Last Sunday of Epiphany (C), Monroe

When I was growing up Colorado

An early lesson I remember from school was a piece of geographical trivia that if one flattened out the mountains of Colorado our state would have been larger than Texas. I was born in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. I’ve always thought of mountains as a part of my inner makeup, a part of what makes me who I am. I learned to drive when my father took me up into the mountains and let me drive the car on some of the deserted roads.

Later some neighborhood friends agreed to teach me how to ski on the little hills by the little park between our houses. These hills must have been all of about 10--15 feet high, but I felt an exhilaration when I could finally stand up on my skis all the way down.

Then we headed for a real ski area! I remember my first real run after practicing on the little “bunny” slope at the bottom. I felt like I was going to fall off a cliff when I got to the beginning of the run. Later, when I became a more polished and experienced skier, I would remember my fear that day with embarrassment. It was such an easy run and I was by then familiar with skiing avalanche chutes.

Later, with the same friends, I would spend a lot of time trying to learn and explore rock climbing and mountaineering techniques. I was never quite as accomplished with those as I was with skiing, but I gained a taste for what the mountains had to offer:

• fresh water in streams that we could drink from
• a couple of times seeing the aurora borealis
• quiet, stillness
• stars filling the sky which was uninterrupted by city lights
• fresh smells of all kinds
• fresh caught fish, cooking on a fire, as the sunrise burned the fog off a lake

And so much more. There is something very attractive, alluring, about the mountains. There is a reason, I guess, that they have been the focus for millenia of spiritual seekers, those seeking a closer relationship with God -- or “the gods.” Moses received God’s name in a cave on a mountain. Moses received the covenant in the form of stone tablets on a mountain. Abraham climbed a mountain with his son, following the command of God. That mountain is said to be the Holy Mount at the site of the temple in Jerusalem. Over it sits the Dome of the Rock. Moses went up the mountain to be with God. Jesus took his companions up the mountain as he turned his face from ministry to his passion in Jerusalem. Later, a community of monks would find their way to Mt. Athos in Greece -- there better to seek to live holy lives and to mold them into persons acceptable to God.

Mountains have been both literally and figuratively a place of holiness and of being molded into holiness and the way of love.

Meeting God at the mountain tops

Many are the holy mountains throughout the earth:

• Mt. Zion, Mt. Everest, Mauna Kea, Mt. Olympos, Mt. Ararat, Machu Picchu, Mt. of Olives. ... the list could go on and on.
• Mountains are places of revelation
• They are places of pilgrimage. They are places of worship. They are places with a powerful draw for many.
• Perhaps it is that the mountain tops are closer to the home of the gods or God.
• It is not as important to try to explain why as to observe their reality.

This last Sunday of Epiphany we in the Episcopal Church observe a mountain day in preparation for a day of ashes -- coming up this Wednesday.

I once heard a man speak who seemed as if he had walked out of the Old Testament.

His name was William McNamara. He lived most of his life as a monk living in a small religious community or living by himself as a hermit. He wrote a number of books about mysticism, contemplation, and how we can and ought to experience those things in the every day life that each of us lives. One of his books begins,

the Mystic is not a special kind of person; every person is a special kind of mystic. The Mystic is one who consciously and thoroughly immerses himself in the mystery of life and enjoys his communion with Ultimate Being.

McNamara thought that every one of us was capable of walking up the mountain of transfiguration alongside Jesus. He was convinced that all of us are capable and equipped by the living God to know the glory of the holy. Thomas Merton said much the same thing as I noted a week or two ago.

Annie Dillard famously described the liturgy that many of us so value in the church as being somehow devised over many years to be actions that keep the glory of God at bay. To go up the mountain with Jesus, alongside Peter, James, and John, we must let go of our expectations for the familiar. If we project our own expectations on the glory of God, we will get it wrong.

Glory in the small things

I have seen and experienced glory in the mountains, but mountain-top experiences can be found in all kinds of places and times, not just in literal mountains.

