"Who Then Can Be Saved?" (Luke 19:1-10)

(Sermon for May Memorial Baptist Church's Worship on November 3, 2019, Proper 26)

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Zacchaeus the Leprechaun

For many of us, the story of Zacchaeus summons up sentimental memories of Sunday School: the song we sang about a “wee, little man”; the comical, coloring-book images of a short man scrambling up and down a tree.  I still remember the year that the lesson on Zacchaeus followed immediately after St. Patrick’s Day.  We children drew the natural conclusion.  This short man who had a lot of gold obviously was a wee leprechaun!

What’s Wrong with Having Money?

The story of Zacchaeus contains within it a lesson about money.  But it was not the first lesson about money that I learned.

The first lesson I learned was simple: to get what I wanted, I needed money.  As a young child, I thought getting money was as simple as walking into a bank or punching buttons on an ATM.  Only later as a teenager would I learn that getting money involved a bit more.  And so I became motivated to do things like mow the neighbors’ lawns, rake leaves, and shovel snow.

It was around this time when I was learning the value of money that my youth group at church read the story of the rich, young ruler.  And the story frightened me because it challenged my very motivation for life.

It’s a familiar story.  A ruler asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life.  Jesus reminds him to follow the commandments, to which the ruler responds, “I do all of these things.”  In other words, this guy knew his Bible just like I did, and he tried to follow the rules just like I did.  This was a guy with whom I could identify.  He seemed alright.  Then Jesus tells him he lacks one thing still.  He invites him to sell all that he has and give his money to the poor and to follow him, which makes the man sad.  In truth, it made me sad too, because to have a lot of money was a good thing as far as I could tell.  Isn’t that why I was mowing lawns and raking leaves?  What was wrong with having a lot of money?

Building Block or Stumbling Block?

What followed, however, frightened me even more.  Jesus exclaims that it’s easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle than for someone with wealth to enter into the kingdom of God.  I found myself asking the exact same question that the crowd Jesus asks, “Who then can be saved?”  Jesus responds, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God,” which was mysterious enough to leave me unsettled. 

Thankfully the leader of our Bible study came to the rescue with a host of reassuring interpretations.  First, he said that Jesus’ invitation to the rich man is not necessarily Jesus’ invitation to us.  Rather, Jesus knew that the man’s riches were his prize possession and thus potentially an idol.  For you or me, it might be something else: a relationship, a job, a dream.  The important thing, my leader said, is that we are willing to give it up for God.  (And notice that willing to give something up does not mean we actually give it up in the end.  God is merciful, after all.)  Then he continued.  The eye of the needle, he said, is actually a reference to a gate in Jerusalem that camels could pass through if they relinquished all their baggage.  In other words, it is possible for a camel to make it through the eye of the needle. Finally, Jesus’ reminder that what is impossible for us is possible for God means that ultimately it’s not about what we do or don’t do, but rather about what God does for us.  Even if we hold onto our money, or whatever it is that we need to relinquish, God can still help us through.

If I’m being honest, these interpretations did not reassure me.  They felt like excuses, like escape clauses that Christian lawyers had drawn up for our eternal benefit.  What left a greater impression on me were not these reassurances but the words of Jesus himself.  His words haunted me.  They upset the balance and order of my life, suggesting that money was not the building block of life but rather a stumbling block.  I could not escape Jesus’ suggestion that camels have a better chance walking through a needle’s eye—or today we might say, pigs have a better chance of flying—than a person with wealth has of entering the kingdom of God.  So I was left with the crowd’s question: “Who then can be saved?”

A Tale of Two Rich Rulers and the Impossible

Jesus’ answer to that question—“nothing is impossible with God”—is a throwback in the book of Luke.  You might remember it.  Mary asks the angel Gabriel how she could possibly conceive; Gabriel responds, “Nothing is impossible with God.”  Shortly after that, Mary sings a song of joy, a song that celebrates lowly persons such as herself lifted up and the powerful brought low, a song that imagines the poor filled with good things and the rich emptied out.  In other words, the impossibility that God overcomes in Luke is not just the laws of physics.  It is the impossibility posed by human hearts, hands, and habits.  It is the impossibility of a new world and way of living, a world where the lowly are lifted up and restored to community and the hungry are filled, where the powers that be who lord it over others and preserve the status quo are emptied of their prestige and possessions.

It’s a little disheartening to me that this impossibility that God overcomes, is not overcome in the story of the rich ruler.  Here the rich man is not emptied, nor are the hungry filled.  Here the powerful are not brought low, nor the lowly lifted up.  But the story does not end here.  Just one chapter after Jesus insists that with God nothing is impossible, we are introduced to Zacchaeus.  Our Bibles call him “the chief tax collector,” but in the Greek he is actually “the ruler of tax collectors.”  He’s also rich.  In other words, Zacchaeus is a rich ruler.  Déjà vu.  We’ve just seen this.

But whereas the first time we were left asking, “Who then can be saved?” this time the story ends with Jesus’ defiant proclamation, “Today salvation has come to this house.”[1]  It’s almost as though in response to the question, “Who can be saved?” Luke tells us the story of another rich ruler who in fact is saved.  Zacchaeus is the answer to the question.

Zacchaeus stands in stark contrast to the first rich ruler.  First, he gives away nearly all that he has: half his possessions, and then four times back to those he has defrauded.  But that’s not all.  Jesus invites Zacchaeus to “come down” the tree, and he does.  He hurries down.  He can’t get down quick enough.  There echoes in Zacchaeus’ physical movement down the tree, the kingdom movement that Mary sang about in the days before Jesus’ birth.  Zacchaeus is a powerful man who is brought down, a rich man who is subsequently emptied.  Zacchaeus is a witness to the good news that with God nothing is impossible.

The Lord’s Supper Is More than the Last Supper

And is it any surprise that God overcomes the impossible at the table?  Because that’s where the story of Zacchaeus ends.  Jesus’ insistence, “I must stay at your house,” and the mention that Zacchaeus was “happy to welcome him” are the unmistakable language of table hospitality.

In Luke, the table is not just the site of Jesus’ last supper.  It’s where Jesus is always hanging out.  It’s where he makes a name for himself.  Repeatedly in Luke people grumble (like they do in today’s scripture) because Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners (cf. Luke 5:30; 15:2).  “In Jesus’ society, eating was a key indicator of belonging and status.  In the way he ate, Jesus refused the boundaries of [status and power and purity] which eating was supposed to uphold.  In so doing he challenged not only a religious establishment but also an entire empire.  [Jesus’ table manners] turned everything upside down: power, status, gender, purity, money.”[2]

For Luke, the Lord’s Supper is about much more than the last supper.  It is about Jesus’ way of gathering around tables.  And there is perhaps no more striking example of that in Luke than today’s scripture.  Whereas churches today have commonly sought to protect the table, making it a boundary between insiders and outsiders, a stronghold for right doctrine, Jesus shows us the opposite.  In today’s scripture, the Lord’s Supper takes place in the house of a sinner.  This is what outraged his contemporaries.  It would have been fine if Jesus were eating with repentant sinners, with people who had already conformed to right religious practice.  But Jesus was eating with sinners, plain and simple, regardless of their repentance.  In today’s story, Jesus doesn’t wait until Zacchaeus promises to give away half his possessions and restore fourfold to others what he has taken wrongly from them.  He insists on sharing the table, and only then do we see Zacchaeus’ transformation.  In other words, for Jesus gathering at the table is not conditional on salvation.  In today’s story, it’s constitutive of salvation.

Zacchaeus is so overwhelmed by Jesus—and not by his miracles, nor by his teaching, but simply by his loving initiative and grace—that he cannot help but follow in Jesus’ way.  At the table, he resolves to follow Jesus’ way of love and self-giving. 

Jesus’ response reveals the power of the table.  “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9).  It strikes me that the rich ruler had asked Jesus about his personal salvation, “What must I do to inherit eternal life” (18:18).  But with Zacchaeus, salvation acquires a broader horizon.  It’s not just Zacchaeus who is saved.  Salvation comes to his house—the same house where Jesus and his rag-tag, itinerant disciples are sitting.  Around this sinner’s table, which is also the Lord’s table, we catch a glimpse of the impossible world that Mary earlier sang about: a world where the lowly are lifted up even as the lofty are brought low.

