Monthly Archives: June 2018

Sermons

SERMON: Proceeding Fearfully

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
Preached on the Feast Day of Saints Peter and Paul, June 24, 2018.

A Feast Day for Saints Peter and Paul;
 A Gesture for Friendship, but no
 Reconciliation or Union Arises.

Today is the feast day for Saints Peter and Paul. This is observed not so much by Protestants but more by the liturgical traditions, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and so forth.

Don’t expect a real feast, but the occasion is a commemoration of their martyrdom under the reign of Nero in Rome.

It is a special day for Roman Catholics in particular because this is when representatives of the Eastern Orthodox church travel to Rome to be with the pope as they celebrate this important day.

It is a token gesture toward friendship renewal, although not anywhere close to reconciliation or union, which was broken during the Eleventh Century when Pope Leo IX in Rome demanded allegiance from the independent Eastern church in Constantinople. Rome will return the favor on the feast day of Saint Andrew in the autumn by sending a delegation to Istanbul.

Most of you probably don’t generally care much about such ecclesiastical matters.

I only care minimally, but I thought you might find the Great Schism of 1054 interesting.

Gestures toward friendship where there has been enmity for over a millennium are important, and actually could be of great importance.

In addition, I thought it might be an opportune time to look at some of the teachings of Saints Peter and Paul on this revered feast day.

Team of Rivals Is a Fascinating
 Moment in History; Creative
 Genius Springs up in Both Camps.

First, I need to tell you about some facts I learned from a marvelous book I have been reading. In 2005, Doris Kearns Goodwin published Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

“The book is a biographical portrait of Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates; Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase; and Secretary of State, William H. Seward. The book focuses on Lincoln’s mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the American Civil War.” — Wikipedia

It is, of course, a fascinating moment in our history.

But there is one facet to the story that left me utterly astounded. It had to do with the creative genius, not of Lincoln, but rather of the men who didn’t want to give up slavery, and envisioned a dozen or so different ways to thwart, eviscerate, delay, or otherwise prevent abolition.

Here are three quick examples:

1. Let’s make abolition a “states’ rights” thing, where, rather than a national law, let the states decide, some allowing it and others not allowing it.

2. Let’s keep the slaves for the time being. However, on a given date, sometime in the future, children born to slaves would be free.

3. The U.S. Constitution already had language to the effect that those who were bound in some way were to be accounted as three-fifths of a person.

Proponents of this lunatic but serious stunt tried to find a way to grant to slaves some of the rights of free people, but just not all of them.

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution reads: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons. (Boldface type added.)

A position somewhere between 100 percent legal slavery and 0 percent legal slavery was propounded by various politicians who envisioned a dozen or so different ways to land somewhere in the middle, to avoid the theological, legal, and moral statement that slavery should no longer exist in our land.

Southern Politicians Also Show
 Creative Genius; Peter and Paul
 Show Holy Spirit Within People.

As I read Goodwin’s book, I felt historically naïve. In my grade-school imagination, I somehow thought it came down to a vote of whether to have slaves or not.

That would have been so simple. But rather, it was this extraordinarily difficult political process of withstanding all those many “reasonable” compromises — compromises that made garnering the necessary votes more likely easier, but that stopped short of ridding the land of slavery.

What astounded me was the creative genius of southern politicians in coming up with those gutless, halfhearted, and morally deficient compromises. It was their genius pitted against Lincoln’s genius.

I see the same genius at play in the way in which human beings avoid some of the clear teachings of Peter and Paul.

I will happily acknowledge that both Peter and Paul wrote many things that are difficult to swallow.

Both Peter and Paul were completely and profoundly dualistic in their view of the world and specifically what a human being is — that is, both sinner and saint.

(Sometimes it’s hard-core sinners capable at least of being a saint, and at other times it’s saintly people lapsing into sinnerdom.)

On this feast day, however, let me at least point out some of the things the two apostles said about you and me, four of them:

  1. Paul — I Corinthians 6: 18: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own.”
  2. Paul — Galatians 3: 26-29: “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”
  3. Paul — II Corinthians 3: 18: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
  4. Peter — II Peter 1: 3-4: Then comes the important one. “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become partakers in the divine nature.”

