Awaking To The Sacred

This Sunday's feast of the Transfiguration (16 March) takes us to the very heart of a living and life-giving Christian faith. Because knowing about God is quite different to the experience of God's presence first hand – which was one of the main goals of Jesus' mission.

You may be well aware that the Jewish religion in Jesus' day had become bound by rules and regulations and was so different to the inclusive, liberating, life-giving and life-enriching teachings of Jesus. For this reason alone, Jesus invited anyone and everyone who came to him to have eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to love, and an open willingness to respond to the generous out-flowing Love of God. We see Jesus offering a similar invitation when he invited us to:

“Come to Me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,and you will find rest for your souls.¹

St Peter also wrote a very similar invitation based on his own experience:

Cast your cares upon the Lord for he cares for you! ²

It's so easy – even for us – to lose sight of the significance of these invitations. I think back over my own background. I was raised in a church-going family. My father was the local Anglican vicar and my mother was a Church Army Officer (which is an evangelistic and mission orientated organization within the Anglican Church). Obviously, my brothers and I were raised surrounded by, and grounded in, the Christian faith. We had prayers at the meal table and were encourage to memorize scripture. We attended Church every Sunday and even had quizzes on our biblical knowledge, but in retrospect, it was a very much a head knowledge faith.

What I valued and longed for, and found most meaningful, was to go into the church building (which was usually near our home) in the evenings when no one was there, and allow the stillness of the prayed-in building to wrapped itself around me and to hold me. They were very powerful and life-giving moments. It was only much later I came across the words of Archbishop Desmond Tuto:

“God is holy, therefore we are all holy; we are all God carriers, God’s stand-ins, God’s viceroys... Each human being, no matter what colour of skin they have, is created in God’s image, therefore is a piece of God, therefore is holy, therefore deserves respect, dignity, compassion and love.” ³

The experience of an almost physically and tangible sense of God's presence was something we also find throughout the Bible – From the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were able to talk with God in the cool of the evening (Genesis 3:8) to St Paul with his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus which changed his life forever. (Acts 9:3-9)

As I reflect upon life-giving experience of God that transformed the life's of so many people in our sacred scriptures it encourages us also to reflect upon our own graced moments when the boundaries of this world seem to grow thin, and we too may sense the love and presence of God surrounding us, and leaving us with the longing that such moments would last forever. However, the intensity of those graced moments do fade – and while we may want to cling to them in the hope they would remain forever, we also have to return to the events of our every day life, and learn how to weave those treasured moments into our life so that all of our life becomes Holy.

The good news is that the Spirit of God is always active and present to those with open hearts and minds and as the Franciscan Priest, Richard Rohr, has once wrote:

God’s presence can become experiential and undoubted for a person. Most of us believe things because our churches tell us to believe them, so we say 'I believe' as we do in the creed. But God doesn't want us just to say 'I believe'. God created us with the ability to say with conviction:'I know' because we have a knowledge that comes from first hand experience.

This is very similar to the experience the 17th-century Carmelite lay-monk Brother Lawrence discovered. When he heard the words of God's invitation:

‘Seek Me, and you will find Me when you search for me with all your heart' ⁵ Brother Lawrence took the words literally, and began to talk to God about everything he was doing during the day; whether he was washing dishes in the kitchen or cleaning the monastery floors. He found this discipline so helpful, that he encouraged everyone he met to try it for themselves:

Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God.  The more we know God, the more we will desire to know God.  As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God,the more we will truly love God.’

His straightforward simple approach to God's presence is beautifully captured in the following poem by Denise Levertov:

‘The Conversion of Brother Lawrence',

Everything faded – beside
the light which bathed and warmed, the Presence
your being had opened to. Where it shone,
their life was, and abundantly; it touched
your dullest task and the tasks were easy.
Joyful, absorbed,
you "'practised the presence of God" as a Musician
practices hour after hour his art:
"A stone before the carver,"
you "entered into yourself."

Amen.

Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga

May you find peace and good will on your journey.

Phil

_____________

Footnotes:

1. Matthew 11:28-30

2. 1Peter 5:7

3. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-i-learned-from-desmo_b_828388

4. Matthew 17:1-8

5. Jeremiah 29:13

 

Taking Time Out

One of the things I have discovered since moving to New Plymouth is the attraction of Mt Taranaki. We have a clear view of the Mountain from our home and recognise the way it beckons us from our gate each time we leave the house.

