Repentance and a Reminder of Death

I once heard a very wise person say that

            repentance is too important for God to leave it all up to us alone.

As the years go by I am seeing more clearly 

            not only the truth of this statement

                        but also the implications.

Welcome to Lent!

            And as we begin this Lent I want to say something to you

                        that you may not have heard before.

Anyone who has been around the Episcopal Church for a few years

            and has shown up on Ash Wednesday 

                        to get the ashes rubbed in the shape of a cross on the forehead

            will recognize the scripture readings.

These readings can become so familiar 

            that we end up hearing them no more than at a surface level,

and then people tend to fall into patterns and rituals for observing Lent

            that just plain miss the point altogether.

And this gets reinforced by the Ash Wednesday liturgy itself.

In this liturgy you will be told to observe a holy Lent

            by self-examination and repentance;

            by prayer, fasting, and self-denial;

            and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

And what perennially happens is that people will think

            that the ashes on the forehead is the repentance part (but really it isn’t).

They may give up desserts or chocolate for their fasting and self-denial,

            and maybe they will read a devotional book,

            and, to cover the prayer part, try to get to church more often.

All done in good Anglican moderation.

If this sounds anything like what you have known,

            then I invite you to sit up and pay attention,

because I’m going to tell you what repentance really means.

You probably know that the word repent (from Latin) means “to turn around,”

to change course, reverse direction, return to your beginning point, the Source.

In other words, the way you are going is in the wrong direction,

            and you are getting farther away from what is life giving and holy.

Repentance (from Greek) is also about having a change of mind,

            and what does that mean?

It means a change in what I have held as my reality, my world view,

            when something happens and I experience a new reality, 

                        a new perspective on life,

so that I can no longer think the way I used to,

            and as a corollary what I do changes too.

Well, how do we get to repentance?

Do I say to myself, “You’re going in the wrong direction.

            You should change your mind.

            Let’s try out a new take on reality.”

No, not usually.

            Repentance happens to us.

Something happens, we have an encounter or interchange with others,

            or something that catches us up, or sometimes with a devastating effect,

and we stand aghast at ourselves.

We did not initiate the repentance, we did not choose to repent,

            but now we find that we are very much in the midst of it.

Isn’t that much more like what really happens?

This, my friends, is God’s merciful intervention in our lives.

God is the giver of repentance.

It says so in the Bible in more than one place.

            Start with Acts 11:18 and Romans 2:4, for example.

            Look them up and then come talk to me about it.

God is the giver of repentance.

You see, repentance is much too important for God to leave it all up to us alone.

Lent is about having a season to prepare for Holy Week and Easter,

            a whole 40 days to get ready so that we will be able to better grasp

                        what Good Friday and the Feast of the Resurrection are all about.

That’s it.  

            That is all that Lent needs to be about.

If we can get it, if we can take in 

            just what it is that Jesus did in going to the cross,

            how it was more than just sins that he was taking on,

how he took on all the suffering that ever was and ever will be,

            and released this huge power and energy of resurrection,

and made that all available to us by his continuing presence in the world

                        through the Holy Spirit.

But we don’t get it, 

            so we need Lent.

We need 40 days or 40 years or a whole lifetime.

And even at that it takes God’s intervention in our lives

            to bring about real repentance.

HOWEVER we can cooperate.

            We can cooperate with this process off being repented.

Repentance is not about self-affliction and asceticism and breast beating.

Our part in repentance is making ourselves available,

            making ourselves available for God’s merciful act of repenting us.

It’s a matter of trust.

Can we trust God to have our best interests at heart?

            I’m going to risk that,

which means I will need to be open to considering

            that ALL events in life have the potential of being in my best interest,

                        events both lovely and gruesome.

It’s a matter of trust.

So do you want to know a way, a good Lenten practice

            for being open in trust to God’s merciful act of repenting us?

Meditate.

            You knew I’d say that.

Meditation is one way, 

            I must say a particularly simple, accessible and efficiently effective way.