The Church Understands Spiritual
 Worth of Humanity; 19 Authors
 Thwart, Eviscerate, Delay, Prevent.

In preparation for this sermon, I’ve been reading a book entitled Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions.

It is a compilation of essays edited by a pair of Methodists from Drew University, Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung. It’s a comprehensive collection of 19 essays by Eastern Orthodox authors, some by Roman Catholics, some by Protestants.

Never have I been so enticed by the promise of a good book. That is how the church in all its variety has understood such passages as I just read pointing to all the supreme spiritual worth of every human being.

The volume focuses on a theological understanding of what the Church Father Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, said so many centuries ago, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”

Never have I been so utterly let down upon reading this book to realize that the authors would all have made excellent compromising politicians in finding new and creative ways to keep slavery.

The words that I used before — thwart, eviscerate, delay, prevent — that’s what the 19 authors did to those passages.

Let’s look at the three passages for a moment:

• You are a temple of the Holy Spirit. At a minimum, that means that the God of the Universe, however you conceive of such an entity, dwells within you, abides with you. Perhaps not limited by you, by any stretch, but fully present inside your very being.

• You are a child of God. At a minimum, that means that you are of the same species — parents don’t give lives to a kid that’s of a different species. Whatever divinity is, that’s what you are also, at least in some mystical sense. It also means a relationship with parents and children, in which the child is unbelievably precious to the parent.

• We are being transformed into the same image of God. One of the great mystical teachings of virtually every religion is that we are made in the image of God, “imago Dei” in Latin. B’tselem elohim in Hebrew.

I did my entire doctoral dissertation on what it might mean to be created in the image of God. The word for transformation is “metamorphosis.”

In your own mind, try to get a feeling for what this verse might be saying. At a minimum, we are metamorphosing back into that primal, Edenic image of God, fueled by the Spirit dwelling within and further fueled by our royal status as children of God.

• We are partakers of the divine nature. At minimum, this means . . . Wow!

Do We Believe Any of This Stuff?
 Don’t Be Afraid to Embrace Who 
You Are; Love Yourself and Others.

Old Olive Tree Inside a Monastery. Interior of the Emmaus Benedictine Monastery (Emauzy or Emauzský klášter) – abbey in Prague.

Or do we instead believe the narrative that we are miserable sinners, lucky to be getting by?

Chances are that we are somewhere in the middle.

Actually in the middle, just like those politicians trying to preserve some semblance of slavery.

And I’m going to soften my tone about them. It may be the case that they were just afraid. Perhaps some of them were genuinely mean people, who simply didn’t care about an African man or woman, let alone their children. Perhaps a few of them really believed they were subhuman, somewhere around three-fifths.

But I doubt that was true of all those politicians. Rather, they might have been afraid. They might have been thinking . . .

“We won’t be able to get this passed unless we compromise. Everybody knows that.”

“If we get rid of the slaves, it might bring financial ruin upon half the country.”

“If we pass abolition, it might unleash an angry and violent mob of Africans upon the white population. They will want revenge.”

It might have been they were afraid, and in their fear all those potential compromises have a certain appeal.

Don’t be afraid to embrace fully who you are: a Temple for the Spirit, a child of God, being transformed into the full image and glory of the Divine, and a partaker of the Divine Nature.

That is who you fully are, and once you embrace who you fully are then realize that this is also true of the next person of a different race, a different gender, a different class, a different orientation.

It is because we do not fully embrace who we are that all the isms exist at all. If we can’t see it in ourselves, how can we see it in others?

Embrace who you are. Love yourself. And then love others as yourself.

Amen.

Download or view the Proceeding Fearfully sermon as a PDF.

Featured Image credit: Dove with Olive Branch, universal symbol of peace and Holy Spirit. PD image courtesy of George Bog, Wiki.

Father's Day, Sermons

SERMON: Unbelievable! Looking at Stories in the Bible.

