The Wounded Angel's Network - Peter Woods

I love pourquoi stories.  They are tales we have told through the ages to explain certain phenomena.  Pourquoi (pronounced pork-wha) is French for “why?”, any pre-schooler’s favourite word!

You know the story of the family that always cut the end off the lamb roast, before cooking. No one knew why.  On consulting great granny they discovered that in her day she had a small roaster and had to cut the joint to make it fit!

Pourquoi stories are the way cultures, religions and families pass on their rituals and sadly, their biases too.

The Crucifixion of Jesus is a multi-layer pourquoi story which like the mythical Urobouros swallowing its own tail, circles around and challenges our comfort zones.

The most common level of the story tries to explain why a peaceful prophet from Galilee was cruelly killed at the hands of Rome and the religious establishment in Jerusalem.  This orthodox answer is an extremely unhelpful one, "God planned it to be this way." 

What! That’s a disgusting image of God! What father would kill his own son? How the church came to this brutal understanding of the horror, requires some questioning.

The Church was trying to make sense of Jesus’ unfair death and rationalised it back to animal sacrifice which was the religious forgiveness ritual then.

But why animal sacrifice in the first place?  Pourquoi?

Well, it's preferable to sacrificing humans!  The Bible story of Abraham wanting to sacrifice Isaac, but God substituting a ram, is another pourquoi explaining the transition from human to animal sacrifice.

The pre-schooler in me continues - Why human sacrifice?  The answer to this one lies in our collective unconscious, and long before the bible was written.

Paleo-Anthropology studies these ancient myths and Rene Girard was one of its great scholars.  Studying ancient pourquois, Girard discovered that as humans began living in groups, they had to deal with troublesome people who didn't fit in and disrupted the status quo.  The easiest, primitive solution was to demonise these characters, which then justified killing them.  

Individuals and groups were treated this way in times of stress. Medieval Jews were blamed for Bubonic plague just as recently, some blamed the Chinese for COVID19!  Ironically, right now the Christian church itself is being scapegoated for all the troubles in the world from paedophilia to colonisation. 

Yet in a strange anomaly within our mental processing, a residue of remorse lingers toward those we have scapegoated and destroyed.  

So the Greeks took Oedipus who killed his parents and they made him a god. Many of the Greek gods were rebels who achieved divine status.  We scapegoat our suspicious ones then remorsefully deify them.

Preachers proclaim that God killed Jesus, but if that’s true, we’ve been exonerated from our collective culpability in the greatest scapegoating crime ever committed!

Humans, not God, kill and destroy those who challenge and threaten us.

Jesus broke no taboos. He taught only an inclusive path of love, yet we killed him for it.  

Why in God’s name do that?

Colonisation has been a hot topic for a while now.  

Traditionally understood, colonisation was the process whereby European powers, mainly in the 16th and 17 centuries, expanded their reach into newly "discovered" continents, subjugating the indigenous populations and replacing their cultures and religions.  

Colonisation had happened before during the Greek, Roman and Crusading eras, but not on the scale of the European waves. 

The human rights atrocities and destruction of human lives, communities and environment that accompanied this process are well documented.

It would be erroneous however, to assume that colonisation has ended.  

Slavery, as well as religious and cultural hegemony, may not be as blatant as those dark days, but a mutant form of colonial expansionism is currently in full swing.

No longer territorial, this colonising does not redraw the world map, but its impact is every bit as life changing and oppressive.

Continents like Africa and South America and the subcontinents of India and China, have been colonised in this process, and this time the colonists are Americans.

The USA has been amazingly successful in propagating its culture globally. 

One example is that South Africans born after 1985 now speak American English and not UK English as my generation does.  

Not only our language, but our eating habits, portion sizes, and fast food culture is decimating populations with diabetes, obesity and sedentary lifestyles as we sit slumped in front of the Americans’ most powerful vehicle of colonisation, our television sets.

Coupled with a rabid global consumerism of chasing the American dream by those unable to afford that dream, and we understand how families and communities have been captured in debt bondage every bit as vicious as the shackles of the old slave traders.

And if that weren't enough, the American fundamentalism of certain churches, has added yet another a layer of unthinking anti-intellectual  brainwashing to the spirits of colonised people. We are so brainwashed we don’t even realise we have been colonised!

And none of this is new.  

When Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, which the church commemorates this weekend, he was entering a completely colonised city.

John 12: 12-19

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=285872162

Zechariah 9:9

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=281806143

At all the levels described above, including religious power mongering, Jerusalem had been colonised by Rome.

