Holy Collision
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Before a dog guide and its teammate meet, an apprentice pup spends twelve months in the home of a 4-H family. Under their tutelage it learns the basic socialization of such behaviors as not lifting the steak off a restaurant patron's plate as the dog walks past a booth.
After that first year, the dog enters the next sequence of training where it works at the training facility with five trainers. Trainer/dog teams concentrate on command vocabulary, walking pace, and a curriculum of other skills essential to dog guiding. For the final month of that eight month period the future human partner trains with the dog guide at the school.
When Dee began training, the training captain told the students in the first lecture, "Despite all this instruction and even though your guide dog had a session with a trainer wearing a blindfold, it does not really understand yet about blindness. One day, however, something will happen," she said. "It will know unequivocally what its purpose is in life."
Sure enough, on day five, Leader Dog Dolley found the vocation she was to follow with keen devotion. Their dorm room was at the far end of the hall from the student phone. As Dolley lay tethered in her sleep alcove. Dee sprawled on the bed. The loud speaker reported, "Dee, your husband's on the phone."
Dee forgot the guide dog who was to accompany her everywhere. She forgot even where she was, and forgot, also, to allow for the wall that abutted the recessed area. She took off in a sprint and ran head on into the protruding wall.
Dolley witnessed this collision. Suddenly for the dog, Dee was no longer just a friendly companion. Her "person" could not see where she was going. The dog knew it must guide her. With that revelation, Dolley was no longer just a dog. With the eyes of her heart enlightened, she had become a Leader Dog. Transformed, she was serious with purpose and mission now. With this mutual empowerment, the dog guide and the woman moved forward as a team.
Revelation sometimes comes to us as a slow series of passages, a lifetime of telling itself with little bits and pieces of hope to keep us going. Revelation also can come with as abrupt a dawning as banging into a wall. The book of Revelation is a holy collision of reality with reality, that is, the reality of struggle with the reality of hope.
The first century after Jesus' life was a time of heavy persecution. The people of that day also needed a vision of hope. They needed release to a better situation. Paul countered their attacks of hopelessness with a vision and dream of hope.
He prayed these words for the church at Ephesus: "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know [God], so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which [God] has called you" (vv. 17-18).
This segment of the lectionary readings for today leaves the book of Revelation. It returns us to Paul's words. The Ephesians passage completes the sequence that we began with Paul's words on Ash Wednesday.
These two verses from the letter to the Ephesians unite the pre-Easter Pauline passages with those post-Easter Revelation selections that have drawn us toward the ascension of Christ. Today, forty days after Easter, is Ascension Sunday. Today we celebrate rising to a new level of spiritual being. Ascension Sunday begins the empowerment of a new community, that we call the church.
Paul is practical. In the words, "a spirit of wisdom and revelation," he reminds us to marry the wisdom of an intentional and clear mind with an openness for what might be revealed within our heart. Paul's prayer is for one united spirit of wisdom and revelation. He suggests that our relationship to God is similar to the journey of two who meet first as strangers. Then they come to know each other in a fullness of understanding.
In the book of Revelation, John's artistic expression of the collision between wisdom and revelation is as pure fantasy as the impressionist Van Gogh's painting, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, or a jazz improvisation of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee."
When jazz instrumentalists jam, they honor a basic tune. The group begins by playing together the straight melody of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee." One by one, each musician improvises on the theme. Each successive improvisation carries the strain nearly beyond recognition. It transports listeners toward a still-fuller understanding of the music. Borders blur between the performer, the instrument, and the listener, revealing the truth of the song and the truth of ourselves to ourselves.
First time attendees at a jam session in New Orleans soon learn that applause mid song is not rudeness. It is ready acknowledgment of each musician's successive revelation of the composer's intent. During Jazz, Ken Burns' PBS series about the history of jazz, Lloyd Schulz commented, "Don't wait until the song is finished." So it is, may we suggest, that we need not reserve our admiration for the end. Instead, we should rejoice in each successive piece of understanding of heart and mind that we gain.
Sometimes when revelation comes to us, it is a holy collision of one reality with another. Revelation bumps into us at Van Gogh's horizon line between a farmer's wheat field standing ripe for harvest and a bank of impending clouds hanging dark with hail.
The terror of revelation collides with the jubilance of revelation. With equal certainty, fast moving storm clouds can turn and blow to the north of a field, opening again the ready crop to the hope of drying sunshine and loaves of bread. With destruction aborted, creation again follows the design of its creator.
In the book of Revelation, the apprehension of looking at the reality of ourselves as God sees us collides with the grace of that same loving and forgiving creator. God wants continually to make us new. Like a gift of impressionistic art or a musical improvisation, the book of Revelation offers a pathway. This pathway can expand us beyond ourselves as it leads us to a fuller understanding of the inner person.
The dawning of responsibility, ours, for our actions, our decisions, attitudes, prejudgings, and dreams comes with equal candor. We recognize our choices toward meaningful living and toward the rising of a clearer sense of purpose. We attain as astute a perception of the driving power of hope as a dog guide that knows why it is a dog guide.
We become acquainted with God, with God's fullness of hope for us, and with the empowerment of the church through the risen Christ. This also may come as levels of gradual enlightenment. This unveiling resembles the hope of a composer. As a congregation of jazz musicians explores and expands the theme of a musical composition, the musicians perceive and convey the full expression of the composer.
With this fullness of spirit in wisdom and revelation, we come to know God. We become cognizant of the hope to which God has called us. We gain a sense of the riches of our inheritance as children of God and the greatness of God's empowerment in our lives and in the world. This strength does not just sit there but frees person, church, and world for wholeness.
