Aha! moments - turning points in the journey of faith

Sermon by Rev Bev Cameron preached at Pitt Street Uniting Church
on the 3rd Sunday in Easter, 30th April 2006

Luke 24:36[b]- 48

THE MESSAGE

Today I’m going to talk about what I call “Aha!” moments.

I ‘m sure you’ve had some. Life is full of them if you stop to think about it. All our learning experiences are in greater or smaller ways, “Aha!” moments which might change our lives. Grasping the point of algebra, for example, could inspire confidence to take the next step in using it. You might end up a mathematician. Scientists making discoveries can have “Aha!” moments. After much work and struggle they may have their lives changed and change the lives of many others as a result of their discovery.

But I’m talking about another sort of “Aha!” moment. It’s more like the “Aha!” of falling in love and being profoundly changed by that. Think of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri who fell in love with a girl called Beatrice. They never married. Indeed, she died when only 24. But Dante’s love for her endured and she became the muse who inspired his writing, made him the greatest of all Italian poets and legendary in the world of European literature..

“Aha!” moments, the sort I’m thinking about today,  are events which touch us deeply in a spiritual way and turn us in new faith and life directions. We die to who we were and rise to new identity. The resurrection of Christ is our most dramatic metaphor for these experiences. 

As you know, Easter is the central Christian event. Without the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we wouldn’t be worshipping here today.

But the meanings of Easter are many.  We can’t deal with all of them at once. So I have chosen the aspect Marcus Borg describes as revelation of the way.  In other words, suddenly grasping the meaning of Jesus in his death and resurrection so deeply that  a whole new way of abundant life opens up before you. “Aha!” moments are at the heart of that.

RESISTANCE

Strangely, we seem reluctant to be open to significant changes which are offered to us in life experience. We are cautious, hesitant and on the defensive.  Most of us live lives which are one long effort to resist the unknown. We could say we don’t want to see the way the unknown and unknowable Spirit is calling us forward in every moment. In the end, such resistance is futile because we’re going to be swept along with life anyway.

The man Jesus, a Jewish mystic and healer, never lived this way, in life or in accepting death.  He remained completely sensitive to each moment as new and unique and kept his mind wholly open to the presence of God and what he was being called to, whether that was to heal the sick, confront the power brokers of his day or preach the message of a better future. This sensitivity to God in every moment is one of the reasons the early church described Jesus as the incarnation of God - because he was so open to and filled with the Spirit before Easter and was a very real presence to his followers after Easter.

HUGH MACKAY

Now I shall digress a little.

Most of you will have heard of social researcher, Hugh Mackay.  He spoke recently on ABC Radio National about the impact of the media on faith.  His point was the way we receive messages about faith will shape our beliefs. 

So if you have grown up in a culture mediated to you through the internet, mobile ‘phones, TV and radio, you will almost inevitably have a different grasp of the meaning of faith from those who have developed faith understandings largely from the written word.

But what is more, the messages we take on board will not only be shaped by the way faith is mediated to us but also by our own individual needs.  And these individual needs are not only dictated by inherently different personalities but will change and develope as we grow older. It would be surprising if we as adults still understood religious faith in the way we did as a children.

Thus, to anyone who thought our faith was a given, fixed and unchanging truth, Mackay’s words about the inevitability of difference and change may come as a surprise.  I, however, was not surprised. I was encouraged, because his message that faith is a journey full of change was relevant to the message this morning.

Obviously, each of us is on a very individual faith journey.  We may, when all is said and done, be able to claim unity only through our shared faith in Jesus, and even what we understand by that will vary.

THE TEXT

Our text today is Luke’s account of Easter morning, the moment when the risen Christ, having appeared already to two men on the Emmaus road, appears to the astonished disciples in Jerusalem

Let’s look again at that central story of our faith.

Peter and the other grief stricken disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem coming to grips with the loss of their teacher and lord. The one they believed in as their messiah who would lead them and the rest of the nation to triumph over their enemies had been put to death in humiliation and suffering at the hands of the Romans and the Jewish authorities. What hope was there for them now?

At this nadir, this profoundly lonely experience of death and loss of hope, the Risen Jesus, stands before them. They are predictably terrified. Jesus calms them by showing them his hands and his feet. He invites them to touch him. The disciples allow themselves to feel joy, though they still doubt. So Jesus eats fish with them. He instructs them again in the scriptures. He tells them they are witnesses to himself, now risen from death. He blesses them.  And as we know, the disciples, now fully and joyfully believing in the truth of the risen Christ, go on to new life, transformed into courageous apostles of the gospel. We know from stories of their later experiences that their transformation, their faith journey, does not stop there.

There are many other stories of transformation in the bible designed to bring us to faith or to renew the faith we already have. But the story of the resurrection remains central.

A CONTEMPORARY TRANSFORMATION

Let me offer you a contemporary illustration.  If you were watching ABCTV on Monday night and saw AUSTRALIAN STORY, then I ask your patience, but it was too relevant to pass up.

The story concerns a young man in his twenties living on a country property with his devoted parents. He assists in the management of the property and is an excellent horseman. But he is a failure with women, feels nothing for them and suspects he is gay though that is the last thing he is ready to acknowledge even to himself. He fears that his parents, let alone the local farming community, would make him a social outcast were he to come out. As a result of his anxiety and lack of freedom to express his true nature fully, his behaviour becomes erratic and aggressive.  He drinks too much and worries his parents greatly.  Eventually, reality kicks in when he has a driving accident and is gaoled for six months on a charge of manslaughter.  When he comes out of prison, he is still hostile, still aggressive but now he is also depressed to the point of suicide.

