ThisWeeksSermon February 15th 2009

“God is Wonder, not judgment.”
The 6th Sunday After the Epiphany, February 15th, 2008

“The revelation of God is Wonder, not judgment.
The only true response is silence, not certainty.
Sacred text is poetry and story, not commandment.
Religion is experience, not dogma.”

“For me the experience was the result of receiving the dreaded cancer diagnosis and then unexpectedly, being aware of the Wonder of it all, somehow, without warning, knowing a connection with God and the Universe that could not be undone, no matter what, ever.”

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May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you, in the name of God our Creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier.

Namasté
Namasté.
As you may know, “namasté” is a common spoken greeting in the Indian subcontinent.
It’s an expression of deep respect.
It’s commonly used by Hindus and Buddhists, but it’s also associated with spiritual meditation among Christians, and all over the world.
In India, the word is spoken at the beginning of a conversation, “Namaste,” with prayerful hands, palms facing one another.
At the end of a conversation, when departing, the same hand gesture is made, but usually without words.
Taken literally, namasté means “I bow to you.”
In yoga, namasté is said to mean, “The light in me honors the light in you.”
Other interpretations are, “I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me.”
Or “the Divinity within me greets the Divinity within you.”
“Your spirit and my spirit are One.”
These ideas should not be foreign to Christians.
The whole idea that God would become incarnate in a human being, Jesus, is the quintessential example of “God-within-us” in our tradition.
There are lots of other examples as well.
Early Christians spoke about Jesus being “in the Father”, one with God, and the Father being “in” him, and Jesus being “in” us, and us being “in him,” and so forth.
We as a church claim, actually to be God’s body in the world.

Naaman’s young skin and my old skin
Changing the subject here for a minute.
In this morning’s first reading, from the second book of The Kings, Naaman went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan River, following the directions of a holy man, and his flesh was restored, we’re told.
It became like the flesh of a young boy.
The leprosy, it’s called Hansen’s Disease today, the leprosy was gone.
He was clean.
(You know, I look at myself in the mirror and I think “If only I could get a bit of that Jordan river water.”
Wouldn’t we all like to have our flesh restored to the flesh of our youth!)
Nonetheless, the aging of our skin, clearly, it’s to be expected.
It happens.

Recognizing the wonder of God all around
But I think there’s another way to look at it.
Instead of focusing on what it is we expect, we can look for the un-expected, we can look for the surprise.
Call it “Wonder,” with a capital-W.
Wonder.
It’s all around us.
When I look in my mirror, and all we see are these wrinkles, and I wish, if only I could take a swim like Naaman’s, in the Jordan River, and be restored?
Instead of focusing on what’s expected, and trying to wish these wrinkles away, I might look at them as “an awesome Wonder.”
I might think of them as something more.
How about thinking of them as “patterned lines of experience.”
Where we see those extra pounds and protruding midsections, what we might see instead could be confirmation of the Wonder of “abundant life.”
When there are tears of regret, they can actually be miraculous occasions for the Wonder of of tenderness and empathy.
Those tears can be “moist opportunities for compassion.”
Where we experience failure, the Wonder of new opportunities presents itself, the Wonder of seeing things in new ways.
Paul celebrated this concept, you know, in his letter to the Colossians:
“…old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
If we want to, we can lose ourselves in the Wonder of the un-expected.
We can welcome the surprise as hiding-places of the Wonder of God.
It’s possible to live being open to possibilities of divine revelation all around us, the Wonder of an incarnation……
of God with us, of God within us.
The wonder of the Light that is within all things that live and move and have their being.

An old joke about what we don’t recognize
Ian Lawton, an ordained Anglican priest who is now “Executive Minister” at a large community church in Michigan, told this joke in a recent sermon.
There’s a saying, he said, that Jews don’t recognize Jesus, Protestants don’t recognize the Pope, and Baptists don’t recognize one another if they run into each other at a Hooters restaurant.
In his sermon, Ian Lawton added one more.
Cynics don’t recognize beauty, even when it’s sometimes right under their noses.
It’s easy to become cynical, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t blind a person to the beauty that’s all around.
And then Ian Lawton said this about Wonder (and I especially like this part):
The revelation of God is Wonder.
It’s not judgment.
The only true response is silence, not certainty.
Sacred text is poetry and it is story.
It is not commandment.
Religion is experience, not dogma.

From a J.D. Salinger short story
In 1954 J.D. Salinger published a short story called “Teddy.”
Teddy, in the story, is a ten-year-old with enormous spiritual insight.
In this story, Teddy is having a conversation with an adult on a cruise ship.
Here’s what Teddy said:
“I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all,” Teddy said.
“It was on a Sunday, I remember.
My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God.
I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.”
An experience like that can change the way you see everything around you.
For me, the experience was the result of receiving the dreaded cancer diagnosis and then, unexpectedly, being aware of the Wonder of it all, somehow, without warning, knowing a connection with God and the Universe that could not be undone, no matter what, ever.
An experience like that lets you see everything around you with new eyes.
You feel different.
Not only do you feel more connected to everything, but you feel more compassionate, more content to simply be in the moment.
There’s a sense of participating in something huge, and grand, and much larger than any individual human being.
The boundaries between me and the rest of life are gradually, but surely, dissolving.

Wonder and Effortless Action
If you are overwhelmed by Wonder at the sight of a coral reef, or by a pristine mountain lake where the water’s so clear that you can stand waist-deep and still count your toes, if these experiences are true for you, you’re not very unlikely to throw an empty beer can into the water, or anything else that doesn’t belong there.
If you look at the stars and you’re overwhelmed by the size of the universe, you’re less likely to think that you’re the center of the world, or that the universe exists simply to satisfy your own needs.
If you’re lost in the joy and pleasure of a toddler learning life’s lessons, you’re a lot more likely to be compassionate toward that child, and probably toward others as well.
If you have these experiences, you know something of the Wonder of God’s presence here and now.

The revelation of God is Wonder, not judgment.
The only true response is silence, not certainty.
Sacred text is poetry and story, not commandment.
Religion is experience, not dogma.

Namaste.
When Wonder in me greets Wonder in you, there is only one of us.
In the eyes of God, those wrinkles and expanding midsections and tears and failures are gone.
They have disappeared in the waters of the Jordan River.

Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.
Jerry Brooks+