The Impossible Table

When I began writing this sermon, I intended to share a challenge about the ways we use our money, for I think today’s passage is very challenging on that matter.

But now that I reach the end, I read in our story a challenge that encompasses more than simply our money.  What is most challenging to me in today’s scripture is the Lord’s table, a place where Jesus turned the tables on this world, where he did the impossible, where he ate with the people I would reject, where the rich are emptied and the hungry are filled, where the lofty are brought low and the lowly are lifted up. 

From my parents, I have learned that May Memorial is celebrating and sharing the Lord’s table in some inspiring ways.  I understand that you all set up tables and shared your love and good cheer with trick-or-treaters at Scottville this past Thursday.  Like Jesus, you saw the table not as the property of the church but the possibility of the kingdom in the world.  I understand too that in your program “Backpacks of Love,” you fill bags with food for underprivileged students in the community.  In this way, you share in the Lord’s table where the rich are emptied and the hungry are filled.

Twenty years ago, Jesus’ words haunted me, in spite of my Bible study leader’s best assurance.  Today I am haunted again, this time by the impossible image of the Lord’s table.  May that table be for us this morning not a boundary but just the beginning of a new, impossible world.

Prayer

Lord of the table,

For whom nothing is impossible:

Where we are full of ourselves,

Full of pride, possession, or power,

Empty us.

Where we are empty,

Fill us with your love.

Gather us around your table,

That we might be changed

And that salvation might come today

To us and our communities.

In Christ, who ate with sinners and tax collectors:

Amen.

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[1] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 666, observes these parallels between the stories of the rich ruler (18:18-30) and Zacchaeus (19:1-10) and suggests that the stories’ juxtaposition invites their comparison.

[2] Steven Shakespeare and Hugh Rayment-Pickard, The Inclusive God: Reclaiming Theology for an Inclusive Church (London: Canterbury, 2006), 97-98.

Threshold People (Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 20, 2019, Proper 24)

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Home Makeovers

If television is any indication, our world is fascinated with home makeovers.  My brother used to live in Waco, Texas, and he worked at a church just one block away from where Chip and Joanna Gaines worked their magic.  It was surreal, he says, to see the tourists.  There were people who actually wanted to come and visit Waco.

Closer to home, I have to marvel every time our church has a yard sale.  Our yard sale crew have become experts with pricing antique furniture and all sorts of decorative paraphernalia.  I’m pretty sure they could put on a home makeover show of their own now.

Why is our world so fascinated with home makeovers?  Perhaps part of our fascination is simply fantasy, a sort of vicarious wish fulfillment, where we get to see on other houses the renovations and furnishings that we would like for ourselves.  But I wonder if there’s not a deeper reason for our fascination.  I wonder if on some fundamental level we hope and believe in and celebrate the possibility that what has fallen into disrepair can be made good and beautiful again.  I wonder if we aren’t looking for confirmation that everything has potential, even the most run-down house.  I wonder if deep down this has to do with us, with our suspicion that there is more to life, that we can be truer to ourselves, that the world can be made over in a very good way.

“A Priestly Kingdom”

When God delivers the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God does not simply liberate them.  As the book of Exodus makes clear, something much larger is happening.  The big clue to what’s going on is that the number seven keeps showing up.  God gives seven commandments about the tabernacle where the Israelites will worship; Moses and the Israelites respond with seven acts of compliance.  This pattern of seven harkens back to the beginning of the biblical story, and it suggests that through Israel God is embarking on a new creation.

In other words, God does not simply set the Israelites free to roam the wilderness and find their own way.  God has liberated the Israelites in order that they might help to usher in a new creation, that as liberated people they might model for all the world what liberation looks like.  God commissions the Israelites with the same message with which Christ commissions his followers: not simply “Go,” but more importantly, “Show!”

Here’s how God puts it at one point in Exodus: “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (19:6).  “A priestly kingdom” is another way of saying a people who act like priests.  And priests, according to our scripture from last week, are people who distinguish what is holy from what is not holy, what is pure from what is not.  In other words, a priest is like a home makeover host.  A priest distinguishes between what is not good and needs to go, and what is good and needs to be developed.  A priest acknowledges and accepts the present reality even as he calls for a future possibility.  A priest stands on the threshold.  A priest sees the potential for something good and beautiful, and helps make the distinctions that will bring that potential to fulfillment. 

