Out of place, out of time

 There is a palm tree outside my window here in Rome - a big one reaching onto my second story and up into the third. The hard tangled knot that sprouts it's leaves is at eye level and the branches sway in tonight's wind. 

No one associates palm trees with Italy. This is hardly the tropics. It feels like they don't belong but because tonight is one of those that won't let me sleep simply for the sake of fomo, I'm watching the tree. And of course, I haven't missed it. The broad Atlantic Ocean was like that. Just there and perfectly itself. 

No one associates rain with Italy either, but we got that tonight, too. Hard short rain so bright that it fizzled from my street lamp like electric current in accompaniment to thunderclap that rattled against the coliseum stones and made it sound like God was not only bowling, but was doing it on marble.

I didn't get much sleep tonight, but in turn didn't miss any of the life that happens while we're checked out. Some nights are just magic. Oh Rome, you can be a hard-edged mistress, but tonight you danced for me, twirling your bright bangles against the dark.

Ah, the birds are singing. The world still turns and I'm still alive. Was starting to wonder if I'd run out of time. Not yet.

Perfectly Round

 

The pantheon in Rome, Italy.

It's the oldest intact house of worship on the planet. Really. Even for people who don't care about history much, and there are a lot of you, that's kind of a thing. 

Anyway, I went to church there today. And  I learned something. Not about history, but about the nature of  God. The thing is, the pantheon was first built in 600-something BC. At the time, it was dedicated to all the known gods at that time. All of them. And the Romans weren't just hedging their bets with their own gods. They had a shrine there for the Unknown God (check your Bible. It's there) just in case they'd missed anyone. Turns out that the one they  missed was the One that hadn't quite come yet.

Well, the pantheon is a church now. A Roman Catholic Christian church. And all the statues of Roman gods and goddesses inside are gone, replaced by Jesus and Peter and Mary, but it turns out that the remodelers haven't forgotten their pantheistic roots. You see, the pantheon is one of the most famous buildings in the world, even in Rome, where famous buildings literally line many streets and the rubble from them sits in piles in alleyways and out of the way corners. There is just something about this place.

Some of it has to do with the building itself - the way it's designed. There's that open oculus in the top - literally an open hole - that makes you feel like God always has a birds' eye view of what's going on inside. And then the shape of it is perfect. It's  not only a two dimensional perfect circle. It's a three dimensional one - the same size top to bottom as it is side to side.  The acoustics are beautiful and the symmetry gives an occupant a feeling of things being just right: God saying He had created it to be Very Good.

Then there are the people. Every color, every shape, every nationality. The building calls them to worship there together as one people. They may no longer be worshiping a pantheon of various gods, but they worshiip together a God who brought them all together conceptually. They are all in Him: every facet of man and life and nature. The hush there has little to do wtih priests or ritual. It has more to do with continuity in a line that extends from the first days of creation through the dawn and maturation of mankind to today. 

And it is beautiful. 

There are familiar places where we join familar faces in worship. But then there are places where we knjow no one, where nearly everyone speaks a language we don't understand, and yet that is where God drives home His point. Come to me. Everyone. Love one another. 

The family of God is bigger than we ever imagined and it takes flying to the other side of the world to begin to understand. It is possible to share the kiss of peace with people who would otherwise be foreign and strangers but, in this context, are brothers and sisters. When God says He brings all people together, He isn't kidding. He gathers people from disparate times and geographies and worldviews under one perfectly round roof and says, "Follow Me."  

I can do that.

This is what it sounded like:

The Cloud that Has No Number

 

A year ago, I graduated from college. This year, I'm finishing my last class, one called God, Faith, and Reason. It was supposed to act as finish of sorts, a way to tie up the ends of what I'd wanted to learn. In the end, it's been only a bit of that but actually rendered what I'd learned both necessary and irrelevant. Two things, only one of which I'd wanted, but that desired thing not able to come to bloom without the one I didn't end up much needing after all. Go figure.

This is my final paper.

I’m not going to write a final paper. I’m writing a position paper instead, a kind of summary, a statement of what Philosophy looks like to me now. Maybe it’s a final position paper. Whatever. I’ve used Philosophy, you know. Used it as a tool to mine for something else. Not for itself, not for knowledge or for proof, not even for the meaning of life. I’ve use Philosophy to find the rest of God. And through grace and perfect timing, and prodding, I believe I did.

