So what do we mean when we
say we have had a glimpse of God? And how do we get these glimpses?
I want to start with what we
read in the Bible about people seeing God. When I use the word seeing I mean
not only seeing visually, but also seeing mentally i.e. understanding and
having insight. And this is particularly relevant in the Old Testament.
For in the Old Testament
certain people are very conscious of GodÕs presence with them but cannot see
and indeed dare not see him visually.
God communicates with people
in different ways, sometimes through dreams visions or voice. But he keeps out
of their direct sight. For example he tells Moses you cannot see my face: for
there shall no man see me and live.
Jacob wrestles all night with
God, without knowing it is God, and is amazed that he has seen God and lived.
Elijah knows God is not in the earthquake wind or fire but is in the still
small voice. He wrapped his face in his mantle for his dialogue with God
outside the cave, in which he had been hiding.
Contrast this with the New
Testament and the presence of God in human form Ð Emmanuel God with us. In the
gospels we can trace the dawning realisation by the disciples of JesusÕ
divinity: like PeterÕs great confession or ThomasÕs my Lord and my God that we
have just heard in the gospel. By
his incarnation God showed us in human form how he is and what he wishes us to
become.
In Jesus Christ we stand at
the point of intersection between the divine and the human. In Christ we see what God offers to
humanity and what humanity can grasp of the divine.
One of the major problems is
the limitation of our human language and understanding when we try to describe
God.
We can think of God existing
in a different dimension of being Ð and not confined by time and space as we
are. At the same time we are using our concepts of time and space to say that
he is not like us Ð he is infinite and eternal. And it is because a complete understanding of GodÕs nature
is beyond our limited human understanding that we can only have glimpses of the
divine.
A few months ago I heard a
very interesting lecture by Margaret Clark at the St Marylebone healing and counselling
centre. She is a Christian psychotherapist and her talk was entitled self, ego
and God: through the Stained glass window. She talked about a process of
finding shades of meaning.
This process could apply to
light religion and therapy. I want to describe her thoughts as they apply just
to light and religion.
Firstly light Ð in her
consulting room she has a crystal, which hangs in the window so that it catches
the light: when it does so, it acts as a prism, and on the floor on the wall
and on the furniture little lozenges of the colour of the rainbow appear.
But until this happens the
room is full of white light, which we donÕt notice. WhatÕs more we canÕt easily
see it as white or made up of the constituent colours of the rainbow. She says: Òwe see light as white only
when the whole spectrum of colours is reflected back from something white, for
instance, the desk in the corner of the room, we donÕt think of it as white or
think that the air is full of this light all the time: light only becomes white
when it is reflected off something which we call white. Yet it is this, mainly
invisible, element, which enables us to see everything else.
She believes that this
analogy can be applied to religion: God is unseen and until something happens,
unknowable like white light. She
says that we get glimpses of God when the effects of God enter our time and
space. The equivalent of the prism in the analogy of light is the incarnation.
In St JohnÕs gospel Jesus says
Ò He that sees me sees the
Father also.Ó
There is another approach to God Ð that of the mystics, like St John of the Cross, Mother Julian of Norwich or the author of the Cloud of Unknowing. For them the filter of the prism or the incarnation is missing. St John of the Cross wrote: Òour ideas about God are like curtains, that veil the spiritual riches that lie behind them. Our images of God, even the most beautiful and most powerful, can sabotage our ascent to God. The problem comes when we begin to think that God is somewhat like these images. In truth they are far from what God is like.Ó Go by faith alone is St JohnÕs message and by love alone is Mother JulianÕs.
Their idea is to wait for a
wordless imageless, conceptless experience of union with God. These two paths
to God are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. Perhaps they suit different people. Relatively few people can attain the
insights of mystics like Mother Julian or St John of the Cross.
So how do we get these
glimpses of the divine? I think
that they can happen in many spheres of our lives. Take the arts for instance. I think when we hear an outstanding performance of a great
work of music we can perceive something of the divine. Harry Williams wrote:
Òart, when true to itself, attempts to bring into the sharpest possible focus
some aspect or other of reality, how it threatens and ennobles, destroys and
creates, its tragedies and triumphs, thus waking us up from our comfortable
dreams and consoling illusions Ð or maybe from our nightmares.
I remember hearing a Story about Bishop Charles Gore who had just heard a performance of one of BachÕs Brandenburg concertos. His almost unconscious comment on the music showed where it had led his thought: Òif that is true, everything must be all right.Ó
I like the remark of a German
pastor who said, Òwhen the angels play music for God they play Bach and when
they play for themselves they play Mozart and God eavesdrops.Ó
Harry Williams also wrote:
Òwherever reality of any kind is revealed there God must be. For it is only in
his light that we can see light, which means also that it is only in his light
that we can perceive darkness.Ó
Paintings can also transport
us to a different kind of reality:
I find that some of TurnerÕs
paintings have that effect on me, and also a painting of the Crucifixion by
Grunwald, which graphically portrays Jesus suffering. Perhaps it is the
timeless quality of such masterpieces that gives us a glimpse of the divine.
This can I believe be equally
true of nature and buildings; that poem of Gerald Manley Hopkins catches the
wonder and splendour of nature Ð glory be to God for dappled things Ð for skies
of couple colour as a brinded cow; for rose-moles all in stipple upon trout
that swim; fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finchesÕ wings; landscape plotted and
pieced Ð fold fallow and plough; and all trades, their gear and tackle and
trim.
Our ancient cathedrals and
churches like ours where worship has been conducted for centuries can convey
the sense of the numinous.
People too can give us
illumination and set us going in different life-changing directions, seeing
things in us which we only half guessed.
As I said earlier the spoken
or written word can give us that flash of insight. We can suddenly see in a
very familiar passage of scripture something new that Strikes us, and gives us
a new understanding of the meaning of the passage.
Perhaps the most striking
description of this flash comes in St AugustineÕs Confessions. He was reading a passage from the
epistle to the Romans Òput on the lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for
the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.Ó
Augustine wrote: no further
would I read nor did I need to. For instantly even with the end of this
sentence, by a light as it were of confidence now darted into my heart, all the
darkness of doubting vanished away.Ó That was his Damascus road experience.
The challenge for us is to
find God in unexpected places and unexpected people. We can only do this if we approach all our experiences along
the road of our spiritual journey with a listening ear, an open mind and a
loving heart. As Jesus said to
Thomas, ÒBlessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Amen.