A blessed November to you all.
This year, for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about parts and partiality. I’m one of those people who hates to leave things half done or hanging on for another day. It’s so bad, in fact, that the first thing I do after getting home from a vacation is to unpack, get things sorted for the laundry, and to put things away. I like the feeling of wholeness and completeness.
And I don’t think I’m alone in this. In psychology, there are two theories which address this dislike of undone or incomplete things: the Zeigarnik effect and Ovsiankina effect. These ideas stress that humans are better able to remember an unfinished project over a finished one due to the stress and anxiety of being unfinished and also they explain why our brains won’t let us forget that we’re only partially done with things.
As I’ve been thinking about these odd phenomena, I keep coming back to these verses:
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
-I Corinthians 13:9-12
In these verses, the Apostle Paul lifts up the idea of two realities: the present one (the one we’re currently in) and the one that is of the world to come (at the return of Jesus).
When things are left undone, we feel odd. We feel as though there is a nagging feeling that something is off kilter and things are amiss. We don’t feel whole until all things are whole.
We live in a period right now that many theologians call, “The almost but not yet.” We’ve yet to fully realize the promises of God that were begun in Christ because they’re not complete yet. What we see and what we experience and what we know are only in part, as Paul says, because the complete has yet to come. While we look at the Communion Table, for example, as a sure sign of God’s grace and love for the world, it’s an incomplete sign. It certainly reminds us of God’s love made real in the incarnation of Christ. It also certainly brings us together as sisters and brothers in Christ to receive the means of grace at Christ’s Table. And for sure it allows us to see a glimpse of the world to come where there is plenty good room for all to come, be fed, and live in communion with God.
But we’re not there yet. In fact, some of the last words of the canon of the Bible, from Revelation 22 are, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Since the earliest days of the church we have been clamoring as Christ’s people for His wholeness to pervade us. And yet…we still wait.
We’re watching and waiting and feeling anxious and perplexed as we traverse our life courses and try to make sense of the partial. We pick up broken pieces and try to make an entire tapestry from them but then get frustrated when we’re unable. We live in the almost but not yet; we live in the in-between; we live in waiting.
But take heart and have hope.
The French Jesuit theologian, priest, and oddly enough archaeologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said these words: “the ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the measure of the maturity of all things.” This is known by theologians as “The Omega Point.” In this idea, the entirety of Creation is moving toward its perfect consummation, or put simply, it’s wholeness. We are awaiting that beautiful day!
Pope Francis I, in his encyclical Laudato Si (or Care for our Common Home) put it this way:
Creation is of the order of love. God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things . . .In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. This leads us to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence, within which it develops. Faith allows us to interpret the meaning and the mysterious beauty of what is unfolding.
-Laudato Si, footnote #53
We are part of the Creation and therefore, by extension, part of the order of God’s love. While we know the universe and our lives only in part, God, the Creator, knows all things fully and intimately. The universe is, if de Chardin is correct, moving toward its fullness when the partial will be made complete and the broken whole again.
As we get ready to enter the Advent and Christmas seasons, think of what it means for God to step into the world in the incarnation of Jesus: The wholeness of God entered our broken world to begin the process of achieving God’s wholeness.
We are part of this process: as recipients and as co-workers. We know only part, but God knows all. And we have been lovingly invited to participate fully with God.