original blessing

You want this eternal life then it starts with the truth– the naked truth of your original wound and your original beauty and every good and bad thing about you. You have heard it said that water finds it’s lowest point – living water finds your lowest point.

The Living water offered by Jesus Christ finds your lowest point.  It finds your original wound. The thing that you spend so much energy trying to heal through all the insufficient ways – relationships, religion, success, more graduate degrees, more therapy, working out, trying to get your parents to love you more, being a perfect parent because your parents sucked.

                                                   Nadia Bolz-Weber

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when I was younger

we were taught to talk about Jesus

always

always

from the starting point of sin

There was (do your remember it?)

The Roman road

Which started

“As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;” (Romans 3:10)

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23)

And then moved to consequences

“For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23a)

You are going to die and fry

And then, finally, got to the good news, the way out

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Of course you have to say the magic words!

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” (Romans 10:9-10)

No magic words

No good news

This is of course, classic Christianity

And I am not going to argue with it.  It is one way to approach faith

Its not “wrong”, exactly

But I wonder if it is really

Classic Jesus?

For the most part (except with the highly religious)

Jesus did not start his approach to people from the perspective that

They were “sinners”

He started instead

With the recognition that they were the wounded blessed

Which to me feels different

from the deficit cursed

It is not, “you are a hopeless, helpless, miserable sinner”

It is, “you are a wonderful amazing, beautiful mess

You are wounded

And I can bring you peace and healing”

Can you feel the difference in that?

One starts with original sin

The other starts with original blessing

Yes we must recognize that the original blessing

has been impacted by things that have caused it,

and that original divine image that we all bear, to become blurred

but one starts with blessing

I know, I know

It seems like a small point

But to me it is a huge point

That God comes not to rescued warped awful miserable souls

(If they say the right thing)

And give them a pass to heaven

(which they cash in when they die)

But God comes to restore in us our original blessing

God/Jesus/Holy Spirit (think Trinity)

Comes to remind us who we are

To restore to us our original blessing

our likeness to God

our Sacred nature

If you “think Genesis”

The story does not start with the fall

It starts with creation, where “it was good”

Original blessing!

The bible talks about this how the original blessing is restored

By using a lot of different images

But one of the most powerful, is that of water

Water in the wilderness

Rivers in the Desert

Living water, welling up like a spring

The amazing thing is that this water

Flows to our lowest point

To that place of wounding

But that is also the place of our creation

That is the starting point

Where we were wounded,

And where we started to forget who we are

But that is also the place where we can once again

Discover and be who we are created to be

A Child of God

A bearer of the divine image

A person of compassion

And generosity

And love

the water comes

the love comes

the grace comes

to us at that place where we are most thirsty

and as we gratefully guzzle

we are refreshed and renewed

and the water keeps coming

and coming, and coming

a spring welling up

a spring that never runs dry

Not “just” giving us a pathway

Back to God when we die

But giving us a pathway back to our original blessing

So that we become new

And do life a different way

now