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
Preached on Father’s Day, Sunday, June 17, 2018

Some Passages of Scripture
 Stretch Our Believability
. Past the Credulity of Stories.

Let me begin with a quote from Loren Eiseley. Some of you might recognize the name. He was a naturalist, a philosopher, and he died 15-20 years ago. I looked up his obituary in The New York Times, where he was referred to as a modern-day Thoreau.

Here’s the quote:

“While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. ‘He doesn’t know,’ my friend whispered excitedly. ‘He is passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know.

Maybe it’s happening right now to us.’ ”

I have long known there are passages of scripture that stretch our believability and strain our credulity.

Most people venerate the Bible, and they try to believe what it says.

This is with full knowledge that at least some of the stories of the Bible are fictional from the beginning but with the intention of teaching through the story. The fable of Jonah and the Whale comes to mind, or perhaps the Book of Job.

There are also some people who simply have trouble believing certain things in the Bible, miracles, typically, such as the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection or some of the healings or turning water into wine.

Even though they might take a pass on some of the phenomena, they are just fine with the general message of the Bible.

Those aren’t what I’m talking about this morning. I’m talking about some of the things that sound okay, but the more we think about them, the more outlandish, the more impossible, and the more utterly nonsensical do they seem.

Two Examples Include the
 Peaceful Kingdom and the 
Greater Works Promised by JC.

I’m going to give you three examples. The first two won’t get me in trouble, but the third one will.

Example number one. The Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 11: 6-9). You hear it at Christmastime:

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over
the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put
its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the
knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”

It’s hard to believe that the wolf shall live with the lamb or the lion shall eat straw, at least in a literal way.

You know wolves and leopards and lions are meat eaters. They have canine teeth well-adapted for killing, and I don’t see them eating straw anytime soon.

Neither shall a nursing child safely play over the hole of an asp.

Example number two. This is in John 14, a famous passage beginning with Jesus speaking to his disciples after having foretold his betrayal:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

Then in response to a remark from Philip, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied, Jesus said, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?”

“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

This is the “greater works than these” passage.

Christ walking on the sea, by Amédée Varint, 19th Century. PD Wikimedia.

Upon sober reflection, we look at some of the things that Jesus did: He healed people who were paralyzed, and he restored sight to people who were born blind. He turned water into wine; that was pretty cool. He walked on water, also cool. Resurrection after having been slain, not so bad.

And then my absolute favorite of all Jesus’ wonders, telling one of his disciples to cast a line and catch a fish, and in the fish’s mouth was a coin large enough to pay a tax. Now I’m sorry, but that is way cool.
But then he says that you and I can do even better, and I’m just not so sure of it. I haven’t seen anybody move a mountain or pay their taxes that way.

Do not Worry; Look at the 
Birds; Consider the Lilies;
 All Things Will Be Given.
Peace Lilies of the Field. PD image courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.

Here is the third example that might get me into trouble. From the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6: 25-33). [Note: The Roman and boldface type are from the Bible; the italic type is commentary by AMS.]:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, [Everybody who hasn’t ever worried, please raise your hands.] what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; [They don’t do a lick of work, and they’re doing just fine.] they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing?

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; [They don’t do any work either, and look how beautiful they are.] they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ [Gentiles do all that stuff. Instead, keep the kingdom of God and his righteousness.] And all these things will be given to you as well.”

But this doesn’t match our experience at all.

We’ve all seen poor people who certainly don’t look or smell like lilies. Will God not much more clothe you? I want to be respectful, but apparently not, because we’ve all seen many without proper clothing, proper food, proper shelter. We know it well. Many of such poor have striven mightily for the kingdom of God.

It makes me, and maybe you, a little jaded and a bit numbed because we take these passages — the Peaceable Kingdom, the Greater Things than These, Consider the Lilies —with a grain of salt.

Maybe Jesus is exaggerating, perhaps trying to make a point with hyperbole. I don’t know, but it’s pretty hard to take such teachings seriously and literally.

