“Books, books, books”

Karen Sloan 21/01/2024

Readings - Mark 1:4-11, 14-20

Book, books books.  Well that’s what the holidays have meant to me, as well as sun, beach, golf and a bit of food and wine, as I mentioned previously.

But back to the books.  Apart from reading some wonderfully comforting and oh so funny books, called the Thursday murder club about 4 seniors in a retirement village solving endless murders, I did have to read a few more serious books.

My tree of life course, a spirituality course run by the Anglican church, which has run for 4 years is about to finish for me in Feb.  This will be my last weekend, which I am in part happy and sad.  Sad that the weekends of intellectual stimulation, but practical experience of the mystical tradition is ending and the sharing with so many wonderful people, but happy that at least one thing in my life has come to completion 

But to finish I need to complete 2 more book reviews, in the next month, so I selected as one of them a book I probably should have read in the beginning, called “Journey to the Heart”, a journey I have certainly taken.  It covers Christian contemplation or meditation through the ages, and is written by different people, experts in the field of Christian mysticism.  They write about Teresa of Avila, Julien of Norwich, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Hildebrand of Bingen, all people you have heard of.  All who have said God is not just an intellectual exercise but a presence that can be touched and felt if we allow ourselves space and silence.

Anyway, the first chapter focuses on none of these, but on Jesus.  For Jesus represents to us one of the great mystics of our tradition.  In the times of great turmoil that he lived in, he experienced the presence of the divine that shaped his life and shaped ours.

But like all good mystics, he never said the inner journey was the only journey.  One has to take that journey into the world.

Maybe this is a good place to start in 2024.

So let’s now have the reading set for today..

Mark 1:4-11, 14-20

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins….

9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

14Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

When we talk about God as an ineffable mystery but present within all of creation, sometimes it’s hard to fathom that.  Even if we wish to.  Sometimes we need some flesh on that spirit.  We just listened to the account of the baptism of Jesus and his call to the disciples to follow him. And suddenly he comes alive.  Because he is a person, a human being, who is making a choice

A choice to follow what was in his heart. 

In fact, I think Jesus baptism should be more important than his birth, because it helps us recover the insight that he was first and foremost a man of spirit, a holy person.  We may have other labels for Jesus, but one thing we are sure of, is that he was, as Marcus Borg says, a spirit person.

Let me read Borgs definition…

“Spirit persons are known cross culturally. They are people who have vivid and frequent subjective visions of another level of reality. In lots of different ways their experiences share a strong sense that there is more to reality than the tangible world of the ordinary experience.  They feel strongly that they know something they didn’t know before.  Their experiences involve not simply a feeling of ecstasy but a knowing.  What such persons know is he sacred. Spirt persons are people who experience the sacred frequently and vividly.”

For some 30 yrs, as David Clark writes, “Jesus was a small town worker in wood, living in obscurity in Nazareth, probably getting  labouring jobs for himself at the nearby town of Sepphoris which was being built at the time of his young adulthood.  But what went through his inner thoughts?  What awareness did he have of any particular vocation or of action of the divine in his life.  We will never know.  But it is suggested that like other unmarried younger men he may well have drifted off in his twenties to join the disciples gathering around this new prophet John, known as the baptiser.”

And when he did he was captivated!

John urged people to be baptised.  Using it as a dynamic symbol of newness, freshness, and a priceless opportunity. It was as if he was saying to people, “Life is beginning again; will you participate in this new opportunity?” John’s baptism invited people to make a tangible symbolic expression, to embrace a new way of looking at things and to commit themselves to a new vision of life together.  Almost like a turning around, which is what repentance really means.   To be a people of God, with a new vision that had radical religious, social and political implications, a challenge which got John eventually killed on the orders of Herod Antipas.

Can you imagine it.  Around the Jordon.  All these people wanting something new!!! A different way of life.

And now picture Jesus.  Here we can imagine a young Jesus eagerly turning up to hear John, being caught up in John’s vision, and perhaps being conscious of stirrings within himself for newness and change. As Clark surmises, “Maybe he already had some consciousness of a unique role in all this through his already deepening spiritual harmony with life, his deep caring for all people and his compassion for the needy in particular.” Who knows?

But drawn to John’s vision of newness, Jesus responded by joining others in being baptised. 

And it was a very profound moment.  For Jesus, it was then that his life and vocation as a spirit person was vividly and profoundly confirmed. Mark depicts this as a deeply personal experience for Jesus. Of his unique vocation not merely to proclaim this new vision, but to embody it and bring it into reality.

