Seeing and Being Seen!

Image: Ivanka Demchuk Trinity in the style of Andrei Rublev

Our unique personhood sits within a much larger set of characteristics that we share with every other human being. Yet there is a kernel at the heart of these shared characteristics that marks us out as uniquely ourselves – as in – like no one else. How is individuality discovered?

There’s a commonly held view that individuality is innate. We come to discover who we are through an internal process of growing self-awareness. In other words, the unique sense of self is something we are born with and develops in step with the process of cognitive maturation.

In contrast, a psychologically informed view holds that personal identity is not innate but interactional. Personal identity develops through our interactions with others – interactions shaped by social and physical environmental factors.

So, bear with me for a moment as I develop a couple of seemingly unrelated strands, I assure you they will come together in a moment.

There is that old chestnut question: does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there is no one to hear it fall? The short answer is no – its fall makes no sound. The complex answer is the tree’s fall causes pressure waves in the air around it. But these are not sounds until picked up by and transformed into sounds by the human ear.

As many of you know I have a background in Object Relations psychology which is a particular British offshoot of classical Psychoanalysis. Object Relations theory views human beings as primarily object or relationship-seeking. The infant instinctively seeks connection with its mother who represents a reliable and constant object. The infant suckling at the breast or the bottle comes to its first awareness of self through being reflected in the mother’s loving gaze.

The human equivalent of the tree falling with no one to hear its fall is the infant deprived over time of the experience of being seen – that is -reflected in the gaze of the mother. Such an infant will eventually die and we have a name for this – it’s called failure to thrive.

My psychology-psychotherapy formation led me – as a childless man – to the realization of what every mother experientially knows – that the infant catches the first intimations of selfhood in the interactional field of the mother’s loving gaze. The mother gazes at the infant. The infant gazes back- catching the first hints of its separateness – individuality – reflected in the mother’s face. I know of a young mother who as her child awakes from sleep whispers – Hello little one, I’m glad you’re back. I’ve missed you.

On Trinity Sunday what happens when we take my initial reflections on human identity development and view them through a trinitarian lens?

When it comes to the Trinity – the doctrine of three persons in one God – there is only one thing we need to remember. The Trinity was an experience of God long before it became a doctrine about God. In fact, the doctrine emerged only as a protection for the unique Christian experience of God.

For the early Christians, the Trinity as an everyday experience of God emerges in this way. As Jews, they believed in God the Creator, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, and Moses. As followers of Jesus, they experienced a life-changing encounter with God through his ministry, death, and resurrection. After his departure following his resurrection, they were inflated in present-time with an experience of transformation from a dejected and lost band of leaderless followers into a community empowered with a revolutionary purpose. Under the guidance of the Spirit – which they associated with the Spirit of Jesus – they took up the work Jesus had begun. In these three distinct ways, they experienced the presence and power of God in their lives.

In the spiritual life of faith and practice, we are caught between two opposing pressures. On the one hand, we are compelled to try to rationalize our faith experience – capturing the invisible and intangible nature of spiritual experience in stories and formulae we can easily understand and repeat. Yet, on the other hand, we have a strong motivation to protect the mystery at the heart of religious experience from being reduced to the limits of our impoverished human imagination.

This tension between these motivations came to a head in 325 CE when the bishops – as the successors to the Apostles met together in council at a place called Nicaea – now the modern-day Turkish city of Iznik situated 139 KM southeast of Istanbul – then Constantinople. The council was torn by opposing factions. There were those who wanted to rationalize the mystery of the threefold Christian experience of God – to make it sensible to ordinary human comprehension within the laws of the physical universe. There were others who defended the essential mystery at the heart of Christian experience. Using the philosophy of the day -they put in place a protection for the mystery of God lying at the heart of Christian experience. This protection has come down to us in the Nicene Creed which we proclaim as the historic faith of the Church believed in all places and at all times.