But do the praying, do the fasting, do the self-denial

            (by the way, meditation is a form of self-denial and fasting).

Read the Bible! 

                                    These are all ways in which we can be open 

                                                to repentance happening in our lives.

Remember, the purpose of repentance is to return us to the Source of Life,

            to return us to the embrace of God,

who like the father in the parable about the prodigal son,

            has never ceased to watch for us,

who sees us from afar and runs to meet us,

who before we get through our litany of penitence

            has already killed the fatted calf and started the party.

What we are doing today in this liturgy 

            is to set us up for 40 days of spiritual practice

so that when we get to Easter we just may realize the immensity of it all.

And now, about the ashes, they are the sign of our mortality.

If there is anything that can bring us to repentance,

            it would be death, the reminder of our own mortality.

Death is a gift that makes us look at the precious gift of life we have been given.

You know, we all have to face this sometime;

            none of us gets out of here alive.

Welcome to Lent.

Primal Light

We can always tell it is the end of the Epiphany season

            not just by this Wednesday being Ash Wednesday

            or that on Tuesday we’re having pancakes for supper,

                        but that today’s gospel is the story of the Transfiguration.

This is the ultimate example of the Epiphany theme of Light -- the Transfiguration, 

            this ultimate showing forth of the Light to the world,

            a manifestation of “Uncreated” Light from the Source,

                        from the Creator, from the One whose first Word was Light.

Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him up a high mountain,

            and he is transfigured before them.

Jesus is revealed as Primal Light.

His face shone like the sun, the text says,

            and his clothes became dazzling white.

But it’s not just his face shining, but his whole body.

No amount of clothing will veil this radiance, this Shekinah Glory of God.

            The dazzling white light shines outward from his being

                                                through his garments.

And then, what is this?  Moses and Elijah suddenly appear 

                        and are talking with this light being who is Jesus.

            But aren’t they supposed to be long departed from this world?

There is something of Resurrection about all this,

            something very much like the Resurrection accounts of Jesus.

And in the midst of this revelation of radiant being 

and the presence of Moses and Elijah,

                                                            Peter starts babbling.

What Peter proposes is actually less about Jesus and Moses and Elijah

            and more about Peter, James and John,

            about building three little hermitages 

                        where they can sit and contemplate 

                                                this colossal spiritual experience of radiance,

                                                this “mountaintop experience.”

They want to institutionalize it, encase it, hold it, 

            have some way to control it, keep it from going any further.

They want to preserve – not the radiant revelation – but their experience of it.

Take a lesson from this, brothers and sisters.

Our human attempts to hang onto “mountain top” experiences

            are ludicrous,

for how can we possibly encase such a divine revelation

            that makes cathedrals look puny?

And so a bright cloud comes over all the scene.

            One might think of the cloud over Mount Sinai when the Law was given,

                        or the Cloud that led the Children of Israel through the wilderness,

                        or the Cloud that filled the Temple

            as recorded in the 6^th chapter of Isaiah,

                        where the whole huge temple could barely hold 

                                    just the trailing hem of God’s robe.

The Cloud of God’s Presence.

And from the Cloud comes the voice:  “This is my Son…listen to him!”

Shut up, Peter.  Listen to Jesus.

I have stood on the Mount of the Transfiguration, Mt. Tabor, 

rising out of the Jezreel Valley not far from the Sea of Galilee.

They have built Peter’s three tabernacle there:

            A central domed church with 2 domed side chapels for Moses and Elijah.

Isn’t that just the way!

Turn the revelation into a building, a structure,

            rather than see it immediately present 

                                    in close proximity to ourselves personally.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church 

            there is a fascination with this Transfiguration event,

                        this Uncreated Light that shines through the whole body of Jesus,

                        this Light from the Source.

There is the realization that this radiance of Uncreated Light 

            is the NORMATIVE state for Jesus.

He exudes this Light all the time.

This was not something he took on at that particular moment

                                    to dazzle the eyes of Peter, James and John.

The Eastern Orthodox say that rather at this time

            the eyes of the disciples were released to be able to see

                        what has always been there, the Truth of what Jesus is like.

Jesus opened the spiritual eyes of his disciples

                        so that they could see the Uncreated Light;

            it was a transfiguration of consciousness.

The Radiance of God is all around us             all the time,

            but WE DON’T SEE IT.

Is this not strange?  How can we miss it?  

            Should we not all fall on our faces before the Glory of God?

St. Theophan the Recluse, one of the great saints of the Eastern Church, wrote:

            “As God is Light, so also our spirit is light.

            Having been breathed into us by God,

            it seeks God, knows God, and in Him alone finds rest.”

Thus from the first, from creation, 

the human spirit was clothed in the Uncreated Light.

Yet through sin our primordial parents, the Genesis story tells us,

            lost “the garment of Uncreated Light” in which they were clothed,

            and they became aware that they were naked,

                        and so they took fig leaves and sewed them together

                        to make for themselves substitute garments.

And we have all shared in that sin that leaves us blind to the light

                        which was our first garment.

Each Sunday we recite the confession, 

acknowledging our sinful condition and our spiritual blindness.

John the Baptist came preaching repentance 

and offering a water baptism for cleansing, 

            but he also announced that one would come after him 

                        whose baptism would be far more effective,

                        whose baptism was of fire –

                                    fire like the flames of Pentecost, Uncreated Light.

Picture 120 gathered in the upper room 

            with that uncreated light springing from their heads.

And coming to the Eucharist

            we find here healing for the sin sickness.

When we partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus

            we receive into ourselves his Life energy, his Light energy,

and this continues to cleanse us by holy fire.

And like the fire of the bush that Moses saw on Mount Sinai,

                        the bush enveloped in the fire of Uncreated Light,

            we are not scorched by this Fire we have eaten.

Only sin is burned up within us,

            as the Light invisibly purifies us.

Remember that when we celebrate the Eucharist,

when we partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus

            we receive into ourselves his Life energy.

How many years have you been coming here Sunday by Sunday

            consuming the Body and Blood of Jesus?

You are shot through with this same Light 

                        as the disciples saw in the Transfigured Jesus.

May the Church awake to this great truth of being,

and may we be delivered from our fears about coming into 

                        the brilliant Presence of this Light.

May we not shrink back from realizing ourselves indeed to be

            light to the world.

This should be disturbing if we take it seriously.

How much of our lives do we waist in puniness of perspective

            about who we are and who Jesus is

            and the implications of the Transfiguration event

                        if taken into serious consideration.

May our eyes be opened to see this Transfiguration Light all around us

                                    and in each other,

may our consciousness be transfigured,

may our minds and our hearts be opened.

And may we resist the temptation to encase the Light of God

            within the limitations of our own minds

but without fear respond to the Voice from the cloud:

            “This is my son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased;

            listen to him!”

Morality or Being in Jesus

This week and next we will have Gospel readings 

            from the 5^th chapter of Matthew, a portion of the Sermon on the Mount.

We aren’t getting as much of the Sermon on the Mount 

            during this Epiphany season as usual, 

                        because Ash Wednesday comes earlier this year.

But the Sermon on the Mount is an important part of the Gospels 

            so I’m going to give you a teaching sermon this Sunday and next.

The selection we get for today fits well with the theme for Epiphany:

            you are the salt of the earth,

            you are the light of the world.

Being light, the light continues to increase as assuredly as the days lengthen.

And I am quick to remind us all 

            that this is not just another commandment, a burden, 

                        to be laid as a moral obligation on Christians.

It’s BE the light, just BE,

            not an emphasis on doing, but on being.

The doing can only happen when first we BE,

                                                 if you can follow what I am saying.

This is actually self evident in the passage.

            “You are the salt of the earth.”

Salt doesn’t have hands or feet to engage in action, one might say.

            But when salt is present, flavor is enhanced, and food is preserved.

