Next Thursday is Ascension Day the feast when we remember Jesus finally returning to God the Father after his rising again on Easter Sunday. After Ascension Day we prepare to celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit nine days later on the feast of Pentecost. With Ascension Day and Pentecost we begin to draw our celebration of Easter to close, although it is important remember that every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, the rising again of Jesus from the dead.
The time between Ascension and Pentecost is a liminal time. Liminal means ‘in between’ and it comes from the Latin word meaning ‘threshold’, neither in the room nor out of it but in between. In some respects to be a Christian is to be in a liminal state, we live in between the time when Jesus lived on earth and the time when we shall see him face to face.
There are other ways in which our existence is liminal. Our present era can be seen as a liminal time. The late John O’ Donohue sums it up like this:
“In this post-modern world the hunger to belong has rarely been more intense, more urgent. With many of the ancient, traditional shelters now in ruins, it is as if society has lost the art of fostering community. Consumerism propels us towards an ever more lonely and isolated existence. As consumerism numbs our longing, our sense of belonging becomes empty and cold. And although technology pretends to unite us, more often than not all it delivers are simulated images that distance us from our lives. The ‘global village’ has no roads or neighbours; it is a faceless, impersonal landscape from which all individuality has been erased. Our politicians seem devoid of imagination and inspiration, while many of the keepers of the great religious traditions now appear to be little more than frightened functionaries. In a more uniform culture, the management skills they employ would be efficient and successful. In a pluralistic and deeply fragmented culture, they are unable to speak to the complexities of our longings. From this perspective, it would seem that we are in the midst of a huge crisis of belonging. When the outer cultural shelters are in ruins, we need to explore and reawaken the depths of belonging in the human mind and soul that will lead us once again to unexpected possibilities of community and friendship”.
(John O’ Donohue –Eternal Echoes, Exploring Our Hunger to Belong).
From a high point in the 1950s church attendance has dwindled. This shrinkage is not restricted to the church, many societies and clubs have seen a great reduction in their membership. It seems that post-modern people do not join organisations in the way that their grandparents and great grandparents did.
So do we simply sit around and wait for it all to fizzle out? Do we accept that the arrow of time moves in only one direction, and that all things move from order to disorder, from organisation to disintegration and decay?
I think the first thing to do is accept the liminality of our situation, we live in an in-between moment in history. To a certain extent two world wars, the holocaust and the threat of nuclear annihilation destroyed our faith modernity and the idea of progress, and with it faith in the institutions of modernity among which our modern church organisations are to be numbered. We live in between what has been and what in the future will take its place. And that is not easy.
“Regardless of how we characterize this epoch, one thing is clear. We are engaged in a transformation, the out come of which is presently unknowable. The basic models and processes that define Church are being deconstructed. They are crumbling around us. Some new ways are emerging, but we do not yet know what the new world order will be, what forms of institutional church, if any, will remain. We are surrounded by prophetic voices trying to point a way forward, but it is not yet clear which pathways we should follow and which we should be wary of. And we are tired. It is exhausting trying to keep the old structures intact, managing the anxiety of the transition, and making space for the birth of the new thing-all at the same time”.
(Susan Beaumont – How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You Are Going: Leading in a Liminal Season)
If we could allow ourselves to accept what is, and that it is largely beyond our control, we might be able to find ways of both living through the time of deconstruction and finding the path towards reconstruction and the new creation in Christ.
We must not forget that in the Bible the liminal, in between spaces are often the places where God is encountered. The Israelites meet with God in the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. Moses does not go into the Promised Land but dies, and according to some stories, was taken up into the heavens, not in Israel, but on other side of the Jordan looking over into Israel. In the book of the prophet Isaiah, and echoed in the ministry of John the Baptist, we read of ‘A voice of one calling, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord’. The wilderness here is not the desert proper; it is the strip of land at the margins of the city between the walls and countryside, a place where the poorest lived in the shanty town. The prophet Elijah was taken up into the heavens not from Israel but from the land beyond the river Jordan at the edges of Israel. Jesus was baptised along with others not at the centre of religious life in Jerusalem, but in the river Jordan which marks the boundary between Israel and its neighbour. He immediately goes out into the wilderness, another liminal place for forty days and forty nights. The transfiguration takes place not on the plain but on a mountain top between earth and sky. He was crucified not in the city but beyond the city walls.
That is not say that liminal places are easy places to be in, often they are not, they can be deeply uncomfortable places and times. So how are we to live in the is liminal season?
Jesus said, ‘I will not leave you comfortless… Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’.
The key here is love, love, not power, not influence or anything else that we might use to control what is happening. This love is that which seeks nothing for itself; it is a self-emptying, powerless, and seeks the good of the other as other. In this love the other can never be a means to one’s ends, the other is not there to satisfy one’s needs or wants.
When we love, it is to glorify the God who very essence is this self-emptying love. It is love that is exalted not the one who loves. ‘Let your light so shine before men and women, that they may see your good works and glorify you Father who is heaven’. Whatever we do should point away from us and point to the love that inspires us.
This has implications for evangelism, for our telling the good news of Jesus. Evangelism is not recruitment, it is not to keep the institution going, for that would be far too great a burden for any one generation to bear. Evangelism is simply to know this Jesus, to receive his love, to make him known to others so that they too may benefit from knowing him and receiving his love.
It is this love that will sustain us in the in between, and it is this love that will bring about our renewal.
So three things to take with us into the in between moment that we live in:
Accept that you are loved, even if you believe that there is not much to love in yourself. Though undeserved and unearned, this love is freely given. Accept it.
Jesus said, ‘Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden’. Our God is not a slave master; God does not drive us on and on. God calls us to rest, refreshment and re-creation.
Receive the Holy Spirit who is the love that the Father has for the Son and the Son has for the Father. This is the one who springs up from the well of the water of life. This is one, and the only one who will be at work in us, transforming us and restoring the image of God within us which is our true and ultimate self, and make all things new. If we are restored, then the church can be restored. In these liminal times we need a restoration of faith in the one who loves and restores us.
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
Brislington Community News 