Thus the Nicene Creed speaks of Jesus being of one substance with the Father, and of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father through the Son. Confounding our expectations – nothing is explained and the meaning of the essential mystery is left open-ended. Although the Trinity expressed an experience of God long before it became a doctrine about God – at Nicaea – experience came under the protection of a doctrine that proclaimed God as a relational community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Today we hear these terms not as an attempt to gender the divine, but as an articulation of relationality at the heart of the divine nature. Following current sensitivities around gendered language some substitute Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer for the traditional gendered terms. While theologically correct nevertheless these are terms denoting function, not relationship. Lover, Beloved, and Love-sharer is a better solution – making the point that it is relationship not gender that lies at the heart of the divine nature.

In 1410, an obscure Russian monk named Andrei Rublev depicted an icon of the Holy Trinity drawn from the Genesis story recording the visit to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre by two angels. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity articulates a step change – a massive leap forward in the human capacity to imagine God – presenting the three distinct Christian experiences of God as a relational community of three persons – distinctively clothed – yet in every other way identical – sharing the same face – the same gaze. Each member beholds the other two simultaneously in a mutually loving gaze.

Rublev’s Trinity is more than a representation of the theology of God’s nature. It’s an expression of the Orthodox devotional tradition in which the Trinity lies at the heart of Christian devotion. Inspired and informed by this devotional tradition, Rublev presents God not as a solitary figure but God as a relational community.

We only come to truly see ourselves when we are caught in the experience of being seen. Coming to see through the experience of being seen is an essential characteristic of the infant-mother bond. Thus it should come as no surprise that seeing through the experience of being seen is an essential quality of the divine community. When we sit before the icon of the Trinity we are drawn into the mutuality of the divine gaze. It’s as if God seeing us says hello – welcome back, we’ve missed you.

Three folds of the cloth yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair,
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snowflakes, and ice, all in water their origin share,
Three Persons in God: to one God alone we make our prayer. An Irish Celtic prayer to the Trinity.

May 25, 2024 0

It’s Blowin’ in the Wind

Image by Jennifer Allison

Everything is connected to everything else. The butterfly beats its wings in the New England woods provoking an invisible chain reaction resulting in a typhoon battering the Japanese coast. The magnitude of interconnection is truly mind-blowing. How so?

All that is ever seen is what Spirit causes, motivates, inspires, encourages, impels, triggers, stirs, provokes, stimulates, influences, or activates.

In his song Blowin’ in the Wind, the great Bob Dylan once more with a direct simplicity comes closest to articulating the mystery of Spirit: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpD26IoRLvA 1:27 -end)

Dylan asks

Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

In this vein, let me try to give some descriptive theological shape to the Day of Pentecost – the arrival of which brings to a close the long biblical narrative that has been unfolding since Christmas, through Easter, ending here at Pentecost.

Pentecost – is Greek for the 50^th day after Easter. On the Day of Pentecost the Spirit of the risen and ascended Christ – the Holy Spirit entered material time and space as a crucial participant in the on-going life of the creation.

John hints at Jesus’ gift of his spirit to his disciples in his farewell discourses – where in today’s gospel he tells them – If I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send it to you …. for when the Spirit of Truth comes, it will guide you into all truth.

It’s Luke, of course, who offers the graphic description of the event that overwhelmed Jesus’ followers on the Day of Pentecost. Luke’s chronological arrangement of the life and times of Jesus from birth to resurrection ends with his Ascension. In the sequel to his gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke chronicles the life and times of the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Beginning with the event that transformed them from a dispirited rag-tag band of the dejected and the lost into an empowered, pneumatic community inflated by the power of the Spirit. Luke goes on to record in Acts how empowered by the Holy Spirit this pneumatic community begins to forge a distinctively revolutionary way of living. Pentecost marks the transfer of power from what had been the ministry of Jesus to the ministry of those who became initially known as the followers of The Way.

Being faithful Jews, these first followers of Jesus had gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot – the other great pilgrim festival at which every Jew – especially those of the male variety was encouraged to come up to Jerusalem on the 50th day following Passover to commemorate the giving of the Torah by God to Moses. Luke paints a vivid technicolor picture of the events that overtook Jesus’ followers who were visited by a pyrotechnic eruption of wind, fire, and ecstatic utterance marking their pneumatic inflation with the Holy Spirit.

