Pentecost 8 year B Sermon 09
Two weeks ago… we started a series…thinking of our church family as a school of practice…where we learn what it means to live and work…in the light of God’s love.
In his book…Finding our way again…Brian McLaren suggests if … we aren’t a school of practice…we’re in danger of becoming just another consumer group…or Sunday morning escape from reality.
Even when we see ourselves as a… passionate well educated congregation…if we’re not practicing the way Jesus taught…we can lose our way…and to find our way forward again…
we have to look back … to see where we got off the track in the first place …
so we recall the accumulated wisdom…
of centuries of Jesus’ disciples and rediscover…
the portrayal of Christian life as a journey…a path…a way…
with stages or seasons of spiritual growth…
It’s what the ancient church called‘the threefold way’ or three dimensions of Christian life…The first dimension…involves a season of self-examination…or self purging…called in Latin the Via Purgativa… or in Greek…Katharsis.
On this part of our journey we honestly examine… how the pursuit of money, pleasure and power… has a hold on our lives…
our marriages, our parenting… our work… our friendships....
We ask how we can hold each other accountable… as we seek to practice the opposite of greed and lust and pride…
as we seek to become a people of humility and compassion…
self control and simplicity. [pause]
Once we’ve cleaned the grime off the windows of our lives… we’re ready to let the light shine in…ready to explore the second dimension of the threefold way…a season of learning and growth… of study and listening and prayer and worship…where we practice seeing everything and everyone…in the light of God’s love.
Here in this second season…we let the wisdom of God illuminate… our lives and our relationships…this dimension of the Christian life ....is The Via Illuminativa…or Fotosis…
And all along…the first and second dimensions of the threefold way … have been preparing us for the third …the one we’re exploring today…the Via Unitiva…or Theosis… where all our practicing…finds fulfillment.
To understand this third dimension… McLaren suggests we sit comfortably by the fireplace… gazing into the flames. It’s so cosy on these cold days…[pause]
and its easy to become relaxed and even captivated by the… beauty and warmth of the fire…
Suddenly we realize we’ve left the tip of the iron poker…
lying in the hot red embers....and we notice something expected but still amazing has happened…
The tip of the poker has started to glow …and the section that’s deepest in the glowing embers… is now completely indistinguishable from them…it pulses with the same orange glow and the same mysterious radiance.
Further up the rod…we notice… it’s orange but not glowing…and still further from the tip… the poker’s white… then gray… and then the normal rough black… of unpolished iron.
And gradually a kind of revelation… starts to warm our hearts. we begin to understand …that the power of fire…is far greater… than the power of iron.
So instead of iron making the fire cold…the fire…
makes the iron hot. If the poker’s in the fire long enough…
the nature of fire overshadows the nature of iron… and the iron begins to catch the nature of the fire. The light and heat of fire… illuminate and warm the darkness and cold of the iron.
There’s a sense in which the iron is fire-ized.
This pre-scientific explanation might maintain that the iron partakes in the nature of fire…until it becomes light and heat itself.
Today we might say something about atoms and molecules and radiant energy or heat transfer…rapid oxidation and combustion. But its experience not science that’s taught us not to pick up the poker without a glove or an old rag even if the handle is black…and when we’ve taken it out the fire… we watch… as the tip reverts… from the nature of fire to the nature of iron.
Less dramatically…we could demonstrate the same thing…
by leaving the poker out in the sun…even simple sunlight can overpower the nature of iron.
Just imagine what would happen…if we could stick the poker right into the sun! Now we’re beginning to understand the third dimension on the threefold way… the via unitiva…the union of our nature… with the nature of God…
To get here…first… with the practice of self-examination…we clean the grime off our windows so the light can shine in…second… through the practice of study… prayer …listening and worship… we place ourselves in the light of God… and now third…we’re gradually overpowered…by the nature of God… and metaphorically you might say …we begin to glow with God’s radiance. We join God…in being fire. [pause]
Eight years before he died…a brilliant 17th century scientist and mathematician…named Blaise Pascal… had a profound experience of the presence of God…an occurrence he described in a poem he stitched into the lining of his coat…as if he wanted to keep it close to his heart.
The poem begins: The year of grace 1654 Monday 23 November From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight…FIRE…
English can’t do justice to Pascal’s experience during those two hours…but some of the words he uses and repeats over and over again are these. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. Greatness of the human soul, joy joy joy tears of joy…
Jesus Christ …Jesus Christ let me never be separated from him. Renunciation, total and sweet. Complete submission…[pause]
Don’t you think it’s fascinating…that Pascal was at the same time a great scientist… and Christian mystic? That his poem wasn’t discovered ‘til after his death…and don't you wonder why he began with the date and the time?
Well McLaren suggests Pascal knew his experience was extra-ordinary and would pass. Perhaps he knew…
if he didn’t write something down… it could easily be forgotten …lost among so many other memories.
And yes…to Pascal …the experience was real and mattered…
but… that wasn’t the point…the point was the agonising tension he expresses… between certainty and complete submission…
and the experience of separation… he writes…yet in my life I’ve departed from him…I left him… I fled him… renounced and crucified him.
Pascal’s extra-ordinary baptism of fire…helps him see and feel… as never before… the horror of turning away from the fire
and the light… of turning away God. And with full awareness of how many times he’s turned away… Pascal wonders how his sense of closeness to God can be sustained after the vision ends.
And so he writes these words
‘He’s to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel…he is only kept securely… by the way taught in the Gospel’
Notice Pascal repeats the word ‘ways’.
Pascal knew that by definition… such a mystical experience…
is rare…and such moments can only be found and kept securely through ways… through practices….
So just as our hot poker caught fire…in the heat and glow of the embers...if we stay close enough to God’s light and heat… for long enough …through our practicing of self examination and prayerful study…then hopefully we’ll catch alight with God.
And when we do…then just maybe we’ll glow with what God has …maybe we will glow with love and peace and patience and justice and compassion and mercy and forgiveness…maybe these will be transferred to us…and maybe then…
we’ll be able to transfer that light and that heat to others. [pause]
In the beginning there was God…and God said let there be light… and time and space…and all created things were made…
and there was enough… and it was good and it was beautiful and we were given life as gift…and there in the garden of our freedom…we made ourselves the managers…and botched the job.
As Pascal lamented… we departed from him, we fled him…we renounced him…and even though he came to us in love…we crucified him.
‘Because I live, you also will live. On that day you’ll realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.’
The whole purpose of Jesus coming… is that the whole world catch fire with the love of God. That all humanity are reconciled and united with God…till all glowing with Shalom…till all people radiate peace… with justice and compassion and mercy.
As Paul said the reading set down for today…in his letter to the church at Ephesus
So he came to proclaim peace… to you who were far off… aand peace to those who were near; for through him all humanity has access in one Spirit to the Father. So then… you’re no longer strangers and aliens to one another…but citizens with the saints… and members of the household of God.
With Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone and in him the whole structure is joined together… and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…built together spiritually… into a dwelling place for God.
Let us open ourselves to this in silence as we listen to 'This is the air I breathe'.
