A Cave of Remembered Dreams

Several years ago the German filmmaker Werner Herzog directed a documentary about an ancient cave in the South of France, now called the Chauvet cave. The rocky enclosure dates back thirty-two thousand years, and it contains what appear to be by far the oldest extant images created by human beings. You’ve probably seen the images: shadowy animal figures on stone walls, buried deep under the earth and far back in time, sealed off by a landslide twenty thousand years ago and then rediscovered and studied, and in this case filmed, by human beings in the late twentieth century, late in human history, in an age of great technological sophistication and, it seems, an age of great moral danger. The images are eerie and surpassingly beautiful. We can identify horses and lions and cave bears, painted in sync with the undulations of the stone walls themselves, designed perhaps to accompany the flow of water along the floor of the cave in some places. There are prints of a human hand, the same human hand over and over, a hand with one crooked finger that allows us to identify his work. These images seem to have been drawn on the walls over a period of five thousand years, in which this cave was apparently not inhabited by human beings but was used by them for purposes that might be described as ceremonial.

Watching these images flicker in the limited light that scientists will allow the filmmaker to use, we have, Herzog says, something like the experience that the cave’s original visitors would have had when they illuminated their own work with torches. Everything moves in a silent symphony of light and shadow, animal and mineral, time and space, familiarity and distance.

Herzog and his film crew record not only the physical features of the underground artworks, but the efforts of those who study them to come to terms with what they are encountering. One young French scientist reports that when he first began to study the cave he was overwhelmed emotionally and psychically, his dreams at night filled with lions and paintings of lions, until he was forced to take a break from the haunting images so he could, he says, “absorb” the experience. At one point the entire crew stands immobile, in hopes of recording on film the cave’s deep silence. Herzog is fascinated by the artistic consciousness of these earliest human painters. Standing before these images, he sees thirty thousand years of human spirituality flickering before him. He feels the heartbeat of a world in motion and also lost in time, images that attempt to register movement and sound and feeling and story across the farthest distances of human community. Herzog’s own work as a filmmaker is an effort both to bridge that gap between us and the cave painters, and to make us feel how vast and humbling that gap must forever be.

You and I are dwelling in our own dark cave this morning, its stone walls covered with our finest images and the shadows illuminated by the flickering of candles—and some nearly-prehistoric light fixtures. As we gather in this dark enclosure we are given ancient words to speak out loud, fed through ancient acts of ritual, and humbled by the great distances we are crossing spiritually. Here we are, inheritors of the traditions of the early Christians, who were themselves inheritors from the Israelites, who in turn had inherited and adapted traditions from the other peoples of the ancient near east. When God became a human being in the person of Jesus, he did something new and unique in all of creation, but he did so by stepping into the stream of human evolution and human history. God so loved the world that he entered into its dark places and stood with us as we watched images move in the flickering light. He allowed an image of himself to be captured in the scriptures, as it were, with the knowledge that his spirit would fill us through those living words and draw us to himself. And the words that he speaks are meant to give us hope, to fill us with awe, and to let us know that we are not alone on this sacred, perilous journey of being human. Hear him speak:

“Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” 

Remember that Jesus is speaking these words as he prepares for his own crucifixion. He is praying on that dark night in order to reach us. He is praying for you, as you face your moments of trial, as you lie awake in the darkness and worry about the future. He is praying for us, as we contemplate danger and distress in our national political lives. He is praying for us, as we sort out how to live in this astonishingly complex moment of human history. Back before the beginning of time, before the creation of the world, Jesus is in loving conversation with the Father about us. His crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven: these are signs for us that we are held in the embrace of our creator, that the Spirit dwells in us richly, for the redemption of the world.

Great care has been taken that we might live a life of connection and love in the present moment. Great care has been taken that my life and yours might bear witness to the Father’s purposes. This dark stone structure that holds us this morning is filled with images that may be familiar to us, but every one of them speaks to us of a mystery beyond our understanding. Before the creation of the world, the Father loved Jesus, who carried us in his heart.

Don’t be lulled into bland acceptance of the life of Christ that is all around you. These windows and these figures and this towering, ascended messiah who looms over our altar—we may be accustomed to seeing them week after week or day after day, but let’s never take them for granted. These ritual acts that we perform, the bread and wine that we bless and break and share; the words we hear from the ancient scriptures: let’s never decide that they are just holy decorations in our lives. Let’s never think that they are meant to lull us into complacency. The opposite is true. We enter this dark enclosure to be reminded that we live in the constant presence of the Alpha and the Omega.

Words and images and sounds and gestures have been preserved for us that we might know Jesus, and in him that we might know the God who made us. We won’t ever be in control of this mysterious union with God that Jesus makes possible for us. We won’t ever get it. That’s not our job. Our job is to stand in awe, and to be filled with love for what we are and where we come from and where we are going. Our calling is to be absolutely sure that our love is never wasted. Jesus loves in us, and Jesus loves us to the end. Jesus has loved every moment of human history and has sanctified it.

We don’t get better instructions than that for this uncertain moment in which we live. But we do get courage, and reverence, and gratitude. We do get strength. We get community, resourcefulness, hope, and charity. We don’t become the masters of our own destiny when we gather here in our dark stone church, but we do become full, willing, honest, loving participants in the life of Christ.

It’s a truth that is far beyond our grasp, but we have what we need to live it out, day by day and moment by moment. Let’s continue moving forward together in faith, broken open by Jesus, like the bread that we share.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

8 May 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Double Truths

There is a double truth in this feast, and this year leaves us more ready to see it, perhaps. Already we have encountered a day that taught two unlikely truths—unlikely and seemingly discordant—but both true and true at the same time when either, let alone both, can astound us. This was one of the rare years when Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation fell on the same day. Christ is given and taken from the Blessed Virgin in one movement. The moment when the incarnation begins as the Virgin assents to Gabriel’s message is the same moment when the flesh that the Eternal Son of God assumes goes the way of all flesh and dies. What is more unlikely than the eternal God making a dwelling within the limits of young woman’s body and taking flesh so as to dwell among us? If anything is more unlikely than that, it is that God—the son of God by whom all things were made, the very expression of the Father’s being and the form echoed in all creation’s existence—that the Son of God taking human flesh, should die in such agony and in such isolation.

We do not comprehend the incarnation until we recognize that he was born into our mortal life, and so born towards death, and we do not grasp the mystery of his death until we understand that the eternal trinity has taken death into the divine life. And that is more than we can understand.

Now the mystery of the Ascension shows us that he is no longer with us, but that we are with him. He withdraws from his disciples and they see him no longer. Language bent past all experience speaks of him being taken up, of clouds receiving him, and the words become strange as soon as “up” gets applied to anything very far from the earth. “Up” only makes sense in a small bit of what we know of the universe.

Of course, there is no way to speak of this event, even as there is no way to speak of the resurrection itself. Read the gospels: we always get to the tomb too late. The resurrection occurs, and our Lord walks free of the tomb and even the guards fail to see. Here too is a mystery, a transformation, an action of God that mortals cannot begin to capture. However we imagine or draw, describe or picture the event, it defies our skill and we are left with words bent beyond the usual meaning. He was raised from the dead in a body concrete enough to break bread, to offer his wounds to be touched; and yet he is transformed, not always recognized, and unhindered by locked doors. Now that body, in its beauty and in its otherness, is no longer within this world but is with God.

We can hardly find language to describe his coming. His death breaks words as well as hearts and his resurrection explodes what we know about the structure of things, and now, the one whose presence with the disciples had transformed Thomas’ doubt and dried Mary’s tears, that had restored Peter after his failure, and had opened hearts and eyes to understand the scriptures at Emmaus is taken into heaven. And though he has gone far beyond our reach, he has taken us with him.

One poet tries to describe this scene the disciples saw to make a particular point:

The arms had stretched as if for flight
The five scars glowed
The chest lifted as if for breath
And his heels as if for dancing,
Between, beneath his toes
The red clay clung and kissed them[1]

Listen to that detail. The Ascending Lord returns with feet still marked with earth’s dust, with the clay from which we were made. The wounds are there, but there too is the red clay.