In the end, Philosophy doesn’t have as many answers as I thought it might. And Philosophy professors certainly don’t. Most Philosophers do an odd concentric dance that draws circles around the God I was looking for, ever expanding and contracting, around Him, but each stuck away from the center in their individual orbits of pet theories. I still blame Descartes more than anyone, who started with faith and tried to use logical progression to prove God and ended up only handing down a bloodless Thinking Thing. Yuck. After Descartes, most of them got lost in the Disneyland of Reason, systems, hermeneutics and dialectic. Even the best of the moderns – Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard – stopped short at the points of their own relative stakes in the ground.

The odd thing is that when you say that Kierkegaard is your guy, I get it. He has the awe and wonder, along with the angst that makes him relatable. In my mind, however, Kierkegaard’s angst is exactly what keeps him from going all the way in. He’s made the leap of faith, all right, but stopped on a ledge part way down the chasm at the place that demands he let go of the philosopher in him in order to grab onto the God in him. He won’t let himself be taken by the mysticism that has to be God. He mocks the philosophical logicians, but in the end, is still one of them.

I guess it happens to all of us. The leap of faith isn’t one and done. That’s why I liked John Caputo so much. What a great way to end this! He picks up all the pieces philosophy left ungathered, mashes them together, and then says effectively, ‘See how beautiful it all can be!’ Caputo saw what has happened to faith.

“Faith” now stood in much sharper contrast with “reason” than could ever have been imagined by the authors of the Confessions or Proslogion, who viewed their books as an exercise in fides quaerens intellectum. ….What had disappeared under the guns of modernity was the robust faith of the medievals where fides and intel-lectus, the love of learning and the love of God, went hand in hand. (Caputo, On Religion, 61)

In fact, as much as I enjoy him, Socrates might carry some of the blame for this, too. He, for all of his exalted forms, enjoyed slicing and dicing mankind and thought into categories that were, although not as remote and detached as Aristotle’s, were certainly elitist and divisive. After all, look where they led him…

For my money, the PreSocratics made the least mess of it all. I’ll take Thales’ “The world is full of Gods” as an appropriate entry point anytime. Spared the ability to disassemble reality into its sensible component parts, he assumed that the world and God were one and he was right. Caputo got it, too.

Human life has a dark center, an unlit core, a concealed depth, to which we have at best limited access. That is the ultimate condition under which we live our lives...as soon as we come to be, we find that being is already up and running. (Caputo, 77-8)

In other words, deep calls to deep. We live, we experience being, hidden from one another but together. The gathering of saints.

Now I am sliding near another cliff, bracing for another leap, this one into a mystic cavern whose occupants no longer need to know why. An orange cat is already there, and the rose, both of which instinctively live within what they were made to be without wondering what it might be like elsewhere. I have one advantage over them, though. I am warned. The cliff is sheer, and the road back no longer available, but I am not afraid.

It may be that I will haunt a classroom again, but I will probably not ask again to be graded or to earn a credential. A door is shutting, and I’m not sure yet where the opening one leads. There is a Cloud of Unknowing there, though, that I want very much to breach. You know what I mean. The woods were dark, but I’m coming out of them now and I have appreciated the company of my Virgil.

Ordinary Time: The Sword and the Fire

 

This teaching was presented at the First Congregational Church of Rochester on January 12, 2025

Scripture Lesson:

Psalm 27: 1-14

 

Sermon: Ordinary Time, the Sword and the Fire

 It turns out that last week, our new Pastor Joe gave me the perfect introduction to a teaching I’d already written when he talked about the seasons of the Liturgical year. We’ve just finished three of them – Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Today starts another one…does anyone know what it is? It’s called Ordinary Time…and takes up all the weeks until the beginning of Lent, when we’re not waiting for anything or doing anything particular. It’s a time that’s just well, just ordinary. And, in my mind, that makes it very special indeed, because it is in these times we don’t focus on an event, but on the bread and butter of our Christian faith and walk. It’s the place we spend most of our days. There’s an old saying that tells us that life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Well, the same is true with our walk with God, too. And ordinary time is when a great deal of our life with God happens.

