Advent and the Eclipse of God

1. Exiling the Stars

Just a few weeks ago, on a crisp Maine night, I saw the vast panoply of the sky again after living for many years without the sense of awe it always inspires. Where I live, the night sky is eclipsed by the haze of urban light pollution, so that only the most intense stars are able to assert themselves.

We humans have expanded without limit. There are too many of us here; besides that, our momentous busyness needs the perpetual blare of man-made light. The night sky seems to us such a small thing to forfeit, to forget.

But that night, as if for the first time, I noted again the almost three-dimensional impression which is created by the brightest stars, which seem to stand out boldly in front of the velvet-black depths of space, so close in their sparkle it almost seems as if one might touch them.

Cosmic Awe

I didn’t choose to feel awe; it thrust itself upon me, standing out there in the chilly night, mouth literally agape at the gauzy stretch of the Milky Way as it marches across the sky. Once again, I was so small, so utterly insignificant in the vastness of the universe, but at the same moment belonged profoundly to it all—exactly what Albert Einstein called “cosmic religious feeling.”

Is it a pure coincidence that atheism is most prevalent where the full panoply of the night sky cannot be seen? Does such disbelief arise more from disenchantment with ancient dogma or from a host of non-theological factors—like the banishment of the night sky?

We are a species hard-wired for awe, and perhaps without it the soul—our deepest self—shrivels, leaving only that little segment of the brain we call “rationality” stranded, high and dry, like a small island perpetually overrun by a shopping mall. Now I don’t imagine that the night sky is some simplistic proof of the existence of God, but I do recognize that something in me goes to sleep when I don’t see the gossamer trail of the Milky Way at night.

Self-imposed Exile?

One of the traditional Advent themes is Exile: O come, o come Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lowly exile here. The holy Story tells us we “fell” from Paradise into an exile not only from God but from the very “face” of the creation itself. (See Genesis 2-4)

How many are the ways, I wondered, that our lifestyle itself—our distraction-saturated, muzak-charged, craving-driven lifestyle—eclipses what Gerard Manley Hopkins called the “dearest freshness deep down things” and exiles us from the astonishing thereness of a world charged with awe? Our ransom from this exile is, I suspect, as close as the night sky.

If we could but see it.

To follow: In a series of five or six Advent postings I plan to explore some of the non-theological factors for the eclipse of God in ‘advanced’ societies, as well as Christ as the symbol and embodiment of deliverance from this world-alienated state.

Doesn’t the flag belong to all of us?

“I hate patriotic hymns,” one of my Facebook friends wrote after I had posted some verses from my favorite national hymn, “America the Beautiful.”

I get this kind of stuff more than I like from some of my fellow liberal and progressive colleagues, and it bothers me a lot. While I don’t start my days singing “My country ‘tis of thee” or fly the flag on a front yard flagpole, I do hang one of my three flags out on major national holidays, and my wife will tell you I can get misty-eyed singing a great many patriotic songs. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am an American patriot — a left-of-center, internationally-oriented, multi-culture-loving patriot, as ready to promote my country’s highest ideals as I am to challenge us all about its failures and mistakes.

So it bothers me a lot when somebody like this FB friend—whom I know as a Christian concerned about social justice and such things—”hates” patriotic hymns. Does she really think her sense of “all are created equal” and her desire for “liberty and justice for all” just sprang naturally into her brain out of nowhere, or is solely derived from her reading of the Bible? Or has she, like too many others, let the Right steal the Flag and all those songs?

Who flies the Flag?

To give another example: at a neighborhood block party a couple of years back, a gaggle of my fellow Democrat-voting neighbors were hashing over the coming election when our lone, and very vocal, right-wing neighbor overheard the conversation. “Well,” she huffed, “you can tell who the real patriots are in this neighborhood. Just look at who does and doesn’t show the Flag.” She stalked off, and they all harrumphed. Fly the Flag? “I wouldn’t ‘fly the Flag,’” one of them said. “I don’t like what it stands for.”

At that point I couldn’t keep silent. “Do you really mean that you’re going to let one political opinion own the American flag?”

“Well,” came the defensive response, “I don’t like that kind of patriotism.”

