we have first understood in the depths of our being that we have no refuge from the divine terror. For it is only in the moment of surrender, in the immediate proximity of death, under the claw of the bear, that the proper relation between us creatures and God is fully realized. God may indeed crush us to death, or rip us apart, but we are God’s creatures even as this happens.
How easily do we presume upon the divine grace! How brazenly we approach the civilized courts of Holy Majesty to lay our case before a manageable God, tamed by divine promises of salvation. How cavalierly we dismiss the divine wildness, as if love were not wild and dangerous, as if grace were not every bit as much fiendish foe as familiar friend. We have no rights before God and no claim upon the divine compassion. Again, deliverance cannot be understood even faintly until we realize how proper it is that we should relinquish even our divinely assured claims to it.
So how is it that the Holy Mystery is cognizant of us, mindful of our lives, tolerant of our attempts to love, even loving us in our confusion? How indeed. To answer that this divine interest has been revealed, or that it is evident in the effusive glory of nature, is often to retreat from the mystery once again, to seek refuge in assurance of the divine love when there is finally no such assurance. It is prematurely to batten down the hatches when what is required is the stinging salt air. Michael Leunig, an Australian poet and artist, puts it well:
When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken,
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting
Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring
In this state of surrender, deliverance may or may not occur. When it happens, it is entirely at the instigation of God. This is the meaning of salvation by grace. Too often our interpretation of salvation by faith corresponds to an incursion on the divine freedom. While trusting the divine promises has its place, it must be founded on the awareness that we may not presume upon anything in the presence of Holy Mystery; not even what we take to be the divine promises. The supposed necessity of some atoning sacrifice to justify the divine decision to forgive can likewise be pressed into service as a way of controlling the freedom of Holy Mystery. What we learn from Job is that the Holy Mystery will not be controlled, not by nations or governments, nor by revelations or theologies, nor by worship, or praise, or promises, or faith, or hope, or love. And yet, we are not always crushed, and deliverance does find us. This inexplicable act of capricious love—of free divine grace—is the miracle upon which our continued survival depends every minute of every day.
•
It is no accident that the Hindu deity Śiva, the God of destruction, is so often pictured dancing. Nor is it coincidental that the Hindu conception of the divine action in history is sometimes characterized as līla, or “play.” For joy is premised on peril. One can dance amongst the brutal teeth of the dragon in ignorance, or with the wise awareness of how great the danger is. Only in the latter case will the anxiety of the dancing and singing give way to ecstatic joy, which is delight.
We delight in God because God is Holy Mystery. We have no protection from the divine wildness, so we need have no inhibitions. There is no higher court of appeal with which we might attempt to tame the divine capriciousness, so we celebrate in our naked surrender. We are not obsessed with absurdly constructing ourselves like so many Lego blocks before the divine throne, so we are free to dance with the angels, those crazy unknown dancers whose innocence was never weighed down by the load of our existence.
We can sing, too. We can sing out the clumsy words of our liturgies, the fractured concepts of our theologies, because we know how inadequate they are to the Holy Mystery they seek to express. Those who take their prayers too seriously, or the contents of their own belabored minds too literally, risk being turgid grumps in the presence of irrepressible divine joy. To be sure, we need to use our language about God with the utmost care, but the first step in being responsible is to recognize that we are negotiating with Holy Mystery, and that our ideas of God are but an unstable, makeshift lattice above a vast chasm. The recognition of the inadequacy of our theological language is the first step toward intellectual responsibility. Delight is one of the most serious emotions we creatures can experience, because it is premised on the true awareness of the pointlessness of resisting or cooperating or negotiating with the divine terror.
And then to see this God, this Holy Mystery, come down from the lofty throne, to dance among us as a child, first alone as if unsure, and then holding hands and whooping up a joyful hullabaloo under the stars, dancing through our history, destroying and transforming. . . . To see this same one riding on a white horse, with eyes like blazing fire, dressed in a robe dipped in blood, armed with a sharp sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. . . . To see this is wonder and awe, love and transforming power. We fear this one, even as we love, recoil in horror even as we are fascinated.
We forget the divine Holy Mystery at our peril. Our broken world dances anxiously amongst the teeth of the dragon, its future unknown. Too often the church sings its dreary songs there, too, having forgotten that the divine is too expansive even for the gospel to capture, foolishly infatuated with the comforting assurance of salvation. To learn to dance with honest terror, with simple wisdom, with disarming delight—this is to live. And what is more important—and profoundly, joyously pointless—this is how we show our love to the Holy Mysterious One in whose terrifying, tender hand we are held.
God Is . . . Friend
Readings
See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him
—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
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