May 31, 2015 "Seeing, Understanding, Hearing, Perceiving"

Isaiah 6: 1-8 John 3:1-17 My friend Tom Long describes having interviewed a Park Ranger, who described the incredible resource that are our Nation's and State's Parks, with views of Waterfalls, Black Bear, Deer, and Canyons. Part of the role of Park Rangers is to answer people's questions, How many Parks are there, How big is this Park, Where to go to get the best view... But invariably, the most often question asked is “Where does the trail begin?” You might think it was where are the restrooms, or where does the trail end, or where can we buy water? But the question everyone needs to know in order to get started is, Where does the trail begin? Some of us never stop to ask, we follow our nose through life, follow where others have blazed a trail before us, taking what comes. But at times, life can become somewhat lost. When we know we need God, but know not where to begin or how. That is what Isaiah was identifying. “In the Year King Uzziah died!” says a great deal more than in the year 740 BC in Jerusalem. When King Uzziah died, it was a cataclysmic event like saying on September 11th 2001, or the Day John Kennedy was shot, or when I discovered my husband had been having an affair with my best friend, or when I finally decided to confront my own self-loathing, the night I thought about killing myself... When a crisis happens, you cannot go back, you can never return to the way things were before, but in addition to facing our fears and confronting the circumstance, there is the question of “Where is God?” The problem being that We are Adults. Everything we see, everything we hear, is compared against our stockpile of experience, places we have been, things we have lived through. A child searches life taking in, because everything is new. To lie on your back watching the clouds roll by, watching the stars at night, feeling the ground beneath you, rolling over to watch the colony of an ant hill, picking a bouquet of dandelions. Everything is wonderful. Everything is new! As adults, we do not approach life as a blank slate searching for God, but instead like Nicodemus we come with a set of safe answers, asking how to fix what is broken. Several years ago, my wife and I were starting out on a long journey early in the morning, and as we came down a steep hill around a sharp curve, one of these large tanker milk trucks was coming the other way taking his half out of the middle. It was when we drove a mini-van, and as I swerved, we hit black ice and the next thing I knew our minivan was sitting in a farmer's field, having jumped the storm gully. The Van was totaled. We were able to get a loaner to complete our journey, but when we got back, our insurance company called to ask “This vehicle has seen accidents before hasn't it?” There was a stone chip n the windshield from before the accident? The doors had dings and nicks from being parked in parking lots? Quickly we discerned that what we thought was totaled and what they were willing to cover were not the same thing. They insisted on fixing only what was related to the accident, and needed to discount all the bumps and bruises of normal wear and tear. It made me realized what an incredible offer there is in faith. Because God is not about patching us up, fixing the presenting circumstance and letting it go, but rather a total make-over, complete forgiveness. This morning's passages are among the best known passages of Scripture “Here I am Lord send me!” And “For God so loved the World God sent God's only son.” But individual words, or lines of Scripture do not make the whole of the Canon of faith. The words of the Jesus said to Nic at Night, are part of the Gospel of John, part of the Gospel Story, part of the New Testament, set within the whole of the Bible. What makes this a little easier to unpack, is that we are only in the 3rd Chapter of John, so what we know is that after his Baptism, Jesus changed Water into Wine at a Wedding, they had run dry there seemed to be nothing left and Jesus created a SuperAbundance of the best anyone had every experienced! Immediately after which, Jesus went into Jerusalem and entering the Temple, he drove out the Tax Collectors and Money Changers with authority. Nicodemus is a well-known Pharisee, he is highly educated, experienced, older, wealthy and powerful, this is one in the community whom others come to for answers, he knows the Law and he knows his place in the world. Under cover of darkness, Nicodemus comes to Jesus, saying we know who you are and where you come from, because no one would have authority in the Temple except one come from God, “so tell me how to find God?” Really that is not what Nicodemus wanted. “How To” is fine for Books for Dummies, but Nicodemus was not looking for answers to How To questions. What he really wanted to know was “Who am I?” “Does it matter?” “In