No Separation Between God and Humans

Today, this third Sunday in Lent brings us to another radical teaching of Jesus. You may not think it is radical because we’ve talked about this many times. But, in Jesus’ time, for him to assert that there was no separation between God and humans it was a very radical shift from traditional Jewish theology. In ancient times, God “lived” on the mountain top, or in the heavens, or in the tabernacle or the temple. God was not in the habit of interacting with normal human beings.

In Luke 17, the Pharisees asked Jesus when the “reign of God” was coming. Perhaps they thought a being would appear in their midst, or that God would vanquish their enemies and put them in power.

Whatever the case, I doubt Jesus’ answer was what they were expecting. Jesus responds by saying, “The reign of God doesn’t come in a visible way. You can’t say, ‘See, here it is!’ or ‘There is it!’ No – look: the reign of God is already in your midst.” God is here – around and within you.

It’s also important to note that when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Reign of God, what he is referring to is NOT a physical place or event. It is sort of a code for reaching a higher state of consciousness wherein one moves beyond duality and  realizes that we are all one. There is NO separation between God and humans.

As Cynthia Borgeault explains in her book, The Wisdom Jesus:

When Jesus talks about this Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. What he more has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. His most beautiful symbol for this is in the teaching in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you.” A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” While he does indeed claim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30) – a statement so blasphemous to Jewish ears that it nearly gets him stoned – he does not see this as an exclusive privilege but as something shared by all human beings. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual interabiding which expressed the indivisible reality of divine love. We flow into God – and God into us – because it is in the nature of love to flow.

There is a cute little story at the end of the book, Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom, that is a beautiful metaphor for this:

Once upon a time there was a little wave “bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air – until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.

’My God, this is terrible,’ the wave says. ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’

Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’

The first wave says, ‘You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’

The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’

We are not separate from the Divine, we are one. This was such a radical concept that as the Christian Church became more and more established, we heard less and less of this concept until it almost completely disappeared. Why? Well, if God is separate from humans, then connection with God can be mediated by those who are “worthy” (ie – Catholic priests who have apostolic succession). And if regular people aren’t worthy (the convenient theology of “original sin” which is not at all Biblical), then they can be manipulated with their unworthiness. Indulgences, confession, penance, guilt all become means of raising funds for the church and assuring attendance. Plus, the whole concept of substitutionary atonement – that Jesus died for your sins – serves to keep humanity separate from perfect Jesus and the heavenly God who both hold the keys to eternity.

But, if we are not separate from God, then we all have direct access, we don’t need an authority figure, we don’t need the church or laws, we simply need to be in our higher mind to know and feel and touch the holy. Wow. That’s radical. And life-giving.

If the Essence of Life, the Source of All That Is, Love Energy, or whatever you want to call it, resides in each of us, then at the core of who we are we are NOT INHERENTLY BROKEN. Sure, we feel broken sometimes. Our families, society, experiences, and the traditional church have programmed us to believe that we aren’t good enough, that we’re broken. And, hey, it’s easier to believe the bad stuff. But I tell you, God tells you… WE ARE INHERENTLY BEAUTIFUL, UNIQUE, SACRED AND LOVED. No two ways about it.

In his book, All in This Together, Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield shares this experience:

In 1989, at an international Buddhist teacher meeting with the Dalai Lama, we Western teachers brought up how often unworthiness, self-criticism, shame, and self-hatred arose in Western students’ practice. The Dalai Lama and other Asian teachers with him were shocked. They could not quite comprehend the concept of self-hatred. There is no such word in Tibetan. It took the Dalai Lama some time to confer with Geshe Thupten Jinpa, his wonderful translator, to understand it. Then he turned and asked if many of us experienced this problem in ourselves. He saw nods of affirmation from all of us. He seemed genuinely surprised.

Then he got quiet and tender, almost earful. Gazing at us, he responded, “But that is mistake,” he said. “Every being is precious!”

It is telling to me that even the greatest meditation teachers struggle with self-worth. Oh, how we’ve been programmed to see the worst in ourselves. But have you ever noticed that in those fleeting times when the world falls away and we connect with Divine Light that all thought of unworthiness disappears? When we experience that oneness, we find that we are Light and Love at our very core.

One last story told by Carrie Newcomer on her Substack:
Theologian and mystic, Dr. Howard Thurman, spoke of an experience he had as a young man when he was in divinity school. In the small hours of the morning he was returning home after a meeting. As he walked the length of Main Street in Rochester, New York, he kept hearing the sound of running water. On that particular day he had a head cold and wondered if the sound was caused by some rumbling or reverberation in his stopped-up ears or by the medication he was taking to help with the symptoms. The next day he mentioned his experience of hearing water at 2 a.m. on Main Street to a professor. The professor said, “Oh no, it wasn’t a rumbling in your ears at all. Main Stret is built over a canal that connects to the Genoese River.” He then went on to describe how during the day, when there is so much noise from human activity, traffic, automobiles, construction machinery and other clatter, the sound of the canal flowing is covered up and hard to hear. But late at night when most of the city was asleep, you can hear the movement of water.

That running water was there all the time, but the noise and chaos of life drowned out the sound. In the same way, Sacred Presence resides in us at all times, but we let the noise and distractions of our lives get in the way of remembering this and connecting to the very Ground of our Being. There is no separation between God (however you understand that) and us. We are beautiful, unique and beloved and are constantly connected to the Source of Love.

Lenten Blessings,

Kaye