So Jesus arriving as a humble king on a donkey and not on a Roman war horse or chariot reenacted ancient Jewish tradition and made a rebellious statement. 

He was protesting the physical and mental colonisation of Rome. His parade was one that recalled the servant kingship of David the shepherd, and the estimated 600000 citizens of Jerusalem loved it. “Hosanna” they cried, seeing Jesus as a new David, a liberator from the Roman tyranny that so controlled and consumed their lives.

But by the end of that same week, in fact by the Thursday night, that same crowd had been flipped by those in power. The colonists had won the battle for hearts and minds. 

Jesus had been called out and cancelled, skilfully scapegoated to be crucified on the Friday morning.

Lets face it, we all want to go back to paradise.  

That idyllic, virus, tax and crime free place, where we can walk with God in the cool of the day.  Where a heavenly being caters to our every need and all we have to do in return is not think for ourselves and blindly follow the rules. If you study the Judeao-Christian story, living in paradise meant living forever too.  What a bonus!

Philosophers, psychologists and all students of human consciousness have speculated on this universal human desire for paradise.  Perhaps it’s a primal memory of the carefree nine months we all spent in our mother's wombs, when all had to do was feed and grow.  Until that terrifying moment of contraction and constriction when were thrust headlong into the life we are living now!

The tipping point for our mythological proto-parents Adam and Eve, was when they chose consciousness and independence over unconscious dependence on God.  By eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they set themselves up to go it alone against the harsh and life-threatening environment outside the gates of paradise.

In the story it is only after their expulsion, that human life is bounded from an eternal to a fixed term deal.  Yet despite it seeming a curse, our limited lifespan is actually a gift for those who still choose consciousness over an unthinking life. Sages throughout the ages have realised that our mortality is a blessing and inspiration, not not a curse.

Pema Chodron a Tibetan Buddhist uses a simple three phrase statement as her ethical measure for skillful action, "Death is certain. The time of my death is uncertain. Knowing this, how should I live now?" A simple focus on reality.

Jesus knew this secret too. He said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Medieval thinkers used the phrase, "Memento Mori - Remember your death” as similar inspiration.

Life coaches recommend we develop our "Future Self", and I understand the intention. Goal setting and visioning are critical life disciplines.

But I would offer one essential condition. Please bear in mind that your ultimate Future Self is a corpse!

Our present self is that grain of wheat Jesus spoke about.  Filled with life and generative potential, we thwart our destiny if we cling to self preservation above sacrifice.

We are designed to die with all other seeds so that our species, our children and their children's children may continue the cycle of life, death, germination, fruitfulness and harvest.

Paradise is forever lost and we cannot go back.  Life in this present is all we have. 

It is our greatest legacy, well worth living for, and then, worth dying from when our time is complete.

Ultimate fruitfulness is to live sacrificially for the future, but in this moment. 

That’s the true, accessible paradise.

The Great Reset, was the theme of the World Economic Forum in January 2020. 

At this meeting IMF director Kristalina Georgieva, listed three key aspects of a sustainable response to the current global crisis: green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth. With the gap between rich and poor continuing to widen everywhere, the world could do with a reset.

Anne Lamott - an American novelist, Christian, recovering alcoholic, single parent and political activist known as “The People’s Author”, has said, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” 

Nicodemus would have agreed with the Great Reset, and with Anne Lamott. 

Nicodemus who? You ask…

An interesting bible character, Nicodemus only appears in John’s gospel where he is introduced as a Pharisee and Jewish ruler. Nicodemus makes three appearances, all of them at night. 

He comes to ask Jesus about a new way of living in John 3.  He advocates for Jesus with his fellow Pharisees, asking he be given a fair trial in chapter 7, and finally appears in John 19 when he joins Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the body of Jesus for burial and donating 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes for the process.  The usual amount of spice required was 5 pounds, so the excessively generous gesture of twenty times the norm, demonstrates the love of Nicodemus, and echoes the extravagant love of Mary who “wasted” a pound of rare perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus in John 12.

Nicodemus’ Greek name means “victory to the common people” from nike = victory and demos = common people.  In New Testament Greek usage demos is associated with the rabble. As in "democracy"?

So Nick, the representative of the victorious rabble, is recorded by John’s gospel, consulting Jesus about the Greatest Reset ever, the switching off and on of our very identities.

In a discussion completely misunderstood by many Christians, Nicodemus, whose nighttime appearances symbolise the shadowy internal nature of The Greatest Reset; is informed by Jesus that no one can see the reign of God unless that person is “born from above”.

