The Central Message of Jesus

(5-minute Read) – The central message of Jesus is self-emptying love. The cross of Christianity is not a tribal emblem on a necklace. It is the sign of a crucifixion – a person’s tortured death preceded by spiritual emptying.

The message of the cross is communion in suffering and in hope. It is a message of radical compassion to the point of self-surrender in death as in life. St. John of the Cross called this self-emptying love madness to human ears.

Christianity failing

This central message is often absent in Christianity – it is just too radical for pragmatic contemporaries – it’s madness. Many Christians prefer instead a prosperity reading of the Bible, which suits their lifestyles. They seek their own fulfillment, enrichment and triumph. They seek their elevation first as if it is a Christian birthright. But this expectation is more like a death knell for authentic Christ-likeness.

Contemporary Christians too often self-righteously separate themselves like the chosen ones. They exclude the poor and the dispossessed, anyone who doesn’t comply with their worldview, or anyone not part of their perceived Christian family. In so doing they are the opposite of Christ-like.

This is a serious indictment since self-emptying love or letting go is deeply ingrained in two thousand years of Christian tradition. Self- emptying and letting go are common threads in the teachings and sayings of Jesus and St. Paul. Christianity is indeed failing to stand for the central message of Jesus.

The Bible

Jesus is recorded as saying:

 “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it”  (Luke 9:23).

 St Paul writes to the Roman Church in the first century:

 “Are you not aware that you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  You were buried with Him.  The old self has died” (Romans 6:35). 

Jesus lived out his teaching in his compassion for, and solidarity with, the poor and oppressed of society. His self-sacrifice on the cross was the ultimate expression of this compassion and solidarity – and his acceptance of a mission beyond this life.

This is not to say that he wanted to suffer on the cross, for he prayed for the ‘cup to pass him by’.  But when he accepted his calling, the suffering took on meaning. He experienced detachment, including detachment from physical life itself, replaced by the light of unconditional love… unwavering solidarity.

Humbled to exalted

St Paul explains in a letter to some early followers of Christ that humbling of self leads to exaltation (Philippians 2:5-11).  He illustrates an ethos that runs throughout the mystical tradition, namely that light follows darkness and more so that the way to light is necessarily through darkness.

Many people today want to skip the dark and go straight to light. There is a pandemic of entitlement in western society and Christianity has been co-opted to sell it. The preacher with the diamond ring hears madness in self-sacrifice.

The effect on us

When darkness is seen as a curse, blessings are illusory. Treasures built up in life are mirages that veil our true human destiny.

Human consciousness, or soul, evolves towards the experience of the light of divine love through many cycles of light and dark.  Letting go and accepting darkness as a precursor to light is the developmental path of a healthy psyche.  This letting go to find healing and growth is the central tenet of Christian spirituality.

Letting go of self leads to radical freedom.  Only then is the true self able to confess:

“It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me.” (Gal 2:20). 

Meditation helps

The experience of letting go is nurtured by meditation. In meditation we let go and rest and the selfless way of love descends upon the soul.  This truth has no names. It is beyond symbols. It descends… and transcends religious doctrine. And it transcends rational understanding. The experience is one of exaltation.

All that is required for us to taste exaltation is our consent to let go. Not once, but again and again as we descend deeper and deeper into true self.

Without the experience of this paradoxical exaltation, the story of Jesus Christ’s incarnation, teaching, death and resurrection seems like a childish fairy-tale to the secular mind. Or it is misunderstood as literal fact by the religious zealot.

The truth shall set you free

Exaltation of the emptied self changes everything. It becomes clear that both the common secular dismissal and the religious zealot’s dogmatism are wrong.

In fact, Jesus is an archetype of our sense of existence beyond limited lifespans – a sense that predates Jesus by tens of thousands of years. He is the example par excellence of self-emptying love, of compassion and solidarity that moves us beyond our limited ego perspectives and gives our existence a timeless meaning.

Following his example leads to a life of meaning.

It’s a journey

Jesus is the human model for the evolutionary journey of letting go and opening to new consciousness.  As a human being he evolved towards acceptance of his mission.  He did not merely jump into a state of freedom from attachment.

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is one of struggle with self. He had to journey through a metaphorical desert to let go and prepare himself for his life of self-emptying love.

Once he made it through the desert temptations, he wasn’t out the woods. Right to the end of his life, he struggled with a complete embrace of his mission.  ‘If it is possible, let this cup pass from me’, he prayed in a garden just before his crucifixion.

Home sweet home

Then in that garden he let go. He refused to take up the sword when his followers wanted to save him from arrest. He accepted the final part of his transformation – total self-emptying, spiritually and physically on a cross where his heart could no longer pump the depleted blood and fluids left in his veins and his organs gave up the ghost.

And therein lay his exaltation; his new life beyond the ghost; his arrival back at the home he already knew.

Self-emptying love is the central message for all of us. We are all fulfilled through self-emptying love, again and again in our lifespan. Our quest for meaning is a journey along a developmental pathway that twists its way through difficult brush. As we travel we must die. We only live fully when our egos die fully. And we only die well when we finally commit our souls to the great love beyond.