Hear again, and listen

Saturday, March 4 + Second Sunday in Lent + Pr. Amity Carrubba (Grace Episcopal)

Today, on this second Sunday in Lent, we hear three principal pieces of scripture. The first: Genesis tells of God’s promise to Abram and in extension, “all the families of the earth.” In only three and a half verses, we hear the beginning of the Israelite’s story, through the relationship between God and Abram. This story is then lived out in the rest of the Jewish Torah, the Muslim Koran, and in many ways, the rest of the Christian the bible. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul argues for his theology of justification by faith. Or in other words, how humanity is granted new life through God’s grace and love. Christians, and Lutherans in particular, have been influenced by Paul and this theology for almost two millennia now. And last but not least, we have John’s familiar narrative between Jesus and Nicodemus and the frequently quoted line: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). What else really needs to be said about the Christian faith after hearing such a perfectly composed line of theology?

Needless to say, each reading today is very complex, there’s a lot here and it deserves a lot attention. Yet when there is so much to say, it is best to remain focused.  So living in this second Sunday of Lent, my message is simple.  I want to explore with you how we hear, how we listen to God.  For it is during Lent that we are called to s l o w down, to draw near, and to listen to God. This idea, of listening to God, is one of the most difficult, yet profound questions, in Christianity- and in all religions really.  Isn’t that why we are here this evening?  To praise and, hopefully, hear God?

Notice how various people listen in these lessons… In the Gospel lesson we meet Nicodemus as he sneaks through the night to talk with Jesus.  He begins the conversation with a statement: “you are a teacher who comes from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (John 3:2). Jesus responds with a statement of his own, and immediately Nicodemus is confused. He tries again, this time with a question. Jesus now speaks a little longer, expanding upon his explanation of baptism. Finally, Nicodemus is completely flustered, this Pharisee, an expert on the Jewish law and theology, asks “How can these things be?” (John 3:9). Even though he is able to recognize that Jesus is “of God,” he is not yet ready for what Jesus is offering- his educated mind too full for this new teaching. God is speaking the truth, in his very presence, yet even as poor Nicodemus hears Jesus’ words, he is not ready to fully listen and understand.  I imagine him walking away, throwing his hands up, not grasping what just transpired.

Many of us have probably experienced this problem in various relationships.  Saying, “ok” to a friend or spouse, and a moment later realizing you have NO idea what the other person just said.  Or more importantly, you heard what is said but don’t fully understand what is meant- a visit to the doctor will often provide such an experience.

Most importantly though is when we misunderstand God, or get too desensitized to fully listen when we hear the familiar message of the Good News: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

Hear again, and listen: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”

We don’t hear about Nicodemus for awhile, but eventually he is able to realize Jesus’ message and respond- first by trying to ensure that Jesus is given a fail trial by other Pharisees, and then assisting Joseph of Arimathea in taking Jesus’ body off the cross and burying him according to Jewish custom.  Nicodemus finally listens and understands, his faithful action follows.

In Romans, Paul turns our attention away from works, right action, and refocuses us on faith. He argues that it is most important to hear the word of God and have faith, above the action. He recognizes that listening to and understanding God’s word precedes faith, precedes action. Although Paul does not actually use his now well-known phrase “justified by faith” in this passage, his arguments about Abraham are certainly leading up to it.

Paul points us back to Genesis, and our reading from that book this morning concludes: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…” (Genesis 12:4) God spoke, Abram listened and responded. Simple really, but significant. Scholars point out that God doesn’t even bother with an introduction, no “Hello, I am God Almighty,” or other openings that are found elsewhere in Genesis (sans the “hello” bit), so it is understood that Abram already knows the One who is speaking- God and Abram already have a relationship. Unlike Nicodemus and Jesus in the Gospel.  

And after God tells Abram to leave everything… his country, his hometown, his extended family… “Abram went, as the Lord had told him…”  He doesn’t even have any lines in this passage. No questions or confusion like Nicodemus. Abram is the silent servant. He hears and acts rightly, his faith is so secure that he is willingly to follow God wherever God leads him. Without a single question or query.

While I personally prefer more dialogue-based relationships, Abram’s example in this passage is very useful. He listens… and then responds. I have heard over and over again in “Active Listening” workshops that the first mistake people usually make in conversations, and relationships in general, is that we often try to listen by talking. (As an extrovert, this “listening by talking” is very familiar to me.) Abram would pass an Active Listening workshop with flying colors, better than me, and much better than Nicodemus.  He would do especially well in the exercise where you practice listening to another person for about five minutes or so, and the only time you are allowed to speak is to ask direct questions about what the person is saying.  (It is important that each person has the opportunity to talk in this exercise, since no one should be forced into silence. It’s about relationship, not dictatorship.)

