Through the Fire

A Meditation on Isaiah 43 ~ "When you walk through the fire," says Israel's God, "you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."

The Great Healing

Those of us in the Protestant world are less likely to venerate saints than our Roman Catholic friends. But there are pivotal figures in progressive Christianity, inspired figures who have a lot to teach us about faith, hope, discipleship. Next week, for example, we’ll linger around the legacy of Martin Luther King. And there are others: Dorothy Day serving in the Bowery, Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisting genocide, Desmond Tutu risking forgiveness in South Africa. They’re not unscathed by the world, these saints. In fact many of them suffer profoundly along the way – illness, depression, incarceration, fear. But they remind us, these saints, that faith has as much to do with losing as winning, as much to do with dying as living. We’re not here to win the lottery or live forever. We’re here to love. So their lives are like sacraments, when we study them, signs of a progressive faith embodied in the rhythm of modern life.

So here’s another, a lesser known progressive saint. Father Bede Griffiths was a Benedictine monk who remained a devout Christian all his life, yet came to live in South India as a Hindu renunciant. He’d been born into an Anglican family in England in 1906, and he’d been tutored at Oxford by the great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis. But Father Bede devoted his life to a remarkable synthesis of Eastern and Western spirituality, one he called Christian Vedanta. And for most of his adult life, he led an ashram right there in South India. Among Bede’s many students and protégés is Father Cyprian Consiglio, who has sung with our own Lori Rivera many times and whose own music shines with Bede’s ecumenical courage.

I include Bede Griffiths in my little circle of progressive saints – because he insisted on being both Christian monk and Hindu renunciant. Faith made it possible and inevitable for him to cross all kinds of boundaries. And in crossing those boundaries, he looked even more deeply into the eyes of God. His life is a sign of what’s possible in our lives; that we too can meet Christ in others well outside the Christian world, that we can pray together and make peace together and imagine a new world together. Let pride go, he’d say, and see what God can do.

Not long before his death in the 90s, Bede told a British journalist that we are living in what he called the “Hour of God,” the Hour of God, and that the crisis the planet is facing is calling forth from a loving God “an unprecedented force of transformation and healing.” That testimony alone is worth a lifetime of reflection. Bede told the journalist that the crisis the world seems headed toward will turn out not to be punishment at all, but what he called a “Great Healing”—ushering in the birth of a new kind of human being all over the globe. Listen to this. This is what he said:

“This birthing of a Divine Humanity on a large scale is the real meaning of what some people call the second coming; the Christ does not need to return as a person…what I believe will happen is that the Christ consciousness…will be born on a massive scale in hundreds of thousands of people. This is a miracle greater than any ‘outer’ rescuing by God could ever be. We are going to be rescued from ‘within’ through a massive…process in which the whole of history will take part as…midwife of the new.”

Wow. Think about it. The birthing of a Divine Humanity, the Christ consciousness, in hundreds of thousands of people. In which the whole of history – crisis after crisis – takes part as midwife of the new. It means labor and partnership. It means blood, sweat and tears. It means profound spiritual struggle. Birthing means all that. But this Great Healing is out there, this Hour of God, the promise of new life and justice and loving human community. History takes part – your history, my history, ours – as midwife of the new. Wow. Father Bede Griffiths.

There’s a new book out, called The Hope, in which that same British journalist, Andrew Harvey, describes his last conversations with Father Bede. On his deathbed in India. He arrives to find Bede ravaged by strokes. One side of his body is paralyzed, his once brilliant mind, shattered. And yet, for all the confusion, Bede is also, for long stretches, basking in a kind of grace, effusive with love for all around him. Andrew Harvey writes that the strokes “had removed the last traces of British reserve; and Bede holds the hands of his disciples and friends, and he weeps with joy for them, and he gazes into their eyes with luminous wonder and childlike trust.”

On their last night together, Andrew Harvey sits alone into the early hours of morning and watches by Bede’s bedside as the monk tosses and turns in an uneasy sleep. At 2 a.m., he awakes and reaches out for his friend’s hand and caresses it gently. He does this for a few minutes. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, the great mystic sits up in bed and says loudly, over and over and over: “Serve the growing Christ! Serve the growing Christ! Serve the growing Christ!” The journalist is flummoxed, overwhelmed. What is this? Has his mentor reached out, even in his last hour, to reassure him? Is our terrible and wonderful time truly the birthing ground of the ‘growing Christ,’ the Great Healing? Wow. Serve the growing Christ!

In his journal that morning, Andrew Harvey writes these words, suggestive, poignant, gospel:

“Now, in the agony of his dying, I see Bede himself being born yet again. And his dying is birthing all those who love him, birthing us into an even deeper love for him and so into a deeper revelation of what true communion between souls and loving bodies can reveal.”

As we gather this morning, around this table, for our own communion, I hope you’ll remember these words. Ponder them. For they are just as true of Jesus as they are of Bede Griffiths. “His dying is birthing all those who love him, birthing us into an even deeper love for him and a deeper revelation of what true communion between souls and loving bodies can reveal.” Out of his sacrifice, out of his loving, out of his forgiving, out of his courage – we are born again today into a deeper love: for him, for one another, for the children of earth, for earth herself. There may be no better summation, no better poetry about communion anywhere. We are born into a deeper love.

Do Not Fear

So I’ll often take a copy of the week’s biblical text – like today’s Isaiah 43 – and fold it and tuck it in my shirt pocket as I go off for the day. It’s a way of staying close to the text, interacting with it, kind of inviting it into my life for a week. And I did that this week. Isaiah 43. “When you pass through the waters,” says the God of Jacob, “I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” I don’t know about you, but there are some mighty rivers out there, and some fierce fires; and I need to be reminded. I need to be reminded that I’ll pass through all kinds of storms, all kinds of flash fires, but the God who loves me will ride them out. The God who names me will keep my heart open to the mystery and grace and possibility even in those storms. “Do not fear,” says the God of Jacob. Maybe the three most important words in spiritual life: Do not fear.

So I’ve got Isaiah 43 in my shirt pocket, as I sit down in a hospital room, on Friday afternoon, with our friend Lynn Hunt – whose journey through this life is winding down and who comes now to her season of letting go. And she’s sleeping this particular afternoon, somewhat fitfully, laboring through each breath. But she’s sleeping, and it’s good to see her resting. And I sit there with Lynn, watching her sleep, praying silently and hopefully for her journey, for courage and grace and peace along the way.

And I remember the slip of paper in my shirt pocket and pull it out. Rarely has scripture seemed so at home, so perfectly right for a moment in time: “When you pass through the waters,” says the God of Jacob, “I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” It’s reassuring, sure, but it’s more: it’s encouraging, it’s intimate, it’s life in the midst of death. Because even in her season of dying, I see Lynn now being born into something new, into some new promise and glory. This is both ending and beginning; it’s both dying and birthing; it’s both pain and glory. It’s kind of like Bede Griffiths told that journalist: the crisis of her illness itself is calling forth from God an unprecedented force of healing and transformation.

She tells me, Lynn does, that with every wave of pain and loss, her faith becomes more real, more concrete. I can see it in her eyes. Lynn’s God, Isaiah’s God, bears with her wave after wave of pain and loss. Lynn’s God bears with her every lap of every flame, every contraction of spirit and soul, every anxiety. God’s love is relentless, patient, determined, true. Her Redeemer calls her by name. And she hears his voice. It doesn’t lift the burden of mortality; it doesn’t change the realities of cancer, the waves of pain. But she hears his voice – and she knows something more than cancer is happening to her. This ending is also a beginning; this dying is also, in some mysterious way, a birthing. “I will be with you,” says the Lord. “I will be with you.” In everything.

Cries of New Life

So maybe baptism means hearing that and trusting that – even and especially when waves crash hard on the shores of our souls. Maybe baptism means hearing that and trusting that when fire burns hot in seasons of political turmoil and economic decline. Maybe baptism means believing that God has named you and called you precious: moreover it means believing that God names and calls you precious every single day, and in every single breath, of your life. Relentless, patient, determined, true. And when the waves crash hard and fire burns hot, baptism has something to do with hoping for transformation. There’s no growing without suffering; there’s no ecstasy without pain; there’s no resurrection without the cross. Baptized folks – like you and me – trust in the promise of transformation and resurrection. We know that dawn breaks after a long night. We know that broken bread makes broken people whole. We know that the tomb is empty on Easter morning.

So we can believe, I think, what that old saint Bede Griffiths said in his last days. We can believe that here in the 21st century, amidst wars and rumors of war, amidst all the evidence that we’ve wounded the earth and desecrated the heavens, amidst all the signs that greed is god at last: here in the 21st century, the crisis the planet is facing is calling forth from our God “an unprecedented force / of transformation and healing.” Do you believe that? Because I do. I think it’s my vocation – as a baptized believer in Christ – to believe that. If only we have eyes to see and hearts to feel, our God bears all of this with us. The waves of doubt and worry. The fiery fear that makes us flinch. Our God bears all of this with us. And in God, all things are possible. In all these endings, there are profound beginnings. In all of this pain, there is the possibility of compassion and grace. And in all this dying, in all this collapsing, there are amazing cries of new life. If only we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

I have to believe that it’s our privilege as Christians to pass through the stormy waters of this century with hopeful hearts; that it’s our calling as Christians to stand against the waves of worry in courage and faith; and that it’s our duty as Christians to celebrate a God who gathers, not scatters, her people, from the north, south, east and west. We need not fear death. We need not fear mystery or the unknown or the stranger we don’t understand. In our living and in our dying. In the dark night of the soul and in the bright light of the resurrection. We belong to God. Who calls us by name.