A priest is like a parent or a teacher or a coach, someone who welcomes a child just as they are but also sees and calls forth what they could become.

God delivers Israel that they might be like priests to the world, a threshold people who acknowledge and accept the way things are even as they show and call forth the way things could be.

Different Than the World

And as we all know, the truest and most enduring form of teaching and showing is by example.  Which is what we hear in today’s scripture, a passage that many scholars consider to be the center of Leviticus, its heartbeat: “You shall be holy, for the I Lord your God am holy” (19:2).  How will the Israelites show the world what liberation and the good life looks like?  They will live good, holy lives themselves.

Last week we talked about holiness as making space for God.  Another key meaning of holiness is being different.  To follow our compulsions, our biases, our unexamined plans, is to be all-too-human.  But to make space for God is ultimately to be different.  What follows the command, “You shall be holy,” is an assortment of ethical and ritual instructions that have to do with being different than the world: not living by the principles of impulse and greed and convenience.  These are the unholy things that need to go, so that the makeover might be made complete, so that the potential of this world might be fulfilled. 

These various instructions culminate in verses 17 and 18, where we see a stark contrast between the way of the world and the way of God: “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor….You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  What I hear in these two celebrated verses, from which will spring the golden rule, is the same good news Jesus proclaimed: “Don’t judge.  And don’t keep score so that you might take vengeance or hold the higher ground.  Instead love.”  God’s new creation is founded on a simple invitation: love.  That is the crucial difference between this world of judgment and keeping score and the eternal circle of vengeance and violence, and the new world that God is creating.

I am reminded of Jesus on the cross.  What his followers likely hoped for—that he would come down from the cross with might and muscle and vengeance and show everyone they were wrong and he was right—is in fact the way of this world.  Such a sequence of events would have been all-too-human.  What his followers saw instead was something different, something holy and divine: a man who with his last breath forgave his enemies.

Not the What, But the How

The writer of Hebrews in the New Testament says that Jesus is our high priest.  He is the threshold person par excellence.  He lived with us in this world, but he showed us a different world—a world makeover, one that he called the kingdom of God.  In other words, he distinguished between the world and the kingdom.  He distinguished between the things that are passing and not worth our time and the things that are full of life and will ever be so.  And he called us to join his makeover project by making the same distinction, by discarding things like pride and coercive power, greed and impatience, all the things that preserve the circle of vengeance and violence, and in their place cultivating things like love and trust, giving and forgiving, all the things that liberate and bring new life. 

You and I both stand at thresholds.  We probably both wonder where we will be in a year’s time.  But as Jesus reminds us in our gospel scripture today, these concerns are not holy.  What we will wear, what we will eat, what we’ll be doing, who we’ll be with, what the world around us will be like.  These things are what the world worries about, he says, but not you.  You strive for the kingdom, for things like loving your neighbor and not judging them, welcoming the stranger and not counting the cost, embracing interruptions like children and the sick and the lonely.

It’s almost as if Jesus is saying, it’s not the what that’s holy.  It’s the how.  To live as a threshold person means to welcome the uncertainty of our lives—we don’t know what the final makeover will look like.  What we know is the how.  Just as Chip and Joanna know how to fix a living room or how to renovate a basement, just as a coach knows how to encourage his players and cultivate their skills, we know how to live. 

The good news of Leviticus, which is also the gospel of Jesus Christ, is that even though we don’t know the future, we know that it can be made good and beautiful.  And according to both Leviticus and Jesus, it all starts in the simplest way: by loving our neighbor.

Prayer

Holy God,

Whose love

Orders all of life

In goodness and beauty:

We are a work in progress.

Bless us at this threshold

With levitical hearts

That beat not according to worldly impulse

But according to the kingdom of God,

Where love reigns.

In Christ, our high priest: Amen.

Making Space (Leviticus 10:1-3, 8-11)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 13, 2019, Proper 23)

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Interpreting “the God of the Old Testament”

“Finally!  Finally we get a bit of action in Leviticus, some story and drama, not just rituals and rules.”  That was my reaction, at least, when I first read Leviticus 10.  But my joy was short-lived, because I was faced with a rather disturbing story.  Two priests offer the wrong kind of fire—and the consequence is death?

