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So, how can the Pascal Mystery of Christ share the essential message of the Buddha teaching of impermanence, as well as the essentiality of realizing such as integral to salvation, or awakening, which are different means of speaking of freedom from the tyranny of the separate, alienated, self-focused self? While I imply or state such above, I will offer another couple of passages with commentary.
First, I will share a Scripture recently shared with you, St. John 12.23-25, and in two renditions.
Jesus said: The time has come for the Son of Man to be given his glory. I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat. If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. (CEV)
Jesus answered, "Time's up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal. (The Message)
The teaching shows that the seed, you and I, or the life we have identified as “my life,” is impermanent. To try to cling to such an illusion is to deter the realization, or enlightenment to, the “real and eternal.” The “my life” must die. In this dying, we enter the Paschal Mystery of Christ.
Then, secondly, the “my life,” died to in the realization of its illusory impermanence, likewise, opens to the potential of producing “lots of wheat.” The death of the “separate self,” which is the person trying to have life by the futility of seeking life to sustain the illusory self, means the opening to communion beyond itself. The seed is alone, separate, and alienated from all the life in it, which is, potentially, the life of other seeds, until the potentiality is realized in the death of the isolated grain of wheat. This is why impermanence is a positive teaching. For it allows us to relinquish the craving to keep “myself” as “I” am, defending “myself” against all the deaths essential to life and union, or interbeing, with all others. Since life is change, process, and flow, all is part of the living, dying, living … flux. To seek to solidify “myself” as permanent, guarding against change and death, means to alienate myself from others and life Itself.
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Interbeing, or communion, is realized in understanding I never die or live; rather, I am an individuated part of the Whole that is change, death, and flux. That is, the nature of Life is contained in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. And, nothing itself can live or die, for each thing is, already, part of this whole Mystery, by acting within the whole of Creation.
I share one additional passage that links impermanence with the Paschal Mystery, Galatians 2.20:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (ESV)
Often, the interpretation of this follows Substitutionary theology. This theology says that in some way Jesus died and, so, I do not have to die. This theology implies, among varied options … Jesus’ death was a sacrificial offering to an angry God , so, now God can forgive us; Jesus met God’s demand for justice, for sin must lead to death, so Jesus died, so I do not have to die; God demands blood to forgive sin, so, Jesus shed blood as a sacrificial offering (i.e., meat offering). At one level, a person might argue for some truth to this theology, at another level the teaching is absurd and worthy of the statement: No wonder many, today, have difficulty reconciling much theology with plain common sense. And, the message is essentially, “Jesus did it for me. I do not have to do it.” I do not think such conclusions helpful to us, not if we want to grow up—I, personally, serve a God that wants us to grow up.
I suggest, rather, a participatory theology. That is, the Paschal Mystery of Christ is a summons for us to enter into that very Mystery, accepting that such is the only way to find salvation from the futility of trying to live by clinging to ourselves apart from the processes of Reality, as even nature, or natural revelation teaches us. “Faith” entails trusting this Christ and His example, so that we allow to happen within us and among us the very Paschal Mystery that Jesus Christ lived himself out of his “sacrificial self-donation.”
This self-donation can be understand in the richness of the images of sacrifice, including blood and crucifixion, for example, but we must see into the message, not getting caught up into a literalistic, materialistic understanding of such sacrifice. Then, we look deeply enough to see that we ourselves can choose to realize the Pascal Mystery, at any moment, trusting that in losing ourselves, we find Life, we experience Resurrection. Then, we are one with Christ in the same.
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