- Joined
- Jul 13, 2015
- Messages
- 19,194
- Location
- Western Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Religious Affiliation
- Catholic
- Political Affiliation
- Moderate
- Marital Status
- Single
- Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
- Yes
In the west we have one central myth, true to history or not does not matter as far as its teaching power is concerned. Our great central myth is this:
A man had died, risen from the dead, and ascended bodily into heaven. He took human nature to heaven and so raised human nature to a height never conceived by any man or woman before. This story is our own story, the story of the elevation of humanity from earthly existence to heavenly existence in the same elevated state as their Lord now possessed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is the divination of humanity, the way in which the children of God share God's nature as much as a creature can.
- The creator of all beings, who is alone in being completely self sufficient and utterly ineffable, who created all things and sustains them all, humbled himself and descended from Heaven to Earth to be born as a human being.
- And having been born he was brought up in poverty among a people subjugated by the greatest world power of their day.
- He learned a trade - carpentry - from his step father.
- As he matured he became a rabi, a teacher, and started his mission to teach the people of his land what the creator of everything required of them. But his teaching offended the religious authorities of his land, the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Scribes who taught the people the Law that God had given centuries before through the prophet Moses.
- Soon the religious leaders of the people were so incensed and offended by his teaching that they planned how to have him killed.
- They acted and had him arrested, beaten, flogged, and crucified - a brutal and very cruel form of execution used by the Romans in that time - and he died.
- At his death the religious leaders were well pleased, the Roman rulers were a little troubled but not much, and his followers were scattered and in deep grief.
- His followers had forgotten what he taught them about his coming death; they did not recall his teaching about his own resurrection. So they hid themselves in Jerusalem, the capital city of their land, and spent their time grieving over his death and wondering what would come next.
- Some women who were his followers went to his tomb to do what was needed for his body in burial. They found the tomb opened and empty. They were afraid and had no idea what happened.
- He was there, in the gardens around the tombs tending to something that made one of the women mistake him for a gardener. She asked him what had happened to the Lord, where was his body, because she had come to prepare his body properly for the tomb.
- He spoke to her, and she realised it was him, her Lord, the man who was crucified and dead was alive and talking to her.
- She went back to the hiding place in Jerusalem and told the men who were his followers. After some discussion and a run to the tomb and having returned to the hiding place the Lord appeared to the men in their hiding place. And they believed and remembered what he had said about his resurrection.
- Some weeks later their Lord ascended to heaven. They saw him no more, except in dreams and visions. But something of very greatest significance had happened.
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