Love flows like blood from our wounds. It flows like tears from our grief. It flows in the sweat of our labours. As some of you already know, Gentle Reader, I do not do comparative religions. I am not interested in declaring that my faith rocks, all others suck. And I don't even believe that. My God is not better than your God. There already is one God, the same God that created, sustains and loves us all. But I do not write about other faiths, not because I don't agree with them, nor because I think they are inferior. I write only about my faith because I am a Christian. I respect Buddhists and Buddhism, Jews and Judaism, Muslims and Islam. I am not interested in converting or persuading others to walk in the way that I walk. That is God's business, not mine. It is the Holy Spirit that converts, that draws us to Christ. Does the Holy Spirit draw people to the other faiths? I don't know. As I said, that is none of my business, and it is not for me to judge.
But I will write about what is real to me. Which is Jesus. But which Jesus? I had a conversation about that this morning with my friend (whom I consider my closest friend) in Medellín, Colombia. I told him how the direction my life has taken, since I accepted Christ, has been dominated by certain themes and key words: Beauty...Love...Truth...Spirituality...Creativity...Justice...Humour....Mercy...Life....Reconciliation...,Joy....Celebration....Forgiveness....Humility....Dignity...Integrity...Laughter....Gentleness...Tenderness...Generosity...Warmth...Openness....Respect...Playfulness....Wholeness....Grace...Wisdom...Hope...Courage...Adventure..
God became real to me, not as an abstract or biblical or theoretical concept that one can or cannot intellectually assent to or dismiss. But God, in the living force of his presence, when the Holy Spirit first filled and flooded me and I was swept up in a prolonged ecstasy of joy and release such as I had never experienced before, and that I have come only close at times to experiencing since. It was in a basement room. There were maybe seven or eight of us. We were prying. And then, as the others laid their hands on anyone who desired the gift of the Holy Spirit, so descended the Rushing Mighty Wind. The impact has never really gone away. I know what happened. I simply yielded to God every bit of my resistance to his love and grace. Literally, my life has never been the same. Literally, I have never felt so completely alive.
So, Jesus is real to me. Not simply from the pages of the New Testament, but as the daily reality of his presence with me. This does not make me mentally ill. I am not delusional, I do not have schizotypal disorder. This is actually a very typical and familiar experience to Christians of a Pentecostal or Charismatic or mystical orientation.
But what cones with this experience, is the wounding of love. Jesus could only truly pour out his love for us, the love of God his Father, through the wounds of the nails that held his frail body to the cross. When he rose from the dead, he showed to his disciples those very same wounds that he took up in his body to heaven. Those wounds, that agony, darkness and abandonment that he shared with us in his passion he now shares with us every day, no matter where or who we are, no matter what we are suffering, no matter what has been done to us. It is the trauma of wounding that gives birth to love, and if we are to walk and live as children of love then we cannot escape this wounding. It is the very instrument that enables us to channel the healing love and grace of God, not God the abstract concept, but the living reality that brought to birth this universe and that inhabits and sustains every subatomic particle of the cosmos. And that, darlings, is the Theolgy of love!
No comments:
Post a Comment