Proper 12b -- Monroe, St. Paul's

Proper 12b

July 25, 2021 St. Paul's, Monroe

Jesus

The church has a reputation for never changing or more precisely for not changing very much. When I was a child I somehow absorb the notion that the church was the rock, the steady rock, in an ever-changing world. I think it’s possible that in my 20s I was particularly attracted to the notion of a church that never changed. One of the things that also occurred at about the same time and for many of the same reasons was that I began to learn about the history of the church, learned what I could absorb about the changing landscape of the interpretation of the Bible and theology.

What I began to learn at that time is that the church in fact changes a lot -- and also often. What made it seem like it didn’t change was that the scale that one needed in order to see the change was much larger than would often be possible for a person in a single lifetime. I began to appreciate and continue to marvel up to the present day that the church changes course over time, but it is the kind of changing course that an aircraft carrier makes, not the kind a speed boat toy or a water skier would.

So it is that in my lifetime the church has made considerable changes related to what we experience on a Sunday morning. One of the changes has to do with the readings from the Bible at the principal service on a Sunday.

About 50 years ago the church abandoned the pattern of following a prescribed cycle of readings throughout a single year. One would have certain readings associated with Christmas, or Lent, or Easter. Then when the year began over again we would hear the same readings. That had been going on for centuries. In the 1960's, as if overnight, that changed. We began to observe a three-year cycle instead of a one year cycle. One aspect of that change was that we now hear from much more of the Bible than we used to.

We follow the three year pattern, but the number three didn’t fit with the number of Gospels in the New Testament. There are four of those. Since we read from one of the Gospels on each Sunday, it meant that if we were to hear from all four we had to mix it up somehow. What emerged was a focus over the three years on Matthew Mark and Luke. But then interspersed one would get readings from the gospel of John. So today although we are in the year of Mark we hear from the gospel of John.

And what a reading it is.

I have talked before about the differences between the gospels. In some ways they are considerable. In other ways the same basic story is told across four different perspectives and styles. Today we hear two of the most iconic actions of Jesus related in the gospels: The feeding of the multitude, and Jesus walking on the water. The feeding of the multitude is such a central narrative of the gospels that it is in fact told six times across the four gospels. Jesus walking on water is told in Matthew, Mark, and John as we hear today.

The setting for today’s reading in the sixth chapter of John is that the Passover was about to occur. Passover is one of the differences between John and the other three Gospels. John talks about three Passovers, the synoptic Gospels only talk about one. Of the different accounts of the feeding of the multitude this is one I am particularly fond of. It’s because the way John relates the story I can feel vividly as if I were in the midst of it. I can picture that boy, as if I’ve seen him before. And why does John observe here that there was a great deal of grass in the place? I am able to visualize sitting down in that grassy place.

The feeding of the multitude encompasses the basic movements that have been preserved in the Eucharist over the course of hundreds of centuries. Jesus takes the food, blesses it, and distributes it among the people. This episode is related six times as I have said, as if to emphasize the centrality of the Eucharist for the ongoing life of the people of God.

It’s relatively easy for us to imagine that it’s a short path between this miraculous episode from the life of Jesus and the Eucharist that we so take for granted within the church today. The feeding of the multitude is clearly for us a Eucharistic image. Perhaps not as obvious are the many ways in which the Eucharist has been celebrated over the centuries. Even in our lifetime there have been numerous changes, but the diversity can be astounding when we take the big picture perspective.

Common cup

I have related here before something of my own journey with the Episcopal Church. Without a doubt the Eucharist, and particularly a common cup from which the people drank, was particularly important.

It still is.

That part is important to me because it is a symbolic proclamation of our connection to one another. Our being a part of a family that extends beyond what we can even imagine. It is a mystical connection because it binds us to both living and the dead, and even those yet to come. The way we have celebrated the Eucharist with a common cup points to our being a part of the entire body of Christ. It is a profound proclamation of faith.

As such it is a proclamation of what we hope for but cannot see, as much as what we cansee before us.

And some of the ramifications of this were manifest to me one Sunday in Hawaii. I had gone to visit on one of my Sundays off a small congregation that was struggling to maintain its identification with the indigenous people of Hawaii. That Sunday we didn’t have bread and wine. We had what some in the Hawaiian community regarded as a more genuine symbol of white bread and wine is for people of European descent. We used poi and coconut water.

In some things in the church I have tended towards the conservative. I know that some in my past have thought of me as a stick in the mud. I was really caught off guard that Sunday, and was not at all sure what I thought about the poi and coconut milk.

