A Protest Against Cremation

 In the recent past, I went to a funeral of a Roman Catholic who was cremated. After the funeral, the remains were placed in an ornamental structure on the church grounds. The amount of detail that was put into the design of the structure must have cost several hundreds of thousands. It was very impressive. After seeing it, I couldn’t help but think of a Hindu phrase I once heard, “JAY MA SMASHANA KALI” (Victory to Mother Kali of the Cremation Ground).

From my perspective what I experienced at that Catholic church amounted to being at a shrine dedicated to death, to Kali.  I am very much aware that my Church allows people to be cremated. I am also aware that there are some circumstances where there is no option. However, the people using this death shrine were paying up to 10k to be there. Most of them are from some of the wealthiest families in the parish. It would make sense to me if this was on church grounds to respect people who had no options other than cremation. However, what the church was doing is a contradiction to the belief in the Resurrection.

In many of the religions of the world, the cremation of the body is the last bridge to be burned in order to be reborn into a new life. This is especially true for the Hindus who believe that the body is more or less a vehicle to get them to their next life. I guess the same could be said for most modern Christians because for them the body is something that has no lasting value. Like it is for Hindus, all that matters for the modern Christian is the spirit, which moves on to what they call heaven.

I’m not sure when in the history of my religion we became like some of the other religions of the world. We used to believe in the resurrection of the body. The burial of the body was the last proclamation of our belief in the gospel. It's where we could say, “We are coming back here”. We even have saints who verified this belief. Their bodies remain incorrupt and are awaiting the day of resurrection. For the incorrupt saints, they believed that they would be coming back here, and their evidence is a witness against those errors that we find ourselves in today.   

If you look at the gospels our Lord never taught Hinduism. He preached about the resurrection of the body and of the Heavenly Kingdom that was coming here to Earth. There was no teaching from him about moving on to the next life. There was no going to heaven when you die. He never taught what most churches preach today. Our spirit does indeed go into our Lord’s care after we die. However, it goes into his care in order to be returned to the body. Just like we see with the Theotokos in the Icon of the Dormition. Could you imagine what would have happened if the apostles cremated her? The symbolism of the Resurrection would have been destroyed!

With our bodies, we are building the kingdom of God on Earth. As he taught us, we proclaim the good news to the Creation (Mark 16:15). One day he is going to finish what we started in our bodies. He is going to renew the earth and renew whatever elements of us that remain here. He is not going to be starting over from scratch. We will be renewed, not rebuilt. We will experience the same thing our Lord experienced in his resurrection.  This is why it’s essential that we stop burning our bodies. Heaven is going to be here on earth in our body. It’s what the body was made for. It’s what our Lord will make whole again. This is why our last act as Christians should be to bury our bodies and not to destroy them. 

The Irrational Voice of God in Scripture

 I did not want to believe in the bible when I began my spiritual journey. If you read stuff like Numbers 31 God seems like a Viking deity when he commands the Hebrews to rape and pillage the Midianites. In addition to that, there are numerous examples in the OT that make God look evil. Based on these things I really struggled to become a believer.  However, due to some spiritual experiences, I came to the point where I was willing to try to understand the message in scripture.

 

I think it was about 25 years into my studies of the bible, both personal and academic, that I found myself becoming an atheist. The academic arguments out there that the God of the Bible is evil are difficult to refute. In dealing with these arguments, the problem that I had was that I could not deny my spiritual experiences and in one of those experiences the being that I encountered identified itself with the bible. As a result, I continued to struggle with the bible and tried to rationalize what seemed irrational.

 

The big breakthrough that I had that helped me to make sense of everything was learning about the 2 powers in heaven theory. There was this Jewish Scholar in the 70s, Dr. Alan Segal, who discovered that there was a belief in early Judaism that taught there were 2 versions of God in the bible. His research helped explain why God would often in the OT switch from the first person to the third person in the biblical text.  His teaching was better modified by the biblical scholar Dr. Michael Heiser. Basically, there was the belief that there was God in heaven and a version of God on earth, God’s vice-regent or representative. This belief eventually became a heresy for the Jews by the time of the 2^nd century. It became a heresy because Christians were using it to justify that Jesus was God on earth.

