The most important lesson that Jesus
taught to the people of his day was: “’Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first
and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as
yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”
(Matthew 22: 38-40).
The lessons that Jesus taught his disciples were about compassion, faith, and
service. He knew they no longer needed the ten commandments of Moses to
remind them not to murder or steal. However, as he told them, kindness toward
one another was just as important: not to demonstrate anger toward another,
not to insult anyone or judge another’s actions, and above all, to forgive
the wrongdoing of others.
Jesus taught his disciples much about the law of love: that they should love
their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. This was one of the most
difficult of Jesus’ teachings two thousand years ago, as it still is today.
Who can love an enemy: one who oppresses us, hurts us, makes our lives
miserable? When we feel separate from Love and from Love’s other children, we
have no reason to love our enemy. Only when we recognize our oneness, that we
are all sons and daughters of Love, can we see that others mistreat us due to
their own blindness. If we can love an enemy, in spite of the evil that
gushes forth from a confused heart, it’s possible that the light of truth
will begin to dissolve the veil of illusion that blinds his eyes.
Jesus encouraged his followers, saying: “You are the light of the world. A
city on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Jesus was not the only
Love messenger to equate Divine Love with light. The solar angels who
enlightened the early followers of earth-based religions inspired them to
worship the sun, from which we receive life, warmth, light, and the knowledge
of our connectedness with Nature. In the Bhagavad-gita of
Hinduism, the Blessed One says: "I am light in the moon and sun . . .
And brilliance in fire am I." Sri Guru Granth Sahib, one of the Love
messengers of Sikhism, wrote: “The Divine Light illuminates my inner being,
and I am lovingly absorbed in the One. Meeting with the Holy Saint, my face
is radiant; I have realized my pre-ordained destiny . . . His infinite Light
deep within us.” (Siree Raag, Fourth Mehl, First House, pp. 46-47) And
the Psalmist wrote: "The Lord is my light and my salvation -- whom shall
I fear?"
So Jesus and Love’s other emissaries have shown us that the divine
All-That-Is can be identified with Love and Light. And Jesus taught that we,
too, are the light of the world. He hoped that his followers and other enlightened
children of Love would increase in number and shine their light so brightly
that it would burn through the shadows and veils that have kept human hearts
from knowing the truth for thousands of years.
One of the most important sayings of Jesus which has largely been ignored is
this: “Truly, I tell all of you with certainty, the one who believes in me
will also do what I am doing. He will do even greater things than these,
because I am going to the father.” (John 14:12) And what were the things that
Jesus did, that we will do, too? He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He
turned water into wine. He walked on water. He raised the dead. He himself
returned from death in a resurrected body to remind us that life is eternal.
He did all these things because he was fully aware of his oneness with divine
power, with Love, with the Creator.
Jesus wanted people to have faith that we, too, are one with the Creator who
makes all things possible. And so he promised: "If you have faith the
size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and
planted in the sea,' and it would obey you!” (Luke 17:6) and then: “I tell
you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to
this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be
impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)
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Jesus hoped to save his fellow earth-dwellers from the hell of separation,
fear, and distrust, by shining his light on the path to divine consciousness.
He taught that the realization of oneness with God, Love, and Divine Light
ushers us into the kingdom of heaven which he said has been within us all
along. (Luke 17:21) Jesus knew that he would need help to take his message to
as many people as possible, so he chose twelve men, whose hearts were open to
the wisdom of Love, to be his close disciples. With the help of these twelve,
Jesus was able to attract many followers among the people of Palestine. Some of
these men and women were simply attracted by the charisma of this gentle and
wise teacher, and the miraculous healings that he was known for. They were
in awe of Jesus, but they didn’t think his teachings were meant for them. They
heard his words, but his messages of love did not take root in the hearts and
minds of those who could not feel the meaning of his words inside themselves.
In the future, stories of Jesus were passed along, sometimes by those who
understood the purpose of his life, but too frequently by those who could not
comprehend it. These people added their own interpretation to the stories,
raising Jesus to the status of God’s only child, and then to that of God
Himself, thus creating a chasm between humanity and divinity that was even
larger than the earlier separation. While Jesus had told his followers
that the only way to attain oneness with God was through love, and the understanding
that God and God’s creation are Love, the early church founders told
their members that eternal life in heaven had to be earned through the
acceptance of Jesus as God’s only son; the rest of us being depraved sinners
from birth.
We can imagine that these men
purposefully sought to eliminate the message of Love from their church
doctrines in order to instill fear and unbelief in Christian hearts, because
these doctrines enabled them to retain power and wealth for themselves and the
church leaders of the future. This fear and lack of belief in our own
divine power has contributed to much of the violence and oppression that has
continued to terrorize the world since Jesus was crucified.
If we believe in the kind of god who
would require a bloody sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity, we live
with constant anxiety and guilt. If we focus on Jesus’s words from the cross:
“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” we can feel at peace,
knowing that we are forgiven for our mistakes, and that we are to forgive
others for theirs. If we believe that Jesus gave up his physical life to
demonstrate his willingness to give his all for others, we can realize that
giving up our material bonds will dissolve the walls that separate us from each
other. And if we recognize that Jesus died in order to
demonstrate the resurrection of the human body, we can be transformed just as
Jesus was when he returned as the prototype of the immortal spiritual being we
were all intended to be.
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