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A
Sermon by Donel McClellan
A
Sermon by Donel McClellan
Thin
Places
Kings 2:1-12, Mark 9:2-9 - Transfiguration Sunday March 2, 2003 For the
Celtic Christians of Scotland and Ireland, there is significance to natural
places of meeting. They were fascinated by shorelines where the sea met the
land, by fjords and rivers, even by doorways which were the meeting places of
the outside and the inside. These places speak of the junction of boundaries,
of transitions from one state into another. In a
similar way, the Celts celebrated those places on their calendar where one
season met another. Their festival days were times when the world we see and
the unseen world seemed to be in close proximity. This is
Transfiguration Sunday, a time between the times of the liturgical year. It is
the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany and marks the beginning of Lent in
three days on Ash Wednesday. The
scriptures for today speak of extraordinary experiences, events far beyond the
expectations of ordinary lives. They are transitions. Elijah has reached the
end of his ministry and his authority is transferred to Elisha in a dramatic
way. The old prophet and his protege are near Jericho. Elijah says that he can
go on alone but Elisha refuses to leave his side. As they walked towards the
Jordan River a bunch of the faculty and students of the Prophet=s
College followed along. The company of prophets stopped as the old man and the
young man went down to the river. Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and
struck the water of the river. The waters parted so the two men could walk
across. As they talked, Elisha asked Elijah for a double share of his spirit.
It was the custom of the day for the eldest son of a family to receive a
double share of the inheritance, or twice as much as the other sons. Elisha
desired to inherit not property but the power of God. Elijah responded with a
riddle. AIf you see me
when I am snatched away it will be so.@
Then Elijah was gone. The language of scripture defies rational explanation of
reduction. Elijah simply disappears leaving behind only his mantle or cloak.
Elisha
takes the cloak and flings it down in the Jordan River. The water divided to
the left and right, just as it had done when Moses placed his staff in the
waters of the Red Sea, Just as it had done when Elijah parted the river from
the other side to cross over. Clearly the power of the prophet Elijah had been
successfully transferred to Elisha. Across the Jordan they had encountered the
power of God. The river met the shore and there, in a place of conjunction,
God was found. Fast
forward a few hundred years and we have another story of transformation in a
place of transition. This time it is a mountain peak where the earth touches
the sky. Peter, James and John accompany Jesus up a high mountain where they
can be alone. Suddenly Jesus begins to glow and two others appear with him.
They are Elijah (of all people) and Moses. The two figures of the Bible who
were believed to have been taken into heaven directly, thereby avoiding death. Suddenly
Peter, James and John Aget
it.@ Jesus really is
someone special. They ask if they can set up camp so they can remain in this
very holy place. Then they are surrounded by fog and hear a voice
AThis is my Beloved,
my Own; listen to this One.@
The fog lifts and only Jesus is there looking as natural as ever. What were
the disciples to make of that. They had journeyed up a mountain with Jesus and
encountered God. The experience left them trembling with hope and fear. Celtic
Christians would have called the shore of the Jordan River and the Mount of
Transfiguration thin places. That is their term for certain
places in the world where the veil between this world and the eternal world is
especially transparent. Thin places are often the locations of
epiphaniesCmoments
when the holy becomes visible to human eyes. Of
course, to believe in thin places you must also believe in a
reality which is beyond what we can see, touch, taste and smell. Thin places
mean little to those who are convinced that nothing is real that cannot be
identified and quantified. Thin places elude those with no mind
for mystery and no longing for transcendence. I have
experienced a few thin places in my travels. One is in
Kykotsmovi, below Third Mesa on the Hopi Reservation. Spending some weeks
there in past summers I knew that the land was a thin place and
one needed little more than to pay attention to know that the earth is rooted
in mystery. Another
thin place for our family has been Lake Tenaya in the high
country of Yosemite National Park. There, the world of nature and the world of
civilization blend into one another and the ancient mystery of life in the
streams, meadows and lakes becomes visible once again. Interestingly enough,
most of the thin places I have experienced are places of majestic beauty which
were discovered centuries ago by the First Nations people who first recognized
and honored their holiness. It would
surprise me if many of you don=t
have memories of visits to thin places where God=s
presence is tangible and memorable. George
Gallup reports that Americans have an affinity for sensing the mystical or
holy. He writes: Our surveys have shown that nearly
one-third of all AmericanCor
about 47 million peopleChave
had what they call a religious or mystical experience. Of this group about 15
million report an otherworldly feeling of union with a divine being. They
describe such things as special communications from deceased people or divine
beings, visions of unusual lights, and out-of-body experiences. For instance,
one said, "I was reading the Bible one night and couldn't sleep. A vision
appeared to me. I was frozen and motionless. I saw an unusual light that
wasn't there - but was. There was a great awareness of someone else being in
that room with me." 1 These are
not good time to try to express our fragile experiences of holiness. We are
easily crushed by the skepticism and doubt of the modern world. But the sheer
quantity of such observations suggest that we pay attention to them. Ralph
Milton preached here a year or so ago. Ralph is a lay member of the United
Church of Canada and a wonderful theologian in his distinctive way. His most
recent book is a novel recording the life of Julian of Norwich. Ralph
publishes a delightful email newsletter called Rumors that looks at the
scripture texts for each Sunday and includes his thoughtful observations on
life. I have placed information on how to subscribe in the bulletin for those
who would be interested. A few weeks ago Ralph wrote: I don't know how you read Rumors, but
to me it's a letter to friends, even though I've never met most of you. . . .
