Elusive Presence
And Promise
These are difficult times we are living through, existentially and spiritually.
I lost a good friend, Bob Foltz-Morrison a week ago. We had spoken for an hour on the phone, catching up and doing errands, just a few days before. He was a man of deep faith and love. Though afflicted with multiple myeloma, he stood up for the vulnerable and poor with intellectual passion and compassion. He lived out his calling with integrity.
Turn thanks.
In the world we live under constant threats, within and without—including death—yet in Christ we live under deeper (threat), promise of true friendship and Resurrection.
Listening and following the elusive friend, Jesus—is not a half baked thing. I am still learning. It is being afflicted, yet not forsaken, sorrowful yet rejoicing, having nothing, really, yet possessing all things.
Helmet Thielicke, whom the Nazis tried to silence, wrote:
“A person who lets this friend, who lets Jesus only half way into their heart is far poorer than a one hundred per cent worldling, far poorer than someone who has never met the Risen Christ, never known the Spirit. The person who lets Jesus Christ half way but no further has no peace. That person does not receive the peace that passes all understanding; but what’s more, that person loses the world’s peace. That person loses the world’s peace because their naiveté has been taken away. Therefore, a constant bickering goes on in that person’s heart and it is quite apparent that one day in a fit of rage the halfway person will slam the door on that quiet Figure, on that elusive Friend, who even then has continued to knock and seek entrance. The anti-Christian is always a half-Christian gone mad. This you can depend on.”
This explains some of what’s going on in our white nationalist churches and Thanatos culture today. The anti-Christian—and for that matter the anti-Islamic and anti-Jewish—are persons of half-faith gone mad.
The way through has to do with unmasking the truth, returning and following with our whole being—one day at a time.
This involves moving through both sorrow and joy with wild patience.
There is pain in living, but greater pain in unliving.
“Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with holding it in, and I could not.” (Jeremiah 24)
The elusive Friend is with us, and never gives up on us—especially now.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
This includes forgiving and being forgiven, even as we seek justice and righteousness
As Coleman Brown wrote, “Jesus is elusive. We read in Mark’s Gospel that they were going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid…
He asks us questions. And we must take time for that. ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother…’
Jesus Christ is not an idea, a concept—and not finally one who stands still while we think about it all. He is an elusive but actual friend. The Spirit does move: it does blow. And the Spirit moves us from philosophy and religion to a living relationship. Amidst the fragments of ideas, the Spirit moves us from detachment and half-heartedness to the beginnings of friendship and new life. We may then well be philosophers or theologians, but we would see Jesus: we will not be ashamed to say in our own ways, what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.
We wait for the Lord—until he comes. But the risen Christ speaks now from within our midst. For Christ comes into our midst, and into our hearts, though we resist him.
Christ comes to us as He came in the flesh to those on a lake-side. As Albert Schweitzer testified:
‘He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow thou me!’, and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.’
We live in days and do not know what a day may bring. There are days of confident faith, and days of sad blundering and terrible confusion and doubt. There are days when the birth of a child brings joy, and days when illness and death bring anguish and sorrow. There are days of peace and days of war. There are days when life is music, and days when despair wraps us in impenetrable mist. Says Jesus the Christ, “‘But, lo, I am with you always: I am with you all the days.’”