O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
For at least the last five hundred years the Western World - the industrial and scientific world - has been intolerant of mystery. Ours is an age which is obsessed with the idea of knowing and explaining everything.
A story is told of a little boy who lived in a religious home whose father expressed the usual before dinner command - "Hurry up, and wash your hands and come to the table so we can say a prayer and eat."
As the boy went toward the bathroom, he was heard to mutter, "Germs and Jesus, germs and Jesus! That's all I hear around here, and I can't see either one of them."
There are many things, my friends, that we can't see, many things that we can't touch, which are real and powerful:
- the light from the Sun
- the electrons which flow through the billions of miles of wires we have strung up around the world
- the radiation that we transmit from microwave dishes and radio antennae to power our telephones and televisions
- the love that we experience from our parents and our partners...
All these things are unseeable and untouchable - yet real.
Yet despite the evidence that there are real but invisible and untouchable forces all around us many people refuse to believe in God; and of those who do believe in God there are many who refuse to believe that God can do anything out of the ordinary:
- they refuse to believe in miracles
- they refuse to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit
- they refuse to believe in the healing touch and in prayer as a powerful instrument of change and transformation.
Sometimes it seems that we of the Church - particularly of the Western Church - are completely out of touch with why our faith has been so powerful a force in the world - sometimes it seems that we are out of touch with the invisible force that underlies our dogma and our belief.
Have you noticed that many people today seem to be hungry for some experience of what I call Spiritual Realities?
The dramatic upswing of interest in the existence of angels, of witches, and the number of people who consult psychics and future tellers speak of a longing that people have to go beyond the merely rational and scientific.
Certainly this longing is reflected in the New Age movement.
There was an interesting news report sometime back. It seems that a company called "Chi Pants" of Santa Cruz, CA, in keeping with the New Age belief in quartz crystals, is marketing a new line of trousers.
Each pair of the trousers has a tiny crystal sewn into the back seam which will rest at the base of the spine when the trousers are worn. The company advertises, "You won't feel the crystal; you'll just feel the energy."
There was another news story sometime back. An artist from Jersey City by the name of Marybeth Strobel explained why she wears a large chunk of quartz on a strap around her neck.
"It puts a circle of power around you that keeps you feeling protected," she says.
You and I may scoff but such beliefs have a great appeal for many people.
They have that appeal - because too many of us - especially those of us in the mainline churches have failed to connect others - let alone ourselves - to the very real power that is spoken of throughout the bible and the history of our faith.
We have been too head oriented and have placed too little emphasis on the heart for too many years - and the result has been confusion and the rise of charlatans and cheats who mislead those who suspect that there is more to the world than meets the eye - but who do not know how to test and evaluate other people's claims about the nature of the spiritual universe that exists all around us.
There is something we ought to acknowledge, something we need to confess and it is this.
Mystical experience is very much a part of our faith. Indeed it lays at the root of all that we believe in.
From stories like those we heard today where we see Moses going up on a mountain and hearing God speak and Jesus being transfigured by a bright light in the presence of three of his disciples, to the indescribable peace and joy that groups of praying and praising Christian pilgrims experience; unexplainable and unprovable - in the scientific sense at least - spiritual realities undergird and indeed, permeate, our faith.
Indeed throughout history right until the present day many of the greatest Christians who ever lived have reported experiences that are outside the realm of rational experience.
It is said that a friend wandered into Handel's room just as he was finishing the last notes of the "Hallelujah Chorus." He found the composer with tears streaming down his cheeks. The magnificent work lay completed on the desk in front of him. "I did think," Handel exclaimed to his friend, "I saw all heaven before me, and the great God Himself."
What do you make of an experience such as Handel reported? Is he speaking metaphorically? Or did he really see heaven?
And what do you make of the man who reports that a friend prayed for his sick brother - a man who was expected to die within a day - and that this brother was given another five years?
What do you make of reports that Elijah raised a poor woman's son from the dead or of the hundreds of people who reported that they saw Jesus alive and well long after he was laid in the tomb?
How do you explain the absolute conviction of those people who have died on an operating table or in a hospital room and on being brought back to life reported travelling down an ever brighter tunnel till at last they met their loved ones and were beckoned to either move onward toward God or to return to life and finish what needed finishing?
If we but believed what we have long preached, what we have long read in this book - how much different might our world be today?
My friends - today I do not want to do with you what so many generations of preachers have done with the story of Jesus and his transfiguration - I do not want to rush you down the mountain and tell you that what happened up there is not as important as what happens in the valley below.
