Quantum Christianity: Human One
Mark 10:35-45
Sermon preached Sunday, May 8, 2005
By Rev. Patricia Pearce
Over these last weeks when we've been looking into the theme of Quantum Christianity and looking at different things that quantum physics is discovering, we've looked at what seems to be a reality of wholeness, of unbroken wholeness, that the universe is an unbroken whole. One of the ways that this has been played with and experimented with is with holograms. I imagine that many of you have seen holograms. Has everyone seen a hologram? They've got them now on credit cards and stuff, those little silver things where if you turn it, it's like a three dimensional image. Those are created by a laser beam that is split and the image is exposed onto a sensitive plate and that process creates a three-dimensional look to it. Which in itself is quite extraordinary, that on a flat surface you can see a three-dimensional object. But what is even more extraordinary in my opinion is that if you break them, if you shatter them, every fragment contains an image if the whole. Isn't that fascinating? If you take a hologram and you break it apart every little piece contains the image of the entire picture. That to me is so fascinating, that every piece contains an imprint of the whole. So I want us to hold that as our little quantum piece for today.
The title today is "Quantum Christianity: The Human One", and I want to talk today about -- the fancy word that you learn in seminary -- is 'Christology'. You have all heard of theology. Christology is what you think of Christ, what do you believe about Christ, who is Christ? One of the things that I find intriguing is that in the Gospels, Yeshua's preferred self-title is not Christ. The way he refers to himself is as the "Son of Man" which actually can be more appropriately translated - "man" going back to the Hebrew word "Adam" which means one of the earth, a human -- so the Son of the Human or the Human One. The Human One. So his preferred self-title is the Human One. In many passages you see him referring to himself as though in third person. "You will see the Human One." In today's passage, "the Human One did not come to be served but to serve." What I want us to think about today is how this use of the Human One coincides with this idea of a hologram.
I have also spoken about how it is that he was able to access the realm of God, the realm of possibilities, and I think the reason he was able to do that, I think the key, is in that notion of himself as the Human One. In other words, he transcended any concept of self-identity and he took on a generic name. To refer back to the dream that I shared with you all, he became No One. He took on the identity of No One, which is to say that he took on the identity of everyone. In our culture it would be something like him calling himself John Doe. John Doe. I am John Doe. I am every man. I am every woman. I am everyone. I am No One. I am No One. I am Everyone. It was in this transcendence of his own ego identity that he was able to be such an amazing conduit for the Divine Spirit, because his own ego, his own self hungers were out of the way.
I believe that is what happened in the wilderness. If you remember Mark begins his Gospel really with the baptism, with Yeshua's baptism, and in that moment he has this experience of God's spirit so flooding him, and he has this experience of himself, of knowing himself at a very profound level, as God's beloved child. It was so obvious to him in that moment that he was God's beloved child.
And what happened next? He went into the wilderness, and in that wilderness time the tempter came and -- whether you think of the tempter as an external influence or the internal voice of the ego and the ego's desires -- what was happening was he was tested to see whether this work he was about to do was going to be about him or about something beyond himself. Turn these stones into bread -- satisfy your own hungers. No. Cast yourself off this precipice, God will not allow your foot to be harmed. In other words, see yourself as special in God's eyes, test that. In other words, Are you sure you're beloved of God? I think you better test it out. No. One does not put God to the test. Then showing him all the kingdoms of the world, all this is yours. No. It's not about me. It's not going to be about me. And so he became the Human One.
And because he so identified himself with all of humanity he was able to perform a profound work on behalf of all humanity. Because by being the Human One, by being No One he became all of us and we became him-no separation, the reality of unbroken wholeness.
Now what is ironic in my opinion is that even though his whole ministry was about relinquishing any need for status -- and you see that time and time again, every time they wanted to crown him king, every time they wanted to call him good -- he kept sloughing it off. It's not about me. It's not about me. It's not about me. But the profound irony is that then the Christian tradition -- what happened? -- made it all about him. It's ironic that Christian doctrine in fact succeeded where the tempter had failed. From now on it's gonna be all about him, about this specific person. Isn't that a supreme irony? Trying to establish doctrinal boundaries around one who had totally let go of all of that? And if he hadn't let go of all of that none of these great things could have happened. So the religion imposed what I think of as the ego paradigm -- the ego, the self -- imposed an ego paradigm upon that event. When in fact that whole event and that whole life was about overcoming the ego paradigm, the paradigm of separateness.