Among the multitude of pilgrims gathered for Shavuot from across the Jewish diaspora were Jews from Media, Elam, and as far away as Mesopotamia – from Cappadocia and a host of other cities in Asia Minor together with Egyptian, Libyan, and Arabian Jews, alongside local Judeans. All witnessed the clamor among a band of unruly Galilean peasants – hearing them shouting out in their own tongues while others of a more cynical mindset dismissed the rabble-rousers as drunk – not simply drunk, but drunk at nine o’clock in the morning. After all, what could you expect from a bunch of Galileans?

Last week I drew the metaphor of a conduit – a two-way traffic highway connecting the dimension of time and space with the spiritual dimension – each a dimension arranged in parallel. With the Ascension of Jesus, the direction of traffic moves from time and space to spiritual space as Jesus is received by God and reunited within the divine nature – not simply as a divine being but now clothed in the fulness of his humanity.

Following the reception of the humanity of Jesus- now perfected through suffering – into the divine nature, the traffic flow reverses as the divine spirit of Jesus is released to reenter time and space – becoming known as the Holy Spirit – who in the words of the Nicene Creed proceeds from the Father through the Son.

All that is ever seen is what Spirit causes, motivates, inspires, encourages, impels, triggers, stirs, provokes, stimulates, influences, or activates.

On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus were set blaze – enraptured –hearts and minds ignited with passion. Drawing a more contemporary analogy, in his song, I’m on Fire Bruce Springsteen captures such a moment when he sings: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VxFS5-klfk 1.24 -end)

At night, I wake up with the sheets soakin’ wet and a freight train runnin’ through the middle of my head, only you - can cool my desire, oh,oh,oh, I’m on fire!

The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God as the primal force animating from within and spanning between everything – an echo of the Genesis vision of the divine wind moving across the face of the void – calling structure and order out of chaos.

The Apostle Paul in chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans recaptures the grandeur of the Genesis vision – leading him to his arresting association of the Holy Spirit as the midwife of the Creation. He writes:

Know this, that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, as part of the redemption of Creation.

Paul offers this extraordinary image of the Spirit birthing us in our weakness; like pre-linguistic newborns, the Spirit speaks for us in sighs too deep for words.

St Martin’s is a Spirit-filled community. This is not the way we normally think of ourselves for we are shaped by a cooler Anglican ethos that has traditionally been highly suspicious of too much enthusiasm. Our Spirit-fullness is revealed through our synergy of traditional Anglican worship with radical theological and social messaging – allowing us to explore, fashion, and present fresh perspectives on traditional articulations of theology and faith practice. In this we capture the revolutionary effect of the Spirit – directly addressing head-on, the challenges faced by us in the lives we are actually living. This can be a testing experience and gives the lie to the accusation that our Anglican way is an easy religion.

Following this liturgy – we will celebrate our Spirit-filled, magnetic community – a community drawing others to us. We are an attractive, warm, and welcoming community. We express a quiet spiritual empowerment. We exhibit revolutionary courage – confronting challenges to faith in a modern context while also risking new opportunities – as together we reach out for God’s invitation to work tirelessly for the healing of the world.

All that is ever seen is what Spirit causes, motivates, inspires, encourages, impels, triggers, stirs, provokes, stimulates, influences, or activates.

Or as Bob Dylan tells it –The answer my friends – is blowing in the wind – the answer is blowing in the wind. The life of Spirit is not subject to our manipulation or control – it’s not comprehensible to our grasping minds. The Spirit makes itself known through us when we allow ourselves to become available to its prompting to act under the furtherance of the divine plan for creation which always begins with a revolutionary refusal to accept that the way things are in the world is the way things have to be.

May 18, 2024 0

So What’s Next?

Picture: Chapel of the Ascension, Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, Norfolk, England

There is a rather ugly 1960s chapel at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham – deep in the rural countryside of the county of Norfolk dedicated to the Ascension of our Lord. On entering the Chapel of the Ascension, one is greeted with a surreal experience. For in the center of the low ceiling is a gilded cloud ring plaster rosette from the center of which hang two bare feet – suspended in the air. Ostensibly belonging to Jesus with the rest of his body having already burst through the ceiling.

