2008_08_31MotherMira

Scripture Readings: Romans 12:9-21

⁹Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

This last week Mother Meera, an Indian woman reputed to be an avatar, someone who has a special connection with the light of God, a reincarnation of the Divine Mother, gave blessings at St. John’s. You may still be able to smell the incense. Being short on custodial help, cleaning gave me a good excuse to snoop around. The four events were well attended. People packed the sanctuary to wait their turn in silence to be blessed. You kneel before her and she places her hands on your head. When she removes her hands you sit up and she looks into your eyes. She does not speak or give lectures. I suspect she has learned the wisdom of recognizing your gift and staying with what you do well.

I looked at some of her material before we agreed to have her here. She had very positive things to say about Jesus and Mother Mary. In fact she sees herself in the same spiritual lineage, a reincarnation of the same Mother spirit. Her blessings are intended to bring divine light, love, grace and peace to people, or to open people to the Divine light that is all around and within us.

We are not people who would claim we control the Spirit within our human made religious institutions, and certainly, I don’t think Jesus would have a problem with someone who wants to bless others with God’s light, love, grace and peace; I would even say love, grace and peace are the narrow Way that Jesus invites us to journey on, so I said yes to Mother Meera at St. John’s.

Being short on custodial help, cleaning gave me a good excuse to snoop around. I noticed that Mother Meera had a disciple or servant with her who would do her own cleaning for each of the Mother’s visits to the private bathroom in our office. I assume this practice was related to the rules and customs for various castes in Hindu tradition. The holier your caste, the further you are to stay from dirty things. Witnessing the strong turnout of new age white folks, I was intrigued and fascinated by the idea and attraction of special human conduits, prophets, visionaries and mystics.

Two weeks ago, Todd’s group, the San Francisco Renaissance Voices, performed an exciting program of music composed by Hildegard, the visionary 12th-century nun. Hildegard had visions of light, of God’s word, which she recorded in poetry and music. In Alleluia – verse for the Virgin, Mary seems to embody God, and Mary’s act of giving birth to Christ seems to embody in microcosm, the creative action of God in the cosmos.

O virga mediatrix / Alleluia-verse for the Virgin
by Hildegard of Bingen

English version by Barbara Newman

Alleluia! light
burst from your untouched
womb like a flower
on the farther side
of death. The world-tree
is blossoming. Two
realms become one.

This image of divine light is frequent with Christian mystics and mystics of other traditions too. “The light is seen to be ever expanding, radiating out from a central point, “like a flower.” Or, as in this mornings passage from Exodus, a burning bush. “It is immediately understood to be the true source of all things, the foundation on which the physicality of the material world is built. This is why the Gospel of John declares, “all things were made through him and without him was not anything made.”

“This light of the mystic is eternal and whole. Its sum is always complete with no loss and no end.” The bush burned but was not consumed. “And, when the mystic truly bathes in the outpouring of this light, the sense of death itself seems to be washed away. There seems to be no small sense of self apart from that light, there is nothing left that is vulnerable to death. The light is “on the farther side / of death.”

And this living light is the medium that bridges the heavenly and the earthly levels of reality, “Two / realms become one.” Speaking as this bridge, Christ in the Gospels states simply, “I am the way (the truth and the light.”) — a statement sadly misconstrued by literalist Christians for millennia as an assertion that Christianity is the one and only way to reach God. (Granger, Ivan http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com)

It is the way that Jesus embodied which is the only way. It is not the name of the physical person, but his embodied spirit, his actions and vision. It was not Christ’s intention to limit God. With Moses, God refuses to limit himself with a name and simply says, “I am.” Mystics of multiple religious traditions, with different language and names for God report almost identical experiences of the divine. They experience the God that simply is.

Still, The strong Protestant blood running through my veins both led me to accept Mother Meera with grace, to be grateful that there is another someone who has devoted her life to blessing people with goodness, and to reserve a good dose of skepticism toward her uniqueness. As the jaunt with Hildegard reminds us, the Catholic tradition is full of special spiritual people, people who are somehow, for some reason closer to God: The pope is the number one spiritual guru or avatar of the Roman Catholics. Then there are bishops and priests, and of course, the saints like Hildegard and Francis.

