Encountering the Flame that Does Not Consume

A Reflection for III Lent                                    All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC February 28, 2016                                      Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Chagall's Moses and the Burning Bush

Exodus 3:1-15              1 Corinthians 10:1-13               Luke 13:1-9                 Psalm 63:1-8

Encountering the Flame that Does Not Consume

“Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

How do we identify “Holy Ground”? It all looks the same and there is no rational reason to differentiate between sacred and profane.

Rudolf Otto wrote a book, The Idea of the Holy, suggesting that in his time, the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, there was much too much reliance on the rational mind as the basis of religion. The rational mind is fine for creeds and theological arguments in academia and for setting up moral standards, but the Divine becomes known to us when we are seized by the irrational. He called the Holy a Mysterium Tremendum ; tremendous in that it fills us with awe- either awe-full or awe-inspiring; indeed a combination of both, an awareness of an energy, a power, greater than ourselves. It is a mystery in that it is something way outside of our usual experience; it is “wholly other” and we are fascinated by it.

Religious experience begins when a person comes across something that is beyond his or her comprehension and then they stop and wonder. Religion develops as a way to come to grips with that which is beyond our understanding. Imagine what it was like for a human being who has to come to grips with a death of a family member or friend and are faced with the dread of death. Or when we watch as a seed became a plant, or when an animal is killed for food and find that the nature of life itself is more complex. Religion develops from the assumptions that there are spiritual realities in persons, places and things. Are the sun or moon or stars different spirits that have control over us? Are they Gods? If so what is the story behind them? Are there demonic energies that we should dread? Is there a way to control or placate, or magically harness these energies for our own good or for the prevention of harm?

Now we can say that this is fine for primitive humans but we are so much more sophisticated than that. Yeah, right! Why are we here on this ribbon of sand at the end of the world which is lousy for raising food, where the cost of living is higher, and which is really difficult to get to, unless we were drawn to a power of the ocean where we can stop what we are doing and be swept with awe and danger? We have been captured by the irrational and by so doing we renew the conversation with the Divine Spirit behind, in, under and through all things.

I get e-mail from some of our young people who have gone off to college and recently I got a couple notes asking me if I believed in demons, ghosts and angels. My half of the conversation went:

I don't believe in ghosts or demons- both of those concepts were outdated attempts to identify spiritual realities using categories which can be easily labeled. They ended up being caricatures. However, I do believe in spiritual energy that cannot be so easily identified or categorized. I have been in situations, churches and houses where I could sense that there was  a heaviness, or bitterness, or anger or joy. Pat and I bought our house based on the sense of love that we could feel in the empty house- these people had loved each other! We passed up a house where there seemed to unresolved anger. My own unscientific and totally irrational ideas are that we carry an energy around with us which does not end with our physical bodies which we leave residues behind as surely as we leave dandruff from our physical bodies.

By definition Angels are messages from God. Poetic mythology gave those messages bodies and names. Mythologies are ways of telling truth but not necessarily historically factual material.. Ghosts and demons were ways to explain the appearances of energy from those who have died or the energy of evil working in our lives and were poetic ways of understanding that energy and how we came into contact with it. God sitting on a throne surrounded by representatives of the Divine is a poetic way of looking at the world to find a metaphor and seeing the Court and Palaces of Kings and using that metaphor as a way of encapsulating the concept of the divine. But every metaphor is always inadequate. I think that the Divine is still speaking but I do not reduce that spiritual energy of strength and grace to winged creatures. I find the poetry comforting and use that language but I have seen angels- communicators of Divine strength and grace in a woman cleaning the club, a sunrise on the beach, a blooming cherry tree outside the church window, my daughter's arms around me when we meet and in so many other guises. I look beyond the outward form and see the spirit that dwells within.

This story from the Book of Exodus in our Hebrew Testament Lesson for today is important in our understanding of God. God is encountered and we are fascinated by that encounter; “How can this be; how can the flame not consume?” As Moses encounters this mystery, this thing that doesn’t make sense, he finds that the deeper energy is not connected to the thing itself; it is indeed connected to nothing that we can touch, see or smell with our usual senses. That nothing is not A thing but the reality of life energy itself; “I am who I am” is its self-identification. It is not trapped in any magic ritual, or controlled by nature but it is the ground under, in and through all being. It is not trapped by time in that this energy was in the lives of forefathers and mothers but it still vibrant even while they are dead. It is not trapped by space, confined in that corner of the wilderness in Midian but stretches into the place from where Moses has fled in Egypt; calling him back into a place of dreadful danger in order to bring about wholeness and peace.

The Hebrew people told this story to share their understanding that their God calls them to partake of the divine energy to remember their past of who and whose they really are, to struggle for justice and love in the present and to work with hope for a future which they may never see.

Holy Space is all around us who open our eyes to see and open our ears to hear the voice calling to our irrational side to be foolish enough to believe that they can make a difference in this world, not trusting in their own power and glory; to be delusional enough to put aside one’s own welfare as their chief priority.

 Every time I come to this lesson I am drawn back to Elizabeth Barrett Browning who said it best in her poem: Aurora Leigh:

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

This is what we do every week in our worship when we realize that this is more than one more social interaction but a place where we come together to do the irrational and to see and touch the connecting space between us where heaven intrudes as we remember who we are at the core of our being and ask for energy to do the things we are given to do for justice and love and to work for a future we cannot fully see.

Encountering the Flame that Does Not Consume (poem)

“I Am who I Am.”, said the God of the desert.

“I am not the one you want me to be.

I am beyond your imagination.

I am not A being at all.

I Am who I Am.”

I replied, “I am who I am but full of shadows”.

I cannot see or know the all of me.

I am beyond my own understanding.

At times act as non being.

But I am who I am.

I hear you calling me forth to claim fully me,

Inviting to go more deeply into you,

Listening to your heart’s beat,

Taking the place of mine,

As You Are in my I am

Asking You send Your light into my shadows,

So I may no longer have hiding places,

From non-consuming fiery love,

Cauterizing the past wounds,

Living into present Being.

Strengthen me under the shadow of you wings.

Teach me a joyful dance on Holy ground.

Lead me through the center of pain.

Of all Your so broken children,

Setting them and me free.”