 

Another breakthrough came by learning about how the early Hebrews understood theosis. I speak at great length about that here in the link: ( Theosis: An Introduction ). Much of what I learned about that is to the credit of Dr. Margret Barker. Basically, when the ancient priests, prophets, or kings, would enter into the Holy of Holies they would become a god or sons of god as they were called. These people were venerated as gods on earth and what they said was considered to be God’s words. So all those, “thus saith the Lord” were basically those people conveying their experience of God and on God’s behalf.

 

I do not doubt that some of the OT prophets spoke on behalf of the Lord, I accept the canon and teachings of my church on scripture, but it should be obvious what’s not of God. Sometimes you need a shovel in trying to make such judgments. However, as I pointed out in my theosis presentation one of the things that these so-called voices of God have in common is that they are all dead. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not dead, he is the real thing, the true voice of the Father. Consequently, I try to approach what I read now in the OT from his perspective. He had no trouble shoveling through it. The greatest example I believe is how he dealt with the woman caught in adultery. God commanded such people to be destroyed, at least Moses’ voice as God said so.  

 

I am writing all this because I hope it helps people to keep believing in the scripture. In the academic world that I knew I had seen many people fall away from God because of their studies. I also would have been someone who fell away if I did not stay true to my experience. Thankfully, the truth was out there, and I hope this truth that I shared will help others in the same way it helped me.

A Homily on Gender Ideology

 (Formerly a Homily for the Sunday of Myrrh-bearing Women: Mark 15:43–16:8)

In the gospel that we heard today, there was a group of women who wanted to anoint the body of our lord with perfumed oils as it was custom. To their surprise the tomb was empty. They were also surprised to meet a man in the tomb who told them about the resurrection. This person also instructed them to proclaim the good news to the apostles.

 

Some of the Fathers of our tradition, when teaching about this gospel, wanted to emphasize that the first people to hear and proclaim the good news about the resurrection were women. They did this because throughout history women were not always treated with the dignity that they deserve. As we know, this continues to be the case in our modern times. The difference now is, we are being told by certain people in our society that being a woman is a subjective experience.  

 

Many Years ago, when he was in this world, St. John Paul II wrote a long series of teachings that are  prophetic for our time. They are prophetic for what women are facing today. These teachings became known as the Theology of the Body and in them, he destroys the idea that being a woman, or a man, is a subjective experience. He does this by demonstrating that our genders are given to us by God. According to him, our gender is the most sacred part about us. It is sacred because it is a gift to us to make God known, not just ourselves known.

 

The Saint wanted to assure us, as scripture teaches, that we are created in the image of God. If you recall, in the book of Genesis, God told Adam and Eve, after they had been made in the image and likeness of God, to be fruitful and multiply. This was not just a call for procreation, it was a call to continue God’s presence in the world. The saint teaches that this is accomplished in us by becoming biological or spiritual mothers and fathers.  When we fail to accomplish this, when there is no longer a difference between a man or a woman, when that truth about us becomes subjective or irrelevant, then the image of God in us is not seen. The presence that God wants to make known through us to the world becomes obscured.

 

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says that God is beyond gender and is a mystery that our minds cannot comprehend. What St. John Paul II was teaching us is that our gender reveals and makes known the mystery of what God is. Our Byzantine Fathers in reminding us that it was to women that the gospel was first proclaimed hoped that we would see God in women. In doing so, Saint John Paul II said that one of the ways to do this is to get to know the Theotokos, for she is, according to him, the face of the Holy Spirit.

