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In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven. You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
And the Spirit immediately led him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by the Adversary; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels took care of him.
When I was first asked to share my faith journey I didnt think I had one. To my surprise, that assignment made me realize there was a thread I had never recognized before. And now, many years later, I can identify even more strongly that thread in my faith journey that made me leave the church in my teens. I realized that I had a yearning for direct experience of the divine. I cannot recall any particular experience early in life that led me to that yearning, but I knew deep in me that it was possible, and important. It was in such a deep place that I could not identify it directly. Growing up in a Presbyterian church gave me only brief opportunities for that experience, and they were not intentional. In those days it mostly happened for me when we sang hymns, or when I sang in the choir. That strong yearning led me away from the Christian church (because I didnt know that Christians might share that yearning). I immediately found some satisfaction going to a satsang service with the Self Realization Fellowship they said right out loud that they wanted to be in touch with the divine and the chanting we did gave me a taste of what Id been looking for. I had forgotten this until writing this sermon, but I actually established a kind of personal chanting-meditation practice for a while after that experience. I still didnt really recognize this yearning, but it drove me to explore lots of other spiritual traditions. I found quite a few doorways into direct experience with the divine....none of them Christian. At that point I felt little connection to Christianity, except through my heritage. I didnt know that my yearning still wanted to find a home in my own spiritual lineage!
Many years later I attended a workshop with the Guild for Psychological Studies an organization that combines spiritual and psychological work, often using wisdom and stories of Jesus as the ground from which the work springs. This workshop was centered around the passage from Mark we heard today. We did a guided meditation on the passage, where we were invited to imagine Jesus baptism as if it were our own... and afterward had time to process our experience with clay and other art materials. I was profoundly moved and very surprised to feel that I somehow knew what Jesus experienced as he both sank into and came up out of the Jordan river. Jesus heart was opened when he heard you are my beloved. THIS was a direct experience of the Divine!! All four gospel writers speak of this experience in quite similar language --- this tells us that it must have been an experience Jesus spoke of to his friends, probably over and over. Somehow this experience led to his public ministry. For centuries, Christian communities have used the term Epiphany to describe the sudden breaking through of the Divine into the world of the flesh. Youve maybe heard the word used to describe a sudden understanding, a divinely inspired solution to a problem, an unexpected visitation of spiritual clarity. We truly do not know what Jesus experience had been before his baptism by John but we do know that his ministry took off like a rocket after it. An epiphany experience can be life-changing; it can shift perspectives; it opens ones heart. It is an experience of the oneness of God and ourselves.
Despite most of what I had heard in my church upbringing, I never believed that Jesus said that he was the only one capable of such direct experience of God. He was constantly telling folks they could also experience God in this way. And those who were his friends surely did for they are the ones who told this story after he died. Looking at Jesus life, it seems clear that this Baptism incident was the ground out of which his ministry grew and bloomed. As he rose up out of the water, he knew he was not separate from God. That deep knowing stayed with him the rest of his life --- and his ministry was about trying to help every human he came in contact with to have that same knowing. That kind of knowing is sometimes described as the way drops of water know they are part of the ocean, or a river, or a cloud. Even though they are drops of water, they are also part of something bigger. We are like those drops of water in an ocean, or a river, or a cloud of God.
And I believe that we all yearn for that experiential knowing its not the same as an intellectual understanding. Its what poets and mystics and movie makers and songwriters seek to describe. Pilgrimages are often about journeying to locations that are sometimes known as thin places --- where it seems easier to make this contact with the Divine. Marcus Borg in his book The Heart of Christianity describes the idea of thin places in this way:
Thin places has its home in a particular way of thinking about God. Deeply rooted in the Bible and the Christian tradition, this way of thinking sees God as the encompassing Spirit in which everything is. God is not somewhere else, but right here. In words attributed to Paul in the book of Acts, God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being....we are in God, we live in
God, we move and have our being in God. God is a non-material layer of reality all around us, right here as well as more than right here.
Borg quotes Thomas Merton here, Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes...and we see it maybe more frequently.
So we are NOT separate from God, but we think we are, most of the time. The thin places in our lives can help us remember that we reside in the Divine, and the Divine is in us. Thin places are not just locations --- they are experiences in our lives. Birth and Death are well known for thinning our imaginary wall of separation. Joy and grieving both sweep aside the veil, though we are not always able to see that happen. These experiences open our heart --- and it is ONLY through an open heart that we can know ourselves to be in communion with God. Borg says We can understand through many Biblical metaphors that the condition of the heart matters. The heart, the self at the deepest level, can be turned toward God or away from God, open to God or closed to God. But its typical condition is that it is turned away from God and closed.
It is part of the human condition to want to know our connection with the Divine. At a retreat at Spirit Rock last weekend, one of the leaders told us that archeologists have discovered what looks like prayer circles around fire pits made by VERY early human beings. So humans have had this yearning probably before language -- or it may even be that language developed as a way to share this yearning.
While it is not possible to make an epiphany happen, we can become more attuned to the condition of our heart --- and to turn towards that which helps it to open.
We can notice when our heart seems closed, and invite it to become more open. There is a bit of a liability, though. An open heart is undefended.....it is vulnerable....and we tend to avoid that vulnerability. One of the reasons we gather in spiritual community is to create a safer space in which to explore that open-hearted place with others. Church or temple or mosque or synagogue can be thin places. We can practice letting our hearts open and stay open as we sing, pray, laugh and cry together. The more we become familiar with the state of the open-heart, the more we can tolerate the feeling of vulnerability that accompanies it. In fact we can learn to treasure that feeling because it is evidence of our connection to that in which we live and move and have our being.
Being in a faith community gives us a place in which to practice and experience our unity with the divine. We can sing our hearts open, weep hearts open, hug our hearts open, pray our hearts open. We can share with each other what closes our hearts. In community we support each other in turning our hearts towards the divine, as hard as that may sometimes be. We can hold the picture of Jesus shining face as he emerged from the river --- knowing he was both a drop of water, and part of that Sacred river. Soon we will share a sacrament that also reminds us that we, too, are deliciously beloved by God we are not separated from the Divine, though we think we are. We are not separate from each other, though we think we are. We share the Sacred meal to remember, and to open our hearts to the Divine in ourselves, and in each other.
Amen.
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