God images in darkness

In my last posting I wrote of the experience of God in times of darkness, when God seems absent and uninterested.  An important aspect of this is the image of God we carry in our minds.  The God we ‘comprehend’ will always be greater than anything we can possibly imagine.

However, having said that, we always move from the known to the unknown.  The fact that we make God in our own image and likeness is relevant and normal as human processes go.  It also has good biblical support in that according to Genesis we are created in God’s image and likeness. Karl Rahner [1] wrote ‘When God wills to be non-divine, the human person comes to be’.  So to make God in our own image and likeness is an intimation of the nature and character of God.

The problem is that not only are we often reluctant to let go our always inadequate images of God, we limit our vision of humanity.  Both require that we step into Mystery but it is easier to live with containable labels. So we cling to what we know and can name like comfortable old shoes.  Our understanding of being human is too small therefore our God will always be too small.  For the hints as to who God is, let’s look to the sages and saints of human history as well as those life-giving people who enter our lives.

While our images of God will always be profoundly inadequate precisely because God is not just another entity in creation that we can analyse, God is continually beckoning, inviting, showing forth the Mystery in creation and particularly in us humans, and in Jesus in order that we may become like God. ‘The God who in and through Jesus reveals himself is human.  And the human being who emerges in and through Jesus is divine’[2]. 

The parables and stories Jesus tells in the Gospels are alive with human stories - Would a father give his child a stone when he asks for bread? The woman who turns the house upside down to look for the lost coin.  Above all, the ease with which Jesus dispenses forgiveness - even from the cross - is disconcerting for us.  He scatters it around abundantly.  The trouble is, I think that sometimes it is all too good to be true and it is too easy to dismiss Jesus’ actions as ‘different’ from our own.

We need to be attentive, to learn, to wait, to allow ourselves to be slowly transformed by our contemplation of this Mystery and this contemplation is not detached observance, it is the contemplation of love.  It is the gaze of lovers, of an adult upon a beloved child - it is a look to tenderness, love, wonder and awe.

So, when we go through times of spiritual darkness and there is a deep sense of the absence of God, perhaps it is because our understanding of God is too small.  The events of our lives have taken us to a point where we need to surrender into relationship with the God we think we know in order to enter into a new relationship with the God who beckons us further into the Mystery. Thus we become profoundly human and thereby divinised. It is conversion.  We will and should strive to understand, but ultimately it is a journey of faith and surrender in faith, love and trust into the God of Jesus.

This surrender of faith, love and trust takes time.  The human mind and spirit needs time to grow into something new.  Even if there is a moment of profound insight, that moment still needs time and nurture in order to transform us, our relationship with God and our relationship with the world.   So, we may have to wait in the darkness for a time.

In this darkness our relationship with God becomes more truthful.  In this time we will struggle and at times rant at the God who seems hidden.  There is nothing wrong with this.  The psalms are full of it and after all, don’t we struggle from time to time with all our relationships because dethroning our isolated egos is one of the most difficult things we do in life until our being-in-relationships grows stronger and stronger.

So, as we wait in the darkness of prayer, we are, in the process being created anew to be more human - humanly divine and divinely human.  The darkness is luminous.

---

[1] Karl Rahner, ‘On the Theology of the Incarnation’, Theological Investigations, Vol. IV tr. Kevin Smyth (London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966) p. 116

[2] Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator:  A Critical Christology of Our Time, tr. Patrick Hughes (London, SPCK, 1980)

When God seems hidden:

For even though the fig tree does not blossom,

nor fruit grow on the vine,

even though the olive crop fail,

and fields produce no harvest,

even though the flocks vanish from the folds

and stalls stand empty of cattle,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord

and exult in God my saviour.

The Lord my God is my strength.

He makes me leap like the deer,

he guides me to the high places.

               Hab. 3:17-19

This is one of my favourite texts that I return to often.  There is juxtaposition between disaster and rejoicing, a motif that occurs often in Biblical literature.  This is not just a literary formula; it is the experience of God whose fidelity is beyond anything we can imagine.

 There was a time when I held onto this text as a lifeline at a period when I had lost almost everything that gave me meaning and happiness.  My sense of God became very dark and God seemed far away - remote and silent. 

