by Joshua Hearne
(1) This is what was from the beginning concerning the word of life. It is what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld, and what we have verified with our hands. (2) And life itself took a body and we declare to you the life, the eternal one, which we have seen and witnessed. It was with the Father and has been manifested to us. (3) What we have seen and heard, we declare to you in order that you also might have community with us. And our community is with the Father and with the Father’s Son, Jesus the Christ. (4) And these things we write to you in order that our gladness might be full.
(5) And this is the message that we have heard from Him and we declare to you: God is light and in God there is absolutely no darkness. (6) If we were to say that we have community with God and we were walking in the darkness, we would by lying and not producing truth. (7) But, if we walk in the light, just as God is in the light, we have community with one another. And the blood of Jesus, God’s son, cleanses us from all of our sins.
~1Jo. 1:1-7 as translated by JHearne on 20-Jan-2006
In Jesus we have the condensation of the essence of existence. God taking a body. This is, at least, part of what is meant in saying that “…life itself took a body…”
The creator has become part of creation.
No longer do we speak of a duality of creator and creation. No longer is God wholly other and completely unapproachable. God, in all of God’s glory, has joined humanity in struggle. Jesus, being fully human and fully divine, was alive at the same time that he was the source and completion of all life. Though not entirely comprehensible, this is one of the beautiful paradoxes that we, as Christians, must hold.
Do not be confused, however. God is “other” and ineffable.
God is outside of our scope and understanding. God is life, and God is light. In God, there is nothing that is not light. God is whole where we are broken. God is pure where we are tainted.
So, we are in an awful position of desiring community with something that needs nothing and is whole. We want to commune with the ineffable.
This cannot hope to be accomplished like we do so many other things. We cannot wrap ourselves around God in an attempt to “be at one.” Instead, we must become like God. We must be “enlightened” by light, itself. We must be vivified by life, itself. Our darkness can only be purged by that which admits no darkness and makes darkness incomprehensible. Some try to remove darkness like plucking one thing from another. Our corruption goes further than that. God unwrites darkness from existence. God does not remove darkness like an excision but, rather, as a brilliant and beautiful redefinition of reality, itself.
In this, we become part of light. We become part of life. Me becomes us. I becomes we. Darkness and sin are not removed but, better yet, are no more. God is redeeming. God is redemption.
“Sweet and incomprehensible God,
Mend our broken minds
Not so we can understand
but so we can know we do not understand
and know that it is not an answer we seek
but, rather, an understanding of the question.
Make us truly alive, God,
because we walk in death and do not know it
we carry corruption and cannot see beyond it
for corruption is only recognized when wholeness is seen.
we offend against our God and our being, itself,
and choose self against the other
and take the being of our Lord in vain.
Lord, do not remove our stains, alone.
Rather, clean the inside so that we do not continue to stain.
We are not stained
We, ourselves, are the stains.
We do not possess corruption.
We are possessed by corruption.
Lord, it is only revision that will help
Revise us, Lord.
Clease us, Lord.
Bring us to communion with you and the other.
Amen.”
Michael Bell
Joshua Hearne
Tim Melton
Joel Black
