If you pray Morning Prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer you may have noticed the collect for guidance found on page 100. This prayer reads, “Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight…” St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, wrote these words, “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal 3:26-27). The imagery of being found out in Christ, discovering Christ in our very being, and being clothed with Christ are all beautiful, ongoing images within Christianity. Lady Julian of Norwich, whom the church remembers each May, picked up on a similar theme as well. Listen to her words,

“God does not despise what he has made…For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the trunk, so are we, soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God. Yes, and more closely, for all these vanish and waste away; the goodness of God is always complete, and closer to us, beyond any comparison. For truly our lover desires the soul to adhere to him with all its power, and us always to adhere to his goodness…For it is so preciously loved by him who is highest that this surpasses the knowledge of all created beings. That is to say, there is no created being who can know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly the Creator loves us…God wishes to be seen, and he wishes to be sought, and he wishes to be expected, and he wishes to be trusted.”[1]

For a moment, let’s focus on this image of God desiring to “be seen, sought, expected, and trusted.” I don’t want this to be an exercise in individualism, or have any pietistic notions. Instead, I want us to imagine God desiring these things through us as a community of faith, a church, a holy fellowship. So a first question to ponder might be, “How does God wish to be seen through the parish?” Two Sundays ago we walked down the road to Emmaus together where God was made known in the breaking of the bread. Jesus, you’ll remember, also wanted to be seen in Holy Scripture; however, the story did not end there. After Jesus disappeared, the disciples who were just with him went and told others about their experience. The lesson that Sunday was simple: God is made known to us through the liturgy of the word, and the holy sacrament of Eucharist as well as when we “go tell it on the mountain” so to speak – when we reveal the love and presence of Christ to others. So again,

“How does God wish to be seen through the parish?” God wishes to be seen through liturgical worship and Holy Eucharist; but another question to ponder is, “How do we as a community of faith see and share our stories of his presence?”

God wishes to be seen, and secondly, God wishes to be sought. “How does God wish to be sought through the parish?” There’s that great verse from the prophet Isaiah, “Seek the Lord while he wills to be found; call upon him while he draws near” (Isa. 55:6). Lady Julian wrote, “For truly our lover desires the soul to adhere to him…” “How might a faith community assist in the realization of God’s desire [to be sought]?”[2]

Third, “How does God wish to be expected through the parish?” There’s a sense of expectation very similar to hope here, but there’s also a reality of the eternal here in the Present. Put another way, there’s the expectation that God will one day unite heaven and earth together, consummating all creation to himself, while at the same time living in a time and place where that vision is currently taken on faith as hope. God has redeemed the world; yet, there’s still some expectation that there’s more to come. What can a parish do to acknowledge this paradox?

Fourth and finally, “How does God wish to be trusted through the parish?” “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5). Many persons have issues of trust through their own experiences of someone abusing trust. This mistrust eventually forms an understanding of the world that was not intended by God; therefore, God calls out to us like a mother to her child to trust again with all the heart because our own understanding has been damaged by sin. “How does God wish to be trusted through the parish?” “What does trusting in the Lord with all of our hearts look like?” Are we brave enough, do we trust enough to ask such questions?

I’ve briefly laid out these questions for us all to ponder. How might we, as a faith community, assist in the realization of God’s desire to be seen, sought, expected and trusted? I invite you to take these questions with you to your small groups, to your Bible studies, to your prayer circles, to your families, and beyond. If these questions sparked your own imagination around living into these desires of God as Lady Julian imagined, make your comment known below.

Julian’s legacy lives on in her writings. From these we can ponder questions both individually and communally. As we look forward to celebrating the birth of the Church on the Day of Pentecost, let us ponder these questions in our hearts asking God to reveal himself to us in tangible ways as we grow into His Son’s likeness. As the prayer for guidance stated earlier, “God, in you we live, and move, and have our being.” Let us pray this prayer of guidance together as a community of faith.

[1]           Lisa E. Dahill, 40-Day Journey with Julian of Norwich, Augsburg Books, Minneapolis, 2008, p. 22.

[2] Ibid., 22.