I first encountered Julian of Norwich in a college course called “The Great Conversation.” My beloved copy of Julian’s book, Revelations of Divine Love, is full of underlining and marginal notes in messy bold pen.Some of the scribbling pertains to the text; the rest of it is my side of a goofy dialogue with a friend during class. I find that amid all that is archaic and weird in this thousand-year-old piece of writing, Julian’s voice remains fresh.She continues to inspire and astonish me. Honestly, it wasn’t her famous phrase that first caught my attention, the one that will be our Advent theme: “All shall be well.” It was her revolutionary description of the motherhood of God.
It is a characteristic of God to overcome evil with good. Jesus Christ therefore, who himself overcame evil with good, is our true Mother. We received our “being” from him—and this is where his maternity starts—and with it comes the gentle protection and guard of love which will never cease to surround us. Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother. (Chapter 59)
As I mentioned, we are taking up “All shall be well” as our theme when Advent begins in two weeks.Advent is a time of preparation for what is coming. And what is coming is multi-layered. We prepare, again and again, to welcome the gift of a child, Jesus, God-with-us. And simultaneously, we await in hope of a newborn world. Advent proclaims that God’s incarnation, God’s becoming flesh, is bringing creation to fulfillment and freedom. God is in the process of birthing the beloved community for which we long. Today is a day, then, of preparing to prepare, as we learn about Julian and then, during coffee hour, we make wreaths and cards so that we can be ready to observe Advent in our homes and hearts.
Today’s Gospel text describes a world coming apart—and maybe this all sounds kind of uncomfortably familiar. Things are bad, chaotic, scary, unhinged—we have wars upon wars, earthquakes, famines. The conditions on earth are not life-sustaining. Structures we assumed would last forever are shaking at their foundations. Likely Mark was written in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, as the Jewish people reeled in the face of a failed uprising and Rome’s seemingly absolute power to dominate and oppress them. It is in this context that Mark portrays Jesus saying: “do not be alarmed” and “do not be led astray.” Throughout Mark’s Gospel Jesus has been teaching his followers what kind of Messiah he is and what sort of community he is shaping them to be—in the face of the world’s ways of violence, greed and fear, the way of Christ cultivates power-with rather than power-over, centering counter intuitive values and practices—care for the vulnerable, mutual service and suffering love.
Jesus reiterates here that there are no easier paths, no shortcuts. His way leads directly through a hurting world coming apart at the seams. And yet there is reassurance, because even in such times, God is at work, in hidden and surprising ways. Today’s text is drawn from the boilerplate of apocalyptic literature common in the centuries before and after Jesus. This genre declares that amid death and destruction, something else is being revealed, being uncovered. Jesus says, “This must take place, but the end is still to come.” “End” is telos in Greek, and refers not so much to a thing being over and done as it does to a thing coming to completion. Jesus concludes, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Despite chaos and destruction, creation will grow into what it is meant to be. Jesus, our mother, is bearing this world, through pain and death, to new life.
This all resonates very deeply in Julian’s story and her theology. Details about her life are scarce; we don’t know whether Julian was her real name or not. She was born in 1343 and died sometime after 1416. Her hometown of Norwich was a bustling trade center, second in prominence only to London. Being at this busy crossroads also placed Norwich at the center of the black death pandemic. During Julian’s childhood, about half of the city’s inhabitants likely died from the disease. Given Julian’s passionate writing about the motherhood of God, scholars speculate that Julian was a mother herself and that her family perished in an outbreak of sickness. In any case, at age 30, Julian fell seriously ill. On the brink of death, she received last rites, and it was then that a series of 16 visions of the crucified Jesus came to her. Five days later, having fully recovered, she wrote down a brief version of her experience. Decades afterward she composed the fuller account we have today, articulating her interpretation of the visions and her unique theology. Her book was, as far as we know, the first to authored by a woman in the English language.
At some point after she received these revelations, Julian was chosen to become an anchoress in the church at Norwich. She was literally walled into the side of the church, confined there in a small room and garden for the rest of her life. The cell of an anchoress typically had three windows: one that opened into the sanctuary of the church, one for receiving food and tending bodily needs, and a third for connection to the outside world. Despite how horrible this existence might sound to us, being an anchoress in those times was a great honor. An important ritual would have accompanied Julian’s being sealed into her cell, including elements of the funeral mass, acknowledging that this transition was a death of sorts. An anchoress was considered a spiritual authority and (through her window to the outside world) she provided advice and comfort to many. By iconographers, Julian is often depicted sharing her cell with a cat; practically speaking this arrangement kept the rats away, but I also like to imagine the friendship she shared with a fellow creature.[1]
The famous words, “all shall be well,” are words that Jesus spoke directly to Julian in her thirteenth vision. Julian was lamenting that sin hindered her from relationship with Jesus and from becoming more like him. “In my foolish way,” she explains,
I had often wondered why the foreseeing wisdom of God could not have prevented the beginning of sin, for then, thought I, all would have been well. But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all I needed, answered, “Sin was necessary—but all shall be well; all shall be very well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Hmm . . . sin, alienation from God, and our true selves, is not a tragedy or a curse; it is necessary. It makes sense to me, actually, that sin is a part of any authentic relationship. And that our relationship with the divine is a kind of dialectic of separation and connection. And yet, Julian insists that our sin, compared to the love of God for us, has “no substance or real existence.” (chapter 27) She writes:
Our soul is united to [the one] who is unchangeable goodness, and between [God] and our soul there is need neither for anger nor forgiveness in [God’s] sight. For the soul is completely united to God by [God’s] own goodness, and nothing whatever can come between God and the soul. (Chapter 46)
In her closing chapter, (86) Julian concludes that her visions, at root, were intended to communicate the unchangeable love of God.
From the time these things were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning. It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding. “You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was [God’s] meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did [God] show you? Love. Why did [God] show it? For love.” In this love all [God’s] works have been done, and in this love [God] has made everything serve us; and in this love our life is everlasting.
In these times, as we face all that we are facing, I find Julian’s articulation of the power and primacy of God’s love enormously comforting. This is a time to lament our collective alienation from our true selves and God—a time to grieve the sin that causes creation such deep distress. And this is also a time to recognize that our collective heart is made for union with God, with love. This is a time to lean into our longing for connection, our ache for peace, our yearning for wholeness. And this is a time to trust the birth-pangs of God, who is at work in hidden ways, who is laboring within us and beside us to bring creation into fullness and freedom. All shall be well. Amen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich