Answering the Call

For the past few days Jami Lula’s song, “Something’s Calling Me,” has been running through my head.  Could it be that something is calling me?  Could it be that something is calling you?  Could it be the same “something” calling us?  Yes.  It is our true nature calling us to a place of remembrance.  It is the voice of the Divine at the center of our hearts calling us to let go of limited concepts of ourselves and accept who we truly are.  It is saying, “Wake up.  Wake up.  Wake Up!” 

I am convinced that whether we are conscious of it or not, our deepest desire is to awaken to our true nature; to know ourselves as the Divine; to live in conscious awareness of the One Power and One Presence expressing in, through and as these human forms.  We desire to experience what in some Eastern traditions is known as “awakening” or “enlightenment.”  In the Christian tradition it is referred to as “salvation.”  In other words, our hearts’ desire is to be saved from the illusion that we are our bodies, beliefs, emotions, or possessions, an image of self that often stimulates suffering.  We are saved from this illusion by awakening to the awareness of who we truly are.

Traditional Christianity teaches that we receive salvation through the belief that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to save us from an eternity in hell, and to give us the promise of an eternal afterlife in heaven; provided, of course, that we accept his atonement.  The theology is that Jesus is the source of our salvation.  In Unity, we believe that the source of our salvation is our acceptance and realization of our Christ nature.  It is not Jesus but the Christ that is the source of our salvation, and the Christ is the eternal essential nature of each of us.  Awakening to and living from our Christ nature is our salvation.

In the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary (MBD), Unity co-founder, Charles Fillmore offers an expansive explanation of “Christ.”  The following is a short excerpt.

“Christ is the only begotten Son of God, or the one complete idea of perfect man in Divine Mind. [Christ] is the embodiment of all divine ideas, such as intelligence, life, love, substance, and strength. This Christ, or perfect-man idea existing eternally in Divine Mind, is the true, spiritual, higher self of every individual. Each of us has within him the Christ, just as Jesus had, and we must look within to recognize and realize our sonship, our divine origin and birth, even as He did.”

While we do not view Jesus as the source of salvation, we see him as one who awakened to and lived fully from his Christ nature.  His life experience serves as a road map which can lead us to our own experience of salvation; if we choose to follow it. 

Last Sunday, I began a series of messages entitled “Wake up with Jesus.”  I am experiencing a great deal of enthusiasm for this series because it speaks to where I am and where I believe many of us are along life’s journey.  My hope is that this series will help us see Jesus as a metaphor for our own potential and possibility and that we will commit to following his example.  We are saved by our willingness and commitment to walk his path. 

Please join us on Sunday for our 10:00 a.m. service as we follow the call, encounter John the Baptist and experience the baptism of water and of the Holy Spirit.