I have also experienced glory in the small tiny pieces of creation. I used to enjoy going out into the front lawn of our house where we would get down on our hands and knees and look and observe and marvel at the little creatures crawling about the blades of grass. I experienced "glory" when I was 12 or 13 playing baseball. Someone in center field lost a contact lens. In those days contacts were very expensive. Something took hold of me and I walked out of the dugout in a straight line to the outfield. I stopped. Bent down and picked up the lost contact. It was serendipitous. I felt as if I was in someone else's control. I felt mystery that I could not explain. It was one more piece of confirmation that I lived in the presence of something far greater than myself.

Coming down from the mountain

As we heard in the opening reading today, Moses came down from the mountain and had to hide from the people. Only slowly, over centuries would Israel begin to understand what the glory of this God was all about. It did not reside in political structures. It did not reside in grand buildings. It resided in the hearts of men and women. It resided in the Torah.

Peter, James, & John came down from the mountain. It’s not clear they understood at all what they had seen or experienced. They were unable to share it and kept silent in those days.

To go to the mountain is to tremble in humility. A veil over your face. Silent before your friends who want to know what it was like.

I know that some of you have known the mountain top experience I have tried to evoke and scripture portrays.

Yes, one comes down. One returns home after pilgrimage. We are given a glimpse of glory -- why? -- but to help others to glory. Not for our own purpose, but for our fellow companions on the Way. Christians were known as “followers of the way” before they were known as Christians.

Jesus led his friends down the mountain, telling them to keep quiet and learn what the glory meant. It is a lesson in humility. It is the Way of the Cross.

The Transfiguration in the synoptic gospels plays a pivotal role. Literally. It is the point in the narrative where Jesus draws to a close the first part of his life and begins to live into the second half which culminates in the cross and the empty tomb.

Mountain top experiences are times for silence and awe. The time for talking, explaining, will come later. My own experience is that mountain top experiences are associated with profound times of loss as well as joyous times of celebration.

When we catch a glimpse of glory we know that life is worth living. Glory. Found on the Cross. Found in the empty tomb. On Wednesday the church literally will invite us to the keeping of a holy Lent. Today the church figuratively invites us to the same.

Come follow the way of the cross. Come with Mary as she discovers the Risen Lord.

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Themes

lectionary Lesson 1: Exodus 34:29--35 Psalm: 99 Lesson 2: 2 Corinthians 3:12--4:2 Gospel: Luke 9:28--36,(37--43a)

Collect: O God, who before the passion of your only ­begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain

• Moses come down from the mountain -- skin of his face shining -- had to wear a veil when before the people.
• 3 disciples trudging up the mountain

Epiphany 7c, Monroe

 

Epiphany 7c Monroe

Nearing the end of Epiphany

Ash Wednesday will be here in less than two weeks. If nothing else we can recognize the passing of time. You know the saying that time goes faster the older you get. One of the young ladies at my therapy commented as February came and gone that she was having trouble keeping track of the new month. I responded saying I’m still having trouble with it being after the millennium. A piece I came across yesterday said, "I just had it brought to my attention that 1980 and 2021 are as far apart as 1980 and 1939."

Time is somehow getting stranger and stranger. Something I thought was obvious turns out to be not so obvious.

I don’t know where I first heard the saying, "If that’s true it’s important." What the scripture seems to say to me today is a little like what I’ve described. It seems like I understand it, but after a little thought I end up saying, "Wait? What?" What seemed like an ordinary truth turns out to be strange. And if it’s true it’s important.

Challenge

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ... But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Did I hear that correctly? Love your enemies?

Jesus (Sermon)

Last week we heard from Luke’s Gospel just before this passage. Today it’s a continuation of that sermon on the plain. I characterize that sermon as direct and to the point, contrasting it with the similar words of Matthews Sermon on the Mount which tends to spiritualize the lessons. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Love your enemies.

It’s ordinary words to be sure but they seem strike deep within us a dissonant chord. It’s not the world we live in.

If we let the words in they will challenge us. If we have ears to listen the message of scripture has the power to change us.