What I want to do
- is have you understand that there really are spiritual realities that exist and which defy our conventional wisdom - our scientific reason
- and to give you one essential tool for evaluating them.
The first thing to be said about mystical experiences is - be careful.
The human brain is a tricky piece of machinery. It can see things that do not exist - or take the wrong message from what lies before it.
William James, a psychologist of religion early in the last century once pointed out that you can toss a bag of marbles on the floor and by selectively ignoring certain marbles find any pattern you wish. Our eyes and our minds can play tricks on us and lead us in directions that have no profit to them.
We see that tendency displayed in some Christians' obsessions with numbers.
Charles Swindoll tells about a lady in Kansas City who went to court to get her license plate changed because it ended with 666. She stated that her fellow church members were shunning her. As you may know, the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation is 666.
Swindoll goes on to note that the 666 scare stuff is getting downright ridiculous. The fact is that those three digits can be uncovered in almost anybody's name if you're willing to work at it hard enough. Using the code A=100, B=101, and so on, Hitler adds up to 666, The same technique works on the word computer - a coincidence to which some of us might attach some validity.
By adopting the so-called "devil's code" whereby the alphabet is numbered backward from zero; Z=0, Y=1, X=2 as so forth - and then multiplying each letter-value by 6 (whew!), fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell's last name equals 666. Even Billy Graham's name is not exempt. His initials are WFG. (William Franklin Graham). Using the A=1 code, the letters add up to 36. The sum of the counting numbers from 1 through 36 is 666, and 36=6 x 6. When Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected president, mischievous Democrats pointed out that each of the President's names had six letters - 666 - and so forth.
Maybe you find all this fascinating, maybe not. There are some people, though, who are very susceptible to such logic. And there are unscrupulous people who look for these susceptible people to manipulate to their own ends. Often they do it in the name of religion. They tell you that what they are saying is based on the invisible spiritual realities which undergird the world. Be careful.
If you wonder why most Christian churches put more emphasis on being true to the historical faith than on any one particular subjective experience, this is it.
We know feelings are subject to distortion and manipulation. It may make us seem somewhat dry and unexciting at times but we know that when we are faithful to Scripture and the teachings of the Church we cannot be misled by passing fads or sensations.
Be careful. But also be tolerant.
We don't know how God may choose to work in individual lives. It is the height of arrogance for any of us to declare that God can only work in one way or another - that God can only be found in one group or another.
Most of us would be thrilled to have the kind of mountaintop experience that Peter, James and John had where they beheld Christ transfigured before them; we would love to go up on a Mountain as did Moses and hear God's voice, but we may live a lifetime and never experience any more than a lump in our throat and a calm assurance in our hearts.
If that's all we experience, that is enough. God knows what we need. If other people discover a wider range of experiences, if they shout and dance and speak in tongues, then who's to say but that God knew their needs as well.
Remember this - and this is the crux of the matter: The test of faith is not our experience of, or our knowledge of, invisible spiritual realities, but in whether we bear fruit that is pleasing to God.
The fruit of the Spirit, says St. Paul, is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. (Gal 5:23)
Does your special experience make you more loving, more peaceful, more trusting, more humble? Does your knowledge of the Spiritual Realities which undergird the world make you more faithful, more prone to give God praise? Does your conviction that God has sent an angel to you to bring you comfort it result in your being a better neighbour? A better citizen?
If it does, then no matter what that experience is, you are not far from the Kingdom of God.
There are, my friends, spiritual realities that undergird not only our faith, but the very world around us.
There are angels. There is a resurrection. Miracles still occur - the blind can still be made to see and the lame to walk. Demons still chill the air and prayers still reach the ear of God. And God still speaks - in dreams and in visions - and through his Word.
And there are many here who can testify to these things.
My friends - there are spiritual things - spiritual realities that are beyond our ken - wonders that still reach out and touch those who expect them and those that don't.
The transfiguration of Jesus is one of these. It happened to strengthen Jesus before his journey to Jerusalem - and it was witnessed so that we might be encouraged in our faith. The spiritual reality - the spiritual power made evident that day - had a purpose. A good purpose.
And so it should be for all those things we call Spiritual.
The important thing is that we believe not simply in the power of the world that is beyond our everyday sight - but in the truth behind that power and in the God who makes it so - and that in believing in God and in his power - we strive - without fear - to live out a worthy life - a life like that of Christ Jesus our Lord. May His name be praised day by day. Amen!
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