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In one of Charles Wesley's most famous hymns, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," the last stanza concludes "lost in wonder, love, and praise." Paul W. Chilcote, a United Methodist scholar, observes that this has a "mystial spirit," and he remarks that many of Wesley's hymns have this mystical spirit.
What do we do when we bump up againt the frontier of the unknown? I mean, the mystical. I do not mean the mystical as an airy, nebulous, and private spirituality. I do not mean an experience for only a few "initiates." I do not mean the mystical as some evasion or escape from this good earth and our bodies, as well as the relationships our lives are lived in and from, daily. I refer to an experience that anyone can have, when she opens her heart to the Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.
A pastor and friend of mine, back in the 1970s, spoke to me of a time of spiritual dryness in his life. For a long time he had felt separated from God, and he agonized over this sense of abandonment. One day, he walked into his field and, suddenly, inundated by the felt Presence of God, he knelt on the ground beside his pond. As my friend spoke to me of this, he could describe the scene but not define the experience. All he could talk about was that this Otherness overwhelmed him, completely, surprisingly, and unforgettably.
The Hebrew Scriptures describe this human response to the Other-than-us in an odd way. The Israelites sang and taught the “fear of the Lord.” The Hebrew Scriptures often speak of this yirat yihvah’. And, while the experience may include fear, as we understand it, that is not always the case.
Eugene H. Peterson, in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, writes that the moment we discover ourselves to be unexpectedly in the presence of the sacred, our initial response is to stop in silence. We do nothing; we say nothing. “Plunged into mystery we become still, we fall silent, all our senses alert." Notice: Our senses are not dulled, rather, we are alert; and the senses are the means for the sense of this Otherness that is, at the same time, very near. This response is the “fear-of-the-Lord.”
Moses has this response, when he meets the Living One in the desert:
One day, Moses was taking care of the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and Moses decided to lead them across the desert to Sinai, the holy mountain. There an angel of the LORD appeared to him from a burning bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire, but it was not burning up. "This is strange!" he said to himself. " I'll go over and see why the bush isn't burning up." When the LORD saw Moses coming near the bush, he called him by name, and Moses answered, "Here I am." God replied, " Don't come any closer. Take off your sandals—the ground where you are standing is holy. I am the God who was worshiped by your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Moses was afraid to look at God, and so he hid his face. (Exodus 3.1-6, CEV)
Notice the change in Moses’ response after God speaks. Moses no longer seeks “why,” as earlier. Moses hides his face (cf. Isaiah 6.1ff).
How do we define fear of the Lord? Fear of the Lord is not something that can be defined from defining four words in English or two in Hebrew. Rather, fear of the Lord is a bound phrase, or syntagm, with fear-of-the-Lord acting as one word. In fact, we cannot define fear of the Lord, at all. We can offer descriptive words, like Rudolph Otto’s numen, from which we get the word numinous, and mysterium tremendum, or tremendous mystery (The Idea of the Holy). We can speak of awe or reverence, but these do not capture the meaning of fear of the Lord. Story, poetry, painting, and song seem the best means to convey some sense of what fear of the Lord means.
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Whether alone or in community, we can experience an odd strangeness, one that comes over us, overwhelms us, threatens our sense of safe confines, and pulls us to the edge of familiarity. In mediation, for example, we can bump up against this Otherness and feel we are going to lose ourselves in some vastness, from which we might never, it seems, return. Here we experience the fear of the Lord, the tremendous, sometimes frightening, mystery.
What is our response? One response is drowning out the mystery with familiar routines of sound and action. Peterson writes, “Uneasy with the unknown, again like children, we run around crazily, yelling and screaming, trying to put our stamp of familiarity on it.” “We attempt,” he says, “to get rid of the mystery by making our presence large and noisy.” Possibly, this description by Peterson is somewhat exaggerated, at least for most responses. Maybe, however, it is not. His remark points to behavior that is incongruent with sacred time and place. In such action, we seek to place ourselves, with our agendas, including our movement and sound, on center stage, diffusing the power of the Sacred Otherness that has pulled us to the boundary of the territory of our know-how.
A second response at the edges of the familiar, to which the Holy Spirit leads us, is domestication. Here, we do not try to drown out the mystery, we seek to trap it within the boundaries of words, dogmas, clichés, and, yes, prayers. Most Christians would not call this “blasphemy” and would not see such as using God’s name in vain, a violation of the second commandment of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not use the name of the Lord, your God, in vain (or, emptily)” (Exodus 20.7). However, Peterson connects the domestication of mystery with violating the sacred name and calls such blasphemy. If Peterson is right, which I think he is, there is possibly more blasphemy of God’s name among us Christians than among those outside the Christian communion.
How are we to respond to this tremendous mystery? There is no one way to respond. However, again, common responses will be or include silence, crying, confusion, uncertainty, and stillness. Sometimes, the response will be fearfulness. Sometimes, we will feel an ecstatic joy, and we may shout, dance, or sing. At times me might say nothing, at other times some spontaneous ejaculation like “Wow!” or “Praise God!” might rush forth, as response of gratitude and delight.
This past week, at Eucharist with other Christians on retreat, I knelt at the altar with bowed head, in adoration and silence. I had just swallowed the bread and new wine. Suprisingly, suddenly, tears welled up. I began crying. I stopped, only to start again. I, finally, got up from the altar, and I sat down. I started crying again. A friend and pastor sensed my state. She walked over. Sat beside me, and placed my head against her chest. I cried, and, after stopping again, I lifted my head. Then, I cried even harder, once more held against her and in her embrace. That was my response. The response was silence with the Presence, an awed, overwhelmed captivation to the Otherness, and all I could seem to do was weep with a weeping that I cannot and could never give reason for, except that something in me had been touched deeply by Love, All Loves Excelling.
Spiritual Exercise
1. When have you had an experience of being overwhelmed with the Presence of the Sacred? What was the experience like? How did you respond? If you would like, go into silent meditation and return to that time. Relive it, again, in your imagination. Again, as then, be grateful for that moment of the tremendous mystery.
2. What Means of Grace seems to be most likely to usher you into the Sense of the Sacred? Is it Music? Communal Prayer? Meditation? Dance? Art? Nature? Sex? Discovery of profound ideas? Art?
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