“So the Flag only stands for ‘that kind of patriotism‘ does it?” I countered. “I thought it stood for the nation and its values—that it belonged to all of us. Aren’t liberal values as ‘American’ as conservative ones? Do you really want the Flag and all it stands for to become the property of an increasingly mind-shackled Right?”

To my leftist-leaning neighbor’s credit, he went home, ordered a flag (even bigger than his conservative neighbor’s) and hung it proudly on his front porch. A symbolic gesture, but an important one; and, I hope, the sign of a change of heart.

A Confession

Full disclosure: I am a repentant Europhile. In my youth, I was swept up in an idealistic longing for something better than “plain-folks,” no-nonsense Midwestern and Southern roots of my family and community. Something more cultivated, cultured, civilized, more communitarian and just.....more....European (as I saw it). While I thrilled at the emergent civil rights movement, and did what I could to support it, as well as the anti-war movement that followed it, my focus was on all that was unfair, unjust and unrefined in American life. I relished the language of the Hebrew prophets as they thundered against the sins of ancient Israel, and easily translated that language into my own dark judgments about my own country.

And then one day, reading Jeremiah, my favorite Denouncer, I had an epiphany: Jeremiah was in such agony over his country because he loved it. He cared about ancient Israel and its people. He cared about the self-injury they were suffering by not living into a fuller realization of God’s call to make their land a haven of justice, compassion and peace. And I realized that as a citizen, a teacher and (by then) a priest and public leader, I could not presume to be “prophetic” if it did not come from a heart of love for the country I wanted to challenge to live up to its stated ideals.

So I renounced my “grass is greener on the other side” Europhilia and embraced my own national heritage. I re-read American history, became newly acquainted with the Founders, learned, over the years, more and more about all that is good, as well as sorrow-making, in this nation’s history. All that the Flag stands for.

Patriotism doesn't have to be prejudice

Patriotism, to me, doesn’t mean “my nation right or wrong.” It doesn't mean refusing to criticize your nation when it fails its own ideals (as in the wholesale internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII). It doesn’t even mean “We’re number One” or “the Best.” It doesn't mean childishly looking down on others to bolster our national ego.

But we are what we are, and love of country means embracing what we are, the good as well as the bad. We are the first nation on earth to be founded, from Day One, on a national creed that aspires to treat everyone equally before the law, to be a haven of “liberty and justice for all.” We were founded, constitutionally, to allow and encourage freedom of religion and the pursuit of personal dreams and ambitions. And, again and again, leaders and movements have stretched and expanded our understanding of what the original Creed means. And that progress goes on, steps forward and back, but still persists in a gradually forward direction.

And progressives, most of all, shouldn't let patriotic loyalty be co-opted solely by the folks who think America is God's current chosen vehicle to impose our version of life on the rest of the world. The Flag, and all (well, most) of those patriotic songs belong to all U.S. citizens.

In our own day, it’s vitally important for this nation, with all its resources and values, to take its place as an important partner with other nations—one among many—in dealing with the daunting challenges facing the human race as we enter fully into what must be a truly global and planetary era. But we’ll never do that by denying the best of what we have to offer as a partner—or refusing to demand that we work toward implementing our vision of justice and fairness, most especially on our own shores.

So, no, I don’t hate patriotic songs, which belong to all of us, especially not ones that soar like this:

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

The 4th of July, with its fireworks and patriotic songs is past. Back to the task of living into the best of what it means to be Americans.

P.S. Please remember to vote for what you care about in the mid-term elections. Congressional elections matter, and patriotism is about more than songs.

The Wounded God 6: The Cloud of Glory and Jesus' Ascension

That cloud—the one that “hid Jesus from their sight”—I’ve never thought that was really one of the white fleecy ones we see in the sky. Rather it was the Cloud, a cloud of Glory, like the dazzling radiance that shone from Christ when he was transfigured, becoming a cloud which enveloped the trembling eyewitnesses who were “afraid when they entered the cloud.” Such a marvelous cloud symbolizes and embodies the nearer presence of the Divine glory itself.

