Mystery, Gifts and Love
The Rev. Dr. Harold Weicker
February 22, 2004
Readings:
Exodus 34:29-35
1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13
Luke 9:28-36
Psalm 99What a lovely day! Our lessons this morning talk about three of my most favorite subjects: Mystery. Personal Gifts, and Love. Since Paul gives us the straight word today on the necessity of sharing individual gifts and love one with another, I think whatever I would add might be redundant and of lesser quality than what you just heard. I mean, how does one improve on Paul's great hymn to love, arguably one of the finest writings in world literature? Please take the service leaflet home. Read it several times. Let it sink in with all of its beauty and details. And allow it to change your life and conduct. The same holds true for the accounts of Moses' and Jesus' transfigurations.
Concerning Paul's list of gifts necessary to the Church's well being, that you just heard read, did it occur to you that many of the ministries that Paul lists as being a vital part of the body of Christ (the Church) either have been forced out, or, at best, have been discredited or belittled or "unwelcomed" into practical non-existence. For instance: where are the prophets? Having painfully been given the gift of prophecy myself, I can tell you life in the church has not been easy- especially when you are told to shut up and sit down- and are not considered part of the gang.
Where are the "Deeds of Power?" As I told you before, John Wesley was thrown out of the Anglican Church because he was deemed by the Bishops to be "too enthusiastic!" Arriving on the scene of acceptable Anglican spiritual experience over 200 years later, Billy Graham, and Episcopal evangelists have not fared much better.
I told you about a priest friend who asked me to cover his parish in Livermore for a month while he went on vacation. Just before he left, my priest friend fixed me with a stern eye and said, "Harold, I know you are an evangelical sort. Now I want you to know that I do not want anything happening while I am gone!" So much for "Deeds of Power" in Livermore. In fairness to my priest friend, how many of you want "something to happen?" In our hearts we do, but we are scared to allow the Spirit to move fully and freely in our midst and in our individual lives. So, for example, whatever happened to the "various kinds of tongues" that Paul lists as being a rightful part of the "Body of Christ?"
What would our mission statement look like - especially to a candidate for Rector- if we said that not only we are called to encourage and support the ministries in each other, but to support all the other ministries that Paul says are appointed by God in the church: apostles; prophets; teachers; deeds of power; gifts of healing; forms of assistance; forms of leadership; and various kinds of tongues (various expressions of faith)? Don't you wonder how so much of organized Christianity has been able to stagger along for so many years with the way the faith and the church have been twisted? This has got to be a mystery!
So let us stay with mystery for a few minutes.
We get a strong dose of mystery today in the accounts of the Transfiguration of Moses and Jesus. Both men had an extraordinary God encounter, in a high place, that left them shining- and overwhelmed those around them.
Thinking about Paul's hymn to love in our Epistle and today's Gospel, if you wonder what the connection is between mystery and love, you never have been in love. Of course, there might be a confirmed bachelor or (dare I say) "Bachelorette" in our midst this morning who could bring a different dimension to mystery and love- such as, it is a mystery why people get married! And, if you think that I am going to analyze the mystery of marriage, especially in the light of recent events in San Francisco, forget about it! It is a mystery!
I like the story of the Bishop years ago who exercised his right to question the Confirmation class, which I recall telling you about in the past. The Bishop asked the children, "What is the nature of the Trinity?"
After a shattering silence, a very shy boy muttered, "Father, Son and Holy Ghost." "What did you say, son? I didn't hear you." "Father, Son and Holy Ghost," said the boy, becoming a little agitated, but still speaking in a very small voice.
"I'm sorry, child," responded the Bishop, but I still don't understand you."
To which the frustrated boy, breaking out in to tears, shouted back, "You're not supposed to. It's a mystery!"
I love the wisdom in this story. How much of the mystery of God in personal, spiritual experience are we meant to explain? If this is a subject that interests you, join the Wednesday Morning Study Group in the parish hall. They know all about respecting, and basking in, mysteries of faith in Christianity and other religious traditions. In Anglicanism, we are so nervous with mysteries, we try to explain them. Worse yet, we spell them out in dogma, such as our creeds. When will we realize that mysteries are not meant to be analyzed but experienced! We have to lay aside our Newtonian minds, to stop breaking things down to their parts and allow ourselves to enjoy the awe of the whole!
I've experienced transfiguration, and I have experienced it in others. Many of you have too.
In 1967, when I was a Canon at the Phoenix Cathedral, a young, short, blind woman with an enormous 12 string guitar was led by her hand to a place just in front of the high altar… and with her guitar, she began singing the gorgeous 80th Psalm. "Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou who leadest Joseph like a flock! Thou who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh! Stir up thy might and come to save us! Restore us, O God; let thy face shine, that we might be saved!" And as this woman sang in deep faith and physical blindness, her angelic face began to shine and shine. In the muted light of that cathedral in those days, it was like there was spotlight lighting her up, and every one of us at the service that Sunday were rocked to our core. Almost 40 years later, I still see her. And when I do, I still am moved enormously! She was a mystery that pointed to the existence and power of God. "Give ear O Shepherd of Israel… stir up thy might and come to save us! Restore us, O God, let thy face shine, that we might be saved!"
I think I told you about my remarkable encounter with an extraordinary woman, Sarah Huntington. Miss Huntington was well into her nineties and gravely infirm when I called on her as the new Curate of St. Clement's, Berkeley, in 1965. I found her name in the dust bin of old and forgotten members whom previous staffs had allowed to slip into obscurity, probably because they were poor and could not get to church.
Within ten minutes of being with this Godly soul, she proudly told me that her brother was the famous Fr. James Otis Sargent Huntington- one of the great saints of the turn of the last century, who founded the largest Episcopal monastic brotherhood in America: The Benedictine Order of the Holy Cross. Born into a well-off New England family, Fr. Huntington had given his wealth to the very poor of the inner cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and to the founding of his monastic order. Fr. Huntington called all of his well-healed, party-going, fun-loving, single, male friends to Christ, helping them to find their bliss by serving Christ in the poor by becoming poor themselves as Holy Cross monks. He was essentially a late19th century St. Francis, and here was his sister, ending her days in marginal living in a bare room in Berkeley, with few people left to care about her- especially in her church.
Why am I thinking about the Huntingtons? Well, those of us with gray hair might remember Fr. Huntington's breath-taking collect, which he wrote in the 1892 and 1928 Prayer Book, for the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ.
"O God, who on the mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thine only begotten Son wonderfully transfigured in raiment white and glistering: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may be permitted to behold the King in his beauty, who with thee, O Father, and Thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end."
No one could write these words whose soul was not transfigured and fed with mystery. Resting in the sacramental and monastic mysteries of God, while ministering on the streets of inner cities, Fr. Huntington's life had been transformed. He chose white, the color (as Fr. Huntington wrote in his collect) of the "glistering" Jesus, as the color of his and his brother monks' cassocks… and, in the injustices of the cities and Liberia in which the Holy Cross Fathers labored- like Peter, James and John before them- many were delivered from the disquietude of this world by beholding the King in his beauty.
So friends, we need to love and worship the mystery of God in this world, our life and our church. The mysteries of God revealed in nature, faith and people are the spiritual oases that restore our souls and give us courage to press forward and be all we are meant to be, and do what we are called to do.
My prayer, for you and me this morning, is inspired by our Gospel, transfiguration in those I've known and in my life…and the collect of the saintly Father Huntington.
Dear God, reveal to us your Son in raiment white and glistering… that we, too, may be delivered from the disquietude of our life and religion by beholding the King in his beauty… and mystery.
Amen.
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