Rachael Johnson Wonder of Scripture Lecture

Transcript

There is nothing I could possibly say that is going to live up to that introduction. I am sorry to disappoint you right now, but I am really grateful for colleagues as generous and wonderful as George and Kim and many others here, and I offer some thoughts. I'll take any blame for the thoughts that don't work for you, that aren't helpful, and all the credit can go to many of the colleagues and friends that I've been privileged to think through and talk about some of these ideas with that I'm going to be sharing today. So let me introduce you to the topic.

So, I'm going to share some thoughts on my favorite restoration text. It's Moses 1 in the Pearl of Great Price. I've always found this book really compelling. It's a theophany where God appears to Moses and speaks face to face and gives him glimpses into creation and the extent of his works. And one word that stands out and should catch your attention because it shows up six times in the first few verses, is this word behold. So what does it really mean to behold? I think we often kind of equate that, or translate that into looking, gazing, having someone tell us to look and gaze. But if we look at a little bit of the etymology of what it means to behold, at least in the Germanic roots for our word “behold”, there's two parts.

There's an intensifier “be”, which really means to just encompass, to be on all sides, to be thorough and complete. We used to have verbs like bespatter and bethwack, which unfortunately, we don't use anymore, but it intensifies the action of whatever is happening in a kind of radius and depth of action. And the action being intensified here in this word, is “hold”, to keep, possess, cherish, tend. So beholding, I hope your catching, is so participative and direct and embodied. Gaze is really our most distant sense. I can see an object further than any other perceptual object for any of my other senses, and this collapses that distance. Beholding is to touch and to carry. I could also geek out a little bit on the Greek version of this word, which really does mean just to look. And so if you'll excuse me for 30 seconds of geeking out on what it means to look in Greek, it was also tactile. Visual sight was a direct process between the eye and the object. People disagreed about whether the object itself emanated forms or species that would strike the eye and then be kind of generatively taken into the soul, or whether the eye itself emitted these rays of fire and rays of light, like visual fingers touching and probing the objects in its perceptual field. So whatever language tradition we're working with, this idea of behold is extremely direct. It's more about participation than a kind of abstract perception.

There's another feature that shows up when we talk about beholding in Moses that I also think is really important, and this is beholding by the Spirit. In these couple of verses, and it's scattered throughout the text, Moses clarifies that he is beholding with spiritual eyes. He is discerning and beholding by the Spirit of God. So what does it mean to behold with spiritual eyes, to behold by the Spirit. Again, I will not let you get away with any kind of abstraction here, I'm going to pair it with my favorite other scripture in Ezekiel that also talks about spirit. “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) So here, spirit is equated or accompanied by fleshliness, by the heart. And so if I were to mishmash these scriptures together, what it means to behold by the Spirit is really to see with eyes of flesh, instead of eyes of stone. To behold and take in and drink up with our entire soul, our body and our spirit, instead of guarding, filtering out, shutting down and narrowing. To behold by the Spirit is to behold everything. That's what it means to behold is to have that capacity. And so I hope you take that in as we go over a lot of scriptures that have to do with beholding, and in what sense this word is being invoked.

So my question today is what it really means to behold. How can we behold? In this direct, fulfilled way, what it does to us to do beholding in this way, how it transforms us. And I'm interested in this question partly because of my own research. Like George said, I study embodiment, especially in the devotional culture of Spanish Catholicism, and I focus on this moment in time in the 18th century. One scholar, Charles Taylor, calls it this wave of excarnation, where, instead of having the gravitational center of our experience or our epistemology being in the embodied soul in all of us, it becomes migrated to the mind, to the to the mental infrastructure of our identity. And I study what the costs were to this shift, and how faith itself started becoming more a matter of propositions instead of participation. And I study how many Catholics resisted this, seeing what they would have to give up to narrow their faith in this way, to excarnate their devotion in this way. And so I'm really invested in this question, not just academically and historically, but because I think we in the modern West have inherited this excarnation, even if our own Latter Day Saint theology and culture is richly radically material and embodied, we can't help swimming in the water. And I think we really risk losing contact with these embodied spiritual perceptual capacities that we need to transform, that we need to build the kingdom, that we need to do the work of healing. And so I invite you to consider your own embodiment, your own practices of beholding.

I'll actually have you do an exercise right now if you're game. Just close your eyes for a moment and think of someone you see daily. Just kind of crosses your visual field every morning or every evening. Maybe it's a child, a roommate, a parent, a spouse. Can you recall their image? Good, you're seeing them. You're registering them. What is it like to behold them? Have you ever beheld them? If you have, what was it like? And if you haven't, what would it be like?

I think you can intuit already the difference between looking and beholding, and this is what we're going for, this drinking in, taking up, caring within us. We already know the difference and what it feels like. So I'm going to focus on four different ways we can behold, and I hope it culminates in a different kind of beholding with these people we see every day. This is all in the service of life and our discipleship in the mundane, even though we're going to hit some pretty lofty heights in in the presentation that follows.