The Bible isn’t quite so literalistic as many folks think. Luke knows the symbol-code when he tells his tale the climactic end of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. He knows that in the saga of Israel in the wilderness a cloud of glory settled, again and again, over and around the Tent of Meeting when Moses entered to converse with God “face to face.” As it did again when Solomon dedicated the Temple. Not that this Cloud is mere metaphor. Rather, “cloud” is an ecstatic utterance Biblical writers use for the actual feel of the divine Presence, at least in one of its aspects. Ancient Jewish storytelling even traces that Cloud back to the beginning of creation, interpreting the “mist” in Eden as Holy Wisdom, the immanent presence of God.

Entering into the Cloud

I sometimes wonder if I was touched by the outer edge of that Glory one night decades ago at a huge Pentecostal gathering in New York. The worship leaders were good at using devotional hymns and choruses to woo the huge crowd into a state of deeply felt devotion—a skilled liturgy of soul-opening, not the frenetic hype of some pentecostal worship. As we sang on, waves of ecstasy moved through the crowd like Wind was blowing through a field of wheat. Bathed in a cloud of radiant energy, there was a sense of a great Vastness opening above us and around us.

Since then that Cloud has crossed my path on more than one special occasion—at a (quite literal) mountaintop Eucharist with three hundred Episcopal college students doing Taize-like chanting, at a conference of Lutheran clergy on a week-long retreat reciting the many different names of God, in a quiet meditative prayer group which suddenly found itself plunged into the “silence of Eternity” — even at a rather secular 60s “encounter group.” The trust in that group had reached such a deep level that, with just one specially penetrating comment, a great, timeless Silence descended upon us all like a mantle, a vast cloud full of peace, joy and love.

So, when the Bible talks about that Cloud, my inner ears perk up, and I feel once more the writers were not just making things up, but trying their best to convey the feel of an encounter.

He “withdrew from them into heaven”

In those “clouds” that surrounded the groups I was in, there was not only “aroundness” but “aboveness.” The atmosphere “descended:” as if from above. That was the sensation: as if the ceiling disappeared—just as, in Scripture, God descends "from above.” And, in the story of Jesus’ exaltation to the “right hand of God,” the narrative says he went “into heaven,” and pictures the disciples “looking up.”

I know that, for the Biblical writers, this was not just a symbolic code, but science, too. The ancient world believed that the realm of God or the gods was “up,” on mountain tops, or in the highest heavens. This was not only the religious, but scientific model of the universe: seven or more rotating, crystalline spheres containing ascending realms of spiritual purity.

But I’m reluctant simply to relegate the Biblical narrative of Jesus' ascension to the realm of “ancient ideas” just because we now know that the architecture of the universe is different from the ancient science. I resist because of my experience of The Cloud, with its felt sense of vastness. And I wonder if, science to the contrary notwithstanding, there isn’t something true in the world-wide human experience of God being “above” (as well as “within” and “around”) — something that arises out of this felt sense of the world.

The "gravitational pull from above"

Since there is something so “uplifting” about that Presence, as if some magnetic energy is stretching us to our full height of soul and spirit, it’s not surprising that they think of the Source as being “up” and “above.” They symbolize It as the all-embracing sky, that cosmic Vastness which comes all the way down to the horizon and touches earth in an all-embracing circle. In her book on Christian mystical wisdom, Cynthia Bourgeault calls this felt sense of encompassing, stretching grace “a gravitational pull from above.” (The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart)

In the light of all this, here’s my version of the Ascension: Each time the risen Christ appeared to his disciples, he was more and more surrounded by that atmosphere of enlivening calm, joy, and love until one day he “withdrew from them” as Luke puts it, entirely into the Cloud, into God, “ascending” finally into the heart of God, becoming a universal presence, a major bass theme in the music of God’s presence in the world. "He ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things," as Paul puts it (Ephesians 4:10).

But, of course, human beings cannot remain forever wrapped in such clouds, “looking up” into such foretastes of the nearer presence of God. There’s work to be done, from taking out of the garbage, to raising children, to the healing, repair and building of a world continually damaged and deformed by what human beings do when they are devoid of the love that fills that Cloud.

Watercolor above: "Glad Day" by William Blake

Next week: Who gets to share in holy Spirit?

The Wounded God 5: What is this mysterious body?