What is love? What does scripture ask of us?

Love

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

If that's true it's important.

A few weeks ago we heard Paul talk about love -- "faith, hope, and love abide. But the greatest of these is love."

Love seems like the concept of time I described above. It seems to be something we all know and experience. But what is it? Really? Is it really what it seems? When we speak the words do we let them in?

Love is?

For many of us love is romantic love. I actually learned a word in this last year that is common place to some. “Rom-Com”. Romantic comedy. It's all about love isn't it?

From Romeo and Juliet going backwards all the way to ancient Greeks and Chinese authors we can read about love and all its various manifestations. Many languages have multiple words for different kinds of love. In English we require the word love to carry lots of freight.

If I were to go around the room and ask each of you what is love, I suspect I would hear a huge variety of different kinds of responses.

Love can be a euphemism for things we want to avoid saying explicitly. Love can be an emotion and feeling, something inside us that we can't quite put our fingers on. It can also be the driving force behind self sacrifice for others, and service to those who are poor or in need.

100 years ago a theologian popularized the notion that in the Bible we can see three different concepts of love at work: eros, philia, and agape. romantic love as between lovers, brotherly love as between members of the community, and self-giving love exemplified by Jesus.

Clearly love is not something simple or obvious.

"God is love"

To pursue it further and to deepen the richness of the concept of love we're dealing with here, we have the example from the New Testament itself. The first letter of John in the fourth chapter.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 1 John 4

I have heard frequently reference to the so-called God of love in the New Testament. I have heard people contrast the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament while expressing their preference for the New Testament God of love. For myself I hear those descriptions with a grain of salt because it suggests that there are multiple gods who somehow have different name tags or characteristics. I have long been convinced that either there is one living God or there's not.

But clearly the author in the first letter of John was expressing some particular insight about how Jesus has brought his followers to a new experience and understanding of who the living God is.

If it's true it's important.

Four levels of love (Bernard of Clairvaux)

Just this past week my spiritual director pointed me in the direction of a well-known outline of love from a writer of the Middle Ages Bernard of Clairvaux. He describes the development of love from a focus on oneself, moving to a love of God, and finally returning to love self. The whole movement being built on the basic reality that God, the living God, the one who created everything is essentially love. Bernard asks

“Why should God be loved?” I answer: the reason for loving God is God himself...

2. The First Degree of Love: Love of Self for Self’s Sake

Love is a natural human affection. It comes from God. But we don't initially recognize that God is the cause of our love.

3. The Second Degree of Love: Love of God for Self’s Sake

We begin to recognize that God's love protects and nourishes us. We will begin to love God even if it is for our own sake. We love God because we have learned that we can do all things through him, and without him we can do nothing.

4. The Third Degree of Love: Love of God for God’s Sake

We gradually recognize that God's love is always there for us. Thus, we begin to love God not merely for our own sakes, but for himself...

5. The Fourth Degree of Love: Love of Self for God’s Sake

Blessed are those who experience the 4th degree of love wherein we love ourselves for God’s sake. Such experiences are rare and come only for a moment. In a manner of speaking, we lose ourselves as though we did not exist, utterly unconscious of ourselves and emptied of ourselves...

Saint Bernard describes love moving from love of self upwards becoming a mystical experience. He even says it's a rare experience. But the whole symphony of love is in fact common place and all around us since the living God is the God of love.

We have an example in our first reading today of how love is both common place and extraordinary at the same time. #### Joseph reconciling with brothers We hear today from the end of the very long Joseph saga in the book of Genesis. It reads actually something like an ancient novel. There are fallible parents trying to care for an unruly group of children. One child favored over all the others. Resentment and plots for revenge. Plan for killing that is modified to only send the brother into slavery.

But the God who loves, the same God who turns upside down the expectations of the world, spoke to us last week about the blessing reserved for the poor and the hungry, for those who mourn, for those who are weak, that God had in mind the redemption of all the turmoil and ache and grief.

