“The Lord is near” (Phil. 4:5).
In our second reading this morning, St. Paul tells the Church in Phillipi that the Lord is near; in earlier translations, that the Lord is “at hand.” The English word “near” in our reading today comes from a comparative form of the old English word “nigh”: so something in those days was either “nigh, nigher, or nighest.” At some point, “nigh” faded out (though we still hear it in hymns) and the more intensive form “nigh-er” (pronounced “near”) took its place; so now we say that something is either “near, (the old nigh-er) nearer, or nearest.” This change in language reminds us that when it comes to the word “near,” it’s all a matter of relative degree: raising the question of how near anything is, how proximate, after all? What do we mean when we say the Lord is near?
On top of this, the Greek word that “near” translates is itself ambiguous, referring to either time or place. That ambiguity is important: depending on the emphasis, something can be either “nearby” in space, or perhaps “nearly” present in time. If something is “nearby” you can reach out and grab it; but if you tell someone you are “nearly” there, you could in fact be almost anywhere, hardly present at all. When you’re not on time, who hasn’t told their loved one that “I’m nearly there,” when the truth is that you are hopeful they will put up with your late arrival anyway!
When St. Paul tells the Christians in Philippi that the Lord is near, he could be telling them that Jesus is already with them, the resurrected Messiah who always stands in the midst of his People; as St. Paul says in the Letter to the Galatians, “it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). But he could also be referring, as he does on many occasions, to the coming of the Lord Jesus at the end of time. Paul ends one of his letters to the Church in Corinth with the prayer, “Our Lord, come!” (1 Cor. 16:22), invoking the Lord who is “nearly” there. Yet Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew that no one, not even the angels in heaven, not even Jesus himself, and certainly not St. Paul, knows the time of the coming of the Son of Man (Matt. 24:36)!
We don’t need to resolve this tension in our reading, about how near Jesus is, because it is authentic to the Christian faith. Christ is both present with us, since his resurrection from the dead, but also still to come. When we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrate Christ who is present with us in our assembly, in his Body and Blood, and in his Body the Church. At the same time, we scan the horizon for the One who is yet to come. “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again,” we say in our eucharistic prayer. As we gather, we still look out for, we still “expect,” an event that has not yet taken place, but for which we hope and pray.
Christians occupy that liminal space, the boundary between our present state and our future hope. That’s where we are this morning, balanced on a fine line between one reality and the next. That place where we find ourselves can be awkward and uncomfortable and even scary. We’re like the person dancing on the highwire who could suddenly go either one way or the other. It’s likely to make us dizzy. That’s what it means to live where and when the Lord is “near.”
As people who live on that fault line, on that highwire, we need to be ready, come what may. As the Gospels tell us, “the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matt. 24:44). That’s right: unexpected. This is one of the reasons that St. Paul tells us in our reading to rejoice, because joy is what we experience as we perch on the edge of the unscheduled. Joy is the feeling of happiness that surprises us when we least expect it. It’s unanticipated happiness at an improbable moment, or even the least likely moment. For people who are waiting, it’s the air we breathe. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4).
The psalmist tells us that “weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:6). Joy is the feeling God prepares for people who are poised in the balance between one reality and the next. Joy is the desire for what we believe is ahead even when we are in the midst of things we cannot understand, comprehend, or even tolerate on our own. Weeping may spend the night: a lovely metaphor. Weeping may move in, open the door to our home even though uninvited. It may share our residence and camp out; take up our time and waste it, and break our hearts in the bargain. But joy comes in the morning, when we least expect it, at a time no one knows. Rejoice, St. Paul tells us, because the Lord is near.