Today, Christians celebrate the Easter Mystery, the resurrection of Jesus. Along with Yogananda, Christians believe that Jesus’ bones are not rotting in some middle-eastern grave. Rather, Jesus’ body, thoroughly divinized by grace, continues to serve his transformative mission in the world. Christians also believe the resurrection is a positive and expanding force within history as well as our individual lives. We are called to actually experience the resurrection in ever-deepening ways. Quite a claim! To ascertain the veracity of this claim, let us pause to consider two relevant truths. The first is a truth of science: the material universe is capable of bending, morphing, and evolving. The second is a truth of history: Jesus was Jewish.
We tend to see the laws of nature as absolutely fixed, set in stone. A materialistic scientist would say the resurrection is impossible because the laws of physics tell us it is impossible. But what if our natural laws are more like habits that can be changed if enough of the right kind of intentional force is applied? In other words, what if death is a stubborn habit? Scientist Rupert Sheldrake tells us, “Matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit to the point where breaking up these habits is very difficult.” Mystics the world over tell us that love is the most powerful force in all of creation. At its optimal strength, love is capable of dissolving the most entrenched habits and creating new and life-affirming possibilities.
Okay, what does this unusual concept of death have to do with Jesus’ Jewishness? Judaism is not an otherworldly religion. It celebrates creation. In Genesis, after the sixth day of creation, we are told God looked at creation and pronounced it “good.” Thus, Jesus did not come to teach people how to merely jump off the reincarnational wheel. Rather, Jesus entered into the bowels of those destructive habits that cause us such great suffering in order to seed the future with an enlightened trajectory. The intense love Jesus brought into these entrenched habits, including apathy, fear, ignorance, despair, hatred, betrayal, and death itself carried the necessary force to entirely dissolve them. Jesus’ resurrection created a flood of hope pouring in and through the mind, heart, and imagination of human beings everywhere.
What is the relevance of Jesus’ resurrection for our day-to-day lives? The same loving impulse, the Christ Impulse, that worked in and through Jesus is available to all of us. Every time we pray, meditate, forgive an enemy, embrace truth, conduct ourselves with courage, or perform an act of compassionate service at least two blessings unfold: we dissolve habits that have long imprisoned us, and we alter the trajectory of the human race for the good. Every mini-resurrection moves us toward the great resurrection. Truly, the more love we bring to bear upon the world, the more capable we are of resurrecting humanity’s dormant divinity. The only difference between Jesus’ transformative efforts and our own was the intensity of his love. The more we give ourselves over to love, the greater our ability to dissolve those habits that enslave us. Yogananda tells us, “Flowers fade never to return, but Jesus only slept to obey the sweet command of Nature and woke again to declare his mastery over her… With the appearance of the risen Jesus in this mundane domain, a hope buried in the immortality of every soul was resurrected in the hearts of 1000 million mortals—the hope that they, too, could wipe away the sting of death from their breasts of everlastingness.”
Risen Jesus,
Come into my heart
And dissolve the habits
Which enslave me.
