27.04.03 Steve Finding the space between the Presence and the Absence of Christ
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The
verse from our reading that is my inspiration today is vs 29 - Blessed are
those who have not seen, and yet have believed.
Yesterday I spent the day alone in the Dumfriesshire hills. Spending time alone is always, for me, uncomfortable, and yet revealing. I think thoughts I wouldn’t otherwise think (not always noble ones….). I was wondering about the nature of this uncomfortable experience. All of my belief-system informs me that God is always present - that the risen Christ is all in all. And yet, this is often in conflict with real experience. The resurrection story of doubting Thomas describes the human condition, and we may rightly think of it as a story about the presence of the risen Jesus. But I want to explore the idea that the resurrection stories tell us more about the absence of Christ. The stories begin, after all, with the words of the angel at the tomb - ‘He is not here’. The records we have of Jesus’ resurrection appearances are very important and convincing - if a little thin on the ground. Why didn’t Jesus go on a lengthy world tour of big stadium venues?
In his essays on the resurrection stories Rumours of Life, the Anglican divine David Runcorn suggests that there can be in the Church a misplaced loyalty to the presence of Christ which can be exhausting and oppressive. Indeed, unless the presence of Christ is balanced by a positive understanding of his absence then our experience of God may become very destructive.
Many of us will have had the experience of some kind of crisis of faith - perhaps linked with a crisis in life. Often, we will be the beneficiaries of the loving prayers of others, asking that we will know God’s presence. It may well be that this was exactly what we didn't want! His presence, and all that this demands of us may have become a total burden. Perhaps we’ve needed his absence. Perhaps we’ve needed space.
But the Church is not the place you’re supposed to say that sort of thing! Runcorn recounts this story in Zorba the Greek:
‘I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a little while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror . . . when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled. The wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings would be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand'
'Giving space' is not usually the way the Church describes its ministry. Nor is it the way many Christians would describe their own church life. We are usually preoccupied with getting people more involved. But in our enthusiasm it is perilously easy to force people to grow and respond at a pace we set for them. Perhaps, in contrast, the resurrection stories reveal that an important feature of resurrection life involves learning to live with space.
If it’s true that many people are drawn to faith but stay on the edge of the Christian community, it’s also true that many complain of a time in their lives when they had God forced upon them. Sometimes, perhaps, it is just an excuse. But those who are trying to be honest have an important story to tell. The problem may have been well-intended pressure from parents, the dullness of compulsory school assembly, or a bad experience of church. But now, through no fault of their own, they have become unwilling to get too close to a God they sense as having violated their space, imposing his heavy presence with exhausting demands that lack nurture, humour and love. There is often a deep weariness of spirit in such people.
'I know the answer's Jesus,' said a bored Sunday school child, asked to name an animal that lived in trees, ate acorns and had a long bushy tail, 'but it sounds awfully like a squirrel to me.' What some people need is the grace of God's absence. There are lessons of faith and awareness we only learn alone.
Anyone who has spent time in silent retreat will have known something of this struggle. Coming from very busy lives, we need time to stop and unwind and to become still. We come longing for space, but as the silence takes hold and stillness grows around us, the absence of people or things to do can become deeply unsettling. The temptation is to fill up the space. Anything will do - even manic coffee making.
In the space that is God's absence, our religious games are eventually seen in all their emptiness. Our false pictures of God and ourselves are exposed for what they are. Our ploys for trying to control God are uncovered. In the Bible the place of God's absence is the wilderness. It is the place where faith is purified and where the power of false gods is broken. It is for this reason that Thomas Merton, writing of the importance of solitude, described Christian prayer as 'the unmasking of illusion'.
Perhaps the simplest and most obvious thing that Jesus was teaching the disciples after the resurrection was how to have a living relationship with him. After all, the freedom to be absent from or present to someone is what makes real friendship possible. The truth is that any relationship based entirely on presence quickly becomes suffocating and oppressive
The ability to love another is not measured by how close we can get. It is actually about the freedom to give the right space. Too close, and our possessive clinging will choke all life out of our relationship. Too distant, and we will simply drift apart.
'He is not here.' Risen life means learning to live between the absence and the presence of Christ - and to love the space between. For the risen Jesus, Jesus the Lord, is an absence that is never abandonment and a presence that is not possession. Jesus gives to his disciples the degree of space that makes real loving possible. And in that space we may freely learn to love him in a relationship that is as terrifying as it is glorious. We might picture the absent Jesus, just out of sight of the disciples, yet present to all their fearful watching and waiting, quietly standing guard over their solitude.
Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.