“God is called light, Who transcends all light, because He illumines us… uniting Himself without mingling with our soul and making it all as light.”
—St. Symeon the New Theologian
Christ, the Light of the World
Brenda approached me during a mountain retreat where Eden and I had joined Tara Boothby (a therapist), theologian C. Baxter Kruger, and Wm. Paul Young—author of The Shack—to chat with attendees about the Trinity. Her face was drawn with traces of what I read as puzzlement and possibly worry. She explained that she even though she had been a life-long churchgoer, now in her thirties, she struggled to see how Jesus fits in the Trinity. She had always known God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but was now wrestling with the point of Jesus. She would relate to the Universal Christ (a la Fr. Richard Rohr) but wrestled with his humanity. How necessary is believing in his human existence even necessary?
I explained that for me, I try to follow 1 John by insisting that Jesus IS the Christ (one Person) rather than distinguishing them and that Jesus’ humanity was not just an episode in the eternal life of Christ. I need God to be more than an all-powerful, all-knowing Spirit in the Sky. Personally, I can only trust a God who bore my wounds—both the wounds I’ve endured and (even more so), the wounds I’ve inflicted on others. I shared how Hebrews 2 and 4 say that the Incarnation of Jesus in human flesh (i.e., the human condition) is how God is able to empathize with us directly. And so on.
But I realized that I was starting to talk in circles and that my responses were completely missing her real heart need. I invited Brenda and her husband James back at our condo for some follow-up conversation.
Christ, the Light In Our Heart
There I heard some of her life story and spiritual journey. Somehow along the way, a fear had entered her heart. When I asked about that, it boiled down to this…
“I am not sure… if I don’t…” Voice breaks. Tears come.
“Ah. There it is.” I ask, “What’s happening in your heart?” My favorite question.
“What if I’m still uncertain? What if I get it wrong?”
“Get what wrong?”
“What if I’m still uncertain… about the humanity of Christ. What if I just don’t know and I miss out on the fulness of…?” She stops. More tears. More fear. And I can feel it’s not just FOMO (fear of missing out).
“What are you really afraid of?”
“… If I get it wrong, will I be OK?
What if I get it wrong…
What if I’m not OK?”
“I see. I get it now.” [This isn’t a theological problem]. “Listen, nothing I say will get at that fear. You’ll need to ask Jesus directly.”
“OK.”
“What if you close your eyes, look him in the face, and just say to him, ‘If I get it wrong, I won’t be OK,’ and see how he responds.” I’m kind of hoping she’ll see the human face of Jesus. Maybe that will settle how he fits in the Trinity.
Brenda closed her eyes and was silent for a while. She swayed a little. Brow furrowed.
“Brenda, what’s happening in your heart?”
“I feel dizzy. It’s dark. I don’t hear anything.”
So I pray, “Lord, come push back the darkness of fear, or worry, of confusion. Shine your light on Brenda and make space for her to see and hear you.”
Okay, this was a bit freaky. Right then… like RIGHT THEN, the clouds that had hidden the sun that day parted outside and a shaft of light came through a crack between the curtains of the patio doors and pierced the shadows in which she was sitting a shone right on her. Not on me (across the table from her). Not on her Jame who sat next to her. Just on her. Her face lit up with both actual light and the radiance of relief, and I ask what she’s seeing.
“It feels like my heart is opening up and the light is shining all the way in.
And I don’t see Jesus. I just see a Light. … a blinding Light!”
“What are you hearing?”
“I’m hearing, ‘The Light is in you. There is no darkness in you.”
“That’s the truth of your being. The Light is IN you. There is NO darkness there.”
“YES.”
“So how true does this feel? ‘If I don’t get it right, I won’t be OK.”
“Not true at all.”
And then I explain that whether she ever gets her head and heart around Jesus’ experience in the first century, or how his humanity works now, Christ IS the Light of the world, who shines in the darkness. And that’s how he chose to come to her.
Three Who Name God
Because I’m a theology nerd, I can’t help myself. I tell her, “Three people in history have been called ‘the Theologian.’ The reason is that they name God. John the Apostle is called the Theologian because in his Gospel, he names Jesus as God (John 1). Then Gregory the Theologian (4th century) names the Holy Spirit. But then there’s this third guy, St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022 AD) who gets called the Theologian because he saw the same Light that Brenda saw a vision of God as Light.
That counts. The Light (aka the Glory of God) is how Brenda met God and knows God.
Symeon’s poetic testimony sounds familiar to Brenda’s experience:
How good it is thankfully to proclaim the blessings of God, who loves men!… By grace I have received grace (cf. Jn. 1:16), by doing well I have received kindness, by fire I have been requited with fire, by flame with flame. As I ascended, I was given other ascents, at the end of the ascent I was given light, and by the light an even clearer light. In the midst thereof a sun shone brightly and from it a ray shone forth that filled all things. The object of my thought remained beyond understanding, and in this state I remained while I wept most sweetly and marvelled at the ineffable.
[St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, trans. C.J. de Catanzaro (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1980) 205].
Christ fulfills all modes of being
I was also reminded of Bishop C.E.W. Green’s maxim, “Christ fulfils all modes of being.”
I thought it might help to say, “So, I believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh… experienced the human condition during his ministry in Galilee and Judea. But he also tells us that we meet him in the poor, the hungry, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. ‘That was me,’ he said. And then he also comes to us the bread and the wine of Eucharist. ‘This is my body and blood,’ he said. And then we hear also that he’s the ‘head of the Body of Christ.’ Christ can come to us in any of many ways, including a ray of Light shining through the window into your heart and mind. And that’s how he came because that’s exactly how you needed him to come.”
It wasn’t lost on us that the Light continued shine on that spot for about thirty minutes, and even when Brenda got up to get a glass of wine, when she returned, the Light was waiting for her. It wasn’t lost on James that by staying at Brenda’s side, close enough to hold her hand, he hadn’t blocked the sunshine as he would have if he had pulled up to the table. Something (Someone) in him wouldn’t let him.
Not only that. The timing of my question, the parting of the clouds, the placement of her chair, the crack in the curtains, the perfect angle of the sun’s rays… such a perfect confluence of divine Love and sovereign care.
And then I noted, “I mentioned modes of being. It strikes me that I’m seeing three right now. I see him in the Light that’s still shining on you. I see him in the wine in your glass. And I see him in you.”
Brenda smiled, now at ease and in extraordinary peace, and let me take a photo and gave me permission to share her story.