+I’m a big fan of the author JD Salinger—-in his novel Franny and Zooey, college student Franny has decided to follow St Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing.” Unfortunately, Franny takes this practice on without guidance or support and her efforts soon lead to a mental breakdown and as the book begins she’s left college, and gone home to recover. After significant back and forth conversation, Zooey, Franny’s brother exclaims, “we don’t need gimmicks to attract God, we’re all carrying God deep with in us where we’re just too stubborn or too distracted, to look.”
God is deep within us. Deep. Within. Us.
And by practicing our faith—- by literally ingesting it through the sacred act of Holy Eucharist—-we join forces with God, living this faith out, fulfilling the dream God has always held for us.
We are to ingest faith—as so beautifully played out in the Holy Eucharist--to have it become completely in us and of us.
It really is a give and take proposition, God’s in us and we’re in God. And together we join in the most holy of all dances.
But, because we are who we are, we spend a whole lot of time looking for God, out here when, as Zooey tells Franny, God is already in here. Totally, completely, always.
This has been God’s promise to us for all time. In today’s reading from Jeremiah---Gos says, “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 has been written on our hearts---suggesting that, if we really listen to our heart’s desire, if we pay attention to what’s deep within us, we’ll find God. Because God is in us and we are 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 the God within us---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.
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--who was, by all accounts, an 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. And so she does.....never quitting, never wavering, never shrinking away.
The point Jesus makes is this: if such a jerk like the judge would listen to the persistent pleadings of the widow-- one of the most dismissed and ignored members of society in Jesus’ day—then imagine how, if we are as persistent in our own pleadings as she, a just and loving God will respond to us.
It’s easy to consider us the widow and God the judge, isn’t it?
But, here’s the thing...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 I 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 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 eagerly 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 appear from some far away place.
But what Franny forgot, what we all forget , is that God doesn’t need to be coaxed out of hiding—for 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 out so fervently, so tenaciously so deliberately and so persistently---we will discover the secret Zooey knows: that God is deep within us, residing on our very hearts where we have been a little too stubborn, a little too timid, and a little too dense to look.
My friends, in this day and age, when so many people are feeling lost, when so much of the world seems to have gone mad, may we all look deep within us and find the God who is waiting for us, longing for us, hiding in plain sight.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment