Abiding in Exile

Last night I offered the following reflection for Week 4  of the Lent Course at St Martin-in-the-Fields, drawing on the chapter 'Abiding in Exile' from Ben Quash's book 'Abiding':

On the day he died, Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa through the streets of Jerusalem. Jesus' journey is traditionally commemorated by the Stations of the Cross. Following in the footsteps of Jesus through the Stations of the Cross has been part of the Christian practice of Lent and Holy Week since the time of the early Church. The Stations of the Cross were created for those who weren't physically able to go to Jerusalem and literally walk the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross, in its streets. Those who began this practice, the Franciscans in particular, understood that travelling the Way of the Cross imaginatively and prayerfully was meaningful and valid spiritually, albeit different from the actual physical experience.

This is an example of our being able to move while standing still, of journeying whilst staying put. That is what this chapter is all about and it subverts our usual understanding of what is meant by abiding. The most famous passage about abiding in the Bible sees us grafted into a vine that is planted in the ground in a particular place and it is from this passage that many of our understandings of abiding in terms of rootedness derive (John 15). However, all images have their limitations when it comes to expressing and understanding the wonderful depths of God and the inadequacy of the image of the vine and the branches is that it suggests that our abiding is a static thing.

The point of the image of the vine and the branches is that we are to abide in Jesus. Jesus came to us as person and a characteristic of human beings is that we move and travel as well as settling and establishing homes to which we return. Jesus left God's side to be incarnated as a human being and returned to God at his Ascension. In his mother's womb he travelled to Bethlehem, as a child he was exiled in Egypt and his ministry was an itinerant one. Therefore, we are called to abide in someone who moves, meaning that we are called to move when God moves and stay when she stays.

Ben Quash notes that this reality for us as God's people is symbolised for the Israelites during the Exodus in terms of the pillar of light by day and pillar of fire by night that led the people through the wilderness (Exodus 13. 17 - 22). When the pillar moved, the people moved, when the pillar stopped, the people also stopped. He says that what we see here is ‘the very remarkable idea of a presence (or an abiding) that moves.’ He quotes Jurgen Moltmann, who says this is a ‘good symbol for the mobilizing presence of God in history’. ‘God dwells with the Israelites all the time, but God is also moving all the time. He is always before them, but by having God always before them, they find themselves moving. God dwells among the Israelites as a ‘Trailblazer’, says Moltmann’.

Our abiding in Christ therefore involves times of moving and times of staying still. These can be physical - actual journeys or places to be - or, as we have reflected in relation to the Stations of the Cross, they can be movement or rest in our spirits and imaginations. This then helps us to understand and make sense of the nature of Jesus' call to us as his disciples, remembering that he called some to travel with him on his itinerant ministry, but also needed other who remained in their homes in order to support those who were on the road. Jesus' call to us could, therefore, be about physical travel or movement, as for someone on pilgrimage or those called to be missionaries in another place or country, but it could also be to imaginative travel, as with the Stations of the Cross, which takes us ever deeper into our faith while we remain where we are physically and geographically.

Ben Quash calls this the ecology of vocations writing that: ‘for some the knowledge of the special sort of home God offers needs to be discovered in having no permanent resting place in the world, and for some the discovery of God’s infinitely new and transforming horizons is best achieved by staying still.’ He quotes Michael Paternoster as saying, ‘some people need to stay where God puts them, even when they feel like moving, and some people must move when God requires them to, even if they feel like staying.’

The reality of God is one of infinite depth. God created all things and therefore all things exist in him and he is more than the sum of all things, so it is impossible for us with our finite minds to ever fully know or understand God. However profound our experience of God has been, there is always more for us to discover. This means that knowing God is like diving ever deeper into a bottomless ocean where they is always more to see. We are within that ocean and, therefore, are abiding within it, but can always be moving because there is always more to see and uncover and discover.

In the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia, 'The Last Battle', C.S. Lewis describes his characters dying and entering eternity. In eternity they find themselves back in the land of Narnia but it is a Narnia that has more depth and beauty than previously. As they explore this revitalised Narnia, their cry is one of exploration, 'Come further up and further in'. When they reach the garden at the centre of Narnia, they discover that this is a gateway to another Narnia that has yet more depth and beauty than that which they had just left. Lewis' idea that we abide in eternity in the world that we know but know it in ever increasing depth reminds of T.S.Eliot's phrase that, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’

This, I think, is the form of abiding that Ben Quash describes in this chapter. It is both a running while standing still and an abiding whilst travelling. The God of movement wants to keep us exploring the depths of the world and himself. The God who dwells with us wants to keep us abiding in her refreshing rest. The God of stillness and change wants keep us growing as we remain rooted in him. Quash writes that we have been called to live lives of abiding, while at the same time we have been told, puzzlingly, that we have no abiding city. We are invited to exchange changeless abiding into changeable abiding.

I want to end with a meditation on the symbols that we use in baptism; oil, light and water. As baptism is our entry to Christian faith, it is easy for us to think of these symbols as being primarily about our beginnings in faith, but they also speak powerfully to us of the journey of faith that we begin at our baptism. The faith into which we are baptised is that in which we abide but in order to do so we must move and change and grow and travel:

Oil …
bleeding
from the pressurised
crushed
and wounded
to
free us up
lubricate
our rusting
static lives
and
facilitate
our ever moving
onward
forward
Godward

Light …
revealing our past
lighting our future
shining like a lighthouse
in our storms
burning like a warning beacon
in our wars
warming like the sun
on our journeying
glowing like a fire
through gaps and cracks
in shattered, splintered lives

Water …
cleansing our grubbiness
reviving our tiredness
refreshing our thirstiness
nurturing our liveliness
babbling communication
rippling out our influences

May we -
baptised in water,
anointed by oil,
lit by the Spirit -
live and move freely
like a babbling brook
speaking life
to parched ground
leaping boulders and barriers
sparkling in the ever present
light of the Sun.

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Moby - This Wild Darkness.