Philippians 3.4-16 & Matthew 5.1-10 – 14 November 2021
Neil Millar
‘In the beginning you weep, then subsequently you learn to wait’ (25). These are the words of Belden Lane, referring to his experience of different phases or stages or movements of growth in the spiritual life, which is our focus in these final weeks of the liturgical year.
‘Beloved, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability’, Peter writes in his second letter, ‘rather, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’ (2 Peter 3.17-18). That’s what we’re thinking about in this little series, what it means to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour – to mature in faith.
Last week, I noted how (with great consistency) our tradition discerns three key stages or movements in the spiritual growth journey. The first, the desert way of purgation, begins as we give up on our various attempts at ‘self-making’. Even heroic attempts to be good, we realise, are self-centred and impede true growth. That’s because, as Paul recognises in the reading we just heard, they rely on our effort – a righteousness of our own = self-righteousness. This awareness that even our best efforts are insufficient, our recognition of failure, is hard to accept, hence the tears. Yet, in this place of poverty true repentance, cleansing and transformation begin – the seed of faith takes root. ‘In the beginning you weep’, Lane writes… And then ‘you learn to wait’. What’s that about?
When Lane wrote those words, he had in mind the experience of accompanying his mother through the final years of her dying. At the age of eighty, in addition to Alzheimer’s disease, which had already begun to rob her of her faculties, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. As this was happening, Lane describes how, in stages, his own life was changing. The initial weeks were marked with an acute grief as reality sunk in – the reality of her upcoming death and their parting; of travelling with her ‘through surgery, radiation treatments, [and] the
painful experience of being uprooted from her house and placed in a nursing home’; and of roles being reversed, as he (an only child…) became mother to his mother. ‘It was an experience of discovering an unlikely grace in a grotesque landscape of feeding tubes and bed restraints, wheelchairs and diapers, nausea and incontinence’ (25), he writes, ‘stumbling slowly with a dying parent along the desert’s purgative way’ (26).
As it turned out, his mother didn’t die in months as the doctors predicted. After those initial turbulent weeks, things settled somewhat (at least in terms of her physical condition), and she lived for a further three years. This ushered them both into a long season of waiting, during which, ‘what had at first seemed to us so bizarre gradually became ordinary’ (89). And, this new phase in their experience, he likens to the second phase of spiritual growth. ‘This time of my mother’s dying had ceased to be “exciting”,’ he wrote,
the initial intensity of the threat of death had given way to the dull ordinariness of a long and exhausting wait. I no longer teetered on the threshold between life and death, caught up in a tragic immediacy that gave meaning and pathos to life… Instead, I felt only the anguish, weariness and anger that often accompany protracted illness.
During this season, he wrestled with painful existential questions. With why his mother, so ready to die, must continue living, (for example) while students and younger friends he knew, so keen to live, were dying. In the end, the confusion and weariness of those drawn-out years was swallowed up in ‘prolonged silence’. (How long, O Lord?) ‘I learned that if any wisdom were to be found, it would take its own good time in being revealed’, he wrote (91).
Lane’s personal experience offers a helpful perspective on this second phase of spiritual growth. It’s often referred to as the way of ‘illumination’, but this is not to suggest it’s all sweetness and light. Yes, awareness deepens, but not all at once, or without struggle. Of the three stages of the spiritual life, this second ‘illuminative’ stage is most akin to the experience of the season of Ordinary Time, the period that follows the dramatic celebrations of Easter and Pentecost in the liturgical calendar, that stretches on and on until Advent. These days we call it the season of Pentecost (which sounds exciting) but the notion of Ordinary Time and its colour – green – reminds us of the call to follow Christ with steady persistence on the slow, painstaking path of quiet growth.
