God

Gospel reading: Matthew 11.2-11
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I guess my favorite version of "The Arkansas Traveler" is on Michelle Shocked's album of the same name. It just nudges out Jerry Garcia and Dave Grisman's rendition. Both include the traditional spoken exchanges between a farmer and a traveling stranger after every verse.

Jimmy Driftwood's ancient strained voice speaks for the farmer in Michelle Shocked's recording. The conversations are backwoodsy groaners for the most part. For instance, when asked why he doesn't fix his roof, Jimmy Driftwood says, "Well, stranger. When it's rainin' it's too wet to work. And when it's dry my roof's as good as any man's roof."

Or he's asked if he knows the way to Little Rock and responds, "Well, stranger, you can't get there from here."

When we tell someone that you "can't get there from here" we usually mean that it's a lot of trouble to get "there". But in theology we mean it quite literally sometimes.

Immanence and transcendence are big, old, heavy, theological terms. And sometimes they are used generally to distinguish between closeness and distance. If you experience God as immanent, God is close to you. A transcendent God is beyond us, far away we might say.

The trouble with using these terms this way is that both describe God as staying put either right here or out there. But this is a false choice and the term 'transcendence' itself should be enough to correct this misperception. To transcend something is not to be beyond it. It is to move beyond it.

I really like the way theologian Kathryn Tanner (expanding some of Karl Barth's thoughts) describes this. Here's a gross oversimplification of what she says. The Incarnation is a paradox, because to be human means we're not God. But God is transcendent. Which means that perhaps God can be fully present in Jesus. God can 'transcend' categories that we can't.

To return to our Arkansas traveler, from our perspective you really can't get to Little Rock (divinity) from here. But God can get here from there.

Now we may have reached a level of confusion never achieved before in this blog. And I'm pretty accomplished at muddying things that were once perfectly clear. Just ask my wife, Ardelle. (My wife of fourteen years as of today, I might add.)

But let me take some of the pressure off. All of this philosophical gymnastics is meant to remind us that we can't quite wrap our minds around the mystery of God. But God comes near to us anyway.

As Kathleen Norris put it to open this chapter, "I take refuge in God's transcendence, continually giving thanks that God's ways are not my own." This sounds strange. We can understand being thankful for how much sense someone else makes to us. But even in human relationships, mystery is just as important as knowledge.

I've been married to Ardelle for 14 years. No one has ever known me like she does. And I've never known anyone the way I know her. But as much as what's known, it's the mystery of what is yet to be discovered in her that excites me about what the next 14 years might hold. And the next. And the next.

This is the wonderful mystery of all meaningful relationships. We're partly amazed that someone understands us a little or has experienced something like we have. But the suspicion that we have so much more to discover in this other person is what carries us on into the future.

As we move through Advent toward Christmas we celebrate a great mystery. We don't know how to get to God. But somehow God gets to us. We can't quite wrap our minds around this. But we've seen just enough of God's presence in our lives and in the lives of others to be enticed.

Maybe the old farmer is right and we can't get there from here. But in ways we'll never quite comprehend God can and does get here from there. That's transcendence. We get just enough of the mystery of God to be drawn into a relationship forever.