2022/03/21

31. "My Church" of Jesus

In the previous article, we discussed how the ''my church'' of Jesus came into being as three Marys. Jesus mentioned the ''my church'' when he taught his disciples on what foundation he would build it. Jesus first asked his disciples, "But who do you say that I am?"(Matthew 16:15). Peter replied, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). Because Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:17-18), the ''my church'' of Jesus is to be built on the words of Peter's reply so to speak. Therefore, the church, established on his words as its foundation, must also have the words. If we think about it, the words Peter replied are a combination of the message of the angel who appeared to Joseph in his dream for the first time, "He will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21), and the message of the angel given to Mary: "Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Thus, the Holy Family can be taken as a model for the ''my church'' of Jesus. Because Jesus was God, the Holy Family that received Jesus as a son had been prepared in the likeness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, of whom Jesus spoke. It is also why the ''my church'' of Jesus was born as the three Marys. In addition, as Jesus said, ''Blessed,'' Jesus' question and Peter's answer are to be connected to the new space in linkage with the Book of Revelation. In our age, in which online communities and organisations that are connected to each other worldwide are everyday things, if the ''my church'' of Jesus appears in the likeness of God, modelled on the Holy Family, it will provide us with the chance to make the biblical world real and to inject the image of God into the highly information-oriented society. The ''my church'' of Jesus, who draws all people on the cross, plays a significant role in being a community where visitors can see and experience God in reality. If so, Christians will be aware that they need to form themselves towards the new role Jesus has brought for the new men and women. We will continue this theme in the next issue.

Maria K. M.

 2022/03/14

30. The Three Marys

The four Gospels each tell the last words of Jesus on the cross. However, examining their contents, we notice that these words can be arranged in chronological order as follows: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34) → "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46) → "It is finished" (John 19:30). It is as if the authors had written their Gospels with an arrangement towards the event, "It is finished." On the cross, Jesus was waiting for the Father to draw the parties to formalise the new covenant¹ he had presented to the Apostles the night before because no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him.² Amid his suffering, Jesus' pleading cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is superseded by the words, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit", like when Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Soon, the people, drawn by the Father, gathered by the cross. Individuals identifiable here are Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary, the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene and the "beloved disciple."³ This disciple is John the Apostle, judging from other accounts in the Gospels. Jesus tied Mary, his mother, and John the Apostle, standing by the cross, by a parent-child bond. And from that hour, John the Apostle took Jesus' mother into his home. This action made the Apostle the legitimate heir to the authority of Jesus’ mother, who had undertaken the Mystery of the Incarnation.⁴ The other two Marys, who witnessed the whole course of the events, became witnesses to this fact. At the same time, together with Jesus’ mother and the Apostle, they bore witness to the Mystery of the Cross being finished. "It is finished" signifies the conclusion of the new covenant and the fulfilment of the prophecy.⁵ The Mystery of the Incarnation brought about the Holy Family with Mary's consent and by Joseph's taking her into his home. The Mystery of the Cross brought the "my church" (Matthew 16:18) into being with the consent of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and by the Apostle’s taking her into his home from that hour. Because the name of the Apostle is concealed here, we can say that the "my church" was born as the three Marys. The blood and water that flowed from Jesus' side fell on them, purifying them and becoming the sign by which danger would pass over them.⁶ The Holy Spirit would descend upon the "my church" thus protected.

Reference: 1. Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, 2. John 6:44, 3. John 19:25-26, 4. this blog #18, 5. Jeremiah 31:31-34, 6. Exodus 12:1-7

Maria K. M.　