There are four beholds that show up in Moses, well, maybe more, but at least four. The first is right away in verse three, “Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty and endless is my name.” (Moses 1:3) So our first question is, how do we behold God? How do we take in, drink up God? And in the next verse, “Behold, thou art my Son.” (Moses 1:4) So how do we behold ourselves? And then a couple of verses later, after being commanded to do so, Moses beholds the world. How do we behold creation? And in that same verse, “He also beheld all the children of men.” (Moses 1:8) How do we behold each other? So these are the four questions I'm exploring today. I'll focus mostly on the first two for the constraints of time, but I'll touch a little bit on the last two.

So, these are the questions: How do we behold God? How do we behold ourselves? How do we behold creation, and How do we behold each other?

So, beholding God. I'm going to introduce you to some fancy words. Stay with me. They're fun. The scriptures really teach us a lot about how to Behold God, not just by what they say or what they command, but what they do. Scriptures act on us. They can open up our perceptual capacities in unusual ways, in ways that I'm just now kind of learning, partly through my research and practice. So, one way I want to talk about how the scriptures can help us Behold God is the way of metaphor. I'm sure you've come across dozens and dozens of metaphors for God in the scriptures. God is like a fortress, a shepherd, a midwife, a mother hen, light, fire, a king. They pile up so deeply that trying to hold them conceptually all together will not work. You are propelled out of a kind of conceptual approach to God and thrust into a more direct and participative, relational mode. And so I'm going to explore a few metaphors here, in which God is likened to something, and I want to share how precious my prayer practice has become, as I have focused less on my words, and more on just kind of situating myself before God and beholding God from these different standpoints, from these different relational modes.

And so I want you to consider what it would be like for you to just Behold God in prayer or in your daily life “as a mother who comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” (Isaiah 66:13) When I have done this, I have tapped into a depth of rest and trust that I didn't know was possible. And it anchors me in a way, that nothing in my conceptual apparatus is adequate to doing when I can behold God this way.

What would it be like to Behold God “as a bridegroom who rejoices over his bride, so will your god rejoice over you.” (Isaiah 62:5) To really behold the intensity of desire and yearning for communion that a bridegroom feels for his bride. Can we behold God that way? What would that do to us?

Or if we behold God as our Potter, “we are the clay, thou art our Potter, and we are all the work of thy hands.” (Isaiah 64:8) When I behold this God, in this way, something in me just relaxes and trusts the pain of transformation, the difficulties of life, knowing that something beautiful is being created. When I approach God and address God as my Potter.

And on the other hand, I can also Behold God as “my rock, my fortress, [my protector]... my buckler and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.” (Psalms 18:2) Instead of shaping me, God also protects me, upholds my integrity and my personhood. This gives me also a very different sense of my understanding of God and his relationship to me. And so there's a way of metaphor and invite you in your scripture study, but especially your prayer, to maybe feel what it would be like to Behold God in this way. There's a lovely clarification that the theologian Paul Fiddus talks about when we address God, in probably the most important function, as our father, right, that's not metaphor. But at the same time, Paul Fiddus says to refer to God as Father does not mean to represent or objectify God as a father figure, but to address God as Father. And so enter into the movement of a son, father relationship that is already there ahead of us. So all of these modes of being are ahead of us, ready for us to step into inhabit, speak from and live from, rather than just kind of conceptually arrange to figure out what God is like. This is what it means, I think, to behold.

There's also the completely opposite direction that the scriptures can take, if this is the way of metaphor, the way of naming, the way of affirming, what some theologians call the cataphatic, this means to make known, to affirm, there's also a scriptural strategy called the apophatic, the unsaying, the saying away the unnaming, that also happens in Scripture, and it fulfills the same purpose that metaphor does, which is to put us into a posture before God where we can't hold on to the saying and the unsaying in any kind of conceptual way, we're thrust again into direct encounter. We see this a lot in the forms of paradoxical extremes that we'll walk through in Moses, where, again, it exhausts our mental calculations of how to understand God in these extreme ways, and invites us into something deeper that takes us through the way of dark to then come to the way of light, back through dark and light. This is a dialectical strategy. I want to clarify here that the apophatic can sometimes alarm Latter-day Saints. It's associated with people who think of God as like totally other and transcendent. And there are no words adequate to God. And so we just can't say anything. But there's a medieval theologian who, right away saw the danger in this and said, the apophatic on its own is inadequate, because we can't love a mere postponement. We can't love a “not this”. So why the not this? What does this do to us? I think it just keeps us open, and breaks open our words and descriptions and experiences, so that we are beholding the face of God, and not just portraits of God, right. As beautiful as those portraits may be, a scholar that Kim introduced me to used that metaphor, we need to sometimes put down the portrait. And so we'll walk through a few examples in Moses 1 of doing this in our own restoration text. So these are again being extremes and paradoxes held together. So I invite you again to kind of feel what it's like. Don't try to, you know, put it together up here. Let it be, be a posture of beholding.

