The Unanticipated Reordering Spiritual Revolution

The Resurrection and the challenge to all Domination Systems through the Kin-dom

The resurrection was not the fulfilment of a long-held well known event. It was a rupture. A jolt. A wild, incomprehensible happening that shook the foundations of everything. The women came to grieve and found a tomb broken open. The disciples, huddled in fear, encountered presence instead of absence. The powers that be—Rome, religion, violence, death itself—were rendered powerless in a single, silent moment of divine uprising.

It wasn’t just that Jesus had returned. It was that reality itself had been reordered at the now but not fully yet Kin-dom of God scandalously made real turning everything upside down.

Contemplative Christianity doesn’t rush to explain this rationally because it is a trans-rational happening. Something that is spiritually and ‘in your guts true’ but utterly not rational defying all the laws of known science. Instead the contemplatives and mystics linger, watch and listen. Contemplative Christians know the resurrection is not about proving something—it’s about being something entirely new. And most importantly, it knows this transformation begins not in hypotheses, systems or doctrines, but in the heart.

The resurrection transfigures the human heart. It confronts and heals the unworked-outness of our inner lives—the festering wounds, repressed emotions, and fearful egos that so often get weaponised by those in political or corporate power. In a world built on domination systems—driven by control (economic, social and ecological oppression), aggression, and the unresolved emotional pain of largely uninitiated men—resurrection reveals another way of being and acting. It is not about collusion with egoic corruption, delusion or the sociopathic reality of a society defined by competition, but rather a divine invitation to face our shadows in the light of love, and become whole leaning into collaboration and the seeking of the common good.

This is where the Kin-dom takes root. It grows not through conquest but through courageous inner work. In the love of the Risen Christ, we are not allowed to outsource our pain and woundedness or project it onto others (so often what class driven societies do). Instead, through the loving power of God, we are called to name it, hold it, and surrender it to the One who bears the wounds and still says, “Peace be with you.”

The resurrection does not allow for bypass. It is the transformation of the false self through the slow and painful rebirth of the true self. It is not about avoiding death or pain, but about discovering that death is not the end—and neither is ego, power, or fear. The Kin-dom is a society not of denial, but of deep integration or ecology.

As the mystics have always known, God’s love is not sentimental. It is fierce. It is refining. As Teresa of Ávila once said, “To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession in nothing. To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing.” In this dying to ego and awakening to God, we are remade.

This Kin-dom, founded on divine humility, invites us to stop projecting our inner toxicity onto the world and instead enter the contemplative resurrected fire of Christ, who, restored as the second person of the Trinity, bringing into being a new transformed order. Out of the necrotic corruption of the world’s systems, he births a new reality grounded in infinite love, self-giving, and healing.

To follow this way is not to cling to certainty, but to surrender to divine flow. As Thomas Merton reflected, “The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus, who died on the Cross, is alive with the life of God... the manifestation of a completely new and spiritual existence.”

This new existence is offered to us. Not as a far-off reward, but as the breath we breathe when we return to silence. It is the gaze of compassion in a cruel world. It is the holy refusal to let the systems of power write the final word.

The revolution of the resurrection begins now in us. In how we choose to live and act from the inside out, how we immerse ourselves in and through Christ, through pray, and how we forgive and truly love. It’s not easy in world driven increasingly by tyranny and injustice, where even the Church in many countries is corrupted by the ego of anger and selfishness.

Instead we are reminded of the commandments Jesus taught. Love one another as I have loved you. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. Or as the Contemplatives have known for two millenias - learn to receive the love of God, to learn to love yourself, to be able to truly love others. By being playful and choosing to live as a participant of the new kin-dom and following Jesus day by day we lean into the transformed way of life Jesus wanted for us no matter the mess of the world around us.

We are called to hold and live into hope and restoration. That the resurrected Jesus and the ‘now but not fully yet’ Kin-dom is today victorious, but where evil is defeated but still clings to all that is. The resurrected Jesus has opened the way for humanity, for those who choose to follow him, to no longer be spiritually enslaved. We are called to inhabit the realty of the resurrection, and each day to dare to imagine a society not of domination but of kinship and communion transformed by love.

Khristos anesti! Christ is risen!
Alithōs anesti! He is risen indeed!
Hallelujah.

Let us end with a prayer:

A Contemplative Prayer

O Risen Christ,
You who startled the world with your silence and your light,
unseal our hearts to your presence.
Roll away the stones of fear, despair, and cynicism.

Plant again the seed of your Kin-dom in our souls,
that we may become vessels of your love,
witnesses of your mercy,
and bearers of your impossible, unending life.

Where the world insists on power,
teach us the beauty of humility.
Where the world demands vengeance,
let us choose forgiveness.

May we live the resurrection not in theory but in truth,
in the depths of our being and the shape of our living.
Amen.

Or try this breath prayer which is all about God being so close to us, as near as our breath, where breath is all about life. Try this prayer naming God with your breathing.

As you breath in shape your mouth to say ‘Yah’
When you breath out shape your mouth to say ‘weh’

Keep going with this for a few minutes, it is a powerful prayer appropriate for the season of Easter.

The image is from an icon by Richard Stott for the parish of Christchurch Blackfriars where I previously worked.