Barefoot Preaching
Tomáš Halík on Preaching, Theologizing, and Speaking to a world in doubt
After a brief holiday hiatus and a few reflections upon some of the media gems of 2024, I am back at thinking with Tomáš Halík through his book, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us.
Chapter 4 of this text is lovingly called “Barefoot,” and it begins with some rather fundamental theological notions, yet they are ones that everyone needs (constant) reminding about. “God is mystery—that should be the first and last sentence of any theology,” writes Halík. Whoever God is, God is the one that is always beyond the grasp of human thinking and possession—this is true by definition according to the likes of no less a figure than St. Anselm.
Halík goes on “take care not to think for even a moment that you have gained sufficient insight into His mystery; the most you can hope for is to touch Him lightly from behind, like the hemorrhaging woman touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak.” Indeed, Halík speaks of God as the psalmists do — “cloud and darkness surround him”— therefore, “faith and atheism are two views of that reality—the hiddenness of God, His transcendence, and His impenetrable mystery; they are two possible interpretations of the same reality, seen from two opposite sides.” For him, faith and unbelief share a close proximity—and that is one reason his approach to sharing Christian faith with those unbelievers who are curious, interested, open, and “on the margins” is so promising. To be plain, Halík’s approach is promising because, like Christ, it enters the world of people with grace, and through inhabiting the shared space it holds the possibility of transformation.
Again, Halík thinks of many who profess atheism, doubt, skepticism, and other affiliated words on the spectrum between the two opposing poles, disciple and “master of suspicion,” as Zacchaeus-types. Like Zacchaeus, many of us moderns who doubt are still curious, or maybe more, maybe we have a yearning or even a unexplainable attraction to the subject of belief. Modern Zacchaeus types are like their biblical namesake, they remain a bit distant and out of the fray. But make no mistake, they are watching and listening. The real question that Halík is asking of preachers, priests, theologians, and all people of belief is do we know how to call up to them and do we know how to walk with them in light of their searching hearts?
In this chapter, “Barefoot,” Halík reminds us that Christianity is in fact a religion of paradoxes, in part because the “the Bible is a book of paradoxes.” He writes, “the Bible’s paradoxes consists of two assertions that need to be treated with enormous caution, so that one gently counterbalances the other: ‘God is an impenetrable mystery’ (He dwells in un-approachable light)—but also: God and man are alike (God created man in his own image).”
The second assertion reminds us that any pilgrim searching for God can see something of God in another person, be they saint, sinner, believer, or atheist, etc. And it also reminds us that it is faithful to move toward others, to share space with them, and to walk humbly along their path. Doing so may be said to be “incarnational” or even merely graceful. But it is more than that, because it also deeply affirms the fact that human uncertainty is one way that we express our divine image. Here is how Halík puts it, “And so the question naturally arises: isn’t Zacchaeus (and I’m sure we’ve realized that he is our image, and if not of all of us, at least many of us)—that hidden, yet watchful human being—also in some way a mirror, a likeness, a picture of God—i.e., a hidden, yet watchful God?” What a fascinating observation to make! What is so helpful about all of this is that it reminds us of the truth we often do not share with the world: our belief is not so simple and constant, rather it waxes and wanes, grows and weakens, for we never and in no way can fully grasp God. And by being reminded of this, we can better speak to, and thus walk with those who appear far away from the comfort of the pews.
Halík’s first assertion, to remind us, is that God is mysterious and hidden, and though God makes Himself known to us in certain ways and means, we never have full access to God. He adds that we often tend to privatize God (albeit accidently) with the genitive case: our God! Over time I believe that such language reaches verbal satiation, and we no longer parse out the meaning—or maybe what happens is that we slip into the unstated (though felt) delusion that God belongs to us, rather than it being us who belongs to God. Halík suggests thinking along with a theologian Joseph Moingt who “urges us to let God go! That is to say: Let Him go to others! Let us discover that he is not simply ‘the God of our fathers,’ our inherited property, but also the ‘God of others.' Only then will we discover that he is the on universal God, and not a particular deity among the deities of the Chaldean Empire; precisely because He is the one universal God, He is not a God on which we could have a monopoly.”
Too much of Christian faith, according to Halík is an inherited “faith of our fathers” sort of thing, and sometimes it gets stuffed into a box of tradition, nation, and creed. Thus it becomes one object among other objects. He calls this “inherited property.” When faith is inherited it becomes something to safeguard to the ever unchanging dictates of traditionalism (we have always done it that way). Rather, Halík like Moingt see a NT faith that was never tied to a nation or even a family, rather it was a pilgrim faith. Ever on the move. learning new languages, devoid of arrogant certainty, Christian faith traditionally (not traditionalism) professed that “God is always greater, semper maior…God is also the God of others—including seekers and those who don’t know Him. Yes, Go dis above all the God of seekers, of people on the journey.” One of my favorite paragraphs from Halík reads as follows:
If we profess the God of Abraham—and not some abstract philosophical concept of a vague ‘supreme being’ who might appeal to everybody—we prove our faithfulness, not by clinging to a specific tradition of the past, but, like Abraham, by entering new territory. ‘Our’ God is a pilgrim God, the God of the eternal exodus, who leads us out of the homes and homelands even though we would prefer to settle in them and fortify them—and also enclose Him in our borders, in the confines of our notions, concepts, traditions, and creeds.
Given all that Halík has said theologically about God, and humanity, he offers a few poignant spiritual comments. He declares that God is watchful, and that He is open to our openness—in fact, God is in our openness. Therefore, Halík challenges us all to be in the attitude of watchful seeking, for in that openness we may not only find God, we might learn that we are becoming like God in the very act. Further:
our openness toward others is our openness toward God, because through Christ, God shows solidarity with others—and our openness toward God and our neighbor is God’s openness toward us and the world, because through Christ (through the mystery of the Incarnation) God shows solidarity with us and seeks to be present in the world through our testimony of love.
All of this means we as believers are required to sit down with unbelievers, and to truly enter their world. We need to have patience and care as we listen. We need to be bold not to have all the answers ready and at hand—if for no other reason than we do not have all the answers. In a world where God is not fully on display, we must learn solidarity with those who are still seeking God. This is not a place of weakness, but rather one of strength. How are we to walk with these Zacchaeus types, and in what matter will we share solidarity with them on their path of questing, seeking, and looking? For Halík the answer is simple, yet profound: Barefoot. We walk barefooted, because we walk humbly with them. For a world of seeking—there is nothing more traumatizing to the faith than a triumphalist, know it all, win at all cost gospel!