            All that’s needed is for salt just to be salt.

And there is no way for salt to lose its saltiness.

            If it’s not salty, it isn’t salt.

If God makes you salt, that is irrevolcable.

Jesus says we’re salt. 

So how do we give flavor to others, how do we help to preserve others?

“You are the light of the world.”

A lamp emits light, and others see by it.

            The lamp does nothing but simply is a source of light.

And it’s what everyone else is able to do because of the light 

            that makes it so useful.

So how do we BE light so that others can see and do by that light?

The point is, God is at work in us.

If we just BE as we are created, 

                        God can work with us and in us and through us.

The potential is there for great things to happen.

So then there is the rest of today’s Gospel reading:

            “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; 

            I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 

            For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, 

                        not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law             until all is accomplished. 

(and)

            I tell you, unless your righteousness 

                                                            exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, 

            you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

So I need to address this with you,

            because this can easily be misunderstood.

What do you know about the Commandments?

            The Ten Commandments?

            or the 613 Commandments of the Jewish Tradition.

These are the expressions of the way of life called the Torah, the Law.

The understanding of the Hebrew People of the Old Testament Covenant

            was that walking in the path of Torah,

                        living a life style of following these commandments,

            was walking the way of Life.

So a major part of their spiritual practice 

            was focusing on these 613 commandments

            and keeping them the best they could.

The scribes knew all 613 commandments

                        and the commentaries written on all of them.

The Pharisees were those whose spiritual practice 

            was to follow all those commandments

            and thus they were recognized by the whole community 

                        as upright and righteous and outstanding in piety.

But Jesus says that isn’t enough!

And the Apostle Paul, who had been a zealous Pharisee himself,

            said that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

                                                                                    Romans 3:23

Being perfect in keeping all the commandments is not good enough.

But Jesus said that he came to fulfill all those commandments in Torah.

Well, remember that Jesus actually broke some of those commandments.

            He healed, that is, he did work on the Sabbath, as a prime example.

Jesus came to bring to fullness what the Law and the Prophets were all about.

            He would do that by everything he said and did

                        as that flowed out of his very being, 

                        as he showed us how to be,

            as he showed us what the fulfillment of our humanity could look like.

Jesus was the embodiment of that whole revelation of God 

                                    recorded by Moses on Mount Sinai as the Torah.

Jesus is the Light of the world, 

Jesus is Enlightenment embodied.

And Jesus says, “Let me get a foothold in your life,

            and I will make you Light too.”

That’s the difference between keeping the law as a morality

            and keeping the law by “walking in the Spirit.”

To fulfill, to bring to fullness, to fill completely 

                        all that the Torah and the Prophets of old were about,

Jesus took on as his responsibility 

            and thus to make himself a blessing to all.

Walking in the Spirit as the fulfilling of the Law

            is an existential, not a moral, response.

It comes from being in union with God.

It comes from understanding that the Covenant with God 

                        is first based on this preamble:

            “I am your God, you are My people.

            Be holy as I am holy.”

BE.  BE.  BE.

            and love God with your whole being.

If you love God with your whole being you are in union with God.

So this whole Gospel passage for today 

            is a treatise on enlightenment and what enlightenment is.

Like with everything else Jesus says,

            those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

            those who have eyes to see, let them see.

There is an old story from India

            told by Anthony de Mello, in his book Song of the Bird,

                        that describes this process of enlightenment.

A salt doll journeyed for thousands of miles over land, 

until it finally came to the sea.

It was fascinated by this strange moving mass, 

quite unlike anything it had ever seen before.

“Who are you?” said the salt doll to the sea.

The sea smilingly replied, “Come in and see.”

So the doll waded in.

The farther it walked into the sea the more it dissolved, 

until there was only very little of it left. 

Before that last bit dissolved, the doll exclaimed in wonder, 

“Now I know what I am!”

So I will conclude with the words of the poet and story teller, Rumi.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing 

there is a field.
I'll meet you there.