Reflecting on Mysticism and the Cross

[The following is a reflection I wrote a decade ago for my website www.preachingpeace.org]

II Cor 12:1-10

Anthropological Reading

“Mysticism does not have the patience to wait for God’s revelation” – Soren Kierkegaard

In our text today, Paul describes an ‘out-of-body’ experience he had. It is the only place in the Pauline letters that he does so.  If we date the Corinthian correspondence, following Robert Jewett’s chronology, to sometime in the year 55, then Paul is alluding to an experience that would have taken place just prior to or at the beginning of his first missionary journey, some seven years after his conversion (assuming a conversion date of late 34 C.E.).   His escape from Damascus would then have taken place sometime in late 37 (mentioned in 11:30-32).

Mystical experiences are both difficult to explain and harder to explore. They are sui generis, outside the categories of the rational and logical.  Those who seek mystical experiences often find themselves disappointed; this is because these kinds of experiences cannot be sought, they must be given.  Nevertheless, people down through the ages have sought some deeper connection to the ‘other-worldly’ to the divine.  When people seek mystical experience it indicates their weariness with the current order of their mental-spiritual universe; they seek something, to quote Barth ‘totally other.’  Our own age with its explosion of techniques and new age ideologies is but the contemporary manifestation of an age-old desire.

Mystical experience provides a certain epistemological security; if my experience is mine and it feels real to me, then it functions as a place to begin that cannot be doubted because I experienced it.  Unlike theological reflection done by the rational-logical mind, with its constant slicing and dicing of ideas, its questions and doubts, mystical experience is owned because it is personal.  Many have had certain experiences they cannot explain.  My first real mystical experience occurred in October of 2004; it was an experience of the pure love of God. It occurred during a guided meditation.  Since that time I have had other sorts of experiences I would describe as mystical.  They do give a certain ‘grounding’ to why I do what I do.  But they are intensely personal and thus private

Unlike so many modern mystics, Paul does not either encourage others to imitate his mystical experience nor does he offer techniques for experiencing transcendence. And unlike so many modern mystics, Paul refuses to allow his mystical experience to be the place from which he speaks.  Paul’s mysticism is tempered by his theology of the cross.  It is in his suffering, the insults he endures, his hardships that he rejoices, where he sees God active.  Why? Because for Paul, life is not about living beyond the human, but precisely in the depths of his humanity.  Just as God was most fully active in the cross of Christ, reconciling the world to God’s self, so also it is in the cross of our lives that God does God’s best work.

We are, all of us, a combination of experiences, some of which seem to reach heaven itself, others which plunge us into the hell of our existential abyss. It is these later that Paul says we rejoice in, for it is in darkness that light is most fully revealed, where God’s grace is sufficient for our every need, where we become open-handed and utterly dependent on the goodness of God, trusting in God to bring about good from evil, grace in sin and life from death.

Historical/Cultural

Paul’s mysticism has been explored by a number of commentators. I personally do not find much of it very helpful inasmuch as the commentators themselves do not approach this topic from the inside, as those who know the kind of reality of which Paul speaks.  They seek to scientifically understand that which cannot be understood except from the inside.

So What?

Our contemporary desire for ‘other-worldly’ experience runs deep. The use of narcotics is a prime example that we seek something other than what we can find in the hum-drum mundane existence we live in.  Massive group gatherings, whether concerts, political rallies or mega-church services all point to our desire to know deeply, to know for certain that we are not alone, that we are more than just isolated bits of cosmic dust, that the temporal can be eclipsed by…the eternal

This desire is not wrong, it is just too often misplaced. We can ill afford to become modern Gnostics, each trying to get the other to replicate our mystical experience thus validating for us the truth that we seek.  Mystical experiences are not mimetically duplicable.  This is precisely the problem with cults ; they offer a duplicable technique to access the divine. Christians do this too, when they say that this mode of worship or a certain style of singing or prayer will automatically lead you to God.  This ex opere operato view of technique is false.  What we could say is that such-and-such a style of worship or praise has been beneficial for many, recognizing that no spiritual technique is for all.

Finally, we must always come back to a theology of the cross. For too long we have been told that our ‘bad’ experiences are times when God was absent, rather than seeing in them opportunities to experience the grace of the good God, the abba of Jesus.  It is in the abyss of human life that God shows God’s self to be most active.  It is during these times we are called to sing praise.  North American Christians will soon discover just how hard life can be.  Will they despair or will they learn to carry their cross and rejoice in the One who raised Jesus from the dead…and has promised to do the same for them.