my reality, I have importance and prestige, but I know who I am, does God?” Instead of addressing Nicodemus' How To Questions with what you can See and what you can Hear, Jesus responds with a Statement of Understanding and Perception. The question is NOT Who is God, are you Jesus? Or are we really God ourselves! God has been and is and will be everywhere and where ever we need. The question is do you know who you are in relation to God? When the King dies, when Crisis happens, when we confront who we ourselves are, we have to start all over, no longer as adults but as newborns with a different awareness of life. One of the Baptisms we celebrated was for an 18 month old, who sat very comfortably in my arms. And at one point, I looked deeply into his eyes and declared “You are loved by Jesus Christ, Sealed as a part of the Body by his Holy Spirit, You are a Child of God, as are we all.” And without missing a beat the child replied “Uh Oh!” That is a lot. We can theorize all kinds of things comparing God to our parents or grandparents, imagining God as being so large that we would compare the cuticle of God's big toe to the Chancel, bigger, that God's big toe is as big as this sanctuary , as big as this whole Church and as eternal as the Grand Canyon, as the Moon and Stars. We can describe the love of God, who cares so deeply for us that God would take off the Divinity of God's glory to be born as a vulnerable newborn infant. Who loves us so passionately as to redefine passion with his suffering for the sins of the world upon the cross. Who loves us so thoroughly, even death could never separate us from God. We can speculate about the Holy Spirit being The Wind, being God's breath, being that spark, the integrity, the compassion inside each one of us. But as much as we theorize and imagine who God is, what we know by claiming God is a Trinity, is that God is in community, God is a shared fellowship. We cannot find God esoterically in our own minds unto ourselves. The great irony of the Isaiah passage, is that what people remember is Isaiah volunteering, like a 3rd grader with their hand wrenching from their shoulder “Ooooh Oooh Call Me!” If that were true, Isaiah would be the only person of faith in all history, in the history of any culture in any civilization, who ever volunteered for God. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Andrew, Peter, James, John, Paul, Mary all reacted to God's Call as “I am not worthy. Not me, Lord.” What actually happened was that in response to this world changing, life altering experience of being the High Priest when King Uzziah died, Isaiah caught a glimpse that everything he knew, everything about himself and his reality was as nothing compared to the grandeur and holiness and glory that is God. Before anything more, Isaiah fell into confession “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, dwelling among a people of unclean lips, here now in the presence of God.” And a seraphim, a spirit of holiness took a burning coal from the altar of sacrifice and cauterized his lips, singed off the unclean sins from him. Whereupon Isaiah is sent. Most of us have lost that feeling of being sent. We look for life to come to us. If only I buy a ticket, I could win the lottery. I could be walking down the street when something happens to fulfill all my hopes and dreams. If my family and company and God really appreciated who I am, they would be indebted to me. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, as well as Jesus, Andrew, Peter, James, John, Paul and Mary and Isaiah, all accepted that they were not living this life on their terms, but as those sent by God to present God to the world. In December 1941, in the Death Camp of Stalag 8, some of the most beautiful music ever composed was played for the very first time. Olivier Messiaen was a Frenchman, a Child of God, who in reply to the Nazi Jack-boot Hup Two Three Four composed what he named “The Quartet For The End Time.” In the Book of the Revelation, an angel is heard and instead of announcing “Holy, Holy, Holy” announces “There is no more, no more time, no more options.” But instead of a hollow emptiness, Messiaen perceived that all the jagged, broken, seemingly hopeless threads of human interaction, human history would be gathered into the eternal, loving life of God. In his Quartet, rather than each instrumentalist playing a solo, they were required to pay attention to one another, to attend to each other playing as an ensemble. More than that, where most composers will put instructions in the text: Staccato, Play slowly, play Rapidly, Crescendo; Instead, Messiaen wrote “Play tenderly, Play with ecstasy, Play with love...” Are we waiting for someone to find us? Are we playing loudly? Are we looking for the wrong answers, are we looking and listening, or are we perceiving, understanding, playing with ecstasy and love?