Now I’m Going to Ask You
 to Combine Two Thoughts;
 One Is Easy, One Is Harder.

I want you to meld the two separate thoughts and make them into one thought.

Here is the easy one:

I want you to think about imagination. Reason about the human ability to contemplate something that isn’t in existence and imagine it as though it were in existence. Intellectualize the way in which we have that ability, and we use it every day.

Think John Lennon’s song Imagine:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/VOgFZfRVaww” frameborder=”0″ allow=”autoplay; encrypted-media” allowfullscreen></iframe>

“Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.
(Songwriter: John Winston Lennon)
Cogitate for a moment about your personal ability to imagine something.
Now here is the second thought, the more difficult one:
This is that psychology has taught for centuries that we experience what we think. The reality we believe we have becomes the reality we experience.
For a century, physics has been saying the same thing. We don’t just experience a preexisting outside reality; rather, we’re the ones who create with our souls, with our minds, and then with our bodies the world we experience.
Cutting-edge science is articulating this truth in ever-clearer ways. From psychology, from physics, and from biology, we don’t just experience a preexisting outside reality; rather, we are the ones who are creating the world we experience.
Take that powerful idea, and add it to “imagine.”
Jesus is saying in this passage, consider the lilies, learn deeply (which is what the Greek word means) learn deeply the lilies. Imagine the lilies.
Could it be (could we imagine) . . . that some of these things might someday become literally true?
Could it be . . . that one day we might live in a Peaceful Kingdom if we imagine it? And then if we create it?
Could it be . . . that one day we might do greater works than these, where Spirit has complete control over the physical realm, as Jesus demonstrated multiple times?
Could it be . . . that the day might come when we don’t need to worry, that all these things the Father knows we need in our physical existence would be given? Can we imagine it, rather than just assuming it’s ridiculous?
Listen one more time to the Loren Eisley story with such things in mind, and try to put all this together.
“While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. ‘He doesn’t know,’ my friend whispered excitedly. ‘He is passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s happening right now to us.’ ”
That is us, generally unaware, generally oblivious to the spiritual realm.
Our physical consciousness is that moth, ever so dimly aware of the world of Spirit, of the world of true power, of the world of true peace, of the world of true love. Allow yourself to believe. Allow yourself to imagine.
Amen
Featured Image Credit: Christ walking on the sea, by Amédée Varint, 19th Century. PD Wikimedia.
Download the PDF version of the
Pentecost, Sermon Transcripts, Sermons

SERMONS: The Lord’s Prayer – Debts and Trespassing.

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
Preached on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 10, 2018

The Lord’s Prayer Is 
the Best-Known Christian
 Scripture. It Goes Deep Inside.

Two Unitarian Universalists are arguing about religion.

The first one squares himself and mouths to the second that he is so ignorant about religion that he probably doesn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer. He puts $5 on the table and says, “I bet you $5 you don’t even know the Lord’s Prayer.”

The second Unitarian Universalist broadens his face with a grin, puffs himself up and retorts, “Oh yes, I do. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ ”

At which point, the first Unitarian Universalist drops his shoulders and admits, “Okay, darn it. Here’s your five bucks.”

About two years ago, believe it or not, I was asked to preach on the Lord’s Prayer. Better late than never, I suppose.

This prayer is, of course, by far the best-known piece of Christian scripture ever, recited perhaps billions of times around the globe every Sunday morning.

However, being extremely well-known, it is also very easy to say it and never once think about what is being said.

The Lord’s Prayer goes deep inside us, way deep.

Aramaic inscription on a funeral stele from the seventh century B.C. in the Louvre. PD Wikimedia.

I was once asked to visit a church member’s father, who was in a nursing home in Syracuse. The father’s time on this earth was drawing close, and he was profoundly wrapped in Alzheimer’s dementia.

During the time I visited him, conversation was completely impossible, but every once in a while, he would mumble something way underneath his breath.

Once I leaned over him and tried to understand what he was gibbering, what the man was muttering, and it dawned on me that he was trying to recite the 23rd Psalm.