So right away, he introduces himself as we said, as “Lord God Almighty, Endless is my name... my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease.” (Moses 1:3-4) We are swept up into infinity and vastness, but before we lose our sense of the particular and the singular, He restores it back again: “I have a work for you.” So out of all this endlessness and vastness and infinity that can swallow up the particular, you are still here. A work is still here for you. So we can hold together the infinite and the particular. We can also think of God's presence. In those verses, He describes himself in a kind of omnipresent, omnitemporal way, and “without beginning of days or end of years. Is not this endless? ... all things are present with me, for I know them all.” (verse 3, 6) Yet just a few verses later, God is gone for Moses, “the presence of God withdrew from Moses, and his glory was not upon Moses.” (verse 9) So even as God can be somehow everywhere, in everything, without beginning or end, we can also experience the goneness of God. How do we hold these two together, that he is always here and yet somehow gone? Similarly, when God and Moses are going back and forth purveying creation, and Moses says, Why? Why have you created these things? We always kind of jump to verse 39 “This is my work,” and I'll do it in just a second. But first he says, “for mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.” (verse 31) There is something God does not disclose. There is something not accessible or knowable in terms of how we can understand and Behold God. But there is always something. “Behold, this is my work and glory–to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (verse 39) I don't think he's changing his mind like I'm not going to tell you, I guess I'll tell you. I'll tell you, I think he is saying, right, there is something mysterious and maybe incomprehensible, even at the same time that I want to be comprehended and I want to communicate, and I want to give you clarity. I want you to know. So how can we hold both of these dispositions God has towards us, of disclosing and not disclosing.

It happens again in the Theophany in Exodus, where Moses encounters God in the burning bush. This is the most classic apophatic text. And again, the importance of seeing how it operates together with the unnaming and the naming always together. God introduces himself to Moses as a god of relationality, of time, of history. I am the God of thy father, of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob. I see you. I hear you. I know you. I come down to you. right? An imminent God, a God we can hear and touch and see. But then a few verses later, when Moses says, okay, but really like, What do I tell people? What is your name? When they ask ‘who has commissioned me to tell them these things? And he says, you are going to say “I am, that I am. And in Hebrew, you can also read this as I will be, who I will be. There is something mysterious and unlocatable, unnameable, that God wants Moses to understand and convey alongside, and he'll go right back in the next verse to and “I am the God of your fathers”. We can hold both.

So what is the effect of putting together these extremes? For me, it encourages me and helps me put myself into a posture where I'm ready to be surprised. If I could add a fruit of the Spirit to Galatians with long suffering and meekness, I would add surprise. Some of my most precious and transformative encounters with God have been upending. They've shattered everything I thought I kind of knew and felt about God. And even as much as I treasure those experiences, and I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't think of them, this unnaming strategy tells me that I need to be ready to also give those up. I can remember them, and I can make sure that I don't idolatrize them. They don't get in the way of the new revelation, the new encounter, the new presence, right? I can surrender them to the dark if need be, so God can set a new bush ablaze. And I think this freedom and trust opens us up so much more to beholding God and seeing how God shows up in our lives. And it takes a lot of trust, I think, to do that.

I think we'll see similar dialectics in the nature of beholding ourselves, and so we'll walk through a couple more. This is an image of a Roman mirror. One of the most famous metaphors of self-beholding comes from Paul's words about how we only see ourselves darkly and we can't really behold ourselves truly, right? We behold ourselves darkly as in a mirror, because back then, they used the reflective surfaces of brass or copper as their mirrors, and so there really was never a true reflection that you could really access. And while I think that's really true, as Paul says, that this full and comprehensive self-beholding is not available to us now, I think there are moments and glimpses and ways of opening up our own beholding to ourselves, that can get us closer. So I'll be working with these pairs again, these kinds of dialectics.