The celebration of the Ascension always occurs on a Thursday – the 40^th day after the resurrection. Because Episcopalians rarely venture to church except on Sundays – the current custom is to celebrate the Ascension of the Lord on the Sunday following – which in 2024 also incongruously happens to be Mother’s Day.

Incidentally, I heard a funny quip recently referring to the Southern Baptist church calendar which comprises only four commemorations: Christmas, Easter, the 4^th of July, and Mother’s Day. It goes without saying that while we shouldn’t pass up any opportunity to celebrate the importance of mothers and mothering in our lives, in the Episcopal Church, Mother’s Day is not part of the liturgical calendar.

Constructing stories and weaving narratives are the way we make sense of our experience of the world. The perennial question concerns the relationship between story and material experience – in other words, does weaving narratives – telling stories interpret and explain our material experience, or does the power of narrative – in the words of the French deconstructionist philosopher Michel Foucault – construct our experience – as in language creating the objects and meaning of which it speaks.

This tension surrounding the function and power of language is especially pertinent when it comes to religious-spiritual stories. Narrative Theology asserts that spiritual meaning lies not in the literal veracity of the events depicted – did they happen or not – but in the function of story by itself to construct and convey purposeful meaning across time. The question is not whether or not Bible stories depict actual happenings – but how they construct meaning and purpose that can be trusted to shape our living?

Spiritual stories recycle human imaginative memory. Clearly, Luke’s graphic account of Jesus’ Ascension borrows extensively from Elijah’s ascension recorded in the 2nd book of Kings. In like manner – as the mantle of Elijah fell upon the shoulders of Elisha – giving him a double portion of his master’s spirit, the double portion of Jesus’ Spirit clothes the disciples. The resonance is unmistakable.

In Luke’s chronology of events from Calvary to Pentecost, his story of the Ascension of Jesus forms a transition point bringing the earthly ministry of Jesus to a close to empower his followers with his spirit to become a community equipped to continue his work. The question underlying the Ascension event is not how, when, or if it happened, but what light does it shed on the question of what’s next?

The question of what’s next throws into sharp focus the choices to be made, the actions to be taken, and the directions to be followed.

In her sermon last week, Linda+ noted that love is not just about how we are to feel. It is about who we are called to be. Rather than asking: What does it mean to believe in God’s love – she posed the more significant question do we trust God’s love, do we surrender to it, will we let love transform us?

So here’s a question. How can we trust the meaning inherent in the story of the Ascension of Jesus even though most of us believe it as an event to be simply a construction of imagination?

One response is to substitute the traditional spatial metaphor of up and down for heaven and earth with a metaphor more suited to contemporary imagination – that of heaven and earth as side by side. The Ascension becomes the conduit connecting parallel dimensions. Through this conduit a two-way traffic flows between what we might call our space and God space.

The image of the Ascension of Jesus as a conduit for two-way traffic communicates two important insights. In his return to the God space, Jesus does not jettison his humanity like a suit of worn-out clothes – but carries the fullness of his humanity – perfected through suffering -to be received by God into the divine community. The words of the first collect for the Ascension capture this: that as we believe your only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell. The we here is not us individually, but the entirety of our humanity which now constitutes an element within the divine nature.

In receiving the fullness of Jesus humanity into the divine nature, God releases the divine spirit of Jesus to make the return journey back into our space. This image is captured in the words of the second collect for the Ascension: our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things and to abide in his church until the end of time. The Ascension is the point where we, Christ’s mystical body on earth are prepared to become empowered to continue the work Jesus began.

The Ascended Christ bearing our perfected humanity is received into the heart of God – so that – as the book of Revelation poetically phrases it – the home of God now dwells among mortals. Now we come to the most extraordinary assertion of Christian faith – that from henceforth to be most fully human is to be most like God.

The Ascension of Jesus opens us to contemplate our participation in the what’s next in God’s work of renewing the creation -throwing into sharp focus the choices to be made, the actions to be taken, and the directions to be followed – when we tire of gazing heavenwards – that is.

May 11, 2024 0