First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
May 22, 2016
Sermon Text - Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
If you'll allow me to geek out for a moment….this week was one of those glorious weeks where the stars aligned, the Spirit whispered, I actually noticed and the voice of a prophet spoke directly to me through words on a page….and then when I went and looked at the Lectionary Texts for the week it all just kind of melded together in a beautiful way.
The prophet I’m speaking of is a man named Richard Rohr. Unlike so many of our prophets, he's not dead. He lives in Albuquerque. He was born just down the road in Topeka. Father Rohr is Roman Catholic - ordained in the Franciscan tradition. He is the author of numerous books and the one I'm reading right now is called Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer.
He made me sit up and pay attention when he said this:
“We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness.”
Hold that statement next to a more ancient text: “Does not Wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand…”
The Holy, personified in Proverbs as Lady Wisdom, is literally standing in the middle of the streets shouting at us to PAY ATTENTION!
“We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness.”
What makes it so incredibly difficult to pay attention and realize we are always and everywhere in the midst of God? I can think of a few things: my unending to do list; my smartphone; my sciatic pain; my mind that is prone to wander and criticize; my fears; bills that must be paid, bodies that must be washed, exercised, tended….we could go on and on, yes?
Father Rohr says that there is something else that stands in our way of recognizing the presence of God: too much. Too much of everything. He writes, “In our culture, we suffer from, among other things, a glut of words, a glut of experiences, and, yes, a glut of...books and ideas.”
The great religions, it seems, exist to help us sift through the glut and focus on what really matters. Rohr says, “All religious teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally see; we have to be taught to see.”
We have to be taught to see….and Lady Wisdom is a highly qualified teacher. Listen to her words: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. God created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”
The image of Lady Wisdom, present at the dawn of creation, is fascinating because in orthodox Christian thought, we tend to think of the three figures of the Trinity as co-existing before creation. Lady Wisdom’s presence seems to have gone unnoticed.
Today is Trinity Sunday - having just received the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are given a Sunday to ponder anew the Trinity, and the folks who put together the Revised Common Lectionary thought it made sense to throw in this other character: Wisdom. I wonder why?
There are probably many reasons, but the one that resonates with me is this: the Trinity, as a concept, has often been used in very legalistic ways. Christians through the centuries have fought mightily over it and have struggled to make sure their version WINS.
But what if the Trinity is actually more useful if it's a reminder of what we don't understand? After all, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity” is awfully confusing. Even if you use the old children’s sermon trick of talking about how ice, snow, and steam are all water...you've got to admit that the Trinity is still awfully strange.
Perhaps, by inserting Lady Wisdom into the mix, the Lectionary committee helps us to see that the Trinity is more useful when it reminds us that the one we call God exists outside of a persona, outside of a box, outside of doctrine (no matter how carefully considered). The Holy exists in Community - God is beyond being consolidated into one distinct being - and that Holy Community is revealed to us in many images, many names, many identities - not just three.
As the hymn writer Brian Wren bears witness:
Bring many names, beautiful and good,
celebrate, in parable and story,
Holiness in glory, living, loving God.
Hail and Hosanna! Bring many names!
God is beyond being defined narrowly. God is beyond being located in one place or one persona. God is fully present in each and every moment, each and every person, each and every animal, each and every blessed part of creation.
It’s a little overwhelming once you really start to ponder it.
Father Rohr says, “We desperately need some disciplines to help us know how to see and what is worth seeing….and what we don't need to see.”
It seems to me this statement is true. It applies to the glut of information that accosts our senses each day. We need help figuring out how to see correctly.
It applies to our experiences of our own selves. We are often overwhelmed, paralyzed, discomforted by what we see when we take stock of who we are. We need help figuring out how to see correctly.
It applies to our experience of the Holy. Lady Wisdom may be shouting the street and God may be present everywhere, but why, then, is she so darn hard to hear? We need help figuring out how to see.
There are no shortages of spiritual practices out there that can help us learn to see: praying, fasting, giving alms, sabbath-keeping, hanging laundry, digging up potatoes, holy listening, running like the wind, sitting with purpose.
Having tried all of the above, I can tell you this: it's not a one-size-fits-all. What works for me may not work for you. And what works for you today may not work for you next week or next year. It's an ongoing quest to find a way to orient our very selves towards the Holy that is among us, to turn towards God, to open our awareness to the presence of the Holy that is ever-present.
I am going to pass around hazelnuts right now. You are invited to take one. Don't eat it. Why on earth am I handing out hazelnuts?
Well, these hazelnuts are in honor of Julian of Norwich. She was born in England in 1342 and was a Christian mystic. When Julian was about thirty years old, she became very ill and almost died. After her recovery, she was given a series of visions, which she describes in her book Revelations of Divine Love.
She writes:
And in this [God] showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.'
I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness.
And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
A little later she continues:
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “one-d” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.
The Spirit speaks through a hazelnut. Who knew? What an odd thing.
Julian knew. She knew because she lived her life in such a way that she tried to tune herself to the presence of the Holy in each and every breath. She knew because she cultivated rich and purpose-filled spiritual practices that nurtured her faith, opened her to a God she believed was Stillspeaking, and taught her how to see.
The good news for this day is that some things have not changed since the 14th century when Julian held a hazelnut in the palm of her hand. Some things haven't changed since the Book of Proverbs was written, centuries before Christ was born.
Lady Wisdom, who was present in the chaos that preceded Creation, and is present in the midst of the year 2016, still stands at the crossroads, begging for our attention, freely offering the Holy to us.
And Father Rohr is still right: “We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness.”
And so I invite you to take this hazelnut home. Put it somewhere where you might notice it and begin to wonder what your life might look like if you took seriously the task of learning to see, shifting your awareness orienting yourself more intentionally towards the Holy.
It doesn't have to be a total life transformation (though it certainly could be). It could be something as simple as finding five minutes of quiet in your day to gently hold something as small as insignificant as a hazelnut, opening your spirit to the Holy, shifting your gaze to the Divine, emptying your mind to make room for God to play, and bringing awareness to the beautiful truth that you exist because God is loving you into being with each and every breath.
Like the hazelnut, you last and ever shall because God loves you.
Like that little nut, you have your beginning by the love of God.
God made you. God loves you. And God keeps you. Amen.
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