crucifixion = resurrection transcript

I have been writing a little bit about this theme of the crucifixion and the resurrection being the same thing. The crucifixion and the resurrection being the same thing. And I’m not going to try to give some kind of context for this discussion, some kind of theological context, because frankly, I think that those of us who give a shit about this kind of thing know that what I’m talking about. This idea of being crucified and yet not giving up. Not giving up, and by that I mean not a, I want to continue to live, I want to continue to be crucified, but in a sense that there is this interior voice, this interior voice that that keeps telling us the next right thing to do if I use I guess I will allow that kind of crude jargon in to this conversation but this presence this um you know as I always say in these meditations it’s the same thing that the christian tradition the catholic tradition has been talking about for thousands of years so as I said before if you think I’m crazy you’re right and so was saint paul and so was every other christian they actually tried to follow jesus as well as jesus himself he was crazy We’re all crazy and we’re so crazy the world crucifies us. But because we know that Jesus was crucified, because we know that if they did it to Jesus, they’ll do it to anybody. If this world will crucify Jesus, they will crucify anybody. And just to make sure that we didn’t miss that, Jesus tells us, “A servant is not greater than his master.” The Bible and the Christian tradition are very clear that the only way to be sane, the only way to find joy, is to surrender. And that means being crucified. And for some people, that meant literal crucifixion, like the apostles, like many of the apostles. I think there are some modern saints who were crucified too. I don’t know. Certainly there have been a lot of martyrs of different types, people that actually gave their life in blood rather than deny Christ. And why do the martyrs not deny Christ? Because they can’t. They literally can’t. Christ is so, for saints, it’s like a saint has already been crucified. He’s already been crucified, either by vows or by circumstances or both. A saint has learned to surrender. A saint’s circumstances… In many cases, I would say, have given him no other option than to surrender. Have given her no other option to surrender. Have given them no other option but to surrender. They have been put in such a box that there’s no way out. And either you turn to nihilism or you turn to the Spirit. And many, and I’m not saying I’m a saint, would prefer nihilism. Not in the sense of any kind of external action. But it would be such a relief to just be able to say, none of it matters. I’m going to go play video games and do what I have to do. Go to my job, you know, make money, whatever. Distract myself. There’s endless distractions in our society. Dive in. But for some of us, we’ve been put into a box that is so severe that we have to go deeper. And the Spirit is there. Not the Spirit that’s talked about in churches, but and in books god knows they’re not in books or it’s not in books I mean the spirit can use books and by books I mean those published in nashville by christian publishers actually I think I’d probably if I had to if I saw a christian book that was published by a secular press I don’t know what that word secular really means anymore I know some theologians think about make a lot of fuss over it but if I saw a christian book that was published by major publisher and they were purely out to make money with no disregard for any type of charitable or spiritual intent. I would trust that more than a lot of these publishers that claim to be doing the Lord’s work but are actually just another profit machine. And you might say, what’s wrong with profit? Well, I’m not going to get distracted by that. The issue here is that crucifixion and resurrection are the same thing because When Christ is on the cross, he’s demonstrating what this world does to people, even to the perfect person. This world will crucify the perfect person. So he’s removing the shame. He’s removing the blame. He’s removing the surprise. He’s saying, this is what happens when you follow me. And by following him, he doesn’t mean being an egomaniac. He means this is the way to peace. The way that Jesus lives is the way to be sane in this world. And I’ve written lots and lots about that. But what I’m talking about now is that when he’s on the cross, he’s not only revealing what the world is doing, but by his doing that, he’s taking the burden off of us. He’s taking the surprise away from us. We’re not surprised when we’re crucified. If they crucified Jesus, if they crucified Jesus, then good Lord, then at least I’m not anywhere near what Jesus is in terms