Mediated Immediacy

At the Paradosis conference at John Brown University, Edith Humphrey remarked briefly on the paradox of mediation and presence. Her point was that, though God’s presence to us is mediated, that mediation is embedded in or infused by an immediacy of presence.

This must be so if we are going to talk about mediation Trinitarianly. God the Father mediates His presence through the Son, but the Father is also in the Son and the Son is fully God. The Son sends the Spirit, but in the Spirit’s coming the Son also comes, and the Spirit is fully God in any case.

In Word and Sacrament, created things mediate, and necessarily so. But that mediation does not imply between Giver and recipient. In Word and Sacrament, the Father who is God gives the Son who is God through the Spirit who is God. Mediation doesn’t distance is from God, but rather God is “directly” present even as He offers Himself in Word, Bread, and Wine.