Wisdom Liturgy
All readings are from The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind– A New Perspective on Christ and His Message by Cynthia Bourgeault, unless otherwise noted.
OPENING READINGS
“Who do you say I am?” Jesus asks repeatedly throughout the gospels. Which really means, “Who or what in you recognizes me?” It is the crucial question. (8)
If you are searching,
You must not stop until you find.
When you find, however,
You will become troubled.
Your confusion will give way to wonder.
In wonder you will reign over all things.
Your sovereignty will be your rest.
Gospel of Thomas, Logion 2
All [our] knowing about Jesus actually gets in the way. Living our Christianity with twenty-twenty hindsight lands us in trouble in at least two ways. First of all, it lulls us into a false sense of security…. But even more problematically, it takes away from us the key tool that we need to find and live the path today, to connect with this person that we seem to know so much about. This tool is our own power of inner recognition…. (3)
Only in the cave of the heart does a person come into contact with his or her direct knowingness. And only out of this direct knowingness is one’s own inner authority born. (7)
CHANT – Become a Living Spirit by Elizabeth Combs
Lyrics:
Become, become a living spirit. Ihidaya, Ihidaya
READINGS
John 1:35-39 The next day John (the Baptist) again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, John exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, Jesus said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said, ‘Rabbi’, ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’
In the Incarnation, Cynthia invites us to think of “Jesus’s life as a sacrament – a spiritual force in its own right. …A sacrament does not merely symbolize a spiritual reality; it lives that reality into existence. Jesus’s life is a sacrament: a mystery that draws us deeply into itself and conveys a spiritual energy empowering us to follow the path that his teachings have laid out.” (91)
Our created universe is a vast mirror, or ornament, through which divine potentiality – beautiful fathomless, endlessly creative — projects itself into form in order to realize fully the depths of divine love. Remember that “realize” has two meanings: to recognize and “to make real”. The act of loving brings hidden potential to full expression, and the more intimate and costly the self-giving, the more precious the quality of love revealed. (95)
“I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the worlds both visible and invisible.”
Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”
CHANT – Become a Living Spirit by Elizabeth Combs
Lyrics:
Become, become a living spirit.
Ihidaya, Ihidaya
READINGS
We too come into constriction. But, not as punishment. Cynthia says “I believe rather that this constriction is a sacrament, and we have been offered a divine invitation to participate in it.
Those sharp edges we experience as constriction at the same time call forth some of the most exquisite dimensions of love, which require the condition of finitude in order to make sense-qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness.
These mature and subtle flavors of love have no real context in a realm where there are no edges and boundaries, where all just flows. But when you run up against the hard edge and have to stand true to love anyway, what emerges is a most precious taste of pure divine love.” (99-100)
CLOSING READING
Jesus beckons us to “come and see” (John 1:39) and Cynthia adds:
“As we actually taste the flavor of what [Jesus] is teaching, we begin to see that it’s not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous.
He’s proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood.” (27)
AMEN
Wisdom Liturgy Credits
This Wisdom Liturgy offering was contributed by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo and Henry Schoenfield. All chants and texts were credited above and used with permission from the authors.
A special note of thanks to our founding teacher, Cynthia Bourgeault, whose teachings and writings have inspired so many across the globe in reclaiming the Mystical heart of the Wisdom Path.