 

To explain why this matters, I’m going to begin with a little history, a very little philosophy, and a little theology, and a guy almost no one has heard of.

 

Plotinus was a philosopher living in Egypt under Roman rule sometime during the 200’s, just when the Christian faith was gathering steam and spreading into both and east and west through the efforts of men like Diocletian and Constantine. In other words, Plotinus lived just when the church was being born and, in his time, learned men were hearing about it so that as a philosopher, Plotinus spent a lot of time thinking about this new faith and he came to believe that in order to understand the world, he had to understand the God who made it. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he decided that reason, or logical thinking, was not enough to find God. More is needed. He wanted to do what a lot of us want to do. He wanted to pierce the veil that separates God from humankind, and he thought he knew how to do it.

 

To that end, he detailed two principal ways to get close to God. First, he said, we should dwell, or hang out, where God is. If we see God through His creation, well then, that’s the place to be. If we find God in His children or in church, or in music, or on a mountaintop, or in fresh baked cookies or somewhere else, then hang out there. Just stay in God’s field of vision. He can be found anywhere, but there’s usually a place where we especially feel His presence. That’s the place He’s easiest to find, but even though He’s not only there, that can be our starting place. Be near where you feel Him to be and look for Him there all the time you’re near.

 

It turns out that finding God in everyday life is important. There have been entire theologies that revolve around this idea. One of my favorite belongs to a 16^th century French Carmelite monk named Brother Lawrence. He never wrote anything or actually preached anywhere. Instead, he worked in the kitchen of his monastery and that was where he encountered and visited with God. In his case, it wasn’t because he liked being there. Quite the contrary. In fact, the kitchen was one of his least favorite places to be. But doing the dishes was the job that was given him, so he figured that God had something for him there. And God did. Brother Lawrence went every day without complaint to the place God had put him, expecting to find him there. Not in the pots or in the dirty spoons or the cranky monks that worked with him, but between them, in the silence, in the still places, in obedience and love.

 

What Brother Lawrence learned in that kitchen is that it’s not the place itself that would ever make him happy, but the God he found in it would. And when he found God in the place, the place brought him closer to God. The same is true of everywhere we find ourselves or with any people. Our circumstances are not accidents. God puts us in a specific place and a specific time for one reason only and He tells us what it is – to find Him.

 

Acts 17: 26-27: From one man God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him, though He is not far from any one of us.

 

We are where we belong because God is there waiting for us, and His arms are open. That doesn’t mean anything noteworthy is going on when we do this. Don’t look for an angel or a burning bush. In the Bible, it’s called abiding, and it’s just kind of being there. Sometimes it means stopping what you’re doing and just thinking. Sometimes, it’s filling the car with gas or changing a diaper. Sometimes it’s looking out the window at a rainstorm or snowfall. Sometimes, it’s driving your truck or playing the piano, or feeding a chipmunk, or calculating a payroll. Sometimes, it’s washing dishes. Whatever it is for you, abiding is one of the ways we develop intimate relationship with God and almost all of the time, it’s ordinary. That’s the first way to get close to God.

 

So: step one to connecting with God—Find God in a place, whether you choose it or are assigned it, and hang out there with Him.

 

The second thing Plotinus said to do was to pray. He didn’t mean the Lord’s Prayer or any other memorized prayers that we grew up with and love. He meant something quite different. He meant the unrehearsed actions and thoughts that well up in us while we’re doing our dwelling – while we’re hanging out with God. His kind of praying is everything that happens, inside and outside, when we feel God is near. It’s not asking Him for things. It is not reciting something someone else made up. Prayer, to him, is “speaking of God, invoking God by extending our soul to meet His so that we can confront Him alone.” It is doing what many think shouldn’t be possible. It is  experiencing a common reality together with the divine. This is not to gain insight or understanding or favor. It is just meeting God in one place alone together and sharing our thoughts with Him. Think of it as sharing a quiet car ride with someone or watching a sunset together with someone you love. Not too many words. No unnecessary explanation. Just being in the same place at the same time and sharing a moment. Something pretty, well, pretty ordinary. Ordinary prayer. Daily, constant prayer. Just being together, each one seeing and remembering the presence of the other. Plotinus says he would, “Call on God and invite Him to enter and may He bring with Him His own universe…” God wants us to join Him where He is. Not just in heaven after we die, but right now.

