A HIGH RISKING ENCOUNTER
It is not surprising, Jesus,
that things turned out badly for
you.
You played with fire and you
burned yourself.
Let us start with your encounter
with John the Baptist.
Everybody knew that that guy
was a dangerous type,
a marginal, an alarmist
who questioned everything.
Nowadays many would have labelled
him
as a “terrorist” or a “woke”…
But the rebels, the poor and the
downtrodden
acclaimed him as a great prophet.
To come close to him, for sure,
was not “politically correct”.
But you, Jesus, a simple worker
in a lost dump hole of Galilee,
you who belonged to the anonymous
and the despised,
you ran the enormous risk
to go and meet him along the
Jordan River.
You found him there, not far from
the desert,
his two feet in the water
and a camel skin on his
shoulders.
A fire was burning in his heart
and his mouth.
He attacked the leaders, the
priests and the people
that he compared to a rotten tree.
Brandishing some kind of an axe
and acting as if cutting down a
tree
he showed the fate that was
awaiting them
if they did not give their life a
180 degree turn.
You saw him also as the new
Elijah
calling the fire from heaven
over internal divisions
the social inequalities,
corruption.
hatred and all kind of violence
that reduced the people to a
wreck
and paved a royal path for
foreign invasions.
Anyway, the powerful Rome was
already there
with its powerful armies
occupying and exploiting the
country,
shedding blood in torrents.
Even the “good people”,
who, in spite of everything,
remained faithful to the God of Israel,
did not escape John's wrath.
He blamed their apathy,
their naïve carefree attitude,
and especially their faith of
black-mailers,
treating God as a national
property
and their hostage.
They thought they had a RIGHT on
him.
They believed that God,
the great friend and ally of
their ancestor Abraham,
had the obligation to intervene before
long in person
and turn the situation in their
favour.
If not, maybe they would turn
their backs on him...
Meanwhile, the priests and the
rabbi,
whose careers depended on the
whims and fancies of the
Romans,
were panicking desperately.
To make sure that they didn't lose control over the people
they filled its ears with the usual serenades
about peace, patience and
forgiveness,
and the obedience without
grumbling to the will of God.
They preached that God was allowing
the present occupation of the
country by the Romans
to cleanse the people from all their
many sins.
In fact, in his boundless mercy,
he was giving them a chance to amend
their ways
so that they return more than
ever
to worship, prayers and sacrifices.
With John the Baptist.
that was another story.
For him, the time was not so much
for prayers and sacrifices,
as for justice ans sharing.
To those people who piled up
riches
he would say: “Give half of your
belongings to the
poor!”
To tax collectors: “Stop
stealing!”
To the military: “Stop exploiting
the people!”
To the police:”Be content with
your salary!”
In one word :we have to
strip injustice off like an old skin
and throw ourselves into the
water to start anew.
Those words ran down within you,
Jesus,
like fresh water in the throat of
a desert pilgrim.
For you, they seem to spring up
straight from the
mouth of God.
This minute, you exposed yourself
like a worm,
and, at your own risk, you
dived
as well in the water of the river
like in the great movement of
John.
It was your « baptism »
(that word means exactly « diving »)
But once under water,
somehow in full apnoea,
you had the surprize of your
life.
In a flash of lightning,
you entered in a
strange and marvellous state…
Ideas, dreams, desires,
images, concepts,
dogmas, rules and structures,
all of that flew away like mist.
It was as if your “ordinary
conscience”,
(the one of each day, the one of the ego)
had suddenly been “submerged”…
by a « deeper
conscience ».
(that everyone possesses but is
ignored by most people)
You entered into the AMAZING,
into a state of total liberty
and absolute plenitude.
All that you had believed until
now
as perceptible and true
appeared to you as empty and non-existent.
It seemed that you were touching
the Real
for the first time.
Like stream that joins the sea,
you were bathing in THE ONE-WHO-IS.
It was THE OPENING OUT,
THE AWAKENING, THE ILLUMINATION.
In the eyes of humans,
at that very moment,
you were really born
as the beloved SON of the Father,
as the AWAKENED
and the AWAKENER.
In that moment,
you received the mission
to be LIGHT for the world.
John the Baptist whom the good
people
regarded as the greatest of all
men
began to pale in front of you.
Like the Moon with the approach
of the Sun,
he slowly faded away...
It is in the light of the Bush on
fire
that Moses had received the
mission to free his people
from the chains of slavery,
you, Jesus,
it is in your luminous diving into the Jordan River
that you received the mission to liberate the
human being from the chains of
darkness and of death.
In the depths of your being
the totality of your human
reality had unfurled.
It appeared to you as one,
without any separation from the
rest of humanity
or from creation,
or even from divinity.
You saw also the whole of humans
as beloved sisters and brothers
of the One-Who-Is,
linked to one another
like the rays of a same sun,
enjoying an absolute freedom
in a diversity of limitless
nuances.
There, you have embraced your
mission
to awaken among the humans the
deep dimension
of who we really are,
that is, women and men similar to you,
in good health like you,
sparkling with light like you
in harmony with the universe
and connected with the Great
Source of all that is.
Apart from John,
no one had any idea
of what you had just lived.
Contrary to Moses,
no ray of light
had remained plastered to your
face.
You were remaining a man like
others
with this sole difference
that you did not follow
the masters of the law
neither the extinguishers of
light and liberty;
you were not a parakeet of the
official discourse
nor a bullhorn of the consensus
of the herd.
With you was beginning
a totally new world.
And so, you left the country of
John
in the direction of your native
Galilee,
on a path not laid out in advance
where were awaiting for you
many other high risking
situations...
to be continued...
Eloy Roy
Translated from the French by Jacques Bourdages
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