“Wow!” I thought. I mentioned that to the nurse as I was leaving. “Do you realize this guy knows the 23rd Psalm?”

She answered quickly, “Oh yes! He knows the 23rd Psalm; he knows the Lord’s Prayer; and believe it or not, he also knows the Syracuse Fight Song.”

An Accident Brings the 
Doxology to the Lord’s Prayer — It’s not in Jesus’ Original.

Now let me tell you some facts about the Lord’s Prayer that you might not have known. Then I also want to look more closely at a few of the lines within it.

• The Lord’s Prayer is found twice within the Bible, albeit in reduced form as we know it now.

We read the Matthew 6: 9-13 version, and then there’s a slightly shorter version in Luke 11: 2-4. It is not found in Mark or in John.

• In Matthew, the context is the Sermon on the Mount, Chapters 5 through 7, in which Jesus in this particular form is talking about praying in non-hypocritical ways, so as not to seem ostentatious or wordy or pious by others.

In other words, don’t pray in the end zone right after you’ve scored a touchdown so that you’re seen by everybody, but rather pray in your closet off your bedroom.

• In Luke, the context is the disciples asking Jesus how to pray, and JC says, “Do it this way.”

The Lord’s Prayer is original with Jesus, but only up to a point. The theme or concept in every single line of the prayer can be found in the Hebrew scriptures, in his Jewish tradition.

There are only three things generally referred to as “the Lord’s,” which would be the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and the Lord’s Day.

It is probably not a coincidence 
that those three occasions do more 
to unite the global church than probably anything else.

On that one day of the week, celebrating holy communion, praying the words that he taught us, Lord’s Day, Lord’s Supper, Lord’s Prayer.

You might have noticed when Deb Miller read the Matthew version of the Lord’s Prayer in the pre-Sermon scripture reading, it didn’t have the final sentence, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”

It was not in the Luke version, either.

This is a Peshitta (NT Syriac translation) from Iraq dating to the ninth century AD.

What happened is that the phrase, called a doxology, was added to the prayer in the Byzantine liturgy going way back to the Fourth and the Fifth Centuries.

A whole millennium later, in the early 1600’s in England, at the time when the King James Bible was being prepared for publication, the oldest manuscripts accessible to the translators of the period were from the Byzantine liturgy.

With some reason, they thought the phrase was original from Jesus himself. That’s why the scribes at the time put the doxology into the original editions of the Book of Common Prayer.

Three centuries later, translators had much earlier exegeses of the Lord’s Prayer at their disposal, and they realized that their predecessors had jumped to a conclusion and had been wrong. But by that time, the form of the prayer had been set, and it had caught on permanently. It’s a nice ending anyway.

• The 1611 insertion of the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer in England’s Book of Common Prayer occurred first.

That version was used by the Anglicans and the Episcopalians and eventually the Protestants, but not the Catholics.

The Roman Catholic Church did not add the doxology to their prayer until well past the middle of the Twentieth Century, which of course made it interesting when Protestants and Catholics worshipped together.

Toward the end of that prayer, the Catholics would look up and wonder why the Protestants were still praying even after the prayer was over. And the Protestants looked up and wondered why the Catholics stopped early and didn’t finish the prayer.

In 1969, however, the Catholics blinked first and added the doxology to their Roman Rite Mass.

Deciding the difference between using the word “debts” or “trespasses” is definitely amusing, no matter which word you choose.

You might like to try that when you’re worshipping away from your home church. Try using the wrong word on purpose. It’s always a lot of fun.

For English speakers, the word “debts” comes from a translation by John Wycliffe going back to 1395.

But then, well over a century later, William Tyndale did a translation in 1526 and decided to use the word “trespasses.”

The word in Greek, and actually in each of those two different English words as they were understood at the time, didn’t mean just financial debt or trespassing on somebody’s property.

The words mean more generally what we might call sins or offenses. There are so many ecumenical versions of the prayer that now in modern times, many churches just use the word “sins.”

