Trinity Sunday, Yr. B,
June 3, 2012
Isaiah 6:1-8; Canticle 13;
Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17
Sermon preached at St.
Stephen’s Episcopal Church
When
I lived in Lake Placid, Nancy and I attended the local Episcopal church
there. On the way home from church
we drove through Saranac Lake and we would sometimes stop at our friend’s house
for a visit. We did that one
Easter morning. Our friend wasn’t
raised in the church. She had her
own ideas about Easter, not particularly flattering ones. On this morning she decided to tell us
what she thought about Easter by drawing us a picture. She picked up a pen and drew a rabbit
being pulled out of a magician’s hat.
It’s all magic, isn’t it.
The resurrection? Isn’t it just
about as real as a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat? I remember thinking, she really doesn’t
get it at all.
In
the mid-90’s our church called a new rector. She was an amazing preacher. She printed out her sermons and left them in the back of the
church for people to take if they stopped in to see the church. I can’t remember how it started, but
without us knowing it, our friend began stopping by church in the middle of the
week to pick up Pam’s sermons. She
began reading them every week. One
day, she asked if we would mind if she came to church with us. before we knew it, … she was being
baptized.
I
had been discerning a call to the diaconate in the diocese for several years.
We loved the Adirondacks and I wanted to stay there. I was struggling to be accepted into the ordination process
in the Diocese of Albany. In the
meantime, my friend began reading the Bible and sought out a spiritual
director. She was baptized,
confirmed and accepted into seminary.
We helped her move to Connecticut where she attended Yale Divinity
School. She graduated and was
ordained a priest several years before I was. In what seems like a blinding flash, a matter of six or
seven years, she went from mad hatter theology to the ordained priesthood. How had that happened? She will tell you that she was loved
back into life in that little church, that Jesus became her companion on the
way, and it set her on fire.
Cynthia
Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest and author of a book entitled, Wisdom
Jesus. In it, she talks about the power of recognition energy … a term she attributes to her spiritual mentor Bruno
Barnhart, a hermit who lives in a monastery in California. “Recognition energy is the capacity
to ground truth in [y]our own being.”[1] Which means
that we recognize truth in our own lives and experiences. It’s not just a truth we’ve been told,
truth that we accept on someone else’s word; it’s truth that we know in our
selves, through what has transpired in our lives. We know the truth deep within us … perhaps without fully
understanding that truth rationally.
We accept something as truth because it “feels” right. It resonates with something deep within
us, and it brings us alive!
I
think that’s what happened to my friend.
Something in her experience – reading those sermons, meeting our new
priest, talking with Nancy and I about our faith, conversations with her
spiritual director. It all began
to connect with her own lived experience and she recognized Jesus in it. That recognition fueled her journey in
faith.
Bourgeault says that “in the gospels, all the people
who encountered Jesus only by hearsay, by what somebody else believed about
him, by what they’d been told, by what they hoped to get out of him: all those
people left. They still leave today. The ones that remained – and still
remain – are the ones who have met him in the moment: in the instantaneous,
mutual recognition of hearts and in the ultimate energy that is always pouring
forth from this encounter.”[2]
Nicodemus is experiencing one of those recognition
moments. He comes to see Jesus by
night. He’s heard about the
healings and the miracles. He’s been
told what Jesus has done. Those
stories have brought him to the source.
But Jesus tells him things he cannot comprehend. He talks about being born again, and
Nicodemus just doesn’t get it. How
can anyone come out of their mother’s womb a second time? What can it mean to be born of the
Spirit? I bet Nicodemus leaves
feeling even more confused then when he arrived! Poor guy! He’s
stuck in his head, but something surely touches his heart because later
Nicodemus defends Jesus in the council.
He says, “Does our Law decide about a man's guilt without first
listening to him and finding out what he is doing?" (John 7:50-51) After the
crucifixion he comes in broad daylight carrying myrrh and aloes, and following
the Jewish burial custom, he wraps Jesus’ body in linen with the spices. (John
19:39-42) Something of
significance happened in that first encounter with Jesus.
When we meet Jesus in a recognition moment, we cannot
escape the energy that results. It
infuses us, and it is passed from one of us to another and to another and on to
another in successive recognition encounters. We begin a lifetime of transformation. God’s energy cannot be stored. It flows like a river, which may be why
Jesus says he will give the Samaritan woman living water, not still water. He’s talking about energy that moves
and twists and turns through us and through those we encounter like a
stream. The energy of God is not
static; it is dynamic!
Those who have experienced Jesus come to the church, and
we offer them baptism. They are
invited to join with those of us who have recognized Jesus in our lives. They come to share in the energy that
is present in our relationships with one another, and with God. Baptism is how we, as a Body, bear
witness to the way God has touched someone’s life, and oriented them toward
Jesus. It is how we
acknowledge our connectedness in Christ and pledge our support to one
another. In baptism, we adopt one
another in Christ Jesus, because we are God’s from the beginning.
Today we will welcome Stella into our Christian community
through baptism. She has been
welcome before, but now she commits herself to a life of ongoing
transformation, seeking to follow the way of Jesus. She is welcoming us into her journey, because it is not a
way that we manage alone. It is a
way that we discover in community and seek to embrace more fully with each
passing day. She commits to the
journey, and we commit to going with her … through thick and thin. Welcome Stella!
In Bourgeault’s words, “Jesus Christ … becomes the
mirror in which [she] we see[s] not only the face of God, but [her] our own
true face.”[3] I pray that that is true for you, and
for us … that we may see Christ in one another and know that that face belongs
also to each of us, as we are all beloved children of God. May God’s living energy enliven your
life and fuel the deepening of your journey in faith.
Amen.
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