Sermon for February 19th 2012

So, what are we to do with our Scripture readings today?

We have Elijah being carried up into heaven in some wondrous happening worthy of the best special effects Hollywood can muster, and we have the Transfiguration of Jesus on the top of the mountain that also stretches our imagination and leaves us wondering …

So, what are we to do with these stories?

Do we opt to take the stance that because they are in the Bible – The HOLY Bible, that our only option is to simply believe? And go along with them uncritically?

Or do we take the modern stance of disbelief and dismiss the whole thing as poppy-cock?

Or is there another option?

What if we step back and consider the concept of the Axis Mundi that I touched on briefly last week and expanded our understanding of the Axis Mundi so that we could view these accounts from a place of faith that understands what and where our Axis Mundi is, and views the world from there …

The Axis Mundi, is essentially the place where heaven, earth and hell meet – it is the centre of the universe – the navel of the Earth to use a more ancient understanding. To the First Nations cultures of the West Coast, the Axis Mundi is the Totem Pole that stands in the heart of their village and conveys the mythic stories of the people while providing them a focal point around which everything earthly and spiritual revolves.

In the Christian Church our Axis Mundi is Golgotha where Jesus was crucified, died and was risen … in ancient Judaism the axis mundi of the people was the temple, but more ancient traditions within Judaism posited the axis mundi at Mt Tabor in the Galilea … Mt Tabor rises like out of the flat plains that surround it like some strange out of place mountain. The physical anomaly gave rise to an understanding of its place and role as something different spiritually … and so it was regarded as the cosmic mountain – the very navel of the earth. And that may be why the story of the Transfiguration is placed on its summit, rather than just one some random mountain …

If you’re going to change our understanding of the world, better to do it some where significant and meaningful, rather than on some random street corner somewhere …

So, with our Axis Mundi posited physically and spiritually on the site where Jesus suffered, died and rose again, we can begin to see the first lessons offered by our readings today:

Undergirding these accounts is the understanding that we are never alone. Elijah being bodily lifted up into heaven, and the disciples experiencing the transfiguration of Jesus are ALL happening within the very presence of God. They are not alone … we are not alone … Jesus and Elijah are not alone …

What if the next step in this is to realize from that – being immersed and surrounded by the Holy Presence – is to allow that understanding to alter our experience of the world, and to open our eyes, our hearts, and the whole of beings to that Holiness that is ALL around us?

What if we are to be open to the wondrous presence that is found ALL around us everyday, rather than expecting the big flashy and grandiose moments like our readings?

Do we dare see and feel Holiness all around us?

It’s a good question to consider as we begin our Lenten Journey. Traditionally, Lent was a time of preparing for the coming of Easter . Fasts and special observances were standard.

We still speak of ‘giving something up for Lent’ but often we tend in our modern church to give up superfluous things that we don’t need anyway.

I’ve encountered people who would proudly proclaim they were giving up paprika for Lent. Do you use Paprika? They’d be asked – ‘no,’ they’d answer, ‘so it’s easy to give it up.’

Traditionally in the Church we’d give up meat, fatty foods, sugar, coffee, tea … something who’s absence would be noted and felt – something we crave so that when we think about NOT having it, we’re recognizing its absence and reflecting on why.

But what if, instead of reflecting on our piety for only 40 days of the year, we moved that idea of standing in a Holy Place outwards and into our lives EVERY DAY of the year?

What if we strived to live holy lives ALL year long instead of just in Lent, or just on Sunday morning for an hour and half while we gather around this place?

What if, we used the axis mundi of our faith to reorient our thoughts and hearts on a more permanent basis?

Rabbi Abraham Heschel observed of the Sabbath:

“In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbour and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day – the Sabbath – a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs as wells as of attachment to the Spirit.”

What if we are to take these islands in time and stretch them outwards into our lives and embrace the other days of the week?