The climax of the story approaches rapidly.  He climbs a high rocky outcrop on the family property and pauses at the summit to collect strength to jump to his death. But, at that very moment, he sees a small bird sitting on a branch nearby and hears it sing a lovely song.  At that instant, something in him opens to a new possibility for himself. He realises he must take his own truth seriously, act courageously by coming out, give himself the chance to love generously and move into the future trying to be everything that he has the potential to be.

The story moves to its conclusion as we see him first confiding in a trusting woman friend who accepts and encourages him, then to his family. While his parents are personally disappointed at the loss of their hopes for the family name to continue through him, they make it clear that having him with them in a relationship of love is far more important and they embrace him.  Finally, he comes out to his local community by having a photo of himself riding his beloved horse printed in the local paper under the heading THIS COWBOY IS REALLY GAY. Far from being rejected, he is warmly included in community events in a way he has scarcely known from previous experience. And he goes on to find companionship among a group of other rural gay men.

It doesn’t take much imagination to interpret that story as a resurrection moment of transformation.  We might even see the small bird as an incarnate symbol of the Spirit of the God we know as the Ground of our being.  In its song, it was loving life, it was living fully and it was being everything it was made to be. And in its very presence it was calling the young man to take the risk and really live.

DISCUSSION

That’s just one individual’s story of an “Aha!” moment, of spiritual transformation, a dying to a former spiritually unaware way of life and a rising to a new and truer way of being.  No doubt many of you have such stories of your own.  In our “God and Me” series we have heard many other transformation stories from such people as John Shelby Spong, Lloyd Geering and other local and internationally known figures.

But we are probably a very small group of people privileged to be in a congregation where we are exposed not only to transformation stories from visitors and each other, but where we are also actively encouraged and aided to think critically and creatively about our individual and collective faith journeys, to consider them in the light of what the Spirit may be saying to us now, and to take risks in putting those changes into practice.

This sets us apart from others with different understandings of faith.  For example, in the coming Assembly debate on resolution 84 between those of a more literal, conservative view of faith who are opposed to it on the one hand and those more progressively minded Christians who want  at least to preserve the present guidelines for gay and lesbian people entering ministry on the other, we are clearly aware of differences in faith positions.

MACKAY AGAIN

Let me return to Hugh Mackay’s research into the nature of belief in Australia.

He says many Australians claim a belief in a God “out there” somewhere.  But, when these people are asked to define the God they believe in, they cannot.  It is sufficient just to believe as belief itself is seen as a good thing.  His respondents did believe in the golden rule “love your neighbour” but could not use bible stories to illustrate that.  Mackay suggests that many church goers would probably not fare much better.

On the other hand there are those who ARE familiar with bible stories, whether their faith needs are best met by a literal, theistic understanding of God or by finding the presence of God in a traditional, liturgical understanding, or by relating to a mystical God who can only be experienced and not defined at all.

I don’t want to imply here that the way we understand the nature of God and the Gospel is all that matters when it comes to spiritual transformation or that those who hold a literal understanding of those concepts will not experience such transformation. But I do wonder whether those with a more literal view of scripture are short changing themselves in terms of what God may be calling them to.

What is the problem here?

Robert Maddox in his  book Witnesses to the End of the Earth,  refers to studies of Australian culture which show that our beginnings as a convict settlement have shaped a habit of impatience or scorn of the intellectual. However, if we are to move forward in our journey of faith we need to have concern for meaning and truth. That means bringing our questions to scripture, using our minds and imaginations to understand it and daring to see and accept the attitudes and actions with which God seeks to lead us into new life.

In other words, it is necessary for all of us, not just clergy and others in specialist ministries, to explore the scriptures critically if we are to discern what they meant for those who wrote them centuries ago and to find any wisdom they may have for us in our contemporary faith journey in the very different 21^st century.

And it is also necessary to spend time in spiritual reflection,

- whether we conceive of the Spirit with a capital S as the Spirit of God, the ground of our Being along with Marcus Borg or John Shelby Spong,

- or whether we conceive of the spirit with a small s representing the human spirit such as we find in the writings of Christian humanists Lloyd Geering or Don Cupitt.

If we don’t bother to nurture our own spiritual growth, if we cling to biblical stories in a literal way without further question, we may not only be opening ourselves to the charge of biblical idolatry; our efforts to do the right thing for others may even add to injustices that already exist. All because we are not open to the new things the Spirit may be calling us to.

However, if we do take the time and trouble to listen to both the scriptures and the Spirit and apply that wisdom to life we may experience inner change,  a new awareness of life in all its beauty, power, complexity and possibility. Through awareness of the sacred and communion with it, we may discover greater self-acceptance as our idea of who we are matures to embrace both positive and negative aspects. And we may find we are called to a new and enriching response of compassion for the world. 

Such change happened to Jesus himself.  He was well versed in the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures. He  took time out to be alone with God to become aware of his way forward. He had changes in direction in his journey. A classic example is the story in Mark of the Gentile Syrophoenician woman who wanted him to heal her daughter. Jesus, believing his mission was only to the Jews, the children of Abraham, tried to dismiss her but her faith filled persistence woke him to the understanding that he was to reach out all to the world, not just to the Jews and he did as she asked.

To move and breathe in this kind of awareness arising from reflection on the wisdom of the scriptures and discernment of the Spirit alive in the experienced world around us is to engage in risky living.  We may, in an unanticipated “Aha!” moment, encounter the Living God.  We may be changed.  We may enter a life we can scarcely yet imagine.

Do you believe this?

It is the promise of Easter.  Amen.