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

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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