And it didn’t end there.  This profound spirit-person experience at his baptism is foundational for all that followed in the ministry of Jesus. His ministry as teacher and healer, as a non-violent movement founder and social prophet, lover of the dispossessed and marginalised, critic of the religious, political and social order which exploited and brutalised his people, is fed and fuelled by his baptismal experience and, his ongoing and frequent experiences of the sacred in times of quiet and solitude.

I think what we have to understand here is that Jesus was human, and his life was not pre-programmed like some plan set in stone. Rather this moment was pivotal in the life and teachings of Jesus. In the transformation of how a single life can be lived.

I think Jesus experienced what the Celts call “a thin place”. “Thin places” are places where the veil lifts between the visible world of our ordinary experience, and God – the sacred or the Spirit, however you want to call the divine presence.  There are places or times when the sacred and the human become very, very close; when one briefly seems to inhabit two worlds at the same time. 

Maybe you have experienced that, maybe you haven’t, it doesn’t matter.

Because sometimes we don’t even realize that we have. Sometimes it may be in these rare moments when music, poetry, nature or some act of incredible resistance or bravery suddenly shows us a different reality. Or an ordinary moment, when you are hanging out the washing or helping a friend.

Let’s revisit Thomas Merton’s words, which I used at the beginning of the service -

“Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows up everywhere, in everything – in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without God. That’s impossible. The only thing is we don’t see it.”

Today the gospel passage took us back to the baptism of Jesus.   We are vividly reminded of him as a spirit person whose mission was undergirded by his experience of the sacred so that his heart was open and stayed open. Open to wonder, open to others, open to love and justice and peace and compassion.  He sensed the ineffable divine presence underneath the surface of things and responded.

And so can we. If our hearts are also open.

For we also have a need for love and acceptance, a desire to care and be compassionate, to be better than we are, to be kind.  A hidden urge to give more, rather than take more.   For God is not found as an object to revere or worship but in a way of life. And in this way of life, at every turn there is a chance to respond in a God way, in the supermarket, at work, with our families and in our relationship with others. 

Even in the great events around the world, we hear the voice of God, in those that resist terror, that fight for justice, that work for peace and who stand up bravely against those that want to divide and threaten.

Frederick Buechner argues that even though “our days are often full of frustration and struggle, God speaks to the depths of our very souls with words like “be brave…be merciful…feed my lambs.”

In every moment of every day we have choices to make, and in those choices the spirit of God can and is sensed, if we are willing to wait, watch, listen and then act.  This is the miracle of faith, a faith that sees a shimmering just below the surface of things.

For Jesus says follow me, for you can be spirit people, you can be mystics too.

Because as Frederick Buechner writes,

“Thin places” are not the preserve of special people, set-apart people, holy people; all are holy and all have the God of the universe within them. Through our own commitment to the call of Jesus and we are all invited here and everywhere to unlock our hearts, to see the ‘thinness’, and experience the otherness”. 

The spirit is everywhere, we just have to see it, believe it and yes follow it.

 “Earth is crammed with heaven,” wrote Elisabeth Browning.  “Earth is crammed with heaven. Every bush is aflame with the fire of God, but only those who see take off their shoes.  The rest just pick the berries."  

Let’s just sit with that for a minute or 2 as we listen to a taize song

Song – Taize

Conclusions

So let’s step back for a moment, and work out what I am trying to say today as we embark on a new year.  Here are a few conclusions from me that you may or may not agree with.  And that’s okay.

When we think about God, it’s not as a bell hop or a person sitting in the sky ready to respond to our frantic calling.

When we think about God it’s rather as a hidden divine presence underpinning all of life including our own.

We can touch and feel and sense this presence whenever we seek love rather than hate, peace rather than war, when we seek life giving ways rather than life destroying.  When out of the darkness sometimes we see a very small light.

Yet we know that our own egos, and fears and longings can expose the fragility of our connection.  God doesn’t go anywhere but we surely do, and we are cramped because of it.

Transformation in life involves challenges, and leaving behind things sometimes is the only way.

Jesus calls us to this transformed life, for he embodies the spirit person, not just as a guide but as an embodiment of the divine presence in a human being.

Our tradition, our scriptures, our ancestors, speak to us, just as they spoke to the people who lived with them.  They do have things that can teach us, even in our crazy hi tech world.

Because there are different ways of knowing, and not all involve words or measurements or hard facts.

And finally, thanks to Frederick Buechner, our lives give shape to that knowing, in ways that are surprising and uplifting, even when things look grim.  We are mystics even if we don’t realise it.

Not bad things to ponder as we enter a new year!

Amen