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Readings

[Job’s friend said:]

See, God will not reject a blameless person, nor take the hand of evildoers.

He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy.

Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.

Then Job answered:

Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God?

If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.

He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength—who has resisted him, and succeeded?—

he who removes mountains, and they do not know it, when he overturns them in his anger;

who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble;

who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars;

who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea;

who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;

who does great things beyond understanding, and marvellous things without number.

Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him; he moves on, but I do not perceive him.

He snatches away; who can stop him? Who will say to him, “What are you doing?”

God will not turn back his anger; the helpers of Rahab bowed beneath him.

How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him?

Though I am innocent, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.

For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause;

he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one!

If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

Though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me;

though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.

Job 8:20—9:20

Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.” Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against the rider on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulphur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth; and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

Revelation 19:11–21

Meditation

We always do well to reflect on our place before God and our conduct toward each other. When we consider that God is Love, we understand that we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves. When we ponder God as Goodness, we know we should strive for excellence in character and faithfulness of witness. When we meditate on God as Creator, we should rejoice in the wonder of life, even as life’s ambiguity leads us to strengthen our determination to create new life with each step that we take in the world. What, then, should we be and do in light of the fact that God is Holy Mystery?

God is holiness, surely, means that we should recognize the majesty of God in sacred praise and holy obedience; we should know that God does not look lightly upon the injustice and cruelty of our human societies; we should sense ourselves called to realize the divine kingdom and do the divine will on earth and in our lives. God is mystery, surely, means that we should trust the divine will even when we cannot understand its purpose. It means that the words and images we use to praise God and reflect on the divine nature will always be inadequate to their object, so that we must approach worship and theology alike in humility, always ready to discover further reaches of the unfathomable richness of divine life.

We might even consider that, in a culture obsessed with personal self-improvement on the one hand, and material wealth on the other, a heightened awareness of God as holy mystery might not go astray. It could go a long way toward checking some of the absurdities of contemporary life, such as new age yuppies wearing specially shaped crystals to enhance their harmony with the earth at the same time as carrying on protracted, vituperous arguments with neighbors about the placement of new outdoor decks and swimming pools and rooflines. It might also make us more realistic about the abysmal conditions of life for most people on our planet, more cautious about plunging headlong into the environmental unknown, more hesitant to claim understanding of everything we try to control, from genes and atoms to societies and economies. God as Holy Mystery may be a message tailor made for our situation.

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You can see how this line of thought would unfold. There would be an essentially moral message about how properly appreciating the holy mystery of God leads us to reappraise our lives and our societies in a truly radical way. Fine. I think there is nothing wrong with any of that. But it seems faintly diluted, perhaps a little trivial, and certainly over-confident. I think the passages from Job and Revelation take us in another direction. God is Holy Mystery, yes, but in a profound, unsettling, even terrifying way.

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How grateful we should be that there is preserved in the Hebrew Bible this insight of Jewish wisdom literature: “For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause; he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness.” The Christian tradition is dominated by the themes of sin and salvation, by biblical images of God as Creator and Father, Mother and Lover, Redeemer and Friend. It is jarring, then, to encounter Job’s description of God as overwhelmingly awesome, as crushingly powerful, as violent and capricious, as unaccountable to any moral standards: “If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?” Job’s innocence and righteousness offer him no protection from the divine fierceness. Nor is there any refuge for us from the destroyer. We are prone, naked, exposed, endangered, helpless, and hopeless in the divine presence. There is no higher court to which we can take our complaint about God’s merciless power. There being no recourse, then, we must suffer and be crushed with no consolation; nothing can protect us.

We might enlarge upon the divine destructiveness by considering that about us which is destroyed. Indeed, we might try to excuse God with clever distinctions. Our evil natures, our pride, and our sloth are destroyed, we might say, but our redeemed natures are increased. Our self-assurance and willfulness are smashed, we might speculate, but our responsible and mature instincts are strengthened. If there is truth in these distinctions, it is a premature truth. The deeper truth is that we are completely, utterly, exhaustively annihilated by the Holy Mystery that is God. Any sense of ourselves is lost in the divine presence. We exchange our joy and sadness for desolation beyond language, our pride and goodness for inconceivable emptiness, our concepts and desires for tears of hopelessness. Nothing of ourselves survives the encounter with the divine destroyer: “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.”

How we trivialize the divine Holy Mystery! We manage and control it, with an even greater degree of ignorance than plagues our dealings with each other and with our world. We hide from it with every ounce of energy we possess, as we deny our common humanity, our biological rootedness, our death. We even dare speak of the Holy Mystery in a measured way, systematically purging it of offense, morally purifying the divine character lest it be besmirched by our complaint against its capriciousness. In so doing we dance with ignorant anxiousness amongst the teeth of the dragon; we dance and sing together for illusory comfort. There is no comfort to be had. There is no escape. If God be immoral, if God hate us, or what is worse, if God be indifferent to our struggling for the very breath of life under the crushing weight of the storm, then what is to be done? As Job suggests, to whom may we appeal? The Holy Mystery transcends every moral category, and is a law unto itself. While ever we fail to grasp the dismaying possibility of divine neutrality and indifference to our pain, to our sense of outrage at life, to our ravaged societies, to our traumatized planet, we also fail to appreciate in even the most basic way the terror of the divine presence. There is no knowing with God. All of our wisdom, all of the assurance of salvation in Christ, all of the trusting in the divine benevolence—all of these are of no avail when God “fills me with bitterness” and “multiplies my wounds without cause.” At that moment, every expectation is shattered, every pattern broken, every security irrelevant. We are at the mercy of God as the bear with its claw to our throats.

It is no wonder, then, that atheistic objections to God can have some moral momentum; that the histories of paganism and of sadism and masochism have religious aspects; that the mana of the shaman in tribal religions is respected despite its amoral, capricious quality; that women who are especially submissive have been worshipped in our culturally confused way as especially pure and holy; and that religion is rightly regarded as a protective haven, not from the world, but from God.

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We may not recognize God as our refuge, “our ever-present help in time of trouble,” until 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.

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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.