Renunciation and the final Idolatry: Letting Go of a God Who is Too Small

Lent is quickly coming to a close, or perhaps better, to a tremendous climax. Throughout this period we have focused on becoming people who truly listen with our whole hearts and minds. The openness such listening demands is not easy for us for there are all kinds of things which militate against it. Our own religious and theological education can be one of the main obstacles to really hearing what we are meant to hear during the Triduum --- those three days when God reveals himself exhaustively without limit or reservation as God-with-us and God-for-us; at the same time he reveals the human being as the one called to be with and for God, the one who is only human to the extent she is wholly dependent on God and committed to allowing God to be God as exhaustively as possible.

The problem is typified in Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees --- a conflict we have been hearing about in the daily readings and hear once again in tomorrow's Gospel. As tempting as it is to see the Pharisees as the villains in the black hats and Jesus as the good guy in the white hat, the situation is more complicated than that. John's Gospel has Jesus affirming that he is the I AM --- the very presence and power of God himself symbolized in the name revealed to Moses during his commissioning to go to the Children of Israel and bring them out of slavery. We tend to hear this name "I Am" (ego eimi) as the rather static Greek term which affirms that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, one in being (consubstantial) with the Father. The fact that the Pharisees accuse Jesus of blasphemy and attempt to stone him bolsters our sense of the accuracy of this reading. But in some ways, we are being prevented from hearing a huge part of what Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees was all about with this hearing of the gospel --- and what his challenge is for us as well.

The Semitic sense of God's name is much more dynamic than this static Greek version. If we read Ex 3:14 in context we see that "I am who am" is accompanied by all kinds of promises regarding the nature of this presence: I will be, I will bring, I will give, I will send, I know, I have seen, I have come, etc etc. We know too that for the Semitic mind God's being was also a doing. Wherever God was, there was speech, and hearing, and summoning, and creating, and loving, and overcoming, and redeeming, etc. God's Name referred to all of this dynamism and promise and therefore, had a sense of "uncontainability" or incomprehensibility. For these reasons, commentators on Exodus 3:14 tend to translate "ego eimi" not as I am who am, but rather as "I will be the One I will be" and they are very clear that that "being who one wills to be" includes an incontrovertible being with and for: I will be with you and for you and nothing at all will stop me from being this God --- not even the most irreligious (or religious!) among you!

When Jesus meets the Pharisees head on and, in the language of John's Gospel, claims to be I AM, he also claims to be the revelation of a God who is simply bigger than the Pharisees have imagined or can allow. This is how it will always be with the real God. Traditions that have served them and Israel well now become fetters which cripple them and constraints to their imagining a God who explodes all the boundaries of their theology. Every time Jesus has come into conflict with the Pharisees it is because of such boundary breaking: eating or healing on the Sabbath, consorting with sinners --- abject sinners --- not just those who have broken this or that halakic rule, speaking to and touching those who would render him "unclean", telling parables which apparently incite to something similar in his followers by revealing God to be more loving and generous, more forgiving, more merciful than seemed prudent or just.

In other words, if Jesus is telling the truth, he reveals a God who is bigger than Jewish tradition and thought has allowed for or could contain, and if the Pharisees affirm Jesus as the revelation of the God of Israel they also confirm the death of the Israel and religion of Israel they know, love, and have given their lives to protecting and nurturing. To let God be God, they must, to some extent, let go of or leave behind the God they have known and worshiped. Here all the readings we have heard recently about idolatry reach a stunning and paradoxical climax. Rather than allow themselves to be trapped in idolatry, the Pharisees must open themselves to a bigger God who will be the One he wills to be no matter how illogical, unreasonable, imprudent or contrary to tradition that seems. They must, to some extent, let go of true religion which can constrain in order to embrace the God of Truth. It will be a matter of letting go of a God whose name is "I Am" and instead allowing the God whose Name is, "I will be the One I will be!" to take hold of their lives. Fortunately, their tradition has actually prepared them for and summons them to this ultimate act of renunciation.

At many points during the Triduum we will be asked to do the same thing. Interpretations of the cross which minimize the horrific sinfulness human beings accomplished in betraying, torturing, and killing a genuinely God-sent man, which treat Jesus' suffering as a price God required for his wrath to be appeased or his honor to be redeemed must be relinquished as unworthy of the real God. Notions of Christ's descent into hell which restrict this event to "the just" and which place limitations on the extent of God's mercy, notions of divine sovereignty which require that mercy be balanced by justice or love by wrath must also be relinquished as unworthy of the real God revealed in the Christ event. A God who can love but cannot suffer, one who somehow allows sin and death to have the last word --- these gods too must be left behind as idolatrous and unworthy of the One Jesus reveals to us.

Jesus confronted the Pharisees with the God revealed to Moses, the one who would be who he would be --- no matter the obstacles that involved overcoming. Jesus reveals the same God to us, a God who is always bigger than we can imagine, a paradoxical God who asserts his sovereignty and does justice precisely by loving his creation exhaustively and unconditionally, a God who, with the Cross of Christ, will always explode our religious and theological categories -- along with the idols they describe -- and summon us to trust him instead. My prayer is that Holy Week will work precisely this way in our own lives.