What if the transfiguration made real within us, is about transforming our lives with the peace – the true Shalom – of the Sabbath, and allowing it to permeate the whole of our being and our lives?

Heschel also contends that the heard of the Sabbath is a manifestation of peace, not only in our spiritual lives, but in the whole of our lives. He writes:

“The Seventh day is the armistice in man’s cruel struggle for existence, a truce in all conflicts, personal and social, peace between man and man, man and nature, peace within: a day on which handling money is considered a desecration, on which man avows his independence of that which is the world’s chief idol: riches. The seventh day is an exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness …”

The location of the Transfiguration is hugely significant theologically because it is posited on the Cosmic Mountain of Mt Tabor – the navel/belly button of the Earth, AND the characters present renders the time, the place, the happenings AND the recollection of it as HOLY.

Holy is a remarkably transcendent way.

Holy in a way that transcends ALL time and ALL space.

What we need to do then, is to move forward from this radical island of Holiness, and bring that understanding into ALL corners of our world.

We need to bring that place of peace and stretch it into the entirety of our existence … Lent is a season of preparing for the events of Holy Week and Easter – preparing for the Holy …

Today, our readings are calling us to stand firmly on the axis mundi of our faith that embodies the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ, and share that gift of Holiness with the world.

Not just for 40 days every spring … not just for an hour or two every week … but every day, as we carry that experience of the Holy down from the mountaintop and back into our day to day lives, stretching that safe harbour of peace and sanctity out into our world …

And it begins with an understanding that we are not alone …

(the new creed)

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Sermon for February 12th 2012

If I use the word Authentic, what comes to mind? What definition do you seize on for the word authentic?

In the Merriam Webster Dictionary Authentic has a wide range of meanings: bona fide, genuine, certified, original, conforming to or based on fact, not false, or finally worthy of acceptance.

The implication of authentic is that it is real and somewhat trust worthy by virtue of its lineage and provenance.

A painting like the Mona Lisa is rendered authentic because it can be proven that it was painted by Da Vinci.

But the concept of authentic presents some challenges in our modern era. We ALL want things that are authentic, but in our consumerist society we’ve fallen victim to our own desire for the authentic and we’ve perhaps been fooled into thinking that some things are more valuable because they’ve been erroneously dubbed authentic, when that title is completely and utterly meaningless.

Consider the fine Canadian brand of Schneider’s meats … having grown up in Stratford, the ONLY brand of cold meat that crossed our table was Schneiders, made down the highway in Kitchener. To reinforce this was the perpetual tv ads that spoke of the quality of Schneiders products. The implication was that the ghost of old JM Schneider was lurking over the shoulders of the processors in the modern plant in downtown Kitchener.

Schneiders meat was by virture of its brand somehow more authentic than other brands …

Today, the implication is made over and over and over that brand products are better for us because they are more authentic, and because they are more authentic they are better … and around and around it goes.

But what defines authentic?

Or more importantly, what are we yearning for when we seek out the authentic?

This week I happened upon a book by Canadian writer Andrew Potter called “the authenticity hoax” that explores the whole issue of authenticity and implication that this modern quest for the authentic has on ALL of us. As I read Potter I kept thinking that the quest for the authentic – the HUNGER for the authentic opens the door for us as Church to feed that hunger and respond constructively to that quest.

People are yearning for something, and it is Potter’s contention that what they are actually hungering for is NOT the authentic stuff that fills our lives, but rather they are experiencing a “deep-felt need to reconnect with the truth of our lives and to disconnect from the illusions that everyone from advertisers to politicians try to make us believe are real.”

Potter puts it rather bluntly when he says “we need a new approach, one that takes seriously our desire for an authentic, meaningful, ecologically sensible life, but that recognizes that the market economy, along with many other aspects of the modern world, are not evils, even necessary ones, but are instead a rich and vibrant source of value that we would not want to abandon.”

