Seeing Christ in All Things

I’ve started reading a book by Father Richard Rohr called The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe.  What he’s talking about can boil down to the following statement: 

Christ is not Jesus’s last name. 

Christ is who Jesus was from the beginning.  

Now, we may think we already know that.  After all various scriptures speak of Jesus existing from “the Beginning”—John 1:1-18; Colossians 1:15-20; Ephesians 1:13-14—but Rohr challenges us to think about the implications of this.  Do we really live like Jesus is Christ (Messiah, liberating King of the Universe, savior of the world) or do we reduce him to the role of Personal Savior, who assures me that I am going to heaven when I die, likes the small group of people I like and promotes their success, and pretty much condemns the rest to hell?   

 “Christianity has become clannish to put it mildly,” says Rohr. “But it need not remain there.   The full Christian leap of faith is trusting that Jesus together with Christ gave us one human but fully accurate window into the Eternal Now that we call God (John 8:58, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3, 2 Peter 3:8). This is a leap of faith that many believe they have made when they say, “Jesus is God!”  But strictly speaking, those words are not theologically correct:

·     Christ is God, and Jesus is the Christ’s historical manifestation in time.[1]

·     Jesus is a Third Someone, not just God and not just man—but God and human together.

Rohr continues, “A merely personal God becomes tribal and sentimental, and a merely universal God never leaves the realm of abstract theory and philosophical principles. But when we learn to put them together, Jesus and Christ give us a God who is both personal and universal”—The Universal Christ, Chapter 1, p. 19.

I think, for most of us reading this article, we’ve grown up in churches that focus much more the personal dimension of Jesus, so that’s where we’re comfortable.  Talk of a universal Christ raises red flags for some.  It can begin to sound like pantheism, which means, “God is all things.”  So, the bird, or the rock, or the tree literally is God.   That’s not what Rohr is describing, however.  He is talking about panentheism; which is a similar word, differing by only a tiny syllable; but that little “en” makes a big difference.  

Panentheism means that “God is all things”, which means that God is not the rock, or the bird, or the tree—but God (Christ) is in all these things, and in everything else that God has created.  So, Christ can be seen in all of creation—and the ultimate revelation of Christ is Jesus. This idea is the bedrock of the theology the Apostle Paul advocates so strongly in his writing.  Rohr points out that Paul uses the phrase en Cristo, or “in Christ,” 164 times—which is more than any other phrase he uses in his letters.  

in 

According to Rohr, “En Cristo seems to be Paul’s code word for the gracious, participatory experience of salvation, the path that he so urgently wanted to share with the world. In Paul’s mind, we’re all living en Cristo; it’s only by our own negative choice that we remove ourselves from God”—The Universal Christ, Chapter 3, p. 43.  

That last sentence from the quote above sounds similar to C.S. Lewis, who wrote in The Problem of Pain that, “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.”

What might it look like to see Christ in all things?  I think I experienced this recently, when my family attended the wedding of my niece (by marriage) Nancy Leigh Gates to Louis Martinelli.  We had a beautiful weekend celebrating the joining of these two lives as one. We didn’t go to church last Sunday as we normally would.  Nevertheless, I feel as though the weekend was thoroughly God-soaked.  It was hard not to see God in what was taking place.

To begin with, I saw God in the circle of life playing out.  My wife was a junior bridesmaid in the marriage of Nancy Leigh’s parents, her brother John and his wife Kathy, nearly 43 years earlier, and Nancy Leigh was a junior bridesmaid in our wedding nearly 16 years ago.   So, it was a real joy for our family to not only attend, but to be participants.  Brady and Becca were both in the wedding party; Laurie was the officiant; and they even asked me to read Scripture.  It was truly a family affair. 

I also saw God in bedrest, ginger-root tea, and antibiotics.  Our family battled sickness (allergies/virus) during the week leading up to the wedding and it was touch-and-go for a while whether Laurie and I would have adequate voice to do our speaking parts.  But God was faithful; when Saturday came, both of us were able to do what we needed to do.

