Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter
This week, I've been reading a book called Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner. Winner describes a mid-faith crisis as the realization that the newness, excitement and joy of faith has worn off and that the end goal of spiritual life (that is, life in God) seems quite far off. How do you make it through the middle of faith, when God seems far off, and nothing ever seems to change? Winner describes the slow, sometimes painful process of going through a mid-faith crisis - from her vantage point, it involves a lot of prayer (even when sometimes you're not sure that God is there), a lot of discussions with trusted spiritual friends, and a lot of simply being in the loneliness that a mid-faith crisis sometimes involves.
I suspect many of us go through mid-faith crises, and probably more than once in our lives. "Mid-faith crisis" is how I might describe my own faith life in the past few months. Even as a theologian and as someone who loves God very much, things have seemed kind of dry. I feel like I've turned a corner on that, especially this Easter, but as in Winner's description, it's been a long slow process.
Today's scriptures have made me think of this mid-faith crisis, exactly because of Jesus' words in the gospel reading (John 14:1-6). He tells the disciples that they already know the way, but Thomas protests that this makes no sense. "We don't know where you're going," he says. It's a simple truth: if you don't know where you're going, you can't possibly know how to get there. I can't tell a cab driver to drive me home, without also telling him my address. It's definitely like a mid-faith crisis. I have sometimes found myself surrounded by a culture that doesn't know God, and doesn't care in the slightest, and I've found myself feeling lost. Sometimes it's pretty hard to see any inkling of God anywhere.
In the scripture passage, I think Jesus rather flippantly replies to Thomas ("I am the way") as though that solves everything. Yet, doesn't it seem just as quizzical as ever? How can a person also be a way, a path?
Jesus seems to be indicating that we don't need to know where he is going to follow the way; we only need to be with him in order to be on the way.
Being with him sounds easy at first, but as Jesus says in many places, it is not at all easy. Jesus dies, and so must we. One of the things a mid-faith crisis does is it reminds us of all the little deaths we undergo in service of God. Sometimes I can't do what I want to do, because it wouldn't be loving or good, and that is a little death.
But even before his death, the going is rough, as we discover in today's first reading (Acts 13:26-33). Jesus is not recognized by anyone, even though Paul marvels at the fact that all the scriptures that they read each week are filled to the brim with words about Jesus. If only they had eyes to see! (Remember: for Paul, the scriptures were the Old Testament only. It is significant that Paul, a former Pharisee and persecutor of Christians who knew scripture every which way, would eventually come to see that the scriptures indicate one thing only: Jesus Christ and him crucified.)
Maybe people will even see us as doing things that seem opposed to God's will, just as they did with Jesus! This is just one more of those things that makes us die a little death and that makes a mid-faith crisis seem so bleak, because being surrounded by detractors makes it even harder to see our home in God, and even harder to see the way.
And yet still, we are called to follow the way, despite the naysayers, and despite the pain of all the little deaths.
The thing about it is, if you stick it out, you also start seeing all the little resurrections in life, too. You start noticing God is not absent, but maybe merely hidden from view, because you haven't been looking in the right places. You start seeing people like Paul, whose amazing conversion is surely a demonstration of new life! You start seeing people like our recent RCIA class members. You start noticing small answers to prayer and small reminders of God's presence.
The small resurrections are also part of being on the way. This Easter, let us pray for the grace to see the small resurrections and the ways Jesus is present to us here and now, in the middle of our faith.
- Jana M. Bennett