Borne on Eagle’s Wings by Elder Gideon
Jesus resolved the riddle of theodicy when he claimed that God so loved the world (John 3:16)—not its corruption, injustice, and exile—but Godself veiled in it. The Spirit shows us how to look through the veils of the world. The ego’s circumscription of itself—a veil—prevents the greater vantage point of Godself free of veils. To gaze through the veils of the world is to see as our faith ancestors saw. To be aware of God with us in the midst of exile requires a bigger picture, one that zooms out beyond one’s ego. Apart from this bigger picture, victim-victimizer binaries obstruct the ability to perceive how God will use exile for good. Somehow, mercy and purpose emerge from exile in a way that God alone reveals. Wisdom that abides, even in exile, demands of us a non-dual embrace of God as God is, with us unconditionally. In greater crises, such awareness of God’s wisdom will rescue us from apostasy. To see through the world is to glimpse what God so loves.
Jesus clearly saw through the world, past its darkest hell and the dawn beyond. Apart from a non-dual view of God’s oneness, how did he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:53)? Short of an integral revelation of God’s radical love for all, how did Jesus turn his step towards Golgotha? The Place of the Skull was so called for all that scavengers couldn’t carry off in their mouths. The site of Roman crucifixions was a charnel house littered with the remains of prisoners, a hell realm above ground. Knowing all of this, how did Jesus remain so steady and intentional while he approached Jerusalem? With what heart and mind could he remain so lucid in self-restraint throughout his beating and torture? We have only bits of his spoken consciousness when the pain and asphyxiation overwhelmed him on the cross.
From what place within himself did he breathe his last, did he send his soul? More than all words, his gesture of self-offering in hell proclaims Emmanuel: God-with-us.
Just as our faith ancestors, we must trust that God is with us in exile. While the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it (Heb 4:1). If our faith ancestors were strangers and foreigners on the earth, […] thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. That heavenly country is inward, where we first encountered Christ. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them (ibid. 11:13, 15-16). In the inner sanctuary of God’s Spirit, our exile ends.
The inward path to this sanctuary required every generation of our faith ancestors to map. The tabernacle in the wilderness, the promised land, or the first temple all prophesied the end of exile in God’s Messiah. When God’s Presence fully entered Jesus just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart (Mark 1:10). Being entirely dwelt by God’s Presence, Jesus embodied heaven: the sanctuary not made with human hands (Heb 9:24). As the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), he became the navel of and great exodus from this world.
To enter the way of the great exodus, let us exit human precepts and structures—the same which Jesus repudiated, as when he said he’d tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days (John 2:19). He decentered the holy land when he revealed to a Samaritan woman: The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. […T]he true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (ibid. 4:21,23-24). Jesus broke the temple with his body and rent the curtain with his spirit to point where God indwells our heart.
Our heart holds a vastness beyond the body. In the fulfillment of all things—New Jerusalem—that John observes I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb (Rev 21:22). He witnessed from inside out all holiness and light: the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb (ibid., 23). The Spirit rested in John, who received this revelation while in exile (1:9-10). We too are the place prepared in the wilderness for the Spirit to rest while in exile (ibid. 12:6). To nowhere but God we go, who bears us on eagles’ wings and brings us to Godself.
Twice nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize, Elder Gideon is the author of three poetry collections—Sophia’s Wisdom (forthcoming with EPS Press), Gnostic Triptych and Aegis of Waves (Atmosphere Press)—and co-author with Tau Malachi of Gnosis of Guadalupe (EPS Press, 2017). His poems, essays, and sculptures have appeared in dozens of journals. He’s an alumnus of the 2022 Kenyon Review Summer Conference and the 2021 Community of Writers. A veteran English teacher-activist and faith leader of a mystical Christian tradition, Gideon lives to connect. Reach out to him @elder.gideon or eldergideon@gmail.com.