Ultimately I decided that God was vastly bigger than the limitations that I brought to the table. God could take care of himself.

Earlier, at the beginning of my ordained ministry, I had learned another important lesson.

Controversy

One of my assignments as the rector’s new assistant was to bring communion to the homebound and to those in the hospital. It was a fairly large parish and they were quite a few who expected communion on any given week. The Rector made it clear to me that the teaching of the church for many centuries had been that the sacramental presence of Christ, both the body and the blood of Christ, or present in the form of either the bread or the wine.

There has been, as with so many things, a lot of discussion and controversy over the centuries.

We could have a good conversation, I think, about the possible difficulties of receiving the Sacramental presence of Christ in the wine for alcoholics who are in the process of recovery. ¹ The various issues are complicated and many-branched.

As with the divisions in our country at this time, issues of Eucharistic conviction can be fighting words for some. ²

For myself, however, indulging in divisions and controversy over such a central experience of the risen Lord in our very midst is the scandal. The feeding of the multitude was a miraculous coming together, so that the People of God can be fed by the Lord. When we make controversies we prevent the body of Christ from being fed.

The church has been living through utterly extraordinary times in the past year and a half. It has required extraordinary responses from us. A miraculous and breathtaking nourishment that Christ has given us over the course of millennia is too great a thing to be placed on the chopping block of impatience.

Elijah

Let me share with you another experience I had related to the Eucharist and the cup in particular. I may have shared with you something of my experience in presiding at Seder meals over the course of the last 25 years. A Seder meal is a sacred ritual done in Jewish families at the time of Passover. One of the things that characterizes those meals is a series of cups of wine. It is clearly the case that the 4 cups of wine that participants drink contribute to the festive nature of the Passover meal. But at each Seder there are 5 cups of wine poured. The 5th cup is poured but never drunk. It is called Elijah‘s cup. The symbolism and meaning of this cup has been richly debated for centuries by the rabbis. But we can certainly say that special status of the prophet Elijah is represented in that chalice of wine that is not drunk.

There was an expectation of the return of Elijah in the first century. That expectation is reflected in the New Testament. One aspect of the ongoing expectation of the return of Elijah is the interpretation given to the Hebrew account of Elijah‘s death. One could read it as describing Elijah ascending to heaven without experiencing death. Thus we have an expectation of Elijah‘s return one day. Such a belief has lasted for millennia in the Jewish community.

For myself, living my life with an expectation of the return of the Messiah is a part of what gives my life meaning. It is an aspect of making the future -- which I cannot see -- present in the world which I can see.

I realized four weeks ago at Christ Church in Lancaster South Carolina that the cup of wine that we leave unconsumed on the altar is a perfect Elijah‘s cup.

I don’t know whether our current practice will last a short time or a long time. In the same way I don’t know what the future will bring. But I live my life with the conviction that whatever the future brings we will be in God's hands.

Closing (Ephesians)

Our second reading today comes from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It is a work that is rich and for me full of the energy of hope and expectation. I see and hear in it glory.

Would that we could hear the word of God with that kind of Messianic expectation all the time. We don't. But sometimes it breaks in -- if only just a little.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Notes

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Lectionary

• http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp12_RCL.html

David

• time when kings go into battle
• Bathsheba
• Uriah the Hittite
• Rape? Betrayal? Dishonesty? Manipulation?

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1. cf. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theliturgicaltheologian/2017/07/12/reflections-on-communion-in-one-kind/.↩

2. this article seems to provide evidence that Thomas Aquinas had received the teaching of "the perfection of the sacrament lies in both", thus placing it to at least the 12th-13th c.↩

Proper 11B -- Our Saviour, July 18, 2021

Proper 11b

July 18, 2021 Our Saviour, Rock Hill

Introduction

Those of you who were here last week journeyed with me to the first century, Paul was traveling around the Mediterranean because God had commissioned him to take the gospel to all people. I offered up a brief introduction to the letter to the Ephesians, suggesting that in order to really understand and to digest what is in that book of the New Testament, we needed to keep a proper perspective, remembering to keep in mind the big picture.

The lessons we have heard today from scripture make it possible for us to put that into practice, keeping our perspective on the cosmos as well as what is going on around us.

The lessons today invite us to consider our place in the community of God‘s people. To consider who are God‘s people, and who do we include in that definition? The lessons today invite us to consider the implications of the gospel for our lives today and the church's mission in the world at this time.

