When we don’t recognize things, we sometimes become defensive. There are many reasons we may not recognize something, or sometimes someone. Maybe we are truly suffering from memory loss. Perhaps we come across something that is completely foreign to us. We have never encountered it in our lives before. For some reason, the strangeness does not bring wonder and amazement, but rather incites fear and defensiveness within us. We go into protection and survival mode. The resulting response that we have is a reaction. This somewhat describes an aspect of our present pandemic situation, doesn’t it?
Many times the reaction is one of judgment and even condemnation. We feel threatened and we make the object of our fear the circumstance or person who is strange or foreign. Then, it is not even a consciousness of the failure to recognize anymore. We have encountered what we would call an ‘enemy,’ and we must deal with it as such. The recognition is a bias-driven labeling and it can be violent and even deadly.
Paul summarizes this very experience in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 13:26-33):
The inhabitants of Jerusalem and their leaders failed to recognize him,
and by condemning him they fulfilled the oracles of the prophets
that are read sabbath after sabbath.
For even though they found no grounds for a death sentence,
they asked Pilate to have him put to death,
and when they had accomplished all that was written about him,
they took him down from the tree and placed him in a tomb.
Paul is summarizing the story of Jesus of Nazareth, but there is a haunting echo in his words within our present day lived experience in the world we live. Our judgments rise up in condemnation and then, when we are certain and justified by our reactions to what we fail to recognize or WHO we fail to recognize, we try to remove or kill them and place them in a tomb. The stranger has been dealt with by finding a place for them, which removes them from our sight. This self-imposed blindness is a killer that takes on many forms: classism, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.
You would think the ones closest to Jesus, who spent the most time with him, walked with him across Israel, witnessed his miracles and experienced first-hand the gentle and responsible commitment he had for all those he encountered, that these would recognize him. Yet even these closest disciples, the ones who thought that they ‘got it,’ even these were at a loss. John’s Gospel (Jn 14:1-6) illustrates this in Jesus’ attempt to reassure his disciples:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The kind of place that Jesus is talking about seems quite different than the place-ment that we hear in the Acts of the Apostles. What if Jesus is not speaking here only of the rewards that his followers will have in his “Father’s house,” which we normally understand as heaven. Suppose that he talking about a place that is already here and only not recognized, or perhaps not yet fully inhabited. What if the place that Jesus is speaking of preparing for you (and me) is the unique, never-repeatable beloved place within our hearts – the precious place where the in-rushing Holy Spirit of Christ does dwell! Is this where Jesus is going?
What would need to be different or transformed within us that would allow us to see and then engage in the Christ that is already present in us – in you and me? And how willing are we to allow God in the Christ within us to transform us interiorly? Is our preference always instead to make the exterior world fit with our own perceptions and interpretations of the world? These questions take on heightened relevance and urgency right now as we face the disrupting strangeness of living with the coronavirus.
Jesus says clearly “Where I am going you know the way.” However, Thomas’ response is ‘Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” The way to the place could be the very recognition of Christ’s presence within us – the image of God incarnate – YES – within us. And that would mean Christ’s presence within all of us. Thomas doesn’t seem to catch on to this (I can resonate with my namesake). What is this rigid frame of how we perceive the world and categorize or place our experiences, our circumstances, and all the people with which we interact (or perhaps never interact)? What does it even mean now to interact in a world where we cannot physically touch each other? Are we willing to acknowledge and creatively engage in these questions?
Jesus was condemned by the ‘placement’ or labeling of him as a heretic, a blasphemer, which resulted in his execution, seemingly finalized by his placement in the tomb. But, Christians believe that Jesus was raised from the tomb in the Resurrection. This central tenet of the Christian faith is celebrated for a full 50-day season and on every Sunday during the year. Placement as an act of violence and aggression, brought on by the failure to recognize the dwelling PLACE of God in our lives through Christ, even in all of its destruction and death can never destroy the Place of God within us, waiting to be born, reborn, resurrected.
The task is to consciously release these placements – our inner tombs from which we operate in our lives – and open ourselves from the inside out, seeing and living FROM the place of God, Christ already here. This is a vulnerable task, but not a weak one. And right now, where the pandemic has placed us may be the most opportune moment to really engage this. It will take honesty and determination, vulnerability and risk, humility and courage, compassion and integrity. The Place of God within us is waiting to be awakened and birthed.
The WAY to the PLACE is within us and its transformative power is waiting to be released from the inside out. The spiritual pioneer and philosopher, Beatrice Bruteau, speaks of God within us in Christ as the Ecstasy of God, meaning “bringing what is inside out.”[i] Christ is waiting to come out from us into the world and be born into the world in the utterly unique way that only each of us can do. This is the way to the place of God, to live FROM the place of God – in Christ! We actually are ongoing incarnation – God coming into the world more and more.
When Jesus tells Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…no one comes to the Father except through me,”I am not convinced that he is making our understanding of Christianity as the only way to God, but rather saying that the way of Christ, who lived in the place of God, is our way, all of our ways. How radical would it be to believe that we do come to God through each other, by sharing, honoring and affirming the Christ place within us all, more and more? We come to Christ by seeing and giving Christ, and God is always MORE.[ii] Could this not be the Way, the Truth and the Life?
[i] Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (Crossroad Publishing Co: 1997), p. 174
[ii] Ibid., pp. 30, 38-39. Bruteau speaks of the “I AM” of each of us as persons is an enstatic or ‘standing within’ of ourselves which always also includes the “MAY YOU BE” which is the ecstatic, or going out to another – Agape! To be a person always implies persons, since being a person is always communicating and transmitting being to another. Persons affirm each other!