Over the years we have spent many happy days exploring the lower tracks on the mountain but aware that we tread as guests on sacred land – yet they are not without their dangers. Tramping NZ suggest a list of 21 essential items you need to take with you, even for a simple mountain day hike, because you never know what might happen to you or to the weather! It's good to leave prepared so we will return home safely.

While the mountain is still considered, geologically, to be a young mountain, it has an interesting history. It's official name is Taranaki Maunga and is a dormant stratovolcano that was formed over 130,000 years of volcanic activity, with it's last major eruption being in the year 655.

The Mountain and the land around it is held sacred to local Maori, and has been revered as a deeply spiritual site and a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance as well as a final burial site. However, during the English colonization of New Zealand in the 1840's – 1860's the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 allowed the confiscation of land belonging to any tribe, or section of a tribe, judged to have rebelled against the Queen's authority, and this included the mountain and more than a million acres of Maori land. However, finally, on Jan 31st 2025, New Zealand Parliament passed the Collective Redress granting the mountain all the rights and responsibilities of a human being. The park surrounding Mount Taranaki was also renamed 'Te Papa-Kura o Taranaki', with management plans requiring dual approval from the conservation minister and iwi leaders.

This week's Gospel reading (Luke 4:1-13 ) we hear of Jesus going out into into the Sinai Desert which also held profound importance to the Jewish/Hebrew people. The desert also contained a mountain (Mt Sinai) that was sacred to them. The desert also held it's own sacred history and beauty to the Jewish/Hebrew, as well as it's well known dangers. Wile the desert lacked both of food and water, it was renown for earthquakes, snakes, scorpions, and attacks from enemy tribes. A traveller could well journey out into the desert and never return. I wonder how prepared Jesus was for his time spent in the wilderness, and what he took with him?

In contrast, in New Zealand, we live in a very beautiful country. I was reminded of this by the Hyundai advertisement on television some time ago which encouraged people to lose themselves in the beauty of creation because by “Getting Lost in the empty wild places of New Zealand we might find our true selves again”; words that also offer us a wonderful introduction to this weeks Gospel reading.

In the reading, Luke records how Jesus, having laid down his carpentry tools, prepares himself for his public ministry by spending time in the desert wilderness. The first thought I had, was that also are spiritual pilgrims, whether we recognise the term or not. We also are on a journey through life, and we need to take time out to find and connect with our true selves. We also need to make space in our lives to simply enjoy the wonder and beauty of God's creation, especially in the empty wild places – whether it be our garden or local park or further afield.

In our readings today we find Jesus taking time out to spend it on mountaintop in the wilderness. The 'wilderness' was a familiar setting in the Bible because it was seen as an-between space where ordinary life is suspended. We might call it “a thin place” where the veil between this world and the eternal world becomes merged. A place of transition, a place of waiting, a place to meet God, and a place where our identity shifts and new possibilities emerge.

By going into the wilderness, Jesus was also identifying himself with his Jewish past where his Hebrew ancestors were referred to as 'wandering Arameans' because they spent 40 years making their way through the wilderness. In the process, they discovered the wilderness also became a thin place for them. A place full of signs and wonders.

St Paul was another biblical person who spent time in the wilderness. After his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, rather than rush to Jerusalem and seek out the other disciples, he withdrew into the Arabian desert for three years (Gal 1:17) and during that time he discovered the desert became a place of waiting and prayer, as well as a place of personal growth as he allowed God's Spirit to transform him and instruct him. When he finally emerged from his desert retreat, Paul was ready to communicate the divine truth to others through his preaching and writing.

So the gift the wilderness gave to the Israelites, and to Paul, and to Jesus, was learning to trust in God – that God is trustworthy, and when they were ready, God would and did lead them. Such trust may not have come easily to them. It also required the gift of faith that God was trust-worthy and knew where he was taking them. It also required the gift of hope – that God knew their final journey's end.

For us also, Jesus seeks to be our Way. To be our companion and our hope – and also to be our destination. And we know that such hope is trustworthy – or to use the words of St Paul written from his own experience:

Faithful and absolutely trustworthy is He who is calling you, and He will fulfill His call by making you holy, guarding you, watching over you, and protecting you as His own. (1 Thes 5:24)

Lent is a time when we are invited to enter a 40 day journey. I wonder what sort of journey you will make, or you are already making over the next 5 weeks? And what sort of stories you will recount when we finally reach the joy of Easter?.


Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga

May you find peace and good will on your journey.

Phil