Liturgies

One Sunday morning a mother went in to wake her son to get ready for church, to which he replied, "I'm not going."

"Why not", she asked?
"I'll give you two good reasons," he said.
(1) "They don't like me, and (2), "I don't like them."
His mother replied," I'll give YOU two good reasons why YOU should go to church.
(1) You are 59 years old, and (2) You are the Priest!!!

Recently a group of local church ministers have been gathering for a catch up and a coffee at a local West End coffee shop. At our previous gathering they asked me about my thoughts on the recent canonization of two Popes in Rome.
I spoke of my ambivalence and my wondering about the fascination by the media in this archaic, outmoded ceremony and process and thinking of saint making. I went on to speak of how disappointed I felt at believing in Apostolic Succession for such a long time and how the Roman Catholic Church continues to embrace this deceitful fraud. Apostolic succession, for those who may be wondering, is the belief in the uninterrupted transmission of spiritual authority from the Apostles through successive popes and bishops. A belief perpetrated on the church by its early spin doctors and fraudsters such as Eusebius (260-340CE), Bishop of Caesarea, an official historian of the newly formed Constantinian Church. Even the term bishop was not used until the mid to late second century, and even then used in only one or two of the hundreds of faith communities (for want of a better term) finding numerous expressions of governance and leadership. The term as well as more laissez-faire expressions of community found resonance in a 4th Century Roman Empire and Emperor looking for a Religion that could bring unity to the Empire and a Religion that he could control and one that would be controlling. He found this in those who came to be known by historians as orthodox or literalist Christians. They were happy to claim through Eusebius’ falsifying of history this direct link of Christ through the apostles. It gave them a power they were happy to embrace, in particular the Bishops who claimed this succession.
For the apostles in the Literalist Christian understanding claimed a unique authority in having direct experience of the resurrected Christ, an experience now closed forever. As German Biblical Scholar Karl Hall has pointed out, this claim restricts the circle of leadership to a small band of persons whose members stand in a position of incontestable authority. Secondly it suggests that only the apostles had the right to ordain future leaders as their successors.
This allowed the Empire Approved Church restricted chains of command for all future generations of Christians. Any potential leader of the community would have to derive, or claim to derive, authority from the same apostles. As Elaine Pagels, an expert on the Naj 'Hammádì text, writes in her book ‘The Gnostic Gospels’(p12). In this new story “What the apostles claimed to have experienced, their successors cannot verify for themselves; instead, they must only believe, protect and hand down to future generations the apostles testimony.”
By these Literalist Christians claiming something like the resurrection as an event that physically and literally occurred, witnessed by the select few, gave greater authority to the apostles and to those they shared the secrets or appointed as leaders. These new bishops saw the power of literalising the Gospel stories, and removing any writings or writers who contested these literal translations and understandings. It is why the Gnostics were the first to be persecuted and expelled and removed from this new burgeoning Christian Empire.
The Gnostics , derived from the Greek word Gnosis(to know)an inner knowing that cannot be taken away once obtained, did not on the whole believe in a literalist understanding of the Jesus stories, and it is why hundreds of Gnostic writings were burnt and destroyed. Only recently have many of them come into the light of day. The famous discovery in December of 1945 in Upper Egypt of the Naj Hammadi texts.
These Gnostics were a real threat to these new select few men who claimed this apostolic succession.
And they were ruthless in the persecution and expulsion and anything that would challenge their authority. This saw the burning of immense libraries, the famous library in Alexandria, Egypt, the loss of many scientific discoveries such as the Posidonius discovery that the Sun was the centre of our solar system, the sphericity of the Earth and its rotation on an axis, and many others, to be replaced with St Augustine’s flat Earth theory and 1000 years known as the Dark Ages. Much of this information is readily available on line, or the many books being written in recent years.
We have copies of the Jesus Mysteries by Peter Gandy and Timothy Freak who outline many of these cover-ups, frauds, deceptions of the official Roman Catholic Church.
As we sat in that coffee shop and I spoke of my disappointment of having been misled for such a long time, my brothers and sister sat and listened with amazing understanding and compassion. It was as if they sat in silent understanding of the arrogance of the Roman Church of which I had been complicit for so many years.
I appreciated their understanding and laughter that day. In today’s Gospel the two disciples have an awakening moment as they journey along. Gradually their eyes were opened and when they saw and realised their hearts burned within them. This awakening moment is the resurrection, and the Greek word for resurrect also means ‘to awaken’. The resurrection is not something that happened physically to anyone but is something that happened to the many who have become conscious of their essential nature as Awareness or as St Paul calls it ‘putting on Christ consciousness’. Writing to the Ephesians he states:
“Wake up sleeper
Rise from the dead
Let Christ enlighten you.” (Eph 514)
The journey we have made as a community over Hope Street 5 years ago has been a journey of awakening, of seeing with new eyes away from the Literalist prison that ensnared us in the old church.
Many have asked me over the last 5 years could you go back; I say I could go back to the building and space we called home for many years, but I could not go back to that Institution, ensnared in the lies that will ensure its loss of its fast diminishing power and influence.
For my heart and many of yours now burns within me of a new understanding of the Jesus story detached from the literalism that has weighed it down weakening its power and message.
I would like to finish with the last stanza of a poem written this week by Margaret Clifford celebrating our 5 years of Exile and Liberation.
“Yet this new way
Is still forming.
We gather around the word and around the table
With the reality of our lives
And speak words, seemingly closer to the truth
Share stories of joy and pain
Respond to needs, speak out and march
And learn, love and celebrate life
And seek to live mindfully
Justly, humbly, authentically
Connecting to all
Knowing, nothing is perfect
That all must die
To give new life.
So the leaving is over
And a new way of connecting, beginning.”