“The light in our hearts”
The Last Sunday After the Epiphany, February 22d, 2008
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“My spiritual director once asked me how far I could get in the Creed before choking on the words. I won’t share my answer. But I too am a product of our literal-minded culture.”
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”…so they lapsed into poetry. When this life was born, the life of Jesus, they said a great light split the dark sky. Angelic choruses peopled the heavens to sing of peace on earth. They told of a virgin mother, a rejecting world, of stars and kings. Light once more separated the darkness. There was no other way to talk about it.”
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Streaming audio available. Click here.
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.
Two magical stories
We got two stories of magic and miracles in this morning’s readings.
Elijah passing his prophetic role to Elisha
First it was the story of the prophet Elijah, passing his torch as the leading prophet of Israel to his understudy, Elisha.
It has all the markings of a heroic folktale, preserved as oral history, and that’s of course what it is, a heroic folktale.
It almost has the ring of a children’s story, in its simplicity and repetitiveness.
Elijah running God’s errands, first to Bethel, then to Jericho, and then on to the Jordan River, and all the while Elisha being told, over and over, “You stay put!”, but he doesn’t stay put.
He insists on tagging along anyway.
Everyone seems to know that it’s Elijah’s last day on earth, but for some reason, no one’s supposed to talk about it.
At the Jordan River, we discover that Elijah has a bit of the “magic of Moses” in his old bones.
Elijah rolls up his coat, hits the water with it, the water divides, and he and Elisha are able to walk across, reminiscent, of course, of Moses parting the Red Sea.
Elijah is then sucked up into heaven by flying horses.
And that’s where our reading stopped today.
But if you read on, you’ll find in the next verse or two that Elisha picks up the coat that Elijah left behind, and he’s able to do Moses’ magic as well.
He hits the water with Elijah’s coat, the water divides, and he walks across again.
The torch has been passed, from Elijah to Elisha.
The gospel
The other story of magic and miracle this morning was in the gospel, where Mark tells a story of Jesus’ “transfiguration,” Jesus’ dazzling, but temporary, metamorphosis, his clothing becoming whiter than white, and a voice of God coming from the clouds, “This is my Son,” the voice said, “the Beloved; listen to him!”
The torch has been passed again.
The point of the stories
The point of these stories of magic and miracle are to show that Elijah had inherited the standing of Moses, that Elisha had inherited the standing of Elijah, and that Jesus shared the historic prophetic tradition of all three of those major religious figures as well.
These stories show a continuity of ancient Israel’s faith with the birth of Christianity, a connection between Jew and non-Jew, a connection with the same God.
These stories are “true myth.”
The stories of course both have mythic qualities.
The Bible as a whole is way more poetry and myth than it is history.
It’s kind of unfortunate that we live in one of the most literal-minded cultures of all time.
We have trouble grasping the idea of “true myth.”
The two words seem to contradict one another.
I can vouch for that.
I used to think I had to cross my fingers when I recited the Nicene Creed.
My spiritual director once asked me how far I could get in the Creed before choking on the words.
I won’t share my answer.
But I too am a product of our literal-minded culture.
It’s not surprising that the Bible largely remains a closed book.
If you treat the biblical myths as history, as something literal, you end up either with distortion, or absurdity.
What the Bible genuinely is, is our story, our story told in myth, our story explained using parable, our story overflowing with metaphor, and allegory.
The Bible is our story, tracing the evolution of the human soul, and its relationship to the mystery we call “God.”
The Bible is our story, tracing the evolution of the human soul, and its relationship with the wider human community.
The Bible is our story, tracing the evolution of the human soul, to the cosmos itself.
The power of our story, told in myth and parable and metaphor, the power of our story for inspiration and transformation is immeasurable.
The true myth of the Bible can change lives.
And it does.
How can we describe the Jesus experience
Jack Spong writes about the effect that Jesus had on the women and men who followed him around.
They had tasted the power that was in Jesus, and they were made whole by it.
They felt a new freedom.
They knew what it meant to live in the moment, to live in what many call “The Eternal Now.”
They became agents of the power of Jesus.
They shared those gifts, and they shared their stories, from generation to generation, creating and re-creating our story, transforming it, making all things new.
As the power moved among those human beings, light once more separated from darkness, and it was good!
They searched for the words to describe the moment that recognized the fullness of this power, living in history, living in the life of this person, Jesus, but words failed them.
So they lapsed into poetry.
When this life was born, the life of Jesus, they said a great light split the dark sky.
Angelic choruses peopled the heavens to sing of peace on earth.
They told of a virgin mother, a rejecting world, of stars and kings.
Light once more separated the darkness.
There was no other way to talk about it.
Paul: Darkness and light
We read a bit about “light” from of one of Paul’s letters this morning.
What Paul said about darkness and light was this:
Those who have been touched by the God they see in Jesus have seen the Light, and it’s as if seeing the Light at the very first moment of creation, knowing the spiritual presence of God in Jesus, as if brand-new, knowing the spiritual presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, knowing the presence of the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness.”
It’s the Light that shines in our hearts.
It has separated the darkness.
(And I don’t need to cross my fingers any more.)
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+
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