That's a lot.

Covenant and Community

Consider from the first reading. We are reading throughout the summer from the books named after Samuel, a prophet linking Israel’s past and its future. Israel both a figure, a person, from the ancient past and also the name of a community bound together by their binding covenant with God, the God who created that cosmos we looked at last week. The past of that community built on the gifts and spirit of patriarchs and matriarchs, judges and warriors. The future, now we’re back 3000 years ago, is a journey into being a nation like all other nations.

The journey stretching back into the far distant past reaches all the way up to the present where the same kind of conversations occur in the Middle East and once again there’s a nation with the name Israel, wanting to be like all other nations and claiming a special relationship with God. It’s a narrative that has been with us a long time.

David has succeeded Saul as the king of the community and Nathan has succeeded Samuel as the prophet in the community. David is trying to figure out the nature of this covenant that God has made with us? Surely it must involve providing a stable home for the ark of the covenant, he wonders to the prophet?

What is God doing with the covenant today? Where does the community of the church fit in with that covenant? Questions continue up to the present.

Community and Covenant are utterly central to understanding the Bible. The community passes through many different manifestations. They struggle from generation to generation with the tension between what the community wants and what God wants of them. I’m thinking of the community of Israel, but I’m thinking no less of the community that was formed around Jesus and became the beloved community.

Becoming Beloved Community -- that's the name being used today by the Episcopal Church to begin to describe what we're about. On the web site of the National Church we read:

As the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, we dream and work to foster Beloved Communities where all people may experience dignity and abundant life and see themselves and others as beloved children of God. The Becoming Beloved Community Vision Document and accompanying resources help us to understand and take up the long-term commitments necessary to form loving, liberating and life-giving relationships with each other. Together, we are growing as reconcilers, justice-makers, and healers in the name of Christ. National Church

From the beginning the covenant that bound us with God also set us apart. David and his descendants for generations would come to realize that being like everybody else was not all it was cracked up to be. Jesus and his descendants would continually be reminded of how the ways of the world did not correspond directly with the ways of the beloved community.

Ephesians

The people of God continued through the centuries to understand and define for themselves what it meant to be in covenant with God. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul continued that questioning and searching.

So when we read in today’s passage from the letter to the Ephesians the subject matter has to do with the question of how God‘s chosen people live in covenant with God and with one another? Paul argues that it is not in the definitions that the Torah has passed down. It is not in circumcision. Rather, it is Jesus who is the bed rock and corner stone for providing an answer. He is our peace.

No longer strangers

From a time in my own life when it seemed as if I was cut off from the beloved community and didn’t know where to turn for Hope I discovered a song that was recorded by John Michael Talbot. The title of it was no longer strangers. I listen to it over and over again. The words are virtually a paraphrase of Paul’s letter.

If you google the phrase "No longer strangers", you will see the wide range of inspirations associated with this phrase, which is inextricably linked to today's passage from the letter to the Ephesians. Talbot's version is the one that I first latched onto, finding there the hope about which he writes.

"You who once were far off are brought near".

John Michael Talbot No Longer Strangers ¹

Once you were strangers to the covenant The promise of God Born without hope, you were without God

A recent recording by the Vineyard ministry is beautiful, peaceful, hopeful:

Beautifully made By nature I've fallen By grace I've been raised You're calling me I'm coming home You're calling me I'm coming home Beautifully made

"No longer strangers" is the name of a ministry in Dayton, OH, aimed at refugees and immigrants.

It is the name of a book that sets forth the many ways in which Protestant evangelicals are obliged by the Gospel commission to minister to immigrants, providing hospitality and healing, all as a form of evangelism.

Community is defined by hospitality

Community. The sacred community. The beloved community in covenant with God. It turns out that it can only happen and only be real in relationship with others. From ancient times Israel understood itself to be set apart, to be chosen. That is virtually the definition of sacredness, holiness. Set apart.

But Israel again from ancient times understood Torah to command that the set apart community would welcome with hospitality and healing those who were wanderers. Israel understood from ancient times that its own well-being was dependent on the care of those who were outside the community and in need.

Covenant can only happen between partners. It cannot happen with just one. The covenant of community, the beloved community, is one that embraces all.

Community defined by moving in and out of solitude

Jesus

In the passage from Mark‘s gospel that we hear today, Jesus bears the marks of the beloved community to which I’ve tried to point today. He has looked at those who have gathered around him, those who have been drawn to him in search of hope and healing. And he has had compassion for them.

