Advent Notes: A Consensual Act of Destruction

Morning darkness. Gusts of wind that occasionally make the house shake. I settle into prayer and as happens from time to time, the prayer prays me. There is only the prayer; there was always only the prayer. When I return from it, the coffee is cold and my legs hurt. The horizon is streaked with fire; ice in the pasture glistens. Day is beginning.

Imagine a life spent longing to see Jesus – to know him as you know your ownself – and then suddenly you meet someone who knows where to find him and tells you. What would you do? Would you linger with the one doing the pointing? Or would you leave them and go?

I met the woman at the well. She made clear the way to see the Lord and I followed. Obeyed? It’s hard to say. The thing is, you don’t find Jesus, Jesus finds you, but saying it that way elides the relationship by which his appearance is made possible. Jesus is like fire, the relationship kindling. It reveals Jesus, but only in a consensual act of destruction. Of course I left.

A holy relationship is a light but light itself is indifferent to what appears within its ambit. Its function is revelation without emphasis on what is revealed. Every relationship exists as a question that makes clear by its very terms the answer. But to see this, this way, requires a willingness to be answered, to live in the space opened by the answer. You have to risk the light.

This means we have to be the one who does not know, but who is unafraid of not knowing. The one who accepts not knowing and doesn’t rush to escape not knowing. It is in not knowing – the depths of not knowing, the hot mess of not knowing – that we become findable by Jesus.

Do you know how from time to time I write about Emmaus? Better yet, do you remember walking to Emmaus with me? That’s our story! He was dead – we saw him die – and yet he came unto us in the form of a living man, a stranger dependent on other strangers for comfort and care. We did not recognize him until he took and broke the bread, said grace over it and served us. But even that came after we said yes, join us, share the way. Do you see?

For the church, Emmaus is a Eucharist story. Jesus is known in and through the Eucharist, of which he is in charge. But before the sacrament (the ritual of reenactment) was the suffering of those who had acted – those for whom the bread and wine wasn’t a symbol to be interpreted but a meal to be shared. Before communion, the ones who know communion as the means of healing, and before even that much, the shared recollection of our need for healing. Jesus finds us, he reveals himself to us. It’s okay not to know the hour or the day. But we do need the relationship. We do need the one with whom to remember.

There is more to say – there is always more to say – but the second day of Advent beckons. It takes neither time nor effort to be as God created you. Only fear says otherwise; only fear obscures the simple truth. We have to become clear – brutally clear, beautifully clear – on the nature of our emptiness, our nothingness. That is what the woman at the well pointed out to me – the interior emptiness, the nothingness – but not in judgment. Not as in, fix this or even as in, face this. More as in, imagine a world in which even this is undone. Imagine sharing emptiness or nothing (he was dead! We saw him die!) with someone and instead of recoiling, they say, yes. Me, too. Imagine the light that relationship is. Imagine the one – even now – drawn to it.

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