LightWorker
04-30-2008, 02:30 PM
I received this from a pastor that is reading ANE. It is long but it breaks down walls.
A pastor's perspective....
It is easy to forget, within the air-conditioned environs of a present day church building, that Jesus was part of a revolutionary movement to reform Judaism. He wasn't here to start a new religion or anything resembling present-day Christianity. He was here to tear open the tightly bound, priestly controlled scrolls of the Torah and the prophets, and allow his Abba's Light to shine on them anew. He himself, I believe, was that Light.
His followers called themselves, early on, People of the Way. They were made up, initially, of his disciples and many of the disciples of John the Baptist, who himself was the leader of a movement, probably within the Essene community of Judaism, a very austere and material-rejecting movement in its own right. The Jesus movement grew, through the telling of the stories of Jesus, the sharing of his sayings, and the living out of his words and example. But then..
Paul and other "elders" began the process of institutionalizing this movement. Meetings around dinner tables became gatherings in always more ornate churches. Stories being spoken in lively ways, became stories read in rigid, unbending form. Shared responsibilities became a hierarchical system of ordered duties. The Christian institution was being born, even as the People of the Way movement was dying.
In many, many increasing ways, too, the Light was dying out. It has never stopped flickering somewhere, in the hearts and minds of people who still felt part of a movement, rather than an institution, but it has come close to being snuffed on many ocassions, under the weight of new versions of the very rules, regulations, doctrines, and dogma that Jesus had tried to expose to the Light.
I believe A New Earth is one of a number of pieces of kindling wood that will cause the real Jesus fire- a true Light- to burn again. I think the opportunities for telling the invigorating, life-changing, ego- checking stories of Jesus are increasingly possible in a world that has suffered from institutional stagnancy long enough. The time for mindless memorization of someone else's creeds and doctrines is over. The time for breaking the chains, and setting the captives free, has come.
A pastor's perspective....
It is easy to forget, within the air-conditioned environs of a present day church building, that Jesus was part of a revolutionary movement to reform Judaism. He wasn't here to start a new religion or anything resembling present-day Christianity. He was here to tear open the tightly bound, priestly controlled scrolls of the Torah and the prophets, and allow his Abba's Light to shine on them anew. He himself, I believe, was that Light.
His followers called themselves, early on, People of the Way. They were made up, initially, of his disciples and many of the disciples of John the Baptist, who himself was the leader of a movement, probably within the Essene community of Judaism, a very austere and material-rejecting movement in its own right. The Jesus movement grew, through the telling of the stories of Jesus, the sharing of his sayings, and the living out of his words and example. But then..
Paul and other "elders" began the process of institutionalizing this movement. Meetings around dinner tables became gatherings in always more ornate churches. Stories being spoken in lively ways, became stories read in rigid, unbending form. Shared responsibilities became a hierarchical system of ordered duties. The Christian institution was being born, even as the People of the Way movement was dying.
In many, many increasing ways, too, the Light was dying out. It has never stopped flickering somewhere, in the hearts and minds of people who still felt part of a movement, rather than an institution, but it has come close to being snuffed on many ocassions, under the weight of new versions of the very rules, regulations, doctrines, and dogma that Jesus had tried to expose to the Light.
I believe A New Earth is one of a number of pieces of kindling wood that will cause the real Jesus fire- a true Light- to burn again. I think the opportunities for telling the invigorating, life-changing, ego- checking stories of Jesus are increasingly possible in a world that has suffered from institutional stagnancy long enough. The time for mindless memorization of someone else's creeds and doctrines is over. The time for breaking the chains, and setting the captives free, has come.