Christ Was Not a Christian
It’s crucial for us to remember how controversial and revolutionary Christ was in word and action for the 1st century. We have forgotten that he wanted to turn the unjust power structures of the Roman Empire on its head, making the first the last, and the last first.
Christ wanted to free us from the misunderstanding that any one of us has the right to put ourselves above or below the other.
Christ wanted to free us from the delusion that the external symbols of power, in the form of wealth and authority, can ever come close to the ultimate power of love which exists within all of us – equally.
This is the mercy that Christ illuminated for us; that we exist equally in love.
It’s also crucial for us to remember that Christ wasn’t Christian. Christianity came hundreds of years after Christ. More so than form an organized religion, Christ, in his brief lifetime, inspired a form of spiritual practice called kenosis, which is Greek for “self-emptying love.”
This practice of self-emptying love is at the heart of why mercy is so healing – because forgiveness shifts everything. When we practice loving someone by letting go of our egoic ideas about them, we free ourselves and them.
This practice of kenosis with and among that band of radicals, beloved to Christ in the 1st century, is an internal effort, an act of the heart. It’s a giving over, an emptying out of the ideas of the ego, again and again, so that the soul rises.
Resurrection or rebirth, here in this practice, is perpetual. It’s not reserved for the moment of our death. It’s practiced now. In this body. I think kenosis is at the heart of healing. This is why mercy meant so much to Christ. Not religion. Mercy.
At the opening of what we have of Mary’s gospel, Peter, one of Christ’s disciples, says to him, “‘You have been explaining every topic to us; tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?’ The Savior replied, ‘There is no such thing as sin.” (Mary 3:1-3)
Christ here is saying that we are not innately sinful. Sin does not exist as an ultimate truth. Sin is when we misunderstand our true self for the ego. When we are unable to sense the presence of the soul, in the midst of one of the powers of the ego, and then we act from that forgetful state.
Mary’s gospel relates that Christ was the Anthropos, the “true human being.” And this is what Christ revealed to Mary we are meant to become also. The true human being has united the ego to the true self, the soul. So that even in the midst of the worst of what can unfold in our life, we have the capacity to return to the limitless love we are also.
Jesus of the People. Copyright 1999 Janet McKenzie. www.janetmckenzie.com. Used with permission.
How do we do this? We have mercy on ourselves. We have mercy on each other. What does this look like exactly? It means letting love reach to where it has never been before.
The aim of this inconspicuously powerful spiritual practice is to be able to recognize when we are mired in the thick tar of judging ourselves or someone else, to also see that we are not just this ego that is wounded, alone. We are not just this small self that is stuck in so much personal pain. We are also the soul of love that is ready to expand in order to hold, to heal, and to wield mercy.
A beloved friend of mine was recently accosted by a man who identified as Christian when she was walking with her girlfriend in L.A. He informed them that they were headed to hell.
What he couldn’t see of course was the hell he’s already living in. The presence of judgment necessitates the absence of love. And living in a place without love is hell.
When someone justifies their homophobia, racism, or sexism as rooted in the Christian faith, as rooted in the words or teachings of Christ, I think of this spiritual tool Christ gave us. Mercy.
Judgment in all its forms is the antithesis to Christ. God is love.
If there are places our love does not reach within us, if there are people our love is unwilling to extend to, then mercy, kenosis, self-emptying love is what we need to practice.
Rather than a set of dogmatic ideas, rather than anything that could ever be found in Christian scripture, the presence of mercy at work in our lives in a real and determined way is what I think makes a Christian Christ-like.
Because Christ wasn’t a Christian. Christ was the embodiment of a love that never ends. And to be Christ-like then means to do the work, daily, not just Sundays, to keep letting love reach where it hasn’t been before. To keep humbling the self, the ego, so that inexorable love can rise within us.
With only more love,
M.