The Alpha & the Omega – The Beginning & the End – Begotten not made…

Christ is the source of life that flows endlessly emanating from the creative power of God’s love. The imagery of Christ as Living Water is a catalyst for my imagination. Consider the story of the woman at the well (John 4) or the symbolic imagery in Revelation 22:1:

¹Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, ²in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.…

Christ instantiates our invitation from the Father to take an ecologically specific place within God’s mystical body. We are like organelles in a cell.  Each of us is highly differentiated and, “called by name,” (Isaiah 43) to glorify God by loving and serving Him with all of our heart and with all of our strength (Deuteronomy 6). It is the integration between the parts as evidenced by their communication with each other that enacts the will of the Father.

God’s law is perfect. God’s law is Love. Christ is the principal (and I do mean principal here) through which we co-create with God by responding to and participating in His emerging will. There is no master script. God the potter: take us the clay: into His hands. The wheel of life spins with its endless array of variations and choices. God’s moistened hands press the clay into shape as the force of events, people and exigencies cry out for a response. And God never disappoints. His covenant is true. Beginning with Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, and ultimately to God giving us Himself in Christ, God keeps revealing the glory of His love and mercy.

Mercy and love are the organizing forces that draw all things to God. Through the Spirit, God’s love and mercy moving in this world are like God’s beacon that will never stop broadcasting its signal until all of His children are assembled together. Here each person, resurrected in the body of Christ, turns from clay formed of the earth into a heavenly crystal through which God’s light shines.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5)

Christ fulfills my deepest longing to see the face of God. The confession that “Jesus is the Christ,” is the answer to my question: “Where and how will I encounter God working in my life and in my relationships?

Christ is embodied in the stories of my life. Let me share a story…

I have begun to see how Christ is at the center of every relationship. The setup for this encounter with Christ began with a moving recount by Father Patrick of a story from Gregory Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. Inspired, I ordered the book.   Two weeks of insane and exhausting travel setup a combination punch guaranteed to take me down for the count. It was the weekend before Ash Wednesday. A dear friend of the family and companion of my father had passed away. The family had asked me to sing at the funeral. By Friday I had little voice. Rehearsal was shaky at best and everyone including myself wondered how I would sing. We had a backup plan in place but somehow I knew I would sing. By Saturday morning my condition had deteriorated. I was coughing incessantly and I felt very weak. Through the grace of God when I opened my mouth to sing the need to cough disappeared and my voice was clear and strong. When I wasn’t singing I was coughing.   I ran from the funeral to a kickoff meeting for the DOM Pastoral Council followed by a run to the San Francisco airport to pick-up my family. On Sunday I was running a fever of 103° F and in a lot of discomfort. I had to travel Monday for a job in Dallas. I could not afford to be unfit to travel. I spent the day convalescing. The book, Tattoos on the Heart was my companion. I ate up the collection of stories like a hungry wolf.   Travel on Monday began with cancelled flights. I was switched to a new airline. Although I can be a chatty guy in person, I tend to be a quiet traveler, preferring the solitude of a book, work, or reflection to conversation. Being sick I was even less likely to want to engage in any conversation. In LA I boarded my flight for Dallas. It was a huge plane; two seats on the left, five in the middle and two on the right. I made my way to 25A and took my seat next to a heavy set Panamanian woman in her early forties.   She was sitting on the aisle. It appeared a number of people were doing a fine job of exhibiting the kind of agitation that often accompanies travel. They were brusque. She didn’t get annoyed but these lapses of civility were stinging her more than one would expect. I offered a few kind words and pleasantries. She made some passing remarks of not liking to fly. I stopped my rhythm of drawing into my proverbial travel shell and I began to reach out to her with questions. It just felt like the right thing to do.   Questions turned into a flood of revelations. Felecia was traveling back to North Carolina after burying her second sister who had died of complications from diabetes. She had buried her first sister the year before who had been a victim of domestic violence. The two and half hour flight turned into mosaic of tears, laughter, and poignancy. Felecia’s story is amazing. Her father was a life-long gang member. She had been estranged from her father most of her life but in the last two years she has reconnected. Felecia was a gang member. Now she was working a correctional officer for a high security women’s prison.   She recounted stories of her sister. The stories were flowing. A normally reserved officer who knows how to keep her feelings in check given the work she does, was pouring her heart out to me. The thing is – I wasn’t there. I was sitting on the side. Christ came to sit right between us. He was holding her hands the whole time.   Felicia was angry at God. She had developed a faith but as far as she was concerned the death of her sister Theresa, was a hard nut to swallow. Even as she was pushing God away she was responding to his knock. She showed me a tattoo on her foot with the names of her grandchildren. She described the miracle of watching one of her grandsons in her words being saved by God. She had seen at his birth the umbilical cord wrapped several times around his neck. Felecia saw her grandson turn blue and then grey. The doctors were convinced they had lost the child. Right when they had just about given up on the child, he was revived.   Like me, Felicia was not supposed to be on this flight. That’s when she realized that God had arranged for us to encounter each other. I gave Felecia my copy of Tattoos on the Heart. She was so touched and moved and we had another good cry. I kept assuring her that Christ understood her pain and anger. He was going to be patient and keep knocking on her door.   I stepped off the flight and back into the real world. I was so gratefully for our encounter of Christ. Truly he had delighted in using my ears, my heart, my hands, and my voice. I had disappeared and Christ had worked one of His infinite instances of love. It was another experience of being overwhelmed and humbled by the reality and depth of Christ’s presence in our lives.

We are sense making creations. Imagining who we are, how we are, and who we can be, is made possible through the mystery of the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. I know Christ through the stories of my life. I‘m immersed in a sea of unfolding, living stories that put me in touch with His presence embedded deep in the lives of others.  I try to examine every storied detail of my life. I want to turn over each word I hear, scrutinize every sentence I utter, and examine each chance encounter I have. Then, with my heart bursting with questions, I pray for discernment. Can I abandon myself to God? How deep is my trust?  

There are different questions we can ask:

Who was Jesus the man?
Who is the Resurrected Christ?
Who is Christ seated at the right hand of the Father?
Who is Christ that will, “come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and whose kingdom will have no end?”

Each of these questions is interesting, yet none of them change the burning desire I have to seek Christ. I take solace in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke’s letter to a young poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet #4

It is Christ’s question to me and to all of us that offers salvation, “Will you come and follow me?” This is a timeless question. It demands that I leave behind every preconception I have, every limiting notion that vexes me and my endless supply of selfish desires. This question implores me to reach across the veiled abyss and grab Christ’s hands. It leaves me no other choice but to go out into the world and seek relational encounters with the Living Christ – the Living Water that flows from the temple of God and which creates our world.