So, after Moses has witnessed and beheld creation and the children of man that we'll get to in a second, this is his conclusion: “for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed." (verse 10) I think we've all experienced that, right, looking through a telescope, standing in front of an ocean at night, looking up at the stars, right when, all of a sudden, you almost can't feel yourself. You're so small. I think this is has to be somewhat of what Moses felt. So while there might be a kind of relative insignificance to Moses, God reassures him that he is still numbered, he is named, he is known. Of all the “many worlds that now stand, and innumerable are they unto [you]; but [they] are numbered unto me, for they are mine, and I know them.” (verse 35) And again he repeats, “the heavens are many... cannot be numbered... but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.” (verse 35)

So what does it do to us to hold these two together, that there is a kind of undeniable relative insignificance to our speck like existence in the cosmos, even as at the same time we are known. For me, this is incredibly intense, and it's really easy for me to lose hold of both. I can either indulge in the narcissism of I am God's work, I am known, I am his child, and make myself the center of the universe. I can also slip just as easily into the other side where I am nothing, nothing I do matters. What's this all for? And as I am learning to hold those two together. My posture before God has changed from this kind of anxious, earnest wrestle all the time I'm trying, I'm trying, to a deep trust and a deep rest. I know that I am known. I know that I'm numbered, and that's enough. This changes the way I pray. My back is straighter, my head is bowed, my chest is a light, and I want to carry that posture into life. This kind of still point, this balance of holding the two together.

We can do this in another way, I mentioned how intense it can be or pathological if we only focus right on the one and not the other. But I do think it's really important that God says right away to Moses, after introducing himself, he says, You are my son, and I've spent probably too much time in the smallness. I've spent too much time in what I though was a kind of mature self effacement of my own standing before God, such that when I read that scripture, I almost can't take it. The intimacy is too intense. The being known is too much. And something that helps me bear that kind of being known quality is this odd digression God adds that I never really understood until now, which is reassuring him that you are my son and you are in the similitude of my only begotten. Why? Why does it matter to see our true nature as intrinsically deeply from the beginning, Christ-imaged? Not something we necessarily or in all the ways have to earn and develop and prove. There's some of that, obviously, but there's also just an intrinsic quality that this is who we are. We are made in the similitude of Christ, and who is Christ? Christ works. Christ does. Christ serves. And so this empowers me out of my self dramas of “who am I”, to “I have work to do”. And if I can do it in the similitude of Christ, as Adam and Eve are commanded in a few chapters, they say, the angel says, “Everything you do, do in the name of the Son”. I find this immensely empowering. I've had many moments, maybe you've had them too, of being really focused in prayer or scripture study, and I just had one of these moments last week where I was spending a whole week in stillness and prayer, and I just felt this nudge, get up, get up and do something. And so I appreciate the way holding this decenters me and frees me to discern what is needful based on this confidence and assurance and who I am.

I'll just close with a couple examples about how this translates into beholding creation and beholding each other. And I think it's really important that we first perceive the unity that connects us in creation, because to God, they're the same thing. When God is commanding Moses to look, he says, Behold this one thing I show unto you. And what does he name? What is this one thing? He beholds the world on which he was created, and the ends thereof, and all the children of men, which are and which were created. So there is a sense of createdness that binds us and creation and each other, that God seems really intent on helping Moses behold. There is a unity.

At the same time... I think one of the best voices for this kind of interconnectedness is Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who passed away just a couple years ago. And my friend used to say this to me. She said once, well, “you can't forget the cloud is in the paper,” Like the cloud is in the paper? What in the world are you saying? And I realized that she was referring to Thich Nhat Hanh passage about, “if you are a poet (and I'd say if you're beholding), you will see clearly there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without Rain, the trees cannot grow. Without trees, we cannot make the paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not there, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say the cloud and the paper inter-are.” And he coins this fun neologism of inter-being and inter-are. So when we see paper, we see clouds. This is the kind of unity I think God is pointing us towards. Even as, on the other hand, he doesn't want us to lose the particularity and singularity of creation. And that's why, I think it's really relevant that in verse 27 and 28 when, when Moses is doing this beholding, he particularizes it. He says “there was not a particle of which he did not behold,” a particle of the earth. And same with children of men, “he beheld the inhabitants, and there was not a soul which he beheld not.” Again, we're holding both this shared unity of creativeness and the indissoluble of particularity, of each blade of grass, of each face. I've had moments when I could really kind of sink into this, and eating a blueberry will make me cry. It is so beautiful when you really just stop and look at the sheen and the colors. If that sounds crazy, go try it. Go, try it. Give yourself three minutes to just eat one thing or look in the face of someone and just stare at one feature until it decenters your normal, habitual way of seeing. I recommend it.

So with all that being said, I want to emphasize our own Latter-day Saint spin on what we might call beholding, and that is that this beholding is in the service of life. It is in the service of all experience, metabolizing and witnessing all experience, whether it's the joy as Adam and Eve behold newly thanks to their transgression, they can now behold joy; or as Enoch witnesses sorrow and suffering. Our Latter-day Saint commitment to all experience shall be for thy good. You must descend as low as the lowest abyss, high as the highest heavens, as Joseph Smith talks about our efforts to understand God, we need the capacity to do it all, to behold it all, so that we can come back into life with a commitment and a direct kind of participative love, for building the kingdom, for healing each other, and for doing the work in Christ's name, and in Christ's image. And this is something that makes me marvel and wonder, and I hope it does for you, too. Thank you.