“Intelligibility Cloak”
1 John 1:1-2:1
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
4/19/15
In the Harry
Potter stories, the young wizard and his hired wands are always trying to solve
some mystery at Hogwarts. In one of the episodes, Harry does some of his
sleuthing by creeping around under the cover of an “invisibility cloak.” As
soon as Harry wraps himself in this cloak, both he and the cloak disappear.
Unless he sneezes or bumps into something, he can move around unnoticed. It is
a wonderful and dangerous prospect, isn’t it?
I am coming to view the scriptures
of our faith tradition as one of Heaven’s and Earth’s signature attempts to
throw an intelligibility cloak over
the eternal mystery we call God. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, scripture is our
daring adventure of taking something as beautiful and artful, but also as
limited and culturally nuanced as language and casting it like a great shroud
over the invisible realities that give human experience meaning. As people of
faith, we presume to do this because we believe that we have encountered more
than meets the eye, and more than makes sense to the mind. We believe that
underneath all of our laws, poetry, stories, and human reasonings we are beginning to discern the presence, and
maybe even the very shape of God.
This is why I find the opening
lines of First John so compelling. John does not open this letter with the
grand formality we see in Paul. John begins this letter with a kind of awestruck
giddiness. I imagine him sitting down to write this epistle immediately after
some transforming epiphany – an experience in which he has peeked beneath the
intelligibility cloak. He has caught a glimpse of the form and substance of eternity
in all its tangible and earthy holiness.
The older I get, and the longer I
live in this astonishingly beautiful part of God’s creation, the more Celtic I
become in my own faith. For over 1500 years, Celtic Christianity has celebrated
and taught the presence of God in and through the natural world. The created
order is the ultimate intelligibility cloak, and scripture aims to help us see
and love God in self, neighbor, and earth. The Celtic heart delves deep beneath
the two stories of creation in Genesis, into the wonder of the psalms and
poetic prophecies, and even of the Apostle Paul who says that “Ever since the
creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though
they are, have been understood and seen through the things [God] has made.” (Rom. 1:20)
Of course, nothing is more
important to Celtic spirituality than the dizzying holiness of God’s willful
incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. You and I are made of the very same good stuff through which the Creator
chooses to be immediately and intimately present with the creation.
Phillip Newell, a contemporary spokesperson
for Celtic Christianity, quotes the 14th century mystic Julian of
Norwich who said that “We come from the Womb of the Eternal. We are not simply
made by God; we are made ‘of God.’”1
This becomes
real for me every time Marianne and I go to the woods. Last Friday we hiked in
the Cherokee National Forest near Clark’s Creek, and as we walked, both of us
felt, again, the tangible, the audible, the blatant
holiness of the earth. The woods were at the peak of their spring renaissance.
Trillium, foam flower, dwarf iris, purple, yellow, and white violets – these
are just a few of the wildflowers radiating joy and hope. Recent rains had those
cold creeks running high and fast. We heard their song with every step.
And oh, the green! To my eyes, no
other color compares to the bright, shimmering, liquid green of new growth. And
it is not just about the newness of spring. To walk among all that vertical
magnificence of mature, even ancient trees is to walk among creatures whose
roots run deep and wide. If we could remove the soil and look at the
intertwining roots of the trees, shrubs, flowering plants, and grasses, we
would lose our breath at the exquisite perfection of the communities beneath
our feet. Some day, humankind may create “artificial intelligence,” but we will
never engineer root systems to match the accomplishments of God.
The physical realities of the earth
feed us, and clothe us, and heal us. They give us not only work to do and games
to play, but reason to work and to recreate – to re-create. The earth unites us in our dependence and our
interdependence. As earthly creatures, each of us is utterly unique and
valuable, and yet like oaks, hickories, firs, rhododendron and sassafras all
make one forest, as profoundly diverse individuals, we make one humanity. God
is the Soil, Sun, and Rain, the Life and the Death that holds us together. We
come from and return to God. To channel Julian of Norwich, at a very deep level
of truth, a level not obvious to the literal eye or ear, we who cannot be
finally divorced from God exist as a tangible,
audible, and blatant expression of
God.
When truly operating as spiritual
community, we recognize that our lives are intertwined like the roots beneath
us. Like the forest, we are a place rich in playful and flowering new growth, in
majesty and maturity, in flowing streams, and even in the spongy, fragrant fertility
of rot. The presence of God teems around us and within us. This is what has John
so excited.
Listen again to the opening words
of his letter. I read this time from the J.B. Phillips translation: “We are
writing to you about something which has always existed yet which we ourselves
actually saw and heard: something which we had an opportunity to observe
closely and even to hold in our hands, and yet, as we know now, was something
of the very Word of life himself! For it was life which appeared before us: we
saw it, we are eye-witnesses of it, and are now writing to you about it. It was
the very life of all ages, the life that has always existed with the Father,
which actually became visible in person to us [mortals]. We repeat, we really
saw and heard what we are now writing to you about. We want you to be with us
in this—in this fellowship with the Father, and Jesus Christ his Son. We must
write and tell you about it, because the more that fellowship extends the
greater the joy it brings to us who are already in it.”
That could almost make a Presbyterian shout “Amen!”
Now, John’s experience with Jesus may
have taken him beneath the intelligibility cloak, but John is not in a state of
schmaltzy denial. He sees how sin dehumanizes the poor, how it oppresses the
weak, how it exploits the earth. He sees how power rationalizes its rampant
abuses, because the Jesus he loves endures crucifixion. But Jesus suffers the
wrath of corrupt worldly power to prove its impotence. His life, death, and
resurrection reveal that all of our violent, fearful, retributive brokenness is
just that. It is ours. God does not demand blood as a penalty for offense, nor
as a prerequisite to or a restoration of holy Love. Any god who needs brutal “satisfaction”
in order to restore its capacity to love is an idol. Jesus saves us by
delivering us from cruel religion as well as brutal powers. Richard Rohr states
the redeeming work of Jesus this way: “Jesus
did not come to change the mind of God about humanity, but to change the mind
of humanity about God.”2
The truth of resurrection has given
John the strength to stand in the midst of all that is broken and say, ‘Yes,
sin is a reality in this world. To deny it is to delude ourselves. But sin is
not our fundamental nature. Brokenness is not the land of our birth. It is not
our DNA. God is!’
First John is a letter from home.
Like a walk in the wilderness, it is a breathtaking reminder that we live as a
kind of intelligibility cloak in, with, and for the creation. We are an
expression of the Love of God. And when we as a church intentionally live
together in that promise, differences and all, warts and all, for better or
worse, we are a welcoming forest. We are an ecosystem of life, death, and
resurrection.
We are an intelligibility cloak in
and for the world. Our calling is to help reveal the eternal and ever-present kingdom
of God. Here. Now.
1J. Phillip
Newell, Christ of the Celts, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 68
2Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our
True Self, Jossey-Bass, 2013, p. 150.
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