The thing about mystery is that we don't "get it"...
"The mystery of the Crucified" that Paul speaks of-- in I Corinthians--isn't a statement about Jesus being victimized by the Jews and Romans, or is it a pro-Christian rallying cry, but it is a deep and meaningful metaphor for the universal pattern of disorder inside of order, tragedy inside of holiness, surprise inside of consistency, the last being first, death inside of life, and the fly that seems to get in the ointment. There is a universal pattern of paradox that is as old as the Hindu scriptures, the aphorisms of Confucius and the Books of Exodus and Job. ---excerpted from Rohr, "The Naked Now"In science, chaos theory is mentioned. Things disintegrate, and integrate.
God is One, and within that Oneness is light and dark, life and death, goodness and its opposite. His view is over all and in all. The whole is expressed in the yin/yang of the Tao. In the simple naming of himself as yhwh~~"I am".
We are trained as humans to think in a binary way.
Either/or, yes/no, black/white, light/dark, wrong/right; but being in Christ is another consciousness, of unitive vision, of the whole. All of reality. The wheat and the tares. The church and the secular. The holy and the unholy.
The Romans (and their Jewish collaborators) thought at the time they murdered Jesus that they were "done with" this revolutionary "king of the jews". Now they could get things back to normal. But it actually meant the beginning of the end of their occupation of Palestine, and the end of society as they knew it. All in the fullness of time.
I love the man Jesus who became the Christ. In his death He participated as the central figure in a process which gave life to those who would accept it. Life from death. Loss begat gain. To the world he was a convicted criminal, a death row victim.
I am not one who fully understands all the inherent meaning- but, again, that is why the Apostle called Christ's crucifixion a mystery.
But I can accept it, and in this truth I find great solace...although, I must confess, I don't "get" it.
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