Why are you troubled?
And why do doubts arise
in your hearts?
Behold My hands and My feet,
that it is I Myself.
Handle Me and see, for a spirit
does not have flesh and bones
as you see I have.”
—Luke 24:38-39

What is this mysterious body that bears the reality of the risen Christ? As the stories tell it, Jesus appears but is not recognized until their “eyes are opened.” He is suddenly “in their midst” even though the doors are bolted. He can disappear in the blink of an eye, but is real enough to be touched and even make a fire and prepare breakfast. Most importantly, his presence seems at once as real as flesh while being “living breath:” The first man Adam became a living being, but last Adam became life-giving breath (1 Corinthians 15:45)

The stories bear witness to something beyond ordinary human experience, but perhaps our own experience of the body can give us some clues to the mystery of the resurrection. On the simplest physical level, bodies display astonishing abilities we take for granted: self-repair, transformation of food into vitalizing energy, complex and fine-tuned physical performance, and the bio-electrical generation of a measurable energy field.

More than just flesh....

But human beings, throughout the ages, have experienced their bodies not just as flesh and bone, but also “temples of spirit.” Bodies shine with the ineffable but unmistakable reality of presence. There are persons whose presence fills the room when their body enters, radiating joy or enthusiasm, anger or depression. And everyone knows what it feels like when someone “turns you off”, even if the body is right there in front of you. Something subtle is withdrawn.

Certain people seem filled with such bountiful energy that they lift your spirits without touching you, or can send a veritable flow of warmth like a current through your body through their hands. Others are such a deep hole of neediness they can drain you of energy just by being nearby. And most of us know what it's like to feel someone’s eyes on us, even if we have to turn around to find out who is staring at us.

We hardly have a vocabulary for these unmistakable, but subtle realities, and fall back on “as if” language: “it was as if she lit up the whole room.” Perhaps we ought to risk dropping the “as if.”

After all there are hundreds and thousands (most likely tens of thousands and more) who will swear to you they can, on occasion, see bodies shining with light, just like the holy pictures of saints with halos in many traditions. Not only that, you can attend any number of workshops around the nation that will teach you how to see these “auras” (in spite of the skepticism of the majority of folks who have never investigated the phenomenon).

Then there are the stories of the liminal dimensions of flesh from all around the world: the bodies of Hindu holy men and Christian saints which do not decay after death, emitting the faint odor of roses; the rare Tibetan Buddhist lamas (in our own times) who, when dying, seem transformed into a rainbow of light; the Indian avatars, like the 19th century saint Sri Ramakrishna, who are literally transfigured before the astonished eyes of thousands of people and shine “with the light of the noonday sun” (as we are told Jesus did on a certain mountain top).

I know a priest who saw a radiantly shining monk in Massachusetts back in the 60s. And consider the eyewitness testimony of Motovilov, a disciple of the 19th century staretz Seraphim of Sarov. "It was as if my eyes had been opened, for I saw that the face of the elder was brighter than the sun. In my heart I felt joy and peace, in my body a warmth as if it were summer, and a fragrance began to spread around us." When the disciple confessed his astonished reaction, the saint responded, "Do not fear, dear fellow. You would not even be able to see me if you yourself were not in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Thank the Lord for His mercy toward us." (See St. Seraphim of Sarov by Valentine Zander)

Stretching our experiential boundaries

Why then (bodies being so mysterious) should we find the stories of Jesus’ transfigured and transformed Presence—so real it could be touched—incredible, as so many modern Christians do? I remember well my seminary New Testament professor making fun of St. Paul’s “baffling attempt” to explain “spiritual bodies” in 1 Corinthians 15. It was all based on “strange ancient beliefs” he found “unintelligible.” He preferred, as do most modernists, some sort of “spiritual illumination” to the vivid realism of the gospel narratives.

Having already been introduced to some of the world-wide lore about the spiritual dimensions of the flesh, I was uncomfortable with his modernist scorn 47 years ago. Today I’d suggest he follow a reading program in comparative mysticism and find a real Hindu yoga teacher who could explain to him the yoga tradition’s actual experience of the multi-layered “subtle bodies” that make up the human reality.

