Comments for Jim Other sermons.                 

.Where do you look for God? How would you answer that question? I have heard people say that they find God in nature, or in relationships, or in social action, or in prayer, or in worship. In Romans 10 the Apostle Paul says:

But the righteousness that comes from faith says, "Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say?
"The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart."

Where do you look for God? Paul is saying that people tend to give two types of answer to that question. One answer is to look for God "up there." That is, to seek God in the sacred and inspiring experience. The wonderful and the unusual. We can encounter God in those so-called "peak experiences" in which ordinary reality goes by the board and we are swept up into the sublime of the sacred. This could be described as the ecstatic experience of God, a transfiguration experience. It could happen in a particularly moving worship experience. It could happen when one is overwhelmed by the grandeur of nature, or the gentle scenic beauty we find at the Retreat House. In this sense, like Paul says, we find God by being lifted up into heaven, finding Christ there, and yearning to bring him back down to the everyday world with us. What experiences of your own fit that category?

On the other hand we may descend into the abyss in order to bring Christ up. This is, it seems to me, finding God by going through hell. This is extraordinary experience that is the opposite of heaven. In this case we discover God in the midst of crisis and ordeal. Hell can be the experience of personal loss, illness, or tragedy. The experience of the Pennsylvania miners trapped below ground must surely have been a kind of hell for them and their loved ones. But we know that for a number of them, they experienced the power of God with a deep intensity. No one in their right mind would choose to undergo such an experience, but yet they met God in a new way, and, in a sense, brought God up with them from the depths. What experiences have you had of meeting God by going through hell?

As powerful as are those heavenly moments of transfiguration, and transforming as those journeys through hell can be, it is interesting that Paul says don’t seek either of them. They will happen, by grace or happenstance. Instead seek God differently. "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart."

The biblical message is always about the nearness of God. Human nature being what it is, it seems to take the extraordinary experiences – heaven or hell – to open us up to that presence. But nonetheless God is near to us all the time, whether we are aware or not. But we mostly lack the awareness and the faith to find God so near. So we search elsewhere.

I am struck as I read Paul’s words that the primary organs of faith are the mouth and the heart. Not the mind, nor the senses (eyes, ears, etc.), nor even the feelings. It is the lips and the heart. Let me speak briefly about each. What is the heart, for the people of faith? If I ask you, just now, to point to yourself, what do you do?…Most of you pointed right here. To your heart. For the people of biblical faith, the heart was the seat of the soul. (Not necessarily the emotions. People in different times have located the emotions in a variety of places, including the brain, or even the liver in Shakespeare’s time). But for the Christian, the heart is where the encounter with God takes place. And what is the heart?

Tilden Edwards of the Shalem Institute recently shared with me some writings from Catholic Christians in India. These are monks who have adopted many of the Indian spiritual practices, including poverty, meditation, and life in ashrams. But yet they live very Christ centered lives. One such Indian Jesuit wrote this:

In a Catholic ashram the practice of meditation is aimed at awakening and developing the mystical consciousness that life actually evolves in Christ, the Inner Guru, who inspires us from within "the cave of the heart", who is really the core of our being.  (Sebastian Painadath, S.J)

The cave of the heart is where we encounter Christ, so that Christ in us becomes the core of our being. One’s heart is not something already and necessarily full of love. One’s heart is that empty space, like a cave, within us, into which we invite the presence of God, and where that encounter can take place. And in that encounter, we are transformed. We become something new – we become Christ-filled creations. Think of this wonderful story from I Kings that we heard earlier. Elijah does not encounter God in the mighty wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire (those extraordinary experiences), but in the "still, small voice." And where does this happen? The story begins with Elijah fleeing to Mount Horeb to escape the wrath of wicked Queen Jezebel. It says, "At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there." He entered a cave, a sanctuary, and waited.

You see we cannot be aware of the presence, the nearness of God, until we move out of our minds, out of our senses, out of our feelings, and into our hearts – that is, move spiritually to that empty cave within, and wait. Father Bede Griffiths wrote this:

Every creature is a capacity for God, a capacity which God alone can fulfill. In itself it is nothing; it is a want of being, a desire of being, a need for being; it has no being in itself. It is this lack of being which distinguishes the creature – from the highest angel to the grain of sand – from God. "I am one who is," as God said to Catherine of Siena, "you are one who is not."

All we can ever bring to God is our capacity for the holy, our emptiness, our yearning to be filled. That is what it means to be a creature. And it is in the cave of the heart, where that encounter between our unfulfilled emptiness and the fullness of Christ takes place. And it is in the grace of that encounter, that we are transformed. We meet Christ in the cave, but then our transformation becomes truly incarnational – we are transformed in our minds, our emotions, and our senses. We are not only filled, we are fulfilled. And as Christians, we call that, living in the Holy Spirit.

I said earlier that the two organs of faith are the heart and the mouth. Paul says:

"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim): because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

I would put it this way. Two things are at work here. We experience God as alive in our hearts, through entering into our emptiness and waiting. That is through prayer, meditation, mindfulness, loving service or adoration. Whatever your practice of this might be. But together with this practice, is the expression our your intention. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But, in a way, the spiritual life totally reverses that old saw. The spiritual life teaches that your intention is the most important thing you can bring to your search for God. Intention may the one thing you need if grace is to come to you. To enter the cave of the heart requires your intention to do so. The extraordinary experiences of heaven and hell force intention upon us by their very nature. "I believe, help my unbelief!" cried the man in agony over his daughter’s suffering. It is a statement on his lips of a powerful intention to believe. To say "I believe – I believe in the living power of the presence of God now in my life" is an intention statement you can make right now. You can say this whether you have all the answers or not – whether you have any answers to anything at all. Your intention, expressed on your lips, can be a statement of your yearning, your seeking, your longing for God, and your honest awareness of the emptiness you are carrying around within, as well as how unsatisfying so much of your life is. Begin there. Just say it. This has never been more simply nor eloquently expressed than in the words of the old spiritual, "Lord, I want to be a Christian, in my heart." Try putting those words on your lips. Repeat them continually, like a mantra. And then wait upon the Word. It is nearer than you think. AMEN.

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