There is an offer that was made to the world
2000 years ago by an itinerant carpenter who happened to believe he could
converse with Reality itself. The man was Jesus. The Reality he named was Abba.
Jesus faced down the temptation to do glitzy
miracles. He thought they were offensive and tacky. Instead, he spent his days
doing two simple things: forgiving and healing people. Some legends suggest
that he did some strenuous miracles. He fed a lot of people and he appeared on
the surface of a stormy lake. But there are a lot of legends about Jesus. The
healing and forgiving were for real and the proof lies in the bare-bones story,
first set down for posterity in what we call the Gospel of Mark.
In that story, Jesus began by suggesting that
things would become heavenly if people would honestly repent of the harm they
had done. He called this the good news. (Mark 1)
Jesus then used his abilities to heal, with
one important caveat. Most of those he healed were required to believe, to have
faith. He actually suggested that faith was intrinsic to the process.
When you examine Mark for the reason Jesus
was executed you will discover two major reasons:
He wanted to end the legalism and hypocrisy
of religion.
And he insisted that he and his followers
possessed the power to forgive and to heal.
Knowing his fate was sealed, Jesus gave his followers the Lords Prayer. It
is the only prayer he left us. It is right up there with Hamlet's most famous
soliloquy. I like it in the form I have cast it in. It has twelve lines in
three stanzas and can be sung to myriad melodies.
Abba whose home
in heaven is
Hallowed and holy
is your name
Let your realm come
your will be done
Till earth and heaven
are the same
Give us this day
our daily bread
Forgive the wrongs
that we have done
As we forgive
those who do wrong
Lead us not into
temptation
Deliver us
from evil Lord
And guide us safely
to your shore
Yours is the power
to heal and mend
Yours is the glory
evermore
Now what do you find here that is genuinely
unusual? Two big things. The name Abba
which stands for Dad, Father, friend. This is the direct opposite of the
vindictive, side-taking deity whose MO is to pit people against one another and
ethics be damned. You also find a
contract, an oral pledge, a covenant, a recipe for harmonious existence for
all.
Now I do not believe this Jesus cared a whit
for establishing a church that would have a creed and build large buildings and
conduct wars and play politics. Jesus's Sermon on the Mount is directly opposed
to this list of ecclesiastical practices. Jesus is much closer to the one that Neitzsche
described in The Antichrist as the only true Christian who ever existed. This
Jesus had only one demand and he put it in this prayer.
Forgive the wrongs
that we have done
As we forgive
those who do wrong
There it is, folks. Plain as day. A contract.
If you repent you will be forgiven.
If there is going to be any cure for the
wrongs of life, there must be universal repentance. And repentance, as this
prayer makes plain, is the only way anyone can be forgiven.
We do not get better because others pray for
us. We get better because we pray for ourselves. We get forgiven because we
seek forgiveness. This prayer is about the way reality works.
To drive this point home is to provide the
most compelling reason why this philosophy is on the mark. Consider the
reality. Me or you and the wrongs we've done. The people we've wronged and
everyone else who do wrong. And? And? Abba. Or Reality. Or I-am. We are saying
that binary has not, cannot and never will cut it. Only when we interpose a
third element do we have a practical effect. A real effect. Only there do we
touch the only way to infinity. It takes
thinking this through to perceive that when we say "think in threes"
we are proposing not an option but a necessity on the way to becoming human.
To suggest that everyone repeat this prayer
or some equivalent three times a day sounds like the most unrealistic request
of this millennium. But I have no hesitation in adding that it would make all
the difference.
We can either have a repetition of the wrongs
of the past or an evolution toward a future based on decency, hope and mutual
care.