For whom we long
is already among us

Speaking of Religion
The Rev. Dr. Tim Griffin

[A] madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, "I seek God! I seek God!" — As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. …The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Wither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I" (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science)
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child she conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." (Matthew 1:20-23)
Nietzsche uses the madman to illustrate a point about the status of religion in the modern period. His point is simple really: in the modern period, God has become irrelevant and unnecessary, and so many, like the madman’s interlocutors, simply ignore God.
In other words, Nietzsche insists that religion and interest in God have ceased to be at the center of our lives. Rather, even for those who still profess belief in God have a difficult time finding God because God has been relegated to the margins of their lives. God is no longer a central concern but a relic for whom a place may be made but not an important place — not a central place at all. In that way, Nietzsche believes that we have killed God.
I think Nietzsche is on to something, and that his point is as relevant now as when he wrote it (over a century ago). In fact, our world has become increasingly secularized since the time of Nietzsche’s writing, and as a result, religious observance and even thought about God is more and more diminished. Small wonder, then, that many claim to have no experience of God and no religious convictions. It seems, more and more, that we live in a world where God is absent.
But it is this absence — the very absence of God — that may hold the key to our finding God again. How can that be? Because this absence of God that characterizes the experience of many is the awareness of an absence and the accompanying longing for what is missing. Of course, this is always the case with God because God transcends our categories of thought. Consequently when we try to know God we are certain to be disappointed. God is beyond our knowing.
But we can experience God in that longing that we have for God — in that longing for what is absent. So this is the irony: that for which we long is present in our longing. Still, even this experience demands some effort on our part. It demands that we turn down the volume of our lives and really feel the longing that is at the center of our selves.
Most of us are masters by now of ignoring the longing by displacing it with this gadget or that activity or this addiction, etc. Of course, none of this satisfies the longing because none of it is what we really long for. So before long we turn to another (temporary) fix to bury the longing.
There is, however, another option available to us. We can ask ourselves what we really desire: "What am I really longing for? What is my dream?"
Joseph’s dream was that God was coming into the world in the form of a child born to his betrothed, who would be Emmanuel, "which means, God is with us."
That is my dream too, and I think it was also the dream of Nietzsche’s madman and those who scoffed at the madman. I hope it is your dream as well. More than that, I hope you have occasion this Christmas season to turn down the volume of your life and listen to your longing.
In that silence and longing may you find Emmanuel, and may you come to know that Emmanuel has been with you all along. I wish you a blessed Christmas season. ••
Father Tim Griffin is priest-in-charge at the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, at 1946 Welsh Road in Bustleton.