Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
We are on the steps of a monastery that nests among the peaks of rock rising straight up from the sea. The young monks gathered to ask me, and I intend to tell them that God’s love is the love of a wise and gentle parent, always forgiving, always welcoming, present with us on earth so we can see and touch, as God is always present in the spiritual, invisible of all that is real.
Taking a breather in this marathon of testing my healing bones, the abbot is stepping in, answering their persistent quandaries always about sin. I realize something about this stage, or phase of spiritual growth. It happened in my own youth when we went to hear the edgy, popular preacher, strange and interesting, shouting the starkest word in the wilderness, “repent” “turn from your old ways, and change up to a new thing.”
We went to that place because we were craving a clear set of rules. We wanted this preacher to tell us what was personally wrong with us, so we could fix ourselves over to be … to be all those things that made people look good to others. We needed to be wise and popular. When I was the age of these young monks, I was looking for some kind of personal beauty or wisdom or a do-over that would make me more good than I believed I was. I wanted good skin and good hair, I wanted to achieve wisdom and humor, and show it off when I had these glimpses of brilliance.
It felt so good to go into the water with one who seemed to know sin well, and then be brought up drenched and gasping, but clean and new, born again like Nicodemus. How could I let popular preaching blind me from seeing God’s gracious, unearned love?
And at that time, I only knew Jesus as a good friend. He had a gentle sense of humor, always catching the irony and keeping things in perspective. My sister had a crush on him. When his turn came for the baptism, there was a shared sense of beauty all around. It was good, joyful maybe, but a shared feeling throughout the crowd. We talk about it in metaphor now, “a cloud” “a voice.” But being stricken with the all-encompassing beauty of God with us, doesn’t answer the theological question of sin. Try as we may, we have no word to speak of this beauty. And when Jesus came up out of the water, God was everything. So where was sin?
(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 8)
Lazarus Ink 