AND INSTEAD OF HAVING ME COMMITTED WILL COMMIT
THEMSELVES TO DIVING DEEPER INTO THE MYSTERY

~ An Inner View Disguised as an Interview ~ No. 1

MYSELF: Well , first, thank you for sitting down with me.

DAN: Of course, my pleasure. It’s not exactly like Oprah or Krista Tippett or NPR or EWTN have been pestering me with non-stop calls and invitations.

MYSELF: EWTN?

DAN: Okay, yeah, that’s not very likely.

MYSELF: Yeah, and Oprah is. Ha! We’re doing this interview (or inner view) at the beginning of Advent. So I’d like to begin by asking if you have ever noticed on your website The Sacred Braid that the most frequently tagged topic category on THE ALMOND TREE is Advent/Christmas. Were you aware of that? And what do you make of it?

DAN: I was aware of that, yes, though it’s not by design. I suppose it’s for a couple reasons. First, it’s tagged for both Advent and Christmas so that doubles the number. I do that because, like Lent and Easter, or Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the full meaning of each season is dependent upon and intimately tied to the other. Second, Advent is my favorite season of the year. Third, Advent and Christmas are story-saturated and I love the stories of these two seasons. And again the stories of each season require the stories of the other to get the full impact of each. And finally, though this is true of Lent and Easter as well, the core message of the gospel of Jesus is presented during the twinned seasons of Advent and Christmas in such a vivid, arresting, enchanting, and earthy way.

MYSELF: And the core message is?

DAN: Emmanuel. God-is-with-us. That’s about as good a description of the gospel and as good a definition of salvation as we have, I think.

As a description of the gospel, the news that is the too-good-to-be-true-news that is nevertheless true, says that despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, despite the mess, murder, and mayhem humans have perpetrated against one another and wrought on this resplendent earth, that God-is-with-us, that we live in the presence of God, and that however hiddenly, the Divine vivifies and sustains the earth with love.

As a definition of salvation it flies in the face of other—shall we say—rather narrow or otherworldly or get-out-of-jail type understandings of the term and the formulaic prayers associated with it that steer people to prattle off the required and verbatim pronouncement: “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior.”

Salvation has way more body to it than that. More substance and texture and risk and involvement than merely presenting a punched ticket to heaven and the afterlife. What’s been lost in many communities that call themselves Christian is the reality that salvation is something we participate in. It’s a lived reality before death, here and now. It’s a cooperative work of grace—as Evelyn Underhill used to emphasize—between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. It’s a dance we are invited into with all creation by the Creator Spirit. 14th century Persian poet Hafiz says God has only four words: “Come dance with me.”

MYSELF: Say more about the dance.

DAN: The seasons of Advent and Christmas are about incarnation. For Christians, that is the dance. That’s the mystery of the season and the substance of the Christ-life: the incarnation of God which is the incarnation of love. If we miss that, we miss it all. Miss the why, with whom, and how we dance.

The revelation is that salvation comes not by way of a magic wand waved over the cosmos by the Great Wand-Waver God in the sky but rather by an act of divine solidarity by way of self-emptying (kenosis), self-bestowal, and vulnerability. Salvation is nothing less and nothing more (what possibly could be more) than life with God. That’s it. It comes as pure gift at birth. But humans suffer from a bad case of amnesia usually brought on by the odd combinations of insecurity and increasing self-interest, fear and self-absorption that cause us to take the gift for granted. Jesus is the “living reminder,” the revealed, incarnated truth of the gift and the dance called salvation: God-is-with-us. Divine solidarity. Emmanuel.

MYSELF: Can you flesh out a—sorry, no pun intended. I’m not quick enough for that to happen on purpose. Can you say more about the mystery of the incarnation?

DAN: The incarnation of God in Jesus reveals to us not only what God is like but also what it means to be human, what our vocation is, why we are here. So the mystery of the incarnation we celebrate this season, is a double revelation and a double-gift.

MYSELF: How so, the double revelation is about who God is and who we are?

DAN: Right. On the one hand, the incarnation brings to light and accentuates the extravagance of God’s love for us and all creation. The word extravagance, literally means to wander extra or to wander beyond. The incarnation that is the mystery at the center of Advent and Christmas and the entire Christian life and that is the cause for awe and joy, highlights the height and depth and length of God’s expansive love—“for God so loved the world“ St. John the evangelist reminds us—which is particular as well. The incarnation shows the wandering beyondness of God’s love, shines a light on the God Without Borders. Our God is not only a dancing God but also a vagrant who goes the extra mile to offer us love and exceeds human expectation.

MYSELF: Jesus is the embodiment of the extravagance of God’s love.

DAN: Mm hmm. That’s how I see it. Jesus embodies the vagrancy of God’s love. The inference in some theology that claims to be Christian or that is even overtly espoused in certain churches is that God only loves certain types of people who act certain types of ways (usually confusing prim and proper.for authentic piety). As I see it, God is the God Without Borders. Borders are human made and they can’t confine God. God, as revealed in Jesus, goes where prim and proper people are certain God does not go, doesn’t belong.

MYSELF: I’ve heard you say it this way before: in light of the line in the Lord’s prayer “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” — that we don’t actually forgive those who trespass against us, because God is the biggest trespasser of all and most people, most Christians if they’re honest, don’t forgive God for trespassing. How’d I do? Is that it?

DAN: I think so. Christians are upset (probably unconsciously much of the time) about two things: one, God is not where God is supposed to be in the way God is supposed to be there; and second, God turns up places God is not supposed to be in a way that God is not supposed to be there. The vagrant God, the God Beyond Borders, encroaches upon and intrudes our preconceived ideas of who and how God is supposed to be or how the Anointed One, the awaited messiah is supposed to appear and to act. But the God incarnated by Jesus violates all our expectations, rules of etiquette, and cock-sure prejudices. In fact, my sense from the sacred texts and the stories of the season is that God delights in trespassing by coming in a manner and form that is wholly unexpected and that sabotages our prized assumptions about God.

MYSELF: It’s sort of Trekky. The God who goes where no God has gone before.

DAN: Well, it’s not incidental to the gospel message that God in Jesus wanders far afield, by-passing the digs of kings and queens and scholars and wealthy merchants or powerful politicians and leaders. As Tolkien wrote “Not all those who wander are lost.”

On the other hand, the incarnation reveals something radical and fundamental about humans, about us, namely, that we are the beloved of God. That God deems us worth saving, and by that word “saving” I mean worth inviting to share God’s life, to join in the dance of the beloved community who is God. What traditionally we call the Trinity.

MYSELF: So the incarnation is a double-revelation revealing what God is like and what it means to be human. Why do you say the incarnation brings a double-gift?

DAN: Because the mystery at the heart of these seasons, and therefore at the heart of the Christ-life, is an inter-action, an exchange of love, a call and response, an invitation and a reply. St. John says it this way: why do we love? Because God first loved us.

Salvation is a double-gift because it is the self-bestowal of God as incarnated love and it is the gift of our being invited and able to respond. It is in the gift of receiving and responding that we discover our vocation, both in the sense of what it means to be human, what is asked of us as humans, and what it means for you to be you, and for me to be me. And by extension what does it mean for the church to be church and what is the vocation of the church, the beloved community, the people of God, the body of Christ, take your pick of images? Is it to save disembodied souls for the after life or is it to offer the extravagant love and wild life of God as embodied in Jesus by following Jesus’ lead here and now? Expressed most vividly by being in solidarity with the least of these, the vulnerable, marginalized, and discarded.

MYSELF: Do you think the way we celebrate Christmas, as the birthday of baby Jesus, we tend to forget or be unaware of the fact that Christmas is a celebration of the mystery of the incarnation which is so much bigger than what’s happening in the crib in the manger.

DAN: Absolutely. We’ve taken an ineffable mystery—for which there are really no words big enough to express it—Emmanuel comes, perhaps, closest, and then we can only begin to wrap our heads and hearts around it because of the embodiment of Divine love in Jesus—but we’ve taken this mystery that can’t be put into words or explained, and made it quaint. It’s about the manifestation of the Reign of God, for heaven’s sake. And for the earth’s sake.

Again, salvation is the invitation and the fullness of life here and now that we experience when we dare to accept the invitation to participate in the life and movement and action of God and when we dare to enter into the mystery. This is the only way we can even begin to fathom the mystery—is by entering into it as an experience. For love to be transformative it must be experienced from the inside out. Most profound experiences can’t be put into words or captured in formulas. This is one of the reasons we refer to it as a mystery.

MYSELF: If I understand you correctly, what you’re saying that we don’t typically hear or associate with the word salvation is the importance of it not merely being seen as a static Divine gift but as the dynamism of this interaction and mutual participation and relationship—what you are calling the dance or interaction.

DAN: That’s right. Every gift deserves a response, otherwise it’s just an overture, a gesture. But by receiving what is being offered and by responding—a thank you, certainly, but not merely a thank you. After all, when the gift comes from the One in whom we live and move and have our being, when the gift is Godself, and when the gift includes our God-given capacity and opportunity to participate in the divine life, then our thank you is also our vocation, our raison d’etre. It’s why were here. Not to be saved or rescued or taken away from here, but to be wholeheartedly involved in the reign of God, the dream of God as embodied and expressed by Jesus. Salvation is “learning and living” Jesus, to borrow the words of scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson. Salvation is LIVING in service to love. Our thank you, our vocation, our response-ability as in our ability-to-respond, involves receiving the gift that God-is-with-us and responding to it by being-with-God. Salvation is not a one way reality. It’s a two-way relationship. 

MYSELF: Salvation as participation as you said earlier.

DAN: Mm hmm, yes. And our being with God, and for God, is our thank you—(our eucharistia).

Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote a book on the philosophy of religion titled Man Is Not Alone. Of course what he means is that humans are not alone because of God, because God is with us. Heschel might have said it this way: “God means humans are not alone.” It is an intuition, a theological conviction, a proclamation of faith, and an experience. I think the rabbi would agree with me when I take it a step further and say: “Human means God is not alone.” Being human means being with God. This is the substance of our faith and the heart of Christian living and hope as modeled by Jesus who, according to John chapter 17 prayed “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us.”

to be continued . . .