I lost my sister June last Sunday. She was only 72, far too young for a woman
with so much vitality and "joie de vivre." And though she slipped away
peacefully in her sleep, her last few years were a desperate and terrible
battle against emphysema and the cigarettes that caused it. We were not the closest in age in our
family. But June and I were the closest in personality and gifts. She had a
flamboyant and artistic personality, which, in the end, was almost totally
muted because of her oxygen starved lungs. When I went to bed last Sunday night,
a couple of hours after my sister Peggy phoned with the news of her death, I
had a vivid memory of June, Peggy and me singing "When at night I go to sleep,
fourteen angels watch do keep. . .two to whom
>tis given to guide my
steps to heaven." In that vision, reverie, dreamCwhatever
it wasCmy sisters and
I sang in our childhood voicesCso
high, so clearlyCand I
knew as surely as I know anything that those angels had guided June's steps
into heaven. 2 Such
moments may be dismissed as simple reverie over the loss of a loved one. Or
they may be seen as an example of thin places
where the deeper reality of the universe seeps into the world of sight and
sound. Marcus
Borg, one of the most liberal of the biblical scholars, balances the harsh and
logical eye with which he examines scripture with a delightful openness to the
realm of the mystical in our experience of faith. Borg notes that such
experiences can only be approached with symbolic or metaphorical language.
Elijah was taken away in something like a fiery chariot. Jesus, on the
mountain, became so bright it was something like wearing clothes brighter than
any bleach could make them. First,
they are ineffable. They can be explained only in the language of
metaphor and symbol. We cannot say exactly what happened, only
Athat it was like . .
.@ something else less
dramatic in our collective experience. Third, such
experience are passive. That is, they happen to us, we do not create
them. We may prepare to be sensitive to such moments through prayer, meditation
and spiritual exercise, but we do not control the experiences themselves. They
are a gift of grace. Finally,
the experience are noetic. They connect with our intellect and leave us
with the sense that we know something we did not know before. The experience of
the sacred always leaves us with some wisdom as a gift. Strangely
enough, every worship service is a thin place which has the
potential to bring us closer to the realm of deeper reality in which we are
closer to God. Many worshipers have mini-mystical experiences triggered by an
element of the service: exchanging the peace of Christ with someone, watching a
child during Time With Children, a phrase in a prayer, a line in a hymn, a
thought in the sermon, the delightful harmonies of an anthem, a word of
benediction which lingers. Need I
point out that times of national crisis are also thin places where
we have easier access to prayer, reflection on the Bible and theological
conversation. Thin places are all around us and they may lead us into a closer
sense of God=s presence
and guidance. We must not
forget that these thin places are also transitional places. They
exist where change is erupting, where routine is disturbed, where opposing
forces come together in conflict and confluence. They are not comfortable places
but then, encounters with God are seldom comfortable. Leonard
Cohen may have been thinking of just such thin places when he
wrote these lines in his song Anthem: Ring the
bells that still can ring. In these
days which are often overshadowed and dark, let us seek the thin
places, the cracks where God=s
light gets in. Amen. Notes: 1. George Gallup,
Jr. Adventures in Immortality, quoted in Anthony C. Winkler, Jo Ray
McCuen's, Rhetoric Made Plain, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
1988 2. Rumors
‑ January 19th, 2003. Ralph Milton's RUMORS is a free Internet
>e-zine=
for active Christians with a sense of humor. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:
rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com. Don't put anything else in that e-mail.
3. Anthem, 8
1993 Leonard Cohen & Sony Music Entertainment |