A conscious awareness of the sacred in and through all of us can be the fuel that keeps us going when things are unraveling faster than we can repair them, and to show up not with bitterness or fear or despair, but with reverence and care. As a rabbi said, “You are not required to complete the work. Neither are you free to desist from it.”
There has long been a misunderstanding that mysticism, a conscious awareness of the sacred, is otherworldly and impractical. Clearly this is not my experience. And our social justice marching orders in Matthew 25 are entirely mystical. Jesus says, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” The risen Christ is among us, in the guise of the suffering stranger.
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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ
August 18, 2019
It’s All Sacred (A Last Sermon)
Psa. 139:1-18 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
Over five hundred years ago, Rabbi Isaac Luria gave our creation story in Genesis 1 a little twist. He told it like this. In the beginning was the Infinite, the Holy One, the all and the only. The Infinite wanted to make a world, but there was no room, because the Infinite was infinite. So the Infinite contracted, and made an empty space, room for a world. Next, the Infinite created finite vessels and filled each of them full of a portion of the divine light. The Infinite scattered those vessels into the empty space, to make a world. But then something happened, that looks to us like a terrible accident. The vessels shattered, and the countless broken shards of sacred light, the very essence of God, were scattered all over the brand new world, hidden from sight in ordinary things. Humanity was created, say the Rabbis, to recognize, and lift up, and gather those sacred shards, and so, in some small way, to repair the world.
Where are those sacred shards? Inside every event and everyone and everything. It’s all sacred, we just can’t see that. And how do we gather the shards together, how do we repair the world? By remembering the sacredness of it. By honoring the sacred Presence in and through everything, whether we perceive it or not. By learning and discovery, the better to appreciate this amazing world. By honoring the good earth, whose bounty gives us life. By honoring each person we meet, whether or not we think they deserve it, because each person carries a spark of the divine. Even a very simple act of consideration repairs the world. As Jesus liked to say, “I was thirsty, and you gave me a glass of water.” We can repair the world by seeking to build a more just government, because that honors more people than we can ever touch as individuals. But we also repair the world by our simple care and appreciation of the world and every thing and person in it.
Brea Congregational, you have chosen a new minister by a fair and wise and democratic process. You attended to the sacred. You are now equipped and ready to begin a new chapter of your ministry, and I am thrilled for you. I’ve got this one last sermon, a sort of last lecture, to give you some words that might help you on your way. My words are simply this: It’s all sacred. I want you to remember and trust and rely on that truth. Everything is sacred, and it’s just waiting for you to notice, to enjoy, or possibly to grieve, to connect, and to trust that you are sacred, and you have a sacred purpose. Simply by noticing and responding to what is sacred around you, you help repair the world.
But how can we see the sacred? Our senses don’t perceive it. Instead, we have sacred story and sacred imagination. We have religion. Yet most of us have had some time and place when it seems like the ordinary world peeled back, and the light of the Infinite was revealed. Maybe a dream. A life event. A near death experience—you’d be surprised how many people have those. A moment of enlightenment, of wonder. Maybe an experience in nature, or with someone you love. Can you remember such a time, an experience when something within you said, “This is sacred”?
When I was twenty-nine years old, I was a scientist looking for God. Late one night at a Catholic retreat center, I was wandering the hallways alone after arguing with the abbot, and God found me. Jesus found me, in the most stereotypical born-again experience, but it was right for me. It was all in my head of course. But after that encounter, everything shifted. I knew. The sacred is everywhere. All is connected, and we are never alone. The words of Psalm 139 came alive for me. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? What I had read about, I now trusted in my bones.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. But what if you’ve never had a vivid experience of the sacred? You don’t have to. You can trust and savor sacred stories and sacred principles, sacred rituals.
What if you don’t want to have a sacred experience? Many of us in the UCC are children of the Enlightenment, of science and reason and progress. These kinds of sacred encounters don’t have a place in Enlightenment thinking. They got filed under “superstition– delusional.” But internal experiences that lead us to gratitude and reverence and courage and a sense of purpose are just as real as any physical event that can be recorded on your iPhone. Science? I love it, but it stops at the physical: science alone cannot provide meaning and value. Reason is nice in theory, but it’s in short supply these days. And reason never was what motivated people. Progress? We seem to be going backwards as a country. So instead of downplaying our experiences of the sacred, let’s rely on them, so we have the spiritual strength we need to face hard times.