As one might expect, I saw God in the wedding ceremony.  This young couple clearly made an intentional effort to invite God to join them at the altar.   During the ceremony, I read four Scriptures that spoke of love, including the story of Ruth and Naomi.  Laurie's homily focused on the love that Ruth showed for her mother-in-law, and the love she found from an unknown God as she journeyed far from her homeland to fulfill her promise, and how Ruth ultimately became the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest King (David). God is found in God’s Word.  As Ruth gleaned from the fields long ago, so the ancient stories of Scripture have wisdom for us to glean today. 

 But beyond the places you might expect to find God at a wedding, Christ played in other places over the weekend.  I saw God in the expressions on the faces of the bride and groom, the bridesmaids and groomsmen, and family and friends at the wedding rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony, and the reception.  The reception was a joyous celebration for Nancy Leigh and Louis—a very tasteful affair. We know Nancy Leigh waited a long time for this day to come, we were glad we could be there to celebrate with them.  

I also saw God in the casually elegant venue that was the perfect place for a young couple to have a wedding.   It was a great setting for both the ceremony and reception.  God was also there in the natural beauty nestled right in the suburbs of Philadelphia—not far from the “Blue Route”.  There was a stream with fountains, which activated when the couple kissed—a tradition they borrowed from Disney I believe. Beautiful flowers adorned the grounds, and a couple of huge trees grew on the property, and from one of those massive limbs hung a rope swing.   I found myself wondering how old those trees were—and the stories they could tell if they could speak.  

Indeed, God was there in the faces we encountered, and the spaces and places we visited last weekend. We just needed eyes that saw... 

I’m sure that I was a bit predisposed to see Christ in all things this weekend.  I was after all reading a book about seeing Christ in all things, and a Christian wedding is the probably the kind of event that naturally predisposes one to “seeing God” more readily than some other events.   Nevertheless, I really do believe that in this world, as the late Eugene Petersen put it in one of his book titles, “Christ Plays in 10,000 Places”.  The question is, are our senses tuned to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the Christ in the faces we encounter, and in the spaces and places we find ourselves?  Or are we so conditioned to only look for God in certain places (e.g., in church on Sunday morning) that we miss so much of what God intends for us to see?  

Church as we know it seems to be dying. Young people don’t seem all that interested in the version of Christ we’ve been presenting.  The statistics speak for themselves.   No need to rehash them here.  Congregations are greying; pews are emptying.  Sunday Schools are sparsely attended.  

For many people it seems Christ plays anywhere but “in church” on Sunday morning.

According to Rohr, “Right now, perhaps more than ever, we need a God as big as the still-expanding universe, or educated people will continue to think of God as a mere add-on to a world that’s already awesome, beautiful, and worthy of praise in itself. If Jesus is not also presented as Christ, I predict more and more people will not so much actively rebel against Christianity as just gradually lose interest—Universal Christ, Chapter 1, p. 17.

So, if Rohr is right, maybe we need to give this Universal Christ some serious thought.  While I don’t necessarily embrace Rohr’s theology completely, I do agree with him that we need to present Jesus Christ as both personal and universal savior.  Focusing as much as we have on personal salvation, in my humble opinion, has not done the Church any favors.  

I don’t think “going to heaven when we die” is enough to make young people embrace Jesus.  They need a larger vision of salvation that impacts their life and gives them hope now—as well as a promise forlater.  They need both Jesus and Christ.

The future of “the Church”, which I’ve been part of my whole life, is unclear, and I find that unsettling. What kind of church will be left when my kids are adults?  How about when their children are born?  I honestly don’t know.  While I’m convinced “the Church” will endure in some form, I  honestly don’t know what it will look like.  To recognize it when we, or our children, see it will likely require us to learn to see Christ playing in places where we didn’t expect to find him.  Confining God to the crumbling conventional church structure simply isn’t going to cut it anymore.  (Not that Christ isn’t there… but that he is found in so many other places as well.) The urgency to learn to see “Christ in all” has never been greater.  I hope our eyes can adjust before it’s too late…  The lyric from the song, Glory is Here, contains our prayer request: Lord, “help me to see that you’re all around me".  Even better, I hope the next generation of Christ-followers can learn to see Christ where we couldn’t (or wouldn’t)—and perhaps teach us to see what they see. 

