Emmanuel v. The Man Upstairs

At the Thanksgiving table this year, after a cornucopia of food filled all the plates, one of the older guests stood up and, apparently to remind all gathered what this day was truly about, raised his glass and prayed (kind of), “Let us all give thanks to the Man upstairs.”

The Man upstairs (TMU) still is in fairly common usage, especially from the older generation in our culture. Perhaps it’s just an innocuous colloquialism. Still, it reflects and reinforces a limited and inactive image of God. While any attempt at naming the Divine is illusive, shaky business, TMU reflects the image of a landlord, most likely white and male, who is up in the sky somewhere, not a presence woven into the moments of our lives.

For mystics, theologians and any thoughtful discerning person, TMU is dualistic – God up there and humans down here. The Latin word for God is Deus. Richard Rohr OFM wrote how awfully close that is to Zeus, a static, distant, authoritative figure who sits aloof and calls the shots, often with lightning bolts.  Conceivably, it can contribute to the rise of atheism or agnosticism, because people reject the idea of an all-powerful ruler who seems absent in suffering or life’s complexities.  Rohr sees God as relational (trinity) and transformative in a kind of divine dance with all.  For Ilia Delo OFM, TMU is cosmologically meaningless. God is not a male overseer located above creation but a dynamic, creative energy at the heart of becoming.  Thomas Merton OCSO, strongly opposed reducing God to a spatially distant, anthropomorphic being. He speaks of God as the ground of being experienced in the depths of the contemplative heart. Finally, Raimon Panikkar, Spanish priest and someone our good friend Russ Feldmeier MM often quotes, spoke of the divine as the depth of reality wherever the human, the cosmic and the divine meet. A God that is encountered in community, in story, vulnerability; a dynamic, relational energy in an evolving universe; an indwelling presence; nondual, incarnational mysticism.

All this could feel very academic. Perhaps the deepest, intuitive response is seen in Mary, a young Jewish teenager from Nazareth– today considered by many as the largest Palestinian city in Israel. She most likely had no academic degree or formal education of any kind.  Yet, she found it in herself to reply YES to the God with and within her.  

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." (Luke 1:46)

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel"…i.e. God with us. (MT. 1;23).