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Dear saints,
I wonder if you have managed to catch the gorgeous images shared this week of the restored interior of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. They are exquisite. It is truly one of the most treasured sites in the world of church architecture.
I was particularly taken by what President Macron said about what the restored Notre Dame could be for the world right now: "a shock of hope." New Testament scholar and bishop, N. T. Wright, talks of being surprised by hope, which I appreciate, yet hope can certainly be shocking, can't it, especially when hope comes when it had not been expected.
As I write this, I look out of my office window across West Peachtree to the North Avenue MARTA station where through the years I have seen so much humanity that seems to be longing for some hope. Earlier in the week, a man ran out of the station, screaming and beating himself, as two officers calmly followed at a distance. I can't imagine the demons he has had to bear and the loneliness a person feels when bearing such things. What would it mean for that man to know a shock of hope?
It seems to me that this is a particularly pressing question for the mission of the church. Church has never existed in order "to get people here," but to reach people there. What does it mean for us to say that the light of God is coming into the world within the context of that man's life, or any life so seemingly low on hope?
I believe that our endeavor to answer that sort of question begins with ourselves. How do we know the hope of Christ's light in our own lives? What is shadowing that light in us right now? And what could we do to change that?
I find myself shadowing the light of Christ all too easily when I move to judgement. I have been on the earth half a century now, yet I have not yet fully realized that not everyone sees the world quite as I do. I'm not sure if this is hubris or stupidity. Either way, it doesn't help me make space in my life for the light of Christ to dwell so that I might see and receive that light in others.
Perhaps you have your own ways of shadowing the ethereal presence of God. The challenge is that the brilliance of God comes to us rather paradoxically with slight and gentle shimmers of illumination. God never glares at us. We are not ever caught in the headlights of the divine. It is a light truer than any we might ever hope to see, yet possible to miss entirely.
One gift, among many, of the church is that it offers to us the good company of others such that together we might learn to be seers. Light catchers of all ages await you on that little church on West Peachtree and North Avenue. The world needs "the eyes of your heart enlightened." Come by and help that world be shocked again by hope.
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