CHRIST, THE SHROUD, AND SACRED ACTIVISM
Is Interfaith Understanding Possible for Mystical Christianity?
THE SHROUD IS CONFIRMED: I recently yielded to that ever-present temptation to “set somebody right” on Facebook, this time regarding the Shroud of Turin. This very seldom turns out well. Loftily informing a fervent skeptic that they are misinformed and blinded by atheistical, anti-religious prejudice does not tend to produce a change of viewpoint, or even a sustained courteous conversation. In this instance, the skeptic quoted Wikipedia’s page on the Shroud, referencing the carbon-dating from the 1980’s which appeared to date the Shroud as a medieval forgery. I responded (a bit frostily) that this dating has been thoroughly dismissed by experts in new studies, which confirmed that the previous dating was carried out on a corrupted fragment of the cloth, and which have produced additional evidence putting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as in fact the burial cloth of Jesus Christ beyond reasonable dispute.
Wikipedia is a go-to source and I use it frequently. However, when it comes to controversial topics, due to the fact that it is compiled by the public under Wikipedia guidelines, the Wiki page can become a battleground between opposing viewpoints (an excellent example being the page on the Shakespeare authorship controversy, with which I am deeply familiar).
One of the remaining mysteries is how the unique image on the cloth was created (modern science has been unable to replicate it) - especially considering the evidence that the body appears to have simply disappeared from within the cloth, i.e., an apparent dematerialization of the body. It is speculated that this dematerialization event (for which science also has no explanation) may have been the source of the flash of energy which created the subtle features of the exquisite image of Christ, as these traces on the cloth have no pigment or paint, or other evidence of forgery.
As one scientist put it, "there are only two possibilities for the Shroud: it is either the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, or it is one of the most ingenious, inexplicable, and fantastic creations of the human mind in history." Using Occam's Razor as my guide, I will go with the former explanation.
Given the mainstream historical evidence which has led to a general scholarly consensus that a charismatic rabbi named Jesus and called "the Christ" was crucified for sedition by Pontius Pilate, and that his followers believed he had risen from the dead, I believe we can safely dismiss the currently recirculating campaign (which claims that He never existed) as secular propaganda promoted by fervent materialists...whose view of the universe, by the way, flies in the face of the reality of quantum science.
This would appear to establish the Resurrection of Christ as an acknowledged historical event - with the meaning, of course, being subject to widely varying interpretations. This also debunks the current campaign to dismiss the Christ story as just another manifestation of the god-man archetype which (the campaign claims) was propagandized by the Roman Empire after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century, with the blame for the Crucifixion being shifted away from Pontius Pilate to the Jews, who then endured centuries of persecution.
So if we are forced on a scientific basis to conclude that Jesus Christ not only existed, but that He was crucified in exactly the way described in the Gospels, and that his body then dematerialized from within the tomb, what are the implications for the current tragic crisis besetting the Abrahamic faiths in the Gaza Strip?
Clearly, the Gaza crisis is not primarily a religious one, but principally geo-political and will therefore not admit of resolution by introducing the Shroud of Turin. But for those benevolent adherents of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity who are seeking common ground as children of One Creator, and who choose to commune with God in meditation, can those of us who seek to practice Sacred Activism (so beautifully defined by Andrew Harvey as “the fusion of the mystic's passion for God with the activist's passion for justice, creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing”), find renewed faith in the heartbreakingly intimate and personal intervention of the Divine into our human confusion, and perhaps tip the balance of Quantum Intentionality on our planet toward healing and compassion?
To be sure, Muslims who hold that Jesus was merely a prophet in the line leading to “the Seal of the Prophets” will have trouble with the concept of Divine Incarnation, to say nothing of the likelihood that the Shroud will be regarded as a “graven image” which it is sin to revere. For the great majority of Jews, who are raised to not even look into the possibility, the apparent historical reality of Christ and the Resurrection constitutes an existential crisis which we can certainly understand will not be welcomed or validated. For Buddhists as well, although Guatama Buddha is widely regarded as an avatar, or personal Incarnation of a divinely realized being into human form, the adoration of an Ishta (a human image of the Universal Spirit) is generally out of step with Buddhist doctrine (the multiplicty of Tibetan Buddhist deities notwithstanding).
Hinduism, of course, has no issue with the apparent facts in evidence here, as the concept of the Divine Incarnation is deeply woven into the dazzlingly diverse tapestry of Vedic understanding down the milleniums, as beautifully brought forward in Paramahansa Yogananda’s profound and revelatory commentary on the Gospels, “The Second Coming of Christ - The Resurrection of the Christ Within You.”
As one who has for the last twelve years been greatly inspired by the work of Andrew Harvey, and as a decades-long disciple of the meditation path brought to the West by Yogananda in the teachings of Self-Realization Fellowship, I find myself renewed in my childhood Catholic faith in the reality of Jesus Christ, tempered and (one hopes) matured into an interfaith understanding of the common mystical basis at the heart of all the great faith traditions. If we are able to commune directly and personally with the Mother-Father-Friend of us all, we can be so much closer to confronting the darkness in our world with the flame of Love in hand. And then, perhaps, even the seemingly intractable horrors unfolding in Gaza may yield to the Reality of a world in which it seems possible that an Incarnation of Love rose from the dead.
Michael Henry Dunn
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Hello Michael, this is probably the best text I have read on this highly pertinent and important subject in a long time. Thank you for laying it out so eloquently, and for sharing your beautiful light with the world. Sharing with my network and guiding them towards your top quality platform of knowledge and insights into all that has to do with sacred activism.