I've been reflecting heaps on what I said on Sunday. I still stand by acknowledging the general trend that the church seems to be buying into the experience based culture around us. I feel that it makes it hard for the church to help produce genuine disciples when people are so used to being spoon-fed as it can be modeled in a church service.
However, I'm anxious to get across that experience in itself is not a bad thing - it is vital. We worship a God who reveals Himself in space and time, and a relationship is experiential. The danger with making a point like I did is that it can sound like I'm saying that experience is for yuppies but contemplation, thinking well and good theology is the important stuff.
That is definitely not true.
In many ways it is unhelpful to separate those things into two camps (I experience God often through theology, contemplation and thinking well). Good theology and ordering of our ideas about God can be freeing in itself because (if done well) it can rid us of oppressive theologies and unhelpful notions that distance us from God. But there is a difference between knowing God and knowing about Him. I don't just want to read about John listening to the heartbeat of Jesus. I want to hear it myself. I don't just want to read about God speaking to Moses face to face like friends. I want to speak with God like that myself.
When I was in high school I remember praying things like 'Lord I want to know your voice intimately, I want dreams and visions, I to see into the supernatural.' I wanted to know God deeply. I even remember praying 'Lord I want to be more intimate with you than anyone in history.' These prayers seem childish now, but somehow they also seem exactly the sort of prayers I should always be praying.
I've been reading a book called 'Abba's Child' by Brennan Manning. The book has affected me emotionally in more ways than any other book that I can remember. Here is a story that he relays in the book - I read it this morning and burst into tears:
Once I related the story of an old man dying of cancer. The old man's daughter had asked the local priest to come and pray with her father. When the priest arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and an empty chair beside his bed. The priest assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit. "I guess you were expecting me," he said.
"No, who are you?"
"I'm the new associate at your parish," the priest replied. "When I saw the empty chair, I figured you knew I was going to show up."
"Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden man. "Would you mind closing the door?"
Puzzled, the priest shut the door.
"I've never told anyone this, not even my daughter," said the man, "but all my life I have never known how to pray. At the Sunday Mass I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it always went right over my head. Finally I said to him one day in sheer frustration, 'I get nothing out of your homilies on prayer.'
"'Here,' says my pastor reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk. 'Read this book by Hans Urs von Balthasar. He's a Swiss theologian. It' the best book on contemplative prayer in the twentieth century.'
"Well, Father," says the man, "I took the book home and tried to read it. But in the first three pages I had to look up twelve words in the dictionary. I gave the book back to my pastor, thanked him, and under my breath whispered 'for nothin'.'
"I abandoned any attempt at prayer," he continued, "until one day about four years ago my best friend said to me, 'Joe, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here's what I suggest. Sit down on a chair, place an empty chair in front of you and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It's not spooky because He promised, 'I'll be with you all days. ' Then just speak to Him and listen in the same way you're doing with me right now.'
"So, Padre, I tried it and I've liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she'd either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm."
The priest was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old guy to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with him, anointed him with oil, and returned to the rectory.
Two nights later the daughter called to tell the priest that her daddy had died that afternoon.
"Did he seem to die in peace?" he asked.
"Yes, when I left the house around two o'clock, he called me over to the bedside, told me one of his corny jokes, and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back to the store an hour later, I found him dead. But there was something strange, Father. In fact, beyond strange, kinda weird. Apparently just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on a chair beside his bed."
And I'm in tears again. This is the cry of my core, to know you more.
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