God Invisible

A Backwards Glance and a Forward Look (Hebrews 3 &4)

Brothers and sisters, the first thought we are confronted with in Hebrews is that the Creator has spoken in various ways, and has spoken the final word in the Son. However, this occurred 2000 years ago. How do we relate to that final word in our age? Is God in absentia — absent? 

Perhaps the answer to this can be found by linking the letter of Hebrews to the practice of silent prayer. The word of the LORD comes in silence to you.

Our goal is a blend of communal reading of scripture, considering and remembering it on a daily basis, practicing silent prayer, and finding how all of this interacts with the stories of our daily lives. 

A reading of Hebrews lifts us into a higher place. A place we may not be familiar with. It is lofty, majestic, expansive, and sometimes may seem onerous. 

Quickly we come to terms with the fact that something seems repetitive about it. It is circular, ironically like a spiral with a centre.* It takes the appearance of a letter but is actually a very Greek form of logical argument, a kind of deliberative rhetoric. This explains the cyclical repetition. It uses the same pattern to propose an argument that something “better-than” has been inaugurated. The first example of this is the argument that the Son is better than the angels, even though for a time he is made a ‘little lower than the angels.’

Hebrews’ expansive nature evokes the similar expansive language of Martin Laird’s An Ocean of Light. There is a heavenly landscape, magnanimous. There is an equally expansive inner landscape. Both, paradoxically, are the dwelling place of the Almighty. These great distances might make us believe that God is far away, lost in the distances. But instead, God is near. 

The practice of silent prayer bridges these distances. The problem with silent prayer is that we silence our speech, but we do not silence the voice in our head. The thoughts in our head haunt us, and then we badger ourselves with guilt over them. Better that we notice the thoughts approaching, call them by name, label the feeling causing them (guilt, fear, pride, curiosity) and let them gently pass, returning to our centre, Christos.

 The letter is a brief word of encouragement.  But it challenges the listener to leave the religion of one’s forefathers behind to discover a new and living way. A reading of the letter, paired with silent prayer, can become an encounter with numinosity, an experience of the Holy. 

Laird, in An Ocean of Light, tells the story of Austin, a young boy of 6, who visits the swimming pool in summer. He is too young for the tall slide. Instead, he swims to the deep end, sinks to the bottom, and holds onto the slide. Wearing purloined goggles, with eyes wide open, he experiences luminosity and the numinous, a mystical bath of sunlight filling the waters of the whole pool.  He is not then aware that he is encountering the Mysterium Tremendum and Fascinans of the Creator. 

In our conversation(s), we have spoken of the many ways we have discovered meditation: birding, walking, creating music, and others. In Austin’s story, it was bathing in the sunlight at the bottom of the pool. 

The letters to the Hebrews, chapters 3 and 4, speak frequently about hearing. This is why listening to the silence seems so important. God is not absent, but is near. But God is invisible, or at least God appears to be invisible. How then do we encounter God? 

Dorothy, when she reaches the Emerald City, asks the gatekeeper about the Wizard of Oz: “How can you believe in something you have never seen before?” Perhaps we do not see God because we are looking in the wrong place? The writer of ‘Hebrews’ encourages the 'readers' to listen and hear, so that they can enter God’s rest. But it is hard to find rest when we are restless, hard to find silence when we desire noise. Should we tremble at the consequence of not hearing and not finding rest? The tremendum the writer suggests, means that we are caused to flee rather than overcome the fear through fascination and the confidence to “draw near”.

Mysterium Introduction | God in Absentia  | God Invisible