Riffin' on the Glorification of Christ

“I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” John 17:26

The Gospel often refers to the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ as the “glorification” of Jesus. What exactly is being “glorified” here and what sorts of blanket statements does it make about death in the most general sense of it? The betrayal and crucifixion of Christ glorify the man born to Mary and Joseph, Jesus Christ the human, as God incarnate.

Many would argue that each and every miraculous act of Christ’s life worked in service to this…of glorifying the man Christ as not only the Son of God, but as meaningfully one with the Source of Life, communed with It in a special way.

That socially Christ was glorified for who He actually was by State Authority via his execution…his brutal Passion, which was itself already somewhat a metaphor for what he had always been up to in the name of Love, taking on the sins and suffering of others… is incredibly sad. It’s an utter social failure, and if you’re the type to view civilization as a gift to humans meant to be in service to the spiritual mission, you can see clearly in this example here how we are misusing civilization rather dubiously.

That being said, we know from the events in the Garden of Gethsemane that it was God’s will ultimately that Jesus be glorified at the hands of the Romans, recognized as God incarnate, through his brutal crucifixion; morally there is no justifying this, and the situation is never to be repeated again. For all intensive purposes, what the Roman’s did was clearly a sin, and in the future going out were we ever faced with a similar situation, we would be expected to forgo capital punishment, and instead recognize in some deep way that each and every criminal we’ve ever looked at is still meaningfully communed with God at some level…is an offshoot of God at some level at the very least, a son or daughter of God, and our literal brother/sister.

And under those parameters…you can’t kill humans, even if they have killed themselves. That wasn’t the part of them that was real, and there had to have been a lot of bad situations in the world to inspire that sort of behavior, a lot of suffering left unchecked…it’s a pervasive social failure, and one that demands more compassion.

Going forward, we would expect the state to still work with criminals…to still deter and punish crime, but they would have to do so under the guise that the criminals they are working with truly are the sons and daughters of God, equal in relation as Christ was.

The 17th chapter of John, from which today’s passage was taken, appears immediately before Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion…before his glorification at the hands of Pontius Pilate (to emphasize, washing your hands isn’t glorification in the same way that fire isn’t ice until God makes it so) and that wicked sweet cross they hung him up on. The 17th chapter of John, from which today’s passage was taken, features a prayer that Jesus Christ directs to his Father in a rather intimate way, dropping the term “Father” rather warmly several times throughout it. It’s a rainbow-y sunshine-y vision of how things are supposed to work on Earth in regards to the intersection of the every day affairs of Man and God the Father.

While today’s passage seems eerily worded as if Christ knows the betrayal and crucifixion are coming and he’s scheming up a way to neuter it in live time as it plays out with Love, incarnate… it’s actually not this. It’s just a vision of how His “ministry” or “system” works…

If one makes “God” “known” to individuals, those individuals will sporadically cultivate “love” for all beings, according to today’s passage. Jesus thinks as much because God has infinite Love for all of his creation…and if that’s the key thing that is missing in said creation as they face their mid-life identity crises…then teaching these people the ways of God the Father is the singular tonic for the masses.

Many would argue that actually, we are automatically opted into unconditional love for all beings at the level of the unconscious, and the struggle of our respective lives is learning how to integrate and work this effectively in our conscious functioning.

In Jesus’ case, some of his persecutors realized along the way that he truly was the Son of God, incarnate. But many of his persecutors didn’t realize until all of the shit ran out of the bowels and the heart beat its last beat… they had witnessed something powerful, and suddenly found themselves incapable of turning away from what had always been the truth to them at some level then… they had realized.

When it’s all said and done, all we are ever expected to do is glorify God. We do this by literally glorifying His creation whole… of seeing everything in terms of miracle, because life/existence itself is singularly a miracle and there is no nuance to this.

We do this by seeing all as equal. Equanimity is the truth of God; it is not blasphemous to view Him as your equal, but instead wise. We are called to do as much. Challenged to rise to that level as Beings.

Love will happen automatically, in an unstoppable way, should we have an appropriate vision of the Father. Which was why Jesus ever did what He did in Life; He glimpsed the inevitability of the victory of salvation, he realized that across time civilizations will morally purify and serve the spiritual mission with greater and greater efficacy…he understood that across time the world would grow into the image of the Kingdom of Heaven more than it would deviate away from it.

Time was on his side. So much so, they reset the clocks. B.C. … A.D.

All of this being said, Jimi Hendrix shouldn’t have choked on his vomit when he was 27, and we should have prog-rock albums that he released in the 1980’s that changed the shape of the guitar/live sound industry in general… we really should.

Unlike with Hendrix, Christ’s vision was absolutely finished and complete/in-tact before his passing…and it’s not his vision. Any holy man throughout all of recorded history has happened upon it…it’s simply the way things are…it’s not a new thing people with ideas dream up… but a truth people in prayer and service are blessed enough to happen upon. Perhaps this is communion with the Father…

I digress. With Christ it can be reduced to something rather simple…we are to glorify God. God is creation, so we are to glorify all of creation as God. The wise and the ignorant will eventually do this singular task… everyone is forced to. The question becomes how much sin and how many left-handed paths can we cut out of the picture.

And should we turn to Christ’s example, we can see the best way to go about doing this. Just let people know who God the Father is as a person.

Now that we've put a little distance between ourselves and the situation... technically everything that happens is in service to God by the structure of reality...and if Christ is God, that means everything is in service to him, even the institution of sin itself. Instead of yielding utter unchecked devastation...sin yields wisdom/love.

Sounds awesome until you realize that they're going to torture and maim you, then nail you to a cross. And this will be in service to the prospects of Love, across time!

Suddenly you understand the practicality of the "BE HERE NOW!" people...they couldn't wait!

Jesus' prayer in John 17 is sometimes referred to as a Prayer of the Lord's Intercession; that sin yields wisdom/love and redirects you to righteous action...that's always been the structure of reality, but only by the intercession of a Loving God. Black hole sun won't you come and wash away the rain?

Or at least stop these people from doing a rain dance...