In JD Salinger’s book, Franny and Zooey, Franny, a college student, has decided to take St Paul’s instruction to “pray without Ceasing” (1Thessalonians 5:17) to heart. This, in her opinion, is the only way she can fully bring God into her life. Her efforts cause her to have a mental breakdown and she has returned to her family home to recuperate. In an effort to get her out of her almost catatonic state, Franny’s brother Zooey berates her for thinking that she needed to somehow entice God into her life, telling her that we’re all carrying God deep with in us where we are often to stubborn, to distracted, to look. Zooey’s characterization of carrying God deep within us is the best definition I’ve heard yet of our “incarnational faith.”
I talk about this all the time because I think it’s what makes our brand of Christianity so special. The idea that we embody our faith-- that God is in us and we are in God---makes sense to me and comforts me. So I talk about it. A lot.
We’re to ingest our faith—as so beautifully played out in the Holy Eucharist--to have it become completely in us and of us. It’s a give and take proposition, God’s in us and we’re in God. But, because we are who we are, we spend a whole lot of time looking for God, seeking God out here when, as Zooey tells Franny, God is already here. Totally and completely. Always.
God promised this from the beginning of time. We hear of it in today’s reading from Jeremiah---“I will be their God and they will be my people. I will write the law on their hearts.” Can’t get much clearer than that. God wants us so much that God is written on our hearts---suggesting that, if we really listen to our heart’s desire, if we settle ourselves to notice what is already deep within us, we’ll find God. Because God is in us and we are to be in God.
Just like Zooey says.
Franny’s efforts to get closer to God aren’t wrong---praying without ceasing is bound to increase our awareness of God---but it doesn’t bring God any closer, because God is already close. It’s funny, we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get closer to God, assuming that God is some elusive force outside of us when God is already within us, just waiting for us to notice. But,
Connecting with God is a two way street, a type of dance. We long for God and God longs for us…we just need to meet in the middle.
In the parable of the persistent widow, a widow ---remember in Jesus’ time there was no lower socio economic status than that of a widow-----is seeking justice against an unnamed adversary. Justice, in this case, can only be granted by the local judge---an, by all accounts, unpleasant man who had no fear or love of God and no respect or love of people. A scoundrel of a sort, but the local magistrate nonetheless. The widow had no choice but to pursue justice through him. The point Jesus makes is: if such a jerk like the judge would listen to the persistent pleadings of such a meaningless member of society—the widow-- then imagine how , if we are as persistent in our own pleadings as the widow, a just and loving God will respond to us. But, are we always the widow in this story? Is God always the judge? I don’t think so.
Sometimes we’re the widow: fervently, and persistently seeking God. But then there are other times—probably more than we care to admit, when we’re the unjust judge, and God is the widow. Times when we ignore the tenacious pleadings of a loving God, who longs to reach us, who longs for us to listen. A God who just wants to be noticed. A God who wants to be found. A God who wants to be heard.
Jesus sums it up at the end of Gospel when he asks---“when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”---will he find us engaged in a dance with God?
Will he find us seeking God as God seeks us?
That is the question.
God is waiting for us to seek God out as fervently as God seeks us.
This is what Franny was trying to do with her attempts at unceasing prayer. She thinks if she continually prays, God will magically appear.
But what Franny forgot, what we all forget , is that God doesn’t need to be coaxed out of hiding—God is hiding in plain sight, waiting for us. Longing for us to seek out the divine as earnestly and as urgently as the widow seeks out the judge because then—when we have sought God so fervently, so tenaciously so deliberately and persistently---we will discover the secret Zooey knows, that God was and is deep with in us, residing on our very hearts where we were a little too stubborn, a little too timid, a little too dense to look.
This is the dance of our faith---God longs for us to notice God and we cry out to God, longing for God to notice us.
God loves the persistent widow part of us-- the Franny part of us that seeks to connect with God without ceasing.
God also loves the unjust judge part of us—the part which tries to deny the persistent, tenacious voice of God until finally we succumb, finally we give in and finally we discover that God has always and will always be, dancing on our hearts and filling our very souls.
As I begin this wholly unexpected journey of cancer my prayer is that I’ll remember to be tenacious in my seeking of the God I long to know and radically receptive in my welcoming of the God who longs to know me. My prayer for all of you is that you’ll join me in this journey, you’ll join me in this dance we’re all invited to, a dance between us and the Divine, a dance of love, a dance of hope and a dance of health.
Amen.
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