Psalm 104: 1 – 2, Matthew 17: 1 – 2
“Sometimes, suddenly . . .”
I believe that this is not the first time I have preached from this pulpit. At some point during the late 1990’s while Farley Maxwell was pastor here and I was at First Christian Church down on Main Street in Vancouver I think we had a pulpit exchange. The United Church of Christ and The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at the denominational level adopted a partnership agreement and we wanted to demonstrate that partnership at the local level here. Perhaps some of you might remember that occasion. My own memory of it is pretty fuzzy so I don’t blame you if you can’t remember it either. However a visible fruit of that partnership is still seen every Communion Sunday when the servers here wear their stoles featuring both the UCC and Disciples denominational logos. I like seeing that.
In my younger years I was a college theater major. I am not onstage much anymore and Patty will tell you that in any case I have a poor memory for lines of dialogue from plays that I have performed. But one line has stayed with me from the first time I heard it. I was cast in Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire -lucky enough to land a role during my first semester at California State University, Northridge. I was decidedly not the rough and vulgar Stanley Kowalski character – the one played in the movie by Marlon Brando. I played the role of Mitch, Stanley’s friend – the role that Karl Malden played both in the movie and on Broadway. Mitch finds himself drawn to the mysterious and troubled Blanche DuBois, who is staying in the home of Stanley and his wife, Blanche’s sister. Mitch works up the courage to ask Blanche out and she pours out her sad history of broken dreams and failed relationships to him. At the end of the evening Mitch takes a chance and unexpectedly embraces and kisses her. “Sometimes, there is God, so quickly” Blanche reflects in response. “Sometimes, there is God, so quickly.” In that moment she identifies that surprising tenderness as what she believes to be completely unmerited and undeserved acceptance and forgiveness. It is as if the Divine itself had somehow reached through and touched them both in a most unexpected encounter where everything painful falls away and all is good, at least for the moment. If you know the storyline, you know that the relationship between Blanche and Mitch was never going to work out happily – but for that one brief moment . . . “suddenly, there is God.”
The question I’ve been pondering in preparation for this morning is “where, when, and how do you and I encounter the Holy breaking through and into our lives?” Given the context of our often chaotic, over-filled, and stressful life – are we able identify moments of grace and say with certainty “sometimes, suddenly, there is God?”
The Celtic spirituality of Great Britain and Ireland describes “thin places” where the gulf between heaven and earth shrinks and humans may more readily experience and encounter the Divine. A “thin place” might be a physical location, or it might be an experience of God on some other level, in a relationship or even in a community like this one.
The events described in the beginning of the 17th Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the story where Peter, James, and John have climbed with Jesus up on a high mountain, could be considered as an experience of a “thin place.” Beyond the thin air found at altitude – God chose that place and time to be revealed in an experience of divine presence that was, in the words of the disciples, dazzling. The three synoptic Gospel writers use quite striking imagery in an attempt to describe what happened: Matthew reports that Jesus was “transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.” Mark says “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” John adds “while Jesus was praying his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white.” What happened up there? Something dramatic for sure. Was it real? Was it a dream or a vision? Was it an ecstatic group hallucinogenic experience of some kind? Scripture does not speculate in this encounter that Peter and the others had been drinking or that they were under the influence of some other kind of mind-altering substance. In their minds apparently, what they were experiencing was as real as you and I sitting here this morning, gathered in community for this service of Divine Worship. I suggest that for Peter, James, and John up on that mountain, they rather unexpectedly experienced themselves to be in a “thin place” and – suddenly, there was God.
In my work as a chaplain in the critical care units at the hospital it seems comforting to be present with loved ones sitting or standing at the bedside of a patient who is nearing the end of life. I listen as families share stories and memories, as they describe family and friends who have already passed, as they reflect on those who will be waiting for a grand reunion with their dying loved one “on the other side.” Someone might remark about how grandma will be able to dance again when she gets to heaven or that dad will go fishing every day and catch only the really big ones. We talk about an end to pain and suffering, about the healing and restoration of all the things that have kept us from being whole and happy. It’s comforting conversation and an appealing vision of what is yet to come, just beyond, on the other side, in God’s heavenly realm.
