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In a creation Myth of the Pima Indians, a savior figure brings life to the human race. At creation he emerges from the center of the earth and, later, leads his people from underground. They turn against him. They kill him, not once but several times. They even pulverize him. But, he always returns to life. Finally, the savior goes into the mountains. The trails so confuse that no one can follow him in their own effort and knowledge. However, by knowing a secret, a person can find access to the savior and be with him.
Like in the Holy Week plot, this story is really one Story. When I refer to the Christ Event, such is linked with the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension of Christ, and the return. The Story continues, wholly, in the life of followers of Jesus, for we live and worship together, seeking to make this world a place of Holy Communion for all. Likewise, being unbounded, the story lives on in our fellowship with persons who have passed beyond this world plane. We call this, in the Church, the Communion of Saints.
This Christ Event is a whole event. To enter into any aspect of the Story is to realize the whole Story. One can enter either at the birth of the Word, which is a creation story, or enter at the Resurrection, which is the coming to life again of the savior figure. Likewise, one can enter at any other phase of the plot, including the return of the Christ. Indeed, the life of a Christ follower is to take on a Christo-form, such that the disciple is an access point to “Father,” the Source of Life. The Christ follower is to share the “secret” of access in his or her embodied way of being in the world.
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The “secret” of the Christ Event, which is part of the Christ-shape of the Scripture, is a case of dramatic irony. The Story shows God creating a people to be His own, so as to bless the world. God, due to the rebellion of humankind, selects one people to be an access point to the Creator. Despite all efforts to gain their love and loyalty, God fails, it seems. The Gospel, as part of the Story, introduces the dramatic irony, hinted at in the previous major section of the plot, called the Torah, the Hebrew Scripture, or the Old Testament. The “secret” comes to the fore in the middle of the plot.
One way to view this plot is that God has designed this whole process, in a fashion of predestination. Another way, a narrative reading, is to read it as the genre Story. The Story shares our own journey in coming to understand the “secret” of Life. We have projected this journey onto God, as though God thought it all up and determined it ahead of time. But, we can read the narrative as the consequence of our choices, based on developmental processes. That is, humankind had to try the legal approach to access, to discover, that such an approach only leads to self-righteousness, pride, community discord, and lack of oneness with our Source. The legal way is futile, for it contradicts the essence of Life, and the “secret” gains all access for it arises from the Nature of Life itself.
The means of access, however sincere, religious, or spiritual, cannot contradict the Source and, finally, bring union with Love. Part of the plot is our resistance to surrender to the “secret,” as we continue our prideful manipulations to gain Life on our own terms and without losing the thing we most fear losing: self-control. This is why surrender and death are essential to the plot. For both open us to Life, even if both seem too contradictory to human perceptions of power, control, and self-determination to appeal to most persons.
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