Heart to heart

The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers recommends the work of theologian and writer Richard Rohr.

IFYOU are searching for a depth of spiritual insight or craving an understanding of the mystery of God, then you might be interested in exploring the work of Father Richard Rohr. Richard is a Franciscan priest and writer whose books and meditations are read by people around the globe. He is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation – an institution built on his conviction that both action and contemplation need to be balanced and integrated if the life of faith is to be of any use either personally or in practice.

You can sign up to receive a daily meditation from the Center (it’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico – hence the American spelling) at https://cac.org/ email-sign-up/ and if you are anything like me you will look forward to starting each day with some new challenge or thought.

Of course, if you are anything like me there will be articles that you do not understand and there will be ideas with which you disagree, but most often your horizons will be expanded, and you will be inspired.

Those who write these meditations have a deep love of scripture, but they draw on the experience of many other disciplines to illuminate its truth.

In thinking about the certainty with which we hold to what we believe about God, Richard Rohr contrasts what he describes as the difference between mouthy certitude and mystical certitude.

Mouthy certitude, he says, “is filled with bravado, overstatement, quick, dogmatic conclusions, and a rush to judgment.

People like this are always trying to convince others. They need to get us on their side and tend to talk a lot in the process. Underneath the ‘mouthiness’ is a lot of anxiety about being right [and it] often gives itself away by being rude and even unkind because it is so convinced it has the whole truth”. He writes about how that kind of certitude has to be balanced with mystical certitude which, he says, “is utterly authoritative, but it’s humble. It isn’t unkind. It doesn’t need to push its agenda. It doesn’t need to compel anyone to join a club, a political party, or even a religion. It’s a calm, collected presence, which Jesus seemed to possess entirely.”

Take a moment to read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5–7, and when you’ve done that think about why, in the last verse of chapter 7, Matthew says: ‘the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law’. The authority which is referred to here is not derived from the rhetoric of the preaching or the logic of the argument or any fear invoked in the listener; it is down to the integrity between the word and action of the Rabbi. Jesus lives out what he believes, and he has nothing invested in browbeating people into sharing his view.

“Those who write these meditations have a deep love of scripture, but they draw on the experience of many other disciplines to illuminate its truth.

The people, however, respond in great numbers because he speaks to them heart to heart.

This is what Richard Rohr means when he speaks of mystical certitude, and while Rohr may be a Franciscan steeped in the Roman Catholic faith, this kind of thinking is not foreign to our reformed understanding of faith as a product of the goodness and grace of God. In my experience, it is in the presence of mystical certitude that faith is born, nurtured and matures.

In the early Church at Corinth there was a dispute about the pedigree of some the new disciples – were they products of Paul or Apollos’ ministry? The answer was clear, Paul and Apollos did no more than plant and water – it was a work of God that made faith grow. Each of us has a part to play in trying to articulate what we believe, but the greater part is living a life that allows God to play the greater part.