The Father’s language is way more wild, controversial, deeply mystical, and outright outrageous than mortal minds can handle. Thus, to hear and learn from the Father we must first eat what Tolkien calls lembas, the waybread of Elves.
“Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me,” says Jesus (Jn. 6:45).
But how does God the Father speak?
My spiritual journey these last twelve years has been wonderfully elevated by my encounter with the Convergence Movement, which weaves together in a three-stranded cord God’s revelation through sacrament, in Scripture, and by the Spirit.
The Evangelical-Reformed traditions of the Church champion hearing and learning from God the Son. As the Word made flesh, the Son speaks prophetically in accord with Scripture, particularly about “things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27). Nevertheless, this is not how the Father speaks.
The Charismatic and Pentecostal elements of the Church teach us about hearing and learning from God the Spirit. The Spirit speaks to us in anointed and kingly ways, including in dreams, visions, and tongues, “not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4). Nevertheless, this is not how the Father speaks either.
So, how does God the Father speak?
Sacraments Aren’t Just for Sunday Anymore
The Liturgical-Sacramental dimensions of the Church embrace the Father speaking in priestly, creational, and sacramental ways. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). When in worship we use “things that have been made,” like bread and wine in communion and water in baptism, we call them sacraments, reminding us that the whole of creation is sacramental. Sacraments aren’t just for Sunday anymore.
The Father’s language is way more wild, controversial, deeply mystical, and outright outrageous than mortal minds can handle. Thus, to hear and learn from the Father we must first eat what Tolkien tells us is lembas, the waybread of Elves.
“The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die...[T]his waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.” (Return of the King)
It Will Blow Your Mind
If we can but relax and roll with it, the Father’s language invites us to cast mortal caution to the wind and hit the eject button on safe human formulas of truth. In the wild place of Secret Counsel, the Father calls us to embrace joyfully the mystical call to chivalric high adventure in the exploration of the limitless possibilities of existence.
Individuals, relationships, companies, and even whole civilizations die due to lack of imagination. Evil’s worst nightmare is a human being with a sanctified imagination. All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is for good people not to use their imagination.
Lest evil have the last word, the Father’s voice comes to us in breathtaking ways, starting with our very humanity as made in His image and likeness. If imagination is the ability to think in terms of imagery, then there’s no more remarkable image to start with than Mankind––the very image of God Himself.
If you’re not yet experiencing shortness of breath over the phrase, “made in His image and likeness,” then maybe I can say it another way. God (Elohim) has so precisely made us in His image and likeness that Scripture applies the term elohim, not just to God, but also to you and me.
When accused of blasphemy for saying, “I am the Son of God” (Jn. 10:36), Jesus defended His unique type of divinity by pointing out that all people already share in a God-given, universal kind of human deity. He quoted Psalm 82:6 to make His point, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’?” (Jn. 10:34). Jesus essentially says, “Don’t freak out that I call Myself ‘the Son of God,' because the Father, who has ‘consecrated and sent’ Me into the world, calls all human beings gods (elohim).”
Could it be that Jesus wasn’t rebuking His adversaries as much as He was trying to blow their minds for their own sake? It’s quite refreshing to think that getting our minds blown by God is an essential aspect of “salvation.” Sounds fun.
See, I Have Made You as a god
Some human beings are unrighteous, false gods, like Pharaoh, who die like mere mortals (Ps. 82:7). So, in the course of human events, how does the Father deal with human gods gone bad? “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you as a god (elohim) to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet’” (Ex. 7:1). Not all gods are false gods.
Imagine yourself before baptism like Pharaoh, and then after baptism like Moses. “See, I have made you as a god,” says the Lord. That’s what the priestly sacrament of baptism is about, no less the sacramental waybread of the Eucharist.
The Father’s way of speaking would have us stop being mortals who lick the ungodly humanist boot stomping on our faces. In other words, “don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out what God’s will is–what is good, acceptable, and complete” (Rom. 12:2, The Kingdom New Testament).
Renewing our minds involves imagining the Kingdom of God all over again in light of what the Father is saying. Consider the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come...” (Matt. 6:9-10). The Kingdom of God is the Father’s Kingdom. And in regards to the Church, notice that Jesus says He's building His Church upon what the Father reveals, not flesh and blood (Matt 16:17).
If we don't first hear and learn what God the Father says, then what God the Son and God the Spirit reveal about the Kingdom tends to get sanitized and sentimentalized by human formulas. Furthermore, failing first to hear from the Father subjects the Church to the unimaginative flesh and blood traditions of men. Such formulas echo the spirit of the age more than heaven. Such formulas try to tame the truth, attempting to make it more palatable to human mortals.
