Finding Faith ... in staying awake

Editor's Note: I am currently enrolled in seminary class called “Moments in Ancient, Medieval, and Postmodern Mysticism.” The course is designed to explore writings about mysticism found throughout the ancient, medieval and postmodern worlds, with a focus on the underpinnings of mysticism in the contemporary church. Through a theological survey spanning centuries, the course explores rich, sophisticated and compelling literature which has helped to shape Christian life and theology in every century to the present. And it attempts to answer the following question: Can today’s modern Christian understand the religious mysticism that was prevalent in ancient and Medieval times, or has the Western church obliterated any chance of resurrecting this theological gift? ... Here is essay No. 3 from that course.

Relevant Readings:

“A Course in Christian Mysticism” by Thomas Merton

“Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense,” translated by Edmond Colledge

“The Homeless God” by Thomas M. Dicken

“The One and Many Ends” (Ch. 5 of unpublished book) by David E. Fredrickson

Thomas M. Dicken, in his essay “The Homeless God” quotes from writer John Caputo’s book “Weakness of God”: “Caputo’s mention of homelessness is a passing comment, in the wider context of his book. Caputo writes, ‘Suppose God most especially pitches his tent among the homeless, so that God has no place to lay his head?’”

Dicken’s chooses this particular quote to illustrate his point that the God we tend to think about and preach about and desire here in Western Christianity is not the God of Paul, the ancient Christians mystics and most certainly not the God of Caputo.

“It is God’s odd choice of the weak of the world, those of no account, to accomplish ‘weak’ purposes, to shame the wise,” Dickens writes. “God’s foolish love of the unlovable, modeled by Jesus’s choice of conspicuous sinners for his companions, is the theme.” (Pg. 128)

Or in others words, as writer David E. Fredrickson suggests in his chapter “The One and Many Ends,” Dickens too is imploring his readers -- as he believes Caputo is saying -- to stay awake because nothing we think we know to be true about God is in fact true. Gone are the omnipotence and omniscience, but still present is the omnipresence, and you just never know when he is going to break into this earthly world.

Interestingly, in his primer on Christian mysticism that he wrote for fellow monks, Thomas Merton wrote in “A Course in Christian Mysticism” wrote often of the night, and the presence of God in the dark. He symbolized that our human attempts to reveal God in the light of day were futile, and we’d have a much better chance of understanding him if we could just give into the uncertainty of the night. … Or in other words: stay awake.

“Abandonment for the search of clear knowledge, and rest in liberty and unknowing. A simple characteristic of the mystical soul is its awakening (a real awakening, to transformation, conversion of mind) to the fact that it really need not seek him whom it already possesses -- plus an ability to rest in darkness, and unknowing without care and without concern over conceptual knowledge,” Merton writes on Page 52. “Where this ability to rest is not found, there may be a sentimental or intellectual operation of ‘unknowing’ followed by a blank and by sleep. This is not mysticism!”

Merton may not be using the same language of Fredrickson, Dicken or Caputo, but he is writing of the same issue, our innate inability to comprehend a God who is comprehensible, nor the ability to easily see when God is even in our midst. … Stay awake, indeed!

It may be a stretch for me to compare the ancient mystical writings of Merton and Eckhart to today’s philosopher theologians such as Caputo and Fredrickson, but I believe there is an underlying understanding they each are trying to draw out for us. And that essence is that despite our well-intentioned attempts to understand the Creator through study of the scriptures and church attendance and our periodic acts of charity and good will demanded of us by our religious forefathers, we are no closer to understanding this crazy God who supposedly is all-powerful but yet inhabits a mortal human body only to allow the earthy czars strike him dead.

And so how possibly can this idea of an omnipotent and omniscient God jive for a people who are unconsciously afraid of a world that will wisp away a loved in car accident without notice, or unconsciously fear that something inhumane will happen to a loved one at the hands of a madman, or unconsciously are terror stricken at the thought of an unknown and uncontrollable disease wreaking havoc all over the world. These events don’t mesh with our notion of the God that controls everything, including our very destinies. And so instead of embracing the possibility that God is weak, and yet still omnipresent, so many rather sleep blissfully unaware that they may indeed be missing the very inbreaking of God into earth on a regular basis.

I think it is this very frightening juxtaposition that keeps modern day faithful on edge, and yet has two very different effects on those who are still asleep … (and maybe I am wrong to believe that any of us can be awake to God’s true reality!) The first response is by those faithful who find comfort and solace in the well-meaning platitudes they hear preached from the pulpit every Sunday at their local church. Faced with the unbearable thought that their God may not actually be able to overtly step in on their behalf to give them a more comfortable life, or maybe even worse, has no desire to do so, they return week after week to hear their pastor comfort them with stories of God’s grace upon grace and Jesus’s sacrificial love. Now isn’t that comforting!

The other response is by the 75 to 80 percent of Americans who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, according to research conducted by the Pews Institute. And their response is to embrace science and philosophy and math to explain the mysteries of the world to themselves, while ascribing to God the role of the person who originally flicked his finger at the very first domino, and then sat back and watched as the successive dominos fell and skittered all over the kitchen table and off the edges to the floor. These faithful are so afraid of an all-powerful God turning a blind eye to their plights that they just outright seat him in the back of the car, never allowing God to drive. Because, if you don’t let the back seat driver actually touch the wheel, they can never direct where or how the car is going to drive. There, we took care of that existential problem, didn’t we? … God isn’t actually in control and doesn’t possess the knowledge of the end at all. But maybe science does! … Now sleep good and faithful one!

Even the early mystics understood the plight of those who remain asleep, as Merton describes: “Surrounded by the divine night the soul seeks him who is hidden in darkness. She possesses indeed the love of him whom she seeks, but the beloved escapes the grasp of her thoughts.” (Pg. 52)

So, to stay awake! … Now there is the challenge.

To stay awake to the potentiality that God is homeless and everywhere as Dickens suggests in his essay. To stay awake to the possibility of God dwelling in everyone and everything, all of the time, as the mystics suggest in their writings. … To stay awake, to witness the true and perfect gifts of the woman giving her two coins in the temple and the woman who offered to refresh Jesus with the jar of expensive oil, as Fredrickson suggests.

And maybe to stay awake for us pastors means not to hope that we can awaken every one of the parishioners who walk through our doors on Sunday morning -- a goal that I fear is far too unattainable -- but rather, maybe we pastors out to be listening for and supporting those who find themselves awakening briefly when they see glimpses of God in the homeless camps, or the hospital trauma rooms and or the free public needle exchanges.

Because, after all, maybe those dwindling numbers of souls whom we find seated in our pews on Sundays just might be all too comfortable in their slumber anyway.