(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 11, 2017, Transfiguration Sunday)
Speaking from Experience
My housemate Nick had never been
there, but he had heard wonderful things from his friends. How the salad bar had more than just
salad, but cheeses and meats and vegetables with names he did not even
recognize. How the waiters passed
by your table ever few minutes, happy to grab you whatever you wished. How the cooks prepared food behind a
glass wall, so that you could watch the drama of cooking unfold before your
eyes.
For months, Nick talked about
this restaurant. He speculated
about what he would enjoy the most.
He theorized which dish was the best. Until one day, it wasn’t enough just to imagine and
salivate. On that day, he messaged
me and several of his friends and said, “I’ve heard about it. We’ve talked about it. Let’s do it.”
And so we did it. We saved up for months and then went
there for lunch. And it was
everything Nick had dreamed and more.
In the days that followed, Nick
kept talking about the restaurant.
But his talk was different now. He no longer spoke in
hypotheticals. Now he spoke from
experience. He was reliving the
experience, remembering how each dish made him feel. How each dish had touched his culinary soul.
The Difference Between Salivating and Savoring
Sometimes I wonder if religion is
not a little bit like my housemate Nick and this restaurant. What I mean is this: Nick talked and
talked for months about food he had never eaten. He speculated about recipes and cooking methods and
dishes. He recited the
descriptions that he had read and heard from other people who had been to the
restaurant. But he had never been
there himself. He was talking
about something that he had not experienced.
Religious folks know their
scripture. They’ve read and heard
all about God. They go to their
holy places and speculate about how God moves in the world and why. Their souls salivate with these
thoughts and discussions.
But there is a world of
difference between salivating over dishes and savoring them. Between talking about food and eating
it. Between thinking about
something and experiencing it.
Trivializing Our Experiences
I wonder how Peter, James, and
John felt the day after their experience on the mountaintop with Jesus. Did they think it was all “just a
dream”? That the dazzling
whiteness was just a bright glare from the sun, that Elijah and Moses were just
figments of their imagination, that the voice from the cloud was just their ears
hearing what they wanted to hear?
I don’t know how they felt, but I
know how I would feel, how many of us might feel if we had had such an
experience. Our modern world has
developed a special register for talking about mystical or otherworldly experiences
like Peter, James, and John’s on the mountaintop. Whenever we have a moment that does not fit into the normal
frame of experience, we trivialize it with words like “just” and “only.” Oh, it was just a feeling. It was
only my imagination. It was nothing.
I suppose we could ask these
questions of Peter, James, and John’s experience. Was it just a dream?
Only their imagination? But
I suspect that would be missing the point.
When our friends have a dream, do
we ask them: did that really happen?
No—we ask them, What do you think it means? Because deep down we have a suspicion
that there is more to the world than meets the eye. It’s almost like the visible and material surface of our
world is a curtain. If we could
peel back the curtain and see behind it, we would see the meaning of things:
great goodness and beauty and truth.
That’s the way Paul talks about it in our other lectionary scripture
today, where he says that the good news is “veiled” or “covered” (2 Cor 4:3).
So whether Jesus’ clothes
actually began to glow, or whether Elijah and Moses took bodily form right
beside Jesus or not, may be beside the point. Maybe the point is what these things meant. For instance,
that the man wearing a dusty robe whom they had been following was not simply a
man wearing a dusty robe, but in fact the light of the world.
Mystical Moments as Experiences of Faith
Recently I have been enjoying the
writing of a German liberation theologian named Dorothee Soelle. Dorothee suggests that we have all had experiences of faith, whether we
acknowledge them or not. She
ponders the possibility that as children, when we lived with a more open and
trusting disposition, we all had mystical moments—moments where we experienced
a deep sense of connection with the world, an unspeakable sense that all was
well and all would be well.
If you’re rolling your eyes at
this idea—and trust me, in the right cynical moment, my eyes are rolling with
yours—Dorothee would say that you’ve proved her point. We trivialize these childhood
experiences with words like “just” or “only,” as though they are merely flights
of fancy amid the cold, gritty reality of our world. But what if—she asks—what if these moments are in fact hints
of a deeper reality? What if they
are glimpses of what’s behind the curtain of the world?
I won’t pretend to have had a
full-blown mystical experience. I
doubt many of us have. But I am
intrigued with what Dorothee suggests.
Because I do remember moments
from my childhood of heightened connection and wholeness. Moments like when I lay in bed and
imagined all the stars above me, and I felt lost among them, just a speck in
the universe, but somehow that made me feel good and safe. Or like when I played soccer and lost
myself in the game, no longer a player but part of the flow, no longer
concerned with winning or losing but enjoying the touch of the ball on my foot
and the calls of my teammates and the unselfconscious joy of freedom. Or like when I gathered with my family
around a table, where we would hold hands and pray and eat and laugh, and I
felt home in a way much deeper than we use that word for the buildings that we
inhabit or the towns where we grow up.
Maybe these are mountaintop
moments? The skeptic in me asks,
“Well what do these moments have to do with Jesus?” At first glance, they seem to have very little to do with
Jesus. But when I think about it,
each of these moments is made up of a loss of self or ego and an intense
feeling of sharing and self-giving.
And are not these the very things that Jesus proclaimed as foundations
of the kingdom of God? Losing
oneself and living for others?
What about you? Have you ever had a spiritual
experience like this, a mystical moment on the mountaintop? The way several of my friends who are
parents talk, I have to think that parenting can from time to time peel back
the curtain of the world to reveal the light of Christ, a light burning with
sharing and self-giving. Perhaps
any heartfelt relationship invites us into these mystical experiences, if we
are willing to accept the invitation.
Treasuring Our Faith Experience
There is a world of difference
between salivating over dishes and savoring them. Between talking about food and eating it. Between speculating about something and
experiencing it. A church that
only talks about what it has never experienced—what’s the point of a church like
that?
The tragedy of our present world,
is that it tends to trivialize any experience that is not grounded in the
rational and material world. It
tends to trivialize dreams and visions, experiences built on feeling or
intuition, the sorts of experiences that give substance to our faith and around
which the church gathers. “Oh
that? That was ‘just’ a
dream. It was ‘only’ a feeling.”
But our scripture today—where
Peter, James, and John see bright lights and ancient figures and hear a
disembodied voice—our scripture today pushes back on this trivializing
mindset. Our scripture today asks:
What if these sorts of experiences are actually the feast that our faith is all
about? What if these are
mountaintop moments, firsthand encounters with the light of Christ, a light
that wants to shine, to be made visible, to be shared? What if instead of trivializing these
moments, we treasured them? Took
them with us as a light into the world?
Shared them with others, and cherished them in times of darkness and
difficulty?
When Peter, James, and John left
the mountaintop, they entered into their own Lenten season and followed Jesus
on the way of the cross. A way
that was dark and difficult at times.
And Jesus would start talking about some scary stuff: about a cross,
about making yourself last, a servant to others, giving your life for
others. And Peter, James, and John
did not get it. They could not
understand.[1] But still they followed Jesus. Why? I think it had to do with the memory of that mountaintop. Their faith was not an abstract
thought. Their faith had to do
with an incredible experience that had imprinted itself on their hearts.
That man in the dusty robe whom
they were following? He was not
just a man in a dusty robe. He was
the light of the world. And he
would be with them every step of the way.
May it be so for us.
Prayer
Shining Christ,
We catch glimpses
Of your light
Here and there,
But so often
We trivialize these moments;
Remind us
And inspire us
By these experiences
On which our faith feasts;
So that we might trust
In what we cannot see
In the dark and difficult days
Of our lives.
Amen.
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