Putting On the Mind of Christ
Jesus came to bring about a changed consciousness. We might even call it Enlightenment. “I came into this world … so that those who do not see, may see” [John 9:39].
For Holy Week I decided to share with you my Palm Sunday sermon I preached this past Sunday. As you may be aware, there is no one belief about what it is Jesus came to do on Earth. Did he come to pay a debt to God for our sins? Cheat the Devil? Heal a broken and sinful world? Offer a moral example? Different Christian denominations have different answers to that question. There is no one universal belief of the atonement among Christians. On Sunday I offered some insight into the ”Christ Consciousness” model of the atonement, which may more comfortably suit those of us with a spiritual bent. Here it is…
There’s a great psychological experiment called the “Selective Attention Test,” which you can find demonstrated on YouTube. The video shows six basketball players. Three are wearing white shirts and three are wearing black, and each team has a ball. The viewer is asked to watch the teams scuffle around, throwing their balls back and forth to each other. The white to the white, the black to the black. You are asked to count how many times the white team passes their ball to each other.
The first time I did this, I felt very confident. I’m good at focusing and, although the players were swirling around each other, I diligently counted that the white team made 14 passes. At the end of the exercise, I proudly discovered that I was correct. But then the narrator asked, “But did you see the gorilla?” What! What gorilla? Then they rewound and replayed the players passing the ball, and I now see, very clearly, a person in a gorilla suit walking right through the middle of the game. Where did that come from?! Turns out, I had been so focused on counting passes that I completely missed something totally obvious, right in front of me. Studies show that for people who watch this experiment, about 50% of us never see the gorilla. It is meant to show that humans have “selective attention.” If we don’t know to look for them, humanity often misses things that are right in front of us.
Not surprisingly, scripture tells us that we are suffering from both sleep and blindness. That we need to wake up from sleep and be healed of our blindness. Both states are forms of not perceiving something. The New Testament in particular addresses this, that Jesus came to help us gain new awareness.
For instance, St. Paul writes,
“You know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers” [Romans 13:11].
When Jesus tells his parable of the bridesmaids he concludes it with the words,
“Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” [Matt. 25:11-13].
In other words, being “woke” is a good thing, a Biblical command.
In speaking about spiritual blindness, Jesus says,
“I came into this world … so that those who do not see, may see” [John 9:39].
In other words, Jesus’ explains that his whole purpose for coming to Earth is to open our eyes.
Today is the last installment of my Lenten Series on the Atonement. Meaning, how did Jesus reconcile us to God? We’ve looked at the Christus Victor Model, the Penal Substitution Model, the Moral Influence Model, and the Healing Model.
What we believe about God, and who God loves, influences what we believe to be true about ourselves and others. So it is helpful to consider what we believe. Today we are looking at what is called the “Christ Consciousness model” of the Atonement. This model can be traced back to some of the early church fathers, such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, who believed that the ultimate goal of the Christian life was to achieve a state of union with God through spiritual transformation.
Maybe atonement isn’t about trying to get God to like us, or physically heal our world, or outwit the devil, or make us more moral. Maybe atonement is more about opening our eyes to something. Getting us to see something that has been there all along. Sort of like the “Selective Attention Test.” Maybe there is a “gorilla” wandering through our world that Jesus is trying to get us to see.
And what is this “gorilla”? It is the Reign of God. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus says,
“The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” - Luke 17:20a-21
Jesus is saying the Reign of God is a present reality. It is right here, right now, and we are failing to see it.
In our passage from Philippians this morning, Paul writes,
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 2:5
He tells us that we are to put on the mind of Christ. Christ Consciousness. To see and experience the world as Christ does. To open our eyes and wake up to the present Reign of God. Which we can only do through a changed consciousness.
The famous Episcopal priest and mystic, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault beautifully expresses this. She writes, “The Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place. . . The hallmark of this awareness is that it sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. And these are indeed Jesus’s two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does. . .”
The Reign of God is not some distant thing that we will only see at death, but something currently, intimately, permeating our earthly, physical realm. Which we can only see when we put on the mind of Christ. Which is enlightenment. It is a non-dual consciousness of love which sees God in all, and through all, and the connections between all of reality.
All the other models of atonement assume that humans are separate from God. That Jesus did something to give us a path towards connection. But what if the truth is we are already connected? That we’ve just been blind to this reality? That we are to love all, everyone and everything, with utter abandon and abundance because we are already One? That Jesus came to wake us up to this truth?
Jesus dies on a cross, not to appease an angry God, but because this death underscores his connection to, and love for, even his most profound enemies. He turns the other cheek. There is no hate in the Reign of God. There is no vengeance. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys.” All is One. Jesus takes love to the ultimate end and embraces its consequences, because he knows there is no death. There is only connection with God. There is only love for all. On this side of the veil or the next. His death and resurrection are to shock us awake to this truth, and alleviate our fears of embracing it. When we “put on the mind of Christ,” we too will see and live only love.
Amen.
Bourgeault, C. (2008). The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind--A New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Shambhala Publications, 29–32.
All Scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition