It's The Mystery That Keeps Me Going, God
Sermon
Holy Email
Cycle A Second Lesson Sermons for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany
Object:
E-mail
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Divine Mystery
Message: It's the mystery that keeps me going, God. Lauds, KDM
At 6 a.m., January's ground of millions of crystals sparkles. Black figures stand silhouetted and still. Huge grayed forms loom from above. Now, a break -- the moon hints, stars glimmer. A bird brushes against a branch of white pine -- bringing a graceful snowfall. Cutting and clear, a car track leads on. It is now far. Crunching boots and padding dog feet pound.
Stand still. No earthly sound, only heaven speaks. A street lamp rudely intrudes, yet rightly. It spreads a filmy fir bough across the road. The way turns bringing a distant plow. The conversation of the world has begun.
From time to time, a few moments of silence brush against us inviting a graceful snowfall of God's mysterious presence. It is a wordless time -- not for lack of words, but not needing words. It is an interlude of settling within the soul -- a time-free epiphany wherein the inexplicable understanding of our being and our union with all other being grows clear.
Epiphany, obvious at a level that transcends both word and image, offers this moment to glimpse and to know the mystery of God. When we are open to the silence or, better put, when we allow the silence to open us to ourselves, we can do little other than revel in its grace.
Such a walk at winter dawn may have spawned KDM's e-mail message for this week. It reads, It's the mystery that keeps me going, God. Lauds, KDM. KDM's pondering calls to mind a conversation between two poets about this same mystery that kept them going. The first poet let slip that he was not a praying person. The second poet answered with the following words:1
He says he does not pray.
If praying needs pious words
If heart and craft pouring into a poem
If soul-filled fingers talking a piano
If a mouthed profanity speaking fear
If two meeting the Thou of each other
If the full silence of suspended time
Is not praying,
Then neither do I.
The first poet then sent to the second his book about writing poetry. Its inscription read, "For Dee in the way we pray together. Fondly, Jud, 12/89."
We all have our own way of checking in with God. For some, prayer, that is, making ourselves available to God's availability to us, comes in the driver's seat of a sports utility vehicle during 7:12 a.m. gridlock. For others, it happens in the mysterious moments between dark and dawn on a morning walk beside a woods.
It would be nice if the music in the silence were always the tender, soul-filled resolution of a Beethoven pastorale. However, sometimes its notes express the equally soul-filled chaos of a movement by Stravinsky. Then, it seems either that nothing of God is in the silence or that the presence felt is discordant.
Sometimes, when we are caught within the disgraceful side of ourselves, the silence takes on the uneasy facet of the mystery of God. Sometimes we become so edgy within the silence that we fill it with anything from perpetual motion to prattle. We avoid the silence, yet the silence finds us. We avoid God, yet God finds us. Something deep inside recognizes, perks up, and takes notice.
Despite how sophisticated we have become, we still wonder about hell. In some shadow of our minds, despite all the talk about the loving, accepting nature of God, we wonder. The snowy limb looms overhead with the insidious, ominous presence of a God who might become so fed up with us that anger will take over.
Then, all those words about God's wishing well for us become muffled within the anxious part of silence. Like a gabble of gossip, the noise from our stock of shortcoming, shortfall, and sin rises until it drowns out any song of hope.
That part within us that believes we do not measure up waits for, even wants, a penalty. What can we do with this foreboding, negative, and disapproving side of silence? What can we do with hell? What about the imagery the word evokes?
Your imagination may conjure up torment in the shape of an inescapable lung-freezing and wind-blasting cold. You may visualize torture as a chigger-ridden and high-humidity heat. Your idea of anguish may be unending conflict. Perhaps it is the frustration of continually being unable. Whatever magnifies the unbearable for you, it crouches down there in the guilty corner waiting for the right moment to spring.
We do our children, and ourselves, a spiritual disservice if we inflict upon them the terrifying dread of a threatened place of never-ending punishment for the wicked after death. Being accountable for our misdeeds in real time is often misery enough. The call to be responsible for our actions need not carry an extra threat. Unjust and irrational acts in our present world bring sufficient lifetime torment.
What we listen for in the silence is up to us. Do you listen for a censuring God or for an encouraging God? When God enters our silence, God opens us up to what is good about us. God reveals to us the hope of our possibility, and we begin to stand up straight in the soul.
Then a startling aspect of this epiphany revelation emerges. Epiphany enters the silence of the night with its promises, its puzzles, its knowing, and its surprises. In the midst of epiphany, we find that God also frees us to let us see what is not so good about ourselves. Then the "I can" part of us begins to tremble with uncertainty. A tiny little inner part starts to quake.
It is hard to revel long in the fertile silence of an accepting God when we know we do not measure up. Have you noticed the snowball effect? When we get stuck in our imperfections, we begin to compile a list. That list grows longer and longer. It takes on greater and greater detail until it turns into a snow boulder and chases us down the hill.
As we try to make sense out of our lives, we can stand to face only a little reality at a time. We seldom stay around long enough in this aspect of the silence to discover that God is also present here. Yet when we fail to wait, we miss hearing God say, "I know. I know all about you. I am still on your side. I am still for you and with you. I share all the silence."
The mysterious presence of the spirit of God draws us with a mixture of fear and awe. So, let us enjoy the awe-filled side of our humanness. Let us receive the gift of gracious possibility. Let us also invite study of this other silence within a snowy dawning.
In singular beauty, a few flakes of snow release from a swaying tree bough. The surprising epiphany of snow gently falls upon snow.
