Wherever You Go, There God Is

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
February 14, 2010; Last Epiphany, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 9:28-36) – About eight days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
______________________________________________________________

A couple of weeks ago a friend was telling about something that happened to him on a trip to the Holy Land. He was with a group of African American clergy, most of them from urban settings. They were a crisp, sophisticated, almost cynical bunch, he said. They've seen a lot in their lives and ministries, and are not easily impressed.

They were visiting the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a sixth century Orthodox shrine at a location that is believed to have been venerated since at least the year 160 as the reputed birthplace of Jesus. Near the church altar is a flight of steps that descends to the Grotto of the Nativity, a rectangular cavern beneath the church. Inside the grotto is an ancient cave. Inside the cave, on the floor, is a silver star which marks the point where it is said that Jesus was born. In the middle of the star is a circular hole. Each of the visitors was allowed to reach an arm into the hole and to touch the living stone of the cave below at the place where it is said Jesus was born of Mary.

As the group waited for each person to touch the holy place, someone began to sing "Silent Night, Holy Night." Their voices blended in the dark, solemn cavern. When my friend looked up, he saw not a dry eye in the place. Celtic Christians speak of "thin places," he said. This was a thin place, where our crusty earthiness and the ethereal transcendent seem so close, so connected.

The next day they had some time off. While others went shopping or doing various errands, my friend hopped a ride and returned to the old church. He went down the stairs again to the grotto, over to the silver star on the floor, and reached down once more to touch the holy place that had so moved him the day before. Nothing. No spiritual feelings; no sense of awe; no special presence. These things aren't automatic, you know. What was missing, he said, was community. It was the shared experience of community that had made the moment so significant the day before. By himself, it was not the same.

A few moments ago we heard another story of the experience of a thin place. Peter, James and John were with Jesus on a mountain. Mountains are often thin places. Generations of Episcopalians in Arkansas have experienced the nearness of God on the mountain-top at Camp Mitchell, our diocesan camp and conference center. Human beings in all ages have known an awe that connects them with the All in mountainous places of thin air or vast vision. For a moment, Peter, James and John witnessed something mysterious that revealed a deep and glorious truth about their friend Jesus. Then it was over, and everything looked like it always does.

What do you do with that? Peter wanted to make a shrine. "Let's make three dwellings," he said. Let's capture the experience; let's objectify the mystery. But a cloud of presence surrounded them and told them simply to listen. Then they went down the mountain, back home, with nothing, but the memory of something that cannot be grasped.

A few years ago we invited our congregation to share stories of thin places, Transfiguration moments, and we collected them into a booklet that we printed in August for the Feast of the Transfiguration. Psychiatrist Gerald May often conducts in-depth interviews with people about their emotional and psychological life. He says that when he asks people about their own experience of these numinous moments, if he is patient enough, every single person he interviews has some memory of something that is a brush with mystery, with the holy, the other, the unitive.

What about you? When have you experienced something deep or awesome or dazzling? If nothing comes to mind, I might encourage you to spend some time this week, as we get ready to enter Lent, going through your memory in a deliberative way, to see if something doesn't bubble up from your unconscious.

Sometimes we put away these mysterious things because we have no containers for them. They don't fit with our ordinary reality, so we hide them in little dwellings in our deep memory.

Sometimes we remember an enlivening spiritual experience, but we anchor it in the time and place where it happened. That place or that community where we experienced awe or peace becomes the place where such things dwell. We may try to recreate that context when we are back home, away from the mountain, and we may feel deeply disappointed, or even nostalgic, when the mystery is not transferable. Or we may, like my friend in Bethlehem, return to the place of awe, and find it isn't there anymore. We may ask ourselves, was it really real?

During our teleconference with Rabbi Zalman last Tuesday night, he told a Sufi story. Once upon a time there was a holy Sufi sheik who had grown very old. Each of his twenty disciples hoped to be his successor. To test them, he gave each of the twenty a bird to hold in his hand. He told each to take the bird somewhere where no one could see them, and to kill the bird. Nineteen returned with a dead bird, but one returned with the bird still alive in his hand. "Why did you not kill the bird as I told you?" the sheik asked his disciple. "There is no place where I can go where I am not seen," he answered. This one became the next sheik.

There are thin places and there are moments of presence and transfiguration, but there is also no place where God is not fully present. It is true: Wherever you go, there you are. It is also true: Wherever you go, there is God. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom says, "You will find stability at the moment when you discover that God is everywhere, that you do not need to seek [God] elsewhere, that [God] is here, and if you do not find [the Divine] here it is useless to go and search for [God] elsewhere because it is not [God] that is absent from us, it is we who are absent from [God]. This is important because it is only at the moment that you recognize this, that you can truly find the fullness of the Kingdom of God in all its richness within you; that God is present in every situation and every place, that you will be able to say: ‘So then I shall stay where I am.’" (1)

Last Tuesday, someone asked Reb Zalman how he prays. "When I am driving, I imagine God in the seat next to me, and I talk to God and tell God all that I am thinking and feeling."(2) A car becomes a shrine. A passenger's seat becomes the dwelling place of God.

It is important to remember and to treasure those transfiguration moments and those thin places when we have sensed deeply the presence of the holy. It is good to seek out community where we invoke the presence of God among us. Thin places like this place; holy communities of faith, like this congregation. As Peter said, "It is good for us to be here."

But it is even more important to remember moment by moment, in every place and time, the presence of God and the intimacy of Divine life with us always. Jesus, the transfigured one that the disciples saw on the mountain, was the same Jesus, their friend who walked with them back into the city to work and to teach. The same Jesus who was crucified in pain and sorrow unto death. The same Jesus who was raised from the dead. The same Jesus who would be with them through the Spirit, day by day, moment by moment, even unto the end of the age.

Wherever you go, there you are. Wherever you go, there God is. Whenever you are aware, there is transfiguration, there is holiness, there is peace.
________

(1) Quoted by Esther de Waal in Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict
(2) My paraphrase of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's comment from our videoconference, February 9, 2010.

______________________________________

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373
More sermons are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org
Visit our web partners at www.explorefaith.org