Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 04
February 20, 2006
Divine intimacy and the paradox of the cross
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A friend recently took issue with something I had written about the Bible being the fullest expression of God’s heart. He cited the Old Testament emphases on land and chosenness, and the wrenching implications these ideas have had in the Middle East. I agreed his points were good, but thought that the biblical text—despite, or perhaps even because of, such tensions and complexities—is nevertheless a richer witness to God’s heart than any individual human experience can be.
As I reflected on that exchange I wondered if coming to the Bible to hear what God has to say for our lives, rather than simply to meet God, is part of our problem. Living into the text, pondering its thousands of expressions of God’s heart, letting it be a companion on our journey through life, breathing it in, and praying it, certainly does encompass guidance for daily life—but also much more.
I am grateful for the emphasis on memorizing Scripture in this year’s Lenten materials. The number of verses that we can recite will undoubtedly mean little when we meet God face to face. But if we live our lives with Scripture “written on our hearts,” the face of God we see will be both familiar and much loved.
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. I Peter 3:18 NRSV
The first Lenten memory text is a part of that difficult passage (I Peter 3:18-22) referring to baptism through the metaphor of Noah’s ark. But verse 18 proclaims reconciliation as the centre of Jesus’ act of trust in God (2:23) as he went to the cross. The purpose of that act was to bring people to renewed intimacy with God. It is a costly reconciliation, demanding from us, as from Jesus, a commitment to the paradox of death-in-life/life-in-death, from which the energy of Christian faith flows.
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. Psalm 22:27 NRSV
The second text is from a lament psalm. It speaks out of the reality that our quest for intimacy with God sometimes takes place when God seems absent, far away or unheeding. Verses 14 and 15 are especially eloquent. The poet feels shrivelled, with bones disjointed, a heart of melted wax, mouth dried up, and tongue sticking to jaws. All is dust. But it is out of this disintegration of the self that the affirmation of verse 27 emerges. Authentic worship, which takes full measure of an honest relationship with God, is given voice, even from the dust.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. I Corinthians 1:25 NRSV
The third memory passage reminds us that intimacy with God has an undeniable oddity about it that is, in its own peculiar way, comforting. Intimacy with God calls us to the same reversal of values that Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom of God. Here, Paul describes that reversal as the foolishness and weakness of God. The divine power to renounce violence and deviate from materialism sets us at odds with our society’s usual norms. But that very oddity is a comfort because it also means that the only requirement for intimacy with God is our own open hearts. God rejoices when we show up, in whatever condition of poverty we present.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. John 3:14 NRSV
The fourth memory text is not even a full sentence. Perhaps it is assumed that we already have the familiar verses 15 and 16 memorized. John 3:14 sets the cross—God’s passion for the world and Jesus’ passion for the way of God—in the context of the story of Israel’s wilderness wandering after their liberation from Egypt. As we enter into a biblical intimacy with God, salvation opens us to salvation history. We find we are not alone in the journey. We not only have the contemporary worldwide company of believers with us, but our companionship extends beyond our century, down through the ages.
But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Jeremiah 31:33 NRSV
The final text is the theme text chosen for this Lenten season. Jeremiah 31:33 is God’s reminder that the covenant that bonds God with us is, after all, a matter of the heart. Intimacy with God involves not just stark obedience to the law, but living joyfully and abundantly in that obedience. Knowing God means understanding that to live in holiness is to partake of God in joyful abandon.
Intimacy with God in both testaments involves embracing the paradox of the cross—that life-in-death/death-in-life mystery that is the essence of the covenant written on our hearts, as well as the heart of God.
Reflection Questions
Lent 1: March 5
• To what part of the work of reconciliation am I being called in response to the radical trust modelled by Jesus?
• How is my resistance to that call, or my embrace of it, affecting my intimacy with God?
Lent 2: March 12
• How have I experienced the absence of God—either in the past or the present? What are my laments?
• Does my praise flow out of honesty with God and others about how I experience God as both far and near?
Lent 3: March 19
• Do I understand and accept the reality that intimacy with God means I am often out of step with my neighbours and my world? Or perhaps even my congregation?
• What does it mean for me personally to claim the “foolishness” and “weakness” of God as my wisdom and strength?
Lent 4: March 26
• One of the resources of a biblical intimacy with God is the wealth of companions we have for the journey. Of these biblical sojourners, with whose experience of God do I resonate most closely? What can I learn from that story?
• How has my own experience of salvation deepened and seasoned as I have walked with God over the years?
Lent 5: April 2
• Is living God’s holy way a burden? Or do I embrace it as a blessing, a delight? How do I experience the covenant that binds God to us as something that is “written on my heart”?
Lent 6: April 9
• Since there is no memory verse for Passion Sunday, take some time to reflect on your own spiritual journey through the Lenten season. Has this time helped me become better known to God? Has it helped me know God better? Am I more ready to arrive, to show up before God, in whatever poverty I find myself? Do I have a better sense that God is eager to meet me wherever and however I am?
Lenten reflection
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“Few have celebrated the darkness of our origins more beautifully than the poet Rainer Maria Rilke...his faith in nights, his love of the dark, is related to the cosmic womb of our origins, where all is drawn in, where we can celebrate our cosmic existence together.”—Matthew Fox
At a retreat in 1999, Peter Penner of Charleswood Mennonite Church in Winnipeg wrote the following Lenten prayer in response to Rilke’s poem, “I Have Faith in Nights.” Ed.
We Are Not Alone in the Dark
I am not ready to actually embrace
the darkness, to sing praises to losses
to the pain in the eyes of loved ones;
But God, do take away my fear of the dark
allow me to step back from my
so inadequate bonfire, from holding
on to my Lord
So my eyes can again learn to see
other shapes:
beautiful moonflowers
that blossom once in the night and die,
stars, planets and constellations,
animal and human shapes
The dark, I now find, includes innumerable
little bonfires, scattered over the plains
of my fearful imagination,
I hear:
drums and singing voices,
sense places of comfort and rest
whichever way I turn.
We are not alone in the dark,
for that I give thanks.