____________
1. The dialogue of these two poems took place between the author and poet Judson Jerome.
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Divine Mystery
Message: It's the mystery that keeps me going, God. Lauds, KDM
At 6 a.m., January's ground of millions of crystals sparkles. Black figures stand silhouetted and still. Huge grayed forms loom from above. Now, a break -- the moon hints, stars glimmer. A bird brushes against a branch of white pine -- bringing a graceful snowfall. Cutting and clear, a car track leads on. It is now far. Crunching boots and padding dog feet pound.
Stand still. No earthly sound, only heaven speaks. A street lamp rudely intrudes, yet rightly. It spreads a filmy fir bough across the road. The way turns bringing a distant plow. The conversation of the world has begun.
From time to time, a few moments of silence brush against us inviting a graceful snowfall of God's mysterious presence. It is a wordless time -- not for lack of words, but not needing words. It is an interlude of settling within the soul -- a time-free epiphany wherein the inexplicable understanding of our being and our union with all other being grows clear.
Epiphany, obvious at a level that transcends both word and image, offers this moment to glimpse and to know the mystery of God. When we are open to the silence or, better put, when we allow the silence to open us to ourselves, we can do little other than revel in its grace.
Such a walk at winter dawn may have spawned KDM's e-mail message for this week. It reads, It's the mystery that keeps me going, God. Lauds, KDM. KDM's pondering calls to mind a conversation between two poets about this same mystery that kept them going. The first poet let slip that he was not a praying person. The second poet answered with the following words:1
He says he does not pray.
If praying needs pious words
If heart and craft pouring into a poem
If soul-filled fingers talking a piano
If a mouthed profanity speaking fear
If two meeting the Thou of each other
If the full silence of suspended time
Is not praying,
Then neither do I.
The first poet then sent to the second his book about writing poetry. Its inscription read, "For Dee in the way we pray together. Fondly, Jud, 12/89."
We all have our own way of checking in with God. For some, prayer, that is, making ourselves available to God's availability to us, comes in the driver's seat of a sports utility vehicle during 7:12 a.m. gridlock. For others, it happens in the mysterious moments between dark and dawn on a morning walk beside a woods.
It would be nice if the music in the silence were always the tender, soul-filled resolution of a Beethoven pastorale. However, sometimes its notes express the equally soul-filled chaos of a movement by Stravinsky. Then, it seems either that nothing of God is in the silence or that the presence felt is discordant.
Sometimes, when we are caught within the disgraceful side of ourselves, the silence takes on the uneasy facet of the mystery of God. Sometimes we become so edgy within the silence that we fill it with anything from perpetual motion to prattle. We avoid the silence, yet the silence finds us. We avoid God, yet God finds us. Something deep inside recognizes, perks up, and takes notice.
Despite how sophisticated we have become, we still wonder about hell. In some shadow of our minds, despite all the talk about the loving, accepting nature of God, we wonder. The snowy limb looms overhead with the insidious, ominous presence of a God who might become so fed up with us that anger will take over.
Then, all those words about God's wishing well for us become muffled within the anxious part of silence. Like a gabble of gossip, the noise from our stock of shortcoming, shortfall, and sin rises until it drowns out any song of hope.
That part within us that believes we do not measure up waits for, even wants, a penalty. What can we do with this foreboding, negative, and disapproving side of silence? What can we do with hell? What about the imagery the word evokes?
Your imagination may conjure up torment in the shape of an inescapable lung-freezing and wind-blasting cold. You may visualize torture as a chigger-ridden and high-humidity heat. Your idea of anguish may be unending conflict. Perhaps it is the frustration of continually being unable. Whatever magnifies the unbearable for you, it crouches down there in the guilty corner waiting for the right moment to spring.
We do our children, and ourselves, a spiritual disservice if we inflict upon them the terrifying dread of a threatened place of never-ending punishment for the wicked after death. Being accountable for our misdeeds in real time is often misery enough. The call to be responsible for our actions need not carry an extra threat. Unjust and irrational acts in our present world bring sufficient lifetime torment.
What we listen for in the silence is up to us. Do you listen for a censuring God or for an encouraging God? When God enters our silence, God opens us up to what is good about us. God reveals to us the hope of our possibility, and we begin to stand up straight in the soul.
Then a startling aspect of this epiphany revelation emerges. Epiphany enters the silence of the night with its promises, its puzzles, its knowing, and its surprises. In the midst of epiphany, we find that God also frees us to let us see what is not so good about ourselves. Then the "I can" part of us begins to tremble with uncertainty. A tiny little inner part starts to quake.
It is hard to revel long in the fertile silence of an accepting God when we know we do not measure up. Have you noticed the snowball effect? When we get stuck in our imperfections, we begin to compile a list. That list grows longer and longer. It takes on greater and greater detail until it turns into a snow boulder and chases us down the hill.
As we try to make sense out of our lives, we can stand to face only a little reality at a time. We seldom stay around long enough in this aspect of the silence to discover that God is also present here. Yet when we fail to wait, we miss hearing God say, "I know. I know all about you. I am still on your side. I am still for you and with you. I share all the silence."
The mysterious presence of the spirit of God draws us with a mixture of fear and awe. So, let us enjoy the awe-filled side of our humanness. Let us receive the gift of gracious possibility. Let us also invite study of this other silence within a snowy dawning.
In singular beauty, a few flakes of snow release from a swaying tree bough. The surprising epiphany of snow gently falls upon snow.
____________
1. The dialogue of these two poems took place between the author and poet Judson Jerome.