of compassion and wisdom like Jesus. If there’s anybody in the world that should not have been crucified, it’s Jesus. And yet they crucified Jesus. They being the state and the religious establishment. That’s who crucified Jesus. Oh, and the regular everyday people were standing by. They weren’t willing to speak up because they just wanted to keep their comfortable positions and not make waves. Because it was scary. It would have been scary to make waves by protesting against Jesus’ crucifixion. Just like it’s scary to make waves… when you protest against ICE or any type of tyranny, any type of injustice. So Jesus in his life, in his flesh, in his ripped up bloody flesh, he exposed the end that comes to people that are living rightly. And so by doing that, he is also revealing that you’re right. The world’s wrong. We know Jesus is right, and so we know that what the world did to him is wrong. We know that the power, you know, the idea that power and money, you know, might makes right, we know that when we look at the cross, that cannot be true. You cannot look at the cross and say that using power unjustly is justified. Not because of some rule, not because of some concept, but because his very crucifixion exposes the absurdity, the evil. It says, it’s like a big black eye. It’s like a big punch in the face to conventional wisdom. Everything that everybody says is right. Don’t, you know, go along, get along. You know, don’t make waves. Keep your head down. You know, it’s all for a greater good. You know, whatever it is. You know, we become numb to it. Children recognize it. We become numb to it. And the crucifixion says… Wake up. Like, look. It’s not even wake up. It’s like, holy shit, what happened? Like, they did that to Jesus, too? I mean, really? Like, so it’s just, the crucifixion itself is just like a rubbernecking moment. Like, you’re just dumbstruck. You know, you’re just like, your mouth is hanging open. You know, it’s like the producers, Mel Brooks, the producers, when they’re doing that parody of Hitler, right? And the audience has just got their mouth hanging open. That’s a comedic version of what I’m talking about. It just stops you in your tracks. And somehow in some mysterious way, I’ve been dancing around this because I’ve been thinking about how to connect the dots linearly. But somehow in some mysterious way, just seeing Christ and seeing what they did to him And the impact that has, the permanent impact. Christ, we have a dead man on a tree. I keep writing about that. A dead man on a tree. Well, what difference does it make? Well, it’s not just any dead man, although Christ is fully human and he came in the most humble circumstances. That’s what the Christmas stories are about. But it’s like he’s utterly humble and yet utterly perfect. And yet this is what the world did to him. And in some mysterious way, just seeing that and seeing the solidarity and having the walls drop down. And you’re just there and you’re just looking at Jesus. And the love, the love that is just gushing forth as the Bible talks about his side was pierced and water flowed from it. And that was actually considered the baptism of the first saint. His name escapes me, unfortunately. St. Dismas, I think. Dismas. And that whole, you know, Dismas was the first Christian saint. He was baptized by Jesus himself. When Dismas said, remember me when you come into your kingdom. and jesus was was he was literally you know a lance was put into his side and the water spilled forth and we can we we also become baptized you know sacramentally and please god do not get distracted with all these ridiculous debates about what baptism actually is some kind of metaphysical blah blah blah like that’s the menu we’re talking about the food you know like it’s like Dismas was baptized. We can be baptized. The early churches, I’m told, would actually have people in white robes, or maybe they went down naked or something, but they literally were under the water and were brought up from the water. And so we get to behold that same crucifixion, and we get to be baptized just like St. Dismas was. St. Dismas said, Remember me when you come to your kingdom. And Christ says, you know, this day you’ll be with me in paradise. And he’s baptized with the water. And we’re baptized and our baptism is sacramentally, we’re sacramentally baptized. And that, to me, one of the main things about the sacraments, especially for someone who likes to think, is that the sacraments are physical. Water, wine, bread, holy oil, water. I’m not saying that holy oil is the same level as the other ones, but it just comes to mind because we do anointing with oil in our church. I don’t mean this crudely, but it’s almost like chapstick. One of the priests or one of the deacons has a… This is an Anglican church. They