Our humanity and even the dust of the earth from which God fashions humanity is carried by Christ into this new creation, into the presence of the Father. It is not simply that this mystery tells us Christ is not here, it tells us that he is now standing before the Father for us. Scripture tells us that Christ ever lives to make intercession for us. Christ leaves this earth having loved it to the end and beyond the end to a new beginning. Because he loves us we can imagine him loving the clay that clung to his toes. Christ leaves all of this and goes into the Presence of the Father and there completes his work for our salvation, for the healing of our humanity, for the renewal of creation. There, as at this altar, the passion and death are recalled and claimed as the sufficient grounds for mercy. It’s not just that he is not here; he is there on our behalf and because he carries those wounds, and even that clay, because he prays for us we are there as well.

This day marks a twofold mystery not unlike that confluence of Annunciation and Passion, in that day he was given and taken away. Today he is taken away and given to us. We cannot see his journey and our vision will not reach to the place where he stands, but this day gives him to us. He stands there with something more than the dust of this earth on his feet: he stands there with our names on his heart as he prays for us. And because he carries so much of us and of this creation, we can trust his promise: “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the ages.”

Christ ascends far above all heavens and he remains with us. We no longer see him, but he holds our names on his heart and so we are there with him. He has gone beyond our sight, and yet calls us and carries us forward until we stand, dirty feet and all, with him in the glory that transcends all our understanding, in the glory that reconciles all paradox.

If we believe this, we can live fully and firmly planted on this earth and in this city. This conviction lets us grow comfortable in the flesh which he assumed, and this faith gives us hope that the Holy Spirit will make effective our efforts towards service and witness. To believe this truth is to know that our lives open out beyond the limits of our sight and that we are already at home in that place we have not yet seen. He stands in glory and speaks our name, he carries us on his heart, and maybe even some red clay on his feet. Knowing that he stands there on our behalf, faith sees here more than the mind can grasp. Hope gives energy and strength, and the love that Christ has for us enables and strengthens and widens our love.

That finally is the paradox of this day. All that Christ has done and the prayer that he offers now is extended and carried forward in the work we do, in the prayer we offer. He carries our name and even the dust of the earth with him, and through the power that the Spirit brings our life, this community, our bodies are made members of his body and if the Christ carried our dust into glory, there is glory here and now.

[1] The Collected Poems of John Wheelwright,  p 21

Preached by Fr. David Cobb

The Feast of the Ascension

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Punch a Higher Floor

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever, and that’s a mighty long time, but I’m here to tell you, there’s something else: the after world. A world of never-ending happiness. You can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills – you know the one, Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright – instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby. ’Cause in this life, things are much harder than in the after world. In this life, you’re on your own. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. Punch a higher floor.

Now some of you are undoubtedly wondering where this sermon is going and/or worrying that that I’ve gone around the bend. But some of you are giggling. Some of you, who were born in that sweet spot that means you can remember the 1980’s, know exactly what is going on and were probably saying those words along with me. Because you know that the words I just quoted are, in fact, the beginning of a song written by that recently late, always great rock star, Prince. Prince, who, in addition to being a funky, enigmatic celebrity, a surprisingly tender songwriter, and an absolutely fierce guitarist, was also, apparently, an amateur theologian.

Because the after-life that Prince describes in this little pre-song sermonette is actually pretty consistent with the description of that holy city that comes down out of heaven, the new Jerusalem, in the Book of Revelation. Prince is right. In this new world after world, there is never-ending happiness, and you can always see the sun, day or night. The city of St. John’s vision is a city of peace and order and tremendous beauty, a city that glitters with diamonds and pearls and every gem that sparkles under the sun. It is a city that contains within its borders all the fullness of Creation – a river bright as crystal that flashes and flows down the middle of the street; a tree of life that bears rich fruit all year with leaves that heal and strengthen. It is a city and a garden, where one can imagine bustling streets beside fields dotted with red, yellow, and purple; rain that washes the rooftops and sweetens the mown fields; the murmur of happy conversation mixing with the soft warble and coo that is heard when doves cry and bed down for the night.

And this new Jerusalem is also a city where, indeed, you can always see the sun – the glory of God, shining with such warmth and brightness that it is as if there is no night at all. The people who live in this city are filled with glory and honor and marked with God’s own name on their foreheads. They live in a world of great beauty, no fear, and the presence of God so wondrously immanent that the whole city has become a place of worship, where each side street and corner holds the holiest of holies. A world of never-ending happiness, indeed.      