My graduate level theology courses at Claremont didn’t put much focus on visions of the afterlife. I don’t remember studying the theology of encounters with the Divine here on earth. My esteemed and learned professors talked more in terms of philosophical and theological constructs in the writings of the Patriarchs of the Faith and they described roots of religious and spiritual belief deep in human history as people throughout time have wrestled with such ultimate questions as “Who or what is God?” “What happens after death”, “will we see our loved ones again”, and “just how long is eternity?” My challenge as a preacher and pastor, indeed as a Christian believer has been to translate that high level thinking into something that make sense to me in the here and now.
Several months ago I came across a cover article in Newsweek that caught my attention. The story was about a new book with the title “Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander, M.D. Dr. Alexander is a neurosurgeon, a teaching physician trained in the scientific study of the brain in all of its incredibly complex processes. He makes it clear that he is a scientist, not a philosopher or theologian.
In the fall of 2008 Dr. Alexander suffered a complete shut-down of the neo-cortex of his brain due to an infection of e-coli bacteria. For seven days he lay in the Intensive Care unit of the Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia – in a deep coma, his body unresponsive, his higher-order brain functions totally “off-line.” His chances of survival were thought to be virtually non-existent. And yet, suddenly, there was God.
“Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds; big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.
Higher than the clouds – immeasurably higher – flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer-like lines behind them. Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.
A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise- that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.
Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of these scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it – without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet . . . or a butterfly’s wing.
It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us – vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but it’s colors – powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach – had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.
Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real – was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial. The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this:
“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
“You have nothing to fear.”
“There is nothing you can do wrong.” (repeat)
The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.
“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me. “But eventually, you will go back.” To this, I had only one question. Back where? A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration.
I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was guiding me through it. Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself. “There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness . . .” That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.”
The opening verses of the 104th Psalm describe experiencing the Divine presence in much the same way: “O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the water, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds our messengers, fire and flame your ministers.”
In this midsummer season, it seems right to be reminded of the power, indeed the reality, of the Gospel message that brings us together in communities of Faith like this one. This is a place where we may rightly expect that any gulf between us and our Creator would be thin, where God is in our midst on a regular basis and not just “sometimes, suddenly.” In this community there are no “outcasts” in the heart of the one who calls us here and is present with us.
Three followers of Jesus on a mountaintop in Galilee and a neurosurgeon experiencing virtual brain death don’t have a corner on suddenly being in the presence of the Holy. Two characters in a Tennessee Williams play seeking to be loved and accepted despite their failures don’t have it all to themselves either.
A few weeks ago a 12 year old girl from Clark County named Caitlyn died after fighting an aggressive form of bone cancer for nearly nine months. As Caitlyn neared the end of her life, her dad, Robert, spent time talking with his daughter about death. He tried to explain to his 12-year old that there was more for her than life on earth. He told her not to be afraid. He told her something better would come next. What her dad didn’t tell Caitlyn was that he was beginning to question those beliefs himself. Maybe God and heaven are just part of a fairy tale for adults, he reasoned. “It’s a very dark place to go,” he said. But then Caitlyn restored his faith. While lying in her bed the day before she died, Caitlyn opened her eyes. She told her dad she had just seen Tory, her aunt’s dog. Caitlyn didn’t know that Tory had to be put down two weeks earlier; the family hadn’t had the heart to tell her. “For her to see that vision re-inspired so much faith that there is something better,” Robert said. “It was one of the few things that’s given me comfort through this. She’s not alone. She’s not in darkness. There is something after. She is somewhere better.” For Caitlyn, in that moment, she was in a very thin place and suddenly, there was God.
My friends, the Good News that we have to share with each other and the community and world around us is this: there really is “somewhere better.” Dr. Eben Alexander knows it, Caitlyn discovered it, the Psalmist knew it and so did Peter, James, and John. Whether it is “up there” or has pearly gates, streets of gold, and mansions, whether it has fluffy white clouds and angels in white robes strumming harps or not, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we live with Faith and hope and joy knowing the reality that there is no need to feel as if you are an outcast. Nothing will separate us from the love of God made known in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Take the truth to heart that “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”“You have nothing to fear.” And, “There is nothing you can do wrong.” When you do – you will know you have reached a truly thin place where suddenly, there is God. Amen.