God's radical dream

If the Bible were all good-cop enthusiasm from God, we would have to treat it like textual unreality or utopian fantasy.  If it were all about bad-cop vengeance from God, we would not need to justify say, our last century.  But it contains both the assertion of God’s radical dream for our world and our world’s very successful attempt to replace the divine dream with a human nightmare.

                               John Dominic Crossan

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God does God’s best to express God’s self as love

Creation is God’s self-expression of love

Jesus was God’s self-expression of love

 

We, forgiven and empowered,

are to be the divine self-expression of love

 

The Sacred dream for this planet

and for us

is indeed the radical dream of love

 

it is a vision of a world

wolf shall live with the lamb,

where “the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together…”

 

it is a vision of a world

where the poor, the meek, the mournful are blessed

and where mercy lives

and reconciliation is always the goal, always

 

it is a vision of a world

where justice rolls like a river

and there is equity and peace

 

where enemies are blessed and not cursed

where people in humility see others

as more important than themselves

 

it is a world which is filled with the knowledge of Sacred

that is Love

 

but too often we humans

even though we carry Sacred DNA

and are inherently Sacred Children

 

even though we have been loved and forgiven

even though we have seen in Jesus, how to live

even though we the Sacred is present in us in the Spirit

 

do not live the divine dream

but instead create a human nightmare

 

I love and hate that the scriptures are very honest about this

that the Bible

which is a human journal of our interactions with the Sacred

is full of such amazing insights about Sacred

and such amazing insights about ourselves

 

we see God instruct and humans ignore

we see God give and humans take away

 

we see the Jesus of Palm Sunday

the man of peace riding on a donkey

become a blood spattered warrior riding a steed of domination (Revelation)

 

did Jesus change?

or did we change Jesus?

 

I wonder sometimes

The Bible does indeed reveal God

But it also reveals us

 

it is a Sacred book, but it is also a very human book

 

I do know this

that as long as we continue to turn God’s way of Love

into our way of domination and power

 

as long as we continue to turn God’s way of service, into our way of selfishness

as long as we continue to turn God’s way of reconciliation into our way of retribution

 

as long as we continue to ignore God’s radical focus on the poor

to instead embrace an adulation of the wealthy

 

as long as we continue to make everything about ourselves,

instead of being people for others

 

this world will be a nightmare

 

but if we go with God

if we let God be God

if we let the Spirit rock and roll in our souls

 

we can be part of God’s radical dream

 

I’m in!

How about you?