Dr. John Young                                                                                                                      4-8-07

Jesus: Alive & Well, or Evaporated?

Evaporate means to change quickly into a vapor, to take the juice out of, to pass away into a thin film that coats other substances. I am concerned that many in the world who are dedicated Christians have dried Jesus out until he is simply a thin shell upon the body of the Church. They have turned Jesus into a ghostly vapor, and in so doing, Jesus, the human being who realized that all people are children of God, who argued passionately that everyone could have a personal and intimate relationship with Creation, has been diminished into an invisible ghost.

          By elevating Christ into perfection and arguing that only Christians are saved, they have become hypocrites. They have become those who falsely and mistakenly throw the first stones in our imperfect, but magnificent, world.  They reject the beautiful world that God has created; they deny the natural laws by which evolution proceeds. They turn their backs on the facts that Jesus embraced all people and particularly argued that the outcasts, the foreigners, the pagans like the Good Samaritan were our neighbors and our teachers. They have found Christ and lost Jesus. They believe themselves to be saved and in so doing they betray inclusiveness, the love, and the clear focus on this life and this world that Jesus lived.

          So, I wish to announce to you that Jesus is, in fact, alive and well. I find the Christian church so tarnished, so caught in their false idolatry of a mythic Christ that I do not call myself a Christian, but a Jesusian because I am honored to be a follower of this man who lived and died to help us understand that each human being is a child of God, a unique instrument of Creation, and that the best of each of us will be saved and become a portion of eternal evolution. I do not revere Jesus alone, but honor and revere many prophets, women and men throughout history that have helped to make a better world, a more sustainable planet, a more loving home not only for their neighbors but for everyone.

          Jesus can live in you whenever you are brave enough to stand up for justice, to live with love, to nurture a sustainable world and a compassionate humanity. Use his teachings and his life to inspire your own efforts and to remind you that the love that counts is the love which grows with those who you think that you oppose, that nurtures those who appear to be strangers to you. Everyone must become our neighbor in this shrinking planet.

 We need to realize that the goal of life is not simply our personal comfort, security or material well-being. Our goal is to find ways to help the world to bloom and to be sustained. Our goals are to find ways to help humanity to become a kin-dom, a community of spiritual equals who become wise enough to stop killing and violating one another and to learn how to share their gifts in compassion and mutual respect. The way we revere Jesus is to lift up his teachings of inclusivity; for the kin-dom is now, and love needs to be testified to by our own lives. This is the heaven of which Jesus spoke. It is here and now when you make it so. Christ and portions of the Christian church may be evaporated with other outworn human idolatries, but Jesus is alive and well, when we do deeds of courageous justice, when we learn to sustain the world rather than spoil it, and when we live with love.