Jesus makes clear the imperative. A complete transformation of the way we look at the world, and behave in it, is required.  Our natural survival drives and selfish interests, our power plays and perpetual domination of those weaker or poorer than ourselves, have to be reset in a radical transformation that is every bit as dramatic as being born afresh.

This is not some arrogant rank of spiritual superiority that “Born Again” has come to mean for some fundamentalists.  It is rather a deep inner change process that happens in the depth of our beings, most often in the dark despairing nights of our souls. 

We are ready for this rebirth when we know the taste of defeat and failure, and can advocate and attend to the crucified and broken ones as Nicodemus did for Jesus.

So don’t tell me you’re Born Again, show us all by the sacrificial service of your life.

They say, there's no place like home. If only we knew what our home was called!  Once the Mayor and the Ministers have agreed, maybe the Mlungu’s will learn to pronounce Gqeberha ?  It’s clearly karma for making second language English speakers struggle for decades with Fort Beaufort!

Yet, despite the name, there’s no place like home, as young lockdowners from all over the planet discovered as they returned to their parental nests.

If you are a Christian in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, this Sunday you will hear the gospel reading of how Jesus went to his Father's House and wrecked the place!  

John 2:12-22 records that Jesus went to the temple to celebrate the passover, but found a lucrative business in operation.  Jews from all over the known world dreamt of Passover, "next year in Jerusalem", and like Muslims to the Haj, or Christians to the Camino de Santiago, they pilgrimaged to Jerusalem.  

The business of the temple had two profit centres - foreign exchange, to convert the pilgrims’ currency into Tyrian shekels (the only currency permitted in the temple, because it had no engraved image on it), and the second business arm - the sale of bulls, sheep and pigeons (for worshippers on a tight budget). 

It is estimated that in Jesus' day the entire economy of Jerusalem was based on the sacrificial throughput of the temple.

Finding forex stalls set up in the only space where non-Jews (Gentiles) were allowed to stand during rituals so enraged the inclusive Jesus, he chased the livestock out of the court and upended the workstations of the money changers.

“Do not make my fathers house a place of business”, he shouted.  "Father's house" is the conventional translation of "Oikon tou Patros" and “place of business” translates "emporiou" (the English emporium), so “shopping mall”, would a be a fair translation.

Jesus had clearly lost faith in the temple, which is why when interrogated by the Jews about his permit to do what he did, he said "Tear down this temple and I will build it up in three days". John records how the disciples later realised Jesus meant his body and not the building, which suggests the home of God is no longer a building.  The temple is wherever our heart is. 

There's no way to make money from that, Jesus' priority was people not profits, so religious businessmen killed him. 

Interestingly the next time Jesus speaks about his parent's house it’s in John 14, where he says “In my Father's house there are many rooms”. Again a little digging reveals that the phrase "many rooms or monai pollai” in Greek can also read "multiple abidings". 

So it’s not a building, and not a business, neither an exclusive, mono-cultural, single room; but a diverse, multiversal home of tolerance and hospitality.  

Jesus also says in the very next chapter 15, "meinate en emoi", Greek for, “Stay here with me.” 

That’s ultimate hospitality. Welcome home everyone!

No exclusive identity, nor tongue testing language skills required!

There is so much information around us, and we who live in the information age can so easily mistake information for transformation.

For this reason, the Radical Christ series, from time to time, inserts Integration Practice sessions to allow the information about Jesus, the Map for each of our lives, to become an integrated transformation of our inner life.

I trust this will be of you to your journey.

Peter Woods

[email protected]

Miracles have been largely trivialised by Literalism and Fundamentalism.

Remembering that Scripture is best understood on the mythical level which enables it to be accessed in any age and context, we begin to grasp the life and actions of Jesus as a Map for our own lives.

The Raising of Lazarus illustrates some powerful truths which may help us in our daily dying and coming back to life?

Scripture reference : John 11.  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=358175470

What miracles are not! Crazy Pastor of "Doom" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWWz7hhstX0

Jesus often spoke about seekeing and saving the Lost,

In this video Peter unpacks three parables of lost things from Luke chapter 15.  The Lost Sheep, Coin and Son.

Linking these to phrases from the Prayer of Confession from the Communion liturgy opens an interesting coice of how to seek for the lost and is dependent on how the lostness occurred.

The breath is a useful and ever present symbol of balance and rhythm in life.

In this episode Peter introduces the Integration Practice of being mindful of the breath to assess what is needed next for balance.

After all to walk headlong onto a stormy sea requires a fine balance.