Give Us This Day Our
 Daily Bread Winds up in 
a Long String of Words

Let’s look at some portions of the Lord’s Prayer, a few of the phrases in it, but I would remind you that Jesus spoke in Aramaic.

The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, based on Neil Douglas-Klotz’s work. Abwoon Resource Network.

The Aramaic version was translated into the Greek, and then the Greek was used for the English version that we’re used to.

However, I will be referencing some erudition by the Aramaic scholar, Neil Douglas-Klotz. He has at least four books out, examining the 
Aramaic words of Jesus. In particular, I’ll 
be quoting and using his book, called Prayers of the Cosmos, which looks at the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes.

What I have come to learn from his research and from studying it is that this prayer is not merely practical.

It’s not just that people will need to be forgiven or will want something to eat today and every day, but rather, the Lord’s Prayer has a powerful mystical side to it, a very deep spiritual side to it, which I hope you will understand.”

Here are some examples …

Want to know just how powerful a prayer The Lord’s Prayer is intended to be … and can be? The Aramaic version holds clues.

Download or view the full sermon PDF now …

Featured Image Credit: Jesus Preaching the Sermon on the Mount
Gustave Doré. PD Wikimedia Commons.

Pentecost, Sermon Transcripts, Sermons

SERMONS: The Gate of Heaven (Pentecost)

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Suggs
Preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 3, 2018

A Gothic Cathedral Spurs Psalm,
 “Better Is a Day in Your Courts
 Than a Thousand Elsewhere”

There is an official Congregational Meeting after church today.

Is it appropriate to spend $100,000 of the church’s money, which by the way is actually your money, to redo the entrance off the parking lot?

Well, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but there is no way I’m going to answer that question.

However, I do want to talk about church buildings, at least a little. As a matter of fact, it was a sanctuary that was my first clue that I was destined to be a religious person. It was at my parents’ church, and I was of kindergarten-age.

Prior to the worship service there was an adult discussion group that met fifty minutes or so for the previous hour, and my parents would plant me in the sanctuary — no baby sitter, no supervision necessary. I would just sit there in the pew and look around, sort of soak it all in. I remember it to this day, and I loved it.

Nowadays, whenever visiting a new city, I have an urge to go to one of the local churches to check it out.

Chapel at Duke University Cathedral. Photo courtesy of Duke University Cathedral.

Once when I went to visit our kids in the Raleigh-Durham area, I went to Duke University to visit the chapel there, a gothic cathedral, huge, gorgeous, impressive, and I had to see it in person. That little line from Psalm 84 came to mind. “Better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”

I’ve always felt that way, with one exception — a day in the courts is roughly equal to a day in nature, sitting by a stream. But then those days in nature might be God’s courts as well.

Why Are Sanctuaries so
 Beloved? Why Are They
 Built so Magnificently?

Look at them: the huge spaces, the stained glass, the woodwork.

Why do we spend 
so much effort and money to erect places 
of worship?

Churches, temples, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, ashrams — all of them, I would suggest, do something symbolic for the soul. That is, they connect heaven and earth because you can walk right in at ground level.

You can feel the functional foundation, built ever so securely, often out of stone. And the way they are built, with spire and vaulted ceiling, draws your eye upward. You can’t help it. They’re rooted in the earth, but with spire and ceiling, you feel the connection between heaven and earth.

On the communion table, you will see a bronze candlestick there with a white taper in it. It comes from my personal altar in my living room, and it’s something I’m fond of, not only because it’s old but also because of its symbolism.

Pair of antique Japanese bronze candlesticks, cranes on tortoises & lotus flowers, circa 1870. Image courtesy of Carter’s Antiquities Guide.

Even though my candlestick is only about a hundred years old, it is modeled after a pair of candlesticks of the same style and appearance from a Zen monastery in Japan from the Fourteenth Century. It has two turtles on the bottom, a mother and a tiny turtle right beside it, and on the back of the larger turtle is a crane and in the beak of the crane is a lotus flower.