 2022/03/07

29. The Apostles

Let us continue our previous discussion. When the Pharisees asked Jesus why Moses had commanded people to give a certificate of divorce and to put their wife away, he replied, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8). The fact that divorce was of Moses' discretion tells us that marriage was a human-made social institution in which the difficulties of the relationship between a man and a woman were already embedded.¹ Jesus was sent to the earth carrying the new role for the new men and women, who would directly receive the work of God's creation. So, he advised his disciples, "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it."² As appears in the Acts of the Apostles,³ at that time, there were men called eunuchs who willingly risked their lives to castrate themselves to obtain an advantageous position and serve the king, the harem and so on. However, since Jesus was the only one who knew what was the "kingdom of heaven" at this time, "eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" was referring to Jesus himself. Jesus requested his disciples to follow in the footsteps of their master and become eunuchs without castration. For the Apostles, who were men among the disciples, the parable of those who were willing to be castrated to enter government office must have been sobering. We know that they accepted to follow their master for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven because, at the last supper, Jesus reported to the Father, "They have kept thy word" (John 17:6). He asked the Father to unite them with the Holy Spirit, just as he and the Father were one, for them who would remain in the world.⁴ The Apostles, to whom Jesus gave the authority to forgive sins after his resurrection, were to bear the role of producing the Body and Blood of Christ by the Holy Spirit who had descended. Jesus, the Word, was born into the world as a male with divine maternity. It is because the Father is God the father, whereas the Word is God the mother, as it is written, "all things were made through him" (John 1:3).⁵ The Holy Spirit descends with divine maternity as Jesus' representative. Jesus chose male disciples like himself and named them Apostles so that the Holy Spirit, who does not have his own body, could bear witness to Jesus,⁶ who is a man of divine maternity. For they, who have been with Jesus from the beginning, also bear witness as helpers of the Holy Spirit.⁷ Jesus gave the new men a new role of the helper of the Holy Spirit who has divine maternity.

Reference 1. this blog #27, 2. Matthew 19:12 (the Japanese translation of the Bible does not adopt the translation 'eunuch' here.), 3. Acts 8:26-39, 4. John 17:11, 5. John 1:1-4, this blog #26, 6. John 15:26, 7. John 15:27

Maria K. M.　 

 2022/02/28

28. The Fictional Gates

In the divorce debate with the Pharisees, Jesus said quoting Genesis: "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate" (Matthew 19:4-6). People keep the reproductive activity of being joined by intercourse which is common to many other creatures. At this point, the sperm and egg become a fertilised egg, that is, one flesh. This process is common to humans and other living things. However, Jesus repeatedly emphasised its "oneness" because a particular event only for human beings is after the process. As Genesis 2 describes, other creatures become the living by spontaneously repeating the process by which God formed living things from the earth for the first time. But, for the human fertilised egg, unlikely any other living thing, God breathes the breath of life into it at conception, and it finally becomes a human. For humans to become the likeness of God, God, woman, and man give each other their lives. This fact is the true meaning of "what God has joined together," and it gives gravity to his command: "no human being must separate." And it is the starting point from which all people share the truth that God is Father and Mother to man. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark insert a scene where, after this dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees, people bring their children to Jesus to ask him to lay his hands on them and pray. For adults who have forgotten they used to be a child, the truth that God is the father and mother to man is a matter of far away. So, the disciples, when looking at the children approaching, found a contradiction within themselves because they clearly saw the reality that they were separating themselves from God. To cover it up, they shared the fiction that children were unworthy to come to Jesus and rebuked the people who had brought their children. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Mark 10:14). Jesus made them face the reality of God so that they might become awakened from their fiction. People see many gates in the fiction they made. But none of them can lead them to reality. Only the Word of God can break through their fiction and bring them to the reality of God.

Maria K. M.