It’s passages like this one that lead people to talk about “the God of the Old Testament,” as though the God of our Bible is schizophrenic, on the one hand wrathful and angry, on the other loving and forgiving.  I would like to push back gently against this notion.  After all, Jesus read the Old Testament and revered it as scripture.  He frequently cites the prophets.  Two of his seven dying words on the cross come from the psalms.  And he says that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  For Jesus, the God of the Old Testament is the same God embodied in his life.

So how do we read a disturbing passage like this one, where God seems to punish a person simply for using the wrong fire?  I believe healthy interpretation begins with the questions we bring to the text.  Oftentimes we approach the Bible like we approach a news report.  We ask, “What happened?”  This literal way of thinking is helpful if we’re trying to reconstruct a history or determine the mechanics of a certain process.  But as valid as these interests can be, they are not the primary interests of scripture.  Scripture is the sacred witness of a people who have encountered God in such a way that they must express it.  So, a better question to ask is, “Why did they share this story?  What are they trying to communicate?  What did it mean to them?  What does it mean for me?”

Empty Time and Empty Space

When we ask these questions, it quickly becomes apparent that our story today is not as interested in the historical fact of Nadab and Abihu’s demise as it is in the reason for their demise.  “They offered unholy fire before the Lord, such as he had not commanded them,” the storyteller explains.  In other words, the strange deaths of Nadab and Abihu have something to do with holiness.  The storyteller reinforces this theme on two more occasions.  Moses tells Aaron that the priests’ deaths are an illustration of what God meant when God said, “I will show myself holy” (10:3), and God later speaks directly to Aaron and stresses the importance of distinguishing between what is holy and what is not (10:10).  All of this is to say: somehow Nadab and Abihu ran afoul of the physics of holiness.

A good question to ask, then, would be: what is holiness?  The root word for “holy” first appears in the Bible when God has finished creation and then makes holy the seventh day (Gen 2:3).  So, time can be holy.  Later, after the Israelites have constructed the tabernacle, God instructs them to anoint it all with oil and to make it holy (Ex 40:9).  So, space can be holy too.

The common thread between these two holy realms of time and space is emptiness.  The Sabbath is essentially empty time.  On the Sabbath, the people rest.  They let go of their work.  Why?  To abide in the presence of God.  And the tabernacle is essentially empty space.  There is a large courtyard with nothing but an altar, and an inner tent with another altar, a table, a curtain, and the ark of the covenant.  Quite unlike a furnished home, the tabernacle was mostly bare space.[1]  Why?  Because humans are not the masters of this tent as they are masters of their homes.  In this tent, they let go and abide in the presence of God.

To enter the holiness of God, we humans must first make space for God.  We must empty ourselves.

There’s a famous psalm that we all probably know, where God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”  The Hebrew for “be still” more literally refers to something you do with your hands; it means something like, “let go” or “drop it.”  I think it’s a great expression for holiness.  What is holy is the place and the time where to encounter God we must first let go—let go of our plans, our preconceptions, our self-projections.

Warning: High Voltage

Now we can rewind and begin to make sense of Nadab and Abihu’s fate.  The storyteller explains that they approached God with incense that he had not instructed them to bring, that is, “unholy” fire.  In other words, they approached a holy space but did not leave space for God.  They did not let go of themselves.  And that is the real problem that the story wants to show us: not their demise but the reason for it.  To assert our presence in the presence of God is “a contradiction in terms.”[2]  It’s like a conversation where you invite the other person’s response but then keep speaking.  It’s impossible for two voices to inhabit the same space in any meaningful way.

To assert our presence in the presence of God can only result in disaster.  We see this in today’s scripture, of course, but we also see it across human history.  The very first act of worship, remember, ended in murder.  Cain and Abel brought offerings to God, but Cain could not let go of his offering, his pride—and the story ends in death.  Holiness is high voltage stuff.  It is the power of God that can redeem this world, but if mishandled it can also destroy this world.  Think about all the violence and oppression that has been done in the name of God.  The Twin Towers still stand at the forefront of our nation’s memory.  But behind them lie fields filled with the sound of cracked whips and the sight of black backs laboring under coercion, while the preacher maintained that this was the will of God.  To assert our presence—our presumptions, our profits, our plans—in the presence of God can only result in disaster.