Revelation "of the hope to which [God] has called us" (v. 17) can come as a dawning as sudden as a prairie sunrise with early, day-birthing sun that startles wind into unsettled gusts. Then, up, sun stands suspended -- silent, full power surveying the possibility of a new day.
After that first year, the dog enters the next sequence of training where it works at the training facility with five trainers. Trainer/dog teams concentrate on command vocabulary, walking pace, and a curriculum of other skills essential to dog guiding. For the final month of that eight month period the future human partner trains with the dog guide at the school.
When Dee began training, the training captain told the students in the first lecture, "Despite all this instruction and even though your guide dog had a session with a trainer wearing a blindfold, it does not really understand yet about blindness. One day, however, something will happen," she said. "It will know unequivocally what its purpose is in life."
Sure enough, on day five, Leader Dog Dolley found the vocation she was to follow with keen devotion. Their dorm room was at the far end of the hall from the student phone. As Dolley lay tethered in her sleep alcove. Dee sprawled on the bed. The loud speaker reported, "Dee, your husband's on the phone."
Dee forgot the guide dog who was to accompany her everywhere. She forgot even where she was, and forgot, also, to allow for the wall that abutted the recessed area. She took off in a sprint and ran head on into the protruding wall.
Dolley witnessed this collision. Suddenly for the dog, Dee was no longer just a friendly companion. Her "person" could not see where she was going. The dog knew it must guide her. With that revelation, Dolley was no longer just a dog. With the eyes of her heart enlightened, she had become a Leader Dog. Transformed, she was serious with purpose and mission now. With this mutual empowerment, the dog guide and the woman moved forward as a team.
Revelation sometimes comes to us as a slow series of passages, a lifetime of telling itself with little bits and pieces of hope to keep us going. Revelation also can come with as abrupt a dawning as banging into a wall. The book of Revelation is a holy collision of reality with reality, that is, the reality of struggle with the reality of hope.
The first century after Jesus' life was a time of heavy persecution. The people of that day also needed a vision of hope. They needed release to a better situation. Paul countered their attacks of hopelessness with a vision and dream of hope.
He prayed these words for the church at Ephesus: "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know [God], so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which [God] has called you" (vv. 17-18).
This segment of the lectionary readings for today leaves the book of Revelation. It returns us to Paul's words. The Ephesians passage completes the sequence that we began with Paul's words on Ash Wednesday.
These two verses from the letter to the Ephesians unite the pre-Easter Pauline passages with those post-Easter Revelation selections that have drawn us toward the ascension of Christ. Today, forty days after Easter, is Ascension Sunday. Today we celebrate rising to a new level of spiritual being. Ascension Sunday begins the empowerment of a new community, that we call the church.
Paul is practical. In the words, "a spirit of wisdom and revelation," he reminds us to marry the wisdom of an intentional and clear mind with an openness for what might be revealed within our heart. Paul's prayer is for one united spirit of wisdom and revelation. He suggests that our relationship to God is similar to the journey of two who meet first as strangers. Then they come to know each other in a fullness of understanding.
In the book of Revelation, John's artistic expression of the collision between wisdom and revelation is as pure fantasy as the impressionist Van Gogh's painting, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, or a jazz improvisation of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee."
When jazz instrumentalists jam, they honor a basic tune. The group begins by playing together the straight melody of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee." One by one, each musician improvises on the theme. Each successive improvisation carries the strain nearly beyond recognition. It transports listeners toward a still-fuller understanding of the music. Borders blur between the performer, the instrument, and the listener, revealing the truth of the song and the truth of ourselves to ourselves.
First time attendees at a jam session in New Orleans soon learn that applause mid song is not rudeness. It is ready acknowledgment of each musician's successive revelation of the composer's intent. During Jazz, Ken Burns' PBS series about the history of jazz, Lloyd Schulz commented, "Don't wait until the song is finished." So it is, may we suggest, that we need not reserve our admiration for the end. Instead, we should rejoice in each successive piece of understanding of heart and mind that we gain.
Sometimes when revelation comes to us, it is a holy collision of one reality with another. Revelation bumps into us at Van Gogh's horizon line between a farmer's wheat field standing ripe for harvest and a bank of impending clouds hanging dark with hail.
The terror of revelation collides with the jubilance of revelation. With equal certainty, fast moving storm clouds can turn and blow to the north of a field, opening again the ready crop to the hope of drying sunshine and loaves of bread. With destruction aborted, creation again follows the design of its creator.
In the book of Revelation, the apprehension of looking at the reality of ourselves as God sees us collides with the grace of that same loving and forgiving creator. God wants continually to make us new. Like a gift of impressionistic art or a musical improvisation, the book of Revelation offers a pathway. This pathway can expand us beyond ourselves as it leads us to a fuller understanding of the inner person.
The dawning of responsibility, ours, for our actions, our decisions, attitudes, prejudgings, and dreams comes with equal candor. We recognize our choices toward meaningful living and toward the rising of a clearer sense of purpose. We attain as astute a perception of the driving power of hope as a dog guide that knows why it is a dog guide.
We become acquainted with God, with God's fullness of hope for us, and with the empowerment of the church through the risen Christ. This also may come as levels of gradual enlightenment. This unveiling resembles the hope of a composer. As a congregation of jazz musicians explores and expands the theme of a musical composition, the musicians perceive and convey the full expression of the composer.
With this fullness of spirit in wisdom and revelation, we come to know God. We become cognizant of the hope to which God has called us. We gain a sense of the riches of our inheritance as children of God and the greatness of God's empowerment in our lives and in the world. This strength does not just sit there but frees person, church, and world for wholeness.
Revelation "of the hope to which [God] has called us" (v. 17) can come as a dawning as sudden as a prairie sunrise with early, day-birthing sun that startles wind into unsettled gusts. Then, up, sun stands suspended -- silent, full power surveying the possibility of a new day.