The brothers of Joseph have come to Egypt seeking relief and help because they're hungry and poor. They don't have any awareness that Joseph stands before them with the power and authority to give them life.

Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and they weep tears of joy, overcome with the power of love.

I came to an awareness of the love of God at the birth of my first child. As the doctor held him up so that I could see a flood of tears flowed from me, bottled up for years.

You have similar stories. Hang onto them and remember them. “O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing.”

Back to liturgy ### Notes

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi7_html.RCL

Epiphany 6c, Monroe

Title: Epiphany 6c 

Author: St. Paul’s, Monroe 

Date: February 13, 2022 ---

Opening

There was an absolutely stunning performance at the Olympics this last week. Actually probably more than one but one stood out for me. Nathan Chen won the gold medal in figure skating with a performance that was utterly stunning. Spinning so fast around and landing on a skate with the grace of a ballet dancer.

I didn't have a sense that the athlete had been focused on his own prowess or his own skill. He seemed to be operating on the energy from something beyond himself. He had put his fate in the hands of another with whom he had an ultimate trust.

Image of the “Knight of Faith” (S.K.)

In the opening collect of our liturgy today we heard: O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you. The Lord is the strength of all who have faith in God not in their own gifts. Nathan Chen seems like an image that works for me to illustrate that text.

I met a similar image in a book that I was assigned in my first semester of college. It was written by a Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, and its title was Fear and Trembling. In that book he introduces the concept of a person who lives by true faith. He calls such a person a knight of faith. In all the years since I have never forgotten the image he uses. It's the image of a ballet dancer.

The goal of Fear and Trembling is to illuminate the difficulty of faith. ... only the knight of faith can dance perfectly, doing what perhaps no dancer can do: he does not “hesitate” in the moment between landing from his leap and assuming the position from which to reengage ... Alexander Jech University of Notre Dame

Note: Johannes remarks that he has never met a knight of faith, but that he would not know such a man if he saw one. Outwardly, the knight of faith is just like everyone else: simple, philistine, and bourgeois, perhaps a shopkeeper, showing no sign of infinitude or sorrow. Because he has made the infinite leap of faith and regained the finite, he is able fully to delight in the finite pleasures of this world. ... Most of us cling to the joys and passions of this world and don't bother even to involve ourselves in the dance. ...

Jewish Legend

I later encountered a similar concept in an ancient Jewish legend. It is called the “Lamed Waw”. [Re. Numbers in Hebrew.] The legend has it that at any given time there are 36 righteous persons living in the world. They are as it were secret Saints. You can't tell them apart from anyone else. They look just like you and me. But it is because of their righteousness, their faithfulness, that the world is sustained and not destroyed.

Faith as trust

Faith can be understood as a Leap. For Nathan Chen or the knight of faith it is sudden. In most cases faith is hidden beneath the ordinariness of lives. The world is supported by the faith of 36 righteous ones but we cannot know who they are because they look like everyone else.

Faith might also be understood to be more gradual, something one grows into through a lifetime. Faith might be understood as the steady commitment to becoming more and more fully what God has made us for.

Early Greek theologians understood the life of faith to be something like what happens in education. As one understands more and more, our actions become more informed by the marks that God intends for us. It’s the model of Christian education. It understands the life of faith to be one of lifelong formation.

Faith as developmental

When I was in graduate school such a view of the Christian life and faith was put forward by a writer, James Fowler. His signature book was titled Stages of Faith; the Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. He described the development of faith as a progression from one stage to the next. It moved from a stage that he identified with an infant up through the various stages of life too the wisdom of old age.

His outline of the stages begins with a faith which is built on separating the difference between fantasy and reality. It is a stage that develops the ability to trust.

In the next stage, logic and reason begin to take shape and stories and myths are understood in literal ways. In this stage one develops a sense of justice.

At the next stage the various narratives become fashioned into systematic principles. The virtue of conformity is held in especially high esteem at this stage.

The next stage develops the ability to be self critical. It's when people of faith are able to see outside the box as it were. As one is able to reflect on one’s own beliefs, there is an openness to a new complexity of faith, but this also increases the awareness of conflicts in one’s belief.

