Creative Spirit UCC Weblog

DISCLAIMER:  As we value “Dialogue More Than Dogma”, this is simply one view (Pastor Carla’s) and we hope it will serve as a starting point for conversation to deepen all our understanding.

I was raised in a conservative faith tradition.  My experience of God just happened to have come from what I had been taught about Jesus in my church and family.  Over the years, my thoughts about who Jesus was have evolved significantly, but the peace, inspiration, and love I’ve experienced from God through my understanding of Jesus have only deepened.

At this point, I believe Jesus was sent by God to bring us a message of love, peace, equality, and justice, just as I believe we are all designed to be channels of God’s goodness to this world.  But Jesus seemed to “get” God better than many of us do and was, therefore, a unique messenger.  Personally, I do believe Jesus was the “Son” of God.  Whether you do or do not, I believe God’s grace is big enough to reach us through may ways and am not amongst those who believe you are going to “hell”.

Regardless of what you believe about Jesus’ divinity, I believe Jesus lived and laughed fully, loved wastefully, and led courageously and is an example to us of how we should live.  He was a spiritual and cultural radical who blew out of the water our understanding of God and how we should live with one another.

 But we didn’t get it.  It was too much.  We didn’t want things to change.  We didn’t want to let go of our power.  We didn’t want to be so selfless.  Not realizing how much God loves us and that, because of that love, we can let go of ourselves and trust that there is enough of God to go around and make us really happy, we were scared and refused to let go of the way things were. 

So, as we often do with things we fear, don’t like, or just don’t want to take on, we denied the message and sought to destroy the messenger.  I believe Jesus had unique insights and access to God’s power as a healer, or Shaman if you will.  He certainly was a charismatic leader and speaker who knew how to rally crowds.  So I believe he could have fought back.  He could have run away.  But to do either would have reinforced our belief that the only way to “win” was to exert power and violence or to back away and give in.

 Instead, I believe Jesus stood nose to nose and toes to toes with evil and said, “I will not strike back, I will not run away.  I’m going to stand my ground and love you and prove to the world that love can transform hate, peace can transform violence, courage can transform fear, and life can transform death”. 

And we killed him.  He was buried.  And then…something happened. 

He came back–perhaps bodily, perhaps only in spirit, I don’t know and, for me, it does not matter.  What matters is that something happened.  What matters is that he, his love, and his message were not gone and the result was that the world was forever and profoundly changed.

What matters to me is that in believing in and choosing to follow (okay, TRYING to follow!) the way he believed and lived and loved I have been changed.  I’ve been transformed.  I GET the message more often than not that Life wins, Love wins, and death is not the end, but the beginning of something more.  I realize through this man who was filled with God’s Spirit (as I believe we all are though we do not always recognize it as clearly as Jesus did) exactly how much God loves me. 

I believe that when we get it, really get how much God loves us and wants our best, that out of that understanding we can let go of ourselves, we can release our fears, and we can strive to live as Jesus did–joyfully, lovingly, peacfully, and courageously. 

Sometimes we fail to be our best selves.  Sometimes we are hurt by others who are not being their best selves.  Sometimes we deal with what happens when we live in an imperfect world we have polluted and broken.  Sometimes, life just happens. 

But when it does, I believe God is right there with us loving us, crying with us, whispering encouragement and direction to us, asking us to trust God and be our best selves, and working to bring about good and life-giving results, even in the midst of the most difficult and tragic circumstances.

Through my understanding of Jesus, I have come to believe that no matter who we are, what we’ve done, or what has been done to us that nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever make God stop loving us.

You may have found transformation through another understanding of God.  If so, we’d love to learn more about it, because we believe God is big enough and personal enough to come to us in many ways.  We just happen to understand God through, and therefore seek to follow, the life and teachings of, Jesus.  That is why Creative Spirit is a Christian community of faith.  But, again, we believe God cannot be contained to one way of thinking, and we value and welcome views that inspire love, peace, justice, and promote life.

Come share your thoughts, experience, and gifts with us.  Without all voices at the table, our story as a people of faith is incomplete.  So come.  We can’t wait to learn from, live with, and love you.