Virtual Choirs, Perfection, Clay Jars, and Making Space for Each Other

Recently I listened to a choir conductor explain the process of creating a virtual choir performance. It requires skill, but also a sensitivity to the human because the best virtual choir performances won't be 'perfect' if they are to sound beautiful. Perfection, when put together by a computer program will sound robotic and manufactured. In creating a virtual choir performance slight 'imperfections' are introduced to make the performance not just beautiful to the ear but also human. What a great metaphor for being human, and the church for that matter.

We are clay jars (2Cor 4:7-15), but who prefers the factory manufactured clay piece to the piece of art that has within it the 'imperfections' of the human hand? The more perfect, the less human, generally. And we recognise this on the screen in those dystopian movies and TV shows that have regimented societies seeking perfection by brainwashing and violence. History is replete with real-life examples. Thank God the preferred human way of fashioning human perfection is not God's way of bringing the metamorphosis of transformation! God works with our imperfection and makes something beautiful from them.

This is not to abandon the call to perfection. (Matt 5:43-48 cf Luke 6:32-36) But it is to make space for each other's imperfections. There is something beautiful about the 'making space'. And this 'making space' is to make space for our mutual imperfections without condoning or condemning ourselves or anyone else. And in this space, we seek the transformation that comes through God's love discovered in our mutual love of one another.

Last week I spoke of the space that the cross gives human beings. (Here.) God provides space for us to be who we are, even to the point of crucifying the Son of God. And it is in this space of weakness (1Cor 1:18-25) that God brings the transformation of forgiveness and resurrection. It is a space of mutual forbearance, but not of carelessly inflicting our imperfections on each other. It is a space of discipline and a space for repentance, for experiencing the love of God in forgiveness without any hint of self-rejection.

Our Poverty Implies God's Fullness.

We are incomplete. As humans. It is our nature.

We see this clearly, as the poet says:

On the Mystery of the Incarnation 

It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:

not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.      (Denise Levertov)

There is a 'taint' in our own selves. The poet recalls for us the terrible things we humans do to each other, from truly horrific violence to all kinds of mundane emotional cruelty. But, she says, this incompletion is the way in which our hearts and minds can be transformed, converted. (“…that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart…”)

There is plenty more evidence for this lack in us, this incompleteness. Not just incorrigible human failure like ethnic violence, family and generational violence, but also the more mundane distress we have all felt in our families of origin, in our own families. Parents see themselves in their children, good and not so desirable, and wonder how the not-so-good happened despite our best efforts! It’s common. 

Utopianism is further evidence, if it is needed. We are currently in the power of all sorts of extreme utopianisms. Utopianism is a kind of denial of our incompleteness. A kind of ‘she doth protest too much’, an over-insistence to cover the fear, to protest against, and to reject of the lack in us.

Our tendency to monument building is another sign of this incompleteness. We don’t last, We are like the grass of the field, as scripture says. So, let’s build a monument to ourselves, our family, our culture. Nothing necessarily wrong with monument building, it’s just that it sometimes can be, once again, a protest, against our evanescence: we age, we fade, we disappear.

Or again, the self-help industry. It’s good, why not try to help yourself? But, again, it is an acknowledgement of our incompleteness, there is more to us than what we are now. So we try all sorts of methods to change and grow, all kinds of methods, philosophies, and irrationalities.

We are told to embrace honestly, or at least, to accept this incompleteness in the myriad ways it shows itself. To change what needs to be changed, to grow, to accept.. Of course.

But there is something missing in that account. The Christian account, while accepting what I have just said, thinks there is something more. It’s not just to accept and or change, as good as these are. It is to acknowledge our poverty, our spiritual poverty. The incompleteness doesn't mean that we just have to learn new methods of self-enquiry or a helpful technique to grow psychologically.  We are poor, but to acknowledge this is to acknowledge God’s loving fullness waiting to be poured into our hearts. Christianity doesn’t say we are poor; it says God is rich and wishes to share God’s richness with us in our poverty. We are made incomplete to be filled by God’s Spirit, to take us to a new depth of loving that we ourselves cannot bring about. And this fullness doesn’t just complete us, it brings healing. The very signs of our incompleteness can be transformed and healed in God’s fullness. Anger, hate, malice, fear, anxiety, violence and revenge, alienation and the fear of death, all can be healed and we can be taken where we were made to go.

This is Christmas. God comes as a human being, the beginning of a new humanity filled by God’s Spirit. The weak, helpless baby a sign of God’s desire to stoop down to us and take us to where God is. Not just the birth, of course. There is to come Jesus’ ministry, rejection, crucifixion, and resurrection. But God has done in Jesus what we are made not to be able to do on our own: to be a complete humanity, in the image of that same Christ. 

Cracks, Light, & Sainthood

It is part of popular culture that our cracks let the light in. It is another example of the Christian legacy in western culture. It is not in strength that God’s power is made perfect but in weakness. People easily miss the point that talking about our sins is another way of talking about our cracks. God doesn’t start with any self-proclaimed wholeness or perfection. God’s love winds its way into our hearts through the cracks, or to use traditional language, our sins. God’s love won’t divide us up, ostracizing the cracked bits and just working with the parts that aren’t cracked (to stay with the metaphor) but works the cracks to bring about genuine wholeness. People ask me why Christianity is so sin focused. This is why. Our cracks aren’t meant to be ignored or covered over. The cracks are God’s way in. God works the cracks, not the uncracked. ‘The saints’ in the New Testament are those made holy by God, and why so many great saints don’t have a holy past.

Sometimes we forget it is not the cracks that are important, it is the light. No one wants to admit to wallowing in our problems. So it is more common to find the reverse of wallowing in our problems (cracks), such that admitting the cracks is in some way a noble gesture of great character. Or something to be proud of. That is really just the other side of the coin of wallowing in one’s problems. Wallowing in our cracks, or vainly parading the cracks focus on the cracks. The cracks are still a problem. The cracks remain unsettling, dangerous. The Christian tradition suggests a different path. A humbler path. Honesty, yes. Honesty, authenticity, lie at the heart of repentance. But the Christian path focuses on the light, not the cracks. It is because we are bathed in light that the cracks can be healed.

The cracks let the light in, but once the light is in, the whole vase is aglow. That’s the path to sainthood as most of us think of saints. The light shines through the saint. The cracks can let the light out, but the whole person is irradiated. While it is tempting to downplay ‘the saints’ because sainthood in the New Testament referred originally to being made holy, it is also important to remember the saints. They are, if you like, evidence of the power of the light.

Holiness is About Relationship First

It is easy to jump to thinking morality when we think holiness. But first, we should think about a relationship with God. My latest Post can be found on the St Barnabas College Blog here.