Within the treasure of Jewish legends and stories there is the tale of a rabbi who disappeared every Sabbath eve. His congregation assumed he withdrew to commune with God in the forest. One Sabbath night they sent the cantor to follow the rabbi into the forest to observe this holy encounter between their beloved rabbi and the Eternal God. The cantor followed the rabbi very deep into the woods and was surprised to find the rabbi enter the small cottage of a Gentile woman who was crippled with disease. The cantor saw the rabbi cook the woman’s supper, carry her firewood, and clean her humble home. Once he finished these chores he returned to his house next to the synagogue.
The people of the congregation were eager to hear the report of the cantor. One of them asked, “Did our rabbi go up to heaven as we thought?”
“No,” the cantor answered after several moments of thought. “Our rabbi went much higher than that.”
We live in a time when people inside and outside the church are searching for God. Many are seeking a spirituality that will help them cope with this difficult, changing, and challenging era in human history. I think this need explains, at least in part, the rise of interest in Eastern religions, New Age spirituality, the Native American approach to life, and even the return of some Christians who ought to know better to a fundamentalist distortion of a liberating gospel.
Those of us within Mainline Protestant churches have perhaps been neglectful of the rich and deep spirituality we have inherited from those Christians who can serve as models for us in our time. Over the years I have tried to present these models and discuss their relevance for our time—people like St. Francis, Hildegarde of Bingen, and John Woolman. These giants of the faith have provided their witness out of their spiritual grounding in God. God was so real to them. At times they were so overwhelmed with the presence of God that they were left awestruck and speechless. We Mainline Christians are perhaps suspect of this deep and experiential spirituality. But my suspicion is that as we continue to calculate the cost of the materialistic and passionless directions of our civilization, we may find our salvation in the recovery of such a dynamic experience of God.
But the above story reminds us of a profound truth about spirituality. God is best experienced as we reach out in compassion and love to others, especially those who are disenfranchised and discounted in our culture. If Jesus was correct in presenting a God who has proclaimed divine solidarity with “the least of these” of our world, then it’s natural to expect that we will find God best as we touch others in God’s healing and liberating name. One of the other giants of the faith, Clarence Jordan, reminded us that the good news of Jesus Christ is not about going up to heaven when die. “The good news is that God has come down to earth and all hell has broken loose!”
God has indeed come down to earth and is to be found among “the least of these” from the world’s perspective. And all the praying, fasting, ecstatic experiences, and sermons will mean very little until we find God among God’s precious children. If we as individuals and as churches could make this our experience, then like the rabbi we too might go much higher than heaven. We might just meet God.
