The coming of.... us

I have been thinking a lot lately about the coming of Christ.  To be more precise, I have been thinking about the phrase the coming of…. I think most everyone is anticipating the coming of something right now. We are looking for what is coming in response to what is now. So for many of us the coming of is something like this…. 

The coming of a vaccine…. The coming of the end the pandemic…. The coming of a new administration… the coming of a new baby… the coming of a new year… the coming of a new friendship…. The coming of a new semester… the coming of a new house… the coming of recovery from illness… the coming of a new day… the coming of night…. the coming of a new job.... the coming of a new pet… the coming of a storm… the coming of the sun… the coming of the holidays… 

All our days are filled with the coming of….

 

The theme of Advent is the anticipatory waiting for, the coming of Christ. We first understand this as the coming of the messiah child born into human experience. But Advent also anticipates the coming again of Christ; the return of Jesus, in our own time and place.

 

In my experience, there are a few basic responses to the promise of the second coming: 

 

1) There are those who think of Jesus’s coming in purely physical terms – pulling from biblical imagery – Jesus seated on a cloud descending to earth, in the same way they imagine the son Jesus, immortally youthful and literally seated at the right hand of the elderly, fatherly image of God. 

 

2) There are those who simply don’t believe it. Many very deeply spiritual people who are quite devoted to the religious life and have an authentic and meaningful sense of piety stop short at the notion of Christ’s return, at least in the way it has been described and taught over the centuries. The imagery of Jesus riding in on a cloud fails them utterly. Not to mention the fact that Mark’s urgent call to prepare anticipates the immediate return of Jesus…. And yet for the last 2000 years Jesus has failed to appear. The hurried expectation has long-since lost its urgency. 

 

3) There are those who possess a vague sense of understanding, even longing, for the coming again of Jesus…. but it is elusive and fleeting, inexplicable, non-specific, ethereal and non-local. 

 

While none of these feels completely satisfying, neither are they failings. Each is a human interpretation and attempt to understand to mentally process a spiritual event; not a temporal event but a cosmic event. The coming of Christ is occurring on the spiritual plane which is both hidden and at the same time accessible to us and may in fact be manifesting on the physical plane in some way that we do not yet fully recognize or appreciate. 

 

Let us again be reminded of the words of Teilhard de Chardin, paraphrased: We are not humans having profound but occasional spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings experiencing human life on the physical plane. This is the key, in my estimation, of understanding the coming of the Christ. 

 

Because we are so completely rooted in the physical experience and quite unaware of the spiritual realm we interpret, and define, and limit our imaginings to that of the physical world. In limiting the boundaries of our spiritual experience we in turn limit our human potential. We are spiritual beings here on planet earth for the experience of being human, perhaps to deepen our relationship with the divine, but the physical plane is not our home – it is a temporary state of being. We are however, most of us, a stranger to our true home, our true nature and our minds try to work out how spiritual events can be seen through the narrow lens of human understanding. But we cannot. So we must either understand our limitations and be satisfied with the assurance of the promise of Jesus’ return, or, engage in an effort to expand our awareness of our spiritual natures. 

 

This is the work of religious life, ultimately, to approach an awareness of our two natures co-existing both on the human and spiritual planes simultaneously. On the spiritual plane all physical limitations fall away… water becomes wine, a man born blind receives sight, the mere touch of Jesus’ clothing brings healing, the angels converse, assure, protect and relay information, Jesus calls Peter to walk on water, dreams carry divine instruction, aged and barren women become pregnant, a virgin conceives a child, the dead are raised, and on and on. In the spiritual realm all things are possible. In the spiritual realm there is no suffering. In the spiritual realm those who have gone before are reunited to one another and we can sense their near presence, their eternal wisdom - these are our ancestors, the saints in light. In the spiritual realm the divine essence of Jesus is fully present and accessible – as the Holy Spirit. In the spiritual realm life does not end but is changed, it is eternal. 

 

Jesus spent his life revealing to us our true nature as spiritual beings and the potential goodness of human life upon that realization. Until we catch this wave of awareness, with its expanded - more than panoramic - vision, trying to reconcile spiritual events within the confines of human experience is like trying to move a camel through the eye of a needle. 

 

When Jesus taught us to pray he said, quite plainly, “thy kingdom come.” It is not coming, it has come. We are the ones who insist on the kingdom’s seemingly eternal coming-ness – its off in the distance-ness – its just out of reach-ness. But Jesus made clear its present-ness, its now-ness, its accessibility in this moment-ness. If we can focus, meditate, sit with, contemplate these three words: …thy kingdom come… we might, at some point be able to see the coming of…. in a new light. 

The truth of our situation, the reality of our expansive being-ness, opens the door of understanding that forever alters the way in which we live as humans; the way we live together as humans; the way we live as spiritual beings ever so briefly on this rock fixed to a sun with a single moon; this planet a mere grain of rice in a cosmic soup bowl of divine broth. There are many moons and billions of planets, countless stars and galaxies, and millions of universes; the vastness of the cosmos is beyond our imagination, but it is not beyond our awareness of it. To imagine is to see as humans see; to be aware is to see with the eye of the soul.  Do not then look for Christ using your human senses, nor with your imagination, but rather with your awareness. 

Now is the coming of…. us. It is us breaking free of the bondage of our limitations, us breaking out of the constraints of our limited understanding, us realizing the fullness and completeness and accessibility of divine love, us realizing our boundless potential. It is us coming to God.