Refusing You, Refusing Christ

Notes on A Relationship I Don't Want to See

I am afraid to meet Christ now that I know I can only meet Christ (not Jesus, Christ) in the other I have chosen - consciously or unconsciously - to reject.

I’m not defending the theology or Christology at work in that sentence. I don’t know how this works for you or anyone else. I’m saying something simpler: in my life, here now, I am afraid to meet Christ in the other.

But why? I know how the metaphysics work. I can parse A Course in Miracles, Mark’s Gospel, Marianne Sawicki’s Seeing the Lord. I know how to pray and meditate. Jesus is not a new friend but an old one. This is not unfamiliar ground; why am I so unsteady on it?

Sometimes old friends challenge us. They push the friendship to evolve or adapt to new conditions. Jesus said to the disciples, who do you say that I am? But he also holds up a mirror (e.g., the outside world) and asks, is this you?

The Jesus I can profess, and the Jesus with whom I am in relationship, makes demands of me. He does not comfort me; he discomforts me. He points to a God who challenges the foundation of my spiritual practice. I’m working on the problem of Sean - becoming happier, calmer, more creative. And God says, that’s not it. That’s not the work. That’s an effect of the work.

Something in the energy of my healing, my recovery, my inner peace runs counter to God’s way of being in relationship. And Jesus will not let me forget it.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house . . . (Matthew 5:14-15).

Those sentences ask me to become vulnerable. They don’t emphasize interior personal growth but rather the willingness to be visible to others - to give them attention, hope, food and shelter without regard for its cost to me. Jesus’s God is not a God of the mighty or the well-regulated. He’s a God of the forgotten, the trampled-on, the lonely. His “follow me” comes from the other side of a line I don’t want to cross. I prefer a God who guides me to a good therapist, coffee with friends, maybe a cheesecake or lasagna. Shall I write yet another poem under the birch trees?

The problem isn’t the desire to be well-fed, well-received and well-situated. That’s human. We’re not being asked to deny our humanity. Rather, the problem is that I don’t want to share the therapist, coffee and cheesecake. I say that I do but the truth is I have those things at the exclusion of others on behalf of a system that sets it up exactly that way. Somebody has to lose and it’s not going to be me.

And Jesus, and through Jesus, God, keeps saying, the way it’s set up is the problem. That’s what has to get fixed. You’ve got it upside down. It doesn’t start within you - it starts outside of you. Who’s hungry? Who’s anxious and scared? Who’s lonely? They are Christ and they are calling. Right now they are calling.

And I don’t want to answer.

And nobody can make me.

And yet.

Love
Sean