Only in relationship to others did Jesus understand his covenant with God.

Merton was a Trappist monk of the mid 20th c. whose writings brought to life for many the realities, the passion, the holiness, the beauty, and the deep commitment of the contemplative life.

I thought of an extraordinary scene from his life that illustrated the point I've been trying to draw. It was a mystical experience. It revealed to him the deep bond between the solitary person striving to live in prayer and the bustling people in the world around him or her. The bond was love.

On March 18, 1958, Thomas Merton was running errands in downtown Louisville when he had an experience that would change his life and influence countless others. The spot is marked with a historical marker, the only one that I know of in the United States that marks a mystical experience.

He described it this way in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: link

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Merton like Jesus and like each of us is called to be set apart, in prayer, but only so that our compassion may come forth and our connections, our love, for all of the others can be manifest.

Prayer

All kinds of prayer

This covenant in which we find ourselves, this beloved community in which we know who we really are, calls to prayer, yes to be a part, to be holy, but only to show forth the love that belongs first and foremost to God and through God to all people.

Call to prayer, to all kinds of prayer. For example in one of the better outlines an acronym form for the variety of prayer, the beloved community is called acts.

ACTS

It goes like this: ²

• Adoration: Give God praise and honor for who he is as Lord over all.

• Confession: Honestly deal with the sin in your prayer life.

• Thanksgiving: Verbalize what you’re grateful for in your life and in the world around you.

• Supplication: Pray for the needs of others and yourself.

Collect

Or rather succinctly brought together in today's collect:

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Notes

Lectionary

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Footnotes

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1. https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/John-Michael-Talbot/No-Longer-Strangers↩

2. https://www.dummies.com/religion/christianity/the-acts-method-of-christian-prayer/↩

Proper 10b, Chapel of Our Saviour

Proper 10b July 11, 2021 Our Saviour, Rock Hill

Introduction to Ephesians

Over the next 6 weeks, on Sundays we will be hearing from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Ephesus. If any of you have made one of the excursions that follow Paul's travels you might well have visited. It's on the coast of Turkey. The ruins you would have seen are spectacular and vivid.

By Benh LIEU SONG - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15578063

Part of today's reading we hear on the 2nd Sunday of Christmas. It's that kind of reading. It is majestic. It takes a cosmic view. In contrast to many of Paul's letters where he is responding to particular issues in particular places and times.

Whole of Creation

In this letter the theme is not about local conflicts or issues. Here the perspective is Christ's redemption of the whole of creation. Here we have a big scope. This is the big picture.

When I read from this letter I have feelings something like a thirsty athlete feels when they get ahold of some quenching drink.

4. God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before the creation of the world.

"Ah, now I am in the presence of the Sacred!"

It is a classic view of Christ as the Lord of all creation. Creation is big.

1. Christ has reconciled all creation to himself and to God, and
2. Christ has united people from all nations to himself and to one another in his church.

Adoption

In just these opening verses we hear a theme that runs throughout the New Testament, taking several different guises. I refer to the theme of adoption. Sometimes it seems mundane, seeming to refer to the very human activity of people and families adopting children. At other times "adoption" is very clearly a metaphor intended to point us in the direction of God and God's relationship to us.

Many years ago when I was in graduate school I took a seminar on the theology of ministry. The basic method we used was to observe a variety of different ministries – I mean really different kinds of ministries – and then to come back to our group and to reflect theologically on what we observed.

We observed the usual kinds of things like Sunday worship, funerals, weddings, etc. But we also observed some less traditional ministries. In the early 1980’s that included radio ministry, which was mostly being done by conservative Protestant ministers. I didn’t feel particular affinity with them but I chose to approach my “research” with an openness based precisely on the fact that I didn’t know or relate to it.

I ended up listening to one program in particular that changed my life. Imagine that. It was by Chuck Swindoll. My recollection was that he was teaching on the prophet Hosea, but my memory could be faulty on that point. What is very clear to me is the theme. The theme was adoption. The narrative in the Bible was about God adopting the people as his own. In spite of everything …

Swindoll's lesson was, for me, something like Jesus' parables in his day. They used ordinary language, ordinary concepts and images, but always with a twist, a turn, that was intended to "hook" us. The catch was always to spur and motivate us to some kind of action or conversion.

Because "adoption" is such an apt metaphor for the relationship between God and God's creatures, I genuinely had to re-evaluate my own life and relationships.