The symbolism of the candlestick is exactly the same as the symbolism of a sanctuary, which connects heaven and earth. The turtle has its feet in the mud and its head in the air. The crane has its feet in the mud and its head in the air. The lotus flower has its roots in the mud and the flower up in the air. In each case, putting them together is designed to remind the viewer there’s a connection, they’re linked.

Two Core Symbolisms of a Ladder:
 Connections Between High/Low,
 Incremental Rungs for Ascension.

This brings us finally to the scripture for today — the story of Jacob’s Ladder.

Jacob’s Dream by William Blake (c. 1805, British Museum, London). PD Wikimedia.

(As an aside, I will be glad when we can move on to a different scripture passage at some point. “We . . . . are . . . . climbing . . . . Jacob’s . . . Ladder” is an unbelievably slow song because he had a long dream.)

Rather than applying exegetical techniques to this passage, I would actually like to apply dream symbolism to it. So Jacob fell asleep, and he had a dream about this ladder with angels ascending and descending on it.

For dream symbolism, you never want to get fancy because you don’t want to get nuanced, you don’t want to get complex about it. It’s straightforward; here’s what it means.

What is the symbolism of a ladder?

It connects something high up, out of reach from where you are, planted on the ground. You’ve got a leaky roof, and there you are, standing on the ground, looking up at it. It’s the ladder that is the connection between the high and the low, between the out-of-reach and what’s at hand.

But ladders actually have two core symbolisms: One is the connection between the high and the low; the other one is that there are rungs on the ladder to ascend. There are increments, one at a time as you rise.

There’s a phrase, “He’s climbing the corporate ladder,” meaning he’s got a job. What’s the next job? And when he gets that one, what’s the next job after that?

Take one or both of those symbolisms — connecting the high and the low, or the rungs for the incremental steps. Take those and look at life from the point of view of Jacob, or better yet, look at it from your point of view, your life.

Here you are, sitting in a church pew, inside a sanctuary, and in the back of your mind are your problems, the things that are always there, cooking around in your mind as well as in your heart.

Then, because your issues overpower the sermon, you nod off and fall asleep for a while. But then you wake up with a sense of assurance, a sense of joy that heaven and earth are connected, that all your worries are understood by the divine, and you have access to the power that heaven and earth are connected. And as if that weren’t enough, you realize that the actual place where you’re sitting is the connection between heaven and earth. You’re back to a spot where they’re connected, and you knew it not!

An Archetype for Everyone:
 Build a Memorial to the House
 of God and the Gate of Heaven.
Stairs to the top of the tower, Duke University Cathedral. Image courtesy Duke University Chapel.

So you build a memorial, and you name the place Bethel — House of God. And you exclaim to everyone that this is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.

Do you perceive the way this story is an archetype for everyone’s story? The way it applies to each and every one of you in your individual circumstances — feet on the ground, soul linked to God, and you knew it not.

Churches are our memorial. Churches are our Bethel, the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. And sometimes we just don’t know it. Sometimes we forget.

(Read the full sermon for excluded text. Link below.)

Putting on the Mind of Christ 
Awakens Us to God & Humanity,
 Spirit & Flesh Already Connected.

Embracing Christ-consciousness, putting on the mind of Christ wakes us up aware of what already is. And what already is, is that heaven and earth, God and humanity, Spirit and flesh are already connected, already linked, Spirit infusing all materiality existing within spirit.

Stained glass window, historic sanctuary at First Congregational Church, Binghamton, N.Y. Photo by J. Walters.

Until the day we awaken to the fact; until the day we incorporate that gospel truth into our souls; until that day, we will read Jacob’s story and try to incorporate the symbolism into our lives, let it sink in; until that day, we will place candlesticks with turtles and cranes and lotus flowers upon our altars.

And until that day, we will build churches and cathedrals with towering spires and vaulted ceilings to remind us because for now, we need reminders. As a rule, we know it not, but we are waking up.

Amen.

View or Download full The Gate of Heaven sermon.

Featured Image Credit: Mosaic of Pentecost in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. Photo by Pete Unseth. CC-SSA, Wikimedia.