And a world that at times seems very, very far away. For here we sit, in a city drowning in trash, with roads that crumble away beneath our feet. Here we sit in a city where Creation has to struggle to keep a hand hold in tiny sanctuaries of green like the gardens that we will bless today. Here we sit in a city where we cannot even keep this church open during the day for fear of thieves in the temple, where more than a quarter of our people live in poverty, where thousands of our children go to school and to bed hungry each night, and where the darkness of gun violence descends each night like a shroud. In this life, things are much harder than the after world, for sure.

Now, bear with me a bit here, but I’m going to suggest that Prince actually knows the right answer to this problem. Prince actually describes the right means of closing the distance that seems to loom between our city and the holy city of Revelation, between our present and God’s future. When the elevator tries to bring you down, he advises, go crazy. Punch a higher floor. I think this is actually exactly what we need to do, and exactly what the book of Revelation is all about. When we feel ourselves sinking down into a world that feels stuck in political turmoil, flagrant self-interest, deceit and greed and sin and all of their painful consequences, we need to punch a higher floor. We need to look up and behold God’s vision for our world, God’s vision for us, God’s beautiful future bearing down on us. We need to punch a higher floor, to hold pictures like St. John’s holy city before our eyes, use them like beacons to guide and warm our hearts.

And this, frankly, seems a little crazy to the rest of the world. Get real, the world says. This isn’t time for some fantasy. You can’t focus on the after world – get your eyes down back here, down in the muck, where there is real work, and real people, and real life. That higher floor might be a tempting escape, the world says, but it doesn’t help us down here one bit. And lest you think that I’m talking only about the world out there, be assured, I’m also talking about the world in here. It’s a sign o’ the times that we, the Church, are just as tempted to think this way as the rest of the world is. When the elevator brings us down, with news of shrinking populations in main-line churches, or the Biblical illiteracy of millennials, or the disinterest of Generation X-ers in shaping their families in the church, we can tend to just get off the elevator and walk around for a while in the basement, muttering to ourselves about the good old days or how we need to become relevant again or how church buildings or organs or pews are the problem.

But to do this is to ignore one of God’s most wondrous and creative gifts. God has given us this image of the new Jerusalem exactly because God knows that we’re in the basement. We’re down here, in this world, where people are imperfect and life can be hard, and so God offers us the gift of knowing ahead of time what the fullness of God’s redeeming work looks like – not as an escape, not so that we can ignore the way our society can ravage Creation and People alike, but so that we will know how to help. We must keep this vision of beauty and safety, light and love, inclusion and blessing before our eyes now, because wherever the elevator lets us off, it’s our job to try as much as we can to grow that vision, to help make it real in this world. We must hold on to the gift of this revelation and lead a revolution of vision so that in looking to the future we will see more clearly our present. If we forget that we are, at our core, a people who are expecting the full redemption of this groaning Creation, we run the risk of losing our focus, losing our way, or – most unhappily – losing hope. But when we punch a higher floor and see that vision of God ruling in love in God’s own kingdom, we will find the hope that does not fail us. Crazy as it sounds.

Prince the amateur theologian did get one thing very wrong, though, so please allow me to correct him. It’s true that in this life, things are much harder than in the after world. We will not eradicate poverty in our lifetime, or prevent people from stealing, or eliminate all laws and policies that discriminate and spread hatred and mistrust. But in this life, we are not on our own. We are always moving and working and falling and hoping and trying to punch a higher floor in the presence of the living Christ. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came among us to live and to teach, here, on this sub-floor level, and he has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the ages. When the elevator doors opened and he saw what lay before him, all he could think was that this was where he wanted to make his home. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, he told us. Love one another as I have loved you, he told us. I would die 4 U, he told us, and then he did, and then was raised to show us that we would never be on our own again.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. And not just to get through it, but to have life and have it abundantly. So do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. For God has prepared for us such good things as surpass our understanding. There will be no more night, nor lamp nor sun, for the Lord your God will be your light. And if you start to sink in worry and woe, go ahead. Go crazy. Punch a higher floor.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, 1 May 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

(with gratitude for lyrics and song titles by Prince)