is, you also feel how real
Realness is (in a Platonic or even Heidegerian sense) and it isn't what you thought it was. You original idea
of Real was a fraction of what is known today and what is known today
is yet a fraction of the Whole. The Whole Real Truth is way, way,
realer than what we are used to, that it is so hard to describe ...
understandably, then, it is hard to believe.
This
truth is ten thousand times more intoxicating than wine. This is the
truth of Jesus Christ.
The
Fish and the Bread
Soldiers
are sitting around, starving. Dude named Jesus comes around and tells
his friends, “get two fish and five pieces of bread 'cause we're
gonna feed these guys.” They're like, “no way, bro.” Jesus is
like, “Yeah way.”
Imagine
yourself there. Hungry as hell. Living in a time in which there is a
guy who some people actually believe is the Son of God. Like, God in
the Flesh. You might not believe it, sure. But there are dudes
around, rational, sane human beings, who believe it. You try to fight
it off, but you can't help but be at least a little bit influenced by
your environment. You have to keep on telling yourself, “this is Jesus guy can't be for real. I don't believe it.”
But
then you see the first guy handling the fish. He is delicate with it.
He takes such a small piece. Thissoldier is emaciated, shivering with hunger,
looking like if he doesn't get half that fish, old dude is gonna die.
But he takes just like a lick of the fish. And then when the bread
comes, he pretty much just touches the bread and then licks his
fingers. Licks his fingers like the taste on them was gonna save his
life. All the guys do this and eventually, but the time the bread and
the fish get to you, there is still like the entire fish and the
entire pieces of bread and all the dudes in front of you are smiling
and talking now. They aren't as grumpy as before. Not even as weak and famished as before. They are lit up. Maybe the moon is out,
shining on them. You don't know. You have your eyes on the barely fed
faces of five thousand soldiers. Your disbelief is dissolving in the
truth of the light of their mood, their smiles, their camaraderie.
You,
too, lick the fish and graze your fingers on the bread, then lick
your fingers like there were endless noodles coming out the tips of
them. Jesus noddles. "Fake". "Fictitious", according to your old way of
seeing things, according to empiricism (or what you thought it was)
but empirically, you are passing the fish, passing the bread,
smiling, talking. The fish and the bread are the occasion that invite loving, even when there is almost nothing. This is the light and when two or more emit, give or basque in it, there you will find the love of Christ, the presence of God.
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