“Familiarity breeds contempt.” Yes, it may.
In the realm of the spirit, familiarity can more likely breed dullness
or staleness, an unwillingness to question or to think, a belief that if one
just “believes” what is said, that suffices, and then one can be left “free” to
live as one wishes. Then
“religious belief” becomes a comfortable way to keep distant from God: perhaps useful as “fire insurance,” but of
little or no effect in one’s daily life.
That is comfortable for those who want spiritual “comfort” above all
else. And it is safe indeed for those
who want “blessed assurance,” and “home security.”
For all of us, the Gospel stories
about Jesus have become so familiar, that we do not hear them as fresh and
alive. We may not even try to listen,
but indulge in comforting daydreaming when the Gospels are read, or the homily
is preached. Part of the problem for
clergy in preparing to preach on this Sunday’s passage from the Gospel of John,
and for lay folks who hear it, is that much of
this Gospel has been simplified and incorporated into diverse teachings
of the Church, and these teachings in turn serve to keep one from hearing the
Word sounding within. Jesus’ words to
“Receive the Holy Spirit” becomes a formula to the Apostles, who in turn become
a means to guarantee the security and longevity of the institutional church,
“founded on the Apostles.”
On the other hand, to listen with
faith requires that one’s mind is open, that one is searching, asking
questions, with an ongoing awareness that one really does not know well the
truth of God. “If you think you know,
you do not know as you ought to know,” as the Apostle Paul wrote in words that
sound genuinely Socratic—and wise. With
an attentive, engaged mind, one actually listens to what is being said here
and now, not primarily to what one thinks was said years ago to saintly men
and women entombed in a book. In other
words, you are the one being addressed.
The living word of God is always personal, always from the mind of God
to the mind of an attentive human being.
In the recurring words of Orthodox liturgy: “Be attentive; holy things for the
holy.”
Let’s take next Sunday’s gospel, the
famous Emmaus Road story, to show how to listen to what the Gospel says to
you. One needs to listen to the story in
all of its details, and then, in effect, activate the same fundamental
experience embodied in the story in one’s own soul or consciousness. Not to let the story engage one spiritually
or existentially is not to hear it as it was intended to be heard: to bring one
into living contact, right now, with the God of Jesus Christ.
We discuss matters, but rarely about
God or Christ or how to live well, but probably about food, politics, sports,
ranching, weather, grand-children, sports. Not often do I hear two parishioners speak about God’s actions in the
world, although occasionally one remarks on the beauties of creation unfolding
before our eyes. God in nature seems to
speak even to those who have not yet discovered God breaking into
consciousness. Now, how would Christ
encounter those whose eyes are cast down, and whose minds are not attending to
the things of God at this moment? How
could that which we call “Christ” press in?
Where is the opening in the discussion to be encountered by the Risen
One—especially when there is no rational discussion which the Lord may be
moving guiding? If one is not attending
to the divine in some form, how does God break in?
Later on, perhaps many years later,
someone may realize that God was actually at work, but it was unseen, perhaps
unwanted at the time—as dark and as unnoticed as mint roots growing under earth
in winter. And then perhaps someone will
remember and bring into consciousness that of which one had been barely conscious
at all. “There was something about that
experience that I have not felt since.
What was it? Somehow it was
there, and I missed it. Why? What was I thinking? Or was I thinking at all?” In a moment, walking along a wooded path, a
glint of light stretches out of the sky, and strikes the rock. Something happens. One then becomes aware of the reality of what
had not seemed real, of the presence of that which had felt utterly absent.
If that does not arrest you,
consider this week’s Gospel. When did
you last turn and recognize the presence of God as Christ breaking into
consciousness?