We are not God and we are not even part of his “family” except in so far as God created us to be like him. So the love that God has for us is not particularly like that of a biological father and mother, but more like an adopted father or mother.

At that point in my life, the birth of my oldest children had been the thing that awakened love within me. Little did I guess, however, that it would be the entrance of children more like adopted children that would really teach me about love.

I went on in future years to be a host for a number of foreign students and invited young people to live with me for extended periods of time. There would be the older folks who became like aunties & uncles to me and the adopted children of other families that would become more like children than my biological children.

In Hawai'i I learned first hand of how indigenous peoples around the globe and throughout time have placed as high a value on adopted members of a family as on the biological members. Hosting exchange students on several occasions in my life has provided me with the opportunity to exercise unconditional love with people who lived much of their lives in other cultures and other traditions. I have bonded with children of students to the point that they call me "grandpa."

Paul was onto something when he greeted the Ephesians with the blessing we have heard this morning. The love of adopted children mimics God's love for us. What could be more powerful than that?

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Understanding the mystery of God’s will

With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Reading this letter to the Ephesians invites us to see ourselves in a new perspective. As if the backdrop to a selfie taken of us with our camera revealed the entire universe and the night sky, filled with galaxies and dark matter, black holes and magnificent nebulae. We are a part of a plan that is awesome in the extreme.

God made us a part of that plan.

But I am with Paul when he says that God has a plan for the fullness of time and that all things will be gathered up in him.

Paul is painting a picture of God's people in the letter to the Ephesians.

• adoption into God's family
• redemption through blood -- blood of sacrifice and blood that binds family together
• we set our hope on Christ and that truly makes all things possible
• marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit and that empowers our often timid movement forward

What does this letter to the Ephesians tell us about the life we are living today?

There is certainly the evocative invitation into a life of holiness in the family of God. There is also a biting indictment of the ways we fall short of "fullness of time" which God has planned for us.

The letter will go on beyond today's reading and evoke a unity fashioned from our differences and diversity. Paul's words in this letter plead with us as God's adopted children to see unity in the world's variety, the rich and even more in the poor, in the splendid variety of colors, shapes, and abilities of God's family, in the richness of the gifts God has laid before us.

We will hear in chapter 3 about all the gifts that have been prepared and given to us for the purpose of mission. They are not for our comfort or convenience. They are for leading those who do not know the richness of God's diverse family into the awareness and knowledge of God's glory.

As we listen to these words throughout the rest of the summer, I urge you to hold tenaciously to an awareness of the majesty and glory of what is being put before you.

Like you, I have expected to find glimpses of glory in the church at Christmas or at Easter. I have had to cultivate seeing glory in the ordinary of our every day lives.

Paul urges us to expand our vision, to widen our sense of engagement with the world. What is at stake is God's cultivation of the garden beyond our imagining.

And we are a part of it. Don't bow your heads in retreat. But stand at the energy emanating from the divine source. Be ready to take a stand, to make a change, to love another who grieves or suffers.

We have been marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. Our hope is based on God's promise of redemption and incorporation into his family. It is a multi-colored family and most of it doesn't look or act like us. But it is all for the praise of God's glory.

Notes

Lectionary

Proper 9B, 2021 -- Christ Church

Proper 9b July 4, 2021 Christ Church, Lancaster

Proper-9-2021

lectionary

4th of July: look beyond the obvious

It's the 4th of July. It only falls on Sunday every once in a while. I remember some years ago when it fell on Sunday, and that day happened to be the day the bishop, Dick Chang, visited my congregation in Hawai'i.

Dick Chang was born and raised in Hawai'i and except for a couple of stints on the mainland he lived his whole life in Hawai'i. Chinese-American. Raised in Hawai'i. I was surprised to learn that weekend that Dick Chang loved hot dogs.

4th of July means such a wealth of things to us in this country. Some of them so important. Some of them trivial -- like hot dogs.

When I lived in Hawai'i it was reported once that the 4th of July fireworks were the 3rd biggest in the country -- after New York and Boston. It's important to note, perhaps, that there were more fireworks in Hawai'i on Chinese New Year than on the 4th of July.

Those are actually the relatively trivial things. Much more important, e.g., is the way in which this day somehow begins to tell the story of who we are as a nation.

 

American stories

"David Brooks" wrote a piece this last week that was eloquent in identifying the story-like quality that the day speaks to us.

By David Brooks

He began by saying that one of essential elements of a great nation is found in "the knowledge from the stories we tell about ourselves."