Last week, I mentioned Gregory of Nyssa, one of the influential fourth century theologians of the church. In his book, The Life of Moses, Gregory compares the process of the spiritual growth to Moses’ experience of journeying through the desert and up Mount Sinai where he is enveloped in the cloud of God’s glory. The desert for Gregory symbolised the season of purgation. The ascent of the mountain, he likened to the stage of illumination.
Now, if you’ve done any bushwalking or trekking, you’ll know that the actual experience of climbing a mountain isn’t as romantic as it sounds. It’s true that occasionally, the climb eases and you reach an outcrop where you can pause and delight in the view; see where you are and where you’ve come from. But mostly, this stage is about taking one small step and breath (large breath!) after another.
For one thing I’ve learnt about climbing mountains is that it always takes longer than you think. Just before lockdown, Sarah and I walked up Mount Tennant. After an hour or so, we were both feeling weary. That’s okay, I thought, we’re nearly there, it must be just over that next rise. Besides, the toughest bits are behind us. Well, another exhausting hour later, having ascended bits I swear weren’t there last time, we still couldn’t see that damn fire tower. The track seemed to wind on forever. It was tempting to give up, and that’s how it can be in this stage – long, gruelling and, at times, down right discouraging.
‘After the desert of purgation, the ascent of the mountain symbolises for the illuminative way the acquisition of a deeper knowledge of God’s mysteries’, Lane writes. However, ‘it seldom comes with the certainty of immediate insight’. Moses had to wait forty days on Mount Sinai in the process of receiving all God had to teach him. In the Japanese tradition of Zen, a classic haiku speaks of the snail as it ‘slowly, O so slowly, climbs Mount Fuji’. And, so it is with illumination – enlightenment. It can’t be rushed; doesn’t respond to our agenda; keeps its own timetable.
Yet on the ‘mountain’, revelation does come. This is beautifully illustrated in Matthew, the ‘mountain’ gospel. In contrast to Mark’s insistence on the horizontal terrain of desert, Matthew focuses on vertical terrain. The five main blocks of teaching in Matthew are all arranged around mountain stories: the Mount of Temptation, the Mount of Beatitudes, the Mount of Feeding, the Mount of Transfiguration, and the Mount of Olives. On each of these mountains, Jesus and his followers gain deeper insight into their identity and vocation. When the crowds swarmed Jesus in Matthew 5, for example, he led them up the mountain to teach them a fundamentally different perspective from that which prevails in flatlands of the mainstream: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek…’ and so on. These are profound insights, and by no means easy to take in – to arrive at. But once we have, everything looks different – a new quality of love and compassion becomes possible for ourselves and for the world. We’re not only more enlightened, but more and more we shed light, give light.
So, what helps us to stay the course during this second phase of our spiritual formation, our growth in love? How do we wait on God through the stretching, painful experiences of life, and keep consenting to what God is seeking to show and do in us? Laurence Freeman speaks of the importance of spiritual practice in this season, keeping faith with the path – however it feels. In the early days of faith, we seek almost constant consolation. In this second stage, we learn patience, detachment from the immediacy of reward. ‘We move’, Freeman writes, ‘from a familiar devotional kind of religious experience with a significant degree of ego satisfaction into the self-less vision of contemplation’ (63). It sounds austere – and in some ways it is. But as we seek to remain steadfast through the difficult, even harrowing phases of our life’s journey, we are being drawn more deeply into the same love with which God loves us, learning ‘to know Christ and the power of his resurrection’ (as Paul puts it). This is illumination – not always fireworks and sparklers, but the slow, steady shining of light in the darkness … which, in Christ, will not be overcome. Amen.
References
Terence Donaldson (1985) Jesus on the Mountain: A study in Matthean Theology, JSNT
Supplement Series 8, JSOT Press.
Laurence Freeman, (2011) First Sight: The Experience of Faith, Continuum, London.
Belden Lane (1998) The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, Oxford University Press.
Belden Lane (2011) Desert Spirituality and Cultural Resistance: From Ancient Monks to Mountain Refugees, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR.
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