KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 26 November
Turning again
“Because I do not hope to turn again.” So begins T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent leading to Easter, to new life, the Resurrection. Advent, too, is a penitential season leading to Christmas in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and to the renewing of our lives in the meaning of his nativity. Psalm 80 is one of the great psalms of Advent and in contrast to Eliot’s poem it is full of the hope of turning. Its recurring refrain calls out to God to “turn us again, … show the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” The refrain is marked with increasing degrees of intensity in the fourfold invocation of God. “O God,’’ then twice, “O God of hosts,” and finally, “O Lord God of hosts.” It is about an increased awakening to the mystery of God.
The spiritual insight of Advent is profoundly philosophical. How can we find what we seek and desire without already in some sense knowing what we seek and desire? This is Meno’s dilemma in Plato’s dialogue by that name. It leads to the realization that God is at once prior and beyond as that upon which our knowing and being depend. Our turning is predicated upon God’s turning; our turning to God and God’s turning to us are really one and the same motion. Advent awakens us to the wonder of this twofold turning. “Then Jesus turned,” we heard in the reading in Chapel this week.
That turning leads to the beginning of the cascade of questions that define the Advent season. The questions of Advent stir up hope against despair. They awaken us to the desire for the Good, for what is always beyond and yet ever present. Such is the radical meaning of God’s turning to us and God’s turning us. “What do you seek?” Jesus asks in the moment of his turning to us. The disciples in turn ask, “where dwellest thou?” How do we abide with that which we most truly seek and which is most truly desired?
The reading of part of Psalm 80 along with the Gospel reading from the first chapter of John’s Gospel complements last week’s meditation upon the Law in Psalm 119 and in the Exodus story of the Ten Commandments. These readings all belong to the sense of endings and beginnings. As against a merely linear way of proceeding, of one thing after another after another, these readings recall us to the spiritual and philosophical insight of our constant circling around and into the mystery of God. That beginning again is our hope, our peace, and our joy.