have a little special container that has a ring on it. They anoint us with oil, but it’s not like they’re pouring oil on our head. Although that’s great too, but… The point is it’s physical. It’s not in our head. It’s in our head. It’s in our heart. But it’s more than that. And that’s one of the things that makes Christianity so outlandish is that it’s literally God breaking into the universe physically. Like it’s the most non-intellectual thing possible. It’s literally a baby in a manger. It’s literally a dead man on a tree. But in his dying, he brings life because we see what the world did to him. And we become physically attached to that in the Eucharist and in baptism. And somehow, in some mysterious way, we are physically united with Christ and his death. And we come out the other side. We come out the other side emotionally united. even though I use that word all the time, but I don’t even think it’s even, I don’t think existential even captures it. I mean, existential is the term, at least as I use it, to capture life in this world that we’re thrown into without our consent. But somehow, somehow by being united to Christ, by looking at the crucifix, and by recognizing that they did this to Jesus, and then we realize, oh, they’re doing it to us too. They’re doing it to us too. And we become bonded to Christ and love and his love. And then we’re in that state that the Eastern Catholic saint, whose name is escaping me, ah, what’s his name? Anyway, there’s this Catholic saint, and I don’t think he’s saying anything new, but he’s talking about a realm that you go into. It’s a prayer realm. It’s a, you know, a I hate to use that word mystic because it always gets messed up and people get confused about it and it’s made to be into this kind of esoteric thing, this kind of private club for church nerds and intellectuals. That’s not what it is. But there’s a way in which St. Charbel, St. Charbel, that’s his name, and he talks about, he says it much more eloquently than I can remember it, but basically you’ve got two choices here. You’ve got drudging through life, moment by moment, day by day, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, Waiting for Godot. It’s a series of meaningless events, which is like being in prison existentially in this life. But there’s a way through prayer and through bonding with God that you’re in this kind of timeless realm. It’s not something you think up or gin up. It’s something that comes to us. One of the things I’ve learned from Catholic spirituality is that, you know, consolation, as they call it, comes from God. Desolation comes from God, too, by his absence. And God knows what we need. We’re his beloved children that he was willing to use. God was willing to let his only son be executed brutally by his enemies in order to prove to his enemies that he wants us to be his children. And so, You have, although there is a sense in the Gospel of John that we’re always his children from the very beginning, and that’s true too. You can only push a metaphor so far. But it’s not a metaphor. That’s the thing. It’s literal. Like, it’s literal flesh and blood. Like, God wants us to be his children. We are his children. In the sense of that Dominican who used Wittgenstein as his basis, or he wrote that book, I can’t think of the name of the guy. [Herb McCabe] He’s in my writing, though. But it’s this idea that we’re already forgiven. If we would just look at God and say, you’re already forgiven. We’re like, oh, we’re already forgiven. We don’t have to keep lambasting ourselves and shaming ourselves and worrying. We just have to look at God. He’s like, oh, you’re already forgiven. That’s what forgiveness is. When we look at God, we realize we already were forgiven. And God tried to make it so painfully clear. It’s like, that’s what the crucifixion is. It’s like, God loves us so much. Like, He’s willing to endure this. And if they do this to Him, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do it to us. And somehow that realization, that joy, that crucifixion is also a resurrection. Because Christ, in His crucifixion, is already demonstrating the victory of Easter. He’s already demonstrated the victory of Easter even as he’s crucified. And he’s bringing us into victory even while we’re crucified. And so for those of us who have situations that don’t change, that are hellish every day, the pain never goes away in this life. Well, we actually get closer to the resurrection. We get closer to Easter because we’re actually on the cross with Christ every day. And that is actually where Easter begins. Easter begins on the cross. Easter doesn’t begin on the third day. That narrative is important, obviously. But for those of us that are really in the pit, that are in despair, that are being crucified, you know, there is no third day for us because every day is a crucifixion for us. It’s not like we’re crucified and then we can be buried and then we can be raised. It’s like every day we’re crucified. But as Thomas Hopko says, the deeper the knowledge, the deeper the suffering. And that means that we have deeper knowledge because we have deeper suffering. And Christ is on the cross. And by his being on the cross, he is already defeating death. It’s like turning the other cheek. Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean be nice. Turning the other cheek means I have so much interior freedom that you can strike me and I can have what I call peace. confrontational non-violence, aggressive non-violence. So it’s like, you strike me on one cheek, you’re like, well, I’m going to turn the other cheek. It’s like, strike me there too, because you can’t do anything to me because I’m free. I’m free. I have internal freedom, interior freedom, because this world crucifies me and it crucified Jesus too. And if it crucified Jesus, that means that If I’m doing something right, I shouldn’t be surprised by being crucified as well. And I don’t have to worry about all the details because I can look at Christ on the cross and I can become part of his sacramental body. I can partake in, I can eat his flesh, drink his blood, be baptized by him. and I’m part of him. I’m eating his flesh. I’m becoming one with him. They’re doing the same thing to Jesus that they’re doing to me. And Jesus is in the trenches with us, and he’s in the trenches. He’s so close to us in the trenches that he’s literally like we become him. He becomes us. And the thing is that that power, that cosmic power, that begotten of the Father before all ages, like Jesus cannot be killed. There’s that old fishhook story that I like to tell that goes back to the ancient Christian thinking. And it’s like, you know, the devil has all the people held hostage in hell. And he says, okay, yeah, if you give me Jesus, your son, then I’ll let them all go. And so Jesus says, here I am. You can take me. You can take me, the devil. Jesus says, you can take me. You can take me and just let my people go out of hell. And then Satan does it and he gets tricked. He bites on the fishhook of Jesus’ divinity. He’s blown up. He’s killed. Because that’s the thing. You can’t kill Jesus. Now, we’re mortal. We are sustained every moment by God’s love. And that’s the love that guides us. That’s the love that God’s always guiding us. And that we have to learn to listen to Him. And we all listen in different ways. And we listen in different ways at different times. And there are a bunch of hucksters out there that are trying to profit off of that because it’s hard and mysterious, but not mysterious in the sense of being esoteric or intellectual, but just it’s new. You know, it’s like almost like you buy a new pair of shoes. It’s mysterious because you never worn before, you know, um, Unless you go to Foot Locker in the 1980s and they’re already there for you to try on. But in these days, you just order them off of Zappos and they come. You try them on for the first time. And it’s a mystery. This is the same thing. It’s like trying on a new pair of shoes. It just turns out that the pair of shoes you’re trying on is the Alpha and the Omega, the one that was before and the one that was after. Christ cannot be killed. That’s what the whole two natures thing is all about. He’s fully God and fully man. It’s like, he’s fully man, And I used to get tied up on the child, there’s like the Oriental Orthodox that are supposedly, the whole idea of Christ nature is being tuned to man and God. It seems like it was, I was watching a Joker movie Joker clips from the Batman movie today, and there was the Two-Face guy that, you know, the mayor that got… The prosecutor that, you know, became a bad guy because half his face got acid poured on it. You know, the Two-Face character in Batman. Like, you know, I think sometimes… the Christology kind of seems like that. It kind of seems like, well, Jesus is half man, half God. Well, that’s not it. He’s fully God and fully man. Well, it’s a mystery. You know, you can do gymnastics all day long about that. You know, I’d rather watch Johnny Carson reruns. I mean, it’s the same thing. To me, it’s not about the intellectual gymnastics. The gymnastics are there when they need to be there to keep the bullshit out. You know, it’s like a guardrail to keep wacko, you know, weird stuff out. But But the thing is, it’s like enter that mystery, enter that mystery. And so when you get there, when you’re there with Christ on the cross, you see that there was no way the world was ever going to fuck up this thing. You know, because Christ is still God. That’s the kicker. He’s still, yes, he’s 100% man, but yes, he’s 