JUST ONE THING
Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying…
But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ (Luke 10. 39,40)
Christ Consciousness
“ONE thing is necessary.” Christ calls us to meet him in our interior life. It is a call to each of us and it is something of which we are all capable. Our interior life is natural to us in fact. Our earthly life begins with it in the womb and we will undoubtedly return to it as we die.
Ironically, since the Age of Enlightenment, Western lifestyles have led the people away from interior space and from spiritual depth. Sadly, the churches have been complicit in this, however unwittingly. A moral Christ has been taught really since the Roman Empire decided to bring Christianity to its centre. This Christ of morality was then adopted by successive empires and used as a means of social education and of control. This Christ is a metaphor for a moral code which the people strive to live up to, inevitably falling short and so are compelled to do things to either make up for their failures or to feel and show that they are in fact on the road to being good Christians. Perhaps this has been an unavoidable trade-off due to Christianity’s acceptance as state religion by governments and maybe it has even been a necessary stage in church history.
However, this moral Christ is not the Jesus of history and not the Christ of the New Testament nor of the recorded experiences of mystics.
Jesus is not a Christ of morality. He is the Christ of consciousness. The story of Mary and Martha is but one of the many illustrations of this in the New Testament. The teachings and miracles of Jesus are about opening the consciousness of people to the Living God. God is not some abstract being out there in space or on a cloud but the indwelling Real in all people and all things, in the microcosm and in macrocosmic reality, what some religions call The Is or Ultimate Reality.
There is I sense an awakening in the world right now. The materialist narratives of capitalism and elitist government are collapsing before our eyes. The social models of the past few hundred years are becoming obsolete. Let’s pray the churches will now help reconnect the awakening ones and those still sleeping to the Christ who says, “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part…”
Tangnefedd nawr, i bob un.
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 