The Brain Box

Seeing how God is bigger than the boxes we put him in

12/16/2019

Matthew 21:23-27 When Jesus had come into the temple area, the chief priests and the elders of the people approached him as he was teaching and said, "By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?" Jesus said to them in reply, "I shall ask you one question, and if you answer it for me, then I shall tell you by what authority I do these things. Where was John's baptism from? Was it of heavenly or of human origin?" They discussed this among themselves and said, "If we say 'Of heavenly origin,' he will say to us, 'Then why did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet." So they said to Jesus in reply, "We do not know." He himself said to them, "Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things."

The older I get the more I am convinced that God speaks not only to all people, but also through all people. God’s voice can be heard in you and me and in Tom, Dick and Harry. Bishop Sartain reminded me about this many years ago while he was bishop of Little Rock. We were discussing some topic and I stated rather strongly (I never state anything strongly): “Well, bishop, the Holy Spirit clearly speaks through you because you are a successor of the apostles.” Bishop Sartain smiled and gently corrected me saying: “John, the Holy Spirit speaks through all of us.” I was right, of course, that the Spirit speaks through the successors of the apostles, the bishops. But he was more right because God cannot be boxed up, even in a bishop. I was trying to keep God in a box, and Bishop Sartain reminded me that God is bigger than any box our brains can conjure.

Both the readings today from Numbers 24 and Matthew 21 expound episodes where the Spirit shatters the boxes people try to cram him into. In the book of Numbers, Balak, the king of Moab, hires a prophet named Balaam to curse the Israelites. Three times Balaam opens his mouth to utter, “God daaaaa…” but he ended up saying the opposite, “God bless you.” As Balaam rides along on his donkey, even the donkey starts to speak prompted by the Spirit. If the Holy Spirit can speak through a jackass – that’s a literal translation of the Hebrew – then surely we are qualified for God to speak through us.

In the gospel the chief priests and elders question Jesus’ authority to speak and teach in public. In a sense, they were asserting the same argument I was with Bishop Sartain, that is, God only speaks through his appointed authority figures, like chief priests and elders. And through no one else. In other words, the Jews wanted to keep God in a box; a box they created and therefore a box they could control. But like Bishop Sartain, Jesus tries to get them to “think outside the box,” that is, to see that God’s Spirit speaks to everyone and through everyone as he chooses and as he pleases. They cannot control him.

Jesus invites them to contemplate how the Spirit inspired John the Baptist to preach and baptize. But they cannot break out of their own box, and reply: “We don’t know” where his authority comes from. Jesus had tried to teach Nicodemus, the Pharisee, the same lesson in John 3:8 using wind imagery, saying: “The wind blows where it wills and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’ In other words, God is bigger than any box our brains can conjure.

I believe one of the beauties of the Advent and Christmas seasons is beholding how God breaks out of the boxes we try to cram him into. If we are attentive, we can hear the Holy Spirit speaking through stars and sages, through shepherds and swaddling clothes. We may try to trap the truth and insist the Holy Spirit only speaks through a particular politician, or a certain theologian, or a specific pope. But not through anyone else. Sometimes people give me a book to read and I am tempted to turn up my nose at it and think: “That is a waste of my time.” That’s when I recall those wise words of Archbishop Sartain: “John, the Holy Spirit speaks through everyone.” Now I am reading the book called “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” that a third grader recommended to me. When I keep that perspective in mind, I can listen to anyone who speaks to me with an open-mind, even if he is a jackass (I am making a biblical reference, of course).

Be careful trying to bind the Holy Spirit and make him fit inside the little box called the human brain. In his masterful “Prosologion,” St. Anselm argues: “God is a being than which nothing greater than be conceived.” In other words, God is always greater than the box of our brain. Trying to put God in a box is like trying to catch the wind. This Advent try to think outside the box, the box that is your brain.

Praised be Jesus Christ!