How often do we practice active listening with God?  How many times do we begin prayer with our own words, not waiting to listen for God’s voice?  Do we even realize that God is already trying desperately to communicate with us, if only we would stop and listen. I encourage you to try actively listening to God this Lent and discover what wonderful message is waiting for you.  Turn off your screens; take a deep breath at the red light; quiet the voices inside your head while standing in line. Just listen quietly in the presence of God…

The first time I tried this was while working at my church in Lincoln Park in the early 2000s before going to seminary. A parishioner began a weekly Centering Prayer group and I was required to attend in order to lock up at the end of the evening. Initially, I was skeptical. What was this prayer practice all about? How could anyone, particularly me, sit for 20 minutes in silence?

I became more intrigued as the group progressed through the four introductory sessions, learning how just sitting could quiet one’s mind, which could then lead to an inner calm, and eventually a space within where God could be heard. (In a fun working of the Holy Spirit, our teacher of the sessions was the Rev. Ted Curtis, my predecessor and former rector here at Grace, that is how I first met him. Today, I participate in the Centering Prayer group at Grace on Tuesday mornings, all because of that training back in 2002.)

Essentially, the practice of Centering Prayer is to sit in a healthy position, and be silent for 20 minutes. If a thought or idea comes into your mind, gently let go of it., and refocus on being quiet. There is much more to it than that, and many good books are available if you are interested in learning more. (Or I can connect you with the group that meets at Grace, right here in the sanctuary on Tuesdays.)

It seems Abram was one of the first people to succeed at this type of praying. He would have done very well in this Centering Prayer group, as we sat in the chancel, under soft lights, being quiet under the beautiful stained glass behind the altar, listening. 

British author Evelyn Underhill takes this a step further in her beautiful little book The Spiritual Life.  The book presents a series of four radio broadcasts she gave on prayer and spirituality before WW II.  She says “we mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do… none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be.”

This Lent I invite you to Be in the presence of God and listen. Amen.

But that is glorious

Seminarian Justin Carlson + February 19, 2023 + The Transfiguration of Our Lord

The flame of these torches looks deceptively simple. 

After all, fire is not a thing. Fire is a process - a process of rapid transformation triggered by heat in which vaporized fuel - [Saturday: beeswax - esters exuded from the abdomen of newly metamorphosed honeybees - beeswax] [Sunday: kerosene, a mixture of hexadecane, pentadecane, and tetradecane distilled from crude oil] - combines with oxygen and transforms, chemical bonds breaking and reforming until just carbon dioxide and water remain. Each of these transformations, through each intermediate state, with each bond that breaks and reforms, emits light! So much light - enough to fill a room, to dazzle our eyes, to produce heat, heat which [melts more of the solid wax below into liquid fuel], heat which vaporizes the liquid fuel traveling up the [fiberglass] wick, heat which provides the energy for the [beeswax][kerosene] to combine with oxygen and combust and transform and emit light!… So much light!

This pattern of transformation continues so long as there is fuel traveling up the wick and oxygen in the air. And it is glorious. 

In each of today’s scripture readings, glorious light dances and dazzles:

A lamp shines in a dark place, the glory of the Lord settles on a mountain like devouring fire, and Jesus’ face shines like the sun while his clothes become dazzling white.

His face shines like the sun…

The light of our sun comes from a very different transformation than the light of these torches. Unlike the chemical rearrangements, the changing of bonds between atoms that we see as flame, sunlight comes from elemental transformation: nuclear fusion! Plasmatic hydrogen nuclei combining and transforming into unstable isotopes of hydrogen and helium that continue combining and transforming until stable helium is formed, each transformation releasing immense amounts of energy, accelerating charged particles, emitting light: So much light!

Visible light, which our eyes evolved to sense, but also infrared light which we feel as heat and radio waves, ultraviolet light, and gamma rays which we cannot sense. There is so much light we cannot see.

Light comes from transformation, from change. It is glorious. And it moves so fast.

Consider our sun. 93 million miles away, and its light only takes eight minutes to get here. 

[Sunday: Look behind you! The light streaming through that stained glass window left the sun while we sang the psalm!]

93 million miles. Eight minutes.

That is glorious.

But that’s just from my frame of reference, my perspective as a human on earth. Special relativity means different perspectives see things differently. Humor me, and imagine yourself as sunlight.

From your perspective leaving the sun’s surface? Earth’s one yard away and it takes 3 nanoseconds to get here. Earth and Sun are basically the same place! One yard! Three nanoseconds! 

If we look through a telescope and see the Orion Nebula, we see it as it looked 1,344 years ago, but the light that hits our eyes hasn’t aged even one second since it left the Nebula.

Why am I bothering to share this trivia, these bits of information related to special relativity and time dilation and length contraction and electromagnetic fields? 

Relativity isn’t even reconciled with the standard model of particle physics yet, so why would I attempt to reconcile it with scripture? 

