God rejoices eternally in intimacy

From the desk of Fr. Ignatius Waters, cp

Sunday, 27th May 2018

The Mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of a God who does not live in splendid isolation but a God who rejoices eternally in intimacy. This week I share with you this shortened version of an article by scripture scholar, Dorothy Lee:

Why do I stay in the church when most of my mid-life contemporaries have long since left? When my friends tell me it’s dangerous for my health and happiness? When my teenage daughter – like many of her friends – finds it dull, misogynist, unrelated to real life?

I stay in a place that undeniably gives me heartache. Women denied selfhood and autonomy. Gay friends denied the sacraments, ministry, and priesthood. A church governed by rules and regulations that are grim, and life denying.

All the same I stay. Not because I’m a hero. I stay because the same church, which denies life, also holds in its hands a radical gospel that is more life enhancing than any of the packaged goods I see on religious supermarket shelves. I stay because the church tells me that, as God became human, so I too will become divine. It proclaims that my bodily life in all its messiness is part of the being of God, since God has become bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. It teaches that my relationships are meaningful because they mirror a God who rejoices eternally in intimacy. I stay because the church reassures me that I belong to a community without limits in space and time, at one with all creatures, living and dead. It shows me how I am part of creation’s journey towards God. It makes sense of my pain, setting human suffering in the hopeful frame of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.

I stay because, as a biblical scholar, I am part of a community that is re-reading ancient texts in new and exciting ways. I love the Bible – in all its beauty and terror, its craziness and depth. The bible shows me what it means to be human, to be in community with others, to be in harmony with the earth, to be in relationship with God.

I stay in the church because when I fall in my life there are hands held out to lift me up, to hold me, to forgive and accept me. Dreadful though church leaders and teachers can sometimes be, they can’t hide the treasures of the gospel. Nor can they eradicate the traces of courageous women who lived and loved within and beyond the boundaries of the church.

I stay to be at the feet of such grace and spirit. I stay for those who have shown me grace. I stay for those who need grace – especially the young people whose lives offer them everything but meaning, every novelty of a consumerist world except the exhilaration of knowing and being known by God.