In the darkness of loss I asked the age old question of ‘Why?’ as I tried to understand what was happening to me.  I had no sense of God’s presence and no sense of meaning in what was happening.  However, it was here that what was left of my fuzzy, confused head came to the rescue of my heart and spirit.  I held onto the fact of Jesus, his flesh-taking, his life, his own suffering apparently without meaning and all that God brought forth from that.  At the same time I would pray Habakkuk in trust and as a promise that this time of loss would not just end, but become in some way fruitful.

Now, Habakkuk wrote at a time of disaster for Israel, so he knew a thing or two about suffering, and suffering on a grand scale at that.  His prophetic text starts questioning God, ‘How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry oppression in your ear and you will not save?’ and ends with this prayer of trust.  It is significant that he is able to rejoice and affirm God’s strength while still in the time of suffering.  In this he stands with Job and the psalmists and above all Jesus.  Habakkuk surrenders in trust to the great Mystery we call God.

This surrender in the midst of darkness is not a fatalistic ‘throwing-the-hands-in-the-air-because-it’s-all-too-hard’ surrender, nor is it the stereotype surrender by which society keeps people ‘in their place’.  It happens when absolute trust in the Mystery breaks forth as we experience God as the one who abides and sustains and who is the very source and pulse of life beyond anything we categorise or imagine.  At the same time we know this breakthrough moment to be absolute gift.

So surrender is not inert passivity.  Words and concepts fail as a knowing greater than knowing happens and turns this moment into hope and joy.  We are capable of this surrender because God has gifted us with freedom and in turn, the surrender allows us to be free.

This experience is possible and has meaning only because we have been drawn into relationship with God.  In any strong and valued human relationship when there is disharmony and crisis, we hold onto what we have experienced as valuable and life-giving in order to weather the crisis.  This is the ground from which we take the relationship to a new depth because we have surrendered in trust to the other in the relationship.

This is an image of what is happening with our life in God.  As crisis or suffering enters our faith relationship we hold on, wait in hope on God who has shown fidelity to us in Jesus.

I remember one of my lecturers when I was an undergraduate saying, ‘God has one very obscene four letter word and it called “Wait”.’  He happened to be a Carmelite and this drew on that great spiritual tradition.  So we wait in the ambiguity with trust and joy for beyond our expectations or imagination, because despite all signs to the contrary God is at work.

This active surrender actually makes us able to live with suffering and ambiguity that is part of human life.  It gives us the strength and hope to sit and wait.  It does not give easy answers; it enables us to begin, however, minutely, to see as God sees and pick up the life-giving threads of who we are.

And it is in this surrender that the first green shoots of forgiveness and compassion born of new freedom break forth.

Corpus Christi - a post script.

Should anyone think that yesterday’s reflection, ‘Do this in memory of me’ questions the Catholic understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I wish to say that that was not my intention. Sadly, too frequently the popular Catholic understanding of Eucharist has taken on images of crass materialism, for example people were told not to eat or chew the consecrated bread, a sentiment totally at odds with the biblical narratives. I remember a devout person remarking to me in all seriousness, that she thought Jesus must get very tired of standing in the tabernacle. Don’t blame the people, blame bad theology.

While our experience of ritual and memory give us a ’doorway’ into understanding the presence of Jesus, they, like all theology, simply paddle on the shores of mystery which is a reality revealed to us. The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is inseparable from the presence of Christ in the community who are the Body of Christ. I think that understanding the power of ritual and memory helps contemplate that gift of Christ which is himself present in his totality of being.

'Do this in memory of me' - Feast of Corpus Christi

These words of Jesus at the Last Supper, repeated at every Eucharistic celebration appear straight forward and simple yet Christian theology has meditated on them throughout our history. I think that how we understand them depends, among other things, on how we understand being human and how we encounter the Divine in Christ. So, I want to reflect on these words….

‘Do this.. .’

Jesus tells his disciples and us to ‘Do this’. This memorial celebration is to be no mere cerebral examination. We are asked to do something. It is an action. Like all Christian faith it is something that is done and lived out. Life, love, tenderness, care are not only ideas, they are not fulfilled until they are done, acted upon. This may sound pedantic, but I think it is too easy to mistake thought for action and conversely, too easy to mistake action for thought. The Eucharistic remembering is a ritual that is done, not only thought about.

