Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
Since the third century, when I first left Ephesus to heal from the persecutions, I’ve seen the pattern of religion moving from personal individual mystical experience to a community following an earthly rule as a religion. This thing that my sister and I had been given by a mystical teacher was the deep and personal love for God and all Creation.
People don’t hear God speaking because someone else is telling them what God is saying, even when it is the saints who are telling us. God among us is a love story, a poem or a piece of art, a song, a dance, a shared silence, but rarely a pedantic lesson. Art is untitled and faith is without definition.
It was the political opposite of autocracy. But then we lived in a world dominated by the politics of hate so our private prayers were answered with our political conscience, God’s love for all people. Just the simple first rule of love for God and love for neighbor and ourselves, set us in the political controversy that led to the crucifixion of many Jews, including our own teacher as well.
At first, what was a personal wandering in spirit put us in political opposition with Rome at that time, setting up their crosses for executing political dissidents. We were left trusting only in the invisible, spiritual life of love for one another even in a hating world. Beyond the political milieu was the simple grounding — the love and the beauty – the handwork of God who is love. With the temple plundered and Roman propaganda and lies making good seem bad and love seem sin, we, who followed the Jesus way kept love the priority. So, we moved to safer cities beyond Jerusalem.
In times of autocratic plundering on earth, prophecies of end times came with more and more specific details. But, like death, any human glimpses of end times are, at best, individual hopes. No universal nature of these things can be known by people. Endings are always unknown or they wouldn’t be endings. Even when God, all loving and invisible, speaks to the prophet, the message is always all loving and invisible and very personal. The wings, or fires, or monsters, or precisely numbered events birthed in human imagination are at best, metaphors to transfigure a personal spiritual experience into shareable, speak-able terms. Amid cruel political times doomsday is the hope, not a threat, seen as the promise of new Creation.
Peter’s water walking lesson is a poignant explanation of this faith problem.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 