As I read this, I couldn’t help but think – THIS IS WHERE THE CHURCH HAS BEEN STANDING FOR MILLENIA !!!

The very thing we need – the very thing Potter says we yearn for is in our hands. We have a connectedness to something profound and truly authentic, and we’ve had it with us ALL along. It’s who we are as the Church – it’s what we’ve been about, and it is the very thing that defines us.

So, the challenge we face is carrying what and who we are out into the world and inviting people to join us … this is not new in anyway, but is central to our calling to go out into the world … spreading the Good News.

We are called to spread the Good News – the most authentic thing humanity has to share …

The story of Elisha and Namaan reinforces this idea of focusing on the TRULY authentic … Namaan, riding high from his military victories suddenly realizes he is suffering from leprosy – a skin ailment that renders him a complete and total outcast.

The most mighty man in country is suddenly about to become a complete and total outcast. His wealth, power and prestige will be stripped away and he will be left a homeless beggar sitting outside the gates of the city … the effects of leprosy were bad enough physically, but it is the ejection and rejection of the patient from their life and community that is perhaps most devastating …

SO Namaan wants to be healed and restored to his life … and his wife tells him of this prophet-healer in the hills of Samaria who could help him.

“Saved,” think Namaan, “I will go with my wealth and offer this healer whatever he desires and he will heal me …”

Namaan is expecting something grandiose and amazing. He is like many of us in our culture today – he wants some razzah mataz, some Hollywood special effects, he wants ACTION – something dare we say AUTHENTIC.

Instead of action and razzle dazzle, he gets a message from the prophet to go and wade in the river over there … the creek – the muddy mosquito infested trickle … Namaan’s reaction is kind of understandable. He cites the great and grand rivers he knows of back home, and on his conquering travels. He likely cites the Nile, the Tigris or the Euphrates and with distain compares them to this muddy trickle.

Namaan was so focused on something big and grandiose that he almost stormed away and gave up the healing … then his slave speaks up and says “Master, if the prophet told you to do something difficult you would do it without hesitation wouldn’t you?”

“yes,” answers the great general.

“Then what is the issue?” asks the slave, “why wouldn’t you do what the prophet says …”

Namaan is us … we want something authentic, but our notion of authentic is about the grandiose and a majestic. We want the BIG glitzy authentic, not the quite subdued authentic. We put value in the big and the bright, and we would reject the simple and subdued.

In our quest for the authentic we need to listen to the voice of the servant who knowingly says – “if you were asked to do something hard wouldn’t you do it without a moment of hesitation?”

Fortunately though we have no lack of the authentic that is being searched for. To return to Potter, he notes in his opening chapter that the authentic is “a way of talking about things in the world, a way of making judgements, staking claims, and expressing our preferences about our relationships to one another, to the world, and to things.”

People today are searching for the authentic because they crave what theologian Mircea Eliade called the axis mundi. To Eliade, the ultimate expression of the axis mundi was the Totem Pole of the West Coast First people. Totem Poles anchor the people of the clan who created and tend it to their place in the cosmos. The Totem Pole tells the story of the clan who belong to it. The images tell the cosmic store of the people and their place in the universe. The Totem Pole is where they draw their meaning, and where they feel connected …

THIS is our totem pole (the building around us) … this is our totem pole (the Bible) … this (the people) is our totem pole. We understand and experience our place in the cosmos through our connectedness and our relationships with each other and with God. This is our authentic axis mundi

As people search for meaning and authenticity, we stand in a place physically and spiritually that overflows with authenticity … and fortunately, it is not big and grandiose gestures that reveal that, Instead our authenticity is shared and experienced in the cup of coffee shared with a neighbour, in the casserole taken to a struggling friend, in the phone calls, and notes and countless gestures that define our relationships with one another … our authenticity, and what we offer to the world around us, arises from the relationships we build, nurture and share in faith …

Our axis mundi comes in the quiet simple things …

Thanks be to God – May it be so … Let us pray …