I had my own surprised experience of these subtle dimensions once during a three-year series of Polarity Therapy treatments—a combination of acupressure and “energy balancing.” The gentle acupressure touches set of a palpable flow of energy along the “energy meridians” described by Chinese medicine. All of a sudden I “saw” very clearly a column of intense white light running from head to foot through the center of my flesh. The experience lasted for ten minutes or more, filling my body with a sweet warmth and a kind of cleansing “breath.” "What is this?" I asked the therapist. “Oh,” she said off-handedly (using the language of her tradition's energy map) “that’s just your etheric body.”

Call it my imagination if you will. I’ll be more inclined to take you seriously after you’ve had three years of these treatments yourself, or really studied the world testimony to the higher capacities of the body.

The challenge of the stories

My faith doesn’t stand or fall on such experiences, nor on the every literal detail of the biblical Resurrection stories. I doubt they are exact videotape versions of what happened. But I do think they seek faithfully to put into narrative form an Encounter that contains, but far transcends, what we experience at the luminous edges of our fleshly existence. Jesus, whose body had already shown many subtle powers in his lifetime, had crossed a threshold into the spiritual dimensions of human existence and appeared to his beloved community in what Christians have called his "glorified body".

And the stories challenge us to wake up to the miracle of our own embodied existence, where flesh and bone already shine, at times, with the light that will be our sum and substance after we are "changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Maybe it's something like that column of white light I saw, and believe is still there in the deeper dimensions of my own flesh—and yours.

Next week: Resurrection Now

The Wounded God 4: Was it all “finished” on the cross?

They thought it was finished—and that they were finished with it: “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”

But he was dead, and the glorious mission seemed over. Then, through appearance and visitation, through illumination and encounter, they came to realize it had only begun. Their own involvement in the redemption of the world, that is; for it became clear this startlingly alive, transformed and enduring Presence was not going to accomplish it without their active participation: “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” (John 20:21)

One wonders how they felt about that. The gospels, of course, present a picture of astonished joy, and surely that was the main reaction. But there are also indications of continuing uncertainty and doubt. We even find the apostles (hiding out?) in Galilee even after receiving Christ's risen “peace be with you” greeting with its commission to “remit sins.” And what are they doing? “I go a-fishing,” Simon Peter declares, and they all hit the boats. (John 21) What’s that about? Possible yearnings to go back to the familiar life they had left behind to follow him on this wild-goose-chase of Messianic hopes?

Not your ancestors' Messiah

So consider this possibility: Jesus had dismayed them by getting himself killed while they had stubbornly, against all warnings, still believed he would give them plum positions in a new government. (Mark 10:36-38) Then he surprised them by reclaiming their lives after his death. By being crucified, he had re-defined the meaning of “Messiah” in the most wrenching way: the one who was supposed to be the great Rescuer had not performed the expected rescue. Indeed, the heart of the meaning of a crucified Messiah is that God is not, primarily, a rescuer. Redemption doesn’t work that way.

Of course they had been challenged to accept this all through his ministry. According to the gospels they just refused to absorb fully what he showed them. From the beginning he made them his partners, trained them, sent them out in the power of the Spirit to share in his work. On the way to the Holy City, while they vied for those governmental positions, he asked them if they were willing to undergo his “baptism” — persistence to the kingdom vision even at the cost of life.

So now, underneath the joy and excitement, there’s maybe the final shock that, after all, the world isn’t going to be miraculously saved from its reckless and destructive ways, souls aren’t going to be brought from darkness to light, without a commitment from them that will cost them (as T.S. Eliot puts it) “nothing less than everything.”

Who wouldn’t be tempted to return to the fishing business? But there he is, a mysterious figure on the shore at dawn, asking them about their catch, and hosting yet another meal, challenging them to shoulder the task yet once again: “The works that I do you will do, and even greater works than these." (John 14:12)

The suffering of Christ is not yet complete

The resurrection challenge to them is to shoulder his task and take their place in the drama of God's own soul-and-world redemption. “As he is, so are we in the world.” (1 John 4:17)The joyful parts of this will be healing the sick and building compassionate community. The risky and possibly sorrowful parts will involve challenging the power-structures of evil in the world and their vicious kick-back, as Jesus did. The johnny-come-lately apostle Paul puts it this way: "...in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions." (Colossians 1:24)

Something "lacking in Christ's afflictions”? Paul's statement, taken at face value (and how else could we take it?), would be considered the rankest heresy in many conservative Christian circles. A wide swath of Christian teaching speaks of the “finished work of Christ upon the cross” and hymns proclaim that “Jesus did it all.” All we’ve got to do is accept Christ’s “finished work” by faith, and —behold!— forgiveness of sins, eternal life are ours.

