Sermons & Readings

Almost every Wednesday after the Eucharist, a group of about eight or ten people sit down to read through and talk about the readings for the upcoming Sunday.  It is one of my favorite times of the week for several reasons.  Since we take turns reading aloud the collect, the psalm and the readings, one of the things I love is that I’m often able to really hear for the first time, a word or a phrase or an idea in a new way.  That’s a real grace for a preacher who’s faced with the same scriptures and prayers and psalms time after time over the years.  Another thing I treasure is the comfort and occasionally the utter abandon with which people participate in this process.  So it was this Wednesday just past, that as I finished reading the great story we hear from the Old Testament this morning about the prophet Elijah and his disciple Elisha, the immediate response of someone who shall remain nameless  was, “Well that’s a fine fairytale.”  Needless to say, the comment produced a great deal of laughter from the rest of us.  We then proceeded to hear the psalm and the rest of the lessons, concluding with the gospel account of the transfiguration of Jesus that I read just a few moments ago.  It was not lost on any of us that Jesus, in clothes white enough for a Clorox commercial and chatting with the long-dead Moses and Elijah, has the same fairytale quality as the earlier story of Elijah and Elisha.

So what do we make of the fantastical stories we sometimes read in scripture, whether they are like the extraordinary events we hear this morning or like the stories of healings and exorcisms we’ve been hearing for the last several weeks?  I think what to make of such stories is particularly problematic for people like you and me who have grown up hearing the stories.  I’m supposing that when we were very small and still very open to the mystical and magical, we listened to them openness and wonder.  We took them at face value for the description of real events and experiences beyond what happened in ordinary life, and felt no disconnect between what is possible and what is not.  But soon enough, most of us encountered and embraced our western European heritage that values rationality above all things, and we relegated “childish” things like fairytales to the purely entertainment category in our lives.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes about those who cannot see and accept the truth of the gospel because “the god of this world has blinded” their minds.  I have no idea what “god of this world” Paul is talking about in this particular case because we all know that there are many idols in human life which can blind us to the Good News.  But it gets me to wondering if the “god of this world” which is most likely to blind our minds is rationality.  The Age of Enlightenment, which blossomed and flourished beginning in the 1700s, rebelled against the mysticism and religious superstition that was the norm during the Middle Ages.  There was a new-found freedom to challenge past wisdom and to explore and question and hypothesize about life and the world without fear of being accused of heresy and burned at the stake.

The problem with mysticism as it expressed itself before the Age of Reason was that it was often used by the Church to control and dictate the beliefs and the very lives of people.  Too often the message was that ordinary people were not able to understand the mysteries of Christianity so the Church had to translate them into practices that would keep the ignorant masses on the straight and narrow path.  The result was that the wonderful gift of mystical understanding was transformed into a fearful and controlling set of practices and superstitions.

Seen in this context, the Age of Reason with its emphasis on the capacity of all human beings to thing and question and puzzle out life and belief was a great breath of fresh air.  In the succeeding centuries and right into our own day, the teachings of the Church and the sacred texts themselves have come under great scrutiny and often been found wanting because they do not pass the test of rationality.  And so stories like the assumption of the prophet Elijah into heaven and the transfiguration of Jesus on a high mountain begin to sound more and more like fairytales to the modern mind.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I am a great fan of reason.  I even indulge in it sometimes.  It is one of God’s greatest gifts to human beings.  It allows our wonder about how things work and what is possible to stoke our creativity and inventiveness.  It allows us to make sense of what may, at first, seem beyond understanding, and to solve problems that make life more livable and enjoyable.  The ability to think rationally is indeed a great gift.

But there’s a problem and the problem is that often rationalism seems to have replaced mysticism.  Mystical experience is now equated by many people with superstition and fantasy.  Mysticism, for some has become the enemy of reason rather than simply another way of perceiving reality.  But mysticism and reason are sister gifts from God who wants us to perceive what is real in all of its richness, and either one, if not in creative tension with the other, leads to a distorted view of creation and human experience and God.

Many years ago, a good friend of ours in Alabama, suffered a brain aneurysm.  It was the dead of winter, and one of those rare times in the Deep South when we had snow and ice on the ground.  The doctors were amazed that the aneurysm didn’t burst during the bumpy and dangerous ambulance ride to the hospital.  They successfully repaired it, and sent Ed home to recuperate.  Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, a post-operative infection developed in the bone of his skull.  When antibiotics failed to cure the infection, our friend was sent to specialists at Vanderbilt University to see what could be done.  After extensive testing, they decided that the affected bone would have to be removed, and that he would have to wear a protective helmet until such time as reconstructive surgery could repair the hole in his skull.  One day Ed called John and asked if he would conduct a service of healing with the laying on of hands for him.  At the appointed time perhaps fifteen or twenty people that Ed asked to be present gathered at St. Alban’s Church.  I no longer remember the specifics of that service, but what I will never forget is all of us gathering around our friend and praying for his healing.  There was a palpable presence, an energy in that room that we all felt as we prayed.  A few days later Ed went back to Nashville for the surgery.  After the extensive pre-operative testing was completed, the doctors were dumbfounded because the infection was completely gone.

The same person who made the fairytale observation the other day also wondered if these stories from scripture are there to help us believe, to help us have faith, and went on to wonder if people are still healed like this today.  My response to those wonderings is to remember the story I just told you, and to say that I don’t know about what happened in the past.  But I do know what happened to our friend Ed.  I treasure the gift of a rational mind and the way it helps me to understand the world I can see and touch and hear, and I treasure the gift of the Spirit which helps me to see and hear and understand the deeper divine reality that undergirds and permeates all that is.