7 February 2010

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11

This morning, we have three stories of divine-human encounters:  Isaiah’s dramatic vision of God in the Temple in Jerusalem; Luke’s story of the call of the first disciples after an overwhelming catch of fish; and St. Paul’s remembrance of the day the Risen Christ appeared to him on the Road to Damascus.  A voice from heaven and bright lights that literally knock a person off his feet...or visions of strange six-winged creatures with voices so loud that they cause the floor to tremble and who touch lips with burning coals...or experiences of seasoned fishermen who have toiled all night without any success giving it one more try at the suggestion of one skilled at carpentry, but not at fishing, only to see their little boats nearly swamped by the fish pulled in by their bulging nets -- do such things really happen?  And more to the point, do they happen still and do they happen to people like us?

Cynics and skeptics would likely answer this question with a “no.” There are people who hear strange voices, see bizarre visions, have weird dreams they interpret as coming from God, but are these experiences of divinity, or the result of hallucinations, mental illness or some other “earthly” cause?  People claim to see UFO’s or traces of “Big-foot” or the Loch Ness Monster, too, but can scientific proof be given of extra-terrestrial life or the existence of these and other strange creatures?

As I was writing today’s sermon, I came across an interesting survey recently conducted by the Pew Trust, which indicates that 49% of the people they surveyed in the United States indicate that they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as “a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening.” Some of these experiences of insight and awakening, I would imagine, were as vivid and dramatic as those of Isaiah or Simon Peter or Paul.  In my years of ministry, especially the fifteen years I was teaching religion and counseling students at Bethany College, I heard many testimonies about vivid religious experiences that I cannot claim for myself but were very real for the people who had them.  I have had met people who spoke in tongues and who could point to examples of healing that defy scientific explanation or medical cures as we know it.  I have known people convinced that God has spoken directly to them to clarify choices they needed to make; paths of life they knew they had to take.  They believed God spoke to them in dreams or by means of other “signs;” they had conversion experiences so vivid that from that moment on, they never doubted or questioned God again.

I have to admit that I cannot point to examples like that in my life.  There have been times when I have had a greater sense of God’s absence and silence than His presence.  I know what it is like to have doubts and questions, especially in times when bad things happen to good people, or when I wonder why certain things are happening to me.  I have often had to pray, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” and I resonate with the words of Madelaine L’Engle who was once asked: “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” -- to which she replied, “I believe in God with all of my doubts.”

My own experiences of “religious insight” or “awakening” have been subtle and quiet, but nonetheless experiences where I felt deeply and unmistakably the presence of God in my life.  Each time I held one of my children, just moments after their birth...when hands were placed on my head at my ordination...when doors opened for me to move from my parish in New Jersey to begin teaching at Bethany College at a time when we were being told that my wife’s mental health was being damaged by service to that parish...the night Betty and I held the hands of her mother reading Bible passages and sharing prayers just moments before we committed her ebbing life to God.... hearing words of sermon that were exactly words I needed to hear right then and there...sensing God’s presence as I apply the ashes on foreheads on Ash Wednesday or as I share or receive the gifts of bread and wine in Holy Communion...preparing a sermon, wrestling with how to share a word of comfort or challenge and suddenly getting an insight that I knew could come only from outside inspiration....these are a few the times when God’s presence has been as real as my sight of you sitting in front of me this morning.

What I am trying to say this morning is that I believe that we need to recognize that the experience of God is different for different people, and we need to avoid the trap of thinking that the way we have known and experienced God is the only way He can be known and experienced.   We need a dose of the sort of agnosticism that Paul urges for us at the end of that beautiful love chapter we read last week:  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, then we will see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

When it comes to understanding God, we all see in part; we are like the blind men in that old parable who encounter an elephant for the first time.  Each one believes that the part he touched was the whole...and went away thinking that an elephant must be like a snake, a garden hose, a thick tree, or an armor-plated being of immense size.

We need, in short, to learn from each other’s experiences of God in the Body of Christ, sharing how God has touched our lives but also hearing how God has touched the lives of others, being ready for greater awareness that God is able to touch the lives of each of us, even in moments when we least expect it.