The Cosmic Christ and the Earthly Jesus:  In our very Bones and Blood Fear in their belly, fear in their heads, fear that had warped their own behaviour and betrayed the best of them.  They could not find anyone or thing to trust.  They feared joining their leader on a cross, being hunted down and crucified by the Roman Guard or the Temple police.  They had witnessed the terror of death on a cross. Their friend and teacher, a man whose behaviour and acts finally brought him to the attention of the secular and religious authorities had brought them not into the glory of triumph but to the horror of a slow death by having hands and feet pieced by nails and being hung in the air. The symbol of dying with your feet not touching the earth was itself demeaning in the culture of Jesus’ time.  It symbolized that the one crucified was not even worthy of touching the earth of his own ancestors.  He was declared by such an act to be an outcast, not merely guilty of a criminal offence, but unworthy even of inclusion as a member of the human community, not worthy even of the soil at our feet.  The death by crucifixion was ugly in the extreme; sheer physical exhaustion takes over, and the victim dies by suffocation and exposure.  There is nothing beautiful about the cross.  Jesus, Yeashoa, the Galilean rabbi, itinerant teacher, healer, miracle worker, and prophet, was executed by the occupying forces; the threat to his followers was clear.  Would you or I have the courage to support Jesus openly in the days after his crucifixion?  Did not his crucifixion simply bring an end to his movement?  Can we blame the disciples for meeting in secret? John’s Gospel portrays the fear of the disciples in their gathering behind locked doors.  How long would they have gathered in secret? How long would they have gathered in secret? How long would they remain tmotivated only by fear?  They have kept the door locked presumably to keep them from being exposed to the authorities.  They are immobilized, huddling together, paralyzed in despair and hopelessness.  Suddenly, Jesus is there.  The Gospel writer does not explain how Jesus appears, he is simply there.  He came as a stranger, so the writer implies, for the disciples required some proof that the one before them was indeed Jesus.  He has them touch his wounds, the marks in his hands and side; the deep holes and scars of the crucifixion and humiliation at the hands of Rome.  There is a common thread through many of the resurrection stories: Jesus appears in the midst of those closest to him, his friends and those who love him, and they do not recognize him.  Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener until he speaks her name.  On the Emmaus Road the two disciples do not recognize him until the meal at the end of their journey.  Fishing, Peter and John do not recognize him on the shore until after they have caught the large school of fish he indicates on the starboard side of the boat.  And each time they recognize him, each time they receive his presence, he soon disappears from view.  Once they have located him, it is as though his presence is no longer  located just in physical reality, but has already moved on and out into the world, out into the whole cosmos. One of the striking things about the Gospel of John is its use of Greek philosophical categories like “logos” and “cosmos”.   In the other Gospels, the figure of Jesus is viewed as a Jewish rabbi or a Galilean itinerant miracle worker and healer, but in John’s Gospel Jesus is viewed as a Cosmic Christ, a Divine presence in human form, a creative transformation that is known not merely in one age or one time, but is universally present, is resurrected and found in human experience beyond a particular cultural framework or place.  This is not to say that John argues that the earthly and historical Jesus is irrelevant, or is not worth considering.  Rather, the earthly Jesus is the place where we can meet the Cosmic Christ and thereby identify the marks of Christ in our experience and time.  And even more, let go of our need to enclose Jesus and Christ within our own doctrines and religious expectations.  The cosmic Christ, once recognized in the particularity and all the earthiness of human experience, disappears from view; so, we cannot capture or contain this Christ.  Although Christ is known in all the pain and earthiness of human life, Christ is always a transcendent love that calls us beyond ourselves and beyond what we know.  In this way, as creative transcendence, Christ always breaks open human experience beyond our certainties – religious, political and cultural --  to a transcending grace, a transcending possibility and a larger hope.  John over and again uses the Greek word Pistis (Pistis) to speak of the response that Christ calls forth.  This word is not translated best by our word belief; belief is usually founded in a doctrine, a formula or a particular creed.  John uses Pistis to mean “trust”.  To trust and to have confidence in the Christ is not to believe in a list, or a certain structur, but rather to be willing to follow after him,  to live open to him, and to live in the same compassionate and justice bearing way that he did. The resurrections scenes in John can be a pleasant abstraction, a way to separate ourselves from the pain, the brokenness and the messiness of human life.  But John makes clear from the beginning of his Gospel, where he speaks of the Divine Logos, the Cosmic Christ, known from the beginning of time until its end; this Logos enters not an abstract body, but into the very flesh and blood of human experience.  