“Do you know how to get there?”
I ask my kids that question when they are going to follow Kendra and me in their cars to a restaurant or an event downtown. And they always answer in the same way. They hold up their phones so I can see them. It’s their way of saying, “Of course, Dad.” Even if they’ve never been to the place where we are headed, all they have to do is enter the name of the place in the “Maps” app on their phone and hit “Directions.” Their phone will immediately map the fastest route to the destination.
In the first section of these posts I’ve tried to identify the destination. God calls us on a journey toward an inclusive and unlimited love–a love in which we are all in, no halfway humanity. A love fighting to demolish every division keeping all from coming in.
But do we know how to get there? What are the directions to this destination?
Thankfully, Christians have given careful thought to this question. For the remainder of these posts we’ll explore some ancient and contemporary models that provide a map to mercy, the journey toward justice, the way of welcome.
We’ll start with the mystics.
Christian mystics focused on our conscious experience of faith. For them, faith wasn’t simply about gaining information about God. It was getting experiences with God. The word “mysticism” wasn’t created until the 17th century and wasn’t popularized until the 19th century. But the word “mystical” has been in use by Christians since at least the late 2nd century.
The roots of mysticism are in Scripture. Repeatedly, Scripture testifies to the experiences of people and our God–from Jacob and his dream of a ladder, to Moses at the burning bush, to Solomon watching the glory of the Lord fill the temple, to the disciples witnessing Jesus’ transfiguration, to John’s visions recorded in Revelation, the Bible is the record of a God that is seen, heard, felt, smelled and even tasted (consider the feasts of the Old Testament and communion in the New).
By the 6th century, the mystics’ four-stage model of Christian growth had gained widespread acceptance in the Christian world:
- Awakening
- Purgation
- Illumination
- Union
The mystics tell us that union is the goal. Union is basically what I’ve described in the first part of these posts. It’s love of God and love of neighbor. It’s oneness with God and oneness with people.
But how do we move in that direction? The mystics said there were three steps. The first is awakening.
This is why one of the earliest ways of talking about the spiritual life was with the image of waking up. Paul put it this way:
13 But all things are exposed when they are revealed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. 14 Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” (Eph. 5:13-14 MEV)
Some believe that the last part of this text was an early Christian song, or at least an early Christian confession. When someone was baptized, those who witnessed it would say these words aloud, “Awake, you who sleep!” The spiritual life is all about awakening. Being in a relationship with Jesus is all about waking up.
The Christian mystics wrote that we awaken to three things.
We wake up to our God. We gain new or greater clarity about who God is and what God’s up to.
We also wake up to our world. We gain new or greater clarity about what’s really happening in our world.
And we wake up to ourselves. We gain new or greater clarity about who we are, especially in relationship to God and to our role in the world.
The sad truth is that many who are first awakened when they become Christians fall back asleep. Churches are filled with people who are missing what’s really happening with God, in the world, or in their own lives. One author writes this:
“Many things keep us content with our small selves and block us from becoming all we can be. None, however, is more important than the fact that most of us go through life as sleepwalkers and, even after a moment of awakening, tend to quickly drift off once again …” (David Benner Spirituality and the Awakening Self)
Thomas Merton writes this:
“There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished by our vital relation with reality.” (Thomas Merton Thoughts in Solitude).
Too often, we wake up for a bit, and then fall back asleep. We prefer the unreality of sleep to the reality of being awake. We refuse to keep our eyes open and see ourselves, our world and our God for who they truly are.
Often, this sleepiness is aimed at shutting our eyes to the painful plight of others. In his book Woke Church Eric Manson writes this:
“…the evangelical church seems to be asleep to the hotbed of tensions that threatens to overflow into communities across America. Scripture makes it clear that we are supposed to be totally awake to what is happening in our world…”
Too many churches are asleep when it comes to the way others are being treated in our world today.
In 1959, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the commencement address at Morehouse College. He would preach this sermon often, including at the National Cathedral the Sunday before coming to Memphis, where he was killed.
In the sermon, King told the story of Rip Van Winkle. What most remember about that story is that Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years. There was, however, another important part of the story–the change that happened while he slept. In a little inn, when Rip Van Winkle fell asleep, there hung a picture of King George III of England. Twenty years later, when he awoke, the picture had changed. Now it was a picture of George Washington. King notes:
“When he started his quiet sleep America was still under the domination of the British Empire. When he came down she was a free and independent nation. This incident suggests that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle was not that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a great revolution … There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.”
God’s stirring a revolution on earth. God is inciting inclusion. God is protesting every policy whose prejudice pushes people away. God is building bridges and burning down biases. He’s creating communities of countless compassion. And nothing would be worse than to remain asleep to the power-plays on earth making all of this necessary and the costly campaign of God to make safe spaces for all.
We see this awakening in the story of Esther. Esther’s world is filled with alienation, nationalism, political idolatry, sexism, abuse and racism. Injustice, oppression and violence reign in Esther’s world.
And Esther seems asleep to it all.
So, God sends Mordecai to bring awakening to Esther:
12 And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Est. 4:12-14 ESV)
Mordecai brought awakening to Esther in three areas. He awakened her to God–a God who was mysteriously at work in the mess of Esther’s world to bring her to the throne of Persia.
He awakened her to her world–a world filled with so much injustice and violence and she would not escape it, not even behind the protective walls of the palace.
And he awakened her to herself–helping her see that God had chosen her for this time to step into the gap and put an end to the injustice about to be unleashed on the Jewish people.
It’s time to wake up. It’s time to open our eyes. It’s time to see a God who is still mightily and mysteriously at work despite the extraordinary efforts of exclusion. It’s time to see the crushing consequences faced by so many who are simply longing for belonging. It’s time to see ourselves and the revolutionary roles God has called us to play as we participate with him in his plan for all to be in.
