Genesis 28:10-22
Prayer: Just as Jacob awoke to your presence, so awaken us from our slumber and give us eyes to envision your presence among us. Amen.
Anyone been in or heard a conversation lately that included “I am spiritual but religious?” I don’t know that religion is fully understood in this phrase but what I do gather from it is that there is a deep longing in our culture for a connection to something More that is not bound by creeds, doctrines, or rigid confessions. People are looking for more meaning, more connection, more life – they are grasping for something to sink their teeth into –something more than day old dry toast.
In the intro to her book ‘An Altar in the World,’ Taylor writes, “They know there is more to life than what meets the eye. They have drawn close to this “more” in nature in love, in art and in grief. They would be happy for someone to teach them how to spend more time in the presence of this deeper reality…” She goes on to note that people will often turn to the places where such knowledge is supposed to be found – like a church, only to discover that more often than not, the people there are just as unsure about how to actually connect to this more as they are…
Her book is for all spiritual seekers, those in the church and those outside – anyone who is searching for a deeper connection to that which we name God, the luminous Web that Holds all things together, the Moreness that evades simple definition. Turning to the “the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life” Taylor invites us, chapter by chapter, to look for God right we are – in the daily routine of our lives. She says, “the treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”
This is going to be the basis for our worship series this summer. The first practice she writes about is Waking up to God. Waking up to divine reality.
In our scripture this morning we find Jacob fleeing Beer-sheba for Haran for fear of what his brother might do to him. He had just tricked his father into blessing him instead of his older twin Esau and Esau was ready to kill him. On his journey to Haran he spent the night in the wilderness, and placed a stone under his head for a pillow. That night he had a dream of angels descending and ascending on a ladder, and he heard God say to him “Remember I am with you and I will not leave until I do what I promise I would do…” the dream was so real, so vivid, so transparent, that when he woke up he named the place Bethel, the house of God – for surely God was in this place and I did not know it.
I imagine we all could share a moment when the line between secular and sacred became blurred and we felt ourselves in the presence of something powerful. Maybe on a hike. Or around a table. Or standing on the shore of an ocean. Or walking through ruins of ancient society. May be we have been on our own journey in the wilderness and come across a pile of stones marking the sacredness of a space. Marcus Borg calls them thin places – I think I told you one of the friends I met on our travels last year, a Anglican priest by the name of Henry, likes to call them instead Fat places, where the air is thick with the presence of God – rich and full and enveloping.
Before we began building special houses for God, God’s house was anywhere and everywhere. But along with the construction of temples and cathedrals and houses of worship came this arbitrary line between sacred and secular and over time we began to believe that God preferred in Taylor’s words, “four walls and a roof to wide-open spaces. We believed that God’s home was the church and that God was chiefly interested in religion. We forgot the whole world is the House of God.”
When I first read this in her book I thought to myself yes, I can see how this is true for others – but I certainly know and believe that God’s house is not contained to the church. But then I thought about how I answer the question when people ask me how I came to be a minister, I usually begin by telling them that I didn’t really go to church all that often as a kid but in ninth grade I went to this church camp called La Foret and that this was the first time I experienced the presence of God…
After reading this first chapter of Taylor’s book – I need and want to amend that story. Because really, my first church, my first house of God, was on the banks of the Poudre river just west of ft. Collins – I may not have spent a lot of time in Sunday school as a kid, but I can remember the joy of packing a basket full of food, spreading out the blanket, jumping in and out of the water, learning to skip rocks, exploring the banks full of bugs and toads and searching for little specs of mica that grew on the rocks – it was a magical world – and while I didn’t have the language of God to describe it, it was fat with joy, wonder, and love. My experience of that something More, that something that binds me and connects me to everything else in this world, it began early and frequently –
All alongside my years in church camp and confirmation my Dad and I would spend time hiking, camping…later in college we floated the labyrinth canyon of the green river. My dad was one of the adults that took my youth group to the canyonlands when I was a junior in high school – We never talked about God per se – but there was sacredness in those miles we walked – in the hours we floated –
On one particular hike we went to chasm lake which sits below the east face of longs peak. To get there you had to cross some snow fields – so we made it to the lake and spent some time there and then on our way back across the snow fields we met these two hikers – a man and a women – full regalia – jacket – long sleeve shirts – ice axes – hiking boots – And here we were in tennis shoes, shorts, t-shirts a couple of hats and one small back pack between us.
Standing there in front of each other one of them says to us – “you do know the technique for self arrest don’t you? Before we could answer – though I don’t know that either of had the answer – the began to explain to us what to do if the snow were to slide beneath our feet or if we were to slip on a snow field – They of course have no idea that just minutes earlier my dad and I were climbing some other snow fields and sliding down them on purpose –
It’s a silly story but it’s a fond memory because I remember being so thankful for my Dad and how much fun we would have together as we spent time in this magnificent house of God. Its stories like these that shaped my sense of something More just as much as sitting in the back pew with my friends in worship. Why would that experience be any less important, or less formative, than the experiences I had inside the church…Who I am in this role is in large part because of the rivers and the oceans and the mountains to which my Dad introduced me.
I am on the one hand a child of the earth. I feel most alive when I sleeping on the earth with the stars over my head and the sound of water singing me to sleep. On the other hand I also found this community called church. This place where my masks could come off and my real questions could be honored and trusted friendships could be cultivated.
Because of this I have long struggled with this belief that God is of the church and not of the world. That these two realms are somehow not compatible, that the way of nature was not the way of Christ. I have fought that separation, I don’t believe it needs to be there, or actually is there– but I can still feel the weight of a thousand years that forced them a part holding us down from fully embracing God in our everyday lives. And so I appreciate the insight of Taylor who reminds us that we can learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as we can from paying attention to scripture.
She writes. “I do not have to choose between the sermon on the Mount and the magnolia trees – God can come to me by a still pool on the big island of Hawaii as well as at the altar of the Washington national Cathedral. The house of God stretches from one corner of the universe to the other. Sea monsters and ostriches live in it, along with people who pray in languages I do not speak, whose names I will never know.”
Her words remind me of a small community in Indiana I just became aware of a few months ago called New Harmony. Anyone familiar with this town? New Harmony is the former site of two historic intentional communities. The first group, the Harmonists, settled on the Wabash River in 1814, and in similar vain to our own Harold Camping, settled there to prepare for what they expected would be the imminent end of the world. After a failed prediction, the community disbanded, and in 1824 a man by the name of Robert Owen purchased their land…and he had a different vision for a utopian community in which the life of the mind was paramount, and philosophers and scientists flocked to the community. A hundred years later a women by the name of Jane married a descendent of Robert Owen, who was deeply invested in Houston oil. New Harmony was a favorite place for them to visit, and beginning in the 1960’s they began a huge restoration project of the town, preserving buildings, creating gardens and conference center, and capturing a bit of what Robert had dreamed of once many years before. As part of this restoration, Jane Owen commissioned the building a new church, but not just any church. She wanted to build a church without a roof – believing that the only roof that could embrace all of the worshipping humanity was the sky. The roofless church. An image that grafts two worlds back together.
An image that invites us to look both inside and outside the church, to wake up to where ever we are, and see that God is in this place and every place.
This summer Creating an altar right here in the place that honors the many altars of our own lives – if there is something that you would be willing to add to the altar – bring it on a Sunday – and during the offering each week will invite you to bring it forward. If you would like to share what the item means to you – let me know ahead of time and we will plan it into the service.