If you’ve been trying to repair the world lately, you may have noticed that it seems to be unraveling faster than we can keep up. So much meanness, so much suffering. So it is more important than ever to remember this planet is sacred, as is each person on it, no matter how dire their condition, or no matter how ugly their behavior.
A conscious awareness of the sacred in and through all of us can be the fuel that keeps us going when things are unraveling faster than we can repair them, and to show up not with bitterness or fear or despair, but with reverence and care. As another rabbi said, “You are not required to complete the work. Neither are you free to desist from it.”
There has long been a misunderstanding that mysticism, a conscious awareness of the sacred, is otherworldly and impractical. Clearly this is not my experience. And our social justice marching orders in Matthew 25 are entirely mystical. Jesus says, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” The risen Christ is among us, in the guise of the suffering stranger.
Here is another story of the sacred among us: “The Rabbi’s Gift.”[1] M. Scott Peck told this story; this is an older version. A famous monastery had fallen on hard times. Formerly its many buildings were filled with young monks, but now it was all but deserted. People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer. Only a handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters, serving God with heavy hearts. On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a little hut. He would come there from time to time, to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him, but whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk: “The rabbi walks in the woods.” And, for as long as he was there, the monks would feel sustained by his prayerful presence.
One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and open his heavy heart to him. So, after the morning Eucharist, the abbot set out through the woods. As he approached the hut, he saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, as if he had been awaiting the abbot's arrival, his arms outstretched in welcome. They embraced like long-lost brothers. The two entered the hut. In the middle of the room stood a wooden table with the scriptures open on it. They sat for a moment in the presence of the Book.
Then the rabbi began to weep. The abbot could not contain himself. He covered his face with his hands and he began to cry too. For the first time in his life, the abbot cried his heart out. The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their shared pain and tears. But before long the tears ceased and all was quiet. The rabbi lifted his head. “You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts,” he said. “You have come to ask a teaching of me. I will give you a teaching, but you can repeat it only once. After that, no one must ever say it aloud again.”
The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said, “The Messiah is among you.” For a while, all was silent. Then the rabbi said, “Now you must go.”
The abbot left without a word and without ever looking back. The next morning, he called his monks together in the chapter room. He told them he had received a teaching from the “rabbi who walks in the woods” and that the teaching was never again to be spoken aloud. Then he looked at the group of assembled brothers and said, “The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah.” The monks were startled by this saying.
“What could it mean?” they asked themselves. “Is Brother John the Messiah? Or Brother Matthew or Brother Thomas? Am I the Messiah? What could all this mean?” They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi's teaching, but no one ever mentioned it again. As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a new and very special reverence. A gentle, warm-hearted concern began to grow among them which was hard to describe but easy to notice. They began to live with each other as people who had finally found the special something they were looking for, yet they prayed the Scriptures together as people who were always still looking.
When visitors came to the monastery they found themselves deeply moved by the life of these monks. Word spread, and before long people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks and to experience the loving reverence in which they held each other. Soon, young men were asking, once again, to become a part of the community, and the community grew and prospered. In those days, the rabbi no longer walked in the woods. His hut had fallen into ruins. Yet somehow, the old monks who had taken his teaching to heart still felt sustained by his wise and prayerful presence.
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Jesus was not talking about a prosperity gospel, a heavenly ATM, but rather the presence of God. Our gospels are full of clues, telling us it’s all sacred.
The Kingdom of God is among you.
Let your light shine.
This is my body, given for you.
The Spirit blows where it will.
I am the vine, and you are the branches.
I am with you always, to the end of the age.
… and many more.
Choose the words and stories that work for you, but remember this: it’s all sacred. We’re all sacred. That assurance will give you the power you need to live and love well, and to do your small part to repair the world. Amen.
[1]From Scott Powell [I changed a few words.]: This story has become popular and many of you know Scott M. Peck’s version as recounted in his book The Different Drummer. However, the earliest version I have been able to trace was penned by Francis Dorff, O. Praem, of the Norbertine Community of Alberquerque, New Mexico, and was published in New Catholic World 222 (March-April l979), 53. The Rabbi’s Gift has by now appeared in many books, been adapted and gets told in numerous ways. Here is the version that to my knowledge goes back to Francis Dorff.
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