Something God Alone Can See

This week has been a time of endings and beginnings. A longtime faithful member, Lillian died on Monday. And while that was an ending, it was also a beginning—a beginning of her new life in Christ, a beginning for her family to move forward as she would want them to.

It was also an ending for my students at Wesley. They have completed their two-year internships and our colloquy. Seven of them graduate in less than two weeks; the eighth graduates in December. It is also a beginning for them—a beginning of the next step in stepping out to answer God’s call in their lives.

Somehow, thinking not only of Lillian and her family, and not just of my students, but also of those in Nepal, and those in Baltimore, the words of Natalie Sleeth come to mind:

            In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

            in our doubt, there is believing; in our life, eternity.

            In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,

                        unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.[1]

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[1] Natalie Sleeth, Hymn of Promise, © 1986 Hope Publishing Co.  UMH 707.

In the End

In a conversation this week, I remembered something one of my college profs said to me. I was really trying to understand what was an alien concept to me, as I came from a thoroughly Methodist background. In the History of Christian Thought, we were discussing John Calvin’s understanding of predestination as being double, meaning that some are predestined to be saved and some are predestined to be damned. I later learned that John Wesley was as aghast as I was at the thought that some would be predestined to be damned. Wesley believed that God desired all to be saved, to live into a full relationship with God.

Anyway, back to my prof, David Bailey Harned. I was not just trying to understand this academically, but personally. I asked Mr. Harned* what his personal understanding of predestination was. He said, releasing his pipe from his mouth, “In the end, God’s will will be done.” Obviously, this nugget of wisdom has remained with me for many years. I too hold to this. In the end, ‘God’s will will be done.’ For me, this does not mean that God’s grace is irresistible—though I cannot imagine how anyone would truly want to resist such a deep love.

In this week’s conversation, I tried to describe my understanding. First of all, end does not mean a chronological stopping point. It is the end or purpose to which all life points. The end that is calling us is Love. As we have been propelled from the beginning by this Love, and are to be living witnesses of and to this Love now, so we are being called towards the overwhelming Love that seeks to encompass all. This Love is the One whose wholeness is best seen as living, flowing trinity of never-ceasing community. By whatever name we finite humans use, this Love is all in all.

While this may sound abstract, I assure you that in my life this is the ground of my being. It is why I am who I am (even with my faults), and why I do what I do (even so imperfectly). 

*No professor at the University of Virginia was called Dr. unless they were a medical doctor or a doctor of education.

Ephesians 1:22-23

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Small yet Vital

Two writers from very different times have touched me this week in leading me to reflect on my place in the vastness of Creation. Julian of Norwich, a late 14^th-early 15^th century mystic wrote:

      “And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.” Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love.

When I read this, I had the sense of myself in the midst of a galaxy in a Hubble telescope photograph. The colors swirled around me as we joined in a dance of loving praise to our Creator.

“There appears to be a law that when creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as humans have, they must become conscious of the creation; they must learn how they fit into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them, and they will become destructive; the very earth will depart from them and go where they cannot follow.” Wendell Berry, Traveling at Home.

Both Julian and Berry transform our relative smallness into a position of vital import. Through the love of God, we find our meaning, place, and purpose. When we ignore that, it is almost as if we tear a hole in the fabric of Creation. As small as we are, our lives are not without meaning. With the psalmist, we can stand amazed at how God has included us.

Psalm 8:3-4

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Prayer. Love. Communion.

The absolute best description of prayer I have ever heard or read comes from a colleague who quite often has a very salty, irreverent way of saying very deep and true things.

Several weeks ago, Jason was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer—mantle cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He is fighting it with a brutal regimen of chemotherapy. He has been sharing some observations on his blog. A week ago, as he wrote frankly about the difficulty of prayer for him, especially now; he went on to say what he thinks prayer really is:

            "When we pray to God, we’re prayed in by God.

"Instead of a practice we perform for results we’ve predetermined, prayer is a kind of parable of the Trinity. All prayer is but an echo of the Son praying to the Father through the Spirit. Rather than hooking God into our internal conversation, prayer catches us up into the eternal conversation Christians call Father, Son and Holy Spirit."[1]

As soon as I read that first line, I knew it for truth. Paul writes that the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. Our deepest, truest prayer is not our prayer at all, but that of God bringing us into the ongoing conversation, the ongoing communion within God’s own self. This is the love we see in action in Communion.

On this Holy Thursday, my hope is that we may be caught up by this prayer that is love flowing through the Three-ness of God: Father, Son, and Spirit. Come tonight at 7 in the Chapel.

Romans 8:26

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

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[1] Jason MIcheli, http://tamedcynic.org/the-problem-with-prayer/, March 25, 2015.