This kind of knowledge (he says) isn’t merely factual knowledge. It is a moral framework from which to see the world. Homer taught the ancient Greeks how to perceive their reality. Exodus teaches the Jews how to interpret their struggles and their journey.

I was particularly interested in his words because I have long understood that the stories we tell about ourselves do two things. One is they reveal who we are.

We who live in this country share many secular stories. These might include: Paul Revere and Sojourner Truth, Irving Berlin and Woody Guthrie, Aaron Burr and Cesare Chavez. In truth we are an exceedingly diverse and complex people.

At the same time, the stories we tell about ourselves also help to fashion who we are becoming. If we repeat often enough that we are stingy and poor, we will in time become exactly that. It is important what stories we repeat over and over again.

Christian stories

Gathered here in this place, we are Americans to be sure, but more deeply we are Christians. As Christians we have different stories to tell, revealing who we are and who we are becoming.

As Christians we share different stories. The most basic is Jesus Christ, the crucified and Risen Lord. That's the Easter story. But there are other stories that are about our participation in that basic story of Christ. They are the stories of how our lives have intersected with Jesus' own story. They are stories of the sacred mystery of God that has broken into our lives.

Paul: a mystic vision

On our refrigerator, like lots of refrigerators, there are lots of different kinds of things posted and taped: photos, mementos, that sort of thing. Among them in our kitchen is a little magnet that my wife gave to me. It says: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

In the excerpt from Paul's letter to the Corinthians that we have heard today, Paul quite explicitly refers to a time that took his breath away.

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.

This experience to which he refers is at the very border between what is accessible to language and that which is not. So he uses this elliptical language. We might respond to him, "Well, yes, Paul. Might that person be you?" But we don't play with him at that point, because we know he is trying to express the inexpressible.

But Paul also knows that the mystic vision he has had does not come cheap. He knows that he has in no way been a better person, a more capable person, a more learned person to deserve this mystic vision.

… to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh …

Paul was a flawed hero -- and that's why he is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have known glory. Far more often I realize how flawed I am.

Like Paul each of us carries a thorn – a thorn we would gladly not advertise or carry around – but which God in his mercy has let us tote around. It is our undoing as often as not. But in the light of the gospel it is our very strength because it points to God’s very real and awesome power.

Whenever I am weak I am strong, Paul says. We can proclaim that from the rooftops and the world will not reward us. But it will be the truth and it will set us free.

Boast of weakness

Frederich Buechner, an author who has inspired me over the years, said this:

We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by…

“I know a person in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to heaven…” I have known such a person myself. And my guess is that each of you has also. Perhaps you yourself? Or another? Perhaps your grandmother? I know that each of you has a story to tell. That's why you are here. As Buechner put it, we are all mystics .

Gerard Manley Hopkins: God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It's not just Christians who have known this. Paul's experience binds all human beings together with this experience. Paul's entire ministry was aimed at that end: that the gospel was for all people.

Our flaws go right together with our mystic experiences. Our flaws are an essential part of our grandeur -- and God's glory.

Navajo blankets are made with intentional flaws to illustrate this. Persian rugs the same. Native American sand paintings, which are laboriously crafted over many man-hours, are wiped away in a flash, in order to make the same point.

Navaho Rugs

Persian rugs

Sand painting

Mission

More than anything else, Paul is known as a missionary. It is not foremost in people's minds that he was first of all a mystic.

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” ― St. Catherine of Siena

Paul's journey 14 years earlier, up to the 3rd heaven, was what gave him authority to preach the gospel to all nations. His journey to the 3rd heaven and the thorn that would not leave him.

Jesus before him had preached that it is in our weakness that we will find our strength. Paul's authority was grounded in knowing and living that gospel truth.

Jesus was not accepted in his own home town. What an agony that must have felt like to him. But he sent them out anyway, two by two. For he had a mission. God had a mission for him to accomplish and he accepted the commission.

Paul did likewise.

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” ― St. Catherine of Siena

Really, how can we do less.

Your mission?

As a congregation you may at times be most aware of what you lack. You may imagine that if you were just a little bit more of that or a little bit more of this ...

It is a thorn. And its message to you is, "Pay attention to the mystic experiences each of you brings with you. It is all you need."

From before my ordination I have felt called to ministry with small congregations. Where we are weak we are strong .

I believe that. I’m generally not at all sure that the institutional church thinks that.

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” ― St. Catherine of Siena

That is the story we as Christians have to tell and to be. That is your mission.