The next to last stage that Fowler identified is moving to be able to see that life is very much made up of mystery. The logic and principles that were used to understand life in an earlier stage are now found to be inadequate.

The final stage recognizes that life is fundamentally paradoxical and more importance is placed on community than on individual concerns. The individual would treat any person with compassion as he or she views people as from a universal community, and should be treated with universal principles of love and justice.

It has been helpful in my life to recognize that the characteristics of "faith" are different for people at different ages and that people experience and understand their faith in different ways. Faith is a full color experience, more a rainbow and less black and white.

Life of faith

Last month I talked about faith in the context of baptism. Today I am thinking of faith as the way we live our lives. Looking at the big picture while embracing the details of the life we actually live.

Paul is talking about the centrality of the resurrection. For him it is either at the center of our life of faith or our faith is in vain. Whatever we are about as Christians the resurrection is at the heart of it. As some put it we are an Easter people. And our task is to put that into practice.

Sermon on the Plain

And putting it into practice is precisely what we are faced with as we hear from the sixth chapter of Luke. It is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Plain, in contrast with Matthews's account of the Sermon on the Mount.

We have an example from the Gospels where Matthew and Luke have similar or parallel passages. This sermon, which contains what in Matthew we call the Beatitudes, is one of them. The Lord’s Prayer is another. It appears in Matthew and also in Luke. Interestingly the church has most often quoted and paid attention to the passage in Matthew rather than in Luke. Matthew and Luke are the only Gospels to contain birth narratives and there the church has blended the two stories.

In the Sermon on the Plain, from today's gospel passage, we hear an ancient pattern that presents blessings and then woes. We might think of it as blessings followed by curses. Blessed are you when you do such and such, but cursed if you do this other. Matthew follows the same pattern but there are more of them and they are spiritualized. Here in Luke's version it is stark and to the point. Blessed are the poor. Woe on you if you are rich. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are those who weep.

Closing

If we have ears to hear we will recognize that in these words we hear of the dramatic importance of the choices we make. If any person we meet might be one of the 36 righteous ones upon whom rests the very existence of the world we live in, we will respond to each of them as if they themselves were Christ. If the poor are blessed, if we exploit them for our own wealth our very life of faith is put in jeopardy.

This is good news and not bad news because there are people of faith like Nathan Chen among figure skaters. Some of them are prominent and we recognize them. Many more appear to be just like you and me. That there was a Mother Teresa helps to sustain my efforts to be a servant. That her life of faith was a struggle in many ways not unlike my own makes it clear to me what my task is.

A woman in my congregation in Hawaii was flying home one day from a visit to the mainland. Suddenly and unexpectedly a part of the fuselage blew out and several passengers disappeared out the airplane to perish below. The plane landed safely with all the rest of the passengers safe. But it forever changed the life of the woman in my parish. From that moment on for the rest of her life she knew her life had a purpose and her only responsibility was to be faithful in carrying that out.

May the hidden Saints illuminate your life will blend in with that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us. May you be blessed in the beginning and in the end.

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Note:¹

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1. http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi6_RCL.html Jeremiah 17:5-10 / 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 / Luke 6:17-26 / Psalm 1↩︎

Proper 5c, Monroe

 

Homily In the year that King Uzziah died

Our text from Isaiah

• In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.
• as if in the background the music: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory."

• unclean lips
• live coal that cleanses
• "Here am I; send me!"

Call it sleep

A novel with the title Call it sleep utterly captivated me in my youth¹. The main character, David, is a young Jewish immigrant growing up in a strange land called New York City in 1907. In the most vivid writing I had encountered at that stage of my life, David’s inner searching for the meaning of his new life, his relationship with his father, the significance of his Jewish faith was seared into me as I identified with much of his odyssey.

It’s perhaps not happenstance that I use the word “seared”, because the young David in the novel is focused on the uncleanness around him in the slums of the city, and on his own unworthiness of his father’s love and of the demands of his religion.

