Religious Truth in Real Time
by Carl Mazza
You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
- St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:2,3

On that day, as the brief light of afternoon started to fade, and all began to settle down for a quiet evening - my theology was harshly challenged by an unwelcome interruption. A young, formerly homeless mother appeared at the door of Wayfarers' House - frantic and quite angry.

She had been on our list for presents, and she was looking forward to a good Christmas for her two small children. We had been given nice gifts for them and they had been carefully set aside. The problem was that now, at the last moment, she didn't have them and we didn't know where they were. Thus began a two-hour search, with many phone calls, and several exhausted workers struggling to find some appropriate offerings. This final rush to Christmas had at last caused me to question our calling.

"Is this what it's all about?" I asked myself. The press of materialism, especially during the holidays, can sometimes weigh heavily on us. I wondered, "Does all this busy-ness and devotion to things fulfill our higher purpose? Or have we become sidetracked into meeting purely physical needs, serving only the alarms and demands of the moment?

As we gave out the last of the toys later that evening, I mulled this question over and over again in my mind. Perhaps it was because it was at the end of a long day that the whole matter had taken on such giant proportion. Our aim is to reach for the heart of things, to help persons in the ways they really need to restore broken and disrupted lives. It is to put an end to homelessness in any way we can.

"So how," I thought, "can we do this when so much time and energy seems to be wasted in such well-meaning, yet seemingly shallow, unproductive tasks - however kind and charitable they may be?"

I recalled one of my professors in seminary who emphasized the importance of everyday parish ministry. He demanded that we habitually ask ourselves the question: "How does our everyday work in ministry shape and transform our theology?" I remember being confused by it, because I assumed theology (literally: discourse about the nature of God) was more or less static, derived from unchanging principles, from the Bible and even the mind of God . "How then," I thought, "can this important thinking be changed by the transient experience of everyday life?"

Yet, over two decades of experience at Meeting Ground, if anything has become clear to me - it is that very principle. We struggle to relate to and learn from
God, yet it seems that God is engaged in a similar effort to connect to us, and we are often surprised, even taken aback by this fact. Perhaps, it is because our theology is meant for us to find our way to God - yet, God's theology is the ways and means by which God searches and finds us.

On Friday that week I was surprised again for the second time. The Community Kitchen was crowded and overflowing with people as I walked in a little late. Out of the large crowd the young mother, who had been waiting, walked directly towards me. Her face was beaming, and her smile was broad and reflective of something I had never before seen in her. Her expression was one of quiet transformation, as she very quietly let me know that her children had finally gotten all the presents, and that they had enjoyed an absolutely wonderful Christmas! There were no words of "thank you," and none were expected - yet, I have never felt a deeper sense of gratitude and satisfaction. It was not the result of anything that we had done at Meeting Ground, rather, it was in the happiness that her children had been made happy, and this was the obvious delight of her soul.

As I had considered things in the days after Christmas eve, the gifts themselves and everything material that had surrounded all such efforts, loomed large in my mind. Yet, now - these things seemed not at all significant. What really transpired, what was truly exchanged, had been the gift of human care. At its various levels, and in all its intricate and mysterious paths, some absolute connections had been made among human souls - normally floundering in isolation, now brought together in the context of a rush of gift-giving.

I had been consumed and preoccupied with my theology of importance. The call of God, I surmised, must always be high and lofty - based on the purest principles of virtue and values. Through such preoccupation, the soul tries to fly, seeking God close to heaven - getting as far away from the complexities and burdens of earth as possible.

While touring in the stratosphere, earnestly searching for divine presence, we are shocked to see by an accidental glance that God is, in fact, busy far below - on earth, working in the thick of human endeavors and relationships, surrounded and even engulfed by the passion of materialism.

Seeking, ever seeking, God remains true to the divine theology, whose first principal appears to be: God's amazing and inexhaustible zeal for people. In the tangled and complicated struggle to love and be loved among the people in our lives, quietly this One walks ever and always among us, continually holding out the possibility of salvation to all who would accept. We are indeed saved by such amazing passion

Perhaps the first principle of all theology ought to be: Keep silence, and listen to those who are so dearly cared for by God. In the tangle of human relationships, there are no chance encounters. Between and among all that happens to us is a presence, whose Being is only briefly able to be imagined. Yet so real, and so powerful, the One who walks with us is able to redeem the smallest incidents of life into timeless ages of love.