Holy Bubble, Feb 3, 2008

Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9
Some claim, “Good fences make good neighbors!”
“But, something there is, that does not love a wall. That wants all walls torn down.”

The title BUBBLE CHRISTIANS is not my own, but was created by a friend, describing that ORTHODOX RELIGIONS, be they chronologically Orthodox, or the Construct some have made for themselves, is a cleverly devised myth, and NOT Faith that comes by experience of what is holy. There is something about a BUBBLE that is attractive, mythic and mystic, defying the realities of life. Be it the pristine glimmer... what appears to float, defying gravity and all natural laws... the simplicity of walling in one space while simultaneously walling out all the rest. No angles, no sharp edges of confrontation, no conflicts. A bubble is A THREE DIMENSIONAL CIRCULAR WALL, a Sanctuary in time and space. The problems with a bubble, with a wall, with a construct, are TWO: that each is fragile, and as described in Frost's Poem there are places where nature so encroaches and stands in the way, our walls cannot penetrate.

The tension is that if you do not wall out, IF you permit challenge to what is secure, the firm hard boundaries, IF you allow yourself to be challenged, we make vulnerable human life, all we value as real, and all we know to be HOLY, we fear that everything is profane.

Before this year began, a 14 year old came to me, defiantly declaring he believed in dinosaurs, in science and evolution, and as this is the opposite of faith, he could not, could never believe in God. We tried to suggest that there are forces and experiences that cannot be seen, cannot be qaulified, cannot be objectively known by pure science. That there is LOVE, that there is Hate and Prejudice, that the tension between and the maturity developed by QUESTIONING WHAT WE KNOW WITH WHAT WE BELIEVE, just like questioning WHAT WE BELIEVE WITH WHAT WE EXPERIENCE AND KNOW, temper us, refine and help us develop a less fragile, more multi-dimensional reality. But at 14, he was not willing to suspend his bubble of certainty, of what is absolutely secure, for believing in what might also be.

There are many different bubbles of reality in our Post-Modern World. Each of us happily floating within our own construct of reality. Those who believe in their PRESIDENTIAL Candidate, who can see no fault. The Senator from New York is either loved or hated, with no middle ground. Republican versus Democrat, NY versus the Patriots, Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Whereas MODERNITY, the ENLIGHTENMENT, was an experimental attempt to prove Universal LAWS of the Absolute. POST-MODERN is a Subjective Tollerance that Every indivual can live their own separate fragile reality. There are of course two difficulties, there are times when our Bubbles, yours and mine, collide and being fragile both explode. There are sharp hard absolute realities in this world which a bubble cannot withstand or protect us from.

Years ago, when I left my first Call as an Assistant Pastor, The Senior Pastor questioned, you preached the sermon, you created the youth groups and served committees, but were you owned by the ministry, did you let it in to permeat your soul? A Bubble faith cannot allow that kind of challenge.

And when that BUBBLE pops, what then? I am one, who believes that The BUBBLE of the HOUSING MARKET and the Bubble of the STOCK MARKET still have great resiliency, and strength. I am an optimist. I believe in marriage when there are chronic hardships; believing in family especially when the bubbles of children and parents as adults collide. Believing there is ALWAYS possibility of FORGIVENESS, because I believe in the reality of COVENANT, THE CHALLENGE OF WRESTLING WITH THE HOLY IN THE MIDST OF LIFE.

But when we are told we have a lump, in our most intimate and private of human parts... When we lose our hair because of treatment... when we lose our friends because of a decision... When our mother, or our sister, or our baby dies... When we lose our job... When we face the reality that life will not last forever, that medicine's primary responsibility is not to cure but to relieve suffering, and when we grasp we are not 14 anymore... What can we believe? BEING IN THE MIDST OF MYST IS NOT TANGIBLE.

COVENANT is not a philosphical, theoretical, contractual agreement. Those are BUBBLE REALITIES, that provide you do your part and I do mine, given these parameters, IF this is true in an absolute world. I tried to explain to an engaged couple, that the questions of INTENTION we ask, and the VOWS we state (For Richer or Poorer, Better or Worse, Sickness and Health), Pronouncement of Marriage or Signing a State License, these are not the LIMITS OF OUR RELATIONSHIP, but rather the beginning. When your marriage reaches that moment of Bankruptcy, or Terminal Illness, or Living with Chronic Suffering, or living in Excess, living beyond the limit of decades together, beyond lust and romance, THESE are when Marriage becomes a Covenant.

The HEBREW Slaves had survived for generations obeying the laws of the Pharaohs. Suddenly, miraculously, they were on the other side of the Red Sea, FREE. They looked to Moses, and said OKAY, TELL US WHAT TO DO. You Be Pharaoh, we will be your slaves. The people tried to trade one BUBBLE FOR ANOTHER, one Pharaoh for a King. According to EXODUS, Moses did something different.

Moses sacrificed a bull, cooked it for a great feast of the people, and reserved the BLOOD, then Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of the Sacrifice. Moses MARKED THE PEOPLE not on doorposts, but phsically marked them with the sacrifice of what they experienced. They experienced something unexpected, different from all reality they had ever known. The people were set apart to be HOLY to God.

We have a reality where everything is a little dirty, sinful, dark. We have come to question all authority, to doubt all leaders, to know that ministers and priests and government officials, employers and businesses, parents and children, spouses, ALL can and will disappoint us. NOTHING is absolute. We believe in the power therapy and education to better understand, to comprehend what we did not know. We believe in our own power to anesthetize and anebriate, in order to cope with what we cannot control. CAN WE BELIEVE IN THE HOLY WITHIN THIS BUBBLE?

Simon Peter wrote the Church in the time of the Great Greek Philosophers, an era of Human History in which Prophets were claiming DEDUCTIVE REASONING, and INDUCTIVE REASONING, CONSTRUCTING and DECONSRUCTING, claiming DREAMS and VISIONS, and who atempted to discount all OTHERS as Myth. Peter described, what we expelain is not myth or theory, but what we have experienced and known from a HOLY REALITY. Testing and Challenging, Tempering what we live with God.

This pasage from EXODUS is so often overlooked, and is MONUMENTAL TO FAITH. After God had miraculously led this enslaved people to freedom, God entreated the people to come to stand before God. The people were afraid, we know we are a litle dirty, sinful, dark and God is GOD. So the people, marked with their sacrifice, stood at the base of the Mountain before God. Moses took with Aaron and Hur, and Joshua, and halfway up the mountain left them there to pray. And the CLOUD OF THUNDER and LIGHTNING, of MYST and MYSTERY overshadowed the Mountain, and MOSES WENT INTO THE CLOUD.
The HOLY not Only Marks us with the SACRIFICE, Atoning for the past, but INVITES US into relationship, into RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY and TRUST.

The challenge, the problem for us, is whether we can let go our BUBBLES, our fragile constructs and myths of what we are, to live in this reality knowing life and death, and Superbowl Victories and Defeats, Candidates Winning and Losing, Houses being Appraised for so much more or so much less which bears no reality unless we are willing and able to give it up, AND to embrace what is HOLY.

We know from EXPERIENCE that GOD is willing and able, because the Creator of all life, the Judge and ultimate Authority of Life and Death loves us so much as to take up human flesh, entering into our lives, our reality, in order to love, and to suffer and die for us, demonstrating another reality, of what it is to live in COVENANT. Can we enter in, into the fullness of LIFE with what is HOLY?