Nonetheless, there it is, along with all Jesus’ acts of initiating his followers into his work, Paul’s bold statement that he is a “co-worker” with God (1 Corinthians 3:9) and his mystical perception that Christ dwells, quite literally, in the heart of the believer, working together with us for good in a difficult world that needs repair, rebuilding and redemption from its evil possibilities.

I don’t mean at all to deny that Cross and Resurrection are cosmically decisive events. I accept completely that Christ was "delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification" (1 Corinthians 15:3), and the whole apostolic proclamation that if we enter into the mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising our whole relationship to God is realigned. But to believe “Jesus did it all” and we just "accept it by faith" is to miss the very meaning of the wrenching re-definition of Messiah as the Crucified One, the embodiment of the Wounded-yet-persistent-God. We must make up "what is lacking....”

The resurrection challenge: participation in Christ

The name of this process is participation. God doesn’t save the world alone, and we certainly can’t do it alone. We are co-operators, synergoi as Paul puts it, literally “co-energizers.” (! Corinthians 3:9)

The “kingdom does not come by observation” (Luke 17:20) but by gradual processes like plant growth and bread rising. In Christ, God has united human nature itself with Divine nature so that the divine Spirit works “by, with, and under” human effort. The cross is sign and seal of God's perpetual entry into all human difficulty and suffering, of God's taking it all into his heart to open every circumstance to the air and light of the Spirit.

The beloved spiritual “He’s got the whole world/ in his hands,” comforting as it is, is only half true. The missing verse is “He gave the whole world/ into our hands,” as Genesis 1 so clearly tells us. Fortunately, even larger swaths of Christian thought from Patristic days onward have realized that participation is key.

Continued resistance to the challenge

But, as the New Testament seems to indicate, not everyone got the message. Some voices in the apostolic literature still imagine the Eschaton, the “restoration of all things” is just around the corner, just as some sectors of Christianity, continue to gaze longingly at the clouds, fervently expecting the return of Jesus now, in this generation, in spite of the repeated failure of the outside Rescuer to appear. Christ is the revelation and enactment of a Pattern, the sign of how grace works to bring good out of evil and work redemption even in the midst of tragedy. And that Pattern reappears again and again in lives and situations, redeeming to world.

The risen Christ, finding habitation in hearts and lives that welcome him, remains ready to take our mistakes and tragedies into his wounded hands and begins weaving them into larger patterns where healing and good emerge in ways small and large—

—if we participate lovingly and trustingly in the Pattern of the Wounded One who persists in embracing the world whole and entire: beauty, goodness, and tragic failings alike.

Graphic: Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion

Next week: The glorified Body and our flesh

The Wounded God 3: “He broke the bars of the prison”

Whatever else happened to those ardent but bewildered disciples during the resurrection appearances of Jesus, the transformed Presence of the Man they had known was real to them—unmistakably familiar, palpably convincing. “We have seen the Lord,” they say. And by that they mean, among other things, that the same soul-liberating power they had experienced around him in the days of his flesh had returned in an unmistakably familiar but transformed mode.

What was this unmistakable Presence like? The stories speak of a suffusive breath of Spirit that brought joy, forgiveness, and peace to men and women wallowing in despair and self-loathing; of a series of Illuminations that broke the fetters of their limited understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ life; and of the spiritual Fire that burned away illusion and opened new doorways to the future.

“We have seen the Lord,” yes; “but now we see him—and ourselves—quite differently.” The Jesus of their past memory—and their own memory of themselves—is now set into the radiant spaciousness of God’s compassionate mind and expansive purposes. They go forth with the message that the “mind of Christ,” the all-pervasive Spirit of God, is available to all who will access it to liberate humanity from the powers of sin and death which underlie and support all the oppressive systems of this world’s life.