And here in these resurrection stories,we see the very wounds, the blood and pain of the crucifixion as marks that bring the disciples into a deep awareness of Christ's presence, of the Cosmic Christ, a God who dares to enter into the whole of human life. Thomas is urged to touch the wounds of Christ, not to look away, or to believe in an abstract and disincarnate principle, a doctrine or a  feeling of Holiness.  Rather, Thomas is asked to touch and know the very brokenness, the wounds, the flesh and the blood, the messiness of a human encounter.  When he has touched these wounds, known the blood and the tears, he can trust again.  John goes on to speak of those who have such trust in Christ without this particular seeing and touching, but his point is not that we do not need to be rooted and know the messiness of human life.  Rather, he is telling us that Christ can be known beyond the time and place of the early disciples, and beyond the earthly Jesus; the cosmic Christ can be known in every culture and through every human encounter.  The Cosmic Christ known through the resurrection is incarnate in all times and places.  The earthly Jesus and the particular resurrection experiences of the wounds inflicted at his crucifixion speak of a Cosmic Christ that is eternally resurrected in the flesh and blood of all human cultures, times and places.  But, as mystic and orthodox theologian Archbishop Lazar puts it, “There is no access to God except through the truly human. "      A very wise child psychiatrist and theologian in his own right, Robert Coles recognized that the very neat and obsessively clean children he met in his practice were often amongst the most troubled, for so often they were unable to trust in human touch, or their own human experience.  They were trained to ignore, look away, hide, disguise and deny their very humanness.  Having them begin to play, to allow themselves to feel the joy of moving and touching the earth, getting messy and even dirty in the process was a sign that the deep wounds, hurts and lack of trust that they knew was beginning to be overcome.  “Good parents tend to be a little messy.  At least their grooming isn’t perfect, because they are aware that the touch of a child and the touching back of a parent are done without any concern for how it may spoil clothing or makeup, or take time away from learning "proper" behaviour.   The Cosmic Christ is known in a Jesus who embraced all the messiness and pain of life, and an intimate God who is like the good parent Coles speaks of, someone concerned to love and care beyond any expectations of cultural or social propriety, correct doctrine or religious practice.  God, as John's Gospel puts it, is Love known to us in the very flesh and blood of human experience. The last scenes of the Movie "Godspell" offer such a view of the resurrection and the cosmic Christ, earthy, playful and yet transcendent.  We have seen Jesus through the film as a playful and caring clown, one who encourages his followers to loving play, to compassionate foolishness, and to an earthy justice.  In the closing sequence, Jesus is crucified on a chain link fence—the image of all that separates and keeps humans from full life in the human community.  The troop of his clown-like disciples carry Jesus’ body out into the streets of New York City.  This is the first time since the beginning of the film when the city is shown as a populated area—most of the film has been shot in abandoned streets and junk yards. The camera at first focuses on his body and the disciples, but then it pulls away so that we see the faces of humanity, teaming through the streets of New York—we them in all their many moods, hues and colours, nations and cultures.  The camera in fact moves out even further, to encompass the whole city; it implies that Jesus has risen into the life of the whole cosmos.  Jesus is revealed in resurrection as the cosmic Christ.  I am forever stirred by the last scenes of this Jesus movie of the early seventies, because it captures both sides of the gospel:  Jesus as an earthy, sometimes disturbing, Holy Fool.  The Holy Fool, like Lear’s fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear, always speaks the truth, sometimes using comic and even satiric wit, foolish as it may sound and whatever the consequences might be.  This is precisely what Jesus did in his parables and even in his healing acts. His healing acts and his way of welcoming children, women and outcasts to join him at table aimed to heal the individual and also to point out that healing of the sort he announced meant breaking through prejudices, presuppositions, injustices, community fears, and the opposition of religious and political powers. Christ is raised, disturbing us by asking us to touch the very wounds of our humanity—to confess our own wounds, and to see and know the wounds of others.  Christ is raised not as an abstraction, but as the Cosmic Lover who embraces the whole of humanity, and caresses with care the whole of creation.  Christ is risen not in religious forms and doctrines, nor in any formula or rule of etiquette.  Christ is risen in human flesh and blood, in the messiness of our human lives.  The wounded Holy Fool stands among us, calling us to be unafraid of entering into the fullness of human experience, unafraid even when there seems no way to hope but through death, no way to wholeness but through loss.  Christ crucified, bearing all the wounds of human injustice, hatred, fear and the obsession for control, power and greed.  God’s way is foolish to the powers of this world.  But such foolishness is Joy, the Joy of the Cosmic Christ incarnate in all human becoming.  Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed!

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