The Yoga of the Resurrected Christ Empowers Healing & Diversity

Scripture

Mark 16:1-15

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back-it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.

Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation."

The Yoga of the Resurrected Christ Empowers Healing & Diversity 

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Read the message below. Video premieres today at 8 pm EDT, click here to watch on YouTube with live text chat

I hope that you're enjoying an Easter that allows for your focus on the resurrecting Spirit within you and within everyone and all things! Although it's sometimes hard to see the light throughout this pandemic and our pain. As we find God emphasizing in Mark 16 and elsewhere throughout many of the world's traditions, we can each be empowered by Divinity by centering on his resurrecting Spirit and Life, no matter our name for God(dess), as well as connecting with and uplifting our communities as best we can.

However, to some, gendered expressions of Divinity can seem distracting, patriarchal, or un-scriptural, so I'll take a moment to address this. In the Jewish and Christian Bibles and many other traditions' scriptures and stories (such as Hinduism, Baha'i, and Indigenous spiritualities), God is depicted both as a mother and a father - although the depiction of a father seems to have been more popular with the Jews of Jesus' day and most Christians today. Of course, Goddess is also depicted as Spirit, a son, a woman, as Goodness, Compassion, Love, and Life or Being Itself. Ultimately, I believe in the fullness of the Resurrected and Resurrecting Spirit, the Divine Wholeness that gives rise to all of our goodness, no matter our gender or tradition, called many things, including "Christ" (Savior), "Elohim" (Gods), the One I Am!

In the story of the resurrection in Mark 16, the Divine Christ seems to go out of his way to emphasize the diversity of ways we might encounter the one Divine Personality of God. Why is that? I think it's because God seeks to further empower and uplift us ("resurrect" us), no matter how we are starting to encounter his Divine life, who by his infinite nature can be approached in an infinity of ways that always center on life, truth, and goodness (instead of destruction, falsity, and domination). Jesus hopes to liberate us from oppression both within and without, changing our systems to one of God-and-Life-centeredness, and teaching us to see others as Divinely inspired extensions of ourselves, even if we each have (infinite) room to grow. And so, we have much to be grateful for this Easter Sunday, even in face of the pain that many of us are carrying due to Covid-19 and our trauma.

This universal union that Jesus often emphasizes (also called "Yoga" in Hinduism) seems to be a core message in the few depictions of the Savior after his resurrection. Besides emphasizing sharing the good news of God's incarnate, living personality (also similar to Hinduism, where Krishna emphasizes the same in the Bhagavad Gita), Mark 16 and elsewhere shares with us depictions of his followers reconnecting with him in different ways, as well as their disbelief until it happens to them, in their own way. We even hear that Jesus shows up to some of them "in another form."

Moreover, we see throughout Christ's ministry this idea that we shouldn't admonish people for worshipping "Je(hovah)-with-us" healthily, in their own way. Indeed, our reading shares that Christ admonishes the disciples for not being open to how he appeared before others differently. They centered on their own grief and fear due to Jesus' death, despite what he had told them about his resurrection and eternal life.

I think that this fear is an easy one for each of us to center on in our own way, even if we don't know we're doing it or don't think we believe in God. It shows up as anxiousness and fear in reaction to so many circumstances in our lives, but especially during these times of sickness, death, loss of work, mounting debt, mass incarceration, and lack of care in our society and politics. This is very understandable and widespread, but ultimately, our deep, seemingly unconquerable fears take root in a lack of embodied faith and compassion.

Easter and the risen Christ emphasizes the opposite!

The Resurrection points to how we should celebrate the Divine Life that connects us all in diversity, letting go of fear through Yogic practices of God-centeredness, awareness of everlasting life, and love for our neighbors. This means looking beyond the veil of finitude and life vs. death, so-to-speak, which we're told Christ tore, and seeing the deep interconnectedness of all things in community, in shared diversity of life and as extensions of our own being, whether living in the material realm, inanimate, or passed fully into the spiritual world.

Today, our society is in need of such transformation toward Yoga, as Christ preached and encouraged us to share: "turn your hearts around" (often translated as "repent") and allow yourself to be resurrected into a love for Divinity, as well as a love for others as you love yourself and as God has loved you.

We each are called to work to let go of our dogmatism, symbolized by the Biblical pharisees and the narrow approach that the disciples often fell into, and shirk the fear and lack of embodied faith that causes us to slip into hurtful selfishness and the flood of our ignorance, anger, and lusts. When we center and immerse ourselves on these destructive things we are depicted as truly dead in scripture, the closest that an eternal being can actually come to nothingness. Instead, the resurrected Lord is a symbol and a means to relinquishing the shackles of this death and our fear of material death, inviting us to find God-centered empowerment toward personal and societal liberation and resurrection, especially through a crisis like this one.

Many people are expressing the fortitude and healing power of Divinity in their own walks today. From medical professionals on the front lines, to grocery workers and the many people often vastly underpaid who make our society run. These people and our own sacrifices and support point to the transcendent core of the human spirit across cultural lines, and strangely enough, it can be easy to see how such a tragic time can also be positively transformative in unimaginable ways.

But it's also tough sacrificing, losing jobs, homes, and connections, and being in isolation, quarantined away from many of the things we've loved about life. And it's easy in these times to turn toward cynicism and hurt.

Interestingly enough, "quarantine" comes from the Latin word for 40, which is the number of days that people during the Black Plague had to stay isolated, and 40 is often used in Biblical scripture as a symbol for a deep state of temptation, pain, and possible growth. This includes the 40 days in the wilderness when Jesus was tempted and overcame, the 40 days of flooding where many perished but the Ark and its inhabitants were saved, and the 400 years of slavery that the Israelites endured to find greater and greater liberation and healing afterwards. Clearly, our current, world-wide state of isolation falls into similar temptation and pain-filled but transformative territory, if we allow it to.

It was also believed by our namesake, the 18th century interfaith-Christian mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, that Christ's crucifixion served as a deeply painful, tragic day of temptation for him. He believed that Jesus' life was one of overcoming the gap between human habits and sentiment, and returning even Christ's external human nature back into a Divine, Yogic relationship with all of creation, even the parts that seemed to reject that Divinity. He said that part of this was by Christ battling and overcoming the hells-of-our-own-making throughout his development and glorification process (something we'll get into more another day), as well as his Spirit connecting with each of us to offer healing, goodness, love, truth, and resurrection.

In my own life, despite growing up going to Protestant churches, Muslim mosques, Indigenous Powwows, and being preached to about Hinduism, I rejected all belief in God and faith - but I believe I still had my own God(dess)-given light and warmth inside. Thankfully, over time I have begun to wake up and experience that consciousness shift between blindness toward spiritual light, as depicted symbolically on the first day of creation in the Jewish and Christian Bibles.

I believe that over time, we can allow our internal Ark to rise above the floods of temptation, quarantine, slavery, wilderness, and death. That through our acceptance of a God-empowered Yoga with all of creation's diversity and an understanding of, and loving-centeredness on, the Resurrected and Resurrecting God at the core of our beings (no matter what we call her) we can find healing and a renewal of life.

Resurrection was always at the center of Christ's ministry and embodiment. May we allow it in ourselves, illuminate it in others, and celebrate the diverse ways that Divinity approaches each of us. A happy, transformative, and peaceful Easter to all of you, in celebration of the Living Lord!

Blessings,

Rev. Cory