A Presence that "takes away the sin of the world"

“Christians believe that they can still meet this human being,” the historian Diarmaid McColloch says, in ways not unlike “the experience of the disciples....They are convinced this meeting transforms lives, as has been evident in the experience of other Christians across the centuries.” (Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years). I would add that this experience of the divine power that was in Jesus is not limited to Christians, but appears in other guises and other names. As Jesus says “I have other sheep who are not of this fold.” (John 10:16)

I’ve seen this Presence at work often. I remember sitting in an Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) meeting for the first time and being amazed at the palpable atmosphere of compassion in the room as people shared a variety of frustrating experiences, painful wounds from the past, and scary challenges. As each difficult situation was shared, no one offered “helpful advice” or burbled “O poor baby.”

The receptivity of the Silence was profound. Every word and feeling was taken into a cleansing, loving, accepting atmosphere that welcomed and embraced both the words and the soul that uttered them. The sense of empathy, of interconnection deepened. Hearing so much pain was not depressing, because the spirit—and Spirit—in the room was not only healing but oddly invigorating. As I left the meeting, I realized I had been experiencing the "sin of the world" being "taken away" that the New Testament speaks of. The power of the past to hold us in its grip was being broken by sharing, confession, and welcome into a larger space that imparted a sense of connection with others, a sense that life is bigger than the wounds, and a Love that poured through, not just from, the group.

Witness from treating trauma

My brother-in-law, an M.D. with training in “Somatic Experiencing” a disciple that addresses the psychological dimensions of trauma, sees in this a parallel to his work with trauma victims. “In trauma, whether physical or psychological” David says, “too much happens too quickly. Neither psyche nor body can cope, and everything gets compacted in a dense, painful, interlocking mass. Whatever reminds you of the trauma sets this compacted mass off again. You’re stuck inside the prison of the memory, which leads to all kinds of avoidance behavior.”

What can unlock this prison? All the “sympathy” in the world won’t do it, and standard talk therapy runs the risk of simply re-traumatizing the patient by hauling up memories that he can’t cope with. David’s complementary medical method involves a form of Vipassana meditation—a way of simply being fully present to your experience, and welcoming whatever occurs or comes up from within. Through focus on relaxation, breathing, and centered focus (the ABCs of meditation), with the presence and guidance of a compassionate guide to support and reassure, bits and pieces of the traumatic memory unfold themselves at their own pace, piecemeal, without being forced. “The psyche knows how to heal itself, given breathing room, and surrounded by an atmosphere of compassionate receptivity to hear what wants to speak itself,” David says. “Eventually the ‘it-was-all-too-much-to-cope-with’ story the person is trapped in dissolves and is replaced by a new narrative connected with the rest of life. The person is no longer crippled by the deadening grip of the past.”

A Presence available throughout time and space

Now you may say, ‘Do you really mean that’s there no more to the Resurrection than that?” Not at all—though that would be quite a lot. Rather, experiences like this give me a clue to what at least one aspect of Presence of Christ must have been like for the original witnesses, for it certainly had a similar result: their entire story of Jesus and themselves, a story that had ended in failure, fear, shame and hopelessness was re-visioned and redeemed. They were "ransom, healed, restored, forgiven" and given a new energy and aim in life.

As a believer, I’m sure that the Dazzling Presence was so real it was as if they could touch the wounds in its side—the signs of Jesus’ own trauma transformed. As they ate and drank it he sat among them. But they simply stood closer to the source of the Presence that surrounded me at the ACOA meeting. It has come to me again and again kneeling at the altar rail to commune with Real Presence, and I’ve felt It in spiritual direction sessions where someone’s imprisoning past gets miraculously re-set in a new framework, and energies are released that will create a new future.

So, even though there's a lot more to Jesus' resurrection than this aspect, what I have "seen and heard and touched" of the "Word of life" (1 John 1:1) looks a lot like resurrection to me. Quite enough to bring forth yet another soul out of the tomb.

Next week: Was it really "finished" on the Cross?

The Wounded God 2: "He opened the Scriptures to them"

One thing is clear from the stories of Jesus’ appearances to his followers after his death: he gave them a radical new angle on the ancient Scriptures of Israel. This new angle would radically alter their view of how the grace of God operates in the world.