But Protestants had a problem with this hierarchy, especially in the way it was used to exploit common people for commercial, religious and political power. From the Protestant point of view these spiritual elite could just as easily become barriers to God’s grace rather than conduits. If we always think that there is some relic we must visit to gain healing, some saint we need to help us experience God’s grace, some indulgence we must buy to gain peace, a priest we must confess to in order to receive forgiveness, then we are always one person or one confession or one sacrifice away from God.

As a quick footnote: this is why we have our prayer of confession right in worship. We all confess directly to God, but also together. You don’t confess to me, but we confess together directly to God. In the same way, during prayer time, you lift up your prayer and we all pray together. I may be trained in the language of prayer, but my prayers are not necessarily more powerful than yours. It is the faith that has power, not the words or the position of the person praying.

So there is a strange and beautiful paradox in the Christian message: Christ is the sacrifice to end sacrifice, the intermediary to end intermediaries. The current Christian culture’s hyper emphasis on Christ as the only way comes from this reformation context: Christ is the only way, as in, that is it, Christ is enough, no more separation, no more hoops, no more pilgrimages to take, nobody else to pay, no other class or occupation you need to rise to, nobody else you need to see to experience the love and grace of God.

We may have different jobs and talents, but none gives us greater access to God’s light and goodness. We are free in Christ. Caste is broken down and we are coheirs with Christ, sons and daughters of God. God is with, in and around you and me, here and now.

Jesus embodies the Spirit of God, is killed, but the Holy Spirit is everlasting and ever-present. It breaks out of the confines of the material world, the world of sin and flesh and tomb, and is witnessed to be alive and well. The Spirit of the risen Christ is present now within us. We all have direct access to God. With the Grace of Christ, we are all avatars, conduits of the way, the truth and the light of God. We are all sons and daughters of God.

This is precisely why I will often use the children when we lay on hands to bless and to pray. For I want them and us to know: not only do we receive the grace and healing of God as Christians, we embody and send it. There is nothing about Mother Meera or Pastor Max, nothing about the title or even the job, nothing about our bodies or our gender …It is our openness to the Spirit of God’s grace that is the conduit, the faith of a Mother, a priest, a teacher, janitor or child. It taps the same light, the same I Am.

There is certainly a place and a calling for those who withdraw from worldly life for the contemplative, for nuns and monks who renounce sexual or material life and dedicate their days to prayer and God alone. Jesus says, pick up your cross. Who am I to say what their cross is. Mystics have much to teach us, illumination to share. They are a part of the body of Christ, the light of God in the world. Certainly it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people praying, meditating and blessing.

Jesus has the option before him in this morning’s passage: head out to the mountaintop or back into town? Moses meets the light of God on the mountain and is sent back to Egypt to let the people know that God hears the cries of the oppressed. The compassion they find in the light of God calls them to stand up for justice. And we are called to follow the same Way: “pick up your cross and follow me.” So we are back to paradox. Christ the sacrifice to end sacrifice calls us to sacrifice. But the sacrifice is not to convince God to bless us, but to show the world that God is a blessing.

On untouchable’s day, Mahatma Gandhi started a fast in an attempt to force all India’s temples to admit untouchables. He said, “I would rather that Hinduism die than untouchability live… My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity.”

Gandhi understands both the cross, perhaps as well as any Christian ever has. There is nothing about suffering in and of itself that saves. The cross Jesus moves toward and beyond is a sacrifice for righteousness, for purity of heart, for justice and equality, for grace and peace.

Throughout the world today people of various religions are killing each other, convinced they alone know the way and truth of God. It is clear that there are significant differences between our Reformed Christian faith and people who believe they need a Mother Meera to receive God’s blessing and light. But I went and knelt before her, let her touch my head and bless me, not to worship her, but to be open to the movement of the God I worship. For I would rather that Christianity die than for arrogant, exclusive Christianity to live. When Meera looked in my eyes, I also looked back. As she saw my humanity, I saw hers. As she sought God’s grace for me, I sought God’s grace for her. Here in this worship the same should be happening between you and me, during the sermon, the prayers and the passing of the peace.