PROPERS: EASTER 6, YEAR A
TEXT: ACTS 26:10-14; ROMANS 8:31-39 (Not the propers for this day.)
PREACHED VIA RECORDING AND INTERNET TO HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2020
This is offered as a meditation and not a sermon.
ONE SENTENCE: Even in moments of extraordinary clarity, “we see through a glass darkly” the generosity and magnificence of God’s grace.
As we approach my last Sunday here, I feel it is important that I share something personal with you, the good people of Holy Trinity. It is a story of hope which transcends these trying times. It is a story of hope which spans seven centuries – and even more.
The thing which has moved deeply inside of me, especially in the past week, involves two names that I have shared with you in my two most recent meditations: Richard Rohr and Julian of Norwich.
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Richard Rohr is a prominent spiritual writer and contemplative who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the leader of the Center for Action and Contemplation.
He publishes an on-line meditation each day. Each week’s meditations are focused on a specific topic. This past week, his writings have been focused on Julian of Norwich.
We do not know her true name. Dame Julian, as she is known, was an anonymous mystic who occupied a small room in a church bearing the name St. Julian, in west central England in the 14th Century.
As you may recall, she is known for her near-death experience and the series of 16 visions which appeared to her during that traumatic time. The writings which emerged from that dramatic day became known as Revelations of Divine Love. It is the oldest book in English written by a woman.
As she lay on what was presumed to be her death bed, a deacon stood over the 30-year-old Julian and pronounced Last Rites. It was then that the visions began. She later recovered, and committed those visions to writing.
Her words and the descriptions of what she saw ring down through the centuries. They tell us of the tender love… the self-giving… of the eternal nature of God. Her words stand over and against the word of the Church of that day, which had focused on guilt, sin, and fiery judgement. Her overarching vision was an ever-loving, ever-giving, and ever-forgiving God.
Hers was a vision of profound hope in a century marked by the Bubonic Plague, in a town which saw three-quarters of its inhabitant claimed by that illness.
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Richard Rohr focused on Julian’s visions, and saw in them the nature of the Holy Trinity. He saw how the intimate relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit pointed us toward God’s relationship with each of us. Woven gently into each person is the imago dei – the image of God – that cannot be obscured. Though our lives – complex and conflicted as they are by the human condition – accumulate layer upon layer of the less than holy, the essence of God’s image continues in our true nature.
That image may be buried very deeply. Though you and I may not be able to see beyond the scars of human existence – the anger, the bitterness, the addictions, the betrayal, the sin – God sees that divine nature at our core… and we are to assume it is there in each other. That may be hard – but it is our call.
And, what’s more: Try as we might to prove ourselves worthy in the eyes of God, that worthiness is already indelibly there. Doubt, though we might, our belovedness in relationship to God, it cannot be taken away. Our embrace by the Holy is beyond dispute.
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That point was emphatically made to me years ago. It came in a personal experience much like Julian’s. Time and time again I have to revisit that experience to get properly oriented.
It happened like this:
The experience was 15 years ago, in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina. I was on diocesan staff in Mississippi. We were struggling to assist the six congregations which had seen their facilities utterly destroyed by the storm and its raging tide, and assist the thousands who were left homeless.
There were long, long days, and frequent trips to the affected area. Gas, food, electricity, water and many resources were in short supply.
Unbeknownst to me, the stress was taking its toll. I found myself collapsed at home with some unusual neurological symptoms. I was alone in a dark room, as Nora worried about my wellbeing. Various doctors were consulted.
I was in and out of consciousness in the dark room. But two scriptural images were prominent in my slumber. Again, and again they came to me, and I knew I had to pay attention.
The first image was from Acts 26 – the third time the apostle Paul’s story of his conversion experience is told in Acts. Hear those words, Paul’s testimony:
I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’
These were Paul’s words to King Agrippa. Their uniqueness occurred to me. Even though his conversion – his Road to Damascus experience – had been told two previous times in the Book of Acts, it is only this time that the last eight words are included: It hurts you to kick against the goads.
I had to find out what goads were. It turns out they are sharp sticks used to herd sheep. And it would hurt to kick goads.
Saul – his name before he took the name Paul – had striven to persecute the church. His righteous anger and striving were – in the eyes of Jesus – counter-productive. He was hurting himself by trying so hard.
I internalized that lesson.
The second image that came into my mind was from Paul, as well – from his Letter to the Romans. The eighth chapter of that that book is considered by many to be the high point of the New Testament. Hear Paul’s words:
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In the darkness of my room, the light of revelation shown clearly to me. It was in the last words of the passage:
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
His words were the essence of the message that Julian of Norwich had heard. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. It was the message of the tender love of God – of God’s faithfulness, forgiveness, grace, and mercy which transcends – that is, trumps – every human failing and condition.
I heard that message – actually, the two messages – very clearly. It has changed my life.
I hope you can hear it, too.
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