 

Consider for a moment what the saint is saying, the Theotokos is everything, in her gender, that God is but as a created human person, as he said the face of the Holy Spirit, the face of God. As he teaches, she in her gender reveals what God is in the fullest most complete way she can. If this is the case with her, what does that say about what we can do?

 

There was this somewhat famous movie producer who was in prison in the 80s for drug-related crimes. When he was there, He said that he did not think it was possible for him to ever quit his criminal lifestyle. At that time, a future saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, came to a liturgy at his prison. When he saw her there, he said that he saw God. This caused him to change his life. He never thought it would be possible to be where he is at today, but this image of God in her altered the course of his life. Like with what Saint Teresa did, God is calling us today to alter lives in the beauty of what we are. For a man this means being like the greatest man that ever was, our Lord Jesus Christ and for a woman it means being like the greatest woman that ever was, the Theotokos. In doing so we will change this world. 

The Gospel We Never Hear

 In the Book of Enoch, there is a story where Enoch traveled through the spiritual realm and came upon the prison of the spirits that corrupted humanity. It says that there Enoch proclaimed their judgment. The Apostle Peter taught that Christ did the same thing. As he teaches, our Lord went to the spirits imprisoned and preached to them after he died on the cross (1Peter 3:19). If we remain true to the Book of Enoch, the content of what our Lord preached must have been about how these spirits were defeated. They were the ones responsible for our corruption, they had the power of death, and even though imprisoned they still wielded this power over us.

When Enoch made his judgment against these spirits he would speak of their doom. However, it would be Christ that would deliver their doom. He did so by taking away the source of their power. In his own body he took upon himself the source of our corruption. He gave his body over to their power of death and by his death he ended their power. He did so by the resurrection of his body, a body that was now raised in immortality.  It is in this body that he now promises that we will have the same immortality, if we follow him, which ultimately ends the power that these spirits had over us.

When we are baptized the scripture teaches that we are buried with Christ. As we go under the waters we ritualistically participate in his death. We symbolically die with him, and we also symbolically go to those spirits in prison to proclaim their defeat. When we come out of the water, we receive what Christ has, the power to overcome death. The Apostle Paul called this power a down payment (Ephesians 1:14). It’s a downpayment because it will achieve for us what we have experienced ritualistically in our baptism, which is a resurrected body. However, we still need to die and be raised. We also still need to go before those spirits and proclaim their defeat.

I don’t know how these teachings about our future hope became obscured by teachings about going to heaven or hell when we die. What Jesus taught in the gospel was the resurrection. The alternative was being in bondage to the god of this world, one of those spirits. He even says that at the last judgment the accursed will end up in the prison that was made for those spirits (Matthew 25:41).  There was no teaching in the gospel on avoiding hell and getting to heaven. The teaching was how to get ready for the coming kingdom on earth or what happens when you choose not to be a part of it.

With all this focus on going to heaven when we die our Lord’s teaching on the resurrection becomes bonus material. We do know that we will be with the Lord when we die but we are not with him to remain in a heavenly realm.  We are with him after death for the purpose of being resurrected back here. Our “heaven” will be on earth. In addition, we also know that until that time we must proclaim the defeat of those spirits in prison, which continues after we die. It’s a great mystery but it’s one I think we need to get right. 

The Maternity of God

 On the holy mountain, Moses was commanded to make a copy of what he had seen in heaven. As God told him, “see that you make it all [exactly] according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain”. What he made would be the blueprints for the future temple that Solomon would build. This temple was a copy of what was seen in heaven. We are given the description of what that heavenly temple looked like in the Book of Revelation. What’s interesting is that the description of the heavenly temple is preceded by a sign, which was a woman who gave birth to a divine king. 

It should be no coincidence that Solomon as well as the other Davidic Kings considered themselves to be divine kings. As it says in Psalm 2:7  “The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”. Obviously, their divinity is not the same as our Lord’s. What gave them their status was based on a copy of the real thing. What then is the real thing? If it was a woman in revelation who gave birth to a divine king, where is she in the OT? The answer should be in understanding how this woman is connected to the temple.

