Peoples Church of Dover Sermon

Mark 1:29-39 Re-Enchantment

Sermon February 8, 2009: People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE: Rev. Dan Griggs

All my life I've been trying to say something that's in my heart, but I've never gotten the words just right. This thing I've been trying to capture with words has no boundaries, no physical existence and no attributes—that is, you can't say that it's big, or good, or beautiful, or powerful: it's outside our categories of description.[1] This thing is the only absolute[2] thing there is, but you can't name it--for most of our lives we don't even connect it with the word "absolute." And yet I'm drawn to it, attracted to it like a hummingbird to a flower. It won't let go of me, and all my life I've been asking the question that Jacob asked the angel he wrestled: "What is your name?" And neither Jacob nor I have gotten an answer.[3] But people need some kind of handle on it so we can talk about it: our ancient ancestors took the common noun "god" and capitalized the "G," and that became a word we could use—but it isn't a name.

Now, the greatest truths of life come to us full of paradox and contradictions that don't make logical sense, and so it is with this thing I've been trying to say. This absolute thing has encountered me, and it was like meeting a person: here come the paradoxes—without words it speaks, without a body it touches me, without hands it lifts me up, without arms it enfolds and comforts me, without a foot it kicks me and pushes me forward, without any drama at all it makes me laugh sometimes and sometimes weep. I sense infinite danger in this presence, and yet every one of my encounters with it has turned out to be love. When Moses was twice my age, he asked it, "What is your name?" And the answer: "I am who I am"[4]—which means that it's even beyond naming.

If all of this is true—and I say it's my experience—then how are you and I ever going to connect with this unspeakable thing that's ultimate and absolute? I've been trying to say this all my life, and I've never gotten the words just right.

The Gospel of John says: "The word was made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth."[5] This is a kind of philosophical way of talking about Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was probably about five feet three inches tall, with a well-muscled sturdy build, sun-deepened Mediterranean-olive skin, very black hair and full beard that would be considered much too long for our modern taste. His clothes were a lot like the traditional clothes worn today by Palestinian and Iraqi men (a dishdash), but he also wore a scarlet cloak or shawl. He wore sandals on a journey because he walked; but he probably went barefoot often. His face was probably a little smaller and rounder than we're used to. He looked exactly like the fishermen on Lake Galilee, or the farmers who tilled the Esdraelon Valley east of Mount Carmel, or the construction workers who built Herod's temple. "He had no form or comeliness that would attract our attention."[6]

Why, then, did Jesus command such attention from everybody—children, slaves, women, men, scholars, priests, kings and the Roman governor himself? It certainly wasn't his looks. As the Gospel Lesson today describes, among the townspeople and farmers in Galilee he created a sensation by his acts of healing; but he did more preaching than healing, just like any rabbi; and the rabbis talked theology with him as if he were one of them.

What was it like to be with Jesus? When you stood close by, or sat down to listen to him talk, you sensed a "More" about the man: a powerful presence, deeper than a persona—this was who he really was. And the only way people could describe what they experienced with Jesus was to use that handle that isn't really a name, "God," because that was what it was like. It wasn't charisma: it was a self that went all the way into the infinite, the absolute. One modern writer used the term "spirit person" to describe him.[7] Another writer has suggested that this finite man Jesus brought a "…transparency to the infinite."[8]

"Finite"—that means this one, particular man from Nazareth. It appears that all the depth of human reality and all of whatever this More is became "transparent" in this one particular man. He was God's self-revelation. Do you want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. The word for what you would feel if you came near Jesus is "enchantment." I mean "enchantment" like traditional children's tales that carry truths people need to learn, akin to "magical"[9]—but with Jesus, real flesh and blood. This transparency to God became most real, as the Gospel of Mark keeps trying to tell us, when Jesus surrendered to the work of the cross. So what must God be like? Infinite danger that turns out to be love in flesh and blood.

Now, maybe, we're ready to listen to what the Gospel Lesson really says:

Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him

about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted

her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve lunch.

. . . .

…at sunset they brought to him all who were sick…. And he

cured many who were sick with various diseases….

. . . .

… Simon and his companions … said to him, "Everyone is

searching for you." He answered, "Let's go on to the neighboring

towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is

what I came out to do."

Somehow this thing I've been trying to say all my life is right here in these stories. I'm not going to dismiss any part of them: what I choose to dismiss might contain a hint of how to say this better. Did he go to the traditional house of worship, and thus assent to all the organizational necessities of doing church? Yes. Did he violate the social rule and touch a woman he wasn't married to, and thus demonstrate the equality of women? Yes. Did he love people who are not special in this world? Yes. Did he have an agenda, a mission that was rooted in the More that shown through him? Yes. Is that all there is to him? Not at all. What is this "evil spirit" thing? How did illness have anything to do with him? Why did he forbid the demons to say who he was?

You see, we can explain and explain and explain, and still miss Jesus. The revelation of God is not a leather-bound book: it's this man from Nazareth—the book is about him. And this thing I've been trying to say all my life, and can't, somehow gets said, done, touched, lifted, pushed forward with Jesus. Some Thing is shining through him. Some unspeakable Reality is really present in him. May I call it "incarnation"?

All my life I've been trying to say this thing that's in my heart, but I've never been able to get it quite right, and maybe I never will get it into words. But listen to the words of an anonymous writer quoted by William James in his study titled The Varieties of Religious Experience.[10]

I stood alone with Him who made me, and all the beauty of the world,

and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but

felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of

things around me faded. For the moment nothing but an ineffable

joy and exaltation remained. It is impossible fully to describe the

experience. It was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the

separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the

listener conscious of nothing except that his soul is being wafted

upwards, and almost bursting with its own emotion. …. The darkness

held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen.

I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was.

I dare suggest that this is close to what it was like to stand near Jesus, to sit at his feet as he talked, to recoil in shock and surprise as they actually saw for themselves that he healed people. Simon's mother-in-law "got it," and she rose from her sick-bed and resumed her household tasks with joy. And when they woke up the next morning and Jesus was gone, they went looking for him—they wanted to be with Jesus, because somehow God was present.

Last Sunday during the service of Holy Communion, after I had taken some time to look into your face and hold you in my prayers, which is my practice during Communion, I stepped back for my own moment of silence with Christ. Luther said, "Almost the whole meaning of the sacrament is in the words 'for you,'"[11] and so I dwelt on the "for you" of Jesus' cross. I asked, "What does this really mean?" Now I've spent my whole adult life, since I started studying theology in college, trying to nail down an explanation of the Atonement that would satisfy my mind; but in that moment last Sunday I asked, "What does it mean?" And without words, he asked, "Don't you know?" And for the first time in my life I answered, "No, I don't know." He said, "You don't need to know." And we laughed for joy.

That's about as close as I can come to saying in words this thing that's in my heart. You've been with Jesus, too, haven't you. And words fail you, too, don't they. And when we wake up from our moral sleep, from our spiritual absences, from our lapses of mindfulness, and we look around and can't find him, we go looking for him like they did. "We are all looking for you!" Yes, we are.

AMEN

PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER