The No Thing God
About Epiphanies
Matthew 2:1–12 (NRSV)
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
We talk a lot about God, about attributes and character, about words and deeds, about revelations and incarnation. There are a million ways and a trillion words spilled talking about God, seeking to know who, what—even why—divinity is. All these words are our attempt to grasp at God, our struggles to name God, our desires to know God… and every word we utter, write, ponder, or study falls completely short of the truth of God.
Even the word “GOD” is a title we have given to divinity, a word we crafted in a shorthand attempt to encapsulate the fullness of Yahweh. Yes, God gave us God’s name when God told Moses who God was. But even that name is enigmatic. “I am that I am.” God is what, or rather who, God is. And God is outside of our reach.
God is a No Thing. The essence, nature, and fullness of God are like nothing else we have encountered, can fathom, or even imagine. God is far greater than the cosmos, reality, and definitely bigger than certainty.
There is no grasping the being of God. There is no encapsulating God’s nature with virtues and attributes. There is no understanding God through word and deed. God is utterly mysterious, completely hidden—not absent—and far beyond what we can comprehend.
All of this truth is why Epiphany is so special to me.
On the feast of Epiphany, we revel in revelation, we celebrate in specificity, and we worship in wonder.
Epiphany remembers the magi’s journey and arrival at the feel of the baby Jesus, where he was honored and extravagantly gifted by these astrologers from the east (probably the area of Persia). These Wisemen had seen a sign in the heavens, the birth of a new star that traveled before them, leading them to the infant Christ.
Here we see Jesus worshiped without being understood. The magicians from the East—these wise men—knew they were witnessing a mystery that they might never know the answer to. They didn’t have theological formulations or doctrinal statements. They had a mysterious star, and a baby born to a poor family in the countryside of Roman occupied territory. All the Magi could do was to bear witness to the reality of Jesus.
Jesus is the incarnation, God taking on and becoming fully flesh. Jesus is the exact reflection of everything that God is, the exact reflection of No Thing.
In Jesus, No Thing became some body without losing the inscrutable mystery that is all that God is.
Jesus as the incarnation, as the Word of God, is the revelation of who God is, but Jesus does not limit what God is.
This is the beauty of Epiphany: in Jesus we discover the relationship we have we the divine. In God’s ineffableness, one thing—perhaps the only one thing—we can say with any degree of certainty is that in Jesus God has revealed Godself relationally.
Relationally we enter into the mystery of divinity.
Relationally we seek signs of God the No Thing actively at work in our world.
Relationally we come to worship at the feat of the infant Christ, who is the fullness of God.
Jesus the some body has shown us that the God that is No Thing loves us, longs for us, and lights a path for us to come and wonder.
But mystery only goes so far in a relationship. It’s not that myatery needs something added to it. Rather, we are bred for intimacy, and pure mystery leaves us in the dark where we can’t find our way to the heart of the one we love.
How are we supposed to stay in a relationship with this god that is beyond the scope of our reality, beyond our ability to understand in any way, beyond our grasping in the dark.
To stay in a relationship with the No Thing God, we need to stop trying to master Jesus.
The incarnation is wild, untamed, reckless with its unbounded unfathomability.
Each and every time we—Each and every time I—approach Jesus as a topic to comprehend, we lose the relationality and begin to try and cram the No Thing God into our theological toy box.
It’s like trying to catch the wind with a butterfly net.
God will always slip through our grasp because our tiny grasping hands aren’t big enough or powerful enough to hold the fullness of a God who is No Thing.
And Jesus is the image of this invisible, ineffable God.
What makes us think we can contain Christ?
What makes us think we can scrutinize and moralize who and what he is?
What makes us think that we can understand Jesus, who is the No Thing God incarnate?
We can’t even explain the reality of the incarnation, how divinity becomes full humanity while remaining divinity without losing a drop of humanity. We can’t fathom how this works, so what makes us think that we can master Jesus himself?
Yes, we can know historical facts about the particularity of Jesus’ life, but facts aren’t the self, and Godself remains aloof from the facts even as the mystery walked among us.
We can’t theologize God, define God, or comprehend God. All we can do is come to the feet of the crucified Christ and worship.
As we worship, as we enter into the relationship with mystery, as we pay homage to the incarnation who bled for us, we are liberated.
Knowing that God is unknowable yet has come to be in intimacy with us frees us from having to be certain. We don’t have to get all the questions right—as if there was one right answer to the Creator of space and time. We don’t have to even ask the right questions. We are invited to come and offer what we have, bear witness to the truth of the God who is love, and be liberated by the simple truth that since Jesus loves us, since the God who is No Thing loves us, nothing, no one, no system of oppression, violence, and domination can ever speak with any truth that we are worthless.
It doesn’t matter what your bank account says.
It doesn’t matter what bigots, homophobes, or racists say.
It doesn’t matter what the government says.
It doesn’t matter what your family says.
You are worthy; you are wanted; you are welcomed and loved as a child of the No Thing God.
The fullness of the mystery of divinity embraces you, kisses your face, calls you by your true name, and will never stop.
God always has. God always will.
Epiphany invites us to come and worship the God who is beyond us and loves us more than we could ever understand. During this season when mystery beyond the cosmic plane comes to us in incarnation, may our words cease. May our silence be the gold we lay at the feat of Jesus. May the ceasing of our striving to understand and master Christ be the frankincense we offer in homage. May our participation in wonder over the mystery of the No Thing God be the myrrh, be the gift we bring in reverence and awe to the incarnation of love.
We have been invited into the cloud of unknowing to be liberated from ego, fear, and shame. We have been invited to the mystery of incarnation to find the God who is No Thing welcoming us home. We are being invited to cease our grasping at God and instead to be embraced by the God who is beyond all comprehension.
Let us be embraced.
I am in the process of becoming a community chaplain with The Order of Hildegard. This program is designed to help form people into spiritual leaders that lead and serve from the margins. It’s for the people who don’t quite fit with the traditional church because of trauma, disability, or identity. If you, as my community, would like to help me fulfill the financial obligation this chaplaincy program has, you can give at the link below. Thank you for the myriad ways you support me.
If you’re aching to listen for God in the real stuff of life—grief, wonder, doubt, desire—I offer spiritual direction as a space to breathe and be heard. We listen together for the Spirit moving in the ordinary, the hidden, the in-between. No fixing. No formulas. Just presence, honesty, and room to be fully human before God.
If that sounds like what your soul needs, I’d love to walk with you