February 23, 2020 - Ash Wednesday - Jesus is in Your Heart or at the Right Hand of God

Attended, for the first time, an Ash Wednesday service held in the afternoon. There was no music. There were readings, a sermon and the disposition of ashes. I still felt deeply what I inevitably feel during Ash Wednesday worship. 

This season of Lent is unlike any I have experienced before starting last Sunday, as we were transitioning from Epiphany to Lent, I felt my approach to the Transfiguration in the past was now a strange slight-of-hand domestication of Jesus as God. When I was young I initially took the Transfiguration at face value. Later I accepted it as metaphorical language. Either this was an experience that the disciples could not adequately describe in earthly terms or it came from the voice of a Christian community trying to describe the power of Jesus through an image none of them had actually experienced.

There was a reason for this. I still don't like to think about Jesus, when God was incarnate as a man, performing miracles. I described my dilemma in the last blog. I have examined that throughout the week and I am writing this on the Monday after I saw one of my favorite authors, Diana Butler Bass,  helped me with a story sort through these misgivings.

She told a story about her daughter, when her daughter was two, asking "Where does Jesus live now?." Diana answered "In your heart". Her daughter then asked her father. He answered "At the right hand of God".

Diana called these two answers articulations of two Christian theologies, namely immanence and transcendence. Immanence, of course, refers to the idea of 'the divine' being present in the world we all inhabit. Transcendence refers to an idea of God that is wholly separate from our universe and our universal laws.

Of course there is an obvious tension in the theologies. I prefer to think about immanence, or an indwelling of God, because of my experiences growing up. One of them is how I imagine Jesus when he was in our world. When I think of him as powerful and "transcending" the pain of crucifixion - when he knows he is God, something gets lost in the story for me. However, draining transcendence completely from the story something different is lost and needs to be recovered. Blessed Trinity.

Also, in the Bible, Jesus mostly downplays miracles. He never offers them as any proof that he is God.
Because of this I feel my choice for Lent was somewhat made for me. I was invited (or perhaps pushed) into my journey of Lent this year. I will explore what my conceptions are, could be and will be about God and the truth around those conceptions intentionally during the next 40 days.