God of Mystery, God of Reality
Holy Trinity Scripture Readings
When we cautiously approach the Mystery that is God as adults, we turn away from the God of our childhood to get closer to the reality. As Saint Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” [1 Corinthians 13:11] This may seem like a harsh way of putting it, but the God of our childhood was a caricature. It’s no wonder that, as people have aged, that God was left by the wayside. Who was that God? The Trinity of childhood was pictured symbolically, using images from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The Father became an old man—the Ancient of Days—seated on a throne up in the sky. Jesus sat at the Father’s right side holding a book, and the Holy Spirit as a dove hovered in the air over them both. That God, like the Egyptian god, Anubis, god of the dead, weighed our good deeds against our sins, welcoming the saints to the pearly gates and condemning sinners to hellfire forever or locking them in a holding cell in purgatory until they came around. Sadly, that’s still many people’s image of the God that was taught to them as children.
That’s not all. There’s a concept of God that stretches the caricature even further. That’s the image of God the magician. This God of childhood was the one who created the universe out of nothing by saying a few magic words. The magician God performs the kinds of miracles that we were taught about early on when they told us that miracles were suspensions of the natural order instead of what it really is: the power of God working in and through it. The magician God cures the sick, raises the dead, and causes things to appear and disappear with a wave of his hand and some special words. He splits the sea, turns water into wine, and bread and wine into his body and blood. Yet, the word miracle doesn’t even appear anywhere in our Christian Scriptures because, in fact, there isn’t any Greek word that translates to what we understand as that kind of miracle.
However, let’s hope that, like Saint Paul, when we became adults, we put away childish things. It takes courage, imagination, and perseverance to be able to reconcile the God of our childhood with the God of our adult experience. Few seem able to make that transition. It’s not for the faint-hearted. The paths of learning and knowledge can take us only so far. As Saint John of the Cross wrote in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, “Beyond this point, there is no path.” That’s precisely why the Letter to the Hebrews [12:2] calls Jesus “our pioneer.” He’s the one who has blazed the trail to the Father so that we can follow.
Who is our God, after all, but the Reality behind reality? The musician and theologian, Barry Taylor, is quoted as saying, “God is the name we give to the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.” When we immerse ourselves in that Mystery—the Mystery of existence, the Mystery of life, and the Mystery of love—we discover the same One the ancients did when they wrote about God in our Scriptures. No matter the inspiration, when humans attempt to describe the indescribable, they run the risk of being misunderstood. So it is with our God, Father of life and of love, and Creator of all—the Reality behind reality.
Yet God has left fingerprints on everything. They’re the clues that both hint at God’s presence and lead us to try to solve the Mystery. In today’s first reading, those clues speak to us in ways we can understand: fountains and springs, mountains and hills, fields and dirt, sky and sea, and all of humankind. “In previous times, God spoke to us in many and varied ways…but in these last days, he has spoken to us through his Son…through whom he created the universe.” [Hebrews 1:1-2] The Son is the Mystery behind reality revealing his secrets to us—the secrets of the Father and Creator otherwise hidden and unknowable. The fingerprints of God on reality and even the teaching, preaching, life, death, and resurrection of the Son give us knowledge and understanding of that great Mystery. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” [Colossians 1:14] and the conduit through which the Reality behind reality manifests himself to us. Yes, in Jesus we see God more clearly than in any other aspect of creation. But this is only secondhand knowledge. The blanket, like a veil still hides the Mystery.
What if we could follow that conduit back, all the way back to its Source? What if we were given the power to come face-to-face with the Singularity at the core of that black hole we call reality and not lose our identity, our personality, our everything? It is that gift, that power, which we call the Holy Spirit. John reported in today’s gospel that Jesus said, “…the Spirit of Truth—will guide you to all Truth.” Let’s capitalize the “T” in truth because he’s referring to the Mystery who is God. The Spirit will “…speak what he hears…” because he is the conduit that leads us not to the Mystery, but into the Mystery. In the Son, through the Spirit, we encounter the glory that is the Father. In and through the Spirit, the entirety of the Mystery we call God is present and visible in human form in Jesus. “…For this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine”—the very Mystery of God—“and declare it to you”—not in words, but by bringing you back to the Source: your Source and the Source of all that is.
We mustn’t cheapen God by turning him into an anthropomorphic caricature of himself. We’ve been given the gift of the Spirit, and with it, the power to encounter the Mystery of God himself—the Reality behind the reality—through our prayer, our meditation, and our liturgy. In the Spirit, come, let us adore him.
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