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[1]This description makes me think of Jesus as the humanavatarof the Christ (in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell—Colossians 1:19) making God more accessible/understandable to us as human beings. 

Stories of Messy Motherhood

Anna Jarvis—originator of Mother's Day

This Sunday is Mother’s Day.  The modern incarnation of the holiday dates back to 1908 (second Sunday in May formally became Mother’s Day in 1914.)  Anna Jarvis is the one credited with establishing Mother’s Day in the U.S.  She wanted a to honor her own mother’s memory by continuing the work she started but she also wanted to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother was “the person who has done more for you than anyone else in the world.”

It didn’t take long for the secular world to catch on that this honoring of mother could be a good way to make a brisk profit.  After all, everyone has a mom.  As early as the 1920s, Hallmark was already producing cards the day.  Much to Anna Jarvis’s chagrin, Mother’s Day became a Hallmark Holiday.  Somewhere amidst all the frenzied gift-giving, the original noble intent of the Holiday got lost.  Ironically, Jarvis found herself protesting against the commercialization of the very holiday she had worked so hard to start.  She tried in vain to keep the focus more on the sentiments and less on the profits.  (Could we not say similar things about what Christmas and Easter have become in our culture?  Have they become Hallmark Holidays as well—at least for some, if not the majority?)

In church on Mother’s Day we typically read some form of liturgy or say a prayer that acknowledges the broad definitions of motherhood.   We affirm in words the messy reality of life: that while “the person who has done more for you than anyone else in the world” is often our biological mother, it isn’t always the case. 

But even when it is biology that bonds us, the emotions of Mother’s Day are more complicated than the saccharine sweet sentiments, and pithy platitudes of a Hallmark card.  Consider, for example, a sampling of the complex array of feelings about Mother’s Day that intersect with single human life—my own.  Tales of messy motherhood abound.  

Mother’s Day is always bittersweet for my family; in fact, early May is pretty much a time when celebration and sorrow come uncomfortably close together for us. To be honest, I feel challenged to know exactly how to respond to Mother’s Day.  On the one hand, it is a day I want to celebrate my wife, Laurie, for the wonderful mother she is to Brady and Rebecca, our son and daughter,  and my wife and I want to give thanks for our moms, and for others in our lives that have been “like a mom” to us.  

But Mother’s Day also has an inescapable shadow-side for my family. To begin with, my mother has been mentally ill for most of my life, which means that your typical Hallmark sentiment often doesn’t feel applicable to me.  Don’t get me wrong, my mom has given her all for me and my brother, and I’m grateful for that; it’s just that many pre-made cards just don’t quite fit our relationship.  Maybe that’s why I often choose to write my own words—much like Anna Jarvis advocated when she was alive.  

The awkwardness surrounding Mother’s Day goes beyond my relationship with my mom however.  The second Sunday in May always falls close to a somber anniversary for my wife and me.  It was on May 10, 2008, that we had the funeral for Rebecca’s identical twin sister Hope Marie, who passed from life support to life eternal two days after her birth.  Not only that, but Mother’s Day reminds us of another loss.  It was on Mother’s Day in 2007 we found we were expecting; but that pregnancy ended about a month later with miscarriage.  But then life rallied;  out of that loss came Rebecca—and Hope. 

What can one do with all those mixed emotions around Mother’s Day except let it be what it is, and ask for God’s grace to help you navigate it each year?

And this year, there’s another layer that hits pretty close to home for us.  On May 4, the anniversary of our daughter Hope’s passing, Rachel Held Evans, a 37-year old author and theologian whom we both admired and respected for her prophetic witness passed away, leaving behind two children under the age of four. Those two children will have little if any memory of their mother—but her husband Dan will never forget.  Mother’s Day will forever be bittersweet for that family.  And we simply don’t understand why these kinds of things keep happening to “good” people on this planet?? Lord have mercy…

Life often reminds us that mothers aren’t always connected to us by blood—and in the end a mother’s love can triumph over tears.  My wife’s father had five children by his first wife, Nancy, who ironically also died at age 37 of a brain tumor, leaving Laurie’s dad on his own to raise the five boys.  But Ordway was fortunate enough to find love again, and his new wife (Laurie’s mom Dawn) became like a mom to those five boys, plus their three additional children, the youngest of which was my wife. I know it’s way too early to think about, but I find myself hoping that Dan Held can find love again as Ordway did—and find someone willing to be a mom to those two precious children. 

Can a man be like a mom?  Okay, I admit that’s an odd question, but I ask because I think I’ve seen it.  I had a good friend named Joseph Bell, who passed away suddenly about two years ago in September.  Joseph and I were in men’s group together called Godfellas for many years.  He left behind two daughters who were his heart and soul.  Although their mother is still alive, she was never mentally well the whole time I knew Joseph.  He and Diane eventually separated and Joseph had been a single dad for several years.  While the girls still visited their mother occasionally and had some level of relationship, it’s fair to say that for a good chunk of their life, Joseph was both mom and dad to those girls. He didn’t really have a choice. 

Joseph’s daughters have been fortunate to be adopted by another of the Godfellas, and his family.  Steve and Trish Audi already had two children of their own, but Joseph had asked them that question we often ask our trusted friends when we have small children and ask them:  In the unlikely event something ever happens to me, would you take responsibility for my children. Well, Steve and Trish thought about it, and most likely prayed about it, and said, “Yes”.  My guess is that they didn’t think much about it after that.  More pressing matters of life presented themselves and thoughts of the “unthinkable” receded to the background.  

For most of us, that’s as far as that conversation ever goes; it’s a hypothetical promise we will never have to fulfill.  The kids reach legal age, the parents remain perfectly healthy, and the God-parent role, whether we’re formally called that or not, is mostly symbolic.  Perhaps you show up for birthdays, confirmations (or first communions), and other key events in the children’s life, but participation is optional.  Let’s face it, being a God-parent usually doesn’t cost most of us that much.

But then there’s what happened to my friends Steve and Trish. In their case, the rubber hit the road one day in September 2017, and the hypothetical God-parent role suddenly became all too real.   In the days that followed Joseph’s untimely death. the Audis had to decide if they would fulfill that promise they made to Joseph.  It hasn’t been easy for them, but they’ve made an intentional choice to fulfill their promise over the past couple years, and with God’s help (as I am sure they would be quick to tell you) they continue to do it.  One of the girls was legally an adult already when Joseph passed away, but we all know young adults still need parenting in this world; the other was just 12 when Joseph died, so they essentially inherited an extra teenager in their home that already had two teenagers.  Almost overnight, their suburban family of four became a family of six—living in the same house that more comfortably fits four than six.  I never cease to be impressed by how the Audi family willingly took in two more children to honor a promise they made to a friend.  Trish truly became a mom to Felicity and Mellissa, Steve a dad, and their children Meghan and Michael, sister and brother.  

Watching the Audi family welcome the Bell children into their family after their father died has been a true witness to me of the reality that the cords of God’s love (agape) are even stronger than the bonds of human biology.

Consider that Mary was technically not Jesus’s biological mom.  If you remember the story, the child was from the Holy Spirit, and Mary served as a surrogate—a theotokos, or God-bearer. But, of course, history remembers her as the Mother of God, because—in all the ways that matter—that’s who she was!

Whether she intended it or not, I think Anna Jarvis nailed the definition over a century ago when she said that a mother was, “the person who has done more for you than anyone else in the world”.  These examples I’ve shared from my own life, and a matriarchal archetype from Scripture, bear witness to that broad definition.  They illustrate that this description can apply to many people in our lives—not just to the woman who gave us birth.

The truth is, it’s hard to put a boundary on what makes someone a mother—so I for one won’t try to be the gate-keeper. No matter how many lines you add to the litany, you still won’t capture all the categories, because, in the end, motherhood defies words.  I’m quite sure that each one of you reading this article can think of your own stories of messy motherhood to add to what I’ve shared.   Who would you point to in your own life as fulfilling the role of mother? As we celebrate motherhood this week, let us give thanks for all the mothers in our lives, and for God’s Mothering love for the whole world.  Have a Happy Mother’s Day!