The fathers teach us that what was seen in the heavenly temple was connected to the maternity of the mother of our Lord. She is even called the Ark. I think this connection is best understood by our feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple. As our tradition teaches, Mary was led to the holy place to be nourished there by the angels in order to become herself the “holy of holies” of God, the living sanctuary and temple of the Divine child who was to be born in her. If she was the true “holy of holies” then the one that Moses must have seen in heaven was her. If this is the case, the OT temple must have also been designed after her, designed for giving birth to divine children.

You could easily argue that even in the OT temple design there are symbols that represent maternity. However, there was something that took place in the temple that empowered those symbols, which was the Shekinah. This was the glory that filled that temple, the glory that gave birth to Sons of God, and the words to describe that were feminine. Even the Hebrew word for Spirit was feminine. Unfortunately, this understanding has become scandalous for many religious people of our time despite the facts. Nevertheless, you can see this same imagery in the NT where the Spirit of God comes upon the Theotokos and she gives birth to our Lord. The temple imagery is reproduced in her. She is the temple, and the Spirit is the Glory that fills her. Again, this imagery is purely maternal.

St. Maximilian Colby as well as his contemporary the great theologian Sergius Bulgakov believed that Mary was the face or Icon of the Holy Spirit. This is helpful in understanding the maternity of God. Like the temple, Mary was the created body for God to give birth to a Son. In this understanding, we can also find the primitive image of the trinity that was in OT temple worship. God/Father would give birth to his Divine Son through the Temple\Mother (the body of the Spirit). This understanding makes a great deal of sense in how we now become children of God. The Father makes us his children through his new temple, the Church, which we also call Mother. If the Church is a mother and also the embodiment of Spirit what does that make God?

Uniting the Liturgy to the Real World

 February 1st begins what the pagans call Imbolc.  It’s a celebration of the starting phase of spring when the light starts catching up with the dark. It is when the sun begins its journey north over the equator. Spring eventually starts when the light and dark are equal, the equinox, around March 21, which is around the time of Pascha. The climax of Imbolc is February 2 when we celebrate the feast day of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple. It should also be of no surprise that we bless candles on this feast day.

 

If you look carefully at all our Byzantine feasts, you will discover that each one is in some way connected to the natural cycles of the Creation. This might be of great surprise to many people who celebrate these feasts. It was for me for some time. In my experience, the liturgy was just the way to get out of here. It was something that had no other purpose than to get me to heaven. It was not something that brought God here into the Real World. More than anything it was a way to escape. Likewise, my ministry as a Christian unfortunately became a way to help others escape. In the end, this understanding made me miserable. I was suffering because God was not here and I wanted to be where God was.

 

Discovering the role of the liturgy in the Creation will change one’s whole understanding of worship and ministry. It really should be of no coincidence that our Lord said, “preach the gospel to all of Creation” (Mark 16:15). It should also be of no coincidence that the apostle Paul said that the Eucharist was this preaching(1 Corinthians 11:26). The Eucharist is preaching because it proclaims that the Creation was made for union with divinity. The Eucharist is the union of the created with the uncreated. The bread and wine become what they were intended to be and when we consume these gifts, we become what we were intended to be.  This is what the purpose of our worship and ministry should be. Worship and ministry are nothing less than preparing the Creation for its union with God.

 

This Real World that we live in was created for God. Its destiny is heaven.  In the beginning, we were created as beings that were to finish what God had started here. As we know, we went astray from that purpose and likewise, this Real World that we live in followed us. Nevertheless, we never lost our purpose for being created and neither did this real world that we live in. Our Lord Jesus by becoming one of us and through the events of his life restores our purpose and he renews the purpose for what this world was intended for. This is the reason for our whole liturgical cycle and every time we celebrate a liturgy we bring this Real World back to its destiny.