I don’t even have time in this sermon to explain things so it feels like I’m just listing facts and recycling jargon and honestly, if I weren’t speaking from a manuscript I probably wouldn’t be getting any of these details right anyway.

I’m not only sharing them because I find them fascinating and fun, though that’s true, and I’m not only sharing them because I consider Creation God’s first word so a responsible reading of scripture requires an understanding of Creation. 

As we just heard in second peter, “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” We can’t only interpret scripture from our human perspective.

I share this knowledge because the effects of special relativity and the nature of light are central to the good news of God’s immanence and to understanding our relationship with God and one another. 

At a deep, fundamental physical level, we are so closely connected. The heat, the light that we each emanate simply through being alive and maintaining homeostasis collapses distance and time between us all. Every time you take communion, every time you metabolize that bite of bread, you transform it into light. 

Light that you cannot see, but light nonetheless. 

And through that light, God says I AM HERE. I AM NOW. 

And that is glorious! To feel God’s presence is glorious!

When we can consult with Moses and Elijah and the rest of our elders - when we can see that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and we know who we are as Disciples of the Christ, It is good! It is good for us to be here! There is so much light here!

But… we don’t stay there. We can’t. We are only human and if anyone says they see the glory at all times… they have been blinded. 

I sense light in my eyes through an unwieldy few molecules that flip from cis to trans when a photon happens to hit just right… and it takes a while before the molecule flips back, trans to cis - when the camera flash goes off and all our retinal sensors become trans at once, we are briefly blind. There is so much light we cannot see.

Even though I know that light collapses time and space and brings all things together, even though I know that is a fundamental truth of our universe, I am human. I can’t feel it. I can’t see it. 

Like the disciples, when I lift up my eyes, I see no one except Jesus alone. Jesus, human. I have to come down from the mountain.

There is so much light we cannot see. 

This week, we transition to lent, to a period of introspection and repentance. 

We symbolically, liturgically, methodically, blot out the glory. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is: it’s okay if you can’t see Jesus’ glory, if you don’t feel inspired at all times, if you feel utterly disconnected even while it seems everyone around you just gets it, when the whole liturgy is a celebration of light and glory and the obvious goodness and holiness of Christ but you are wrapped up in grief and worry and detachment and anxiety and have you seen the news recently? 

When the preacher is going on and on about electromagnetic radiation when all you need is to hear God loves you.

“Get up and do not be afraid.”

There is so much light we cannot see.

Almost six years ago, my dad and I traveled to Grand Island, NE, gathering with thousands of others to witness a cosmic coincidence: a solar eclipse. As the moon orbited past the sun, less and less light reached us. The sky dimmed and the horizon in all directions transformed from blue to orange.

Darkness fell across the plains and we looked up. Where the sun should have been was instead a circle of pure black, utter darkness.

But surrounding the darkness, revealed to my eyes for the first time, was a hazy glow: our Sun’s corona, normally drowned out by the surface’s blazing glory, was finally visible. I could see it with my own eyes.

There is so much light we cannot see.

The Epiphany of Our Lord

January 6 is the festival of the Epiphany. Unfortunately, January 6 now has other associations. Power, tyranny, uprising, violence.

Epiphany is a joyful feast. The infant Jesus is revealed to the nations. Represented by the Magi who come from the East to offer worship. Arise, shine, for your light has come, writes the prophet Isaiah. Light for all the world. Salvation for all nations. Hope for all people.

We love Epiphany at Holy Trinity. Children carry stars-on-sticks. Magi in costume process. We sing beloved carols.

Yet there are other associations, too. An unsteady tyrant king threatened by the birth of a baby. Known for his ruthless appetite for cruelty, domination and violence, Herod kills all the infants under two near Bethlehem.

This baby, this Christ, will be scorned, rejected, and crucified. Even in the birth stories Jesus’ death is foreshadowed. Consider the gifts. Gold for a king, incense for a priest, and myrrh for one who will suffer and die.

Some of our carols name the harsh realities of life into which Jesus is born. The world in which we too live. “Nails, nails shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you.” And the lovely hymn, “A stable lamp is lighted” juxtaposes the bright glow of the barn where Jesus was born with the evil rampant in the world. “Hearts made hard by sin, God’s love upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.”

Being warned in a dream to go home another way, the Magi likely save the life of Jesus. By refusing to obey Herod they engage in an act of divinely inspired disobedience.

Today is also the feast of Jesus’ baptism. In the early church Epiphany marked three revelations of Jesus: to the Magi and all nations, at his baptism, and in his miracle of turning water to wine.

Today we have the joy of celebrating the sacrament of baptism. We are named “child of God.” But there are other associations. We are marked with a cross. We stand against all forms of domination, violence, and greed. Like the Magi, we are called to be courageous and bold as we work for justice and peace in all the earth.