‘…this…’

The ‘this’ of Jesus’ injunction is to take food - bread and wine - in a ritual setting and remember him. His ritual setting was the Passover, a festival deep in Jewish origins and beyond until its origins are lost in prehistory. So Jesus has taken this already ‘weighted’ ritual and invested it with his own meaning.

Rituals are such deep actions in the human psyche and history. We are ritual making species. As I have written elsewhere, I understand rituals and festivals to be periods that take us away from the normal passing of time which takes on a ‘timeless’ dimension. Whatever the ritual, be it family, civic or the festivals of faith, we allow ourselves to enter into a moment that draws past and present and future together.

The rituals of sharing food lie deep in the human community, to be used among other things to show gratitude for a harvest or commune with the dead. However, think about our own special meals, particularly those we prepare ourselves for others. Now, I love cooking for friends and while it certainly is about a modicum of skill there is a ritual quality to the meal. It is sharing with the guests what I have and the what and the how will always reflect to some degree who I am and who they are and who we are to each other. But this is no self-satisfying closed circle. All this carries us forward to the future and other relationships we have. Now, when all this happens in a particular ritual context the many meanings are brought into a sharp focus. So Jesus, at the Passover celebration turned all these meanings into his own loving self-gift for us to enter into his life and who he is and therefore discover who we are.

‘…of me.. .’

The ‘me’ of his injunction is Jesus - human, divine, self-giving, life affirming who gifts us with this food and memory.

At that Passover meal, he gives himself, he invests the bread and wine with new meaning which is himself at the most ‘intense’ moment of his life when death was imminent - the final fidelity. However, to take this moment out of the context of his whole life and identity is to impoverish the love-gift which only came to be understood after his Resurrection. Now, if we understand that all creation exists in a web of life, in the risen Jesus that life is renewed and given a new and vibrant quality. So the ‘me’ we are remembering is Jesus in the fullness of who he is in this web of life, therefore we also know who we are, our identity in Him.

‘…in memory.. .’

We are told to ‘Do this in memory of me’. I think of the long theological and devotional history of trying to understand this gift and command. To the Jewish people the remembering in a ritual made the great power of God manifest in a particular historical event present for those remembering now. It was not some vague wishful thinking. It was allowing God who is beyond history to act again to save and nourish in the now.

I think this is not unlike our own human memory. For us memory makes present people and events in our past whether it is our individual history or a collective history. Those memories to a great extent make us who we are as individuals and as a community. If my memory of aspects or people of my past are negative, it will fill me with pain and prevent me being free, whole and loving person. This sort of memory calls for a journey of healing and forgiveness. The memories of love given and received by family and or friends, gives me strong identity, makes freedom, courage and love grow. Either way, identity is shaped and acted out.

So for us, memories are very, very real. To lose our memories whether personal or collective is to forget who we are and therefore unable to act in the present or create a future. I think the Jewish people had the right understanding.

So ‘..in memory of me.’ is no nostalgic, wishful-thinking past event. The love and fidelity which led to death and resurrection is active, vivifying and transforming now and each time we tell the story, share the bread and wine we know who He is and who we are in him now, at this moment is the world’s history.

Finally

Sometimes I think that theology can become forgetful of our ordinary human processes. For us humans memory gives us identity, can treasure the joy of a past moment to real strength in the present; sharing food with friends is more than sustaining the body, it is nourishing spirit by sustaining identity and building bonds of life; and finally, when we love it always has to be shown, that is, done, otherwise it can’t be sustained.

To say that the Christian life is essentially Eucharistic means that ‘Do this in memory of me.’ speaks to every moment of our lives because it is the truth of who we are and therefore how we are.

So Jesus, who loved to the end and beyond, gave us the gift to so that he could abide with us in a most tangible way. In these terms, the Eucharist is not so much ‘Godhead here in hiding’, as showing forth the great mystery that God-with-us wants to stay with us until we come, all of us in this web of life, to the fullness of joy in the End.

Until then, ‘Do this... .’ is not mere repetition. Each time we celebrate Jesus’ memory we enter into the life of God now, at this present moment and we know who we are. It is always new, just as each time friends meet it is new because of the joy and the deepening of that friendship and the history and truth we bring to each other.