Ego! How many of us know about ego? Who escapes it? "Ego" is the Greek word for 'I'. 'I'. Living in the ego is living in the world as an 'I', and the ego has remarkable desires and ego trips can play out in a variety of ways, and I am speaking from experience. I had some ego bouts this week so you know there is grist for the mill. I want to speak of this from a spiritual perspective. I will leave it to the psychologists to talk about how the ego is part of the development of the human psyche and all of that. But I want to talk about it from the spiritual perspective. I have been talking the last few weeks about the notion that separateness is an illusion. That's what quantum physics is telling us and what mystics have always been telling us. The notion of separateness is an illusion, but the ego mind lives within that illusion. It lives within the illusion that "I" am separate and distinct, special -- either in my goodness or in my awfulness -- from others. And the ego tends to believe that its self worth is dependent upon its actions, its status, whether other people approve of it. You see all of these things are what the ego looks for in order to be satisfied that it is okay, that it is good and worthy. But, you see the Christmas lights [used in the Children's Time] are just there doing their thing. And the reality is that who we are is we are beloved children of God, we are one with the Source that created us, and there's nothing that we can do or not do to compromise this. It's a given. It's a given. But the ego doesn't believe that you see. The ego believes that it has to be earned, it has to be proven.
I mentioned last week that the last few weeks I have been going to Love Park on Tuesday mornings to do some sermon reflection. This week I didn't go to Love Park, because I was called up for jury duty, and so instead of sitting in Love Park I sat in the jury room on Tuesday morning. It just so happened that I was there on Juror Appreciation Day. The 6th Annual Juror Appreciation Day. So I walked into the jury room and they've got balloons, and there are television cameras, and there are all these judges lined up having their names spoken out loud, and the mayor was there, and the basketball coach from Villanova was there. And he gave us a little pep talk about how we are part of the team, and there are two things that are important. One thing is attitude and the other -- and I thought this was very interesting, Ram Dass appeared in the jury room -- he said the other thing is Be here now. The secret is to be here now. I agree with all of those things. I didn't expect to hear them showing up for jury duty. We all got little bags with mugs and pencils and key rings. I thought it was pretty ironic that we all get called up for jury duty and we all show up and we all get mugged! But what a contradiction, Love Park one week and Jury Duty the next. And when we're called to be on a jury we are called to sit in judgement of someone, and I don't know how much more of an ego frame of mind there can be than sitting in judgement. And what I experience is that often times the jury is sitting in judgment of me. My internal jury is sitting in judgment telling me all the ways that I screw up. That's the ego-mind, believing that somehow my self-worth can in anyway be compromised, when in fact it is a given for all of us.
So how do you get out of ego-mind? How do you get to No One consciousness? This is the funny thing about the ego. The ego wants to do (and I'll speak of myself and this probably applies to many of you here as well) the ego really wants to do a good job, you know? We want to do a good job, we want to help out in the world, we want to make a difference, we strive to do the right thing and we feel really lousy if it doesn't go the way we think it should go. See the ego really tries so hard. It tries so hard. But you know what? It doesn't have to. And here is the interesting thing. The ego tries hard and it doesn't go well and the ego beats up on the ego for not doing well and then the ego beats up on the ego because you have an ego and you're not suppose to have an ego and it just goes on and on and on, you know. "Oh shoot, I haven't reached that no ego state yet. Darn! I gotta try harder. I gotta to try harder..." It is this really interesting form of spiritual and psychological self-flagellation -- and it's remarkably unproductive.
The only way that I have found to get out of ego-mind, out of that ridiculous cycle, is through love and forgiveness. To appreciate even the jury, to recognize those self-judging voices within me and appreciate even them. To love even them, to set out the balloons and the donuts and bring in the speakers for all of me. There is something about learning to do that with ourselves, learning that kind of compassion for ourselves that enables us then to love others.
So Christ, Yeshua, as No One, as the Human One, as the hologram, the piece that contains the whole, the piece that contains all of us, that contains the entire world. And there is truth in saying that when he was crucified we were all crucified. Humanity was crucified because he took on a global identity. He became all of us. And it is also true that humanity was resurrected, because he became us.
Thanks be to God!
© 2005 by Patricia Pearce. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