 

Why is this important? It matters because this is why Jesus came. Remember how the curtain in the temple tore in two when Jesus died, exposing the Holy of Holies to public view for the first time? It was an invitation to find Him, all of Him. It was permission to approach Him with boldness and confidence. He and the Father made us to be like them. In Their image. And He came to restore access to that image, to allow us to take our intended places among His creation so that we, by grace, can be what He is by nature.

 

Peter said it in 2Pet 1: 3-4:

“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness…so that we might partake of the divine nature.”

Jesus Himself said it when He quoted Psalm 82: “All of you are gods.” All of you are gods.

 

We are not God. We are not divine. We are not all powerful or all knowing. Still, we are gods –with a small g- to the extent we take part in what God offers us. The divine image is in us. There is nothing we can do about that. It’s what makes us humans instead of animals. As we draw ever closer to God the Father, and God the Son, we put on more and more of what we were made to be. In the ancient world, this was taught as the sword and fire principle. Think about a blacksmith working as his forge. When a sword is thrust into a fire, it takes on the fire’s energy. It becomes just as hot. It takes on the same color, looking more like a star than steel. But it never becomes fire. It only becomes like it as much as it is able.

 

This is what Jesus means when He says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” When

1 Thess 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing, it doesn’t mean we go around with heads bowed and eyes closed all day long. It’s an attitude, not a posture. It’s not even words. It’s living every waking moment in an awareness that God is with us, that He walks every step with us and we love Him back for being there. The raw materials are all there already. This concept, often foreign to us today, was very familiar to early believers. It made perfect sense to them and if we do not try to understand it as well, we are missing a big part of why Jesus died. He wants us to die, too – to die to the wretchedness of sin, to put it away for good, and take hold of a risen life just as He did. He wants us to enjoy a union with Him, a constant communion. Not just to spend all our life hoping for something we don’t have, for a faraway heaven we can’t touch today. We’re supposed to have it all the time, not just when we go to church or when we eat the bread and wine, but all the time, every day. Starting right now. And prayer is the union, the union with God in ordinary, everyday time. That’s why the ordinary is never ordinary. It is always full of God.

 

Martin Heidegger, a German 20^th century philosopher, believed that the modern era has cut us off from our proper place in the world and has separated us from what we were meant to be. And it does feel like that. We often hear that this earth is a place of misery and tears and that our only hope for happiness is in heaven, that we have to die to finally find God. But that’s not what the Bible tells us. Psalm 27 says this:

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

The land of the living.

 

Heaven is not in some faraway place where God is waiting for us. Jesus opened the way to heaven on the cross and doesn’t expect us to wait to enjoy it with Him. Remember the paralyzed man sitting at the pool of Bethesda? He sat there, stuck, for 38 years. Jesus healed him but He didn’t tell Him, okay, you’re healed, but don’t walk anywhere just yet. Just stay put until you die. You can walk when you get to heaven. He didn’t say that. He told him to pick up his mat and walk. Right then. No waiting required. Jesus accomplished our salvation on Calvary and all we have to do to enjoy it now is to pick up our own mats and walk. We didn’t earn this, but we are intended by God to acknowledge it and enjoy it right now. Jesus’ death created the conditions through which we receive forgiveness, die, and rise in new life like He did, a new life that can start right now if we just reach out to find Him.  

 

So: step two to connecting with God—Pray. Talk and listen to God. In your words about what’s going on in your life. Be honest. Be real. Use words that come naturally to you, or no words at all.

 

That’s why ordinary time isn’t ordinary. God is in the places that are only a short reach away, in the uninteresting, in the plain, in the everyday. When we reach out to find God in these places – because He’s there – we make a way for God to reach back and discover possibilities for communion we were never able to imagine on our own because they aren’t human. They are divine. We are God’s children. We carry the kingdom within us. Abiding and prayer is the way we find it so that every waking moment becomes an act of union with God. When we do our part, then He will do His and when He does, life will never be ordinary again.