The new angle was that the Crucified and Risen Man is the key to understanding the entire saga of Hebrew history, and God’s ongoing work in the world. Jesus as the messenger and embodiment of God’s Way with humans “opens” a different way of reading the Scriptures. Such a radically changed reading of sacred texts would, more and more, drive a wedge between the new Jesus movement and emergent rabbinical Judaism, rival claimants for the heritage of ancient Israel enshrined in the Hebrew Bible.

The early Christian movement was a hot-bed of inspired utterance, vision, and out-of-the-box angles of vision on the possibilities of human nature, alternative constructions of society, and the ways grace can operate. We get a glimpse of the beginning of this mystical fervor in the resurrection stories when we are told of incidents where the Risen Christ “opened the Scriptures to them” and in the book of Acts where the new insights continue, opening the movement to non-Jews and bringing Paul’s radical views into the fellowship.

Beyond the issue of "proof-texts"

At the center of all this is the reality of a Jesus who has somehow managed to pursue the disciples after his defeat. In the light of this, previously obscure verses in the Psalms and Prophets now appear clearly before the astonished eyes of the disciples as they re-read the Bible and see the Crucified One revealed in startling new ways: “It was necessary that the Christ suffer and rise again.”

We can easily misunderstand the experiences of the disciples if we reduce this all to a series of “proof texts.” Christian conservatives still hold fast to the historic list of “prophecies” which, they feel, “prove” that Jesus is indeed Israel’s promised Messiah. Other Christians, under the influence of historical-critical biblical scholarship, point out that most of these “proofs” are wrenched out of their historical context in the Hebrew Bible. And, they will point out, that to beat Jews over the head with these texts (as was the custom of the medieval Church) has led to great evils against a people trying their best to be true to the God of the Covenant.

But the debate about the power or non-power of the proof-texts misses the point. Because of what happened to Jesus, the disciples now saw the Creator of the world and the Shepherd of Israel as The Wounded God, the One patiently seeking to teach, woo, lure humankind away from its self-destructive paths, and all too often being betrayed and rejected. They saw Jesus foreshadowed in the story of Joseph, in the Exodus from Egypt, in the suffering servant of the Exile, in the mysterious pierced prophet of Zechariah. And because of this, they could never read Israel’s story, or their own, the same way.

They see that the cause of God, again and again, is crucified, dead and buried. And yet, again and again, the Divine Love returned, again and again to embrace those who had failed it, resisted it, or ignorantly misunderstood it—returned with mercy and forgiveness, to resume once again coaching, enlightening, expanding understanding, prodding to new ventures designed to further the best interests of humankind and all creation.

The paradoxical good news

This is good news for humankind, however counter-intuitive. Really good news for a species that, sometimes in spite of its best intentions—and often because of truly self-serving, ultimately destructive intentions — hasn’t yet learned how to “get it right” on so many things that we need for our survival and long term well-being. It is good news because it tells us that the creative Intelligence that broods over and within our life in the world knows how to take mistakes, failures, and tragedies in stride, continuing to work “with those who love him to bring forth good.” (Romans 8:32)

This message was a "stumbling block to Jews" because Messiah is meant to come in Triumph, and "foolishness" to non-Jews who believed that deities were removed from ordinary human suffering. But, for Christians, it remains a valid and revelatory reading of ancient Israel's holy book, though this does make all other readings invalid. (Nor does it suggest that Jews and others do not have their own insights into the pattern which Christins call "cruciform").

And it remains both stumbling block and foolishness to so many in our culture — and in the churches — who see brokenness only as "failure, stupidity (or) incompetence," as Walter Bruggemann puts it. "In such ideology there are no genuinely broken people."

Since Christian history, is about as full of disobedience, betrayal, and tragedy as ancient Hebrew history (and, for that matter, all histories) this is specifically good news for a Church all to often intent on wrapping the image of righteousness about it as a defense rather than opening its brokenness to God — and a culture that, increasingly, can only "apologize" for failure, sin, and destructiveness.

As Bruggemann puts it, The outcome....is that there can be no healing, for there has not been enough candor to permit it. In the end, such denial is not only a denial of certain specifics--it is the rejection of the entire drama of brokenness and healing, the denial that there is an incommensurate Power and Angst who comes in pathos into the brokenness, and who by coming there makes the brokenness a place of possibility...generosity, candor...and resilient hope." (The Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible)