[from a meditation I sent to a friend]
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour – William Blake
Judaism and Christianity affirm a most fundamental truth about God: God reveals.
The word revelation, like its Greek counterpart “apocalypse,” etymologically means to un-veil or pull back the curtain. God, hidden behind the veils of time and space, is in the business of tearing open those veils.
Because he is not made of “stuff” like atoms, God is not accessible to bodily sense perception which relies entirely on interaction with matter. In fact, God is not “made out of” anything at all, and drew his existence from no-thing. He is simply the beginningless act of to-be, self-existent Being without origin or source. There is no “before” or “after” in God, who simply is.
This makes the difference between our contingent existence — which has a definite beginning and source — and God’s existence incomparably and inconceivably vast. An infinite chasm between us and God, that cannot be crossed.
(And yet, through revelation we have learned this God is all about doing the impossible…
Honestly, I can’t think on these truths for long without a mind-melt beginning. To ask, “how can God be the source of his own infinite existence?” or even “and why is that existence love?” – is for me no less mind-blowing than when I first began to conceive such questions 35 years ago.
So, no wonder grasping such a God’s unveiling-revelation is elusive for us finite bipedal rational mammals most accustomed to perceiving sunsets, predicting the weather or hunting animals for food. And yet, as the universal human quest for transcendent meaning, found in the religious impulse, shows — humans are clearly designed to seek and find this hidden Ground of all existence.
You might say that’s a great definition of being made in the image of God: desperate to discover its Archetype and say, “thank you.”
And God, like a child playing hide and seek, seems to teem with an impish excitement at tossing teasers our way and then revealing himself through the element of surprise. Think here: Moses tending sheep at the foot of Sinai, being ambushed by a Burning Bush.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him
in a flame of fire out of a bush;
he looked, and the bush was blazing,
yet it was not consumed.
Then Moses said,
“I must turn aside and look at this great sight
and see why the bush is not burned up!”
…
And Moses hid his face,
for he was afraid to look at God.
Jews and Christians together affirm that there are two “books” by which God reveals himself: liber naturae et liber Scripturae “the book of nature and the book of scripture.”
All around us, the world, the cosmos, humanity speaks a language of order and power and beauty and mystery that gestures beyond itself, begging us to ask: “Why do you exist? Who made you?” We can’t not think like this, however clever our methods may be for burying our inbuilt search engines in trivialities.
But the answer to those questions, even among the greatest minds of history, is unclear, confused, ambiguous. It seems clear that translating the “language” inscribed in creation by its transcendent Origin requires a Rosetta stone of sorts. And this God provides when he chooses Abram and Sarah – the people of Israel — and sets in motion a radical, total and final unveiling of himself that will provide the keys humanity needs to decipher the divine Word chiseled in every quark of the cosmos.
The story of Moses and the Burning Bush is a beautiful synthesis of these two books, as God unfolds the ‘scriptural’ Rosetta stone for Moses through a ‘natural’ shrub at the foot of a mountain.
But it is only in Christ, who is the Word-made-flesh, that divine hermeneutics reaches its apex – above all, in logos tou starou “the word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18), which unveils love’s triumph planted deep in the heart of all cosmic and human violence.
For to this you have been called,
because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example,
so that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When he was abused, he did not return abuse;
when he suffered, he did not threaten,
but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross,
so that, having died to sins,
we might live for righteousness;
by his wounds you have been healed. –1 Peter 2:21-24
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Psalm 19 provides a magnificent meditation on the two books of revelation – vs. 2-6 extol the “book of nature” and vs. 7-13 extol the “book of the Law.” This Psalm has taught me that the best way to read and pray Scripture is by creatively interfacing the two books. For me, this means either reading Scripture outdoors, preferably near a garden (which is a symbol of the whole created order cultivated by man to God’s glory and the joy of all), or praying lectio divina in the French Quarter, where untamed humanity gathers in all its wild splendor. In those two contexts, for me, the Sacred Text becomes powerfully revelatory.
May each of us, schooled in reading the Books, be empowered by the Spirit to see the world, with William Blake, as shot through with the glory of God.
Neal Obstat Theological Opining 