I wonder about today.  Where do we stand in danger of asserting our presence in the presence of God?  Where do we stand at risk of a holy disaster?  Several ideas come to mind.  But on ein particular I’d like to share.  I understand that the church remains divided over the matter of affirming LBGTQ identities, and I do not mean carelessly to stoke the coals of that conflict.  But I do worry that this matter is one in which more than coals have been stoked, and the consequences have been disastrous for the many LGBTQ persons who have been rejected by the church for who they are.  Surely in this matter many churches have asserted their presence—their presumptions, their biases—in the presence of God.  Surely they have not made space for their LGBTQ neighbors, to listen fully to their story and experience.  I understand the Bible complicates this matter, but I fear that too often it has been read simply to confirm the reader’s own worldview rather than to bear witness to the heartbeat of God, which is surely deeper than the cultural mores sometimes reflected in these ancient texts.  If holiness is high voltage, capable of redemption as well as destruction, I worry that in this matter many churches have done harm in the place of good.  Rather than redeeming a community, they have condemned it.

The Healing of Holiness

In contrast to holy disaster, the positive, healing work of holiness often transpires with little fanfare.  After all, it’s usually in the little, unremarkable moments of life that healing occurs.

For many Christ-followers, these moments may happen during Sunday worship.  For this hour is holy time and this sanctuary is a holy place.  Here and now we make space for God.  But as we discover in Leviticus, holiness is not just a matter of the tabernacle and worship.  God calls Israel to be a holy nation, to be holy all the time.

With that in mind, I want to share today the example of Mary Mrozowski.  According to one of her friends, Mary Mrozowski had “an in-your-face, swaggering” kind of person.  She fought with life and anyone who got in her way.  But later in life, she committed herself to the way of Christ in a very purposeful manner.  In particular, she sought at crucial moments throughout the day to abandon herself to God.  What she meant by this, was that at moments when she became unsettled—when someone insulted her, when she could not solve a problem, when an unexpected change confronted her—instead of living from her small self, she would choose to live instead from the source of all life.  She would abandon herself to God. 

Mary became the pioneer of what she called the Welcoming Prayer.  If you’re curious, I would encourage you to Google “Welcoming Prayer” and you can learn all about it.  In summary, the Welcoming Prayer was a way for Mary to let go of her smaller urges—like revenge or control or greed or proving herself—so that instead she might live from the depths of God’s love, from which comes all true life.  Or as she put, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be free?”  The Welcoming Prayer was a way for her to be free—a way to empty herself, so that God’s holiness could break through in these crucial moments.  One of her close friends remarks that by the simple practice of this prayer, Mary was transformed from a domineering woman with a Brooklyn accent to a saintly woman in whom others recognized holiness (and with a Brooklyn accent, no less!).[3] 

Becoming Less, Becoming More

The surprise of faith is that in order to become more, we must actually become less.  In order to become holy, we must make space for God.  And making space for God does not mean relinquishing our personality—any more than it meant Mary would need to lose her Brooklyn accent.  What making space means is that God’s love and grace take their rightful place in our heart instead of the temporary and passing plans and projects and prejudices which threaten to limit the work of God.  Making space for God does not dull the edge of our individuality but sharpens it.  In the end, we become more fully ourselves.  And all the world becomes holy, an opportunity to commune with God.

Prayer

Holy God,

So often we live automatically—

Guided by our compulsions,

Our prejudices,

Our unexamined plans and projects.

May this holy hour and this holy place

Be only the beginning for us.

Bless us with levitical hearts

That aspire always

To make space for you,

So that we might faithfully bear

Your love in redeeming ways.

In Christ, the fullness of your love:

Amen.

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[1] Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness (Covenant and Conversation Series 3; New Milford, CT: Maggid Books and the Orthodox Union, 2015), ebook loc. 384-404.

[2] Sacks, ebook loc. 2783-2427.

[3] See the remarks of Cynthia Bourgeault at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bClyhR2ZPc&t=195s and marymrozowski.com/testimonials.