100% God too. And yes, that manifested itself in the Easter story. And there are a million different ways to interpret that. from the most fundamentalist to the most abstract liberal, even though I hate those terms, there’s all kinds of Easter story analysis. I’ve written about that. We can talk about that another time. The point is I’m talking about on the cross, in the trenches, when we’re being crucified, when we’re not going to have an Easter because every day is a crucifixion, including Easter, it’s a crucifixion. But in that crucifixion, behind all the fuss, Behind all the blood, or in all the blood, is the fact that Jesus Christ is divine. And so the world overplayed its hand big time, big time. They crucified God. God died, but he’s God. And so in some mysterious way, he’s like, tricked you. Like, you overplayed your hand. The devil overplayed his hand. The world overplayed its hand. Because Christ is God, and that’s what caused the resurrection, is Christ’s godness, his divinity. And, you know, we talk about the Father raised him from the dead. You know, the Father, you know, that Jesus didn’t walk out of the dead, metaphorically walk out of the tomb on his own, you know, or literally whatever. But it’s like, that’s the thing. That divinity… That thing that was before all ages, it’s in the cross. It’s not like when Christ was on the cross, it didn’t mean he still wasn’t divine. And you can interpret the cross as some kind of metaphorical, existential expression of love that is divine. But I’m talking about hardcore, not fundamentalist, but hardcore, mystical, and not in a weird way, but sacramental. in a physical way, in a real way. You know, in a real way, Christ is and was and always will be God. And so even when he was on the cross, he was God. And so when we’re on the cross and we are united to Christ, we also become God. That’s what the theosis tradition is all about. And I know that sounds crazy to some people, but there’s that whole saying, like, you know, God became man so man can become God. Sometimes they make the second God lowercase. That’s Eastern Orthodox, you know, coffee talk, you know? But it’s like we become so wrapped up in Christ’s divinity by being crucified ourself while he’s being crucified Himself. And we’re eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It’s like we become him. He becomes us. We become unified. And so that is resurrection. Being united with Christ is resurrection. And, you know, I keep saying the same thing a million different ways. But I think what I’m coming back to is this fact that this world crucifies us. It crucified Christ. But when they crucified Christ, they overplayed their hand because Jesus… Just look at the Gospel of John. Look at any of the books that John wrote or his people wrote or whatever. I don’t care about all this stupid academic debate. So did he really write it or was it his community that wrote it? It doesn’t matter. It’s in the Scriptures. It’s stuck around for 2,000 years. It works. So, and I can give a more sophisticated reply than that, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, you know, in a lot of ways, I think the Gospel of John, I’ve written about this and it still blows my mind, but like, The Gospel of John and the letters of Paul, they’re all talking about the same thing that the synoptic Gospels were talking about, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were talking about. But they’re doing things with the significance. I mean, I think that John’s letter, I’m sorry, John’s gospel is about, you know, it’s about what’s happening, but it starts to take in the sacramental, the spiritual, the reality, like the significance of it. It’s like it’s just, you know, and I’ve written a whole little blog post about it, but the gospel of John just blows your mind, you know. But, you know, there’s no discontinuity there. I’ve resolved that discontinuity in my mind. The same with Paul’s letters. They’re all talking about the same thing. They just do it in different ways. I call Paul’s letters a double shot, like a double espresso. I never actually had a double espresso, but I think that my understanding is that it’s like a coffee that’s concentrated and doubled up or whatever. But anyway, the point is that the crucifixion and the resurrection, for us, that are in the pit all the time. They are the same thing because Christ was always divine and they were always overplaying  their hand. And Jesus told us what was going to happen after the crucifixion. He told Peter what was going to happen. He told him he’d be raised. He was. And what I’m saying is that he didn’t stop becoming God on the cross. And his godness is what allowed him to be resurrected again. And we can, in prayer, in contemplation, as St. Charbel says in ways that I can’t really