 2022/02/21

27. The First Illusion

Last time we concluded God is the father and mother to man. So, replacing the word "father and mother" in the text of Genesis 2:24, which was our topic last time, with "God," we find the text foretold that man's first act of reproduction would begin apart from God: "That is why a man leaves his God and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body." We will examine this issue to find out why the Bible gives such notice. Genesis reads, "The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. When he brought her to the man, the man said: 'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called "woman," for out of man this one has been taken'" (Genesis 2:22-23). The words of the "man" do not match the narrative here. So, this statement indicates that the accidental information¹ occurred when humankind became plural and that an illusion developed in the "man." The woman is not the "flesh of flesh" of the "man", even though the "bone of his bones." Moreover, even though the text already said that God made "a woman," the "man" decided to name her "woman" himself. And he called himself a man and said the woman was taken out of man. When an illusion develops in a person, a contradiction arises, then it becomes a burden in the realm of his consciousness. To cover it up, he creates fiction, and when people share it, "the work of man" happens. The man must have found his words contradictory as he interacted with the woman. He invented the fiction that "she was the mother of all the living" (Genesis 3:20) and justified his position by newly giving a name to the woman. But this act, as if he became God, was the direct cause of his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. According to Genesis, it was not until they were expelled from the Garden after this happening that the man had intercourse with his wife. Literally in this way, "the man left God" and clung to his wife. Together with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the fact that human reproductive activity, which had been given for the same purpose as that of other animals, took place apart from God gives rise to a profound sense of loneliness on a visceral level in us. The relationship between man and woman had difficulties from the beginning.

Reference: 1. this blog #4

Maria K. M. 

 2022/02/14

26. Father and Mother

The first two chapters of Genesis tells us what is in man's unconscious realm. Human beings have almost fulfilled the following command of God here: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth" (Genesis 1:28). Today, we know well that man was created in the image of God from our surpassing speed of evolution and influence over other creatures. But it is also clear that human beings are still just a speck of the universe before the threats of nature and the wonders of the cosmos. We have always understood the things before us as far as we could think of them and have realized what we understood. And out of that need, we have tried to figure out the bodily functioning of living things so that we can use the information also for our own needs. The findings of the research of man's behaviour of intake and excretion of food, which has significantly changed as we have broken away from the natural food chain, has been widely communicated and studied by the public as a subject of overcoming disease and death. However, when it comes to the human reproductive function, despite the progress made in research, the diversity of gender-related elements and the disparity of conditions in many fields hinder us from reaching a common understanding, leading to all sorts of serious problems. For Christians, their faith is tested. Therefore, we need to start by examining the following statement in Genesis, the first description of the human reproductive function: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame" (Genesis 2:24-25). This phrase seems to describe a usual human reproductive activity. However, given the back and forth of the text, the word "father and mother" inserted here is supposed to refer to God. The phrase was placed there to indicate that God is the father and mother to man. Jesus announced the name of God as "Father." John’s Gospel suggested the Word was "Mother."¹ As discussed above, the human reproductive function has its origin in the fact that "God is the father and mother for human beings." We will discuss this topic next time too.

Reference: 1. John 1:1-4 

Maria K. M.  

 2022/02/07

25. The Realm of Consciousness

People feel "existence" as something that "is" because we have spontaneity. This spontaneity originates from the fact that, according to Genesis 1, the heavens and the earth and everything in them were created through God's word, "Let there be." This word of God gave spontaneity to all creatures. Human beings can be aware of this spontaneity, so they feel something that "is" in the object and take it as "existence." So, even when God says in the Bible, "I am", they take it to mean that God "exists". But when God says "I am" in the Bible, the word means that God is with people. In the bush passage in Exodus, God who replied, "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14), to Moses, who asked for his name, had taught him, "I will be with you; and this will be your sign that I have sent you" (Exodus 3:12). Jesus also used the phrase "I am" to mean "God is with people."¹ The world that we perceive as reality is constructed in the realm of consciousness in our brain. In other words, the human brain takes information from the outside world and reconstructs it and creates, so to speak, a virtual reality. To confirm our experience of God being with people as a reality, we need a connection with people who share the space and the things that happen there. Jesus said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20), and he required that the connection should be his name. The scene of the Transfiguration,² in which Jesus gave the three Apostles an intense experience, was just like a metaverse. We can come together in the name of Jesus, even in a metaverse.

Reference: 1. replacing the words "I AM" with "God is with people," each verse of John comes to as follows: "For if you do not believe that God is with people, you will die in your sins" (John 8:24), "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that God is with people, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me" (John 8:28), "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, God is with people" (John 8:58), 2. "Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, 'Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.' While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid" (Matthew 17:1-6).

Maria K. M.