This passage from Isaiah is the frame of several scenes in which David is nearly electrocuted at the tracks of the subway.

Holiness is encountered and it nearly kills him. The encounter with holiness it seems is dangerous.

“Holy, holy, holy” every time we celebrate the Eucharist

When I was in seminary my teacher emphasized his own view that if there is anything sung at the celebration of the Eucharist it is this passage, the Sanctus. Perhaps it is the heavenly hosts, the seraphs around the throne, that indicate that it ought to be sung.

It is one of the places in the liturgy where I very often raise my hands, as if in recognition that perhaps the angels are singing and God is before us sitting on the throne.

This passage from Isaiah appears twice in the Sunday readings.

Once every Trinity Sunday

Somehow pointing to the unspeakable holiness of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Once every 3 years on Epiphany 5 in year “C”

Midway through the season of Epiphany. A season shaped by the growing manifestation of the true and deep reality of who Jesus is.

The passage also appears as one option in the ordination of a priest.

• I felt like I had some inkling of what that meant. Then I was ordained and I learned I didn’t have a clue.
• I’m here because you as a congregation are anticipating calling a priest to be your rector.
• Perhaps the passage is read here because of its association with the Eucharist.
• I have always identified with the way in which a newly ordained priest is (at least normally) rather enthusiastically saying to the people of the church around him, “Here I am! I’m ready.”

It makes it all the more ironic when the passage goes on to relate what God wants the person to say. The message is to be addressed to the people and it is:

• Why do you listen but don’t comprehend?
• Why do you look but don’t understand?
• This is going to be the ruin of your cities and your houses.

It’s no wonder that a priest later in life might ask, “Why was I so enthusiastic at the beginning?”

Holiness comes with danger as well as great attraction. It draws us to it. But it can kill us.

The 3-fold “holy, holy, holy” appears twice in the Bible

• here in Isaiah
• And in the final book of the Bible, Revelation 4:8

Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”

As in Isaiah, there is a throne with One seated on it. That throne is surrounded by 24 thrones with 24 elders sitting on them. In the center, near the one throne are 4 living creatures, and they are singing 24/7 – yes, they’re singing what we call the “Sanctus”

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is coming.”

That’s more reason, I guess, why we should be singing the sanctus at every Eucharist.

What is this “holiness” of which we speak?

What is this purification that we must go through before we are ready to speak and do what God has given us to do?

We hear the words, maybe even frequently use them, but do we have a sense of what they signify? What the import and impact on us and our lives might be?

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees
Takes off his shoes --
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In the eyes of the beholder

Jesus responded to the inquiries of Andrew and Simon in the first chapter of John, by saying, “Come and see.” They gave up everything to follow him. They had seen holiness and it made all the difference in their life.

When the centurion turned to Jesus for help (Mat 8), he looked at Jesus, I suppose, the same way someone looks at me when they approach me asking for some money so that they could buy some food or gas.

In Matthew 27:54 a centurion looked at Jesus dying on the cross, saw an earthquake, and was greatly afraid, he said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

The centurions and the disciples looked at the same person, the same holiness and responded by changing their lives.

Is it something we recognize when we see it?

Or do we generally walk past it without seeing or hearing?

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.²

Merton described it this way in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

“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.”

As we leave this sanctuary today,

may we go forth with the anticipation and the conviction that we are about to encounter the holiness of God. It may come in the form of an electrical spark in a New York slum. It may come from a person in need or suffering. It may come from a stranger or your nearest friend.

But that throne is out there as much as it is in here. If you have ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to embrace – you will find it.

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Footnotes

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1. https://www.grin.com/document/7665 Isaiah story in the novel. N.B. the “coal” as a purifying (not a dirty) role in Isaiah. http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2009/11/call-it-sleep.html exploring the relationship of the novel with modernist and Jewish themes.↩

2. https://www.spiritualtravels.info/spiritual-sites-around-the-world/north-america/kentucky-a-thomas-merton-tour/thomas-mertons-mystical-vision-in-louisville/↩