The truth will never be tamed because its nature is to make us wild.
The Apotheosis of George Washington
The special sacraments of the Church teach us also to hear and learn from the Father through the general sacraments of immortal epic and mythic story, poetry, art, architecture, and music.
Take architecture, for example. Every capital building in every country of the world is a temple. Walk into the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., look up and what do you see? A fresco called, “The Apotheosis of Washington.” The mural depicts George Washington ascending into the sky to take his place among the heavenly beings as a god (apotheosis). Is this blasphemy? That’s debatable. While “The Apotheosis of Washington” may not be comfortably Evangelical or Charismatic, it has a lot in common with the way the Father speaks about the nature of Mankind. Perhaps there’s something here to hear and learn from the Father after all.
May “The Apotheosis of Washington” stir us to jealousy.
Developing a Mythological Consciousness
To hear and learn from the Father requires that we develop a mythological consciousness, that is, a mystical imagination. Awakening such vision is the great purpose for which J.R.R. Tolkien strived in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Tolkien was painfully aware that his beloved British Empire had for some time been dying a slow death due to a lack of imagination. So he served up the waybread of Elves to travelers weary on the journey, even as the Angel of the Lord served the fatigued Elijah. “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7).
We all need some food for thought now and then.
Epic, mythic story is not pagan per se, even though there are pagan myths that would subvert to nefarious ends the great adventure of Mankind becoming like God in God’s way.
Satan was correct in saying to Eve, “you will be like God” (Gen. 3:5), for the Lord God made Mankind in His image and likeness. Satan’s lie––the lie at the root of mythology that fuels pagan idolatry––was that Adam and Eve could become like God on their own terms and not die. Rule number one in becoming like God is to eat only the "waybread" set before us by our good Father in heaven. "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die'” (Gen. 2:16-17).
While all idolatry is polytheism, not all polytheism is idolatry. There’s a fundamental distinction between the novel deity of God (Elohim) and the gift of deification––or theosis, as the Eastern Church calls it––given by Grace to Mankind. There is a God and you are not Him. Guarding this distinction between the Creator and the creation enables us more comfortably to embrace a sanctified mysticism and mythology of our own. Mythic story is essential in celebrating the Church as the union in Christ of a type of deified humanity distinct from the unique type of deity that God alone possesses. As long as we maintain this fundamental distinction, then we can explore with joyful abandon what it means to be created by God to be elohim like God. You see, I’m a Fundamentalist after all.
Pantheons of gods are an inescapable concept. A culture that forgets and falls out of communion with their “founding fathers” (i.e., priest-god-kings, like George Washington) cease to be a culture. Thus, one of the most important feasts of the Christian Year is All Saints Day, celebrated on November 1. On All Saints, we connect with that great pantheon of heroes who embody the Kingdom of God––a pantheon we are destined to join. Until we get comfortable with celebrating ourselves, along with the entire Communion of Saints, as priest-god-kings, then we will remain in a spiritual dark age while pagan empires advance against a castrated Christendom.
Lembas, the Legendary Waybread of Elves
In the common tongue, the special sacramental gathering of the Church to feast on lembas, the legendary waybread of Elves, is known as the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist. It’s fascinating to me that the Eucharistic prayer of the Church is addressed directly to the Father. These special Sunday gatherings train us in the basics of also feasting on lembas Monday through Saturday as we hear and learn from the Father through the sacramental structure of creation in general and of our humanity in particular.
Our journey––our Eucharistic lifestyle––of growing in likeness to God, “beyond the measure of mortal kind,” is too great for us. Therefore, the Lord invites us to His Table, to a Secret Counsel feast, and bids us to rise from our mortality and eat. “If anyone eats of this bread,” says Jesus, “he will live forever” (Jn. 6:51).
As the Elves counseled the members of the Fellowship of the Ring in “Farewell to Lorien,”
“Eat little at a time, and only at need. For these things are given to serve you when all else fails. The cakes will keep sweet for many many days, if they are unbroken and left in their leaf-wrappings, as we have brought them. One will keep a traveler on his feet for a day of long labour, even if he be one of the tall men of Minas Tirith."
May we feast on lembas together and fuel our imaginations for the journey ahead.
Let’s go wild.
Boyd+
The Thirteenth Week after Pentecost, 2015
Boyd writes a new Secret Counsel blog every couple weeks. Click here to see the whole collection.