remember exactly how he said it, but somehow we can enter that timeless nature of the crucifixion. We can look at an icon, we can pray, we can read the Bible, whatever. We can think about Christ on the cross. We can pray the rosary, and we can enter into that. We can let that absorb us. I mean, Christians, I think, it’s fair to say, are pretty obsessed about Christ on the cross. And the real reason of that is because when we get absorbed into the cross, we get absorbed into Christ. And Christ is God. And it shows, it gives us a way, it gives us a way to unite our brokenness, our woundedness, our suffering to Christ, who is also suffering, but is also God. And so if you are literally uniting yourself to Christ on the cross, you’re uniting yourself to God who cannot be killed. Or perhaps better said, you’re uniting yourself to God on the cross who is also divine. And that divinity is going to be what resurrects him literally, physically on Easter. However you interpret that. And it’s almost like you’re getting a front row seat. You’re being crucified with Christ so much. that you’re literally dying with him. And so you’re going to rise with him. It’s like you get a front row seat because you’re so crucified with Christ that you get to go for the whole ride. You’re not somebody that just passed by and looked at the cross and said, oh, that’s too bad. And then like, oh, they raised from the dead. Whoa. You know, three days later, whoa. You’re like, no, you’re being crucified with Christ real time in a timeless sense, in a way that this is what St. Charbel talks about is like, The drip, drip, drip of everyday life, like when you get into this position where you’re so consumed with the cross and you’re uniting all of your suffering to it, your day-to-day grind, when you’re doing that, you’re entering into a space that is transcendent. Not in the airy-fairy, cloud-in-the-mountain sense, but transcendent in the sense of, I’m changing a dirty diaper on a nine-year-old because she has disabilities and I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life, but That’s a form of crucifixion. And that gets me closer to Christ. As I said before, there’s nothing the SOBs can do to us anymore. Because the more they crucify us, the more they fire us, the more they make fun of us, the more they overcharge us, the more they do whatever the hell they do to us. I’m not defending bad things. I’m saying that If this shit is happening to us, we can latch it on to Christ. We can let it drive us closer to the cross, drive us closer to Christ, make us closer to Christ. And so the more shit they do to us, the closer to Christ we are, the closer to the crucifixion we are. The closer to the crucifixion we are, that means the closer we are to Christ. That means the closer we are to Christ as man and as God. And so we get to ride the whole way. We get to be crucified right along with him. And we get to be close to that same divinity that also raised him, even if it’s in the form of the Father. And I’m not going to get into gymnastics about the Trinity. And that’s why I can say that the crucifixion and the resurrection are the same thing. Because the crucifixion is the root of the resurrection. And so I don’t want to, I could spin off some more abstract thoughts about it and quasi-poetic thoughts about it, but I don’t want to muddy the waters any more than they’re already muddied. But I’m just saying to those of us who live in hell, who live in existential hell, we don’t have to wait for Easter to get to existential heaven. In fact, we never get to Easter, not in a chronological way. We don’t get to Easter in a chronological way. We’ll get to Easter in a prayerful way, I want to say, a timeless way. We accessed the resurrected Christ. What is the resurrection? It means they crucified Christ, but he’s still alive. And they’re crucifying us, and we’re still alive. And we’re alive because we’re loved by the one who was uncreated and can never die, even when they’re crucified. So for those of us who are crucified every day, we also have Easter every day. And that’s the mystery of Christianity. And by listening to this, if any of this makes any sense at all, I’m not saying this solves all your problems or my problems. By definition, it doesn’t do that because you’re being crucified. I’m being crucified. Being crucified is the furthest thing you could possibly get from problem solving. But what it is, is turning the other cheek with your whole life. And not in the sense of being nice, but it’s in the sense of like, Oh, you hit me on one cheek? Hit me on the other cheek. See how that works for you. Because I’m being held by the one that can’t be destroyed, even by a crucifixion. So I’m already living Easter. I’m already being resurrected while I’m being crucified, just like Jesus.